A view of Michelangelo's dome over St. Peter's Basilica from a window in the Vatican Museum (left) and a remnant from the cold war in the former East Berlin not far from the American sector between East and West Berlin. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Summer Research: Visits to Berlin and Rome

Last year's travel-research project took Prof. Weis to Italy and Germany. His last visit to Italy involved 32 Winona State University Mass Communication students three years ago. This visit was strictly personal and took him to Rome and Florence with a chance to examine the society and its wonderful landmarks.

The visit to Germany, Berlin and Potsdam specifically, provided an opportunity to examine that city since the reunification of East and West Germany 20 years ago this year. There are traces of the Cold War separation everywhere...as is the case with the aftermath of World War II. But the distinction between East and West fades each year. Little remains of the infamous Berlin Wall, although a twin row of inlaid bricks can be found at locations throughout the city to mark it's former location. Potsdam is such a beautiful city it's hard to realize that that is where President Truman and Prime Minister Churchill formalized the subject of the fate of Europe after World War II raised with Stalin and Churchill earlier with President Roosevelt. The end result: enslavement of much of Europe, including half of Germany and half of Berlin to the Soviet Union. Those not freed by the western Allied forces were left subjects of Soviet tyranny for nearly 45 years. Roosevelt and Truman's Potsdam agreement help Eastern Europeans swap one dictator--Hitler--for another--Stalin.

Fortunately, reminders of that Cold War era are fading in Germany and Berlin...but there are a number of nostalgic East Berliners who openly long for the "good old days."

Some random sights:

A typical section of the Berlin Wall, not very tall, really, with rounded top (above left). But most don't realize there was a section of the wall abutting the West Berlin side with a wide open section with a roadway, gun turrets and watch towers between that an another section just like this on the East Berlin side. It wasn't a case of just getting over this wall that led to so many deaths at the hands of the East German and Soviet troops. At right Prof. Weis stands in front of the new American embassy, just west of the Brandenburg Gate and on property that was East Berlin until the wall fell in 1989.

Looking down on the site of Checkpoint Charlie, the barrier between East Berlin and the American sector of West Berlin (above, left). Taken from the window of the Berliner Mauer Museum at the site. Bullet holes (far right) mark older buildings throughout Berlin...most from World War II...but not all.

The tower of Vatican Radio from the grounds (above,left). The last time Prof. Weis was in Rome with WSU students, their host for a visit to Vatican Radio and TV was a priest, Father Lombardi. Today Father Lombardi is the official spokesman for Pope Benedict and heads all communications activities for the Vatican worldwide. The photo at left shows the macabre ceiling of the Capuchin monastery in Rome. All of the  decorations in the crypt area of the monastery under the church are made from bones of former priests and monks, saved from a former cemetery hundreds of years old.

In the heart of the ancient Roman forum (above, left) and at the Arch of Titus, son of Vespasian and conqueror of Jerusalem. That arch stands on the Palatine Hill at the entrance to the forum. It depicts the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 70 A.D. it was built in 81 A.D.

At the sign that used to mark the entrance from the American sector of West Berlin into Communist East Berlin (above, left) and a vestige of that era, a plaque indicating an area of the former East Germany, the DDR. Berlin was completely surrounded by Soviet-controlled East Germany after the war and the city itself divided into four sectors: American, British, French and Soviet. The Soviet domination by barbed-wire and gunpoint, and the Berlin Wall that separated East from West in that city, did not end until 1989, not long after President Ronald Reagan stood at the wall and told the Soviet leader to "Tear Down This Wall."