The City That Overshadows Whatever Art It Hosts

“Every street in Berlin is ghosted. Every memorial is plastered in 20 layers of tragedy, heroism, and shame.” You leave a theater, concert or exhibition and look around: the still-bombed-out Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church here, a moldering section of the Berlin Wall there, the Reichstag across the way, tiny memorials to Auschwitz victims amidst the cobblestones …