Absurdistan in Köpenick

Warning: this post is written out of intense temporary rage.

I have probably been spoilt too much with my research trips to Italy where archivists (among others) are super empathetic and take it into consideration that foreign researchers have a limited time to conduct their research there, hence they let them stay longer than the official opening hours. Moreover, they are willing to stay there half an hour longer to enable the researchers to finish what they need to go through. In addition, they are interested in people as humans, talk to them, invite them for coffee. To sum up, it is a great experience to research in an Italian archive. In Vienna and Prague I did not experience such extra kindness, but there is a basic level of politeness and helpfulness. In addition to the awareness on the part of the archivists that it is actually beneficial for them that researchers use their materials in their work.

With the acknowledgement that also in Berlin the director of the Technical University’s Archive is a kind ad helpful person (once she stayed half an hour longer for my sake and even offered help to me in case I’d trouble with deciphering some handwriting), now I am going tor ant about the Archive of the Humboldt University.

The Archive of the Humboldt University makes me feel -perhaps unfairly – that it is this famous following of the rules at any cost without a sparkle of flexibility and humanism -that enabled Nazism to exist. One is allowed to use their research room only in their super limited opening hours. However, what makes me write this ranting is what has just happened in this morning. Since on Monday they open at 9, I came early today too. Two research room supervisors were already there, spending their strict work hours. Nonetheless they told me to go away because on Tuesday they open only at 11. I kindly asked if I could stay in the reading room with my own book until the microfilm reading room opens, still they anyway are there. No. Ok, so what should I do here in the middle of nowhere for hours? I have to notice here that the archive of the Humboldt University is not near to the university itself at all. It is in a very industrial part of Köpenick, just looking a tit instigates suicidal thoughts, let alone the perspective of walking here 1.2 hours with my 4 kgs laptop. All the nice parts of the city which have parks and cafés are far far away, so it did not make sense to me to travel to another district for this time. So, to my question what should I do until 11 their answer was that there is a Kaufland somewhere, maybe I can have a coffee there or I cna do shopping. In the afternoon I am going to ask them whether they would have sent me away like this, had it been winter and -10 Celsius. In the end I found a café in the Kaufland a few kms away from the archive and here I took my laptop to write out the anger from me that this surrealistic scene aroused. Ont he top of it, here I took a Wiener Melange since this coffees named VIennese are usually great unlike German coffee and here it turns out that „Wiener Melange” in Köpenick actually means coffee with cream which I don’t like.

In the current phase of my life I have to really really force myself to notice the positive sides of everything and to concentrate on them instead of Lex CEU and the crumbling of liberal democracy. So, let’s acknowledge how great it is that I was kicked out from the archive in summertime and not in -10. In addition, I work in two different archives as well in the next 2 weeks, so this is not going to be my only Berlin archive experience.