The recent graduate is spending his summer interning with Freunde des Mauerparks (Friends of Mauerpark) before beginning his Fulbright year in Germany.
Once a site of violence and a sign of the separation between the two Germanys, Mauerpark—which used to be a strip of "no-man's land" at the Berlin Wall—has been repurposed as a community space symbolizing unity. It's here in Berlin that Daniel Rothschild '15 is spending his summer interning with Freunde des Mauerparks (Friends of Mauerpark).
"I fell in love with Mauerpark when I was studying abroad in Berlin last year," says the recent graduate, whose internship was arranged by Postdoctoral Writing Fellow Paul Farber, and is sponsored by the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship and the John B. Hurford '60 Center for the Arts and Humanities. "[The internship] combined my love for the park with the academic interests I pursued at Haverford as a history major and German minor: my interest in collective memory and memorialization, and especially how they play out in Germany."
Freunde des Mauerpark is a volunteer association created 15 years ago to preserve the park as a vibrant public space, which faces challenges from urban development projects that could compromise the character of the park. For instance, a sewage tunnel will be built under Mauerpark starting in 2017 that may require the construction of large, above-ground buildings. While the group knows that clean water is essential, they want the city to understand how a large construction on park grounds will disrupt Mauerpark's weekly activities.
"I'm extremely grateful for the opportunity I have right now to both continue wrestling with historical questions and learn about the messy, complex issues that go into preserving a public space," he says.
As an intern, Rothschild is translating blog posts and brochures for visitors from German to English, participating in a number of municipal meetings on water works, and proposing ideas to repurpose an old vegetable warehouse on park grounds.
He will remain in Germany after this internship ends, moving on to the much smaller town of Fulda, where Rothschild, one of this year's Fulbright recipients, will teach English for a year.
"[This internship] is an incredibly lucky segue into what I'm up to next year," he says. "So right now I'm able to brush up on my German and resituate myself in German life in a place that I'm familiar with and care about deeply."
—Hina Fathima '15
"Summer Centered" is a series exploring our students' Center-funded summer work.
