Berlin Adventures and Otto Bock

After a jam-packed Monday and Tuesday, the rest of our week in Berlin slowed down in terms of the time we were spending out and about. That didn’t mean that we weren’t still seeing many incredible things. Wednesday morning we traveled to the museum of German history and were given a tour that showed us the progression of the area now known as Germany from Roman times, through the Revolutionary 1700 and 1800s, through both World Wars and the Cold War, all the way to present day. Since our tour was only a couple hours, we weren’t able to see the majority of the pieces and exhibits in the museum. However, our guide showed us the hot spots and was very thorough in his explanations of the various parts of history he was explaining. We were able to see a German country that endured both triumph and defeat through its history but has emerged as a country whose people are proud of their heritage. Wednesday afternoon we traveled to the Robert Koch Institute where we learned who this pioneering scientist was. He was a doctor in the late 1800s who discovered the cause of tuberculosis which revolutionized how the disease was viewed and treated. He also researched many other dangerous and deadly diseases of his time and eventually won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1905 for his tuberculosis research. He traveled all over the world doing his research and was a huge figure in German sanitation. Now the Robert Koch Institute has a role in Germany similar to the CDC in the US. They are in charge of issuing health warnings as cases of diseases such as avian flu are discovered in Germany. After seeing Robert Koch’s tomb and some of the various medical instruments, documents, and medals/ commendations he received and used during his life, we received a lecture on the Nuremberg Doctor’s trials of the late 1940s. In this lecture, Dr. Wasser told us about the various medical experiments performed by the Nazi doctors on prisoners as well as who the doctors were and their feelings on their crimes. It was stunning to see how evil men could be to people and simply believe they were serving the greater good and have no remorse for causing thousands of deaths of innocent people whose only crime was their race or creed. The main point of the lecture was what came from the trials, the so-called Nuremberg code which focuses on the importance of informed consent. Although, the Nuremberg code isn’t a law it did help to put in words the necessary information to prevent anyone from repeating the Nazi doctors’ crimes and saying there was nothing wrong with what had been done.

Thursday brought probably the most lasting memories that I will have from this trip. In the morning we traveled to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen on the north side of Berlin. The day happened to bring with it a decently heavy snow (by Texas standards) so when we arrived at the camp the somber mood that places like these should be viewed in was set up by the falling snow. Sachsenhausen was a camp mainly for Soviet prisoners of war and German dissenters/ Communists as well as some Jews. It was not a death camp like Auschwitz, but instead a work camp which also had a hospital at which many experiments were performed. On our tour, we were led through the hospital rooms and learned of how poor the care was that was given to the sick prisoners and the pure neglect of the doctors who were present there as well as the non-Nazi doctors and attendants who tried to help the sick. It was sobering to learn how the Nazi doctors would simply select people to be executed based on the fact that more beds were needed. By far the most impactful part of the tour was the walk through the ruins of the killing center of which only the foundation remained. We were able to stand only feet from a room where over 10,000 Soviet prisoners were killed in a week’s time. This small room was camouflaged as an examination room and the prisoner would enter and stand against the wall to be “measured” and would then be shot in the neck through a hole by a soldier in the room behind them. Along with the body storage room and the crematorium and gas chamber (that was possibly never used), the whole area had a feel of pure evil. It’s hard to believe how cruel people can be to their fellow man. As we left the camp we walked through the front gates and saw the inscription on the gate which is on all concentration camps and means “Work will set you free”. Such irony can only be appreciated after one has seen how false this statement truly was. In the afternoon, we traveled back to the Charite campus, but this time we took a tour of the medical history museum there. Our guide was very thorough in his explanations of how surgeries took place in the 1700s, which caused many of us to cringe at the thought of having to live at that time. It was very interesting to see how medical technology and procedures developed and improved over time. We also saw the role of the Charite in this development and saw how large of an impact the hospital had on helping Berlin’s people through their medical problems. At the end of our tour we were able to see many specimens from all parts of the body both healthy and diseased. All I can say about that is I hope I never have any of the problems I had to see there. After the tour, Dr. Wasser gave us a lecture about a man who was a large part of the Charite, Rudolph Virchow. We learned how important he was in German medicine and how his teaching style allowed many to learn from him and solve many of the medical problems of the time. The coolest part of the lecture was that it took place in Virchow’s own lecturing hall that was partially destroyed from an Allied bomb from the end of WWII.

Friday brought to an end our time in Berlin, as we took a train to Göttingen and then a bus to Duderstadt to tour the Otto Bock factory located there. Now I had been supremely impressed with the Otto Bock center in Berlin, but the factory topped that by a mile. First, we were treated to lunch in the futuristic looking eating area. The whole lobby was built in a very trendy style in an attempt to show how Otto Bock is constantly on the cutting edge of technology. Then, we were able to walk through various production centers of the integral parts of the many prosthetic devices that Otto Bock makes. The factory was extremely efficient in its production and we were able to see the areas where prosthetic feet were made as well as the C-Leg joints and many other joints and adapters and finally the covers for the prosthetics. As cool as the production centers were, the logistics center was the prime example of efficiency. In a huge room filled with conveyor belts, blue boxes and crates were transported through the automated system to various human workers who would take the pieces needed for shipments and then send the boxes back to the storage room. The storage room was simply incredible. There were shelves that spanned from the floor to the ceiling which was very high and then extended back as far as one could see. Between these shelves were a version of what you could call a robotic forklift which moved back and forth along the rows to bring the necessary blue boxes as well as return the ones whose parts had been taken. The whole process was extremely fast, but even the system got somewhat less efficient as the day progressed. That was fixed when the entire system reorganized itself at night to reach its peak efficiency once again. Amazing. After the tour, we learned a little more about Otto Bock as a company and saw a company that was a model of stability at the top (only 3 CEO’s since it began in the 1920s) and being an industry leader in its field for many years. Finally, we saw some of Otto Bock’s fully assembled products on dummies and learned a little bit more about the details of how they function and give added quality of life for amputees. Finally, we were able to try out some of the interactive exhibits which showed us how our own bodies work and how this effects how prosthetics are developed. After our time at Otto Bock came to end, we returned to Göttingen. I’ll be back with more on our night in Göttingen and our subsequent weekend in Copenhagen next week.