Last Updated on August 9, 2023
(This article originally appeared in a 2015 issue of Where Berlin.)
It’s only natural that a city known as Silicon Allee has several Berlin-specific apps that enable visitors to upgrade their sightseeing experience, whether it be through virtual technologies or simply expanding the knowledge of their surroundings.
Stolpersteine in Berlin
With the Stolpersteine in Berlin app, visitors can learn more about the various “stumbling stones” found in some 5,000 locations around the city. Each brass-covered sidewalk cobblestone serves as a memorial to a victim of the Holocaust, and the app allows you to locate specific stones and find out additional biographical information about the individuals they honor.
App available for download on iOS and Android.
Virtual Concert
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas)Taking commemoration a step further is Virtual Concert, which will completely transform the way you experience the Holocaust Memorial, located near the Brandenburg Gate. The app re-creates a historic 2008 concert in which 24 musicians interspersed among the memorial’s concrete blocks performed Harald Weiss’ “Vor Dem Verstummen.” Now, with the help of your iPhone (not available for Android) and the area’s free WLAN, you too can wander the rows as the orchestra plays, the volume of each instrument rising as you approach the location where a musician once played, then falling as you meander down another lane.
Available for download on iOS.
TimeTraveler
As of 2023, the TimeTraveler app no longer seems to be supported.The TimeTraveler app allows you to “witness” historic events in the very locations where they occurred, enabling you to enrich a self-guided walking tour. Just hold up your smart device at select locations noted by the map’s app, then watch as the past comes to life, the event footage projected onto the modern-day structures before you. Depending on the site, you might watch East German soldier Conrad Schumann leap across a field of barbed wire to West Berlin, 77-year-old Frieda Schulz escape to freedom by dangling out her window into the safety of a fireman’s net, or several other milestones from the Berlin of yesteryear.
For more ways to enhance your visit, check out these books to read before visiting Germany.
