Psychology and Sociology School Trip to Berlin

Psychology

AQA GCSE

• Conformity: Identification and explanation of how social factors (group size, anonymity and task difficulty) and dispositional factors (personality, expertise) affect conformity to majority influence.
• Obedience: Milgram’s Agency theory of social factors affecting obedience including agency, authority, culture and proximity.
• Crowd and collective behaviour: Prosocial and antisocial behaviour in crowds: identification and explanation of how social factors (social loafing, deindividuation and culture) and dispositional factors (personality and morality) affect collective behaviour.

Pearson-Edexcel GCSE

• Social Influence: Obedience, Conformity and Deindividuation

OCR GCSE

• Social Influence:

• Conformity including majority influence.              
• Collective and crowd behaviour including pro-social and anti-social behaviour.
• Obedience including obeying the orders of authority figures.
• The effect of situational factors (other people and social) on behaviours:
• majority influence on conformity
• collective and crowd behaviour, including deindividuation
• culture on pro-social and anti-social behaviour
• authority figures on obedience
• criticisms of the effect of situational factors, including the free will/determinism debate.

AQA A’ level

• Aggression
• The ethological explanation of aggression, including evolutionary explanations of human aggression.
• Social psychological explanations of human aggression, including the frustration-aggression hypothesis, social learning theory as applied to human aggression, and de-individuation.
• Institutional aggression in the context of prisons: dispositional and situational explanations.
• The role of desensitisation, disinhibition and cognitive priming.

OCR A’ Level

• Responses to people in authority - Milgram (1963) – Obedience
• The psychology of genocide

Pearson-Edexcel A ‘Level

• Obedience / Social control
• Prejudice / Discrimination

Sociology

AQA GCSE

• Social control: Formal and informal methods of social control.
• Power and authority: Different forms of power and authority.

WJEC GCSE

• Social differentiation and stratification:

• Different forms and sources of power and authority
• Social control

AQA A’ Level

• Socialisation, culture and identity
• Social differentiation, power and stratification
• Human rights and state crimes

OCR A’ Level

• What is socialisation?
• What is identity?

Neue Synagogue

Once one of the largest synagogues in the world, it was damaged during Kristallnacht and then destroyed during the war. The front section has now been restored and is home to a museum that tells the story of the building and its congregation.

House of the Wannsee Conference

Location of the now famous Wannsee Conference of January 1942 this newly refurbished exhibition focuses on the significance of the conference in the process of planning the genocide of European Jews, as well as the involvement of the conference participants and the authorities they represented in the persecution and murder of the Jews.

Sachsenhausen Memorial

Set up in 1936 the Sachsenhausen became the blueprint for concentration camps across Germany and Occupied Europe. A visit to the memorial and the series of exhibitions spread across the site will cover themes such as: the origins of the camp; the system of control; the life of camp inmates; the use of violence and terror; mass murder; liberation.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Opened in 2005 the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is the German Holocaust Memorial honouring and remembering the up to six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The Memorial consists of the Field of Stelae designed by Peter Eisenman and the subterranean Information Centre.

Museum Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind

During World War II, visually impaired broom and brush maker Otto Weidt employed many Jews in his workshop. As tensions in the country grew, Weidt endeavoured to protect his mostly blind and deaf employees from persecution and deportation, bribing the Gestapo, falsifying documents, and eventually hiding a family behind a backless cupboard in one room of his shop. This museum is dedicated to him and is administered by the German Resistance Memorial Centre Foundation. It tells Weidt’s story with archival photos and interviews with some of those he saved.

Jewish Museum

The largest Jewish museum in Europe which consists of three buildings, two of which are new additions specifically built for the museum by architect Daniel Libeskind. Highlights include the Shalekhet Fallen Leaves exhibition where 10 000 faces are punched out of steel and distributed on the ground of the Memory Void. Visitors are invited to walk on the faces and listen to the sounds created by the metal sheets, as they clang and rattle against one another. Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman dedicated his artwork not only to Jews killed during the Shoah, but to all victims of violence and war.

German Resistance Memorial Centre 

Located in the former headquarters of the Army High Command where Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, the man behind the plot to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944, has an office.  The permanent exhibition Resistance to National Socialism documents the motives, methods, and goals of the struggle against the National Socialist state. The nearby commemorative courtyard is dedicated to the memory of the officers executed here on the night of July 20, 1944.

Topography of Terror

This excellent documentation center is of the most frequently visited places of remembrance in Berlin. It is located on ground that, between 1933 and 1945 was home to the central institutions of Nazi persecution and terror: the Gestapo with its own house prison, the leadership of the SS and, during the Second World War, the Reich Security Main Office.

Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion, Reconciliation.

The Documentation Centre Flight, Expulsion, Reconciliation is dedicated to the history of forced migrations from the 20th century to the present day and is an important place of remembrance and reminder that is well worth a visit. The permanent exhibition aims to explore the reasons for forced migrations in the twentieth century and whether these were political, ethnic or religious or, indeed, a combination of all three.

The section of the exhibition which focusses on ‘The Flight and Expulsion of the Germans in the Context of the Second World War’ looks at a pivotal chapter of Germany’s contemporary history within the context of National Socialist ideology, occupation, and extermination policies. It also focusses on the integration of the expellees in West and East German society after 1945, and personal and public commemoration surrounding German flight and expulsion.

GUIDED WALKING TOURS OF BERLIN

We can arrange a half day guided walking tour to be tailored visits to suit your preferred study theme.

Introductory tour

Hidden Berlin & All the Main Sites. Duration 3-4 hrs. Sites included are:

• Alexander Platz, Museum Island, Berliner Dom, Site of Palast der Republic, Bebel Platz, Berlin Wall, Topography of Terror, Wilhelm Strasse, Checkpoint Charlie, Site of Hitler's bunker, Holocaust Memorial, The Reichstag, The New 'Hauptbahnhof', Brandenburg Gate.

Psychology City Walking Tour.

Duration 3-4 hrs

Our expert tour guides can deliver a fascinating walking tour covering the brainwashing of a nation during the rise of Nazism to the control methods, propaganda and persuasion dogmas of the East German government.

Jewish Life: Destruction & Rebirth. 

Duration 3-4 hrs. Sites included are:

• The Jewish Quarter, The Otto Weidt Museum for the Blind, Jewish Cemetery, Große Hamburger Str, Gestapo District HQ, Jewish Community Administration Building II/ Memorial, Neue Synagogue, Grunewald train station.

* All the guides for this tour are fluent English speaking Israelis

No matter what your study aims are it is impossible to go to Berlin and ignore the city’s turbulent history. Many of the groups who travel with us include a range of visits that will help students gain a greater understanding of how Berlin came to be the city it is today. 

Brandenburg Gate area:

The area around the Brandenburg Gate includes many of the iconic monuments linked to the history of Berlin. These include:

• Reichstag building
• Brandenburg Gate
• Memorial to the Murdered Politicians
• Sinti-Roma Memorial
• Victory Column
• Soviet War Memorial, Tiergarten

These monuments are usually included in an introductory guided tour.

The Reichstag Building

A guided tour of the Reichstag building is one of the most popular visits in Berlin. It will explain the functions, working methods and composition of parliament whilst also covering the history and architecture of the building. The highlight at the end is the opportunity to visit the famous dome, which has become an iconic image in Berlin and gives a great view of the city.

Olympic Stadium

This stadium was purpose built for the 1936 Olympics and is a great opportunity to view Nazi architecture, surviving virtually untouched in the battle to capture Berlin. The stadium will not be open to visitors on event days so please be ready to be flexible on which day you visit. Groups can take a self-guided visit with an audio guide or an English-speaking guided tour. From March to October, for an additional charge, you can also go up the bell tower, which will give you an excellent view of the interior of the stadium.

Hohenschönhausen Memorial – Former Stasi Remand Prison

This fully guided tour, which may be led by a contemporary witness, focusses on the role of The Ministry for State Security, better known as the Stasi. It will look at the reasons why people were taken to Hohenschönhausen, their treatment by the Stasi as well as interrogation methods employed to gather confessions. It is a truly fascinating visit

Museum-Haus am Checkpoint Charlie

A museum dedicated to the legendary border crossing point, with imagery and exhibitions of attempts to escape to the West, it follows the stories of fugitives and their helpers.

The Wall - Asisi Panorama

Right across from Checkpoint Charlie is a large cylindrical building made of steel. Inside is a fascinating display of life in the vicinity of the wall in divided Berlin during the 1980s. The display shows the contrast of daily life on both sides of the wall according to the memories of Yadegar Asisi's, who actually lived in Kreuzberg in the 1980s. It’s great visit for helping students to understand life on both sides of the wall.

DDR Museum

A wonderful interactive museum that looks at the politics of East Germany, but more importantly gives a fascinating insight into what it was like to live in the East.  Closed on Mondays.

Timeride Berlin

Embark on a unique journey through time & see Berlin in the mid-1980s. During your one-hour stay you will: catch a glimpse through the Berlin Wall, and see what everyday life like in the West, how people lived in the East; Listen to eyewitnesses and see how everyone dealt with the separation and the political oppression in an individual way? Take a seat in a bus of the 80s and set off on a VR city tour, to experience a border control at Checkpoint Charlie, drive along Friedrichstrasse and see the Palace of the Republic shining in its former glory.

The Story of Berlin – closed until Autumn 2020

This interactive museum that explores 800 years of Berlin’s history. Currently closed until Autumn 2022

Berlin Zoo

Zoo Berlin is Germany’s oldest zoological garden and home to the world’s largest variety of species. Almost 20,000 animals of around 1,300 species live in the 33-hectare zoo. They include elephants, giraffes, gorillas, and Germany’s only giant pandas.

Berlin Dungeon

You will take a journey through 700 years of Berlin’s murky history, as a full cast of theatrical actors bring to life gripping stories of the city’s most infamous characters and events from medieval times to the 1900’s. You will see stunning special effects, authentic sets and a host of scary surprises lurking in the Dungeon.

Timeride

Embark on a unique journey through time & see Berlin in the mid-1980s. During your one-hour stay you will: catch a glimpse through the Berlin Wall, and see what everyday life like in the West, how people lived in the East; Listen to eyewitnesses and see  how everyone dealt with the separation and the political oppression in an individual way.? Take a seat in a bus of the 80s and set off on a VR city tour, to experience a border control at Checkpoint Charlie, drive along Friedrichstrasse and see the Palace of the Republic shining in its former glory.

TV Tower

Located in former East Berlin, in Alexanderplatz, this is Berlin’s highest structure offering fabulous views over the city. The TV Tower can be pre-booked but not pre-paid, this visit must be paid directly on arrival.

Alexanderplatz

Once the centre of East Berlin, since re-unification Alexanderplatz continue to undergo major renovations and redevelopment. With cafes, shops and a certain times of the year street markets there is plenty here to explore.

Museum Island:

A group of museums located in the centre of Berlin on the River Spree:

• Alte Nationalgalerie: 19th Century paintings and sculptures from artists such as Monet, Renoir, Cezanne.
• Pergamon Museum: Antiquities, Islamic Art, Middle Eastern Art and objects.
• Bode Museum: Home to a collection of sculptures from Byzantium through to the Middle Ages.
• The New Museum and the Old Museum: Greek, Roman and Egyptian art.

East Side Gallery

At 1316 metres long, the East Side Gallery is the longest continuous section of the Berlin Wall still in existence. Immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, artists from 21 countries began painting murals many of which commented on the political changes in 1989/90. Officially opened in September 1990 it was given protected memorial status just over a year later.

LEISURE

Please note shops are generally closed on Sundays. Exceptions are shops offering touristic products, stores at airports and railway stations, and petrol stations. There are up to eight designated shopping Sundays each year. 

Mall of Berlin

The Mall of Berlin offers international chains such as Zara and H&M and luxury brands such as Armani Exchange and Tommy Hilfiger. The Food Court on the second floor in the west wing offers a large selection of restaurants and snack bars with burgers, curry sausage, ice-cream cafés and international street food.

East Side Mall

On around 38,000 square metres and three levels, the East Side Mall houses around 120 shops, including retailers, service providers, restaurants and cafés, and leisure facilities.

Potsdamer Platz

Another redeveloped area of Berlin, this has an ideal central location and is full of shops, cafes and entertainment.

Sony Centre

Located in Potsdamer Platz this is home to the IMAX Cinema where you can catch a film in German or English, along with a great selection of cafes and shops. Great for a night out, especially if seeing a film on the giant screen.

KaDeWe

Kaufhaus des Westens, or KaDeWe as it is better known, is the second largest department store in Europe after Harrods with over 60,000 square metres of selling space and more than 380,000 articles on sale it is a great place to explore – especially the food court on the top floor!

Kurfürstendamm

This is the main shopping street in Berlin and home to one of Europe’s largest department stores, KaDeWe, with all that a major store offers.

Alexanderplatz

Once the centre of East Berlin, since re-unification Alexanderplatz continue to undergo major renovations and redevelopment. With cafes, shops and a certain times of the year street markets there is plenty here to explore.

Ritter Sport Colourful Chocoworld (Bunte Schokowelt)

This store offers a unique and varied assortment of items revolving around Ritter Sport chocolate. Chocolate lovers big and small can explore the store’s three floors. The SchokoKreation area allows visitors to create their own favourite chocolate bar.

Bowling

Berlin has a range of bowling centres throughout the city. Ask us for more information if you wish to book a session

Tropical Islands Water Park

This indoor tropical beach with waters slides, lagoons, rapids and wave pools is a great fun and a great place for students to burn off excess energy. It is open Monday to Sunday from 6am – 12pm

RESTAURANTS

Make your evening meal a night out. We can book a variety or restaurants ranging from traditional German to American diners. Our most popular are:

Alte Fritz              www.der-alte-fritz.eatbu.com

Giraffe                  www.giraffe-berlin.de

Hofbrauhaus      www.hofbraeu-wirtshaus.de/berlin

Maximillians       www.maximilians-berlin.de

Nante Eck            www.nante-eck.de           

Paulaners            www.paulaner-im-spreebogen.de

Pavillon                www.berlin-pavillon.de

Que Pasa             www.restaurant-bar-berlin.de

Route 66           www.route66diner.de