BERLIN MEMORIES

1995 by Gerardo BrownManrique

INTRODUCTION [silence] FIRST TRIP, FIRST IMPRESSIONS During the summer of 1979, while in Cologne at Mathias Ungers office, I made plans with our former colleague Richard McCommons, then leading a group of Miami architecture students on a tour of Europe, to meet him at the Cologne main train station and go on an overland journey to Berlin. Neither of us had ever been there, but it seemed that we should go, especially since so much of what we taught had in some way roots in the former German capital. We took the day train, and the trip was long. It seemed the segment from the border city of 3. Helmstedt through the DDR longer than the actual distance that it represented. Riding in every 4. car, from the DDR city across the border to the PotsdamBerlin limit, were border guards accompanied by border dogsGerman Sheppards not only to issue the necessary transit visas, but to assure that no unwanted travelers joined the train as it stopped outside the stations at Magdeburg, Brandenburg, and Potsdam, and to assure that no careless tourist took photographs of the countryside, including Soviet and Warsaw Pact military installations that could easily be seen from the train: at one point, row upon row of tanks could be seen next to the rail line, ready to move at a moments notice. We entered Berlins western sector, and were soon at the Zoo station in the early hours of the evening, not before passing by the segment of autobahn that once served as Berlins famed Avus racetrack, with its main grandstands and banked curve still present. We found a hotel, now I dont recall its name, on the famed Kurfrstendam or Kdam. The hoteland Berlin was a place I would soon revisit. 5. Our first foray that evening, as the sun set, was to walk from our hotel along the Kdam, past the night ladies that still populate its corners (though now likely Russian rather than German 6. or Turkish), and went on to find the famed dividing wall about the edge of the Tiergarten. My first impressions were of being held captive captive from Helmstedt on and of being in a decadent city still much like that of the 1920s and depicted in the film Cabaret. A BIT OF HISTORY The Berlin that we know today is the result of the 1920 annexation of its suburbs into what became known as Greater Berlin. However, its story goes back at least 750 years, an anniversary celebrated in both sides of the then stilldivided city. The origins of the city go back at least to the 13th century, when two Germanic villages came into being on either side of the Spree, then known as the Zpriawa: Clln, founded in 1237 on an island to the west of the main channel, and a community of fishermen, and Berlin, in 1244 to the east of the river and a community of merchants. From the Spree, river trade continued as it empties into the Havel, which flows on to the north. KaiserWilhelm Memorial 1945 (823001) AND 1979 (791909) Brandenburgertor at night (791907 and 791908) Map: HelmstedtMagdeburg Map: Greater Berlin ca. 1979 1. 2. Berlin, Symphony of a City Map, BRD AND Richard @ Mehringplatz (791916)

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Its neighboring towns included the fortified Slav settlement of Spandau to the west, and another Slav settlement, Kpenick, to the east. The twin towns of BerlinClln were part of a growing number of Germanic settlements. In the 12th and 13th centuries, other settlements appeared nearby, founded by the Knights Templar (thus Tempelhof), including the villages of Mariendorf and Marienfelde, today part of Greater Berlin. By the 14th century, the two halves joined, and Berlin became the leading city in the league of towns of the central Mark of Brandenburg and a member of the Hanseatic League. The two halves continued to act as a single city. In 1411 the Holy Roman Emperor appointed Frederick VI, Burgrave of Nrnberg (a member of the House of Hohenzoller), as governor of the Mark of Brandenburg. In 1415 he was installed as Elector Frederick I of Brandenburg within the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Berlin became the capital of the Electorate of Brandenburg and eventually the Kingdom of Prussia when the second Elector, Frederick II of Brandenburg, built between 1443 and 1451 his town palace on what was Clln, becoming the seat of the electoral court, Residenzstadt. The Elector FrederickWilhelm of Brandenburg mounted a reconstruction of the city following its decay during the Thirty Years War. Massive fortifications circling the city were built in 165883. After his defeat of the Swedes in battle at Fehrbellin, northwest of Berlin, he became known as the Great Elector. The citys growth continued as a center of government, and as a center of trade and commerce, supplemented as well by the presence of a standing army. New towns were added to the west of the original two parts. Friedrichswerden was founded to the southwest of Clln in 1670; in 1674, Dorotheenstadt extended the city along Unten der Linden; to its south and in 1701 under the patronage of the Elector Friedrich III of Brandenburg, the new Friedrichstadt was added. 9. Europe ca. 1512 (Imperial Circles) (821207) 7. Map, Berlin and Clln, ca. 1230 AND view, Berlin and Clln, ca. 1250: right, Berlin w/Nikolaikirche; middle, the Mhlendamm; left, Clln w/ Petrikirche. (1882)

8.

View, Nikolaikirche (Johann Heinrich Hinze, 1827) AND photo, Marienkirche (13th century)(831802)

10. Maps, ca. 1650 (J.Gr. Memhard)(82-13-09) AND 1688 (Johann Bernhard Schultz)(82-13-10)

11. Maps, 1710 AND 1733 (82-13-11) These last two extensions are rectilinear grids punctuated at the city wall by ceremonial squares and gates: Unter den Linden ends in the Quarr by the Brandenburger Tor; the main 12. Plan, 1748 (82-13-13) AND BelleAlliancePlatz (ca. 1730) eastwest axis of Friedrichstadt, Leipziger Strae, terminates in the Oktagon by the 13. Knigliche Bibliothek (FischervonErlach, 172526)(842919) AND Prinzenssinern Palais (1733)(843027) Potsdammer Tor, while the northsouth one, along Friedrichstrae, ends in the Rondell and the Hallesche Tor. As its ceremonial center, Friedrichstadt has a market square, which from 1701 on included the twin French Protestant and German churches flanking a theater, rebuilt after a fire by Schinkel in 1821. In 1709, Berlin, Clln and three new towns of Friedrichswerden, Friedrichstadt and Dorotheenstadt, were officially united. In 1710 it had a population of 61,000. The influx of French Huguenots persecuted by Louis XIV meant that every fifth Berliner was of French extraction. FrederickWilhelms successor, Frederick III of Brandenburg, assumed the title of King Friedrich I of Prussia, which included not only the areas outside of the Holy Roman Empire but also those of Mark Brandenburg as well as those in the Rhineland. He rebuilt the city palace,

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and added other public buildings to the city. His consort Sophie Charlotte gathered a wide circle of artists and intellectuals at her new palace in Lietzenburg to the west; when she died in 1705 it was renamed Charlottenburg. In 1735 FriedrichWilhelm I of Prussia, the SoldierKing, turned the pleasure gardens of the palace, the Lustgarten, into a parade ground, and a new customs wall was added around the whole. The role of the three formal squares at the city gates, as well as the three earlier new towns, gave nineteenthcentury Berlin its most memorable elements: the Quarr became Pariser Platz, the Oktagon Leipziger Platz, and the Rondell became BelleAlliancePlatz and then Mehringplatz. King Friedrich II of Prussia, Friedrich the Great, reigned from 1740 to 1786. While he to live in his country palaces of Sansouci in Potsdam, new public structures were Berlin, including the new cathedral on the Lustgarten. At his death, Berlin had population to 150,000, similar in size to Vienna, Amsterdam, Madrid and Rome, smaller than London or Paris. 14. Map, 1789 (J.C. Rhoden)(82-13-14) AND Unter den Linden, 1786 preferred added to 15. Europe in 1797 (82-12-13) AND map, 1798 (J.F. Schneider)(82-1316) grown in and only

In 1810, a university was founded in Berlin by Wilhelm von Humboldt, housed in the Prinz 16. FriedrichWilhelmUniversitt (792015) AND statue of Alexander von Humboldt (791931) HeinrichPalais on the Unten der Linden. Today two seated statues flank its entry court. 17. Europe in 1810 (82-12-14) AND 1828 (821215) Politically, Prussia endured the French occupations yet in 1813 formed part of the coalition the Belle Aliance that defeated Napoleons armies in Leipzig, then again in 1815 in Waterloo outside Bruxelles. THE ROMANTIC VIEW OF BERLIN AND SCHINKEL It was following the defeat of the Napoleonic armies that its greatest architectural changes occurred to Berlin. KarlFriedrich Schinkels many projects transformed the Unter den Linden and the center area of Berlin, while the landscape architect P.J. Lenn transformed the Tiergarten. 18. Among Schinkels masterpieces are his renovations of numerous palaces along the ceremonial Unter den Linden as well as the Neue Wache, the FriedrichswerderKirche, the 19. Schauspielhaus on the Gerdanmenmakt (1821), the Bauakademie, the Schlobrcke, and of course the Altes Museum (182430). 20. These form the forum of the humanist city that Berlin had become. According to Liselotte and 21. O.M. Ungers in their essay, The Humanist City, the term refers to 22. a place in which the traces of the past are vivid and evident; a city in which, during 23. the course of history, intellectual and physical efforts have shaped the Gestalt in such a way that the political, social and sthetic ideas and utopias coincide with the history of architecture and urban design and they cite Rome as the prime example of such a city and the archetype Hadrians villa in Tivoli, where the Roman emperor: Maps, 1824, Schinkels Berlin (82-13-18) AND 1833 (821406) Maquettes (831820 and 831822)

Neue Wache (831723) AND Friedrichswerden Kirche (941522) Schauspielhaus (941608) AND Bauakademie (maquette, 831821) Schlobrcke (843021 AND 843022) Altes Museum (831730 AND 843003)

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collected and rebuilt classical monuments and landscapes that he had seen during extended travels through his empire At the time of FriedrichWilhelm III, Berlin was home to humanists, scholars and artists. Their visions were transformed by Schinkel into a concrete reality. The Ungers write: His importance as a city planner lies in his completion of existing urban structures rather than in creating new utopian concepts. One has to understand the composite plan as a design that incorporates history within a process of history. His vision was of a place where different aspects of the human intellect could be assembled and become manifest in an environment consisting exclusively of cultural objects of the highest sthetic value an intellectual forum as the central urban place in which each object stands for an idea and has an identity of its own. This Forum of the mind has its counter in the garden as a city, realized in Schloss Glienicke. 24. Map, Schloss Glienicke (823604) AND Schloss (842702) 25. Casino (822803) AND Groe Neuduerede (822627) Here Schinkel and his disciples inserted replicas and fragments of ancient and historic structures into the landscape overlooking the Havel, itself an archipelago of architectural 26. Statue (822634) AND column (822625) visions realized by FriedrichWilhelm IV as a cultural landscape that recalls the warmer 27. The Havel (822727) AND Pfaunseninsel (822729) landscape of Tuscany. 28. German Empire, 186471 (82-12-16) AND aerial view of Unter den Following the FrancoPrussian war, the various entities that had formed the Holy Roman Linden (821308) Empire including Prussia became consolidated under the Prussian crown. 29. Maps, BerlinTiergarten, 1931 (82-13-03) AND BerlinMitte, 1931 Berlin itself was expanded by the law of 27 April 1920 when it incorporated all of the adjacent (82-13-02) urban parishes of Charlottenhof, Kpenick, Lichtenberg, Neuklln, Shneberg, Spandau and Wilmersdorf, together with Berlin proper and fifty-nine additional small towns into what became Greater Berlin. By now its area was (and is) of 88,308 hectares. THE REALITY IN 1979, 198284, 1987 30. Cathedral (794515) AND Gendarmenmarkt in 1857 This was the city that I was looking for that first trip, a city not only of Schinkel but also of Gropius, the city of Otto Klemperer, Wilhelm Furtwngler, the film studios and the cabarets; 31. Ishtar Gate (842939 AND 843008) 32. Pergamon (842934) AND Miletus (842936) the Ishtar Gate, the Pergamon temple, and the Miletus market gate. 33. Aerial view, Pariser Platz, 1930s (821315) AND Brandenburger But the experience of the journey revealed to me another city, one shaped by the postwar Tor, 1945 (823002) political reality of two islands and bulkheads facing each other. 34. Aerial view, Potsdamer Platz, 1930s (939492) AND 1945 (823005) So while we visited some of the sites of Neoclassical and modern Berlin, in having to go 35. Leipziger Strae, 1901 (930408) AND 1945 (823006) across to the other side we also had to confront the wall. And it is this that over the next fifteen years formed my image of Berlin. 36. Checkpoint Charlie, 1979 (791923) AND wall along Zimmerstrae Berlin in 1979 and in 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1987 is for me a series of experiences with the (791926) wall. As I wondered about visiting works of architecture, the reality of the artificiality of Berlin 37. Wall along Zimmerstrae (822135 AND 822136) was reinforced over and over again.

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Berlin in the postwar period was the result of its partition and its continuous occupation and administration by the winning powers. Following the capitulation of the remaining garrison on 2 May 1945 to the victorious Red Army, the city and the country were divided according to a plan formulated by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in Yalta. Unlike the armistice at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 which ended the First World War, this one was to end with the unconditional surrender after which Germany as a state would cease to exist, with some eastern portions annexed to Poland and the CCCP. The western allies entered the city on 1 July 1945. The European Advisory Commission recommended by its Agreement of 12 September 1944 (as revised on 14 November 1944 and 26 July 1945) that the country as it existed on 31 December 1937 would be divided into three parts, for each of the conquering nations. The plan had been drawn up as early as 1943, and at Yalta in February of 1945 it was agreed to, stipulating that a fourth zone would be portioned off from the UK and US segments. As a result of the partition, Berlin was located within the Soviet zone, though itself would also be jointly occupied and administered by the conquering powers. According to the agreement, the city would be divided as follows: the northeastern part of Greater Berlin (Pankow, Prenzlauer Berg, Mitte, Weissensee, Friedrichshain, Lichtenberg, Trepnow and Kpenick) to the CCCP; the northwestern part (Reinickendorf, Wedding, Tiergarten, Charlottenburg, Spandau and Wilmersdorf) to the UK; the southern part (Zehlendorf, Steglitz, Schneberg, Kreuzberg, Tempelhof and Neuklln) to the US.

When France was added to the equation, the UK reallocated Reinickendorf and Wedding to the French. Connecting the western sectors of the city with the western sectors of the country were air, water, railroad and road corridors, with the air corridors connecting the city to Hamburg, to Hannover, and to Frankfurt. The most significant and profound changes to the agreements between the conquering powers occurred in 1948 and 1961. On 24 June 1948 the Soviets enacted a total blockade of the roads, rail lines and waterways connecting the city to the west, with the intent of driving out the three western powers. The response was to supply the western sectors by air from airbases in Frankfurt, Hannover and Hamburg. Among the heart-warming stories to come out of this were the Rosinenbomber lead by Onkel Wigglewings, Gail Halverson. Because of the success of the airlift, the blockade was lifted in 12 May 1949. The lifting of the blockade also marked the political decision of the western powers to give virtual political independence to the city. When the BRD was formally established on 21 September 1949, its new laws became the laws of Berlin, which administratively did not belong to the western German sectors but became one of the Landes of West Germany.

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The second event was the construction of the wall. All through occupation, even during the Blockade, the citizens of the city had been able to move about unrestricted between sectors, and the S and UBahns continued to operate as they had before the war. But on 13 August 1961, DDR soldiers began sealing off the eastern sector from the western ones, first with barbed wire and eventually with permanent walls. Seventy-three people were killed trying to escape trying to cross the wall between 1961 and 1989. On my trip with McCommons in 1979, and again in 1983 and 1984 with Miami students, I 38. Arc 307 in 1983 (831736) AND 1984 (842527) had gone by train; in 1982 and 1987 I had flown into BerlinTegel. The two sets of entry 39. Potsdamer Platz in 1983 (831605) AND 1984 (842517) experiences could not be more different. I have already described the train ride in, which with fifty Miami undergrads was even more stressful. Nonetheless, it was very important to take two different groups of students into West Berlin in 1983 and 1984, if for no other reason than the historical reality that what we experienced would hopefully not again be experienced by any of us. Flying on the other hand at least removed the anxiety of the crossing. But in any case, there was always the wall. The explanations for the wall are as opposite as the realities that were the two Berlins. The DDR built the wall because it was bleeding: more than 1.5 million eastern Germans escaped to the west through the western sectors of Berlin between 1949 and 1961. But its explanation was that it existed to keep out the decadent Capitalists who were trying to destroy the DDR: on the morning of August 13, 1961, the soldiers of the National Peoples Army, the border police and the members of the fighting groups erected an antifascist defense wall in Berlin our border soldiers stand guard over peace. And the explanations for the Berlins equally convoluted: West Berlin was the last outpost of freedom the showcase of capitalism To the western Germans, it represented a hope, and as such the city benefited from unusual arrangements. A subsidy was paid for working Germans to move there; men were exempt from universal conscription, air travel was heavily subsidized. To the occupying western powers, the city continued to nominally be their ward, although essentially it was a nominal control; however the three garrisons remained there until 1994. But to the tourist, it was a sin city, the only German city where bars stayed open all night instead of closing down at the puritanical 1 AM curfew found elsewhere. 42. Guards (842923 AND 842925) On the other hand, the eastern sector became a showcase of socialist reality. Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR, was rebuilt, particularly in the tourist areas, not only to restore some of 43. Universitt (842921) AND Pariser Platz (843032) BerlinMittes lost grandeur, but also, particularly on Leipziger Strae for example, or the 44. Alexanderplatz (792013) AND sign (842930) earlier KarlMarxAllee, as showcases to counter the propaganda of the western sectors 45. Leipziger Strae (791927) AND KarlMarxAllee (942628) visible to the eastern Berliners. 40. Eberwalder Strae in BerlinWedding (822502) AND near Potsdamer Platz (842518) 41. Crosses (822501) AND houses (822438) in BerlinWedding

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BERLIN REVISITED, 1994 This past summer marked my first opportunity to return to Berlin following the collapse of the CCCP and the DDR, and the reunification of Germany and Berlin. And so I chose to drive a circuitous route, going first to Hamburg and then taking the Autobahn and a series of secondary roads to Potsdam and into Berlin. And once in Berlin, besides the official reasons for my visitupdating my materials on Ungers work there and on the IBA I spent a considerable amount of time driving across the demarcation line, revisiting those portions where the wall had existed for me. I also visited parts in the BerlinMitte district that I had not walked before, and discovered jewels restored to their prewar conditions, most notable among these the synagogue on Oranienburger Strae just a couple of blocks from the Unten der Linden, and the bizarre virtual castle in the center of the Spreeinsel And so my reason for this lecture, to share the visions of a Berlin that had once existed and has somewhat returned, after a period now concluded of being an island at the edge of disaster. FINAL OBSERVATIONS Contrasts: before and after the collapse of the wall. 46. House facing Schlopark Glienicke in 1984 (842706) AND 1994 (941405) 47. Glienickebrcke in 1979 (792220) AND 1994 (941404) 48. Map, BerlinMitte: Oranienburger Strae AND Synagoge in der Oranienburger Strae (Emile de Cauwer, 1865) 49. Synagoge, Oranienburger Strae (94-16-03 AND 94-16-05) 50. Schlo (941509) 51. Brandenburger Tor in 1983 (831607) AND 1994 (941507) 52. Map, BerlinWedding 53. Vinetaplatz, 1982 (822434) AND 1994 (941528) 54. View 1 in 1982 (822504) AND 1994 (941530) 55. View 2 in 1982 (822503) AND 1994 (941537) 56. Map, BerlinFriedrichstadt 57. Checkpoint Charlie in 1979 (791925) AND 1994 (941612) 58. Checkpoint Charlie in 1979 (791922) AND 1994 (941615) 59. Zimmer Strae in 1979 (791924) AND 1994 (941614) 60. Building under demolition, Berlin Weissensee