Berlin’s “Critical Reconstruction”: Repairing a City Divided and Deformed by Political Strife
Jeremy R. Young
GEOG 226: Political Geography Dr. Derek Shanahan Millersville University of Pennsylvania April 5, 2011
Introduction Few cities over the course of world history have been physically shaped by dueling political and ideological forces as Berlin, the capital of modern Germany reunited more than two decades ago. Beginning early in the twentieth century, this city’s built environment became subject to drastic changes brought on by various political regimes, destructive warfare, and division. Nearly wiped off the map by Allied air raids and an invading Soviet army at the conclusion of the Second World War, the capital of former Nazi Germany was quickly occupied, fragmented, and had its urban fabric systematically altered by the rivaling Capitalist West and Socialist East. The unique situation created by nearly half a century of division by the Berlin Wall and opposing redevelopment policies on the part of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany/BRD) and the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic/DDR) resulted in Berlin developing much differently than other European cities. The DDR’s construction of the Wall in 1961, which cut directly through the city’s historic urban core, effectively ripped the city in half and created two separate cities with two new nuclei, mimicking a cell splitting in two during mitosis. West Berlin and East Berlin, as they naturally became known thereafter, were rebuilt and redeveloped over the next three decades independently of one another, and according to entirely different doctrines. Large portions of the city’s pre-war street grid and its densely constructed built environment were dramatically changed to match each the East’s and West’s respective visions (Elkins 1988, 166). After the fall of the Wall in 1989 and the subsequent reunification of the German state the following year, however, a strong focus was placed on “Critical Reconstruction” over the next
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decade: mending a broken urban fabric and recreating one Berlin; a single urban organism that more resembled, and functioned more similarly to, the city before Hitler and the Cold War. Spatial Distribution of Postwar Berlin & Division among the Victors When the victorious Allies staked their claim to Berlin in 1945, more than a third of its built environment lay in ruins. The most damage was done to the city’s historic urban core in the districts of Berlin-Mitte (Central Berlin), Charlottenburg, Friedrichshain, Tiergarten, and Schöneberg. Nearly every major cultural institution, over half of the housing stock and the city’s primary commercial presence here had been destroyed by the incessant bombing campaign that began two years earlier. This area quickly became known as the “dead heart” of the city and was essentially abandoned as it was considered a wasteland (Elkins 1988, 165). On the outer fringe of the “dead heart” was the decimated Potsdamer Platz (Potsdam Square), which prior to the war had been a sort of German “Times Square” (Ladd 1997, 117). Both the Mitte district and Potsdamer Platz were divided in two, along with the remainder of Hitler’s capital city, and all of the territory was divided up into DDR territory and BRD territory, to be guided by socialism and capitalism, respectively. A majority of the “dead heart,” including the Mitte, lied within the eastern half of the city, or Soviet sector. The control over the eastern sector, proved beneficial to the Soviet Union as it contained most of the Berlin’s important remaining institutional buildings such as the Rotes Rathaus (city hall), the state library, the university, and many administrative offices. It also contained the city’s Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate), the Baroque-era monument recognized by the world as a symbol of Germany itself (Ellger 1992, 41).
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On the other hand, the western half of the city, divided into sectors controlled by the United States, France and the United Kingdom, comprised over “fifty-four percent of the city’s land and sixty-two percent of its postwar (1946) population.” (Merritt 1973, 61) It also contained two of the city’s secondary commercial hubs which had potential to rise as new economic powerhouses in place of the devastated Mitte district and Potsdamer Platz. These two areas, the Zoo Viertel (Zoo Quarter) and the Kurfürstendamm, or Ku’damm, quickly became the new central business district for West Berlin when the city became divided by the Wall in the 1960s and soon came to resemble the closest thing to a new urban core. The general area of the Zoo Viertel and the Ku’damm was the most likely place for a new downtown, as it was focused around the Berliner Zoo train station which quickly became the nerve center for rail transportation for this half of the divided city (Ellger 1992, 41). Capitalist and Socialist Agendas for Redevelopment Redevelopment began in earnest in both Berlins in 1949, following the creation of the new and separate German states, the BRD and DDR. Each politically and ideologically different German state had its own distinct vision for how their portions of the divided city of Berlin should be rebuilt. Architecture and city planning often go hand in hand, and the BRD and the DDR each planned to use a different style of architecture to characterize their new cities (Till 2005, 41). In addition, the two separate Berlins were to serve two entirely different purposes for their respective countries. East Berlin was to be the capital of the DDR, and as such was designed to symbolize the power and glory of the East German state and “reflect [German] national traditions” through its recreated built environment (Ladd 1997, 182). To DDR planners, such a step required the
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rejecting of contemporary modernist designs and returning to more “national and local styles— meaning above all…Berlin [19th-century] neoclassicism…” (Ladd 1997, 183) One of the first redevelopment projects the East German state embarked on was one which created a grand treelined boulevard similar to Paris’s Champs-Èlysées in honor of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, to be called Stalinallee. Stalinallee, renamed Karl-Marx-Allee in 1961, was built to serve as a central urban focus point for East Berlin, complete with densely-constructed neoclassical buildings designed to serve as “stores, restaurants, and cultural institutions” as well as residences (Ladd 1997, 183). This act helped to emphasize the importance of the city as a centralized focal point for a region, which had begun to be rejected by many capitalist Western nations such as the United States, which had started decentralizing many of its cities by this time. (Ladd 1997, 183). In addition to constructing the Stalinallee, East Berlin recognized that much of its housing stock had been destroyed during the war and focused on large amounts of new housing for workers. Much of this new housing was constructed during the 1950s around the same time as Stalinallee and was built in the same neoclassical tradition, giving workers “the sort of housing that the reviled bourgeoisie had striven to acquire in the previous century” (Kunstler 2001, 129). The neoclassically-emphasized Socialist redevelopment scheme would not endure past the 1950s, however, and eventually, after the installation of Nikita Kruschev as Soviet Premier who cried out against neoclassicist/Stalinist architecture, East Berlin’s design standards began to mirror West Berlin’s. (Ladd 1997, 186). In Capitalist West Berlin, redevelopment plans stood in direct contrast to those of their Eastern counterparts. Development in this half of the divided city seemed to be more focused on creating a financial and commercial powerhouse than creating a capital for the BRD. After all, the BRD already had a new capital in Bonn. In addition, redevelopment efforts were not focused 4
on maintaining the city’s dense urban fabric. Unlike many other Western cities, West Berlin was not able to sprawl outside of its traditional urban boundaries and suburbanize because of the wall which contained it. Planners in this portion of the divided city decided instead to alter much of the centuries-old street grid and design the built environment with a more open and low-density layout. In addition, planners and architects in West Berlin chose the polar opposite of East Berlin’s design standards for the drawing of its rebuilt structures: “Bauhaus-inspired modernism” which lacked the detail and ornateness that neoclassicism provided (Kunstler 2001, 129). Some contemporary architectural critics argue today that the West embraced modernism because it “became the default architecture disliked by fascists and communists [like Hitler and Stalin], and therefore the official architecture of democracy and human decency” (Kunstler 2001, 128). Eventually, under the guidance of the Soviet leader Kruschev, DDR authorities adopted a policy of modernism in the further architectural design and redevelopment of their capital of East Berlin. This was perhaps most evident in the 1970s construction of the Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic/People’s Palace), the new State headquarters, as well as a new statecontrolled “downtown” for this side of the city, called Alexanderplatz (Alexander Square). The latter, a public space which survives today, is “dominated by undistinguished high-rise and steeland-glass buildings” and sprawling open space, and is reflective of a style of architecture that the East Germans and the Soviets had once decried as “decadent and dehumanizing.” (Ladd 1997, 186-190). Fall of the Berlin Wall, German Reunification and “Critical Reconstruction” When the Berlin Wall came tumbling down in 1989, officials of a united Germany quickly drew plans to relocate the capital from Bonn to the site of the former one—a newly
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reunited Berlin. After nearly half a century of division and inconsistent redevelopment efforts on the parts of two ideologically-opposed Germanies, this proved to be a difficult goal. Authorities immediately recognized that along with reunification came the daunting task of recreating a single Berlin from two deeply fragmented pieces. This plan, dubbed “Critical Reconstruction,” was to be the rebuilding of Berlin as a “modern interpretation of the model of the European city.” (Till 2005, 45) The term “Critical Reconstruction” was coined by Hans Stimmann, newly-appointed city planner immediately following reunification. To Stimmann, the “contemporary mess of Berlin could no longer be blamed on the World War Two bombing, but was a result “of politics and bad planning by people who were against history”” (Kunstler 2001, 137). Stimmann continued to explain that “postwar planners in West Berlin: …Consciously declared war on the surviving texture of the city. They replaced the density of the old city with spatial disintegration… The goal was to replace the old Berlin with its historical and political rejections with new images. As a consequence of the division of the city, Berlin became the showcase for ambitious urban planning and architectural competition between the [DDR and BRD] systems, the protagonists of which in both east and west felt themselves to be committed to the dictates of the modern, car-friendly city” (Till 2005, 45-46). If Berlin were to again fit the mold of a traditional European city, it had to recreate, to the greatest extent possible, the city’s complex street pattern and high-density built environment which had existed before Allied bombs destroyed them. To accomplish these goals, planners in the 1990s created a strict set of building codes based on “an
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extensive analysis of the existing and historical traces of the city” which was made possible by analyzing black and white photographs of the city, or “black plans,” from 1900 through present day (Till 2005, 46). Such photographs communicated a clear “narrative of loss” over the decades of the twentieth century which occurred as the result of each of the following: severe destruction from the Second World War, division of the city and construction of the Wall, and demolition of surviving structures and the street grid for redevelopment purposes throughout the Cold War (Till 2005, 46). Conclusion During the 1990s, the first decade of Germany’s reunification, the city of Berlin became the largest construction site in Europe and perhaps the world. By 1999, many people even began referring to the city as the “City of Cranes”. In the latter part of the decade, construction was nearly complete on the newly-reconstructed Potsdamer Platz, Berlin’s original hub for commerce and economically-crucial piece of the historic urban core. This once-vibrant center of commerce is again full of energy today and contributing to the urban and national economies, thanks to major investment by Daimler-Chrysler and Sony, which built their new European headquarters here (PPMG 2010). At the dawn of the 21st century, it was certain that city planners and officials from the newly reunited Federal Republic of Germany were making progress. It was also clear that they were determined to transform Berlin, a city which had its physical environment deeply torn and altered and which over time had fallen victim to the strife between two bitterly and ideologically opposed states and doctrines. Perhaps the presence of only one German state, and therefore a single, common vision, will heal Berlin’s 7
wounds and drive it forward as a neotraditional, yet modern, European city. Only time will tell.
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Bibliography Elkins, T. H. with B. Hofmeister. 1988. Berlin: The Spatial Structure of a Divided City. New York: Methuen & Co. Ellger, Christof. 1992. “Berlin: Legacies of Division and Problems of Unification.” The Geographical Journal 158 (1): 40-46. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3060015. Kunstler, James Howard. 2001. The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition. New York: Simon & Schuster. Ladd, Brian. 1997. The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Merritt, Richard L. 1973. “Infrastructural Changes in Berlin.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 63 (1): 58-70. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2561950. PPMG Potsdamer Platz Management GmbH. 2010. “History: Beginnings-Present.” http://www.potsdamerplatz.de/en/history/. Till, Karen E. 2005. The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.
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