CHAPTER 2 BERLIN DURING THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC The period of the Weimar Republic is divided into three periods, 1918 to 1923, 1924 to 1929, and 1930 to 1933, but we usually associate Weimar culture with the middle period when the post WWI revolutionary chaos had settled down and before the Nazis made their aggressive claim for power. This second period of the Weimar Republic after 1924 is considered Berlin’s most prosperous period, and is often referred to as the “Golden Twenties”. They were exciting and extremely vibrant years in the history of Berlin, as a sophisticated and innovative culture developed including architecture and design, literature, film, painting, music, criticism, philosophy, psychology, and fashion. For a short time Berlin seemed to be the center of European creativity where cinema was making huge technical and artistic strides. Like a firework display, Berlin was burning off all its energy in those five short years. A literary walk through Berlin during the Weimar period begins at the Kurfürstendamm, Berlin’s new part that came into its prime during the Weimar period. Large new movie theaters were built across from the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church, the Capitol und Ufa-Palast, and many new cafés made the Kurfürstendamm into Berlin’s avant-garde boulevard. Max Reinhardt’s theater became a major attraction along with bars, nightclubs, wine restaurants, Russian tearooms and dance halls, providing a hangout for Weimar’s young writers. But Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm is mostly famous for its revered literary cafés, Kranzler, Schwanecke and the most renowned, the Romanische Café in the impressive looking Romanische Haus across from the Memorial church. Here writers, painters, actors, theater and movie directors, journalists and critics mingled, among them Thomas Mann’s children Erika and Klaus Mann, Kurt Tucholsky, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Mascha Kaléko, Erich Kästner, Joseph Roth, and the painter George Grosz. Since the Nazis hated the Romanische Café as a center of Jewish intellectualism, they raided the café on numerous occasions, even before Hitler came to power. Although it was not shut down, the restaurant lost its importance after the Nazi takeover, when most of its illustrious guests emigrated. The building was destroyed in a bombing raid in 1943 and replaced by the current Europa-Center, a shopping center built in style of the nineteen- sixties. Our walk through Berlin’s West continues eastward from Kurfürstendamm to the Potsdamer Platz, which lies a few blocks south of the Brandenburg Gate at the geographic center of Berlin. During the Weimar period the Potsdamer Platz was Europe’s busiest square with two big railroad stations, Potsdamer Platz Bahnhof and the Anhalter Bahnhof to its south. Thirty bus and streetcar lines crossed the square, which was lined by some of Berlin’s largest hotels and its first underground shopping mall. Europe ‘s first traffic light was installed here in 1926 to control the large traffic volume. Some of Berlin’s most vibrant nightclubs such as Haus Vaterland and the Hotel Esplanade were also located on Potsdamer Platz. All that remains today of the old architecture is the Weinhaus Huth and the ballroom of the Esplanade hotel, which has been incorporated into the new Sony Center. During the Cold War the square was divided by the intimidating wall. It was hard to imagine that there once was life in this no-man’s-land, when the Potsdamer Platz was the heart of Berlin. During the Cold War the death strip around the Potsdamer Platz became one of the most visited spots for western tourists who would try and spot activities in the east from an elevated platform. Since the architecture with its distinctly nineteenth century appearance seemed out of touch with modern life plans were made to modernize Potsdamer Platz. The Potsdamer Platz hotels, restaurants and clubs were cheap 1880s imitations of neoclassical architecture. Modern signature buildings were supposed to be constructed beginning with Erich Mendelssohn’s Columbushaus of 1930, Germany’s first air-conditioned building. However since Mendelssohn was Jewish and since the Nazis regarded modernist architecture as decadent, further modernization of the square could not proceed. The Columbushaus is on the left (west) side of the picture, still obscured by advertising panels due to construction. Another more prominent building stood on the Eastern extension of the square, Leipziger Platz. Beyond Schinkel’s neoclassical Potsdam Square Gates was Berlin’s largest department store, Wertheim. It contained many modern luxuries, such as elevators and escalators normally not found in department stores at that time. Ironically the Jewish Wertheim store was next to the new Reich chancellery Hitler had built in 1938, on Voßstraße across Wertheim’s delivery entrance. Hitler’s infamous “bunker” located directly under the chancellery was also next to the Potsdamer Platz. Erich Kästner’s 1929 poem “Visit from the Country” captures the atmosphere the square presented to newcomers stepping away from the surrounding train stations: “Confused they wait at Potsdam Square, Berlin seems too loud for them, Night glows like a million. A lady beckons ‘Come along, my darling’. And her legs are terribly bare. They marvel and they are too tense, They walk around in awe. Streetcars screech, tires squeal, They want to be at home, Berlin is too much for them. It sounds as if the city moans Because they made a mistake, Houses sparkle, the subway roars, Everything they see seems fake, And Berlin is far too rough. Their legs are bent with anxiety. They get it all wrong. Their smile is uncomfortable. On Potsdam Square they stand in awe Until run over by a car.”1 1 Besuch vom Lande Sie stehen verstört am Potsdamer Platz. Und finden Berlin zu laut. Die Nacht glüht auf in Kilowatts. Ein Fräulein sagt heiser: "Komm mit, mein Schatz!" Und zeigt entsetzlich viel Haut. Sie wissen vor Staunen nicht aus und nicht ein. Sie stehen und wundern sich bloß. Die Bahnen rasseln. Die Autos schrein. Sie möchten am liebsten zu Hause sein. Und finden Berlin zu groß. Es klingt, als ob die Großstadt stöhnt, weil irgendwer sie schilt. Die Häuser funkeln. Die U-Bahn dröhnt. Sie sind alles so gar nicht gewöhnt. While the Kurfürstendamm area in Berlin West was developing into Berlin’s major cultural and entertainment center, the Friedrichstraße area had continued as the theater district since the Kaiserzeit. Although Unter den Linden crossed by Friedrichstraße had been a fashionable promenade for a while, it was now beginning to look faded and attracted mainly older Berliners. However, this loss of appeal was mitigated by the emergence of Friedrichstraße and adjoining smaller streets that were developing into Berlins’s second fashionable entertainment district. There were forty-nine theaters in Berlin during the nineteen-twenties, with the more serious ones playing in Mitte; among them the Deutsche Theater, the Kammerspiele, and the Großes Schauspielhaus at Weidendammer Brücke across from Friedrichstraße station. The famous Austrian Max Reinhardt worked here, Leopold Jessner, Erwin Piscator, and Bertolt Brecht who was beginning to make a name for himself by working with Reinhardt. Several of the variety theaters were located on Friedrichstraße as well, such as the Admiralspalast and the Wintergarten across from Friedrichstraße station. Most of Berlin’s forty daily newspapers were printed in the newspaper district in the southern part of Friedrichstraße. Walking still further east we reach Alexanderplatz, the center of the Eastern districts, where roads from Berlin’s Eastern, Northern and Southern districts converged. Named after the Russian Czar Alexander, Alexanderplatz was Berlin’s largest farmers’ market and trading center in front of the Frankfurter Tor. For hundreds of thousands of Jews leaving Poland and Russia headed for Berlin, the Alexanderplatz/Rosenthaler Platz area became the first stopping place, where the Scheunenviertel, one of the largest Jewish districts in Europe developed. Upstream along the Spree from Alexanderplatz the industrial parks of Berlin had been evolving since the nineteenth century, with the Stadtbahn continuing its course along the Spree from Alexanderplatz to Jannowitzbrücke and beyond. Eastern Berlin was always more rural and more proletarian than the rest of Berlin. Berlin's rapid growth from the Prussia’s small regional capital to Germany’s center of four million people in less than fifty years generated large social and political differences. Berlin saw its greatest surge in cultural innovations after post WWI street-fighting had calmed down. Berlin’s political turmoil began after the end of WWI in November 1918 when the new constitution could not guarantee a stable government and the constituting assembly had to withdraw to the small town of Weimar. Since Goethe and his fellow-artists had established a literary movement in Weimar in the early nineteen-hundreds, German classicism, which became the origin for Germany’s national literature, Weimar has been a synonym for the synthesis of culture and politics. Rightist violence and Communist refusal to cooperate with Socialists set the stage for Berlin’s chaotic years between 1918-23, which culminated in staggering inflation in 1923. Although its causes are still under discussion, the government’s inability to pay for WWI reparations certainly contributed to the collapse of the old currency system. Despite the disappearance of the middle class through inflation, economic expansion quickly resumed. During those chaotic times, Communists and Nazis were rapidly gaining power not only among the masses, but also Und finden Berlin zu wild. Sie machen vor Angst die Beine krumm. Sie machen alles verkehrt. Sie lächeln bestürzt. Und sie warten dumm. Und stehn auf dem Potsdamer Platz herum, bis man sie überfährt. among the cultural elite, as radical ideas became fashionable in the literary cafes of Berlin. With the economy gaining strength, by the mid-1920s Berlin became the largest industrial city on the European continent, attracting an ever-increasing influx of industrial and office workers.