Berlin, Germany

BERLIN, GERMANY GROUP INTRODUCTION Michael Baldwin Luke Carnaby Saskia Furman Y3_S3 A country with an already unstable economy, Germany suffered an embarrassing end to World War 1 in 1918. Forced to agree to the conditions set in the Treating of Versailles, the country fell into further debt, borrowing off the USA to pay heavy reparations fines. The Weimar Republic, established from the German revolution, set out to eliminate a majority of the terms. The crises of 1923 saw Germany fall into gross unemployment and a sunken depression. The French invaded the Ruhr, when Germany missed a reparations payment in 1922, which led German workers to strike, providing a goods shortage and prompting the government to print more paper money, leading to hyperinflation. In Berlin, over 30,000 people rioted during the misery caused, while the Nazi party attempted a revolt in Munich. When the Wall Street crash caused the USA to call in their reparations loans, Germany’s economy plummeted even further, and by autumn of 1932, five million Germans were unemployed. The following year, Adolf Hitler was appointed the last Chancellor of Weimar, and the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party continued to grow in popularity. At this time, the Kunsthaus Tacheles (then “Haus der Technik”) – located in the Jewish Quarter of Orienstrasse – was used to hold meetings by Nazi Party members, and eventually became the central administrative office for the SS. The Second World War saw both characteristics and use of the building change dramatically. From a Jewish department store until 1914, the Nazi’s “closed the building’s skylights and removed ridge turrets” (Berlinartsjetzt, 2012) during the War, turning the attic into a prison for interrogation. Although glass skylights were removed, bars remained over the windows to prevent escape from the “Haus Der Technik”; at this time, used as a prison. Similarly, as the Nazi party continued to rise in power many changes occurred in and around Berlin as Hitler’s capitalist regime affected community, architecture and Germany’s moral. After coming up against escalating hostility from the Weimar Republic, Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus, a school for artists, architects and designers (1919), was forced to move from Weimar to Dessau in early 1925, where it remained until the school was closed under political pressure from the right-wing dictatorship in October 1932. The flat plain surfaces Gropius decided on dominate the design, uninterrupted by windows, peak or other architectural features. This was, in fact, one of the reasons used by the Nazis to close the school in 1933, as ‘flat roofs’ generated much public controversy. In November 1938, the divide in Germany’s community became so great that a pogrom was carried out through the entire country, reaching parts of Austria. Kristallnacht, “Night of Broken Glass” saw Jewish owned stores, buildings and synagogues ransacked, demolished and burned to the ground. German society and culture was heavily controlled and regulated by Hitler’s capitalist regime, with a disregard for all creativity, leaving the country in a mess of destruction, “the little synagogue was but a heap of stone, broken glass and smashed-up woodwork” (Lucas, 1938). This act of control spread not only to destruction, but also the building of new architecture. The Fascist regime used architecture as a method of propaganda to display their strength and intimidation over the general public. The Re- ichsluftfahrtministeriumis 1933, located on Wilhemstrasse, is an existing limestone example of a large masonry building that housed the Ministry of Aviation during World War II. Hitler did not, however, limit his design control to government buildings only. To display complete control of the Nazi dictatorship, the Olympic stadium in Berlin, initially design by March for the 1939 Olympics, was forced to resign the original plans for “a steel frame with lightweight cladding, which expressed a ‘modern’ image”, (Fraser, 1996:115) in favour of Architect Albert Speer’s design of steel and masonry. 1 Hitler felt that everything wrong with Germany was Berlin, where Friedrichstraße was at the heart of that problem. After the boom period of the 1920’s, Friedrichstraße had become a real hedonistic capital of berlin filled with nightclubs, jazz dens and dive bars. When Hitler came to power in 1933, over 250 of these bars were closed and Friedrichstraße was transformed it into a shadow of its former self. The area to the west of this street was to become the central Govern- ment district, and later the centre of Hitler’s new Nazi Berlin. Hitler believed that once Germany had won the war, Berlin would become a dominant world capital to be known as Welthauptstadt Germania, coming from the roman word for Germany. In a plan drawn up with his trusted architect Speer, Berlin was to be divided by a great axis running west to east, through Brandenburg gate, as well as a north-south axis known as Prachtallee - Avenue of splendours – which would pass the Reichstag towards the new Reich chancellery and south towards Tempelhof Airport. This axis would be traffic free and act as a parade ground for the Third Reich (The Times, 2008). This new architecture “aimed to dwarf the monumental cityscape of Paris… a typography of power on the model of the ancient empires” (Webber, 2008). “The Nazis had three fundamental problems in building Germania: a shortage of labour, a shortage of building mate- rial and the houses that stood in the way.” (The Times: 2008). Few projects were ever started and as the war continued, efforts moved to the front line both on the fields and in the camps. However, even though Berlin was bombed repeat- edly during the war, in the early years of the 1940’s there was a constant battle for Hitler and Berlin to stand defiant and rebuild. The berlin opera house Staatsoper was re-built and re-opened after being victim to bombing from the allied troops, a symbol of Hitler’s love for Prussian architecture and the opera. After the War, Berlin was divided into four sectors; the USA, Great Britain, France, and Russia. Relationships between the 3 western allies and Russia quickly broke down, when USSR severed transport lines into the western allied sectors that responded in 1948 with the berlin airlift – supplies were flown into the western sectors (Melzer, 2003). In 1952 work began on the construction of Stalinallee, Germanys first Socialist Street, but a year later the workers went on strike against a rise in work quotas. Tensions continue to rise and with working and living conditions becoming increasingly difficult in East Berlin nearly 200,000 GDR residents flee to West Berlin in 1960 (Melzer, 2003). In 1961 as an attempt to stop residents moving from East to West Berlin, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) rolled out a barbed wire fence – the first stage of the construction of the Berlin Wall. In its final form, the separation consisted of a Wall with a piped cap on the western side, a raked sand ‘death strip’, lights, watch towers armed with guards on shoot to kill orders and a further two more fences (Berlin.de, 2008). The years between 1961 and 1989 saw West Berlin become an outpost for the western allies allowing them to peep over the wall at technological and architectural devel- opments within the socialist state, including the construction of the television tower to which the western allies retali- ated by inviting major architects to design for the International Building Exhibition which was completed in completed in 1987. (Webber, A, 2008:14) The Berlin Wall separated families and friends when it was constructed in 1961 almost overnight, acted as a physical and symbolic divider of Europe for nearly 40 years. The GDR’s downfall began with the election of Mikhail Gorbachev to the position of General Secretary. With the USSR experiencing economic difficulty, Gorbachev put in place radical economic and social reform policies that allowed privatisation of industry and greater freedom of speech throughout the Eastern Bloc, ultimately changing the course of history. The new freedom of speech reforms led to revolution and eventually the complete dissolution of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics; for East and West Germany this meant unification (Graham, 2000). On the evening of November 9th 1989 the announcement that East German citizens could now cross the boarder into West Germany, was inaccurately broadcast across the country stating that the new law was in immediate effect. Peo- ple all over the world watched as crowds rushed to the checkpoints where the situation was extremely tense, as the announcements did not correspond with the checkpoint guard orders. After attempts to regulate border crossing, the guards gave in and the hostile Berliners were allowed through; a truly iconic and emotive moment. One of the most important events of the 20th century, the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism. 2 In 1990 the Berlin Wall was removed and Germany adopted sovereignty (Suau, 2009). Up until this point West Germany had experienced unprecedented economic success. However the country now faced a difficult challenge as East Germa- ny had experienced significantly less economic growth. The merging of the two states was a slow process economically and socially and West Germany invested over one trillion Deutschmarks in economic reconstruction (Lange and Pugh, 1998). Socially there was a rewarding outcome, exhibited best in Berlin. Counter-cultural life style and ideologies were rife in West Berlin before unification as it was a free democratic state, but occupied more of an underground status in East Berlin. In the years that followed reunification, income and quality of life greatly improved across former East Berlin and the city adopted a new identity.

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