West Berlin (1949-1989)
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CHAPTER 4 WEST BERLIN (1949-1989) In May 1949, the three sectors of Germany governed by the Western Allies (France, England, and the U.S.) merged into a single entity: the Federal Republic of Germany. Considering itself merely an interim, provisional state with a provisional Grundgesetz (a Basic Law instead of a constitution inscribing nationhood), the Federal Republic chose Bonn, a small city rather than a metropolis, as its provisional capital. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was founded in October 1949. East Berlin was pronounced its capital, a step that indicated, despite official protestations to the contrary, that East Germany and the Soviets (who were behind its every move) had already abandoned the goal of a unified Germany. Viewing itself, more or less, a bona fide nation, the GDR refused to call its capital “East” Berlin, a designation implying a West Berlin. To avoid association with a stunted capital, it expediently removed the word “East” from its title. After 1961 it went further: it eliminated West Berlin from its maps, substituting it with a white spot. For the GDR, then, there was officially no Berlin other than its own Berlin. Whereas East Berliners were taught to call themselves citizens of the GDR and had passports that validated them as such, West Berliners—still living in French, British, and U.S. zones—were not permitted to consider themselves West Germans, a fact reflected in their special passports. But, the Federal Republic did extend most of its laws and also its currency to West Berlin (the latter a bygone conclusion after the Airlift). In addition, though the Federal Republic did not grant West Berlin voting rights, West Berlin’s political representatives could at least be seated in the Bonn Parliament. Despite lacking West German status, “the island in the Red Sea” was expected to be West Germany’s staunchest representative in the Cold War—this illustrative of the countless paradoxes associated with West Berlin. In the harsh competition between the two radically different German systems, each waged propaganda attacks against the other, grimly and unrelentingly. The east railed against what it regarded a selfish, decadent, consumer-oriented society manipulated by big business, the west against communism and its abridgements of personal freedoms. In Berlin, the only location where east and west had contact with each other, at least until the Berlin Wall went up on August 13, 1961, loyalties to one’s own system were to be demonstrated, not merely asserted. Thus, if one Berlin did something well, the other tried to outdo it. Since this pertained to topographical matters as well, we will start our walk at a West Berlin site that arose from the competition of the two systems: the Hansaviertel (northwest of No. 53). In response to the GDR’s efforts to turn the heavily bombed Frankfurter Allee (renamed Stalinallee) into a grandiose boulevard in the Stalinist neo-classical manner, West Berlin— within the framework of Interbau, the international architecture exhibit of 1957—rebuilt the severely war-damaged Hansaviertel into an ensemble of 36 starkly modernist high-rises, each designed by a renowned architect. All face the street, but in a slanted manner—as if in unanimous defiance of the unimaginative rectangular buildings lining so many of Berlin’s central streets. Close to the Spree River (always a plus), the Hansaviertel boasts its own stores, restaurants, church, and since 1969 the youth theater Grips. Propaganda battles with the east extended to demolitions of buildings representative of unsavory German history. Particularly the GDR’s destruction of the war-ravaged but still reparable palace in Berlin-Mitte in 1950 reverberated in West Berlin. The GDR demolished the palace due to its unwelcome reminders of Prussian militarism; soon afterward West Berlin razed the similarly damaged Kroll Opera across from the Reichstag (No. 81) because of negative historical connotations (after the Reichstag fire, it had served as the seat of the Nazi government). From the Hansaviertel, though, our walk will take us to a location where the leveling of a history-laden building proceeded far less smoothly: to the site of the Anhalter Bahnhof, once Berlin’s most important train station (off the map, close to No. 102). Though the demolition of the castle prompted decisive steps to raze the Anhalter Bahnhof, the strong objections of West Berliners prevailed, at least temporarily. Thus it was finally torn down in 1961, even then, however, not without the protests of those outraged at yet another erasure of the past. As a concession to them, the portal of the Anhalter Bahnhof was left standing, providing a gateway for entering the past at least in one’s imagination. Public opinion against the demolition of at least Prussian history triumphed with Charlottenburg palace (No. 4); though more damaged than Berlin-Mitte’s palace, it was reconstructed in the early fifties. From the Anhalter Bahnhof, we will walk to a building that was also resurrected: the KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens--No. 68). This consumer paradise was one of the first major buildings restored by West Berlin after the founding of the Federal Republic—in 1950 its first two floors, in regular periods afterwards its additions. Even in the minimally prosperous early 1950s, its gourmet section could boast of almost 1000 cheeses. By 1964, it was again the largest department store in continental Europe. However, in contrast to its unabashed self-promotion, the KaDeWe does not surface positively in literary works of the Cold War period, for West Berliners, continuously admonished in the fifties and early sixties to flaunt their economic well- being in the east/west propaganda war, often reacted with revulsion to the crass materialism continuously expected from them. Across the street from the KaDeWe, we notice a large rectangular board fastened to a metal contraption embedded in the Wittenbergplatz (Nr. 69). On its front we read “Orte des Schreckens, die wir nie vergessen dürfen” (Sites we should never be allowed to forget), followed by “Auschwitz… Theresienstadt… Buchenwald… Dachau”— one concentration camp after another. Placed on the Wittenbergplatz in 1967, the plaque was meant to counter the many memorial plaques in West Berlin dedicated to all casualties of war, these of course including Nazi perpetrators. By contrast, the one on the Wittenbergplatz recalls Nazi Germany’s specific crimes and thus remembrance of its victims. That its proponents were able to place such a shocking message in such close proximity to West Berlin’s grandest consumer haven was a feat—one that signaled more honesty for West Berlin’s memorial culture. Turning left from the Wittenbergplatz, we find ourselves on the Tauentzienstraße, a street showcasing West Berlin as “the display window of the West.” This message is at its most emphatic in the Europa Center (No. 64), which houses approximately 100 businesses—stores, restaurants, bars. When opened to the public in April 1965 by Willy Brandt, then West Berlin’s mayor, the Europa Center was touted as a spectacular city within a city, a one-of-a kind building capable of providing inspiration for urban architects. Above all, though, the ten-ton, 14 meter high, rotating Mercedes star on the roof of the 21-story building left no doubt about the agenda of its proponents: to broadcast West Berlin’s economic miracle and, by implication, the towering success of its political system. East Berlin was meant to see and envy the shining, rotating star, but certainly not to emulate it. On a small scale, this is nonetheless what happened when the BE sign on top of the Berliner Ensemble, the legendary Bertolt Brecht theater, started rotating as well. Stepping out of the Europa Center, we join the crowds headed in the direction of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (No. 62). It is a symbol both of the Berlin damaged by the 1943 bombs and fires and of the horrors the Third Reich unleashed. Yet none of the passersby pause to gaze at the landmark so reminiscent of a horrific past. The disinterest is in marked contrast to the passions the Memorial Church had aroused in the 1950s—when the city council, preferring to divert high restoration costs into the construction of an entirely new church building (scheduled for completion in 1956), planned its complete destruction. Unlike West Germans, ever anxious to remove reminders of Nazi atrocities, West Berliners were prone to retaining them, even in the midst of their most commercial areas. Thus the imposing ruins of the neo-Roman Memorial Church, soon affectionately labeled “hollow tooth,” remained the centerpiece of the minimalist buildings comprising the new church ensemble on the Breitscheidplatz. Much as West Berliners tacitly accepted ruins, most adjusted to the Wall in their midst, which arose because of Cold War politics beyond their control. Drastic measures had been dreaded since 1958, when Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev started insisting that the Western Allies leave West Berlin and allow it to govern itself (in the doublespeak of politics, this signified Kruschev’s desire to annex West Berlin to East Berlin). But, rather than annex one Berlin to the other, the Wall, which went up on August l3, 1961, cemented their division and that of Germany—by extension also that of the capitalist and communist worlds. Though the Western Allies moved their tanks to the border between East and West Berlin, they were wary of triggering a war (in contrast to the Blockade days, the Soviets now had the atom bomb). A war was indeed averted because the three points U.S. President John F. Kennedy had posed, not long before, as a sinequanon for avoiding U.S. intervention had not been violated—above all, the demand that West Berlin remain free.