StreetScenes.Qrk 27/10/04 9:58 am Page 1 Always the focal point in modern times for momentous WHYBROW political, social and cultural upheaval, Berlin has continued, since the fall of the Wall in 1989, to be a city in transition. As the new capital of a reunified Germany STREET it has embarked on a journey of rapid reconfiguration, involving issues of memory, nationhood and ownership. Premised on an understanding of performance as the SCENES: articulation of movement in space, Street Scenes &BERLIN STREET SCENES:BRECHT,BENJAMIN interrogates what kind of ‘life’ is permitted to ‘flow’ in the ‘new Berlin’. Central to this method is the flâneur figure, a walker of streets who provides detached BRECHT, observations on the revealing 'detritus of modern urban existence'. Walter Benjamin, himself a native of Berlin as well as friend and seminal critic of Brecht, exercised the practice in exemplary form in his portrait of the city Nicolas Whybrow (PhD) is BENJAMIN One-Way Street. Bertolt Brecht, meanwhile, stands as Lecturer in Theatre and one of the principal thinkers about art and politics in Performance at the University the 20th century. The ‘Street Scene’ model, which was of Warwick, UK. He has published numerous articles the foundation for his theory of an epic theatre, relied & BERLIN on contemporary performance precisely on establishing a connection between art’s in journals such as New functioning and the practices of everyday life. Theatre Quarterly, Performance Research and Street Scenes offers various points of entry for the Research in Drama Education BY NICOLAS WHYBROW reader, including those interested in: theatre, (of whose editorial board he is performance, visual art, architecture, theories of a member). everyday life and culture, and the politics of identity. Ultimately, it is an interdisciplinary book, which strives to establish the ‘porosity’ of areas of theory and practice rather than hard boundaries. Front cover quote by Dr Gabriella Giannachi, University of Exeter. ‘This is an exceptional book. The author not only effectively performs the city of Berlin - and Brecht - but intellect also creates a formidable intertextual ISBN 1-84150-114-X map, interlocking streets and intellect buildings with individual episodes of PO Box 862 THEATRE & Bristol BS99 1DE PERFORMANCE oral history, politics and works of art.” United Kingdom www.intellectbooks.com intellect 9 781841 501147 streetsceneslayout 27/10/04 9:40 am Page 1 Street Scenes:Brecht, Benjamin, and Berlin Nicolas Whybrow streetsceneslayout 27/10/04 9:40 am Page 2 First Published in the UK in 2005 by Intellect Books, PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK First Published in the USA in 2005 by Intellect Books, ISBS, 920 NE 58th Ave. Suite 300, Portland, Oregon 97213-3786, USA Copyright ©2005 Intellect Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Electronic ISBN 1-84150-908-6 / ISBN 1-84150-114-X Cover Design: Gabriel Solomons Copy Editor: Julie Stradwick streetsceneslayout 27/10/04 9:40 am Page 3 Contents 5 Acknowledgements 7 Photographs Introduction 11 Preamble 27 1. Terra Terror: the Unlikely Event Part 1 41 2. Chaussee Strasse: the Last Place 63 3. Chaussee Strasse: Brecht’s Spectacles Part 2 81 4. Oranienburger Strasse: the Space of Recurrence 103 5. Grosse Hamburger Strasse: the Space of Disappearance 127 6. Niederkirchner Strasse: Wall Wounds 151 7. Potsdamer Platz: White Noise 171 8. Strasse des 17 Juni: the Space of (Dis)unity 195 9. Karl Liebknecht Strasse: the Space of Light 219 Bibliography 235 Index of Names Contents 3 streetsceneslayout 27/10/04 9:40 am Page 4 streetsceneslayout 27/10/04 9:40 am Page 5 Acknowledgements Formally I wish to thank the UK Arts and Humanities Research Board for two funding awards, one a small grant (in 2000) that enabled me to spend two months living in Berlin, the other a research leave grant (2001–2) that permitted the completion of this book. I am also grateful to the British Academy for enabling me to deliver two PSi conference papers based on the research material for the book, one at the Universität Mainz, Germany in 2001 (‘Schauspielplatz Berlin: the performing city’), the other in Singapore in 2004 (‘Der Bevölkerung’/‘For the People’: performative interrogations of nationhood in the new Germany’). Further relevant conference papers were given at the UK universities of Lancaster, Bristol and De Montfort in 2000, 2003 and 2004 respectively (‘Locating Brecht in Berlin: performativity and the city’, ‘Wracked Reichstag: performative interventions in the Berlin Republic’s seat of power’ and ‘Encountering the City: on “not taking yourself with you”’). Some of the book’s content has also appeared in journals in one form or another, and I would like to thank the editors concerned for permission to include it here. Performance Research published two pieces, parts of which are distributed throughout chapters two, five and six: ‘Leaving Berlin: on the performance of monumental change’ (6i, 2001: 37–45) and ‘Foot-notes’ (7iv, 2002: 27–37). Chapter eight meanwhile has appeared more or less as it stands in New Theatre Quarterly as ‘Street Scene: Berlin’s Strasse des 17 Juni and the performance of (dis)unity’ (76, 2003: 299–317). Most of the quotations in the book come within ‘fair use’; permission to use copyright material has been sought from all relevant parties concerned and I am grateful for their consent (though replies have not been received in all instances). I mention here those that have specifically requested to be given separate credit. Thus Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main holds the original rights to both Brecht and Benjamin. Excerpts from Illuminations by Walter Benjamin, copyright © 1955 by Suhrkamp Verlag. English translation by Harry Zohn, copyright © 1968 and renewed 1996 by Harcourt, Inc., reprinted by permission of Harcourt Inc. Extract from Illuminations by Walter Benjamin published by Pimlico. Used by permission of the Random House Group Limited. Methuen Publishing Ltd holds the UK Acknowledgements rights to all Brecht's writings in translation and has granted permission for excerpts cited. In the US the plays are published by Arcade Publishing, New York. Copyright © 1995 and 1997 respectively from Journals 1934-1955 and Poems 1913- 1956 by Bertolt Brecht. Reproduced by permission of Routledge/Taylor and Francis Books Inc, New York. Excerpts from Brecht on Theatre translated and edited by John Willett. Translation copyright © 1964, renewed 1992 by John Willett. Reprinted by permission of Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 5 streetsceneslayout 27/10/04 9:40 am Page 6 The copyright for Norman Ohler’s Mitte © 2001 is by Rowohlt. Berlin Verlag GmbH, Berlin. I am, moreover, pleased to thank both the Brecht-Archiv and the Brecht-Weigel-Gedenkstätte for their respective supplying of research material. All photographs appearing in the book are by me. On a more informal but no less important note I would like to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of certain colleagues and friends. I am particularly indebted in both capacities to Ulrike Zitzlsperger of not only Exeter University but also Berlin, past and present. Without her comprehensive support – which has included making available successive Berlin apartments for extended sojourns, maintaining an ongoing dialogue on the city, directing me towards likely places, events and publications of interest, as well as commenting critically on aspects of the material – this book would simply not have been possible. In many respects it is Ulrike’s tireless enthusiasm for Berlin life in general, based on an intimate association reaching back to late Cold War times (when I first met her there), that has sustained my own interest in the city from a more detached standpoint. I also wish to credit Baz Kershaw of the University of Bristol, Gerry Harris of Lancaster University and Richard Boon of the University of Leeds for their welcome assistance with various funding applications. May Yao and Lucinda Sanders of Intellect deserve recognition for their responsiveness and diligence. And thanks, finally, to a range of occasional and informal interlocutors, among them Kate, Jo, Jutta, Andreas, Donald and Susanna, Bernhard and Ulrike, John and Felicitas; to Marlinde for the kind bequethal of Brecht’s entire Stücke and, not least, to the old Leeds crowd for commissioning, on the occasion of my fortieth birthday, Ronald Arthur Dewhirst’s droll Warholian portrait of Bertolt Brecht (who told Bert). Street Scenes: Brecht, Benjamin, and Berlin Street Scenes: Brecht, Benjamin, 6 streetsceneslayout 27/10/04 9:40 am Page 7 Photographs 1. Passport with GDR stamps (bottom left: Brandenburg Gate, 17 June 1990). 2. Chaussee Strasse street sign. 3. Brecht House, Chaussee Strasse 125. 4. Brecht/Weigel gravestones, Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof, Chaussee Strasse 126. 5. Chaussee Strasse street sign. 6. Brecht Bookshop, Chaussee Strasse 124. 7. Neue Synagoge, Oranienburger Strasse 30. 8. Ampelmännchen (red), Potsdamer Platz. 9. Ampelmännchen (green), Potsdamer Platz. 10. Plaque (‘Never forget’), Neue Synagoge, Oranienburger Strasse 30. 11. Anti-Neo-Nazi demonstration, Neue Synagoge, Oranienburger Strasse, 2001. 12. Damaged police vehicles, anti-Neo-Nazi demonstration, Oranienburger Strasse. 13. Tacheles (rear), Oranienburger Strasse 54–56a. 14. Tacheles (frontage), Oranienburger Strasse 54–56a. 15. Grosse Hamburger Strasse/Oranienburger Strasse street signs. 16. Boltanski’s The Missing House, Grosse Hamburger Strasse 15–16. 17. Ernst Thälmann monument, Greifswalder Strasse. Photographs 18. Libeskind’s Jewish Museum, Linden Strasse 13. 19. Graffiti, Markgrafen Strasse. 7 streetsceneslayout 27/10/04 9:40 am Page 8 20. ETA Hoffmann Garden, Jewish Museum, Linden Strasse 13. 21. Holocaust Tower, Jewish Museum, Linden Strasse 13. 22. Brecht bronze, Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, Bertolt Brecht Platz.