BERLIN: THE CITY OF STRATIFICATION
I always believe that Berlin has a different spirit, a “genius loci.”. In my opinion, Berlin is not a ordinary Europe city, it is the city of contrasts. It has revolution and fascism, youth, chaos, liberty and love. Many historical cities in Europe are multi-layered cities due to their continuous settlement, but when we examine Berlin's urban archaeology we see that it has been repeatedly demolished but rebuilt and reinterpreted. Berlin is always destroy and rebuild itself, like an “ouroboros”. Berlin is constantly changing; “In a place that has been the scene of the dramatic events of the 20th century, when you're thinking about the past, you're thinking about the 21st century.you can encounter the modern face of the century and return to the present time.” (Sezin Hekimoğlu, “The city of Berlin Living With its history, Modern architecture and alternative culture”, May 19, 2014, http://sezinlegez.com/Berlin-46) I believe that Berlin is living yesterday, today and tomorrow at the same time.
From past to today, Berlin lived through so many things. In the beginning, “The name Berlin appears for the first time in recorded history in 1244, seven years after that of its sister town, Kölln, with which it later merged. Both were founded near the beginning of the 13th century. In 1987 both East and West Berlin celebrated the city’s 750th anniversary. Whatever the date of foundation, it is certain that the two towns were established for geographic and mercantile reasons, as they commanded a natural east-west trade route over the Spree River. The way for their founding was opened by a Germanic resurgence in the area, which had been abandoned to the Slavs by the original Germanic tribes as they had migrated westward. The Slavs were subdued by Albert I the Bear, a Saxon who crossed the Elbe River from the west. His successors took the title margrave of the mark (border territory) of Brandenburg. Berlin still retains as its symbol a defiant black bear standing on its hind legs. The settlements of Spandau and Köpenick, now metropolitan districts, preceded the establishment of Berlin-Kölln; fortified settlements at both sites date to the 8th century. The Ascanians, followers of Albert I the Bear, established their fortress in 1160 at Spandau in the north where the Spree flows into the Havel River; by 1232 the fortress had earned the privileges of a town. Berlin-Kölln emerged between Spandau to the northwest and Köpenick to the southeast. By 1250 Berlin-Kölln dominated the mark of Brandenburg east to the Oder River, where a fort had been built in 1214, and in the 14th century it became the centre of the city league of the mark of Brandenburg (founded in 1308) and joined the Hanseatic League of northern German towns. In 1411 the mark of Brandenburg came under the governorship of the Nürnberg feudal baron Frederick VI. This began Berlin’s association with the Hohenzollerns, who from the end of the 15th century as electoral princes of Brandenburg established Berlin-Kölln as their capital and permanent residence. The Thirty Years’ War of 1618–48 laid a heavy financial burden on the city, and the population was reduced from 12,000 to 7,500. When Frederick William the Great Elector assumed power in 1640, he embarked on a building program, which included fortifications that enabled him to expel Swedish invaders. His rule also marked the beginning of the development of canals, which by 1669 provided a direct link between Breslau (now Wrocław, Pol.) in the east and Hamburg and the open sea in the west. His successor, Frederick III, crowned Prussian king (as Frederick I) in 1701 in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), made Berlin the royal residence city.
In 1709 the framework of Greater Berlin was laid when Berlin-Kölln and the newer towns of Friedrichswerder, Dorotheenstadt, and Friedrichstadt were put under a single magistrate. The population grew from 12,000 in 1670 to 61,000 in 1712, including 6,000 French Huguenot refugees. During the first half of the 18th century, Berlin expanded in all directions. Frederick II the Great adorned the city with new buildings and promoted its economic and infrastructural development. The Napoleonic occupation of 1806–08 caused a serious setback to its development. Part of the administrative, economic, and cultural reconstruction was the foundation, in 1810, of the Frederick William University by the scholar and minister of education Wilhelm von Humboldt. (The university was renamed Humboldt University in 1949.) But colleges and academies had already existed in Berlin since the mid-17th century. Berlin early attracted outstanding thinkers, including the philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Karl Marx. The city had its first popular uprising in 1830 when tailors’ apprentices took to the streets over working conditions. The Revolution of 1848 led to a bloody clash between soldiers and citizenry. By this time the city’s population had risen to 415,000, from about 100,000 a century before. With the opening of the Berlin-Potsdam line in 1838, Berlin became the centre of an expanding rail network. The period of the Industrial Revolution was also that of Otto von Bismarck, who as prime minister of Prussia united Germany in 1871. At this time the population of Berlin, the capital of the German Empire, was 826,000. The population continued to grow rapidly (1880: 1,300,000; 1925: 4,000,000). From the 18th to the late 20th century, French, Jewish, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Austrian, and Turkish immigrants contributed to the population mix of the metropolitan area.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Berlin, History, Jul 20, 1998, https://www.britannica.com/place/Berlin/History)
Before I talk about Hitler and fascist architecture, I want to talk about the importance of the nation-state for the Germans. The French has states, and the German has nation. “We normally start the era of “nation-states” with the French Revolution. But, if we take this as a define moment, we shall have a problem in trying to understand what France was before the Revolution.” (Bilge Bal & İhsan Bilgin, Continental Capitals: Paris, Berlin, İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2016, 131.) European countries has monarchy in the past, and the era of nation-states destroyed it. For Germans, the concept of State is very important, but what really matters is the nation. The nation is sacrosanct to the Germans. During the second half of the 19th century, “For German thinkers on the threshold of modernity, the nation-state was still an aspiration. There were German people in the world, quite a number of them. There was the German language, differing but understandable in Prussia and Baveria; there was “german culture”, with Goethe as its apotheosis, but also in “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” of Arnim and Bretano, which epitomized german volk genious. However, there was no “germany”, that is, no Deutschland, the mention of which cost a university position, as it befell poor August Herinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben, the writer of the lyrics of “Deutschland über alles”. Therefore the Germans did not have the state as an agent of universal good and through their institutions such as the Zollverein or the Franfurt Diet were trying to create it. But, their chef asset was the volk, the “nation”, whose genious was recorded in the Wunderhorn and the folktales collected by the Grimm Brothers. As Heider said, the best qualities of a nation are embedded in the cultural products of the volk.” (Bilge Bal & İhsan Bilgin, Continental Capitals: Paris, Berlin, İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2016, 133.)
“After earning the status of capital of continental Europe’s broad German-speaking middle, it expanded along with its employment capacity, focused on the attraction of this status and its bureaucracy and service sector, and gained the status and its metropole in the social sense as well. With the Greater Berlin competition of 1910 this status became official. As much as the Hobrecht Plan was framework for broadening developed areas and opening the surrounding countryside to speculative development, it was also a weighing of the city competition with London and especially Paris. Berlin wanted to measure itself against its eternal rivals not only in official status but also in social and material weight, and to achieve the capacity to represent the national weight at the continent’s center as well.” (Bilge Bal & İhsan Bilgin, Continental Capitals: Paris, Berlin, İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2016, 191.) The Hobrecht Plan is the framework for Berlin’s urban development in the 19th century, 1862. It is the binding land-use plan for Berlin. It is named due to its main editör James Hobrecht, who is worked as a Prussian urban planner. The Hobrecht Plan is an urban planning that considers functionality, aesthetics and developmental functions of the city. It has designated green areas, neighborhoods, streets and public squares.
In the 1918, Berlin became the capital of the first German Republic, the World War I just ended up. People was unaware about World War II at this time and they were fighting against the poverty. At the beginning of 1930s, Germany wasn’t impressive and effective. The defeat of the World War I was still on their minds, and the effects on Germany were still being felt. They had suffered a severe defeat, and there was a worldwide economical depression. Millions of people were unemployed. They didn’t know whar to do. They were looking for an escape route, a hero. The Germans lacked confidence in their weak government, known as the Weimar Republic. There conditions provided the oppurtunity for the rise of a new leader, Adolf Hitler, and his party, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, as known as Nazi Party. Without these circumstances, Hitler would not have turned into such a hero. Hitler promised people a better life, and a new and victorious Germany. Unemployed people, the young and members of the lower middle class people believed the promise of Hitler and the Nazis. The Hitler’s rise to power was rapid. Hitler wanted to make Germans pure blood, he flied in the race of hybrid generations. For Hitler, Germany (and of course himself, even his party) was above all personal rights and freedoms. Hitler wanted to show his power through architecture. Fascist architecture is monotype, conventional and powerful, just like Germans in Hitler’s eyes. For him, architecture is the “building of a nation”. So, it’s really important for him, and so Germany. The magnitude of architecture represents the magnitude of the state. Fascist architecture must crush people with its mass, it is actually one of the tools of authority. “Just like the Fascist Italy of the Benito Mussolini era, Nazi Germany of the Adolf Hitler era was deeply influenced by the Roman Empire, and they received a warrant. Hitler was very pleased with the military might and militaristic spirit of the Nazis, who were able to take over Europe, and that was his view. He likened his own personal political views and ideology to the ideology of the Roman Empire and regarded them as related to each other.” (Veli Rauf Velibeyoğlu, German Architecture of The Adolf Hitler Era, https://www.kenandabirkuyu.com/adolf-hitler-donemi-alman-mimarisi/)
Hitler regarded all branches of art, especially architecture, and even artists and architects as a propaganda tools. He wanted to justify himself and the fascist ideology he imposed on society in some way in the public eye. In this direction, all architects, musicians, poets, painters, and dancers in Germany, “Gesamtkunstwerk” and known as “total work of art” to abandon their individual interests through a system called a joint Nazi ideology and directly with the government to work towards the goal of they are called upon to work as a volunteer. Also Hitler said: “I believe that art exercises unconsciously with the greatest direct effect of the mass, as it forms the most pristine, closest reflection of the soul of the people.” Hitler was determined this vision of a Nazi dystopia called Welthauptstadt Germania (World Capital Germania) would be finished by 1950. Speer had impressed Hitler with his work on buildings at Nuremberg, which were deliberate reinterpretations of classical architecture into massive, distinctly austere Nazi architecture designed to intimidate and overwhelm. (Daniel Rennie, Inside Hitler’s Plan To Build The “Capital Of The World”, April 21, 2018, https://allthatsinteresting.com/welthauptstadt-germania) For vision of Hitler’s to make Welthauptstadt Germania the grandest city of them all by taking the best monuments Europe had to offer and to super-size them. He wanted to make great monuments, massive monumental buildings, and everything magnificent, showy. To Albert Speer: "When passengers leave the train station they will be stunned by the landscape of the city and the power of the Reich.” Welthaupstadt Germania were shown Germany’s political, socio-economical, cultural and military power to the whole world. Welthaupstadt Germania and Hitler’s all fascist architecture plans were based on Roman architecture. The power, greatness and grandeur of Roman architecture deeply affected Hitler, and deep down he regarded Germany as a continuation of the Roman Empire.
“The most important Stadium example outside the Reichsparteitagsgelände is the Olympiastadion in Berlin, the first work of the Welthauptstadt Germania project. Seeing the Olympic Games to be held in Berlin in 1936 as a propaganda opportunity, Hitler commissioned Werner March, one of the famous architects of the period, to build the Olympiastadion on the foundations of the Deutsches Stadium between 1934 and 1936. This stadium, which inspired Olympic physical perfection and reminded us of the racial and cultural ties between the Germans and the ancient Greeks, represented Germany's superiority under its new leadership.” (Veli Rauf Velibeyoğlu, German Architecture of The Adolf Hitler Era, https://www.kenandabirkuyu.com/adolf-hitler-donemi-alman-mimarisi/)
“Ending with a parliament that was also Hitler’s residance, flanked by state institutions and the central offices of companies on both sides, Germania was nothing more than a reflection of his rule. Thankfully it was never executed. But what Hitler couldn’t do, the World War II he caused did, and Berlin became the city damaged most by aerial bombing, the entire city leveled to the ground. And then the boundary of the Cold War that would divide the world in two pieces was drawn inside the city.” (Bilge Bal & İhsan Bilgin, Continental Capitals: Paris, Berlin, İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2016, 192-194) As far as I'm concerned, it's always a shame to build walls and draw borders. The Berlin Wall is also an embarrassment to humanity, and its implications are still in place. While Berlin was destroyed, the Reichstad Building got its share. In 1954 the dome was demolished, the Reichstag Building had a different meaning for West Berlin. “As a remedy for the seperation of the city into east and west, two contests were planned: the “International Capital Berlin Contest” and the later-cancelled “Reconstruction of the Reichstag Building Contest”. The “Capital Berlin Contest” was declared with the aim of saving Berlin from its political history and uniting Germany under its real capital. The jury consisted of international representatives of Modernism such as Alvar Aalto, Cornelis van Eesteren and Walter Gropius.” (Bilge Bal & İhsan Bilgin, Continental Capitals: Paris, Berlin, İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2016, 230.)
Berlin’s urban planning was changedin 20th century. In 1960s, East and West Berlin started to improve in progress. “Berlin was preparing for the IBA, the International Building Exhibiton in 1984/1987. Head of the IBA was the architect Joseph Paul Kleihues. His idea was the critical reconstruction of the city (Die kritische Rekonstruktion der Stadt). This actually meant to keep the city layout, the fabric of the streets and infrastructure and build new houses. As his theoretical head, he invited Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani and related to debate to the Italian discussion of the time. The current hot topic had been Aldo Rossi and his thoughts about “l’architettura della citta”, architecture and this city. Therefore, he had the Italian context on one hand and the American context with Peter Eisenman and Daniel Libeskind on the other. Both hadn’t completed buildings yet. They were noted for their theoretical work.” ((Bilge Bal & İhsan Bilgin, Continental Capitals: Paris, Berlin, İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2016, 204-206) In early 1989, the Government of the German Democratic Republic allowed East German citizens wishing to move to other Eastern Bloc countries within the Soviet Union. With the release of this permit, thousands of East German citizens flocked to the capitals of countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The East German government had approved the removal of the wall. On 9 November 1989, a press conference was held to announce this decision to the public. The Berlin Wall’s felt is a milestone for the history of Germany, and whole world. After the Berlin Wall’s felt, Berlin was the new German capital.
In progress of time, Berlin was improved, it became the capital of the Europe. Many “starchitect” left a mark in Berlin. On 1991, with Berlin becoming the capital of the Republic of Germany, the Reichstag became the Federal Assembly of Germany again. Under the leadership of the famous architect Sir Norman Foster, who won the architectural competititon, the restored building and the dome was opened for as a Parliament Building in 1999. Then, in 1999, Daniel Libeskind’s iconic building the Jewish Museum was opened. Libeskind’s inspiration is Jewish Star of David and then, the inspiration became “zig-zag” building form. In 2005, Peter Eisenman’s the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe opened. Peter Eisenman mentioned this memorial one of his interviews, and Eisenman describes the concept as a “field of otherness”. (Peter Eisenman Interview: Field of Otherness, Louisiana Channel, April 27, 2020, https://vimeo.com/412273515)
As a conclusion, Berlin has a complex, intensive and magnificent history. All of those Nazi plans, the Wall, “starchitects” and “Bilbao effect” made Berlin irreplaceable.
And David Bowie says in “Heroes”: “I can remember, standing, by the Wall. And the guns shot above our heads, and we kissed, as though nothing could fall. And the shame was on the other side, we can beat them, forever and ever. Then we could be heroes, just for one day.”
Ekin Ayan
