Berlin - Softcover

Clay Large, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 046502632X ISBN 13: 9780465026326

Publisher: Basic Books, 2001

Synopsis

In the political history of the past century, no city has played a more prominent-though often disastrous-role than Berlin. At the same time, Berlin has also been a dynamic center of artistic and intellectual innovation. If Paris was the "Capital of the Nineteenth Century," Berlin was to become the signature city for the next hundred years. Once a symbol of modernity, in the Thirties it became associated with injustice and the abuse of power. After 1945, it became the iconic City of the Cold War. Since the fall of the Wall, Berlin has again come to represent humanity's aspirations for a new beginning, tempered by caution deriving from the traumas of the recent past. David Clay Large's definitive history of Berlin is framed by the two German unifications of 1871 and 1990. Between these two events several themes run like a thread through the city's history: a persistent inferiority complex; a distrust among many ordinary Germans, and the national leadership of the "unloved city's" electric atmosphere, fast tempo, and tradition of unruliness; its status as a magnet for immigrants, artists, intellectuals, and the young; the opening up of social, economic, and ethnic divisions as sharp as the one created by the Wall.

About this title

About the Author

David Clay Large, Professor of History at Montana State University, is a specialist in modern German history. He is the author of Where Ghosts Walked, Germans to the Front, Between Two Fires, and Berlin. He lives in Bozeman, Montana, and San Francisco, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Berlin

By David Clay Large

Basic Books

Copyright © 2001 David Clay Large
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780465026326

Chapter One

BERLIN
UNDER
BISMARCK

The city wall of Berlin is falling victim
to the metropolitan spirit.
?Robert Springer,
Berlin Wird Weltstadt (1868)

When Germany became unified in 1871 following the defeat ofFrance by a Prussian-led coalition of German states, Berlin was transformedfrom a provincial royal seat into the capital of one of the mostpowerful nations in Europe. Like the new German nation itself, however, the capitalat that point was a work in progress, a far cry from the vibrant cosmopolitanmetropolis it would eventually become. As Lord Frederick Hamilton, a youngdiplomat in Britain's Berlin Embassy, snootily observed: "The Berlin of the `seventies'was still in a state of transition. The well-built, prim, dull, and somewhatprovincial Residenz was endeavoring with feverish energy to transform itself into aworld city, a Weltstadt." Even some Berliners were doubtful that their rough-edgedcity had leaped into the ranks of the great European capitals. "Oh Berlin, how faryou are from being a true capital," opined the novelist Theodor Fontane. "Youhave become a capital overnight through political fortuitousness, not through yourown devices."

    In the course of trying to reinvent itself for its new role, Berlin changed sorapidly that it became difficult to define the essence of the place. Within twentyyears, old timers were complaining that they couldn't recognize their town. Yet itwas during the great flux following German unification that the leitmotivs thatwould dominate Berlin's history for the next hundred and thirty years were firmlylaid down. Berlin's frantic attempt to catch up with its older and more polished Europeanrivals; its provocation of resentment and envy on the part of Germans fromother parts of the country, especially the south and west; its tension-filled relationshipwith the rulers who governed Prussia and the Reich; its complicated mixture ofnovelty-worship and nostalgia for a lost, quieter era?all these trends were evidentin the nineteen-year period during which Count Otto yon Bismarck ran the newlyunified German Reich from Europe's newest capital.

Berlin en Fête

Germany celebrated its emergence as a unified nation with the largest military paradeever seen in Berlin, a city which over the years had witnessed more than itsshare of martial displays. On June 16, 1871, a brilliantly clear Sunday, 40,000 soldiersparaded from the Tempelhof Field via the Halle and Brandenburg Gates tothe Royal Palace on Unter den Linden. All wore iron crosses on their tunics andmany had victory wreaths slung over their shoulders. A contingent of noncommissionedofficers bore eighty-one captured French battle flags, some of them in tatters."The troops looked superb," enthused Baroness von Spitzemberg, the wife ofWürttemberg's representative in Berlin, "so manly, suntanned, bearded, their traditionalPrussian stiffness loosened by the atmosphere of the parade; they were alovely sight for a patriotic heart."

    At the head of the long column rode eighty-seven-year-old Field MarshalFriedrich von Wrangel, a hero of past Prussian victories who had been resurrectedfrom retirement to lead the parade. He was followed by General Albrecht von Roonand Helmuth von Moltke, the latter carrying the field marshal's baton he had justbeen awarded for his recent victories over France. According to one witness, thegrim-faced field marshal looked as though he were planning a new campaign ratherthan accepting tribute for a war just won. Next to Moltke rode the true genius behindthe wars of German unification, Bismarck, who in reward for his services hadbeen made a prince, a title he claimed to disdain. Behind Bismarck and the generalscame Germany's new kaiser, William I, his erect posture belying his seventy-fouryears. "The wonderful old man must have larger-than-life strength to endurethe external rigors and inner turmoil so calmly," exulted an awed observer.

    The conditions that day were indeed difficult: it was so hot and humid that severalriders suffered heatstrokes and fell from their horses. But the heat apparentlydid not bother the kaiser's grandson, twelve-year-old Wilhelm, who, despite a witheredleft arm, stayed on his mount throughout the ordeal. Haughtily, he refused toacknowledge a well-wisher in the crowd who addressed him as "Wilhelmkin." "Hewill never forget this day," said Wilhelm I of the boy who would later rule Germanyas Kaiser Wilhelm II.

    In accordance with the epochal significance of the occasion, Berlin was deckedout as never before in its history. "The via triumphalis was about three miles long,through streets as wide and in some cases thrice as wide as Broadway," wrote theAmerican minister George Bancroft. All along the route stood captured French cannonand flagstaffs festooned with oak leaves and evergreens. At important way stationsrose enormous allegorical figures made of wood, linen, and straw. A twenty-meter-highstatue of Berolina, patron goddess of Berlin, graced the Halle Gate,while two huge female figures, representing the newly acquired cities of Strasbourgand Metz, presided over the Potsdamer Platz. In the Lustgarten next to the RoyalPalace loomed an even larger statue: Mutter Germania, flanked by her youngestdaughters, Alsace and Lorraine. A velarium suspended over Unter den Linden depictedthe great military victories that had finally brought Germany its unity.

    Upon reaching their destination at the Pariser Platz, next to the BrandenburgGate, the kaiser and his retinue stood under a canopy while dignitaries from the cityof Berlin paid their respects and a maiden in white recited an interminable poem.Princess Victoria, daughter of Queen Victoria and the wife of Crown PrinceFriedrich Wilhelm of Germany, had deep reservations about this new Reich born ofblood and iron, but even she could not contain her admiration for the victory parade,declaring it "the greatest fête Berlin, and I may say Germany, has ever seen."

    Such pomp did not come cheaply. The celebration cost more than 450,000 talers,which had to be raised through a surcharge on all income taxes levied in Berlin.Few Berliners complained, however, for the festivities offered ample opportunity torecoup the tax. Restaurants and taverns added extra tables and dispensed a "CommemorationBeer," which, though the same as the regular beer, cost a few penniesmore because of its historical significance. Street vendors hawked a "War and VictoryChronicle 1870-71," along with guides to Berlin's nightlife, tickets to tours ofthe city, coats of arms of famous generals, regimental flags, and fragrant laurelwreaths.

    Vantage points from which to watch the proceedings in comfort were in great demand.Merchants with houses or shops along the route rented out viewing space forbreathtaking sums. One enterprising store owner on Unter den Linden installedten "comfortable chairs" in his window "with an unobstructed view of the PariserPlatz." Thousands brought camp-stools to the street or perched atop trees, lampposts,and monuments. "No roof was too high, no stool too low that was not occupiedby people," wrote the Vossische Zeitung. "There was not even any empty spaceatop the dizzying heights of the Brandenburg Gate.... The men and women upthere sought to outdo each other with daring poses, all of them showing a contemptfor death that was truly astounding."

    This moment, with all its bombast and swagger, can be seen as deeply symbolicof Bismarckian Germany and its raw new capital. Apart from its dominantmilitary motif, the triumphal celebration resembled nothing so much as a housewarmingparty thrown by a newly rich sausage baron upon taking possession of hisneo-Renaissance mansion. In subsequent decades the prevailing mood in Berlinwould not remain uniformly celebratory, but the city's self-conscious determinationto display its prowess and to show the world that it had arrived as a great capitalremained constant.

The Unloved Capital

Tumultuous as the unification festivities were, they masked disappointment insome quarters that Berlin had become the capital of the new Reich. Given Prussia'scrucial role in German unification, Berlin's elevation was no doubt inevitable, but ithardly came without opposition. Wilhelm I would have preferred nearby Potsdam,seat of the Royal Guards and favored residence of Prussia's greatest king, Frederickthe Great. Wilhelm had fled Berlin in 1848 to escape the local radicals (see Introduction),and he continued to see the place as potentially unruly and rebellious.Wilhelm's son, Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, known for his liberal inclinations,favored Frankfurt, site of the 1848 parliament that sought unsuccessfully to unifyGermany from below. Bismarck quickly quashed objections within the ruling familyto Berlin's becoming the German capital by promising that the city's elevation tothat status would help ensure Prussian domination of national life.

    Yet this Prussian angle was precisely why many Germans in other parts of thecountry were deeply unhappy with the selection. They resented Prussian powerand saw Berlin as a bullying behemoth determined to overwhelm the rights andprerogatives retained by the individual states in the new imperial constitution. Thatdocument represented a tortuous compromise between Prussian-based centralismand the particularistic ambitions of semisovereign entities like Saxony and Bavaria.The fact that the national capital was simultaneously the Prussian capital threatenedto tip the balance in favor of the centralizers. Many of the smaller states wouldhave preferred Frankfurt, Leipzig, or even little Erfurt. Non-Prussian Germans alsoobjected to Berlin's eastern orientation, decrying it as the "capital of East Elbia," acolonial frontier city on the edges of the Slavic wilderness. The residents of ancientwestern German cities like Cologne, Aachen, and Trier, which had known the fruitsof Roman civilization, fretted about being under the thumb of a city that had beennothing but a bump on the Brandenburg Steppes when these older towns werebuilding cathedrals and hosting lively medieval cultures. Anti-Berlin sentiment wasequally strong in the south, especially in Bavaria, whose largely Catholic citizenrysaw the Prussian metropolis as a dangerous repository of alien Protestantism.

    Concerns about Berlin's new status surfaced even in the imperial capital itself.Municipal officials, whose powers had long been limited by the Prussian government?mayors,judges, and police chiefs all had to approved by the king?wouldnow be subject to yet another higher authority. Berlin's assumption of the capitalfunction made it seem dangerously powerful to non-Berliners, but in reality themunicipal government had little authority of its own. The powers of the city assembly,magistrate, and mayor's office were all closely circumscribed by the imperialadministration and the authorities of the state of Brandenburg, headquartered inPotsdam. It would be years before local officials even gained control over their ownstreets and utilities. A determination on the part of Prussian and Reich officials tokeep the city politically weak underlay repeated refusals throughout the imperialera to allow Berlin to merge the various suburbs around the historic core into oneadministrative entity.

    Prussian patriots, meanwhile, were concerned that traditional values and customswould be swept aside as the new capital was invaded by alien elements fromother parts of Germany and Europe. They worried that their town would becomeunrecognizable as a result of the demographic and economic changes accompanyingBerlin's assumption of imperial-capital status. This view was poignantly illustratedin a popular novel of the day, Ludovica Hesekiel's Von Brandenburg zu Bismarck(1873), which lamented the passing of a humble and harmonious "Old Berlin" inthe rush to imperial greatness. Having seen her neighborhood around the Wilhelmstrassetotally transformed by national unity, the protagonist, an aging Prussiangrande dame, protests: "[My heart] is sick. Let me go home now; the new Germansun that is rising into the sky would only blind this old Prussian lady." To TheodorFontane, who loved Old Prussia, if not necessarily Old Berlin, the capital was becomingjust another place in which to get ahead fast. "What does it mean to live inBerlin except to make a career?" he asked in 1884. "The large city has no time forthinking, and, what is worse, it has no time for happiness. What it creates a hundredtimes over is the `Hunt for Happiness,' which actually is the same as unhappiness."Fontane's perspective reflected the widely held view in Germany that true creativitywas incompatible with the hectic pace of life in a large city like Berlin, where everyoneseemed too rushed to think seriously about deep matters of the soul. Contemplatingthe spread of vice and modernist values in the new capital, theconservative cultural critic Constantin Frantz insisted that Berlin had forfeited itsclaim "to be the metropolis of the German spirit."

    The great Bismarck himself, though largely responsible for Berlin's becomingthe German capital, shared some of these prejudices against the city on the Spree.Having grown up as a Junker (the aristocratic, East Elbian landowning class) on anestate in rural Prussia, Bismarck saw Berlin as an ugly concrete jungle full of pallidpeople and nasty urban smells. "I have always longed to get away from large citiesand the stink of civilization," he declared. "I would much rather live in the country,"he told the Reichstag members, "than among you, charming though you are."On another occasion he protested that Berlin had "grown too big for me industriallyand politically"?a reference to the city's growing manufacturing base and sizableindustrial proletariat. He was hardly less wary of Berlin's high society, which hefound frivolous and pretentious, and he grew positively contemptuous of its ambitiousbourgeois liberals, whose influence he believed was corrupting the Reichstag,making it more difficult for him to control. Speaking before the parliament in 1881,he was quite frank regarding this issue:

The political disadvantage connected with having the Reichstag in Berlin does not end with the external [security] danger that this poses to the delegates and governmental officials; ... even more, this has an unfortunate influence on the composition of the Reichstag.... The delegates move here and become comfortable here.... We have too many Berliners in the Reichstag, which is only natural, since they don't have to travel to meetings.

In the latter part of his reign Bismarck stayed away from the capital as much as possible,preferring to run the nation from the sanctuary of his country estates, Varzinand Friedrichsruh, which had been awarded him for his successful wars of nationalunification.

    Ambivalence about Berlin as imperial capital was further reflected in the hap-hazardand tentative manner in which the Reich government established its physicalpresence in the city. Bismarck's bête nolte, the Reichstag, did not get a newbuilding of its own until 1894. Until then it had to conduct its business in an abandonedporcelain factory. The structure was so decrepit that its glass ceiling occasionallybroke away and fell into the assembly room, slicing up the chairs. Had thisever happened when parliament was in session, observed one member, "a delegatecould easily have lost his head, or some other part of his body." Such conditions ledto the complaint that "the representatives of the nation are unhoused guests in thenew Reich capital." But it was not only the Reichstag that got short shrift. Bismarck'sgovernment provided virtually no financial support to the city for logisticaland infrastructure improvements. Most of the Reich ministries and administrativeagencies initially rented space in private houses or moved into converted palaces onand around the Wilhelmstrasse, where the older Prussian offices were also located.A new building, modeled on the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, was constructed at WilhelmstrasseNr. 74 for the Imperial Chancellery. Bismarck, however, did not likethe building's style, so he moved his personal residence and office into a neighboringpalace at Wilhelmstrasse Nr. 76, and then, in 1878, into a new Chancellery inthe former Radziwill Palais at Wilhelmstrasse 77. Meanwhile, the Interior Ministrymoved into the building originally designed for the Chancellery. The Foreign Office,increasingly cramped for space, worked out of several different buildings untila new home, modeled after another Florentine palazzo, was built for it on the Wilhelmplatz.Lacking time and preparation to grow gracefully into its new role, Berlinwore its capital vestments like an ill-fitting suit off the rack. For many years afterunification, the governmental quarter had a temporary and improvised feel about it,as if the national government were not sure it wanted to be there at all.

Boomtown

The doubts that many Germans harbored about their new capital did nothing todampen Berlin's physical and economic expansion, which assumed truly frenziedproportions in the period following unification. The city resembled a giant miningcamp or gambling casino, luring ambitious newcomers with the promise of instantgains. As many locals feared, rapid growth exacted its price in terms of civic graceand urban aesthetics. Berlin not only felt like a gambling camp, it began to look likeone. Moreover, since the steamroller of growth tended to crush any historical impedimentsto "progress," Berlin seemed increasingly bereft of any coherent identityor sense of continuity. It was settling into what one commentator famously labeledits "modern fate"?that of "always becoming and never managing to be."

    At the time of German unification, Berlin's population stood at 865,000. In 1877it passed the 1 million mark and, after a mere twenty-eight more years, reached 2million. Berlin's population growth came through large-scale immigration, notthrough a sudden burst of fecundity on the part of the natives. The newcomershailed principally from Brandenburg, East Prussia, and Silesia. The Prussian capitalhad long been a city of immigrants, but now every other person seemed to have justclimbed off the train and to radiate that mixture of disorientation and determinationtypical of recent arrivals. Their prevalence prompted the bon mot "every trueBerliner is a Silesian." The rawness, but also the vitality, of Bismarckian Berlinowed much to the influence of its newest residents.

    Significantly, a considerable number of the newcomers were Jews from the Prussianprovinces or from eastern Europe. In 1860 Berlin had only 18,900 Jews, but by1880 the figure had risen to 53,900. The so-called Ostjuden from eastern Europewere seeking a safe haven from racial persecution in their own countries; for themBerlin was a promised land of religious and economic freedom. The Jews from ruralPrussia saw the new capital as a place where they could take maximum advantageof talents honed as a result of past discrimination in the provinces. Havingbeen barred from owning land, practicing many of the traditional crafts, or servingin the bureaucracy and military, the Jews had become experts in commerce, finance,journalism, the arts, and the law, precisely the fields that were most indemand in the modern metropolis. Settling into their new home, the Jews quicklyput their stamp on the city, melding their own distinctive style with native traditionsof irreverence and caustic wit. Their rise became associated with Berlin's ownrise as a major European metropolis. This integration generated much talk of a"Berlin-Jewish symbiosis." Although never merely an illusion, as some commentatorswould later insist, this partnership was fragile from the outset, and its veryseductiveness would tragically prevent all too many Jews from recognizing that fatalmoment, some six decades later, when it had broken down altogether. It shouldbe recalled, moreover, that while Berlin's Jews were prominently identified withthe city's emergence as a center of cultural and economic modernism, most of thecity's modernists were not Jews and most of its Jews were not modernists.

* * *

The most pressing problem facing the new arrivals in Berlin was finding a place tolive. For years Berlin had experienced housing shortages, but in the dawning imperialera the problem became acute. To accommodate the rising demand for housing,dozens of private Baugesellschaften (building societies) began throwing up new structuresthroughout the city. They covered over vacant lots, urban gardens, and children'splaygrounds. To render a large wetland near the Spree buildable, a constructioncompany brought in boatloads of sand and spread it over the bog. Here rose theHansaviertel, named after the sea-trading league to which Berlin had once belonged.Residents of the district could still experience the sensation of being at seawhenever heavy rains caused the Spree to flood and engulf the surrounding territory.

    Much of the new construction took place in suburbs ringing the city, and competitionfor development sites quickly turned the environs of Berlin into a vastsandbox for real estate speculators. Anticipating the need for expansion, variousbuilding societies bought up some of the old Junker estates outside Berlin and subdividedthem for private houses and apartment complexes. The former aristocraticholdings of Lichterfelde and Wilmersdoff were urbanized in this way. The potatofarmers of Schöneberg became millionaires overnight by selling their fields to thespeculators.

    State and city officials made some effort to control the growth. There was aplan in place dating from the 1860s that called for grids of apartment blocks intersectedby wide streets. The regulations, however, said little about how theunits should be constructed, save for limits on height. This deficiency, combinedwith an entrepreneurial zeal to maximize profits on private plots, resulted in aproliferation of so-called Mietskasernen (rental barracks)?sprawling apartmentcomplexes that blighted the poorer suburbs to the north and east of the old city.The "barracks" nickname was apt, for the structures resembled military quartersin their monotonous utilitarianism and disregard for basic human comforts. Typicallyfive stories high, they filled entire blocks in a dense honeycomb of apartmentsbuilt around inner courtyards just large enough (5.3 meters square) for afire engine to turn around in. The innermost dwellings, accessible by long passagewaysfrom the street, received virtually no sunlight. Flat renters competed forspace in the courtyards with small factories and craft shops, ensuring that thepounding of hammers and buzz of saws mixed with the wails of children and chatterof housewives all day long. Everyone who lived and worked in these urbancaverns shared communal kitchens and earthen privies. Needless to say, suchplaces were perfect incubators of diseases like cholera, typhus, and smallpox,which periodically swept the city.

    Unhealthy and unsightly though they undoubtedly were, the Mietskaserne wereby no means mere repositories of gloom; they were centers of genuine social, cultural,and economic vitality. Many an invention was born in those cramped courtyards,which also served as informal stages for popular theater and musical performances.The painter Heinrich Zille would later capture both the misery andliveliness of this scene in his famous drawings of Berliner Hinterhöfe. As land valuesincreased after 1871, the Mietskaserne spread from the proletarian districts of Weddingand Luisenstadt to the wealthier districts of Charlottenburg, Schöneberg, andWilmersdorf. The average number of inhabitants per building lot in the city rosefrom forty-five in 1860 to sixty in 1880. By contrast, in the 1870s Paris had twentypeople per lot, and roomy London only eight. Berlin was on the way to becomingEurope's Barrakenstadt par excellence.

    Despite increasingly squalid conditions, housing costs in Berlin shot up dramaticallyin the wake of national unification (as they would again in the early 1990s).Between 1871 and 1873 Berliners were typically paying three times what they hadpaid two years earlier. Theodor Fontane experienced as a renter the darker side ofBerlin's boom. His landlord at Hirschelstrasse 14, where he and his family had livedfor nine years, sold the house to a banker in October 1872. The banker increasedthe rent threefold, though the building was a refuse-strewn wreck, its courtyard"looking like it could infect the entire neighborhood with typhus." Indignant,Fontane moved his family into cheaper quarters at Potsdamerstrasse 134c, but thiswas not much of an improvement. It was so dilapidated and dirty that cockroachesand other vermin occupied "every nook and cranny."

    In shifting quarters to obtain a lower rent, Fontane was hardly alone: 38 percentof Berlin's renters moved at least once in 1871; in 1872 the figure rose to 43 percent.City streets were perpetually clogged with carts bearing the belongings of familiesin search of affordable housing. This constant coming and going took its psychologicaltoll. A Berliner who counted himself among the "orderly people" reported hisshame at having to move around "like a nomad" from one hovel to the next, eachworse than the last. He concluded that the old adage that poor lodgings could "killlike an ax" was wrong; rather, they killed "like opium or some slow-acting poisonthat lames the mind and will."

    With the steady increases in rents, more and more Berliners became homeless.Some of them found temporary places in public or private shelters, but by 1872these institutions were turning people away because of overcrowding. Many cast-outsbecame Schlafburschen?temporary lodgers who rented a patch of floor in someone'sapartment for a night or two. But this makeshift arrangement was unworkablefor larger families, who were obliged to camp out like Gypsy clans under bridges oron construction sites. Sensing a profit in such desperation, packing-carton manufacturersadvertised "good and cheap boxes for habitation." Huge shanty towns sprangup around the Kottbus, Frankfurt, and Landsberg Gates. Occasionally the policemoved in and burned out the squatters, pushing them on to other encampments. Insummer 1872, when dozens of homeless families rioted against such treatment,mounted soldiers rode in and cut down the demonstrators with their sabers.

Continues...

Excerpted from Berlinby David Clay Large Copyright © 2001 by David Clay Large. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 046502632X
• ISBN 13: 9780465026326
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 736