Place In Place Of: Berlin

Niederschlags- wahrscheinlichkeit

Language is tricky - I was curious about this word for weeks before I bothered to ask a friend to define it.

Her response is as follows:

Well, it is not so absurd as it looks:
+ niederschlag - all what comes down from the skies, usually one would connect it to rain though.
You can break it down still to:
+ nieder - old german word for ‘down’ or ‘under’ (in austria it still exists as such)
+ schlag - literally it means bash, beat, knock, punch.. (in austria it is whipped cream)
and then
+ wahrscheinlichkeit- probability
it is built out of
+ wahrscheinlich - likely, or probable, or supposable..
this you can break down also -
+ wahr - true
+ schein - appearance, but also bogus..
+ lich - ending for adjective
and + keit - this is one of the possible german endings when transforming an adjective into a noun.. so actually it is very simple

In the end - Niederschlagswahrscheinlichkeit = a chance of rain.

Posted by Meredith at 11:36 on August 26, 2005

Women and War

Today we visited Gedenkstätte Plötzensee, the site of the prison where many victims of National Socialism were murdered. I also finished Albert Speers Memoir. Then I saw a blip about Cindy Sheehan on CNN. Last, I started slowly into some reading on my ever unfinished thesis. These four moments culminated in the start of some ideas about women and war. I have not come to any great revelations, so I will just post a few disparate quotes and images that are only now starting to gel into something solid.

1. A trip to Gedenkstätte Plötzensee today to deposit an usPunkt reveal to me a significant number of women involved in acts of resistance during WWII. Knowing that, of course, they existed, I was pleased to see them represented at the memorial.

2. Albert Speer (Hitler’s Architect and then Minister of Armaments) writes about his argument against foreign labor (prisoners from the occupied territories) to increase Germany’s armament production during WWII. He suggests German woman as a viable source of labor, following in the footsteps of the Americans (and Germany’s previous actions during WWI). But his argument in favor of German women working in the armaments factories was put down by a Goering - Sauckel combo: “Sauckel laid great weight on the danger that factory work might inflict moral harm upon German womanhood; not only might their “psychic and emotional” life be affected, but also their ability to bear.” [from: “Inside the Third Reich”]

3. Cindy Sheehan, who’s son was killed in Iraq, is camped out at the Bush Ranch in Crawford, Texas. She is the first person the U.S. in a long time to successfully draw attention to the Iraq War with and anti-war stance. I am well aware of the media’s roll in this process, but I think it is worth noting that her pain as a mother is what is most often used to legitimize her argument.

4. From “Spinster: An Evolving Stereotype Revealed Through Film” by Deborah J. Mustard

After WWII, there was an overwhelming resurgence of family values – the world needed the naturally gentle mothering of women after all it had been through (O’Brien, 1973).  In the United States, the pressure was on for women to marry, raise families, and fulfill the American dream.  After all, these were the values that we were fighting for in the war.  Because women had assumed employment in various occupations to help the war effort, it was now acceptable for single women to work.  But it still wasn’t acceptable that that ultimately these women might not marry (O’Brien, 1973).   It was expected that most women would leave their jobs, now that the men were returning home and rejoining the workforce, and go back home where they belonged in their domestic role of wife and mother.  Margaret Meade surmised that in the 1950’s unmarried women became virtually non-existent because society couldn’t afford to tolerate them (O’Brien, 1973).  But this wouldn’t last for long.

image credit

Posted by Meredith at 23:08 on August 18, 2005

Tram

There is something so different about the tram—different from the bus, the train and certainly the car. In Berlin the trams were developed primarily by the East, and the PT divide is still quite tangible. The tram gives you the luxury of being immersed in the city—similar to the car, but it is physically connected to the space. This connection is what separates it from the bus—which can be effected by detours, traffic jams, accidents etc. The tram is its own shared bubble gliding through the city. But I am also drawn to the newness of this experience that makes it feel somewhat exotic. The whirring noise of the acceleration, its absolute regularity and its lovely glow as it sweeps through the city on a dark night—it is a mobile Edward Hopper.

The tram’s existence in the East and near disappearance in the West seems right on considering how street cars disappeared in the U.S. And since the U.S. was friendly with the West it would be obvious for them to follow in our unsustainable and dull, bus-like existence. Seems that GM single-handedly put the Trolley industry out of business all across America, buying them up and installing new GM buses (they were convicted in the U.S. Supreme Court). But there are alternative theories about the demise of the Streetcar like this Berkley’s Institute for Transportation Studies piece that argues America’s trolley lines were doomed to be eliminated. GM just accelerated the process.

Few trolleys remain in the U.S., although Philadelphia (my soon to be home) boasts a single line from the west into center city (though the Girard Avenue Line may have started running again this summer). My suspicion is that Philadelphia was in the fortunate position of being too poor to destroy the actual tracks so the infrastructure is still there and I think is being considered for redevelopment. I am determined to live near one of these lines in an attempt to find some pleasure in getting around.

New trolley systems in the U.S. are more often “light rail” systems (not sure if there is anything really different except for the fancy name). Champaign-Urbana (where I just left and had lived for the last three years) also had a very successful trolley to connect the two towns to one another and the surrounding communities. But of course that is long gone, though there has been talk of light rail in the past few years. You can see it is often met by abrupt and anonymous opposition (C-U image below). Perhaps Champaign-Urbana will reconsider under the influence of this weeks surging oil prices.

Posted by Meredith at 10:14 on August 13, 2005

Seeing History

Looking for remnants of the past in Berlin often digresses into trips to see large scale monuments – but deciphering these monuments is tricky business and coming to decisions about how to represent war and loss in Berlin is even more tricky. To complicate the situation even further the East/West split generates another whole set of issues. How do you represent a united German view of remembrance when the country effectively took two different paths in this process?

There seems, even now, to be a constant buzz about contested public space. Recently, a memorial near Check Point Charlie was removed after the lease on the land turned over (more context here). The memorial was created to honor those who were killed attempting to cross the Wall and consisted of a field of black crosses. Some contributing factors were that the memorial was only in existence since last October and that it was not funded by the state in any way. And though it lay close to Check Point Charlie, the site itself did not have a specific history (a site of escape, etc.). Its removal sparked a debate throughout the city (and abroad) and aroused discussions that seem to be just below the surface at all times. What is preservation? Where is history? Who should be remembered, and how?

Another hotly debated topic is the preservation or destruction of the Palace of the Republic – a building that was built by the GDR on the site of the former Hohenzollern palace. This article from 2003 threatens that citizens should get a last glimpse, implying imminent threat to the structure. But it is still there and the debate continues as the Palace of the Republic falls into a wretched state of disrepair. The site is prime real estate for the historic center, right on Unter den Linden. The structure is in stark contrast to the “old world” feel of the other structures close by (Schinkel’s Lustgarten, Alte Museum and redesigned Protestant Church). It is proposed to re-build the old 19th-century Baroque Hohenzollern palace after the demolition – restoring the historical center to its pre-war existence. A fake palace in a democratic state, strange.

It seems to me that the GDR Palace of the Republic is a remnant of Real history – recent history, as unpleasant as it may be. A re-built palace would be only a representation of the past and a myth. It is a nostalgic decision to attempt to return to a time before the Royal Palace was destroyed by war, when Berlin fit neatly into the Romantic notion of how Europe should look (to visitors in particular). But what the GDR building provides me, from an architectural standpoint, is great visual breadth and an architectural map of the actual history of the space. I can walk from west to east on Unter den Linden and understand the moments where history changed common space, without the interruption of nostalgia or glorification. It seems so honest the way that it is.

If people were to eradicate architectural landscapes that made them uncomfortable, wouldn’t the Lustgarten itself be a candidate for demolition? The Third Reich used this same square as a backdrop for dramatic rallies and speeches that make any normal person shutter – but this history is less visible – so the architecture remains, uncontested.

Posted by Meredith at 13:49 on July 27, 2005

Gentrifizierung - Kolonie Wedding

Berlin has a relationship to artists that is both seductive and repellant all at once. Gathering information and understanding more about this relationship is complicated for a variety of reasons and my primary sources have been some friendly ex-pats, some natives and an occasional website that provides English translation. I worry that my critique is not properly informed – but I will go ahead with it anyhow and trust that if I make a terrible blunder someone will kindly send me an email correction. This critique involves a number of organizations and it is tough to understand how they connect to one another (as arms of local government, as autonomous non-profits, as collectives, as commercial ventures). But here goes…

I first learned about Kolonie Wedding (Colony as in colonize – Wedding is a district of Berlin, not a puffy white dress) from a native Berliner after inquiring where we might find some alternative art spaces (non-commercial). I understood Kolonie Wedding, at that point, to be a collaboration of artists who had started renting studio and storefront space in Wedding because of its low cost and availability. After attending an opening this past weekend I came to find out that the situation was quite different. Kolonie Wedding is rather a situation that was offered to artists by a company called Dewego. And Dewego is in turn a company who’s major shareholder happens to be the city of Berlin. Kolonie Wedding provides spaces free to artists, as well as organizing monthly walk-abouts and printing for publicity. Artists are required only to cover the cost of utilities. Dewego is also aligned in this venture with other local businesses and an EU project that I have yet to read up on.

The arrangement between the collaborative partners and the artists gets even more complicated when you start to uncover Wedding’s social, cultural and economic context. Wedding had been a working class neighborhood since the 19th century and from what I read has maintained its distinction as a “red” labor district – in fact it was often targeted by the Nazis in the 1930’s because of this very characteristic.

After the war, Wedding fell under French occupation (the city was occupied by the French British, Americans and Soviets). It was one of the few unfortunate districts that bordered the Berlin Wall. Because it was occupied by the French it fell to the west of the Wall, but suffered greatly from the Wall’s existence. When the Wall went up in 1961 the businesses of Wedding lost much of their clientele who lived in neighboring Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte. Like Kreuzberg (another western border neighborhood), it went into decline. Wedding was also the site of many of the early and dramatic escapes from the East. It is now home to the Berlin Wall Documentation Center.

The trauma of WWII and then the building of the Wall left Germany in a situation where it needed to add to it existing population. West Germany adopted a liberal immigration policy and in particular offered guest-worker (Gastarbeiter) permits quite freely. As compensation for the wrongs of the war West Germany also adopted a liberal policy on the immigration of people seeking political asylum. Read more here about Germany and Immigration.

These actions lead to a great influx of Turkish immigrants. Germany now has the largest Turkish population outside of Turkey. Though the largest section of Turks is in Kreuzberg (another western Wall district of Berlin), Wedding also has a large Turkish population. Many of the on-line references use very strange language to describe this fact – noting rather that the district is “multicultural”. An article in the Deutsche Welle even suggests it is becoming a ghetto (a suggestion that I find baffling). In fact, Dewego openly stated that the artist programs “are very long-term projects that aim to attract a different demographic to Wedding.”

There seems to be a pattern here – although this is certainly a simplification to a process that has been long and complicated.
1. The Wall goes up
2. Neighborhoods that are cut off by the Wall suffer greatly
3. Natives leave those neighborhoods for greener pastures
4. Unoccupied housing deemed undesirable by natives is occupied willingly by immigrants (Turks)
5. The Wall comes down
6. Neighborhoods start to redevelop
7. Some are gentrified quickly – others maintain an immigrant population that has been settled there now since the 1960’s
8. City, in part with Developer and others, invites artists to pioneer gentrification in particular neighborhoods
9. Artists, excited by great opportunities to work and show , move into the spaces that are offered to them in marginal neighborhoods

So herein lies the dilemma. We know that artists are commonly pioneers of gentrification. But is gentrification any more or less problematic when it is arranged by an organization with specific political or economic intentions? And is it more problematic when that organization’s expressed intention is to change the neighborhood’s “demographic”? What are the responsibilities of the artists to their new neighbors?

Berlin makes a special problem of these issues, first because of the history of the actual built environment (having been obliterated and rebuilt so many times), but also because of its receptive attitude towards the arts. It is a city that I do perceive as being exceptionally hospitable to artists. It is a city whose local government seems to be invested in artists as vibrant and vital part of the city’s landscape. But based on my current understand of the Kolonie Wedding project, I am suspicious of the alignment of business, government and artists.

This is a subject that I will continue to pursue while I am here in Berlin. If you have additional information or links on the subject I would love to hear from you. I have provided links to my sources in the body of the text, but you can also link to them here:

• Kolonie Wedding
• Berlin Gets Creative About Waste of Space, Deutsche Welle
• Berlin Restored to New Glory—Story discussing Dewego
• A bit on German Immigration Issues and Policies
• A Brief History of Wedding
• Berlin Wall Documentation Center

Posted by Meredith at 23:57 on July 20, 2005

Some more Punkt - usPunkt

We seemed to have settled into a certain way of understanding the space of Berlin: through a series of points (locations) that are connected – physically, conceptually, historically. I embarked on a project on the 4th of July marking site of political events with in the city of Berlin. Berlin itself is a site of historical and political contention, so I started with the sites that I know thus far, ones that are in some cases frightening and haunting, and others hopeful.

At each site I deposited a crocheted red, white and blue target (about the size of a coaster). Underneath each one is a card marked with the web address uspunkt.blogspot.com—where the project is explained. In most cases this site will act as a place for me to deposit writing and thinking about the American political landscape—but also as a place to ask for help. From who, I don’t know.

Being away from America has done nothing to lower my anxiety about home. I suppose it shouldn’t.

Posted by Meredith at 17:54 on July 13, 2005

Mein Name ist Meredith. Ich spreche English.

The Audio in German: Mein Name ist Meredith - Ich spreche English. Können Sie es bitte für mich Deutsche lehren. Ich kann nicht bezahlen nur ich kann tauschhandel. Ich kann Sie lehren das Programme Dreamweaver, Photoshop und Final Cut für der video. Ich kann Sie lehren zu stricken und zu täkel.

Wenn Sie interessiert sind bitte eine e-mail schicken. Das ist meine Kunste Project.

Translation in English: My name in Meredith. I speak English. Can you please teach me German? I can not pay but I can barter. I can teach you the programs Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Final Cut. I can teach you to knit and crochet.

If you are interested, please send me an email. This is my art project. Thank you. jmwarner at knittingcommunity.org

Posted by Meredith at 23:51 on July 3, 2005

AEG Oberschöneweide

AEG Oberschöneweide was part of the East German Industrial Center, producing transformers, energy and electric cable. The industry was abandoned in the 1990’s and now we (and other artists like us) stay here for a few months. Not in the AEG building but in a neighboring building that is part of the same complex. Other studios are here and some smaller businesses fill in floor by floor. But to the best of my knowledge, much of this huge industrial site is still vacant. These massive buildings follow the Spree south toward the edge of Berlin.

My research into this subject has been hampered by a lack of documentation and my inability to read German. Here is what I do know. The AEG building (the image I posted, though I can not confirm this is the right one) was designed by Peter Behrens between 1909 and 1914 (during which time his assistants were a laundry list of soon to become super-star architects like Gropius, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe). That information was provided by my current read - The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape by Brian Ladd. So far an excellect read and doing a great job of helping to make more sense of this place.

But what this really brings me to, and I will expand upon in the future is the role of the artist in the process of gentrification. Here in Berlin this process seems magnified - even more rampid than what was described recently in the NY Times as the new SO-BRO area of the South Bronx.

Posted by Meredith at 16:44 on July 1, 2005

Guns and Combs

The Colors of Berlin PUBLIC TRANSPORT (see image left). Our friends remarked at first that the wallboard pattern on the S-46 looked like guns and combs (it does). At closer inspection you see they are tiny representations of local historical monuments.
We spend a large chunk of our time on the trains and trams in Berlin. It is a pleasure to know that it takes me three weeks to even realize I have not been in a car for that long. I find public transportation to be a pleasure (of course I still rubber-neck at everything in sight). But even when I did live in a city for longer than a few months, I enjoyed my state of car-less-ness. Driving makes me hostile, uptight. It forms this huge impenetrable bubble around me - one where I care little for the people around me. I remember my last week in Philadelphia, prior to moving to Austin, TX - I was cut off abruptly by a woman in a construction zone (she was also in a car). My blood was boiling and so I leaned out the car window and hollered some obscenity at her (I was also shaking my fist at her). It was one of those moments you can she yourself from a far and you think - who the hell is that? I knew at that moment I needed a break from Philly. Unfortunately I was moving to a place even more dominated by cars. Texas. Land of Brisket and Bush.

Posted by Meredith at 13:45 on July 1, 2005

DE (somewhere near the western border with the Netherlands) vs. US (Pennsylvania)

Is a personal political mindset a symptom of just socialization, or does landscape and space play a role in determining our cultural values? I have been playing with video of two journeys—one from Illinois to Pennsylvania (via truck) and one from Amsterdam to Berlin (via train). I am searching for a difference in the landscape that could help me better understand the massive fissure I am constantly aware of between my own country and most European nations.

The mode of transportation is the first clue. The truck is a place of isolation / independence, the train is a collective venture. Sustainability is an obvious comparison (and also relational to the idea of the collective). There is also a marked difference in the pollution of space with advertising, billboards etc. (the invasive experience of our hyper-capitalist project). And although our differences are political, I wonder if looking for the difference in the landscape—the sky we were raised under—can be a place to understand how these difference are cultural, less political. That our socialization in a space, a landscape leads us to understand our role as individuals, as citizens.

Historically, America has always been the land of the individual. This idea, which has always been an asset, has led to a time where our lack of concern for our global community (born out of a collective nation of fierce individualism) has created an image of greed, unilateralism and empire. Our best asset has become our biggest downfall.

Posted by Meredith at 10:55 on June 26, 2005

Colors of Berlin

We went to see The Colors of Berlin yesterday at the Deutsches Architektur Zentrum. The show consisted of a gallery lined with a vertical cards revealing images, color swatches, maps and some quotes. The cards resembled paint chip samples in scale and formatting. The top row had an image of the city and two color chips below. Underneath that was a card with a location (written), the same location circled on a small, black and white map and occasionally a quote (sometimes English, sometimes German). The projected took images of Berlin, many vacant and without people and broke down the image into two colors that are in some way meant to represent the color of the place – described as revealing the “emotional” color of the site. The show is part of a larger symposium / exhibition that will be taking place this week in Berlin called Loving Berlin.

I found the images to be materially superb – compositionally, color-wise, the way in which they reveal ed a kind of absence. I was reminded of Gabriel Orozco’s images. But I was weary of the camera and the person framing the shot. The formatting of the cards allowed me to understand that the image was taken on the site pointed to on the map. This was just one view of the space and was very intentionally chosen by the artist – but was this really a representation of the site? And were the colors derived from the image anything more than the artist using Photoshop to chose the colors (again a heavy handed gesture revealing the artist).

The exhibition was an obvious glorification of the sites, and Berlin as a city. The artists were asking us to learn to love Berlin in the way in which they do. I guess we always want others to see what we think is virtuous about a place – but the format instead revealed a color palette that referenced interior design. It is gesture that is a covering, a thin skin to hide the past – to pretty up the present. The show seemed to make excuses for a place that seems so uncomfortable with itself, with its obvious internal disagreements that are spread all over the architecture of this place.

But there was a quote on one of the cards that I think tries to make some sense of this problem of blankness and absence and made me wonder if perhaps I am too quick to judge Berlin –
“It is as if Berlin stands on nothing: the void here is “the” void – a void raised to its essence. One feels groundless – and that this is the position of the city. We think of Vienna, of Paris, of the old cities of the south and west, that have an essence, a nature in their staleness. Berlin is not stale, it does not exist in any history, not even any heritage.” – Wilhelm Hausenstein über Berlin: Eine Stadauf nichts gebaut – Berlin:1984 (1932). S.10.

Is this groundlessness a freedom, not a burden? Is Berlin fortunate to not have to deal with the burdens of the glorious material and architectural histories that so many other European cites are both blessed and burdened with? Or is Berlin just content to wipe clean its recent past? I am struggling to answer so many questions about this city – both physically and socially. Berlin, in my eyes sits a the crux of postmodernism and is the definition of how globalization effects urban identity. EXAMPLE: Last night (in Berlin) we went to an Italian restaurant in Kreuzberg, a neighborhood defined by its large Turkish population. Jeremy and I spoke Italian with the waiter, Anna and Susanna spoke German. We all occasionally digressed into English. There were posters on the wall – Pennywise, Agnostic Front, Sick of It All (Hardcore bands from the US).
Nothing is what you expect. Nothing is in place. Everything is all mixed up. It is a schizophrenic city.

Posted by Meredith at 14:00 on June 19, 2005

Facing Berlin

We have been here in Berlin for one week. My initial thoughts are what I presumed, different from the preconceived notions I had of the place. Although some seem closer to the truth. First major difference is that you face your neighbor on the train. And in most cases your neighbor looks you straight on – not even nervously.

Jeremy and I are both interested in the Wall – perhaps as all visitors are. It is inconceivable that any person could even consider a feat like this one. And how strange what has been left behind in its now 16 year absence. It has been gone half as long as it existed. Germans reveal a kind of ambivalence towards it by the way in which they reveal / hide its remnants. Last night we were at Potsdammer Platz. This square was Berlin’s center before the split. It was cut nearly in two by the wall (but was also vacant due to wartime destruction) and know has been heavily redeveloped. We were scanning the area for a dark corner for Jeremy to take a piss. Down a deserted street we found an old watch tower (not in its original location). It was a comical shape – like a lollipop – just large enough for one person to climb the small circular stair that made the stem. Jeremy pissed and I looked around. Leaving the street to find our way back to the train we realized we has passed a small section of the wall (3 or 4 large panels) and what one of our books refers to as an “obstacle”. It was surrounded by an area that looked like it was under construction – a chain linked fence and unruly weeds grew up around it. It was not memorialized, but not hidden. It was just worked around as though it were not there at all – like an abandoned building or a homeless person.

The surrounding square – Potsdammer Platz – has been hyper-commercialized. Its reconstruction, in an attempt to regain its central position, has instead established as a glowing hot-spot of lights, “modern” architecture and wi-fi. It is the anti-Europe center of capitalism – global, not local - an amusement park of bright things, but with nothing to do. It is all very American. The scale of the whole square is imposing and offensive to anything human. Cars whiz past as pedestrians exit the underground wondering what exactly they are supposed to be looking at – because it all looks so blank. How does one (re)create a blank space out of a space that was barren (lacking life), not blank – one that is embedded with such a dense history. Have I missed all references to the past, to a shared history, to an establishment of a recognizable space? Or is the pain of this place enough for the Germans to want to forget? Memory is hidden here – though perhaps I just yet do not have access to it.

Posted by Meredith at 11:39 on June 12, 2005

How did/do/will/should we remember?

Memorials provide an unending source of fascination. This is not only unique to Berlin, a city whose history is so contentious—in terms of its past conflicts as well as the interpretation of that past—but is evident in just about every place where people have ever lived (I imagine). For any culture, society, or community, there is always so much at stake with the memorials it creates, as if there was only one chance to mark the memory of the past with one grand gesture of finality: “This happened here, and this is how we remember it. Forever and ever.” Every memorial is bound to questions of representation and symbolism—who is represented? what is symbolized?—and ultimately to the question of authority—who decides how the past is represented and how a group’s values are symbolized? And then, an architect or an artist (or groups of these) is commissioned with the task of creating something which embodies all of these unfixed and imprecise ideas and psychologies of remembrance in one final gesture. Once you begin to look a bit deeper at a memorial and the process of its becoming, you can learn so much about a place and its citizens and its (contested) notion(s) of itself.

Berlin is a memorialized place. (How could it be otherwise?) A brief survey of some of its memorials begins to indicate the range of strategies / tactics (I’m thinking of de Certeau’s distinction here) for remembrance.

Soviet War Memorial (built 1946-1949) [more info]
This massive memorial and gravesite was built by the Soviets to honor the 20,000 Russian soldiers who died in the Battle of Berlin of early 1945.

Neue Wache, Memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism (1816-1993) [more info]
The Neue Wache (guard house) building was buildt by Karl Schinkel in 1816. In 1931, the Weimar Republic designated the building as a World War I memorial. The GDR restored the building after World War II as a war memorial and then it was rededicated after reunification in 1993 with a newly placed copy of a Kathe Kollwitz Pieta sculpture.

Berlin Wall Memorial at the Berliner Mauer Dokumentationszentrum (1998) [more info]
An entire section of the Wall (wall, death strip, patrol track, hinterland wall) on Bernauerstrasse was preserved and capped as a memorial at the Berliner Mauer Dokumentationszentrum, an institution which documents the history of the Wall with text, photography, audio, and film archives.

Berlin Wall marked by cobblestones near Potsdamer Platz (mid-1990s)
Several kilometers of the Wall are simply marked with a double row of cobblestones inset into the ground.

Stolpersteine (1992, project initiated in Köln) [more info]
These brass “stumble stones” can be found all over Berlin. They mark the residences of those who were deported by the Nazis to concentration camps—Jews, Gypsies, dissidents, and others deemed antithetical to German national identity—stamped into a single brass stone is the name, date of birth, name of the camp deported to, and, if known, what their ultimate fate was (usually murdered). Often you will see clusters of these as entire households were evacuated.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (2005) [more info]
Architect Peter Eisenman’s high-profile and maximalist memorial was recently opened in May 2005 on a site between Potsdamer Platz and Brandenburg Gate. (For an interesting counter proposal for this memorial and an example of a very different kind of tactic, see Stih and Schnock’s Bus Stop project, which proposes to the use the site in Berlin as a point of departure (deportment) for individual pilgrimages to the various cites in central Europe where the victims of Nazism were murdered, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and so on.)

Posted by Jeremy at 00:51 on August 25, 2005

Corbusierhaus

Berlin sponsored and hosted an international building exposition in 1957 (Interbau ‘57) which featured the construction of over 30 buildings designed by the All-Stars of modern architecture (Gropius, Aalto, Niemeyer, to name a few). Most of the buildings constructed were large-scale housing buildings which were sited in the war-damaged Hansa District in west Berlin. The planning and design of the district embodies the tenets of CIAM’s (Congres Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne) Athens Charter of 1933 (aka “The Functional City”): ample, high-rise apartment buildings surrounded by expanses of green space and strung together with vehicular / pedestrian arteries. Ostensibly, this program was developed as an antidote to the dark, chaotic, unsanitary mess which was the modern industrialized city.

Le Corbusier’s contribution to Interbau ‘57, a variation on his Unité d’habitation model, was so massive (it contains 557 units) and out of scale with both the Hansa master plan and the other proposed buildings that it was relocated further west to an area near the Olympic Stadium. Typical of Corbu’s predisposition towards architectural dogma, he found it necessary to explain the CIAM ideology to the residents of the building via a large bas relief which diagrams les conditions de nature and then explains how the inhabitants will live harmoniously with nature, thus fostering community and reaffirming individual liberty.

Posted by Jeremy at 10:38 on August 12, 2005

Memory, again

The memory of different cities asserts itself, wedging the spaces of the past into the places of the present. It’s always like this: you walk along a mundane street beside a mundane building and with a jolt you turn only to find the space warped and transformed with the overwhelming sense of some other place. And it’s always been like this: you move through layers of spatial cognition, some so-called real and present while others are less concrete but contextually integral nonetheless. And it’s always going to be like this: you are submerged in that perceptual cocktail mixed with memory, experience, and hope, and it pours over you like a deluge. The liquid flows over and around sidewalks, curbs, tram rails, cobblestones, lampposts, buildings, courtyards, through open doors and windows, down alleys and up stairwells. Truly the stuff is both contained by and containing the world before you. How can you know exactly where you are in such a state?

…even if it was a matter of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey, because the traveler’s past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.
—Inivisible Cities, Italo Calvino

Posted by Jeremy at 11:48 on August 8, 2005

Ein Steingott über Berlin

Posted by Jeremy at 00:43 on August 7, 2005

To Marx and Engels

The government of post-reunification Berlin decided to leave Marx and Engels alone. Perhaps this is because the monument lacks the heroic bravado of so many of the other GDR-era monuments. The bronze figures are not quite three times as large as the average person and they are placed rather informally on a low pedestal in the cobblestoned expanse of the Platz. Both figures are solemn and passive: Marx sits calmly, almost benevolently, as Engels stands just left of and behind the better-known figure. One can walk right up to Grandfather Karl, place a hand on his knee or rest an elbow on his thigh, and have a memorable photograph taken.

Or maybe Marx and Engels remain in Berlin because of the popularity and relevance of their ideas. The Marxist critique of politics, culture, art, and literature etc. has been developed and refined by so many thinkers in the 20th century, and it is Marxism which has fueled the more strident and radical (and much needed) voices of the Left within the context of numerous democratic societies and states. Marx and Engels do not only belong to the troubled histories of communism and socialism.

On a recent afternoon I watched numerous tourists from all parts of the world walk into the expanse of the Platz, gawk quizzically at the two old, bronze gentlemen, and then either snap a photo or saddle up next to the statues to have their picture taken. I was particularly amused by a large group of Asian men—from which Asian country I don’t know—who so methodically went up to the statue one by one for a photograph. Did they know who these two men were, or was this just another stop among many in their sight-seeing itinerary around Berlin? It most likely doesn’t matter either way.

It occurs to me that allowing Marx and Engels to stay in Berlin might have been a bit more cynical, though: a big-time F-U from Capitalism to the tired (ergo, ineffectual) ideas of Marx, Engels, and their ilk. In Berlin, in Germany, in eastern Europe, Capitalism has triumphed. Sony, Daimler-Benz, and Price Waterhouse Cooper have built their corporate castles on the very site of the Berlin Wall! All the radicals and punks have been kicked out of their unheated utopian squat houses and the Lefties now sport around town in Diesel jeans and Campers listening to Chomsky podcasts on their mp3 players! (Hey, that’s me, too.) So Marx and Engels can stay and isn’t it quaint this relic from a time before neoliberalism gave us free-market democracy. Look, take a picture.

Posted by Jeremy at 23:50 on July 28, 2005

All the way around the Palace

Read more about the former GDR’s Palace of the Republic.

Posted by Jeremy at 21:52 on July 24, 2005

Denkmal (Monument)

(The etymology of monument begins with the Latin monumentum, literally, “memorial,” from monEre, “to remind.” The German word, Denkmal, appears to be comprised of denk, a root meaning “thought” or “mind” and mal meaning “mark.”)

Perhaps a monument, as long as there remains some extant trace of it, will always remain a monument to something, intended or not.

The respective governments of West and East Berlin, a divided city for so many years, erected monuments to those historical figures and events which might symbolize the ideals and values and histories suitable for each political ideology, for each image they desired to project to themselves and to the world. After World War II and the division of the East from West, each side sought to claim some connection to a past and a tradition somehow not entangled with the egregious sins of the National Socialists (Nazis). One side sought identification with the heroic antifascism of the Communists, the other wished to identify with the slightly militaristic but culturally rich heritage of the 19th century, as well as the victims of fascism. (These numerous questions and difficulties regarding Germany’s relationship to its past extend to many other areas, including architectural preservation, urban planning, even the naming of streets, as Brian Ladd’s Ghosts of Berlin reveals.)

After reunification, many (politicians) in West Berlin found the monuments of the East embarrassing and distasteful—colossal statues of Lenin were deemed incompatible for the united, neoliberal Germany of the future. These views have been met with protest from leftists and a few intellectuals simply interested in preserving an inclusive, collective version of the Germany’s past which might embrace all of Berlin’s monuments as historical markers rather than specifically political ones. Yet many of the GDR’s monuments are gone and their streets have been renamed. In Oberschöneweide—our home in East Berlin—I discovered a weather-worn pedestal which at some time no doubt held aloft a figure or group of figures. A couple of brass numbers still dangle from the stone, leaving no discernible trace of who or what the monument once marked.

What remains is an abstract monument; its historical referent is vague for those of us who either didn’t know it when it was whole or have forgotten it. Yet it still serves as a marker. For me, it marks another instance of the city’s partial forgetting (or partial remembering) of itself. It marks an uneven act: a sloppy coat of paint, or a poorly scrubbed pot, or the ragged marks of pencil on paper after it has been hastily erased.

Posted by Jeremy at 11:27 on July 19, 2005

A Typology of Mess Punkte

Within the course of walking down any given block in Berlin, you might notice out of the corner of your eye a small raised metal disc or knob placed on the sidewalk; it might be brass or steel, with a weathered patina or gleaming new and shiny. And maybe what draws your attention in further, then, is this: there appears to be letters embossed or stamped in relief around the circumference of the disc. So, the tiny metal dot seems to have some intentionality invested in it, some vague purpose to its being where it is. Closer inspection allows you to identify the letters, which spell the words “Mess Punkt” or maybe “Verm Punkt” and you also notice a precisely machined dimple in the exact center of the disc. With your foot you give it a little nudge; the thing holds fast and you guess that it is spiked into the sidewalk.

You may register this first encounter as an oddity, merely another errant distraction among many which has stuttered your walks through the city, possibly giving cause for a snapshot or at least a closer look. However, the next day you spot another one of these strange metal discs in the sidewalk, and maybe this one is slightly larger or smaller, made of aluminum rather than steel or brass, and maybe there are some markings and numbers sprayed around the disc on the paving there as well. One Mess Punkt is an anomaly, but two (then 3 and 4 and 5…) Mess Punkte suggests a typology. But a typology of what?

“Punkt” is easy: “point.” Your dictionary shows you that “Mess” is shorthand for “measuring,” and “Verm” is an abbreviation for “Vermessung,” meaning “measurement.” Measuring, or measurement, point. Measuring points spiked into the sidewalk obviously used for measuring what? Utilities infrastructure buried underground? Lot lines? Building setbacks? You guess that the dimple in the Mess Punkt must be for coupling with some other instrument, a stake or a plumb line or a surveyor’s sighting device. But you’ve never seen one in action.

You become obsessed with the Mess Punkte. As you walk, your eyes scan the ground from left to right and back in search of other Mess Punkte, perhaps never-before-seen types to add to your typology. Your eyes are tired and strained, your forehead aches. The intensity with which you search for these miniscule points is blinding you to the world above the plane of the sidewalk. Your thoughts are filled with abstract representations which plot a new map of Berlin according to the network of all the Mess Punkte in the city. In your imagination you move from point to point making any number of precise measurements and calculations in search of some new hermetic understanding of the city. Your theories devolve into some vast cryptic code capable of creating a magnum opus text of the city with which initiates descend upon Berlin, measuring tapes and notebooks in hand, plotting points of intersection and curvature, climbing through windows and running across courtyards in search of direct lines between adjacent Mess Punkte. Are you going insane?

Posted by Jeremy at 12:32 on July 11, 2005

U-Bahn Selves

You are being watched, but you can watch yourself being watched, or watch others being watched, or watch others waiting, not watching. There are two versions of you down there. One is flat, or in profile, seen from the front, from slightly above. One is pixellated slightly, a bit off-color, or maybe just right. One is contiguous, soft, fleeting, roundish. One is fixed on magnetic tape, and then summarily erased. One is remembered. One is partial.

One is wandering. One is bolted to the platform and covered in stainless steel. One is shuffling between people and benches and fragments of conversations in a language barely understood. One sees. One is seen. One is among so many, bumping into another one, or hoping to at least. One is standing on an empty platform and waiting.

Posted by Jeremy at 18:28 on July 6, 2005

One wall will replace another

Using the aforementioned guide, I made the journey south to find the point where the wall began, or ended, or stopped, or turned. One aspect of the hasty division between west and east Berlin in 1961 (the border was secured over the course of a single night) which I have found difficult to understand is the much overlooked fact that West Berlin was essentially an island within the GDR. I had assumed until very recently that Berlin was located on the former border between West Germany and East Germany, which seems logical—how else could the city have been so decisively split in half? Not so. On that night in 1961 the entire perimeter around West Berlin was secured by the GDR and comprised of 2 sections: the infamous Berlin Wall, which snaked through the middle of Berlin, and the remaining border along the northern, western, and southern boundaries of West Berlin. West Berliners continued with the same freedoms they always enjoyed—freedom to move about the world, to enjoy the economic benefits (and hardships) of capitalism, to participate in western democracy. East Berliners, on the other hand, were kept inside the GDR (or out of the West) behind the Iron Curtain. (Their experience of the everyday is something I’m anxious to learn more about.)

Another much neglected fact about the Berlin Wall: it wasn’t so much a wall as a system of retention, a space to deter East Berliners from, first, even approaching the border, and, second, certainly breeching the barrier. From east to west, the system generally was organized like so: 1) warning markers, painted red and white, to alert comrades of the forbidden zone; 2) sometimes large concrete barriers to defray vehicles; 3) the hinterland wall and followed by a chainlink fence crowned with barbed wire; 4) a zone of coiled razorwire; 5) the patrol track and street lamps; 6) the “death strip”, several meters wide of sand-laden space; 7) and finally the concrete wall.

But I digress. I located the southernmost point from where the Berlin Wall runs north through the city. Much of the patrol track remains in this initial section, but the space of the border has largely been overgrown with vegetation in the last 15 years. A new ecosystem has developed in the zone of the former death strip: wild grasses and flowers, an odd tree here and there. Horseback-riders from the neighboring stables have forged trails along the path of the former wall in places.

Most notably, though, a new barrier is being constructed in place of the former: a multi-lane autobahn. It will stretch for several kilometers into the center of Berlin, following much of the former wall’s path—and it is as much of a boundary. I attempted to follow the patrol track north as far as I could, which meant following the unfinished autobahn as well, and I was completely cut off from the other side, unable to find a place to cross back over into the east. The question I have been carrying with me came back to mind: where is the wall now? This new barrier may not have the same absolutist ideology behind it, or the same imperviousness, but, in a sense, its physical effect was similar to that of the former wall, especially for me as a pedestrian. I am reminded of the I-35 expressway which bisects Austin, TX from north to south (and countless others across the U.S.) and how that city seemed to by so divided along that line in so many ways. What happens here in Berlin?

Posted by Jeremy at 22:48 on June 30, 2005

Über-Spree-Trams

Posted by Jeremy at 00:06 on June 24, 2005

Cracks and Gaps and Urban Chandeliers

Exceptionally said…

Beware, though: the assimilation of these exceptional spaces is on the move. This consumption seems distant enough maybe, since there still remain so many of the “gaps and cracks” of which Lear writes, but the transformation certainly is a visible work in progress. I have to wonder for how much longer they will be forgotten, these urban voids and squatters’ compounds and abandoned warehouses and intersticial wilderness. Proper, branded space as represented by the techno-commercial miracle of Potsdammer Platz (Sony Center et al) seems to be spreading along the arteries of Berlin.

Posted by Jeremy at 01:44 on June 22, 2005

Wo ist die Mauer jetzt?

Where is the wall now? Newly arrived to Berlin, we sensed the presence of the Berlin wall, like a pervasive humming sound which at times seemed louder or softer depending on our imagined proximity to its former path. Its specter has asserted itself as the primary datum by which we have begun to understand the city, or have wished to understand the city, or have needed to understand the city. The image (and it is mostly imagined) of this monumental boundary is provocative in so many respects, raising so many questions about the nature of this place: Berlin’s socio-spatial organization, the economic, political, and historical divisions, the post-reunification project at large, the way the Berliners have (dis)acknowledged its presence and engaged this very troubling and inevitable part of their collective history.

In the first few days of frantic movement about Berlin, we looked for the wall often as we traveled by train through and around the city. We imagined that we caught a glimpse of it at certain points, but could not be sure if in fact we had seen it. Identifying the wall is difficult in that Berlin is actually punctuated with crumbling walls and buildings and infrastructure throughout much of the city, as well as blanketed with a relentless layer of graffiti—all features which, according to my preconceived notions, combine to signify “the wall.” Added to this confusion is the erratic path of the boundary as it winds through the city, especially near the Mitte (the historic center of Berlin which fell on the eastern side); the wall sometimes followed existing street patterns, but then might cut obliquely and acutely across plazas or jump quickly across a portion of the Spree River and then back again.

We recently came across a very helpful book entitled Wall Remnants — Wall Traces which comprehensively documents all extant traces of the wall. Full of detailed maps, photos, and contextual information, this guide has been instrumental in giving us a much clearer image of the physical parameters of the former wall.

The wall lingers in our imagination. But it is not the only datum by which to consider Berlin. The danger is that the wall—in all its enormity and immediacy—becomes a cliched, trite symbol which misrepresents a much more nuanced and complicated set of circumstances; especially for we foreigners who wish to deal with this city as an object of enquiry and as a place in which to live.

Posted by Jeremy at 11:37 on June 19, 2005