Divided Streets; the Struggle for Urban Identity in Post-Wende Berlin.

20 20

divided

streets.

The Struggle for Urban Identity in Post-Wende Berlin.

Matthew Patrick Rooney [MA Architecture] 8,756 words Tutor: Shumi Bose

preface.

Divided Streets; the Struggle for Urban Identity in Post-Wende Berlin The question of who owns the streets has, and continues to confront city dwellers across the globe. For Berliners living through the period known as ‘die Wende’ (or the fall) this question became ever more striking as various actors struggled to assert control over the city streets and the formation of new urban identities. This thesis will explore the power of urban space and its role in the reunification of the divided city in the decade following the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989 - 2000). The focus of the study lies in the staging of a new Berlin through the interplay of dramatic physical transformations, the erasure of memory and reconciliation with the past as well as the new behaviours and performances enacted upon the city streets and through architectural form during the 1990s.

Through an analysis of the visual sensations of the public space and the streetscapes of Berlin, the study will describe urban space as a form of mass media capable of communicating the transitional identities of ‘das neue Berlin’ to the urban gaze.

fig 0.0 Goodbye Lenin.

Leninplatz - 1991

contents. introduction

die wende. chapter one

new symbols. chapter two

erasure. chapter three

autonomy.

06 14 22 30

legacy

36

[bibliography & list of illustrations]

40

conclusions

introduction:

die wende.

07

[00.INTRODUCTION]

fig.

0.1 Mauerfall 9. November 1989

Late on the evening of the 9th November 1989, East German border guards at the Bornholmer Strasse checkpoint relinquished to the demands of an ever growing, jubilant crowd, and removed all barriers to the West[1].

Within hours, all of Berlin’s crossings had followed suit and thousands of citizens ventured across the border, many for the first time in their lives. Der Mauerfall or fall of the Berlin Wall marked a moment of collective euphoria for Berliners across both sides of the divide as the perceived permanence of the Cold War stalemate came crashing down. This moment can be seen as the culmination of the peaceful revolution or die Wende that had gained traction across East Germany and other member states of the Communist Bloc throughout 1989. Literally translating as the turning point, the Wende had seen citizens in the East defy their repressive authorities by gathering in urban areas to demand freedom of movement to the West, genuine democracy and greater human rights.[2] Since 1945, Germany had been split along the lines of the victors of WWII. The territory under control of the western allies formed the Bundesrepublik Deutschland, while the east of the country developed into the Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR. The former embraced liberal western capitalist values while the latter, laying under the sway of the Soviet Union (USSR), carried authoritarian state structures and a centrally planned economy.[3] The city of Berlin came to be defined by the stand off between the two Germanies and the ideologies they represented. As the

[1]__Berlin.de. (2016). Opening and fall of the Berlin Wall - Berlin.de. [online] Available at: https://www.berlin. de/mauer/en/history/opening-of-the-wall/.

[2]__Carter, E., Palmowski, J. and Schreiter, K., 2019. German Division As Shared Experience. Interdisciplinary Perspectives On The Postwar Everyday. Oxford: Berghahn Books Ltd. [3]__Ladd, B. (2018). The Ghosts of Berlin. University Of Chicago Press.

[DIVIDED_STREETS]

West Berlin

East Berlin

08

fig.

0.2 - Berlin Wall Line

ever greater political tension between the USA and USSR played out on the streets of Berlin, in 1961 the East responded by commencing construction of the so called ‘Anti-Fascist Protection Wall’ as a means to physically split the city and prevent the mass exodus of its citizens to the West.[4] Over the years this Wall would come to be the most fortified border in world and claim countless lives for those who attempted escapes in the pursuit of freedom.

Moreover the ensuing decades of Cold War confrontation sowed division into the streetscapes of a city that had, in its golden age been one of Europe’s most thriving and cosmopolitan capitals. As I will set forth in this dissertation, the resulting urban topography formed by the extremes of twentieth century politics would leave indelible impressions onto both the city’s psyche and built environment for generations to come.

After twenty-eight years divided, East and West Berliners overnight found themselves thrown together once more. By 1990, the two Germanies had become one as the DDR state dissolved and its leadership accepted reunification with the West. This moment beckoned a period of national introspection as Europe’s now largest nation sought to redefine a collective identity. As I will argue, urban space was perceived to perform an intrinsic role in the construction of the new nation and healing of the wounds of its volatile histories. With the ghosts of national socialism and the DDR dictatorship still haunting the city, Berlin was seen as inherently tied to German reconciliation with the past and aspirations for the future.[5] As a consequence in 1991, after months of nation-wide debate it was decided that the federal parliament should be returned to the city (after having been situated in the town of Bonn

[4]__Schick, J.M. (1971). The Berlin crisis, 1958-1962. Philadelphia, University Of Pennsylvania Press.

[5]__Taberner, S. and Finlay, F. (2002). Recasting German identity : culture, politics, and literature in the Berlin Republic. Rochester, Ny: Camden House.

Division Partition Lines

09

[00.INTRODUCTION]

since 1949). This retrieved status as a capital city set the course for Berlin’s dramatic transformation over the following years and cemented its ambitions to become a globally competitive, European metropolis. Having been governed for the past forty years by two disparate political systems, planners found themselves negotiating immense challenges of forming a new urban image fit for the reunified nation; whilst bringing together two separate autonomous cities and identities. The extremes of public sentiment and intense debate over the built environment reveal the contentions that existed in German society during this period.

[VOIDS]

The felling of the Wall exposed the virtual and physical voids in Berlin’s streetscapes that had emerged from its construction. At its largest, the border between East and West had comprised of two monolithic walls sandwiching a vast stretch of no-man’s known as the ‘death strip’.[6] With the installation gone, the city was left with large swathes of wilderness in its centre, known by locals as the ‘prairies of history’ [fig.0.3/4].[7] These haunted voids spoke by means of absence, of the traumas experienced by Berliners in the twentieth century and naturally became the focus of redevelopment as planners attempted to normalise the physical landscape for the approaching new millennium.

'Normalisation’ was a dominant theme surrounding much of the debate concerning the reconstruction of the reunified capital. As Brian Ladd notes in the seminal work, Ghosts of Berlin, politicians and critics were spilt between those fervently yearning for the urban normality present in neighbouring Western democracies and those who believed that spaces such as the voids of Berlin should be maintained as reminder to the burdens of Germany’s history.[8]

Beyond the physical gaps in the city, remained the lingering psychological legacy of the divide. Accordingly attitudes to the Wall differed greatly on either side. For those in the East it represented the physical embodiment of a system of repression and as such fed into a collective trauma. A form of depression named Mauerkrankheit or wall sickness, unique to Eastern citizens living alongside the border infrastructure, reveals the scarring impact the Wall had on the DDR’s imprisoned population.[9] Conversely those on the West, held the Wall with a different regard since it did not pose a direct threat to their lives or personal freedoms. Arguably the legacy of these differing perspectives aggravated the already deep rifts along East-West lines that had formed from the two states’ political and economic divergence. In many ways the redevelopment of Post-Wende Berlin was marked by these differences. Contestation between the former 'Wessis' - West Berliners and the 'Ossis' - East Berliners, now centred on the outcome of the built environment [6]__Burkhardt, H. (2001). Facts of Berlin Wall - History of Berlin Wall. [online] www.dailysoft.com. Available at: http://www.dailysoft.com/berlinwall/history/facts.htm.

[7]__Huyssen, A., 1997. The Voids of Berlin. Critical Inquiry, 24(1), pp.57-81.

[8][9] __Ladd, B. (2018). The Ghosts of Berlin. University Of Chicago Press.

[DIVIDED_STREETS]

010

fig.

0.3 Voids Potzdamer Platz in 1990

and the grappling over the physical and cultural legacy of the DDR.[10] Anxieties built up over decades goes far to explain decisions taken in the reunified capital with both sides fearing the domination of the other over the ‘new Berlin’. Being the clear victor of the Cold War, the West held the upper hand in the sway for control of the streets. The often aggressive means in which the voids of Berlin were filled is telling of the decisions made by large-scale public and private investment partnerships in their bid to effectively control the image of the reunified city.

[STRUCTURE]

The 1990s witnessed a period of truly monumental building activity in the pursuit of the ‘new Berlin’. During this time the skyline was dominated by cranes and construction sites as major projects broke ground throughout the capital. ‘Critical Reconstruction’, a planning strategy devised by the largely Western-dominated city governance sought to normalise the built fabric by reinstating street plans and architectural styles from the pre-war city.

Numerous large scale projects were built according to the tenets of ‘Critical Reconstruction’ including: the redevelopment of Potsdamer Platz, the new government quarter for the reinstated German parliament and the complete renewal of the old town centre of Freidrichstadt. Chapter one discusses these projects in relation to the frenzy to curate the image of a burgeoning global city that was representative of a new German statehood. By analysing the production of image and cultural symbology through the architectural interventions of the 1990s I will suggest how these urban interventions can be read as seeking to wipe the city clean of the memory of the DDR.

[10]__Finney, G. (2006). Visual culture in twentieth-century Germany : text as spectacle. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.

011

[00.INTRODUCTION]

Commentators such as Claire Colomb, have argued that the co-ordination of critical reconstruction projects during this time constituted a ‘staging’ of the ‘new Berlin’ through the purposeful manipulation of the physical history of the city in pursuit of new identities: "alongside the new, gleaming corporate headquarters and government centres, Europe’s largest building site [was] also the scene of the postunification construction of German history and identity – ethically, politically, and … rhetorically" [11]

fig.

0.4 The 'Prairies of History' Potzdamer Platz -1995

The notion of ‘staging’ is further explored in Chapter 1 through the analysis of the visual sensations of mass redevelopment of the city throughout the period of reunification. These years saw the use of public event and spectacle to act as a marketing tool to sell the vision of the future city to locals, investors and tourists alike. [12] Encompassed within these strategies was the extensive use of construction sites to act as the backdrop for a wide array of celebratory performances and tourist attractions that attempted to convey the image of the city of ‘tomorrow’. In this way the thesis looks to how the city streets of Berlin have been politicised through the medium of event, with the ‘festivalisation' of urban planning strategies exhibited during this time being used as a means for healing but simultaneously acting as a means to exerted claims to urban space.

Chapter two expands on these themes to explore the struggles and debates that raged over the erasure of the physical legacy of the DDR through the wider actions of the city municipality. I argue that the principles of historical

[11]__Colomb, C. (2012). Staging the New Berlin : place marketing and the politics of urban reinvention post-1989. New York: Routledge.

[12]__Lehrer, U. (2003). The Spectacularization of the Building Process: Berlin, Potsdamer Platz. Genre, 36(3–4), pp.383–404.

[DIVIDED_STREETS]

manipulation undertaken through the medium of critical reconstruction, was continued through the assault on urban memories of the East’s streetscapes.

By re-constructing the historic struggles over monuments and the widespread practice of renaming streets after the Mauerfall, the thesis points to the politicisation of collective memory, which for Berlin played out through its highly contentious urban landscape. The struggles for and against the identity of the East is representative of the diverse range of actors seeking to influence the formation of the new city’s image. In many ways although the actions of the city fathers and their public-private partnerships dominated much of the redevelopment of the city, shown by the backlash of former Ossis against the attacks to their culture is the degree of power still held by grassroots campaigns over urban identity. Chapter three discusses this notion in further detail through the exploration of the ways in which autonomous underground scenes claimed urban space by exercising new freedoms afforded by unification. The Post-Wende conditions of Berlin allowed counter culture movements to flourish in the landscape of vacant buildings left by the demise of the DDR. In this context, the actions of the squatting movement and techno scene are interrogated to understand how these groups strived to define alternative ways of being through use of the city and event whilst combating the neo-liberal advances of the capital-wide redevelopments.

012

fig.

0.5 Construction Tourism Tourists flock to Potzdamer Platz in 1996

Post-Wende Berlin’s rapid metamorphosis has drawn a plethora of academic interest over the years since the wall fell. It is within this context that the study seeks to develop a unique angle by examining the politicisation of urban space through the interplay of actions from both public-private intervention with those of autonomous, subcultural movements. The motivation to study this topic, is, in its widest sense led by a desire to understand the means in which architecture and the built environment play an intrinsic role in the performance of collective identity and statehood. The dramatic upheaval encountered during this time can be viewed in many ways as a globally unique

013

[00.INTRODUCTION]

event that nonetheless holds value for the better understanding of urban processes. In particular the manner in which the streets of Berlin were used to stage new national identities provides a fascinating insight into the effects of regime change onto the city streets. Berlin through its past has shown itself to be a highly malleable site that throughout the twentieth century was made and re-made according to the desires of successive creators, in turn revealing the artificiality of urban space. The seismic shifts of the Wende, left a city grappling with the questions of how to deal with the physical reminders of uncomfortable pasts. The debates of this period bear a striking relevance to the problems faced by contemporary urban governments in battles between preservation and erasure that result from troubling histories. By studying the streets of the Post-Wende capital it is possible to view the deep structures of German society at this moment and the inventive use of urban space, spectacle and event as attempts to enable its healing. The scramble to define the new city in the wake of the events of 1989 laid bare the contestations of reunification, as government, private investment, counter-culture and hedonism from East and West fought to claim the streets in their name. As the years would reveal, everything was up for grabs.

chapter one:

new symbols.

015

[01.NEW SYMBOLS]

fig.

1.1 Goebbel's street: Torchlit parade in celebration of Hitler's rise to power.

Unten den Linden, Berlin 30th Jan. 1933

“The Street is now the primary feature of modern politics. Whoever can conquer the street can also conquer the masses, and … thereby conquer the state.” [13]

As the Minister of Propaganda to the Nazi party, Josef Goebbels had an understanding of what it took to gain the support of the nation. Represented by this quote, is the value he placed on urban space as a platform to perform the ideals and aspirations of German society in the time of national socialism.

The city of Berlin, saw its streets transformed into a highly politicised form of mass media, activated by means of pageantry, spectacle and violence to convey the total strength of the party [fig.1.1].[14] Nazi urban ambitions were ultimately channelled through Albert Speer’s Haupstadt Germania, a fascist world city of unrivalled grandeur. Dreamt up to entirely replace Berlin, the city was to be built over the erased streets and neighbourhoods of the historic centre. This never-to-be vision is the most extreme example of how successive regime’s in the 20th century attempted to remake Berlin’s urban identity according to their best image. Goebbel’s faith in urban space to reform society speaks of the dialectical relationship between the formation of cities and performances of citizenship. Drawing from Henri Lefebrve’s Right to the City, urban geographer, David Harvey sums up this relationship:

[13]__Goebbels, J. (1932). Kampf um Berlin, Der Anfang.

[14]__Loberg, M. (2020). Struggle for The Streets of Berlin : politics, consumption, and urban space, 19141945. S.L.: Cambridge Univ Press.

[DIVIDED_STREETS]

"what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from the question of what kind of people we want to be" [15]

This understanding has been shared throughout the lineage of city fathers; reaching pronounced heights after the divide of Berlin as East and West set about remaking themselves according to the socio-political regimes they represented. Both sides would ultimately utilise post-war reconstruction as a means to exaggerate their competing political ideologies and societal aspirations through built form.[16] The resulting street topography was of two disparate place identities representing a physical manifestation of the coldwar confrontation. In simple terms the West became an extreme microcosm of liberal capitalist order and western planning paradigms while the East came to represent the stark concrete urbanism of the Eastern Bloc and socialist monumentalism of Soviet Russia.

[STAGING]

Uniting these two identities became a key raison d’etre of the Post-Wende urban administration. Following in the footsteps of previous generations, identity was to be staged through physical and architectural intervention. A new concept however saw the post-Wende administration employing some of the most intense and concerted efforts to curate and communicate the image of a changing city to a wider population. Urban actors turned to spectacle and display as a means to focus the attention of the public, investors and tourists alike onto the future of the built environment, whilst deflecting from dwelling on past traumas. Ute Lehrer has labelled this as the ‘spectacularisation’ of building, arguing that the tactics employed in the 1990s marked a departure from construction being solely concerned with the erection of buildings.[17] Instead this process came to represent ‘the production of images between the project’s inception and completion’ used to sell the process, in this case the construction of a bright and promising future for the city.

The image of the city can be manipulated by physical transformation and by means of altering the symbolic meaning associated to the place. In Post-Wende Berlin while physical transformation was taking place on an enormous scale, a celebratory campaign of public engagement was launched which most notably saw the introduction of the Schaustelle - ‘Show-Sites’ which denoted construction sites turned into tourist attractions. Arguably the culmination of these events, the summer of 1996 witnessed a cultural programme involving two hundred guided tours of construction sites as well as open-air performances taking place on the sites of future developments. The [15]__Harvey, D. (2019). REBEL CITIES : from the right to the city to the urban revolution.

[16]__Broadbent, P. and Hake, S. (2010). Berlin Divided City, 1945-1989. New York: Berghahn Books.

[17]__Lehrer, U. (2003). The Spectacularization of the Building Process: Berlin, Potsdamer Platz. Genre, 36(3–4), pp.383–404.

016

017

[01.NEW SYMBOLS]

Schaustelle site at Potsdamer Platz reportedly had over 50,000 visitors a day during its peak and also hosted a number of concerts that used its half-built architectural elements to act as a backdrop for the spectacles enacted.[18]

The InfoBox [fig.1.2] was one of the most defining symbols of construction site tourism promoted by the city and investors. This bright, red exhibition centre was temporarily placed alongside remnants of the Wall on the site of the Potsdamer Platz developments from 1995 to 2000. It’s roof-top terrace enabled panoramic views of the wasteland of construction sites and cranes; while inside was a multi-media experience intended to interactively engage visitors with the future developments. What the InfoBox displays is the use the construction process to act as spectacle for the gaze of the urban flaneur. Its popularity speaks of the success of its creators in promoting mass excitement around the city’s numerous developments and the future they represented. However to its critics the InfoBox, with its slogan: ‘Visit Tomorrowland’, appeared as a crass,Disneyfied reminder of the West’s total allegiance to corporate globalisation and failure to engage sensitively with the East’s urban landscape.[19] [Critical Reconstruction]

fig.

1.2 The Infobox 1998

The stated desires for these spectacles was to act as a form of communicative planning, instigate interest and public debate over the transformations taking place in the city. However as opponents argued, the democratic value of these initiatives was somewhat minimal since they worked largely as a tactic to gain public support for the hegemonic visions of the city’s critical reconstruction strategy. In essence, critical reconstruction embodied the efforts to stage the entire reunified centre of Berlin through a co-ordinated manipulation of history and selective idealisation of traditional pre-WWII architectural heritage. The chief architect of critical reconstruction,

[18]__Taberner, S. and Finlay, F. (2002). Recasting German identity : culture, politics, and literature in the Berlin Republic. Rochester, Ny: Camden House.

[19]__Leander Brotz, C. (2011). Icons of the East: Urban Planning in Post Wende Berlin.

[DIVIDED_STREETS]

018

fig.

1.3 Critical Reconstruction: Friedrichstadt facades

Hans Stimmann held the position of the city’s head of building from 1991 to 1996. Stimman presided over a period dominated by the nostalgic pursuit of returning to a perceived ‘golden age’ of urbanism largely formed during the Grunderzeit years of Wilhelmine Berlin (1871-1918) and the Weimar Republic years (1918 - 1933). In physical form the paradigm of critical reconstruction was set forth by a strict set of aesthetic requirements that developments throughout the 1990s had to adhere to as means to recreate the streetscapes of this romanticised époque [20]. Design parameters described in Berlin Mitte, a manual for redevelopment released by the city senate in 1994 include the replication of the centre’s old street plans wherever possible and, with that the preservation of historic frontage lines of the streets. The aspired aim of this document reveals an idealisation of the Mietskaserne or tenement typology.

Additionally the mandatory use of stone as a facade material was prescribed alongside the specification of traditional window arrangements, set lot sizes and a compliance to a thirty-metre building height limit. The streets of ‘new’ Berlin thus became a highly regulated urban stage-set that employed architecture to form a fake historical impression.[21] Hans Stimman’s statement: ‘Berlin must look like Berlin’, speaks of a violence to the critically reconstructive requisite that the ‘new’ city must allude to a selective window of Berlin’s past in its effort to become globally normalised. Critical reconstruction polarised opinions of commentators during the 1990s with supporters believing it necessary to achieve a presentable German cultural identity through the built environment. The other side of opinions voiced concerns over the strategy of historical staging across the city that essentially performed an aggressive act of gentrification that omitted any mention of the East.

[20]__Colomb, C. (2012). Staging the New Berlin : place marketing and the politics of urban reinvention post-1989. New York: Routledge.

[21]__Broadbent, P. and Hake, S. (2010). Berlin Divided City, 1945-1989. New York: Berghahn Books.

019

[01.NEW SYMBOLS]

[Potsdamer Platz]

It is certainly highly doubtful whether the key projects of critical reconstruction, achieved their aim of replicating the bustling streets of the golden age capital. Postsdamer Platz represents the largest and most overt of such attempts to restore the lost streetscapes of the former capital. As a major transportation hub of the 1920s, the area has played a role in many of the 20th century contests and convulsions experienced in the city. Propelled by the expansion of road and rail links, Potsdamer Platz’s ‘heyday’ in the Weimar Republic saw the interchange transformed from a peripheral zone to new urban centre that bridged both East and West.[22] Cue to 1990 and the area represents the largest void present in Berlin, originating from the combined effects of WWII aerial bombardments and the subsequently neglect and purposeful clearance of the area by the East to make way for the border wall in the 1960s.

It is within this sixty-acre site that the critical reconstructionists embark on the largest built endeavour of the 1990s [fig.1.4], to piece together pre1933 urban topographies and form a new commercial district emblematic of an aspired urban modernity. Unlike other redevelopments taking place in the centre, the architectural style employed was less directly constrained to the requirements of old world nostalgia. However, the same principles remained of seeking to glorify the vibrancy and street plans of historic urban grids. In this case, the grids of the old Berlin were adorned with the gleaming, highrise architecture of corporate transnationalism with the area becoming a playground for global starchitects of the time. As Europe’s largest building

fig.

1.4 A skyline of cranes Potzdamer Platz - 1996

[22]__Loberg, M. (2020). Struggle for The Streets of Berlin : politics, consumption, and urban space, 1914-1945. S.L.: Cambridge Univ Press.

[DIVIDED_STREETS]

site took shape, it became clear that the project was to be dominated by the interests of just a handful of private corporate interests eager to site their brand identities in what they believed to be a burgeoning business centre; DaimlerBenz and Sony being the largest trans-nationals to move their European headquarters to the area. The dominant aesthetic of mute, westernised office architecture says much of the compromise made by a city senate eager to replace an urban heritage it perceived was lost and the visual qualities of a globalised city promoted by private investors.[23]

020

fig.

1.5 Replication The rebuilt 1924 traffic lights of Potzdamer Platz

To many the resulting topography revealed upon completion of Potsdamer Platz in 2000 was emblematic of a wider americanisation of the city that was taking place throughout the Post-Wende decade. If we are to consider the renewal of Berlin’s streets as an act of staging, then Postdamer Platz represents a performance of power through visual association with capitalist ideologies.[24] The reconstruction of a 1920s traffic light in Potzdamer Platz (the first of its kind to be employed on any urban street) poignantly exhibits the use of prop to adorn its corporate streets with historical mimicry [fig.1.5].[25] The crude manipulation of history further reveals the mis-én-scene nature of this stage set.

As Andreas Huyssen notes, the attacks on the history of the DDR represent ‘the politics of wilful forgetting’ motivated by ‘a strategy of power and humiliation, a final burst of cold war ideology’.[26] What is evident is that by opting for the normalising architectures of nostalgia or banal global

[23]__Colomb, C. (2012). Staging the New Berlin : place marketing and the politics of urban reinvention post-1989. New York: Routledge.

[24]__Zukin, S. (2000). Landscapes of power : from Detroit to Disney World. Berkeley, Calif.: University Of California Press.

[25]__ Taberner, S. and Cooke, P. (2006). German culture, politics, and literature into the twenty-first century : beyond normalization. Rochester, Ny: Camden House.

021

[01.NEW SYMBOLS]

fig.

1.6 Landscapes of Victory Checkpoint Charlie's Statue of Liberty

corporatism, the advocates of critical reconstruction reveal the importance they placed upon image and symbol in the new city. So far so, that some critics of the late-nineties began comparing the city to the Las Vegas strip on account of the often absurd embellishment of historical fabrication and self invention.[27] In general the symbols carried by the new streetscapes of the Post-Wende Berlin fabricated an urbanism to convey victory, in some cases more overtly than others. At Checkpoint Charlie, the border crossing that once saw Soviet and American tanks face one another down, there appeared some of the most crass examples of architectural symbolism. In 1996 - the last remaining East German watchtower became the host of a miniature, goldcoated styrofoam Statue of Liberty, installed by an American artist [fig.1.6][28]. Meanwhile, on this same stretch a giant cut-out billboard of the architect, Philip Johnson advertised the arrival of the new American Business Center in 1998, that was to be constructed over the remnants of the border crossing. What these urban spectacles reveal in no hidden terms is the, at times kitsch breed of Disneyfication employed on Berlin’s street to suppress the legacy of the Wall.

[26]__Huyssen, A., 1997. The Voids of Berlin. Critical Inquiry, 24(1), pp.57-81 [27]__Ward, J. (2006). Las Vegas on the Spree: the Americanisation of the New Berlin. In: Visual Culture in Twentieth-century Germany: Text as Spectacle. Indiana University Press.

[28]__ Kreuzberged: Berlin Companion. (2019). The Lady on the Wall: the Story of Berlin’s Statue of Liberty. [online] Available at: https://kreuzberged.com/2019/05/13/the-lady-on-the-wall-the-story-berlinsstatue-of-liberty/ [Accessed 19 Jul. 2020].

chapter two:

erasure.

023

[02.ERASURE]

fig.

2.1 'Ostalgie' Goodbye Lenin, 2003

“One may say that Berlin has always been a self-destructive place in which successive regimes have attempted to wipe out the built symbols of past regimes� - Claire Colomb

In Wolfgang Becker’s 2003 film, Goodbye Lenin the story is recounted of Alex, a young East Berliner striving to protect his frail mother from the news that the Wall had fallen whilst she had been in a coma for the entirety of the Wende. As the West rapidly creeps in over the East, we view Alex taking ever more drastic steps to recreate a fictitious version of the DDR to save his mother from knowing the true fate of the country she had adored. By doing so the film explores the rose-tinted nostalgia that many East Germans held onto for their lost socialist Heimat - homeland. As such we see Alex struggling to revive icons of Eastern culture against a tide of Western consumerism. When his mother at last ventures out onto the streets of a reunified Germany, she is met by an unfamiliar built environment dominated by the visual sensations of the new capitalist order. We watch as she takes in the sights of Wessis moving their exotic furniture into her apartment block whilst on the street, Trabant cars are being traded-in for their superior Western counterparts- all to the backdrop of a landscape of billboards promoting new brands and lifestyles. As the scene reaches its crescendo, the mother locks eyes with the statue of Lenin being removed from the city by helicopter [fig.2.1].[29] Although exaggerated for cinematic effect, the moment is telling of the level of cultural erasure that the East experienced through its physical environments, and the often traumatic personal loss this entailed for the Ossis. In a wider sense, the film can be identified as being emblematic of the wave of Ostalgie: nostalgia for the former

[29]__Goodbye Lenin!. (2003). Germany: X Verleih AG.

[DIVIDED_STREETS]

DDR that grew throughout the Post-Wende period.[30] The emergence of this phenomenon has been identified as reaction to the agressive manner in which critical reconstructionists, of a largely western dominated city administration embarked on removing all legacy of the symbols of the DDR.

024

Erasure of the East began the very night the Wall fell. Within hours of the opening of the border, the physical infrastructure of the divide had begun to be metabolised by Berliners from both sides. The Mauerspechte - ‘wallwoodpecker’ came to describe the legions of people who engaged in a frenzy of ritualistic chiselling at Wall's symbolic concrete for weeks following the event [fig.2.2]. As Ladd comments it was in this ‘carnival atmosphere that the concrete was divested of its murderous aura’[31]. As a final act of triumphalism, pieces of the wall became a highly sought after commodity amongst locals and tourists alike. Symbolistically portraying communism’s loss to western capitalism, the structure defining the twentieth century’s largest confrontation, turned ornament for the mantel-pieces of the West.

[Monuments]

fig 2.2 Mauersprechte 1990

In the sense that the Wall carries a weight of historic and symbolic meaning for the story of Berlin, it must be viewed as a monument albeit an unintentional one, that speaks of a period of violence, terror and division.

Understandably for most Berliners, the destruction of the Wall acted as a form of catharsis to the past forty years and its total eradication served as a means to heal their collective identity. Voices campaigning to memorialise sections of the wall often faced strong objections and by 1991 most of the physical

[30]__Taberner, S. and Cooke, P. (2006). German culture, politics, and literature into the twenty-first century : beyond normalization. Rochester, Ny: Camden House.

[31]__Ladd, B. (2018). The Ghosts of Berlin. University Of Chicago Press.

025

[02.ERASURE]

presence of the structure had been removed, dumped on the edge of the city and ground to rubble [32]. Ladd’s discourse on the nature of public memory in Berlin speaks of the highly politicised nature of the physical landscape, and how like many monuments in the city, the Wall acted as a source of contention amongst a public grappling to make sense of what to remember and what to forget [33]. In the years following reunification, like the Wall, monuments of the East became the target for eradication due to their lingering effect on the collective memory of the urban space that hosted their presence.

For the DDR, monuments played an enormous role in the functionings of daily urban life. Unlike the West, it was not constrained by an aversion to symbols of statehood and national pride owing to its asserted allegiance to the cause of anti-fascism. Whereas the Federal Republic definitively ceased the practice of monument construction after the terror of Nazi nationalism, the DDR followed Soviet Russia and Eastern Bloc states in its adorning of the built environment with sites of celebratory remembrance. Leading one observer to describe the condition as ‘West Germany was a land of victims,’ and ‘East Germany a land of Heroes’ [34]. East Berlin was therefore scattered with hundreds of memorials, plagues, statues and street names in commemoration to those individuals and events that embodied the aspired principles of socialism. Naturally the differences between East and Western attitudes to memorialisation proved to be a focus of post-unification disagreement and invoked mass public debate over their future.

One of the most contentious GDR monuments proved to be the twenty metre tall statue of Lenin in the square of Leninplatz [fig.2.3]. Having been designed by Soviet sculptors, employed the aesthetic of socialist realism on monumental proportions. The proposed removal of both these monuments came to be a source of extreme conflict along the former East-West lines and highlighted a faction of former Ossis who clung onto the monuments more for their symbolic representation of DDR history, as opposed to their personal admiration of the individuals. Consequentially the dismantling of the Lenin statue and renaming of the square to Platz der Vereinten Nationen- United Nations Square in 1991 invoked anger and protests at the site [fig.2.4]. The behaviour here embodied a mood shift as the initial euphoria of the Wende was beginning to be replaced by feelings of loss amongst those from the former East. This backlash against eradication led the critical reconstructionist city government to adopt a more sensitive review of the handling of DDR monuments, as shown by the eventual sparing of many of the relics marked for removal.

[32]__Leander Brotz, C. (2011). Icons of the East: Urban Planning in Post Wende Berlin.

[33][34]__Ladd, B. (2018). The Ghosts of Berlin. University Of Chicago Press.

[DIVIDED_STREETS]

026 fig.

2.3 [left] Leninplatz aka: Platz de der Vereinten Nationen

fig.

2.4 [right] Leninplatz Protest - 1991 Translation: " You FRG occupiers!

Do you not fear a Lenin made of stone?"

[Street Names]

As the debate over the urban legacy of the DDR moved to the fate of street names it became clear that former Ossis were split between those in favour of assimilation with the West and those who wanted to keep the memory of the DDR alive. The naming of streets, as in most global metropolises was for Berlin a highly politicised act that has served to bolster urban identity throughout the city’s metamorphoses [35]. During the most turbulent periods of the twentieth century, Berlin’s street names have been intrinsically tied to the political hegemonies of their conceivers- owing to their innate ability to demonstrate political influence upon the lived experience of the individual. Re-naming streets has thus typified the key exchanges of power in 20th century German History, being a quick and easy method to exert one’s claim to the built environment. Arguably the most co-ordinated effort to revise street names took place during the twelve years of National Socialist rule. Here an aggressive Arisierung - aryanyzing of urban space was employed through the adoption of names commemorating prominent Nazis (notable examples being the Adolf-Hitler Platz, Herman Göring-Strasse) and the removal of names associated with democratic political traditions or disapproved cultures[36].

Following the defeat of the Third Reich, administrations of the East and West set about purging these reminders of fascism from the streets by embarking on a strategy of mass re-naming [fig.2.5]. For the FRG these efforts were focused on restoring the pre-1933 street names and, for new housing

[35]__Verheyen, D. (1997). What’s in a Name? Street Name Politics and Urban Identity in Berlin. No.3 ed.

German Politics & Society, pp.44–72.

[36]__Azaryahu, M. (1997). German reunification and the politics of street names: the case of East Berlin. Political Geography, 16(6), pp.479–493.36(3–4), pp.383–404.

027

[02.ERASURE]

developments, inventing names perceived to be innocent and apolitical. The DDR meanwhile saw an opportunity to use the purging of Nazi street legacies as a means to strongly affirm the identity of the socialist state. The replacement names, and in a wider sense the renaming of schools, hospitals and even entire towns, honoured a variety of figures including anti-fascist martyrs, revolutionaries, third-world Marxists and leaders of the DDR and USSR. Thus when the Wall fell, there began the next wave of revisions to the city as hundreds of streets and plazas were ridded of their communist associations.

fig.

2.5 The Politics of Street Naming Berliner Alle 1991 name change

The debates surrounding these actions, like those of the disregarded monuments of the DDR were emblematic of the divisive political landscape existent during the Post Wende period. Supporters of the re-naming campaign spoke of a desire to forget the painful memories of an oppressive regime brought into continuous consciousness by the likes of Leninalle and Stalinalle.

For many Ossis however the renaming of their streets stood as a needless example of an administration that was seeking to deny them of their own identity and collective memory in the pursuit of symbolic acts of triumph over the East [37]. Moreover many of the pre-war names that were being reinstated had equally problematic connotations with the militaristic imperialism of the Prussian era monarchy, as well as territories formerly occupied by the German Empire. Therefore the re-naming of streets brought about similar questions to that of the critical reconstruction of the city centre, namely what history was deemed to be acceptable and who was to make this decision?

As it became clear that the city administration’s answer to the question of

[37]__Ladd, B. (2018). The Ghosts of Berlin. University Of Chicago Press.

Taberner, S. and Finlay, F. (2002). Recasting German identity : culture, politics, and literature in the Berlin Republic. Rochester, Ny: Camden House.

[DIVIDED_STREETS]

public memory omitted any mention of the DDR, there began a backlash from former Ossis. The term Trotzidentität - came to describe a defiant identity of former East Berliners unnerved by the widespread attempts to cleanse the city streets of their collective identity[38]. Protests, petitions and mass complaints thus came to be the defining feature of convulsions over the city streets in the early nineties. Ultimately the Trotzidentität sentiments would be channeled into the rise of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) which served as the successor to the DDR’s dominant party, the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands). The gains made by the PDS in the 1994 city elections were due on a large part to the party appealing to the sensation of loss and disillusionment that those on the East were experiencing as the built environment was changed beyond recognition.

Through its local election success, the PDS managed to hinder many of the planned removals of DDR monuments thus marking a turning point in the backlash against the paradigm of critical reconstruction. However the perceived capitalist ‘colonisation’ of the East continued nonetheless to claim high profile monuments. Most notably the parliament of the DDR: the ’Plast Der Republik’ was demolished in 2008 to much furore [fig.2.3], to allow the reconstruction of the baroque-era Berliner Stadtschloss, which had once stood on this site before its ideological demolishement by the SED in 1950. This architectural tit-for-tat and the wider disputes over the future of street names and monuments in Berlin expose the interaction between politics and history.

The erasure and replication pursued by certain urban actors after the Wende iterates the artificiality of collective consciousness as physical elements of the city were handpicked according to their value to a new German identity[39].

[38]__Taberner, S. and Finlay, F. (2002). Recasting German identity : culture, politics, and literature in the Berlin Republic. Rochester, Ny: Camden House.

[39]__ Kipphoff, K. (2007). Self and the City: The Politics of Monuments. Social Analysis, 51 [40]__ Nora, P. and Jordan, D.P. (2006). Rethinking France = Les lieux de mémoire / Vol. 2, Space. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.

028

029

fig.

2.5 Plast der Republik Facade missing emblems of the DDR

fig.

2.6 "The DDR never existed" Graffiti on the demolished remnants of the Past der Republik - 2008

[02.ERASURE]

chapter three:

autonomy.

031

[03.AUTONOMY]

fig.

3.1 The Love Parade 1989-2003

While the city fathers of the Post-Wende period busied themselves with the curation of Berlin’s image as a burgeoning European hub, simultaneously there existed a thriving scene of autonomous sub-cultures that arguably exerted equal effect onto the place identity of the city. Perhaps arrogantly, the notion carried by members of the city’s administration was that architecture and urban design had total power to perform a therapeutic role in reviving the city’s image. In general, discussions surrounding the Post-Wende redevelopment of Berlin dwell largely on the actions of state and private interests whilst neglecting the role of those outside the halls of governance. Throughout the turbulence of the Wende and the following decade of reunification, it is evident that the general public played an intrinsic role in the definition of the new society and its collective identity, at home and abroad.

The Mauerfall, by nature was an act of public participation after the events were set in motion by citizens taking to the streets en masse and subsequently removing the wall by the individual chiselling of the Mauersprechte. As Ulrike Zitzlsperger suggests, the sensation of participating with history and the ‘feeling of having played a part in events’ is a defining feature of the memories of reunification, that in a wider sense go beyond political convulsions to describe the experience on an individual level [41]. This chapter charts, autonomous, grassroots movements equally sought to claim urban space in the reunified city; who by doing so, would in turn attract the attention of authorities seeking to manage and profit from their activities.

[41]__Zitzlsperger, U. (2002). Filling the Blanks: Berlin as Public Showcase. In: Recasting German Identity: Culture, Politics, and Literature in the Berlin. Camden House.

[DIVIDED_STREETS]

In the idealogical vacuum of the 1990 reunification, Berlin’s multitude of voids and transitory spaces represented a playground of opportunity for those attempting to piece together alternative urban realities. The city had long been known internationally for its music and arts scene, which owed much of its strength to the specificities of geography. As an island, the West had developed a distinct peripheral place identity permissive to liberal expression and particularly a highly innovative and avant-garde electronic music scene that would form the foundations for German Techno. The Wende would ultimately alter the city’s cultural landscape beyond recognition as what had previously been a largely Western phenomenon swept through the reunified capital capturing the spirit of a hedonistic youth in revolt. The new freedoms being experienced by the Wende generation were aided in a large part by the the peculiarities of Berlin’s urban landscape. As the DDR unravelled so too did the entirety of its state owned industries, leaving in its wake, mass unemployment in the East and a rapidly de-industrialising inner city. The landscape of vacant buildings produced by this turmoil drew the migration of young and creative individuals to the East, looking to form autonomous cultural and living spaces free from the reach of state control [42]. Accordingly whilst the city experienced its building boom, so too it underwent an explosion of club culture and squatting that was intrinsically tied to the spatial reverberations of the fall of the Wall. As those in control of the city’s marketing campaigns sought to tightly curate a normalising image of global prosperity, subculture movements were organising themselves in their fight to claim spaces of free expression and hedonism that would eventually come to dominate the image of the reunified capital.

The successes of the city’s subcultures were thus bound to holding a presence in urban space as a means to claim a ‘right to the city’. 1989 to 1990 marked one of the last major waves of squatting in Berlin as hundreds of vacant buildings in the East were occupied by dissenting groups. The was seen as an inherently political act that challenged the hegemonic forces of critical reconstruction that were privatising the properties of the former East. Municipal authorities often took a combative approach in response [fig.3.2], opting for eviction by force or the negotiated settlement of its residents that typically led to properties being subsumed into a neighbourhood’s wider gentrification. In turn however, as many commentators have argued, squats came to be used for gain by the city’s numerous marketing campaigns of the late 1990s that had begun to acknowledge the city’s ‘poor but sexy’ spirit and wider creative scene[43]. Thus the transgressive act of occupation was largely reduced to a branding asset of the wider market orientated redevelopments in the city

[42]__Bader I. and Scharenberg, A. (2010). The Sound of Berlin: Subculture and the Global Music Industry. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 34(1), pp.76–91.

[43]__ Vasudevan, A. (2017). The autonomous city : a history of urban squatting. London ; New York: Verso.

032

033

[03.AUTONOMY]

fig.

3.2 Mainzer Strasse, 1990 Police remove squatters from occupied buildings.

As the Post-Wende decade would show, this was to be a fate suffered by numerous other urban movements, most notably: the Love Parade, a techno music event that attracted millions of revellers at its peak. Arguably the most visible sub-cultural presence within urban space during the 1990s and 00s, the Love Parade had its origins in political protest yet over the years morphed into a commercialised mass festival that ultimately was used to promote the image of the ‘New Berlin’ as a ‘party capital’ [44]. The parade first spilled out of the underground techno scene and onto the city’s streets in 1989 when a group of around 150 politically motivated participants sought to use hedonism as a means of uniting the city. The medium of parade allowed the group to produce a transient public party space whilst parodying traditional militaristic notions of parading that had dominated the city’s streets for so much its history. For the first several years this chosen backdrop was the grandeur of West Berlin’s Kufurstendamm, however as techno became ever more tied to a reunified Germany, the Love Parade outgrew this setting and moved to arguably the most contested geography in all of Germany, the Straße des 17. Juni [45].

The history of this one street perhaps speaks of the changing faces of the German psyche like no other. By origin, it had been conceived as the site for Prussian military parading and subsequently been widened by the Nazis to improve its visual impact and capacity for hosting state pageantry. As division followed defeat in WWII, the street came to be a symbolic axis of a divided Europe with even its renaming being a marker of the contestation. The current

[44]__Perry, J. (2019). Love Parade 1996: Techno Playworlds and the Neoliberalization of Post-Wall Berlin. German Studies Review, 42(3), pp.561–579.

[45]__Nye, S. (n.d.). Love Parade, Please Note Again: a Berlin Cultural History. [online] Echo: a Music Centred Journal. Available at: http://www.echo.ucla.edu/article-love-parade-please-note-again-a-berlincultural-history-by-sean-nye/ [Accessed 15 Jul. 2020].

[DIVIDED_STREETS]

name, literally translating as the ‘the Street of the 17th June’ was motivated by a Western desire to memorialise the East German victims of an attempted uprising against communist rule on this date in 1953. Thus the selection of this highly politicised landscape for the new location of the Love Parade in 1997 marked a turning point as the event’s drug-charged pleasure-seeking was forced to confront the past violence and volatility of Berlin’s streetscapes.

By this point the event consisted of 39 moving techno-sound systems and around a million participants engaging in a mass euphoric experience. As has been argued, organisers utilised the pseudo-political underpinnings of the parade as a counter to the symbols of a problematic statehood present on this location [46]. As Elizabeth Bridges describes in her analysis of the mass event, the Love Parade’s slogans such as: ‘Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen - Peace, Fun and Pancakes’, 'We are One Family’, and ’The Future is Ours’, espoused an amorphous politics of non-affiliation through its vague statements of change made possible by a transcendent, global rave culture [47].

034

fig.

3.3 [left] Strasse des 17. Juni 1996 - Love Parade

fig 3.4 [right] Commercialisation Parade Advertising - 1999

Despite the questionable politics of the event, the Love Parade maintained an official status as a political demonstration until 2001, largely in a bid by its organisers to avoid the costs of the clear-up and policing that this status exempted it from.[48] A political demonstration by definition speaks of an oppositional gathering acting within the law, yet as mentioned, the Love Parade purposely had little in the way of a clear political message or affiliation. Even more paradoxically, as the event grew bigger it became a magnet for advertising and commercial interests which countered the

[46]__Terkessidis, M. (1998). Life after history. How pop and politics are changing places in the Berlin Republic. Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 6(2), pp.173–190.

[47]__ Bridges, E. (2005). Love Parade GmbH vs. Ladyfest: Electronic Music as a Mode of Feminist Expression in Contemporary German Culture. Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature & Culture, 21(1), pp.215–240.

035

[03.AUTONOMY]

underground and anti-authoritarian nature of its origins. The irony of a highly commercialised, apolitical mass event being endorsed by the city municipality as a form of political demonstration describes ‘the festivalisation of politics’ undertaken during this time in the pursuit of the image of the ‘new city’ [49].

In this way, city authorities were willing to overlook the considerable costs that were forced onto them by the parade’s protest status in order to nurture the image of a liberal and youth-orientated city, projected to a global audience by the event. The Love Parade and wider use of the megaevent in Post-Wende Berlin are indicative of the economy of symbols that had come to dominate the redevelopment of the city. Symbols, meaning and cultural attributes could be quickly placed onto urban sites in the city through the medium of festival, the aim being the formation of experiencedriven place identity paired with the attraction of global attention. However what the Love Parade shows within its partnership between city boosters and global brands is the risk of homogeneity such symbols could produce.

In its final years, the parade bore no resemblance to the grassroots partyprotest of 1989, instead appearing as the manifestation of the total branding of public space as advertisers and organisers alike attempted to use the once subversive event for profit [fig.3.4]. In a fitting way, the fate of the Love Parade speaks to the victory of neo-liberal forces in controlling the city streets.

[49]__ Bridges, E. (2005). Love Parade GmbH vs. Ladyfest: Electronic Music as a Mode of Feminist Expression in Contemporary German Culture. Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature & Culture, 21(1), pp.215–240.

conclusion:

legacy.

037

[04.LEGACY]

fig.

4.1 Reichstag Wrap 1995

“It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen: 100 rock climbers abseiling down the facade of the Reichstag, slowly unfurling this huge silvery curtain. There were no cranes or machinery, just people descending in a kind of aerial ballet.” - Christo [50]

The words of the artist, Christo discussing the 1995 Reichstag Wrap [fig.4.1], which involved the complete covering of the dormant German parliament, iterates the uniquely performative value the art piece held. This act, like so many other experiments on public space conducted in Post-Wende Berlin sought to perform a ritualistic healing onto the city’s scars. As this thesis has described, doing so would represent a conciliatory performance of the aspired identity of the reunified nation. Burned by the fascist city and left neglected by a divided nation, the Reichstag stands an architectural manifestation of German trauma. Its wrapping arguably set forth a purification process for both the bricks and mortar as well as the hearts and minds of a nation coming to terms with its unification. For two weeks, two million visitors poured to the site, to touch, to caress and to witness and celebrate this anomalous event. As a consequence of four decades under partition, it is said that Berliners had a troubled relationship with public space and mass society. The Post-Wende years saw the unprecedented use of event to encourage new ways of being as well as promoting a new found optimism for the reconstruction of the city’s architectural voids. This period gives a unique case study of a city undergoing dramatic physical and cultural upheaval and the mediums in which identity can be performed through urbanism.

[50]__Wainwright, O. (2017). How we made the Wrapped Reichstag. The Guardian. [online] 7 Feb. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/feb/07/how-we-made-the-wrapped-reichstag-berlinchristo-and-jeanne-claude-interview.

[DIVIDED_STREETS]

The city streets played an intrinsic role in this performance. Mauerfall was a uniquely architectural piece of theatre of which Berliners, from East and West participated in with the common aim of claiming their city back from the contestation of superpowers. Reconstruction of the city, meanwhile was enacted by a different set of actors with competing interests seeking to use built form to express aspirations of capital, commerce and statehood.

As the building boom swept through Berlin in the early-nineties, so too did conflicts over the identity of the ‘new’ city. The moments discussed within this thesis shed light onto the battles staged upon the city’s streets in the pursuit of a normalised built environment. To understand the legacy of this period, one must only look to the streets of central Berlin today to view the impact held by the critical reconstructionists of this époque. The once contested decisions of historical manipulation are now naturalised elements of the urban landscape, thereby speaking of the myth of collective identity.

When histories can be staged and memory constructed, the politics of the built environment comes into focus. The purposeful attacks on the built legacy of the DDR reveal the central role played by architecture in public memory. As street names were erased, monuments demolished and new quarters drawn up to the plans of an idealised past, we can see in plain sight the distorted nature of Berlin’s physical remembrance. What occurred during this period was nothing new for a city which had been successively made and re-made according to the tenets of each age. The mantra of critical reconstruction would justify its actions with the right to forget. And indeed whilst erasure and historical production succeeded in releasing the city from some its twentieth century wounds, those in favour of historical accuracy found themselves clinging to ever smaller monuments of the divided city. The strength of emotion tied to this argument has continued visibly into the twenty-first century as portrayed by the fierce protests against the removal of one of the last remaining sections of the Wall at the East Side Gallery in 2013. Chanting, 'Die Mauer soll bleiben' - the wall must stay, protesters unsuccessfully campaigned to stop portions of the fixture being removed to make way for luxury housing.

Ultimately these decisions and those conducted during the building frenzy in the years following the Mauerfall act as a reflection of power structures in German society. Who decides what is remembered and what is forgotten? Who gains the right to influence the place identity of an urban area?

These questions ran throughout the debates of Post-Wende Berlin yet hold value for all cities to this day. The struggles to hold onto dying identities or to assert triumphant ones onto the urban fabric provides a telling case study for any democratically formed urban environment. In this case, dominant forces placed symbols onto the landscape of a city with abandon as they strived to construct meaning and image in an ideological vacuum. These symbols largely pertained to the state and market dominance of reconstruction yet it would be inaccurate to portray the actions of these groups as having had the last word on the formation of Berlin’s urban identity. Looking to the contemporary city, the urban topography remains far from entirely normalised and the city’s

038

039

fig.

4.2 East Side Gallery Protest 2013

[04.LEGACY]

identity conceivably owes much more to its underground scenes than to the actions of neo-liberal interests. The battles that continue to be waged in the city against the ever growing threat of gentrification and mass tourism evoke the struggles of the Post-Wall city. These are contestations that should resonate with all of us. The city streets remain one of the most visible platforms for the performance of identities and politics. What holds true from the streets of Post-Wende Berlin is the inate communicative power of urban space to reveal a society's inner most divisions. Through assertations of power or cries of dissent the street is a voice for all who claim the right to use it.

bibliography:

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041

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[List of Illustrations] [Fig 0.0.] Source: Whalley, Z. (n.d.). Where Have Russia’s Lenin Statues Gone? [online] Culture Trip.

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[Fig 0.2] Source: Original [Fig 0.3] Source: andreasghb (2019). [online] Flickr. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ andreasg-hb/ [Fig 0.4] Source: andreasghb (2019). [online] Flickr. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ andreasg-hb/ [Fig 0.5] Source: andreasghb (2019). [online] Flickr. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ andreasg-hb/ [Fig 1.1] Source: Reichsfoto (2020). The Victory Torchlight Parade Through the Brandenburg Gate on 30.01.1933. [online] Reichsfoto. Available at: https://reichsfoto.wordpress.com/ [Fig 1.2] Source: andreasghb (2019). [online] Flickr. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ andreasg-hb/ [Accessed 21 Jul. 2020]. ‌ [Fig 1.3] Source: PANORAMASTREETLINE. (2016). Friedrichstrasse | Friedrichstadt Passagen. [online] Available at: https://panoramastreetline.com/friedrichstrasse [Fig 1.4] Source: andreasghb (2019). [online] Flickr. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ andreasg-hb/ [Accessed 21 Jul. 2020].

[Fig 1.5] Source: Visitberlin.de. (2020). Potsdamer Platz. [online] Available at: https://www. visitberlin.de/en/potsdamer-platz.

[Fig 1.6] Source: The Lady on the Wall: the Story of Berlin’s Statue of Liberty. [online] Available at: https://kreuzberged.com/2019/05/13/the-lady-on-the-wall-the-story-berlins-statue-of-liberty/ [Fig 2.1] Source: Goodbye Lenin!. (2003). Germany: X Verleih AG. [Fig 2.2] Source: andreasghb (2019). [online] Flickr. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ andreasg-hb/ [Accessed 21 Jul. 2020]. ‌ [Fig 2.3] Source: Whalley, Z. (n.d.). Where Have Russia’s Lenin Statues Gone? [online] Culture Trip.

Available at: https://theculturetrip.com/europe/russia/articles/where-have-russias-lenin-statuesgone [Fig 2.4] Source: idib.

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