Berlin - The Symphony Continues: Orchestrating Architectural, Social, and Artistic Change in Germany’s New Capital [Reprint 2013 ed.] 9783110906806, 9783110177237

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Berlin. The Symphony Continues

W DE G

Berlin The Symphony Continues Orchestrating Architectural, Social, and Artistic Change in Germany's New Capital Edited by Carol Anne Costabile-Heming Rachel J. Halverson Kristie A. Foell

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

® Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

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Berlin : the symphony continues : orchestrating architectural, social, and artistic change in Germany's new capital / edited by Carol Anne Costabile-Heming, Rachel J. Halverson, Kristie A. Foell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-017723-4 (alk. paper) 1. Arts and society - Germany - Berlin - History - 20th century. 2. Arts - Political aspects - Germany - Berlin. 3. Germany - Capital and capítol. 4. Berlin (Germany) - Intellectual life. I. Costabile-Heming, Carol Anne. II. Halverson, Rachel J., 1961 III. Foell, Kristie Α., 1962NX180.S6B4736 2004 943'.155088-dc22 2004002897

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at .

ISBN 3-11-017723-4

© Copyright 2004 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Cover Design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin

Table of Contents Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction CAROL ANNE COSTABILE-HEMING AND RACHEL J. HALVERSON

Berlin's Symphony Continues: Architectural, Social and Artistic Change 3

Physical Space GARY L . CATCHEN

Gedächtnis and Zukunft, Remembrance and the Future: A PhotoEssay 13 BARBARA MENNEL

Shifting Margins and Contested Centers: Changing Cinematic Visions of (West) Berlin 41 ERIC JAROSINSKI

Building on a Metaphor: Democracy, Transparency and the Berlin Reichstag

59

SIMON WARD

"Neues, altes Tor zur Welt": The New Central Station in the "New" Berlin

77

MICK KENNEDY AND KAREIN GOERTZ

Tracking Berlin: Along S-Bahn Linie 5

93

vi

Contents

Experiential Space EVELYN PREUSS

The Collapse of Time: German History and Identity in Hubertus Siegert's Berlin Babylon (2001) and Thomas Schadt's Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt (2002) 119 ELIZABETH JANIK

The Symphony of a Capital City: Controversies of Reunification in the Berlin Music Community 143 JENS SCHNEIDER

Mutual Othering: East and West Berliners Happily Divided? .165 MARGIT M . SINKA

Heinz Bude's Defining Construct for the Berlin Republic: The Generation Berlin 187 RACHEL J. HALVERSON

Living Berlin: Autobiography and the City

205

Representation STEPHEN BROCKMANN

Divided and Reunited Berlin in Peter Schneider's Fiction . . . .223 CAROL ANNE COSTABILE-HEMING Berlin Snapshots: Images of the City in Short Fiction

245

MILA GANEVA

No History, Just Stories: Revisiting Tradition in Berlin Films of the 1990s 261 KRISTIE A . FOELL

Growing Together, Growing Apart: Berlin Love Stories as Allegories of German Unification

279

Contente

vii

SuNKA SIMON

Weimar Project(ions) in Post-Unifìcation Cinema

301

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

321

INDEX

325

Acknowledgements Our collaborative work began in 1997 and with each project our now longstanding personal and professional relationships have evolved further. As Germaniste interested primarily in the literature and culture of divided and once again united Germany, it is only logical that we turn our attention to the city of Berlin, which has undergone fascinating changes in the years since unification. Like our previous anthology, this has been a collaborative project from the very beginning, as each editor (when time permitted) took over portions of the work. In general, we editors are grateful to all of the contributors for their cooperation and ability to comply with deadlines, and to the Walter de Gruyter Verlag, especially Heiko Hartmann, Susanne Rade and Katja Hermann, with whom we worked closely on this project. Specifically, we appreciate the support we received from our institutions, colleagues, friends, and family members, who have stood by us during this entire process. Carol Anne thanks the Department of Modem and Classical Languages and the College of Arts and Letters at Southwest Missouri State University in particular for technological support. She is grateful to Katja Hermann at Walter de Gruyter Verlag for her assistance in preparing the final manuscript copy. Additionally, she wishes to thank her colleague James Parsons for his insightful reading of portions of the manuscript, as well as for his collégial respect and support. Her husband, Ralf Heming, tolerated yet another project and demonstrated steadfast support throughout its duration. During the final stages of manuscript preparation, her mother, Anne Costabile, passed away. She dedicates this project to her memory. Rachel acknowledges the Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures and the Honors College at Washington State University, intellectual havens where she has found an environment of active intellectual exchange so important not only to her scholarship but to her sanity. Her partner, Cecil Williams, who is able to solve every computer problem, which threatens to halt her progress, once again displayed great tolerance for yet another academic project. Kristie is grateful to her colleagues at Bowling Green State University and its year abroad program in Salzburg, which has afforded her the opportunity to keep in touch with current developments in the German-speaking world. She also wishes to thank Barton Byg and the DEFA film archive at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst for a valuable summer seminar on East German film that gave her new insight into representations of East Germany. Finally,

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Acknowledgements

she thanks her "Mitleser," the graduate students who have read and reflected on contemporary German literature with her over the past several years, in particular Andrea Antal, Réka Barabás, Peter Clayson, Alina Mahu, Ana Maritoi, Bruce Paulin, Anna Rulska, and Amy Tatem-Dougherty; without them, she would not have read nearly as much or questioned as deeply. Springfield, Missouri December 2003

Pullman, Washington

Bowling Green, Ohio

Introduction

C A R O L A N N E COSTABILE-ΗΕΜΓΝΟ AND R A C H E L J . HALVERSON

Berlin's Symphony Continues: Architectural, Social and Artistic Change The fall of the Berlin Wall is one of the defining images of the late twentieth century. The subsequent unification of Germany and the decision to return Berlin to its status as capital has made the constant changes within the city a matter of even greater public interest. It also has afforded Berlin the opportunity to create a new image for itself, one that can serve as a counterbalance to the city's politically charged recent history as the capital of Nazi Germany and former East Berlin as the capital of the German Democratic Republic. Poised between capitalist Western Europe and the former communist powers in Eastern Europe, Berlin occupies a fascinating geopolitical space. As Karl Scheffler wrote as early as 1910, Berlin is a city destined "immerfort zu werden and niemals zu sein" (267).1 Even now at the outset of the 21sC century, Berlin is in a state of relentless transformation, still portrayed in the media not as a city that is, but as city that is always "becoming." Many changes, above all architectural ones, are obvious; others are occurring much more subtly, as the population shifts to occupy areas of the city that long lay fallow. In incorporating these changes, the city thus seeks to redefine itself, and in so doing, also attempts to shake off some of the historical burdens that befell it during the 20th century. For observers of these changes, the city evokes the feel of an unfinished site; new political directions and city planners continue the tasks that previous ones have left unfinished. As our book's title suggests, our reference points derive from the images of Walter Ruttmann's 1927 film, Berlin. Die Sinfonie einer Großstadt (Berlin. Symphony of a Great City). The release of that film earned Ruttmann immediate fame, thrusting him into the limelight and making him one of the most important avant-garde filmmakers of the 1920s. The film itself is symbolic for Berlin as it is remembered from the Weimar period, a robust and dynamic city, full of speed. When viewed today, the film also calls to mind the historical period before the turmoil and strife that characterized Berlin for most of the 20th century. Seventy-five years after the debut of

1

"forever to become and never to be." Unless otherwise noted, the authors have done all translations.

4

Introduction

Ruttmann's film, the metaphor of the symphony remains contemporary: on 10 April 2002 the documentary filmmaker Thomas Schadt's homage to Ruttmann, Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt (Berlin. Symphony of a City) premiered at the Berliner Staatsoper, with live symphonic accompaniment.2 Our anthology builds on the idea of a city symphony that these two filmmakers espouse, and thus seeks to analyze the myriad changes in the city as part of an unfinished composition. As the capital of newly united Germany, Berlin has been granted the unique opportunity to re-create itself: it yearns to become a multi-national metropolis, a Weltstadt ("world city"), with an image and stature equivalent to that of other European capitals such as Paris and London. Still the scars of the past lie just under the city's new glossy surface and continue to color its realization of a new identity. This volume is the first in any language to examine and analyze the myriad changes in the city of Berlin since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The media, particularly news magazines such as Der Spiegel, eagerly have documented the changes in Berlin and followed every controversy. Recently, documentary films have tackled changing Berlin. The city also has garnered considerable attention from historians and writers in the last five years. It is our hope that this collection of essays will be read alongside such texts as Brian Ladd's The Ghosts of Berlin (1997), Giles MacDonogh's Berlin (1997), Alexandra Ritchie's Faust's Metropolis (1998), Michael Wise's Capital Dilemma (1998), David Clay Large's Berlin (2000), and Elizabeth A. Strom's Building the New Berlin (2001). Bringing together scholars from the United States, Brazil, Germany and Australia, who represent German studies in general with their individual disciplinary interests in literary and film studies, urban planning, art history, architecture, music, history and anthropology, this anthology seeks to present readers interested in recent German history and culture a unique glimpse into the various constituencies that make up Berlin and that impact the city's challenges and promises. Physical space, its representation and the way we experience it form the backbone of all the essays in this volume. The first section, physical space, presents five essays that focus not only on the outward changes occurring in Berlin, but also on the history, mentality, and philosophy behind them. In his photo-essay, "Gedächtnis and Zukunft: Remembrance and the Future," Gary Catchen demonstrates how Berlin's future is dependant on remembering its past. Catchen views Berlin's current architectural renewal as symbolic of the continuous connection between Berlin's history, its present, and its future. The photographs provide a pictorial tour of important Berlin sites: traditional tourist destinations (.Reichstagsgebäude, Gedächntiskirche); contrasts between the Topography of Terror exhibit and the Jewish Museum; the Cultural Forum in West Berlin 2

In choosing to title his film "Symphony of a City," Schadt implies a more general approach, making Berlin symbolic of major metropolises rather than being the symbol par excellance.

Costabile-Heming and Halverson

5

{Neue Nationalgalerief and the traditional, historic city center (Lustgarten), sites of intense debate {Neue Wache, Schloßplatz) and industry (AEG buildings). Barbara Mennel's essay, "Shifting Margins and Contested Centers: Changing Cinematic Visions of (West) Berlin," examines a topographic shift in cinematic portrayals of Berlin. She addresses a geographic axis of center {Potsdamer Platz) and margin {Kreuzberg) to highlight spatial relationships. Pre-1989 films such as Heike Sanders' Redupers (1977) and Wim Wenders' Himmel über Berlin {Wings of Desire, 1987) are representative of films, Mennel argues, that employed (West) Berlin topography to underscore the decenteredness or marginality of West German identity in the post war era. Post-1989 cinema shifts its focus to the construction on Potsdamer Platz, where a paradigm shift occurs: the earlier margin now serves as center in two films by minority directors, Hito Steyerl's Die leere Mitte {The Empty Center, 1998) and Hussi Kutlucan's Ich Chef, Du Turnschuh {Me Boss, You Sneakers, 1998). Die leere Mitte focuses on the question of public space and who may access it. Mennel shows that this film beseeches the audience to understand and to question the continuities and discontinuities of violence and power as they relate to the marginalization of groups. Ich Chef, du Turnschuh is an immigration comedy that focuses on the situation of migrant workers and asylum seekers. Both films thus seek to insert a minority perspective (typically a voice from the margin) into the transnational center that Potsdamer Platz has become. In "Building on a Metaphor: Democracy, Transparency and the Berlin Reichstag," Eric Jarosinski scrutinizes the concept of Transparenz ("transparency"). The current architectural trend toward glass façades draws on a tradition begun in government buildings in Bonn. The transparency of the glass is intended to symbolize an openness that the democracy of the Berlih Republic promises. Drawing on the theoretical writings of Walter Benjamin {Einbahnstraße) and Theodor Adorno {Minima Moralia), Jarosinski applies their cultural criticisms to the metaphorical transparency occurring in Berlin. He warns, that despite the lofty ambitions of political policymakers, transferring an aesthetic concept like that of transparency onto Germany's political agenda may serve to work against the democratic ideals it seeks to evoke. In contrast to Jarosinski's focus on the Reichstag cupola as a metaphor for openness and democracy, Simon Ward turns to the site of Berlin's new central railroad station for his analysis of how rail travel impacts physical space. In '"Neues, altes Tor zur Welt': The New Central Station in the New Berlin," he 3

The entire complex of the Cultural Forum includes three museums: Neue Nationalgalerie, Gemäldegalerie, and the Kunstgewerbemuseum. Also part of the Cultural Forum are the philharmonic, the Staatsbibliothek, and the Staatliche Institutfîir Musikforschimg which also contains the Musikinstrumentenmuseum. In the photograph in the chapter in question, however, only the Neue Nationalgalerie is pictured.

6

Introduction

outlines the fundamental importance of the railroad station for late 19th and early 20th century Germany, and thus sees a continuity between this earlier era and the plans for rail travel in unified Germany. The new central station, which occupies the site of the former Lehrter Bahnhof has been designed by Meinhard von Gerkan as a space for lived experience. The railroad station is intended to reflect cultural change and following Jarosinski's line of analysis, the emphasis on transparency in the 21st century shifts to consumption, rather than openness. Rail travel also is the focus of Karein Goertz and Mick Kennedy's contribution. Whereas Ward analyzes the new train station and its potential as a site not only for connecting Berlin to other cities but also as a site for consumerism, Goertz and Kennedy trace history and traditions via the Berlin S-Bahn. According to their essay, "Tracking Berlin: Along S-Bahn Linie 5," this particular city rail line provides a unique perspective from which to view the city due to its encircling route. The circularity overrides the traditional geopolitical distinctions of East and West that have become so ubiquitous in discussions of Berlin. Though the S-Bahn is a public entity, travel along the rail line affords, as Goertz and Kennedy argue, a glimpse into private spaces and unofficial (non-tourist, non-promotional) views. They propose that chronotopography, the layering of literal and spatial descriptions of the physical urban space, makes it possible to experience S-Bahn travel. They offer a new type of methodology for mapping the city that draws not only on physical markers, but also on sensory and cognitive inputs. In the second group of essays, all of the authors examine the way the city can be experienced, in film and literature, in controversies surrounding music, in the constant naming and re-naming, and in the perceptions of former East and former West Berliners. Evelyn Preuss analyzes two films that she characterizes as city symphonies. In her "The Collapse of Time: German History and Identity in Hubertus Siegert's Berlin Babylon (2001) and Thomas Schadt's Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt (2002)," Preuss proposes that the pre-occupation with 1920s Berlin projected in these films grows out of a desire to return to an era free of historical guilt. Though both films focus on 21s' century Berlin, Preuss's analysis demonstrates that the preoccupation of both directors with Weimar images prohibits their engagement with Germany's difficult history in the ensuing years. The conflation of past and present ignores historical accuracy, resulting, in Preuss' view, in time collapsing. It is the 40-year division and resultant creation of divergent intellectual communities that is the focus of Elizabeth Janik's essay, "The Symphony of a Capital City: Controversies of Reunification in the Berlin Music Community." She traces the history of various cultural controversies in Berlin since unification, focusing in particular on the debate surrounding the merger of the two Akademien der Künste (Academies of Arts) and the continued support for Berlin's three public opera houses. Considerable protest accompanied the efforts to merge the two Akademien der Künste, for members of the East

Costabile-Heming and Halverson

7

German academy had to pass a selection process and receive state and party approval. Ultimately, the discussions focused on the relationship between art and the State. Public support for cultural institutions forms the backbone of the debate surrounding the potential merger of Berlin's opera houses or the eventual closing of at least one. In this instance, cultural finances take a backseat to the attempt to define German music and its appropriate representation. Despite all overt attempts to unify the cultural and intellectual communities in Berlin, the centuries-old debates about appropriateness still remain. Through a series of interviews with East and West Berliners, Jens Schneider seeks to analyze how they perceive themselves and each other. His essay, "Mutual Othering: East and West Berliners Happily Divided?" addresses the questions of identity and perception: how do East and West Berliners perceive themselves and each other. Schneider's conclusion is disturbing. Contrary to Willy Brandt's claim that the fall of the Wall would allow what belongs together actually to be together, it seems that Peter Schneider's narrator in Der Mauerspringer (The Wall Jumper, 1982) was correct: there is still a divide between East and West, if only in the heads of Berliners. Following on the question of identity, Margit Sinka provides a fascinating look at the innate human predisposition to labeling. She traces sociologist Heinz Bude's branding of the "Generation Berlin" as the defining construct for the Berlin Republic. Drawing on business models rather than artistic or political ones, Bude classifies the Generation Berlin as "entrepreneurial individuals." Ultimately, these individuals will want to enter the political arena, evoking decided change. Bude's original optimism from 1998, however, has already waned, for somehow Berlin is unable to sustain the newness and promise that Bude envisioned. Nonetheless, Sinka concludes, Bude successfully has inserted himself and his Generation Berlin into discourses about Berlin. In her essay, "Living Berlin: Autobiography and the City," Rachel J. Halverson directs attention to several generations of male East German novelists, who following the Wende, turned to autobiographical writings in their efforts to come to terms with the tumultuous political, social and economic upheaval taking place. By examining three writers from three different generations, Günter de Bruyn, Christoph Hein and Stephan Krawczyk, Halverson articulates the position that the city of Berlin plays in each life story. Furthermore, as her analysis progresses, multiple subtextual meanings of the city emerge, each of which conflicts with the officially sanctioned portrayals of East and West Berlin that GDR authorities allowed. This analysis demonstrates that the autobiographical works of East German authors offer the plethora of perspectives necessary to understand that complexities of what Berlin was and is becoming.

8

Introduction

Moving from the experiences of the city, to its representation, the final section of the anthology presents five essays that treat literary and filmic portrayals of Berlin. In his essay on Peter Schneider, "Divided and Reunited Berlin in Peter Schneider's Fiction," Stephen Brockmann examines three of Schneider's narratives that take the city of Berlin and the German Question, that is the co-existence of two divergent political and social existence in immediate proximity to each other, as their focal point. While Der Mauerspringer (1982) pre-dates the Wende and unification of Germany, an understanding of this text plays a pivotal role in Brockmann's judgment of Schneider's later works. Brockmann sees the Berlin of Der Mauerspringer as the "most German of German cities" because it is in this divided Berlin that the question of German unity most glaringly is obvious. Brockmann views Schneider's approach here as an open one, and concludes that this openness is missing from Schneider's subsequent Berlin novels. Paarungen (Couplings, 1992) in particular focuses exclusively on the love interests of the three male protagonists, ignoring fully the larger political questions that divided Berlin symbolizes. When in Eduards Heimkehr (Eduard's Homecoming, 1999), the narrator returns to a united Berlin, political questions once again take a backseat to personal concerns. Though sexual prowess remains an issue for Eduard, his ability to satisfy both his Jewish wife and his East German lover, places him in the role of an "unconflicted" [West] German, whose sins of the past have been forgiven. Though the German Question has been resolved, at least politically, Brockmann concludes that Schneider's inattention to it in these two post-unification novels represents a literary sellout. In the last decade, Berlin has changed so rapidly and radically, that it is difficult to absorb the changes except in a schematic framework. Through an analysis of short fictional representations of the city, Carol Anne CostabileHeming's essay charts the impact that the physical, social, and cultural changes have had on writers who are both native Berliner and relative newcomers. In "Berlin Snapshots: Images of the City in Short Fiction," she begins with an analysis of Katje Lange-Miiller's anthology Bahnhof Berlin (1997), a collection that explores the principle of transit, the city as a vehicle as well as the city in transition. Die Stadt nach der Mauer (1998) assembles prose pieces of less-established writers, who look to the city's potential for the future by moving beyond the images of Berlin as a divided city. Romanianborn Carmen-Francesca Banciu's presents a collection of vignettes in Berlin ist mein Paris (2002). The compilation illustrates how an immigrant can come to feel at home in the vast and foreign Berlin. The texts discussed move beyond black and white comparisons and the juxtaposition of East and West to show that Berlin is a vibrant, multifaceted city. Costabile-Heming concludes that only such short fiction can provide readers with the true variety of impressions that are indicative of Berlin. Mila Ganeva turns to cinematic representations of Germany's capital in her essay "No History, Just Stories: Revisiting Tradition in Berlin Films of the

C o s t a b i l e - H e m i n g and Halverson

9

1990s." She argues that post-Wall Berlin films no longer contain the political pathos and historical depictions characteristic of the genre prior to 1989. Ganeva first addresses the commodification of unified Berlin, whose urban spaces have been cleaned up in an effort to promote tourism. In these efforts at beautification, significant historical reference points (the most obvious example being the Berlin Wall) have all but disappeared. The history that is permitted to remain does so in an easily digestible form. One of the most significant trends in Berlin film from the 1990s is the shift in perspective from West to East or at least to the old city center. Despite this topographical shift, Ganeva contends that Berlin films of the 1990s do not concern themselves with questions of unification, but present instead, the stories of individuals in the present. Wolfgang Becker's 1997 film Das Leben ist eine Baustelle (Life is all you get) and Andreas Kleinert's Wege in die Nacht (Paths in the Night, 1999) for example, avoid direct confrontation with historical issues. As Ganeva argues, these films evoke the traditions of earlier Berlin films through their emphasis on aesthetic forms and themes. Kristie Foell also looks away from political-historical perspectives to analyze four post-unification love stories in "Growing Together, Growing Apart: Berlin Love Stories as Allegories of German Unification." In her analysis, Foell employs the metaphor of love story to symbolize the unification process still taking place in Germany. As the locus of unification, Berlin provides the appropriate backdrop to judge the success of these love stories. Foell analyzes two commercial pulp novels and two more challenging ones in her attempt to read the unification process as love story. The sado-masochistic characters in Else Buschheuer's Ruf! Mich! An! (Call! Me! Up! 2000) is, according to Foell, a critical commentary on the sex, glitz and consumerism of the West that now too finds a home on the Potsdamer Platz. Barbara Sichtermann's Vicky Victory (1995) is a similar example of the personal degradation that occurs through Westernization, the main characteristic of the unification process. Foell juxtaposes these two works with two novels from 1996, Monika Maron's Animal Triste and Ingo Schramm's Fichters Blau (Fichter's Blue). Unlike other critics who have focused on the erotic side of Maron's novel, Foell concludes the novel actually bemoans the unfulfilled promises of unification. Schramm, on the other hand, turns to Germanic traditions, citing both Grimm's fairy tales and Wagnerian operas to suggest the ambiguousness of post-unification unions through the siblings, Janni and Karl. Foell concludes that all of the characters in these novels suffer from an inability to achieve a sense of unity; symbolic of the way that Berlin's unity still is, at least emotionally, incomplete. In the volume's final essay, Sunka Simon returns to the bond that exists between Weimar Berlin and the newly emerging Berlin of the 21st century. In "Weimar Projections) in Post-Unification Cinema" she focuses on the ways that Weimar-era iconography has infiltrated post-1989 Berlin films. It is noteworthy that the popularity of Weimar images grows out of that era's

10

Introduction

association as the "better" Germany; that is, one free of the historical guilt of post-Nazi Germany (arriving at a reference point similar to that of Evelyn Preuss). Simon bases her analysis on two very different films: Comedian Harmonists (1997) and Nachtgestalten (Night Shapes, 1999). The blockbuster Comedian Harmonists idolizes both the musical group that is its subject as well as the Berlin of the Weimar era. Simon argues that the filmmaker Josef Vilsmaier tends to gloss over the complicated issues of racial politics so clearly a part of the Harmonists' career trajectory, leaving the audience with a "feel good" sensation. By contrast, Andreas Dresen's documentary-like Nachtgestalten, while focusing primarily on the darker side of Berlin existence, draws on the montage techniques of Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt, thus bringing the volume full circle. Constant changes make it difficult to analyze the city of Berlin adequately, and the adage "Berlin wird" ("Berlin becomes") is as apt today as it was during Scheffler's time. It perhaps is more productive to view Berlin from a distance, for as Bodo Morshäuser writes, "Um [...] doch lieben zu können, muß ich stets Berlin verlassen [...]" (37).4 It is our hope as the editors of this volume, that we and our contributors can bring exactly that perspective to Berlin, for, though all of us have spent extensive time in the city, we all also write about the city from afar. It is with this distanced eye and differentiated perspective, drawing from our own Berlin experiences and cultural relevancies that we present this anthology in the hopes that all who read it will gain a sense of Berlin since 1989, enough to want to visit and investigate personally this unfinished, perhaps never to be finished symphony. Works Cited Ladd, Brian. The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Large, David Clay. Berlin. New York: Basic Books, 2000. MacDonogh, Giles. Berlin. A Portrait of its History, Politics, Architecture, and Society. New York: St. Martin's, 1997. Morshäuser, Bodo. Liebeserklärung an eine häßliche Stadt. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2002. Richie, Alexandra. Faust's Metropolis. A History of Berlin. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998. Scheffler, Karl. Berlin. Ein Stadtschicksal. 2nd edition. Berlin: Erich Reiss, 1910. Strom, Elizabeth. Building the New Berlin: The Politics of Urban Development in Germany's Capital City. Landham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001. Wise, Michael Ζ. Capital Dilemma: Germany's Search for a New Architecture of Democracy. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998. 4

"In order to love Berlin, I constantly have to leave it."

Physical Space

GARY L . CATCHEN

The Pennsylvania State University

Gedächtnis and Zukunft, Remembrance and the Future: A Photo-Essay1 Berlin is "becoming" the new political and cultural capital of the Bundesrepublik. New architecture characterizes this transformation, because it reflects visions of the future. Moreover, this future is inexorably linked to a tumultuous past. Likewise, when the original architects built many important, older buildings, their designs reflected the corresponding Zeitgeist. Over the course of history, the architectural statements corresponding to these older buildings have evolved. Thus, the old and the new architecture provide a continuous connection between the past history, the present state, and the future of Berlin, reflecting simultaneously the history and the culture of Berlin. To understand how and in which directions Berlin is "becoming," we must examine the architecture, both old and new. For this purpose, I use the visual impact of still photography augmented with text. In Figure 1, a cityscape of Potsdamer Platz, the crane is a ubiquitous element. The myriad of cranes, pointing in all directions, symbolize the construction of new architecture, the signpost for the new Berlin spanning from the immediate present well into its future. Moreover, the cranes presage the erection of skyscrapers. Historically we would not identify Berlin as a city consisting of many skyscrapers. Frankfurt am Main, "Mainhatten," holds that distinction. Because its architectural composition is diverse and eclectic, Potsdamer Platz represents an archetypical component of a city that is burgeoning with new buildings. In contradistinction to some of the government buildings, for example, the Reichstag, which have a history that is interwoven with the histories of the Second Reich, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and the Federal Republic, the buildings on Potsdamer Platz will have a connection only to the history of the future. This situation is ironic, given that between the world wars, Potsdamer Platz was a key instrument in Walter Ruttmann's film, Berlin. Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (1927) and during the

1

I thank Professor Daniel E. Willis of the Pennsylvania State University for his insightful and critical reading of the manuscript. 1 thank Mr. Aaron R. Catchen of Prestrud Architect in Jackson, Wyoming for critically reading the text and for providing many important and useful suggestions. I thank Ms. Margaret K. Barton of Bellefonte Area High School for assisting me with the graphical art.

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Physical Space

Cold War, Potsdamer Platz was a no-man's-land, devoid of buildings and the focal point of the division of Berlin. After unification, major international corporations, including Daimler Chrysler and Sony, began planning the new Potsdamer Platz, whose entrance Figure 2 depicts. Architects Renzo Piano and Christoph Kohlbecker developed the master plan for Daimler-City, and Helmut Jahn created the master plan for the Sony Center. The angular appearances and the structural and stylistic use of glass and bricks characterize the design of Piano's Torhaus ("gate building"), and these architectural elements decidedly depict the architecture of the future. In contrast, the imposing, monumental brick structure of the other gate building by Hans Kollhoff, resembles the architecture of the historicism period. These distinctively different styles allude to classical New York skyscrapers such as the Woolworth Building, the Fuller (Flat Iron) Building, and ironically the Chrysler Building, each of which is marked by different design elements typifying the tenor of their period of construction (Willis). Thus, as the classical skyscrapers of New York signified the transformation of that city into an international metropolis nearly a century ago, the new skyscrapers of Berlin symbolize the renaissance of a metropolis that prior to 1933, was a cultural and intellectual capital. Between the two skyscrapers that form the entrance to Daimler-City, the Alte Potsdamer Straße runs into Marlene-Dietrich-Platz. The naming of this plaza has been controversial, for it only recently became acceptable politically to honor Dietrich's contributions to the performing arts. This long delay may reflect the Germans' increasing confidence in their Vergangenheitsbewältigung (mastery of the past). Marlene-Dietrich-Platz evokes memories on three different levels: as a sex symbol of the German cinema of the 1920s and the early 1930s; as a diva of the American cinema and as an opposer of the Nazis and entertainer of) US troops during World War II. In addition to the buildings on Marlene-Dietrich-Platz that provide space for commerce (Figure 3), the Musicaltheater (Figure 4) provides a home for the performing arts. In a water basin, in front of the Musicaltheater, stands a metallic, 14meter-high sculpture, "Galileo im ökologischen See," which Mark Di Suvero created. The linear elements represent axes running through space. Where they cross, a ring-like structure holds them together. The intersection of the linear and circular elements suggests streets and walkways, essentially a sculptured depiction of Potsdamer Platz. Moreover, the water basin, into which this sculpture is integrated, provides a feeling of openness, even when dense crowds may occupy and fill the rest of Marlene-Dietrich-Platz. Whereas the newness of Potsdamer Platz points to Berlin's bright future, numerous other sites in Berlin depict the city's checkered history, including its division, its legacy as the capital of the Third Reich, and East Berlin's legacy as the capital of the German Democratic Republic. From 13 August 1961 until New Year's Eve 1989, Berlin had remained a divided city. Since unification,

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many symbols of the division have disappeared, including much of the Wall and most traces of where the Wall stood. Figure 5 depicts one of the few remnants of the Berlin Wall. The sculpture, Berlin (Figure 6), resembles the broken links of a massive chain, and, as such, it symbolizes the. unification of Berlin. Interestingly, the artists, Brigitte und Martin Matschinsky-Denninghoff, created this sculpture in the mid-1980s. Thus, it preceded unification, and symbolized at that time the "becoming" of the New Berlin. The terror institutions of the Nazi-era were located on the Prinz-AlbrechtGelände, a tract of land located east of the Martin-Gropius-Bau (Riirup). These organizations included the Geheime Staatspolizeiamt (Gestapo or federal secret police) and various offices of the Schutzstaffel (SS or protection organization). Perhaps the most heinous of crimes perpetrated in these buildings was the planning of the Wannsee-Konferenz, during which the Nazi authorities developed the "final solution" to eradicate European Jewry. By the conclusion of World War II, these buildings had been destroyed. Only some parts of the basements remained, along with piles of rubble. In the mid-1980s, scholars excavated the ruins, and created an exhibit (Figure 7) that explains the structure and operation of the Nazi terror organizations. This exhibit represents a form of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, in which, in a candid and detailed fashion, historians describe the crimes committed by the Nazis. The former Reichsbank (government bank), shown in Figure 8, is an example of Nazi-era architecture. Early in 1933, a competition was held to design a new building for the Reichsbank. The participants included two wellknown architects, Walter Gropius, who fled from Nazi Germany to England in 1934, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who emigrated to the US in 1938. Adolf Hitler selected the design of Heinrich Wolff, who proposed a steel-reinforced concrete structure that was covered by stone walls. The construction was completed in 1938 (Borgeit and Jost). The participation of Gropius and Mies van der Rohe in this competition is ironic, because the Nazis basically drove their well-established school of architecture, Hochschule für Bau und Gestaltung (College for Construction and Design), commonly known as the Bauhaus, out of existence. Interestingly, these architects along with others, such as Le Corbusier and Erich Mendelsohn, had developed the International Style of Architecture that has influenced much of mid-20th-century architecture. The International Style and the architecture of the Nazi-era are antithetical. Whereas the former is characterized by simple, modern, and highly functional designs, the latter is distinguished by grossly exaggerated classical elements such as long, monolithic series of columns. During the 1930s, the Nazis viewed Berlin with contempt. Correspondingly, as part of their megalomania, the Nazis planned to build a new capital, "Welthauptstadt Germania" (world capital Germania). For this purpose, Hitler commissioned the architect, Albert Speer, to lead the design of Germania. In his memoirs, Speer commented on the planning of Germania, in

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which he quoted Hitler: "Zumindest in der Planung war Hitlers Satz verwirklicht, daß, 'Berlin sein Antlitz ändern müsse, um sich seiner großen neuen Mission anzupassen'" (Weihsmann 1166).2 Although only a few of the designed buildings were ever constructed, these stated intentions remind us that the western world could have become a very different place, if the Nazis had been more successful. Although the existing buildings from the Nazi era, such as the former Reichsbank, are reminiscent of that period, these buildings serve very different needs today. After the Nazi-era, the former Reichsbank housed the Finanzministerium der DDR (Treasury of the German Democratic Republic); and, after 1959, the Communist Party used the building. Despite the building's history, the professor of architecture, Hans Kollhoff, proposed that the building should be used for the Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Ministry) in conjunction with a new building, shown in Figure 9. Kollhoff designed the modifications for the former Reichsbank, and Thomas Müller and Ivan Reimann designed the new building. In addition to government architecture, Berlin has a rich tradition of industrial buildings. Peter Behrens designed many of these industrial buildings during the early 20th century. Perhaps best known are the factories of the AEG (Allgemeinen Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft), founded by Jewish industrialist Emil Rathenau in 1887. Figures 10 and 11 show parts of a factory complex. These architecturally innovative factories emphasize Berlin's industrial past, and are located in areas such as Wedding that typically do not attract tourists. Berlin's traditional city center has undergone numerous changes, particularly with each successive government. In 1816, Friedrich Wilhelm III commissioned Karl Friedrich Schinkel to design a guardhouse for soldiers, Neue Wache (Figure 12). The simple lines and abstract cubic form reflected the limited resources available for this barrack. Schinkel used the architectural genre of the building itself to evoke an abstract idea about the past, namely, the hegemony and culture of ancient Greece. After 1918, the Neue Wache no longer served as a barrack. In the 20th and continuing into the 21st century, the Neue Wache has taken on a new function: to remind people about the victims of war and violence. In 1931-32, the architect, Heinrich Tessenow, redesigned the building as a memorial to soldiers killed in World War I. In 1960, when this central district was part of East Berlin, the Communists again redesigned the building to serve as a Mahnmal für die Opfer des Faschismus und Militarismus (Memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism). Following unification, the Neue Wache was renovated to evoke Tessenow's design. Since 1993, an enlarged copy of Käthe Kollwitz' statue, Trauernde Mutter mit totem Sohn (Grieving Mother with a Dead Son), shown

2

"At least in the planning Hitler's statement was realized: 'Berlin must change its face in order to adapt to its great, new mission.'" Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

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in Figure 13, sits in the interior. In the early 20th century, Kollwitz dedicated the sculpture to "allen Opfern von Krieg und Gewalt" ("all victims of war and violence"). In the context of World War I, after the death of her son Peter in 1914 in Dixmuiden, Flanders, Kollwitz remarked that the sculpture should serve as a reminder of the sacrifice made by young volunteer soldiers. This sculpture frequently is referred to as a "Pietà" and thus alludes to Michelangelo's sculpture showing an image of a dead Christ being held by his mother. The appellative may be an unfortunate accident, for the Expressionist Kollwitz emphasized antiwar themes and not Christian ones. In 1993, former chancellor Helmut Kohl declared the Neue Wache with Kollwitz' sculpture to be die Zentrale Gedenkstätte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany), an event that incited intense controversy, because many victims of war and tyranny have been nonChristians. Although Kollwitz' Trauernde Mutter mit totem Sohn offers no direct allusion to Christian beliefs or themes, the appellative, Pietà, does allude to a fundamental element of Christianity, namely, the crucifixion of Christ. Likewise, an observer could view Kollwitz' sculpture as symbolizing the crucifixion, regardless of her intent. The Nazi atrocities decimated Berlin's Jewish population, and few remnants of Jewish history exist. Since its founding in 1962, the Berlin Museum has maintained a Jewish collection but, because of limited space, was unable to exhibit the collection adequately. In the 1980s, the city of Berlin decided to build a new museum, dedicated exclusively to the history of the Jews of Germany. The Polish-bom American, Daniel Libeskind won first prize in an international competition to design the new Jewish museum (Figures 14, 15). The Jewish Museum does not resemble a typical museum structure, in which the ground plan would have a rectangular cross section and the walls would have rectangular windows (Schnedier). Instead the ground plan consists of zigzag lines, and from above it resembles a lightning bolt. Rather than rectangular windows, one observes various notches and tears that run in slanted directions. Windows are set in the notches, which decorate the zincsheet-metal exterior walls, and symbolize events in the history of the Jews in Germany. This feature could indicate that the history of the Jews has no welldefined beginning and end. This architectural style is known as deconstructivism (Johnson and Wigley). It is a style that can evoke a sense of inconsistency in the observer. That is, a particular architectural element, e.g., a distorted window, appears to be very different in character from a conventional element, e.g., a rectangular window. To the observer, this inconsistency suggests that something is not correct. We can describe this alienation as an architectural Verfremdung (alienation), analogous to the literary Verfremdungseffekt originated by Bertolt Brecht in his dramas.

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Forty-nine upright stone slabs, Stelen, arranged in a seven-by-seven square array, form the Garten des Exils und der Emigration (Garden of Exile and Emigration). This arrangement is numerically significant: the number, forty-eight, alludes to the year in which the State of Israel was founded (1948) and the forty-ninth slab in the middle symbolizes Berlin. Olive branches, according to Jewish tradition symbols of peace and hope, grow in the soil inside of the slabs. Likewise, the slabs remind the observer of grave markers that have long been missing from destroyed Jewish cemeteries.3 When observed from a distance, the grid of slabs appears to be slanting. If one walks around them, the posts are perpendicular, because the ground on which they stand is sloped. Upon entering the Holocaust-Turm (Holocaust Tower), visitors confront a dark and empty tower with light entering from above. Although they can hear the noise from the street, the street is inaccessible, as if the visitors were confined to a concentration camp. This Holocaust-Turm provides a brief but existential experience, and a corresponding exhibit chronicles the Holocaust. Some of Berlin's best-known landmarks are the Reichstag (Parliament) and the Gedächniskirche (Memorial Church). Paul Wallot designed the Reichstagsgebäude (Parliament Building), completed in 1894. Square, castlelike towers rise over the corners of this monumental rectangular construction, and a triangular gable, whose framework is supported by six round columns, forms the main entrance in the center of the building. In the original construction, the 75-meter-high central cupola made out of iron and glass and culminating in a lantern topped with a king's crown, was celebrated as an architectural masterpiece. It is ironic that such a powerful building was built for the parliament, because, at that time, the Reichstag had no real power. Although the Reichstag represented a democratic element of the monarchy of Wilhelm II, it was only allowed to approve tax laws. On 28 February 1933, arson partially destroyed the building's interior. During World War II, the building sustained heavy damage; and, subsequently, the cupola, symbolizing the power of the Prussian monarchy, was demolished. After unification, an international competition was held to obtain a new design for the Reichstagsgebäude (Figure 16), where the Bundestag (German Parliament) would subsequently meet. The British architect, Norman Foster, won the competition. Except for the cupola that Foster completely redesigned, the exterior, after it was sandblasted, looks as it did earlier. The cupola is made out of glass and is egg-shaped; a ramp winds around the inside of the cupola. This transparent glass cupola symbolizes the "open understanding of the state and the society" (Borgeit and Jost). Between 1891 and 1895, the original Gedächtniskirche was built in a newRomanesque style to honor the memory of Kaiser Wilhelm I. The original 3

The grid of Stelen also resembles the design of a Holocaust memorial in Berlin that the American architect, Peter Eisenman, submitted for the competition.

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building, designed by the architect Franz Schwechter, was a symbol of the German Empire. During the next several decades, the church became a focal point for the Charlottenburg district, symbolizing unity and a feeling of community. During World War II, the church was heavily damaged but not completely destroyed. During the post war era, the rubble became a symbol of the bombings of World War II. In the late 1950s, the ruins were to be demolished, but residents protested this action. In 1961-63, the architect Egon Eiermann designed two modern style buildings next to the church: the high six-sided bell tower and the flat eight-sided main building. The old tower ruins were secured structurally, and serve today as a church museum and a remembrance hall for peace and reconciliation. Figure 17 shows the reinforced ruin and the new bell tower and church. Because of its division, West Berlin was cut off from the cultural heart of the metropolis. This led to the construction of new cultural centers in the West that often duplicated those cultural institutions out of reach in East Berlin. As Figure 18 illustrates, the roof of the Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Galery), the largest self-supporting steel plate in the world, appears to float over the glass façade, formed by a steel framework. This 1.25-metric-ton roof was fabricated elsewhere, and, during construction, it was hoisted onto the supports. The "flaf'roof has a slight curvature in the center and at the comers so that it does not appear to sag (Cobbers). The glass façade provides a transparent view to the exhibit space. Because of this absence of support structures, the interior can be said to allude to the Pantheon (Kleihues, BeckerSchwering and Kahlfeld). Although the function of this museum is to house art exhibits, its structural form is also an art exhibit. The building consists of two stories. The upper story, visible in the photograph, is integrated into the concrete court, where a diverse collection of modern sculptures surrounds the building. The lower story opens into a walled sculpture garden. This design by Mies van der Rohe presents a modern application of classical architectural elements. Instead of using massive, classical columns to support the roof, slender steel columns provide the support. These architectural allusions to classical design are reminiscent of Peter Behrens' approach to using classical elements to design the modern factories of the AEG, specifically the Montagehalle and the Turbinenhalle. In his design, Mies van der Rohe departs from functionalism to create a modern but classical gallery. In the historic city center, tourists and residents today enjoy the Lustgarten, an open, grass-covered park, shown in Figure 19. From this vantage point, an observer can experience a historically and architecturally diverse view. To the north, stands the rebuilt version of Berlin's first museum, Schinkels Altes Museum, showcasing the beauty of classical design. The Berliner Dom stands to the east. Its architecture shows the monumentality that characterizes the Historicism of the late 19th century. Across Unter den Linden,

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stands the Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic).4 Built in 1973-76, it shows the banality characteristic of many buildings designed under Communist rule. This site was the location for Andreas Schlüter's Hohenzollern Stadtschloß (Royal Palace). Because of war damage, the Communists demolished the ruins of the early 18th century palace in 1950. Until the unification, the so-called parliament of the former GDR, the Volkskammer (People's Chamber), had its seat in the modern-but-characterless Palast der Republik. Shortly before unification, the Palast was closed because of asbestos contamination. Although renovations have been underway for several years, a variety of groups have proposed that the Palast der Republik should be demolished and that the Stadtschloß should be rebuilt on this site. This has resulted in public debates about architectural style. Should Berlin hold a design competition for a modern design or for a Baroque façade? On 4 July 2002, by a large majority, the voted to rebuild the Royal Palace according to the Baroque style of the original castle. Although architects such as Hans Kollhoff and Peter Conradi have discussed this issue, the proposal to build a Baroque-style building has prevailed.5 Despite the apparent fait accompli, the government of Berlin has not yet identified the means required to construct this building.

Via photographs, we have toured important sites and buildings that represent Berlin's past and its "becoming." New buildings are architectural statements of a future, and we can interpret this "becoming" by reviewing the connections of the New Berlin with its tumultuous past.

Works Cited Berlin, die Sinfonie der Grossstadt [videorecording] / ein Fox- Europa Film (Leitung Karl Freund); ein Film von Walther Ruttmann. Berlin, Symphonie einer Grossstadt. Luftspiel, Opus I. Opus IMPRINT: New York, NY: Kino on Video, cl993. Borgeit, Christiane and Regina Jost. Architekturführer. Bundesbauten Berlin. Berlin: Stadtwandel Verlag Daniel Fuhrhop, 2000. Cobbers, Amt. Architekten und Baumeister in Berlin. Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe. Berlin: Jaron Verlag, 2002. Johnson, Philip and Mark Wigley. Deconstructivist Architecture. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1988.

4 5

Pictures of these buildings can be viewed at the following website, maintained by Gary L. Catchen: http://www.deutschlandsarchitektur.org/. Hans Kollhoff, "Letter to representatives of the Bundestag," Die Welt 4 July 2002; Peter Conradi, "Reply to the letter of Hans Kollhoff," Die Welt 10 July 2002.

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Kleihues, Josef Paul, Jan Gerd Becker-Schwering and Paul Kahlfeld, eds. (editors). Stadt der Architektur—Architektur der Stadt. Bauen in Berlin 1900-2000. Berlin: Nicoilaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, 2000. Rürup, Reinhard, ed. Topographie des Terrors. Gestapo, SS und Reichssicherheitshauptamt auf dem "Prinz-Albrecht-Gelände. " Eine Dokumentation. Berlin: Verlag Willmuth Arenhövel, 1997. Schneider, Bernhard. Daniel Libeskind. Jüdisches Museum Berlin. Zwischen den Linien. Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1999. Willis, Carol. Form Follows Finance: Skyscrapers and Skylines in New York and Chicago. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1995. Weihsmann, Helmut. Bauen unterm Hakenkreuz. Architektur des Untergangs. Wien: Promedia, 1998. Wörner, Martin, Doris Mollenschott, and Karl-Heinz Hüter. Architekturjuhrer Berlin. 5th edition. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1997.

Figure 1 : Cranes and construction on Potsdamer Plan, June 2002

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Figure 2. Entrance to Daimler-City am Potsdamer Platz. On the left, stands the 80-meter-high Torhaus by Renzo Piano; and, on the right, stands the 101 -meter-high Torhaus by Hans Kollhoff.

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Figure 3. Designed by Renzo Piano and Christoph Kohlbecker, the 85-meter-high Debis-Zentrale (Daimler Chrysler Services AG Headquarters) stands on Eichhornstraße, which intersects Marlene-Dietrich-Platz. Behind the tower runs the Landwehrkanal, which the Marshall-Briicke crosses. This bridge carries the name of General of the Army George C. Marshall, former Chief of Staff and later Secretary of State. Along with President Harry S Truman, Marshall developed the Marshall Plan to rebuild Germany.

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Figure 4. The Musicaltheater was designed by Piano and Kohlbecker. It is located MarleneDietrich-Platz, across from the Debis-Zentrale. A water basin with sculpture is located in the foreground.

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Figure 5. This remnant of the Berlin Wall is located near the Topographie the Martin-Gropius-Bnu.

des Terrors exhibit and

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Figure 6. Sculpture Berlin, constructed from chromium-nickel tubes and placed on Tauentzienstraße in 1987; it is not far from Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) and Wittenbergplatz. In the background, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche can be seen. As is typical for the residents of Berlin, they refer to this sculpture, as they often refer to other landmarks, by an appellative: "verschlungenen Därme" ("entwined intestines").

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Figure 7. Topographie des Terrors. In the background, the Martin-Gropius-Bau (formerly the Kunstgewerbemuseum or arts-and-crafts museum) can be seen. Niederkirchnerstraße, (formerly Prinz-Albrecht-Straße) runs along the north side of the exhibit space, roughly parallel to the walkway shown in the photograph. To the left of the walkway, along a remaining basement wall, stand the elements featured in the exhibit.

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üSSsüS;

Figure 8. Former Reichsbank (Government Bank) located on Werderschen Markt. This view shows the Spreekanal and an oblique view of this curving government building. On the front facade, which is for the most part not visible, the first floor contains a long row of monumental columns, a style element typical of Nazi-era architecture. The newly constructed part of the Foreign Ministry is located to the right.

Figure 9. Auswärtiges is the Spreekanal.

Amt is located am Werderschen

Markt and Kurstraße

36. In the foreground

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Figure 10. From 1909-13, Peter Behrens built a complex, rectangular array of factories for the AEG. These included the Montagehalle, located at the intersection of Voltastraße and Hussitenstraße in Wedding. This photograph shows the interior of one of these factories.

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Figure 11. Additional view of AEG-Montagehalle.

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Figure 12. Neue Wache is located along Unter den Linden. As the first masterwork of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the Neue Wache reflects romantic classicism. From the completion of the Neue Wache in 1818 until the 1870s, Schinkel's classicism dominated the architecture of Berlin.

Figure 13. Sculpture by Käthe Kollwitz: Trauernde Mutter mit totem

Sohn.

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Figure 14. The Jewish Museum is located on Lindenstraße in Kreuzberg. On this façade, the tear containing the windows looks like a distorted Star of David. Because this Star of David differs from a "real" Star of David, it suggests to the observer that something is not correct. This architectural Verfremdung may allude to the status of Jews in German society, which has fluctuated between deprived of rights and equal rights. Construction took place from 1992 to 1999.

Figure 15. Jewish Museum. The Holocaust-Turm is located on the left, and, on the right is Der Garten des Exils und der Emigration.

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Figure 16. Reichstagsgebäude. The façade faces the former Königsplatz, which today is the Platz der Republik. The Reichstagsgebäude was renovated from 1995 to 1999 according to the design of NormanFoster.

Figure 17. Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche

am Breitscheid

Platz.

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Figure 18. Neue Nationalgalerie, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1965-68, is located at Potsdamer Straße 50. This gallery is the only building in Germany that Mies van der Rohe designed after World War II. Within view of this gallery is the Philharmonie, designed by Hans Scharoun in 1962 and the St. Matthmiskirche designed by a former student of Schinkel, August Stüler, in 1846.

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Figure 19. This fountain is part of the Lustgarten, located along Unter den Linden. The Berliner Dom stands to the east. Across Unter den Linden is the Palast der Republik. In 1825-30, Karl Friedrich Schinkel built the Altes Museum (visible in the background), as Berlin's first museum. The building was completely destroyed in World War II, and it was rebuilt in 1966. In front of the museum is the Granitschale (granite bowl). G. C. Cantian created this large sculpture, dedicated in 1834, which has a diameter of seven meters and which was a technical marvel in that era.

BARBARA M E N N E L

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Shifting Margins and Contested Centers: Changing Cinematic Visions of (West) Berlin1 The city of Berlin has been foundational for the development of the genre of the city film. Walter Ruttmann's 1927 film Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt {Berlin, Symphony of a Big City) exemplifies the connection between modernity, urbanity and the medium of cinema that characterizes the city film. "In some respects, Berlin, Symphony of a City can be seen as the archetype of 'city symphonies' and other modernist cinematic responses to modernity which were appearing in many societies in the inter-war period" claims Colin McArthur (38). In this essay, I suggest that in contemporary Berlin films, the city of Berlin takes on a more complex function than a predetermined symbol for the modern or postmodern metropolis. In the following I map out the cinematic representation of Berlin on a geographic axis of center, Potsdamer Platz, and margin, Kreuzberg and the Berlin Wall. This cinematically privileged topography of Berlin that relies on the spatial relationship between margin and center illustrates the preoccupation with the Eastern margin of the West. Within the historiography of Berlin films, postwar West German Berlin films employed Berlin's topography to claim marginality and a lack of center for West German national identity. I suggest that German unification occasioned a significant shift in this symbolic topography. Whereas pre-1989 films employ Potsdamer Platz to represent the visible absence of a center, the post-1989 films discussed here engage with the construction site of Potsdamer Platz. Two representative post-war films, Heike Sander's Die allseitig reduzierte Persönlichkeit—Redupers (The All-round Reduced Personality—Redupers, 1977) and Wim Wender's Der Himmel über Berlin ( Wings of Desire, 1987) map marginality onto West Berlin by privileging the visual representation of

1

The seminar on German film at Dartmouth College under the auspices of Anton Kaes and Eric Rentschler first introduced me to The Empty Center and Me Boss, You Sneakers! Deniz Göktürk generously shared her then unpublished essay on Me Boss. You Sneakers! with me and read an earlier draft of this essay. I thank the participants of the Beatrice M. Bain Research Group at the University of California, Berkeley, especially Susan Kray and Edith Sauer-Polonik, for their productive engagement with a partial first draft of this essay. Finally, 1 appreciate the never-ending discussion on cinema and cities with Amy Ongiri.

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Kreuzberg and images of the Berlin Wall. In Redupers, Kreuzberg is the site of women's marginal existence in contrast to official city events. The Berlin Wall symbolizes artificial divisions between lived experience in East and West that can be appropriated for an alternative public space. Der Himmel über Berlin employs Kreuzberg as backdrop for the circus and the main French female character Marion, which serves to feminize, exoticize, and fetishize marginality. In contrast, the character Homer, who represents storytelling and historiography, searches in vain for Potsdamer Platz, the historic, yet absent, center of Berlin. I contrast these cinematic configurations of West Berlin's topography with the spatial politics of two post-Wall films by minority directors, Hito Steyerl's Die leere Mitte ( The Empty Center, 1998) and Hussi Kutlucan's Ich Chef, Du Turnschuh (Me Boss, You Sneakers! 1998) that engage with Berlin's and Germany's new hegemonic center under construction: Potsdamer Platz. The two films negotiate the politics of inclusion and exclusion in a historical, political, and transnational perspective and articulate a minority perspective in the space marked as the center, an articulation traditionally relegated to the margin. They thereby radically shift the perception of margin and center inscribed into and reflected by cinematic culture. The two films appropriate the construction site as a symbol for a discursive construction of meaning and intervene in the discourse about national identity. Urbanity thoroughly characterizes Sander's feminist classic Redupers, a film concerned with feminist aesthetics and the divided city of Berlin. Urban grittiness and the Berlin Wall, shown in lengthy tracking shots, characterize West Berlin in 1977. Academic discussions of Redupers have privileged the investigation of feminist aesthetics and modernist narrative practices to which they subordinated the topic of West Berlin (Mayne, Rich). In contrast, my reading focuses on the representation of the urban landscape and its underlying geography to pose the question how the materiality of West Berlin is mobilized for a politics that is thoroughly structured by margin and center. The film's narrative focuses on Edda Chiemnyjewski, a free-lance photographer and single mother. Her feminist women's group of photographers has received money from the Senat (city government) to create photographs of Berlin. They intend to exhibit these photos on billboards throughout the city to create an alternative public sphere. A female voice-over provides additional information about the main character, reflects on aesthetics and Berlin, and quotes literature. Redupers emphasizes urbanity through lengthy tracking shots of urban space. The film begins with an opening tracking shot of the Berlin Wall, which transitions into a tracking shot of façades of Mietskasernen, the Berlin building structures that developed during industrialization to house workers in the metropolis. The graffiti on the Berlin Wall and the houses transforms the urban surfaces into a public space that offers an alternative account of history, one that references the radical student movement of the late 1960s, 1970s

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terrorism, and criticism of East German politics: "KPD/ML," "Sabotiert die Fahndung," "Stasi verschleppt," "Justizmord an Holger Meins: Tod den Mördern."2 In contrast to the visual that emphasizes the border of the Wall and the materiality of rows of houses, the audio provides sound from East and West German and American radio stations with propaganda, information, and popular culture. The first audio we hear during the opening tracking shot moves between different stations: AFN, "DDR-Nachrichten" ("GDR News"), RIAS Berlin, SFB, and "Stimme der DDR" ("Voice of the GDR"). These stations include two American stations and two different West Berlin radio stations, as well as two different radio features from the GDR. The linguistic switch between English and German points out the invisible but audible presence of the military forces in West Berlin. The GDR and West German radio stations, however, are not differentiated by national languages but by content. The tracking shot moves from the Berlin Wall to the streets of Kreuzberg continuing the depiction of urban surface. The movement through the cityscape simulates a car driving through the city, which is repeated in variations throughout the film, and functions to naturalize Kreuzberg as representative of West Berlin. Historically Kreuzberg was a working-class neighborhood that became the margin of West Berlin through the artificial division of the city by the four military powers. Because the center of West Berlin shifted from the historic center in the East to the West, Kurfiirstendamm, Kreuzberg was neglected by urban planning, which allowed it to develop into an alternative space (Kaak). The emphasis on traveling shots echoes the women moving through the city by foot and by car. Edda Chiemnyjewski travels through the city for her job as photographer: she goes out at night for photo shoots, joins the "take back the night" march in Kreuzberg to take photos in hopes of selling them, and drives to different locations to shoot photos ordered by newspapers. Redupers thus claims urbanity as a space to be inhabited by women. The women's constant movement through the margins of the city is contrasted by the male dominance at public events, such as the "Kuratorium unteilbares Deutschland" (curatorial for an undivided Germany) in the Deutschlandhalle (Hall of Germany). Redupers addresses the relationship of margin and center on the level of representation and on the level of narrative. The women's group has received funding to create photos of Berlin. Politicians want the female photographers to showcase the special situation of women, whereas the women insist on their feminist perspective on the divided city of Berlin beyond the specific situation of women. The film questions the restriction of feminist concerns to the object of woman and the margin of cultural representation while it nevertheless

2

"Communist Party of Germany/Marxist-Leninist," "undermine the police search," "the GDR state security deports," "Holger Meins murdered by the justice system: death to the murderers." Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

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articulates a feminist aesthetics. Edda's photos focus on the dividing Wall between East and West but also document the similarities between East and West. The representation of the margin is visually doubled when the women move through the streets and along the Berlin Wall with their photo plastered on a moveable billboard. The photo itself shows an image of the Berlin Wall devoid of people with a row of houses on the West German side and emptiness on the East German side, and one single car parked in front of the Wall. The women insert themselves into the representation of the Berlin Wall when they step up on a platform to look out to East Berlin and create a curtain that they can open to emphasize the act of looking and framing the gaze at the East. Thus, Redupers focuses on the Berlin Wall as an emblem for the cold-war era and the space of the margin from which the women stage their politics. The women appropriate the image of West Berlin through representation and literally carry their image through the city. The map of West Berlin that hangs over Edda's telephone and the map of West Berlin as the final image of the film intercut with the film's narrative, illustrate the double function of West Berlin on a narrative and on a symbolic level. It is the margin that enables counter-hegemonic accounts of history through graffiti, collective artistic activity questioning the idealized figure of the male genius, and the creation of an alternative public sphere by walking through the city. Der Himmel über Berlin, directed ten years later than Redupers, also negotiates the topics of aesthetics, history, memory, and representation via the cityscape of West Berlin, also focusing on the axis of Kreuzberg, the Berlin Wall, and Potsdamer Platz. Even though the two films mobilize the representation of similar locations in West Berlin, their contrasting spatial politics create a different relationship between marginal and central spaces. Whereas the emphasis on the margin in Repuders is mobilized for feminist politics, Der Himmel über Berlin fetishizes and exoticizes the space of the margin in the figure of the French trapeze artist Marion and mourns the lack of a center in the search for the absent Potsdamer Platz. Shot almost exclusively in black and white, Der Himmel über Berlin creates an urbanity characterized by empty spaces, dilapidated buildings and graffiti, but, I argue, endows those sites with a different politics than Redupers. The films' different relationships to margin and center are expressed in the different access to the space that the camera affords the viewers. Whereas the camera in Redupers reenacts the limited perspective of the characters, emphasizing visible and invisible boundaries, the camera in Der Himmel über Berlin provides the perspective of the angels, capable of transcending all boundaries: between life and death, young and old, foreigners and Germans, internal and external. The lengthy opening shot of West Berlin provides the viewer with what Roger F. Cook has termed "the angelic perspective," a shot that moves from streets to groups of urban population and individual inhabitants of the city, alienated and lonely in a different city (172). The shot

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moves through walls and borders, and offers access to the thoughts of the inhabitants of West Berlin. Co-written by Peter Handke, the dialogue and interior monologues are as important as the film's visual aesthetics (Wenders and Handke). Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, move through the city of West Berlin. Damiel wants to become human to leave his spiritual existence and create his own story, expressed in his desire to say "now" and "not forever." He watches a French trapeze artist, Marion, in a circus. Their romantic encounter, once he becomes human, provides closure for the film. The figure of Marion, the female lead character, serves to romanticize, feminize, and exoticize the margin of West Berlin. Her Frenchness emphasized by her French accent, in which she reflects on her rootlessness in her inner monologue, also positions her at the margin of the film's concern with national identity heavily negotiated through language. The circus, itself a symbol of marginal, transitory, yet fantastic and romantic existence, is located on an empty space in front of KuKuCK, one of the significant squatted houses in Kreuzberg of the 1980s. Joachim Berger describes the house as follows: "Hausbesetzer-Zentrale" und "kriminelle Fluchtburg" nennt die Boulevard-presse das Kunstund Kulturzentrum in der Anhalter Straße 7. Ein Ort für Versammlungen, Filme, Musik, Theater, Ausstellungen; Kultur von unten-improvisiert, spontan, kompromißlos. (309) 3

By positioning the circus in front of KuKuCK, which can be recognized by its mural, Der Himmel über Berlin uses the counter-hegemonic movement in the margin of West Berlin as a backdrop for its discourse of German history and romantic love. The female love interest, Marion, moves from the circus in Kreuzberg to the Hotel Esplanade on the Potsdamer Platz in the film's final sequence. In contrast, the angels move through different locations in West Berlin and also cross the border between East and West. Damiel becomes human in the liminal site of the Todesstreifen, the space in between the East and West German Wall, a symbol for the liminality between eternity and the single existence of a human being. The counterpoint to Marion's search for love from the margin of West Berlin is the character Homer's search for Potsdamer Platz in its pre-World War II splendor. Accompanied by the angel Cassiel, Homer walks along the Berlin Wall on Potsdamer Platz, a now empty space, but does not recognize it because he is looking for the signifiers from the past: Café Josti, Loese and Wolf, and Wertheim. The insertion of historical footage documenting the destruction of Potsdamer Platz immediately after World War II foregrounds these differences with the past in the film. According to Elizabeth A. Strom in Building the New Berlin: The Politics of Urban Development in Germany's 3

'"Center for squatters' and 'criminal refuge' are the titles given to the art- and culture center at 7 Anhalter St. by the boulevard press. A place for meetings, films, music, theatre, exhibitions; culture from below—improvised, spontaneous, and without compromise." Italics and bold in the original. For a map of the location, see Berger 326-7.

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Capital City, Potsdamer Platz became important in the latter half of the 19th century when the city center moved from east to west (186). Originally, it had been the city's western border but in the second half of the 19th century, hotels and famous cafés surrounded the square. After heavy bombing during World War II, the allied forces converged here, and it became the site for black markets in the immediate postwar period. The creation of two separate states transformed the area from a meeting place to the "no-man's land" of the border. Only two buildings were left on the west side of the barren wasteland: the Hotel Esplanade and the Weinhaus Huth. Potsdamer Platz thus becomes evolves into a space of loss and mourning. The open space in the center of the city therefore becomes an open wound of German history, a discursive space, I suggest, that is ultimately filled with the romantic love story of Marion and Damiel. In the most significant shot of Potsdamer Platz, Homer sits in an abandoned armchair in the center of the empty space, with the angel Cassiel next to him. The furniture of a living room in the empty public space encapsulates Homer's displacement. This contrasts with the conclusion of the film, in which Marion and Damiel, who is now human, meet in the Hotel Esplanade on Potsdamer Platz. Nick Cave and his band play on stage and Damian stands at the bar and awaits Marion. Their final conversation in the film casts their love story as a radical break, not just for them, but also for all of humanity. Sitting at the bar in the Hotel Esplanade, Marion declares to Damiel: Now, WE are the times. Not only the whole city but also the whole world takes part in our decision. We two are more than the two. We personify something. We are sitting in the people's plaza and the whole plaza is filled with people who wish the same as we. We are deciding the game for everybody. I am ready. [...] Now [...] or never.

The secondary literature differs radically in the evaluation of Marion's speech. Cook, who reads Der Himmel über Berlin as a search for an alternative to epic narratives created by Hollywood, suggests that neither Damiel, nor Marion fall into stereotypical male and female roles. According to him, "Marion's voiceovers give the audience access to her innermost subjectivity and dispel the mystique that typically shrouds the female inner world" and "Damiel does not act like the love-struck male obsessed with a woman" (177). More importantly, Cook argues that the fact that the "spectator is situated alternately in the place of the man and the woman," destroys the suture that the film accorded the viewing subject in the narrative of Damiel becoming human (178). Thus, Cook concludes that Wenders "situates Der Himmel über Berlin as a new beginning of narrative epic in cinema" (181). The story of Berlin, "that unites a divided city and people" is part of the new beginning of narrative epic in cinema,

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because it "promises a new beginning in the continuing search for a national identity" (181). Peter Beicken offers a radically different reading than Cook of this sequence, resulting, in part, from his alternative approach to the film; he suggests that it "proposes that redemption occur with a descent into physicality" (140). He describes their meeting in the hotel as follows: This potentially subversive moment of female intervention is subverted, however, by Handke's stilted and artificial language, reverberating with the images and slogans o f the Great Revolution and the language o f a n e w mythology that reappropriates Promethean grandeur while coming dangerously close to cryptofascist fantasies. ( 1 5 6 - 1 5 8 )

Marion's invocation of the plaza of the people that will join in her and Damian's romantic union contrasts with the empty space of Potsdamer Platz experienced by Homer. Marion's speech substitutes the romantic love of man and woman as the embodiment of human desire for Homer's discourse of story telling and history. Thus, the tension between margin and center, which has marked the topography of the film, is resolved in the Utopian final scene, which takes place in a dilapidated interior of Potsdamer Platz. Power differentials between margin and center are dissolved in a humanitarian utopia that emerges from romantic love. There are two additional symptomatic readings of Der Himmel über Berlin. Roger Bromley suggests that in Der Himmel über Berlin it is "a generation of strangers living out, and living in, the empty spaces and absent memories of postwar Germany" (71). In his reading, "angels, children, storytellers and other agents of creativity are all marginalized, but in their marginality and otherness there is the potential for symbolic and ethical value, for forms of reparative love" (72). His postmodern reading of estrangement as "an internal condition" (82) contrasts with cultural critic bell hooks' observations in her essay "Representing Whiteness: Seeing Wings of Desire." She suggests, "Wenders' work represents a trend in white avant-garde aesthetic circles toward re-visioning old narratives of opposition" (167). Central to her critique is the portrayal of the library "as a storehouse of knowledge" where there are "only white people who are angels, only white men who dialogue with one another, only white men who interpret and revise old scripts (benevolently reading people's minds, touching them in the intimate body space)" (171). Yet, she questions the productive possibilities of "the current fascination with otherness" (171). This fascination with otherness lends itself to position the French woman at the margin of West Berlin, which would be more likely to be populated by Turkish women. But to create a fantasy of rootless French otherness both allows for a mobilization of the stereotype of the beautiful French woman, but avoids an engagement with contemporary heterogeneous German society. Ironically, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the symbol of the East/West division and the subsequent construction of Potsdamer Platz

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that created a space for films that reconfigure the paradigm of margin and center in the cinematic depiction of Berlin, coinciding with the emergence of a new generation of self-confident minority filmmakers in Germany (Fenner; Göktürk 1998, 1999, 2000). In the following I discuss two films that engage with this discursive opening in the late 1990s, a moment that might be closedoff again with the completion of Potsdamer Platz and Thomas Schadt's 2002 film Berlin—Sinfonie einer Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a City), a cinematic answer to Ruttman's 1927 film of the same title, thus suggesting a historical frame to Berlin films. With the disappearance of the Berlin Wall, the center of a united city reemerged as a space whose symbolic emptiness was politically outdated. Similar to Redupers and Der Himmel über Berlin, Die leere Mitte and Ich Chef Du Turnschuh! also negotiate the politics and history of margin and center. However, in contrast to the pre-1989 films, the two postWall films focus on the construction site at Potsdamer Platz. The function of the fall of the Berlin Wall as a symbol for unification has been fetishized to disavow the effects of globalization and the rise of the European Union, both of which go hand in hand with the exclusion of asylum seekers and immigrants. These complex and sometimes contradictory changes are cinematically expressed in the shifting depiction of margin and center. Die leere Mitte and Me Boss, You Sneakers! both situate their narratives on Potsdamer Platz during its transformation throughout the 1990s, anticipating its function as the center of the new German capital city and transnational capital. Die leere Mitte and Ich Chef Du Turnschuh! take marginality to the center of the Berlin Republic, Potsdamer Platz, whereas the West Berlin films concerned with counter-hegemonic strategies and alternative visions rooted their visual depiction in the margin of Kreuzberg. Die leere Mitte takes the construction site of Potsdamer Platz as a starting point to investigate the history of visible and invisible borders, center and margin, inclusion and exclusion in German history. The narrative is dependent on the absence of the Wall and the presence of the construction site, but emphasizes the dialectic between the two. The excavation of a negated history parallels the visual images of digging on the construction site. The years of shooting the footage for Die leere Mitte, 1990 to 1998, roughly overlap with the years of Potsdamer Platz as Europe's biggest construction site (1992-2000), which also coincided with the reorganization of the Berlin Republic. Planning controversies dominated Berlin politics during those years. Potsdamer Platz became the city's geographic center, but not an unambiguous symbol of the New Berlin Republic once the Berlin Wall came down. Instead, Strom claims: "[T]his is the story of the clash of new pressures and old institutions meeting at a volatile point in the city's history and geography" (186). In the following, I offer a brief account of what Ingeborg Majer O'Sickey called "the most controversial construction project in recent German history: the city-within-a city DaimlerBenz would build on Potsdamer Platz" (65). I account for the controversies

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about architecture, urban planning, and economics around the construction of Potsdamer Platz in order to highlight underlying notions of national identity and history. Die leere Mitte and Me Boss, You Sneakers! work out of and against these discourses. Months after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before Germany's official unification, Daimler Benz announced that it had reached an agreement with the city government to purchase a large part of Potsdamer Platz to locate its new service subsidiary, Daimler-Benz InterServices (Debis) in Berlin. In 1990, the Japanese electronics giant Sony purchased the adjacent site. Strom attributes the ease with which the city engaged in these early deals with the multinational companies Daimler and Sony to the city's self-image as being marginal in regard to West Germany (188). It remains unclear whether Daimler's search for a site and the identification of Potsdamer Platz, as well as the subsequent price negotiations began before or after the fall of the Berlin Wall. According to Strom, most public officials did not learn about the agreement between Daimler and the city until the company's public announcement of its intentions (188). The senator for urban development complained that the decision lacked the standard processes of planning competitions and public approvals. Another complaint was the size of the parcel sold to Daimler, approximately 50,000-square-meter site, which created a fear of likening Potsdamer Platz to an American city center. The low sale price also evoked criticism, since "German building law requires all public property to be sold at appraised value" (190). Appraisals are based on reviews of comparable transactions, but according to Strom "there were no land sales to compare to the proposed Potsdamer Platz deal" (190). The European Union investigated and ruled in 1991 that Daimler had paid below market value for the land and demanded that the company pay an additional DM 86 million, nearly doubling its acquisition costs. The controversy around Potsdamer Platz continued through the next major deal with Sony. Again the finance senator handled negotiations with the firm quietly, and again, the contract was reviewed by the European Union only to determine that Sony's parcel was worth more than the firm had paid. Controversy also surrounded the planning competition, an invitation-only event involving sixteen architectural films.4 In October 1991, the partners 4

Senator for urban development Volker Hassemer (CDU) changed the procedure from an open process, in which every architect could enter, to an invitation-only competition. The competition is documented in Lampugnani and Schneider. The edited collection is a catalogue of an exhibit of the same title in the Deutsches Architektur-Museum, Frankfurt am Main (December 2, 1994 - March 26, 1995) and in the Bauhaus-Archiv, Museum für Gestaltung, Berlin (April 28,1995 - July 30, 1995). Both the exhibits and the catalogue were supported by the Daimler-Benz AG and the debis Gesellschaft fur Potsdamer Platz Projekt und Immobilienmanagement mbH. The volume thus includes a section "Zum Geleit" (8) by Manfred Gentz, Mitglied des Vorstandes der Daimler-Benz AG, Vorsitzender des Vorstandes der Daimler-Benz InterServices (debis) AG, that precedes the "Vorwort" ("Preface," 9) by Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, Direktor des Deutschen Architektur-

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Hilmer and Sattler were announced as winners with a proposal that emphasized the recreation of the old city fabric, a proposal, according to Strom, that "ran counter to [Daimler's] dreams of building signature headquarters at the heart of the new capital" (194). In the individual competition for the Daimler site, the first prize went to French-Italian architect Renzo Piano, whose plan included five- to six-storied buildings with just two modest high-rises. The Sony jury chose the German-born, Chicago-based architect Helmut Jahn, who designed Frankfurt's Messeturm. The Debis area, featuring nineteen buildings designed by six teams of architects, was completed and opened in October 1998; the Sony complex, with five buildings filled with offices, stores, an entertainment center and apartments, opened in the summer of 2000. Reviews of the new Potsdamer Platz characterized it as an "Americanization of German city planning, citing the heavy involvement of investors, the massive scale, and the creation of shopping areas that look like shopping malls" (Strom 199). This was ostensibly not the effect sought by the architects: the winning proposal by Hilmer and Sattler begins with the following statement differentiating its concepts from a model of city development seen prominently in the United States: Nicht das weltweit verwendete amerikanische Stadtmodell der Hochhausagglomeration, sondern die Vorstellung von der kompakten, räumlich komplexen, europäischen Stadt liegt dem Entwurf zugrunde. Städtisches Leben soll nicht im Inneren großstrukturierter Gebäudekomplexe, sondern auf Straßen und Plätzen entfalten." (Lampugnani and Schneider 70)5

The response might be an effect of the individual influence of the Daimler and Sony architects as well as the heightened sensitivity and anxiety of the German public about Americanized public spaces. By taking the construction site of Potsdamer Platz as their main location, Die Leere Mitte and Me Boss, You Sneakers! reflect the unique position of

Museums, Frankfurt am Main and Peter Hahn, Direktor des Bauhaus-Archivs, Museum für Gestaltung, Berlin. The volume includes a one-page description of "Der städtebauliche Wettbewerb Potsdamer/Leipziger Platz" from October 1991 without authorial credit, presumably written by the editors of the volume (69) and description and architectural drawings, models, computer simulations, and plans by architects Heinz Hilmer and Christoph Sattler who won the first prize (70-73), Oswald Mathias Ungers and Stefan Vieths who won second (74-77), William Alsop and Jan Stürmer who won fourth (78-81) and Hans Kollhoff whose proposal did not win (82-85). Five prizes were handed out for the area of 480 000m 2 , which was proposed as a "Bindeglied zwischen dem östlichen und dem westlichen Berlin" (connection between the eastern and western parts of Berlin). The competition included the "Nutzungsmischung" ("condition of mixed use") in order to facilitate a lively "Zentrum der Metropole" ("center of the metropolis") and hinder the development of "Monostruktur" ("a singular use structure") (69). 5

"The proposal is based not on the American city model of an agglomeration of skyscrapers, which is used all over the world, but on the idea of the compact, spatially complex European city. City life should not happen in the interior of grand structured complexes of buildings but in the streets and on plazas."

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Berlin in the historical, urban, architectural, and geo-political changes of the late 1990s. Recognizable as Berlin, the construction site functions as a stand-in for the city while it also embodies change. Conceptual disagreements over the look of the completed Potsdamer Platz determined the official debate. The two films cut across this discourse, articulating positions that have been excluded from the official controversy, such as the exploitation of foreign workers in the construction of symbols of Germanness further used to symbolically exclude those who were exploited in the first place. Die leere Mitte employs conventions from art films, which break traditional linear narratives, features from traditional documentaries such as voice-over, and cinema vérité style of politically engaged video. The handheld camera as well as references to the camera by filmed subjects foregrounds the authenticity of the material and the interactive dimension of the film. In the tradition of documentary conventions, the film employs a voice-over narrator and talking head interviews. The film relies on montage of footage from different historical periods. Repeated disjunctures between the visual and audio create alienation effects and suggest connections between seemingly disparate topics. The interviews are staged traditionally with medium close-up head-shots of two international students. One of them tells the story of how he and his friends were attacked by German neo-Nazis on Potsdamer Platz, while the other shares her impressions of the architecture of the Brandenburg Gate and the planned architecture on Potsdamer Platz. Die leere Mitte opens with images of the fall of the Berlin Wall, images that have been televised as the endpoint of the Cold War. The film thus reinterprets the images as a moment of beginning, a moment, whose meaning is not yet decoded. When the film cuts to the construction site of 1997, the voice-over states: "Zuerst war es das Zentrum ihrer Macht, dann wurde es zum Randgebiet, zur Grenze. [...] Jetzt kehrt die Mitte zurück."6 This statement serves as a narrative leitmotif for the film while the accompanying shot of the seemingly random construction site of Potsdamer Platz serves as a visual leitmotif. Potsdamer Platz as "Randgebiet" ("marginal area") and "Grenze" ("border") reflects the way the margin was mobilized in Redupers and Der Himmel über Berlin as a metaphor for the status of West Berlin in West Germany and the West. By contrasting "margin" with the neutral term "Mitte" ("middle" and "center"), Steyerl implies that the possibilities of Potsdamer Platz are still open.7 The opening sequence ends with the title Die leere Mitte ("the empty center") projected onto the construction site. The voice-over's accounts of history contradict the association of empty space with a lack of meaning, turning the image of Potsdamer Platz into a metaphor for unearthing connections between the present and the past.

6 7

"First it was the center of power, then it became the margin, the border. [...] N o w the center returns." Center is not an accurate translation of "Mitte," which really means "middle."

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The history of the space Potsdamer Platz, which began as a Zollmauer (customs wall) from 1734-1869, is placed in relationship to the contemporary conflict over who owns and inhabits urban space, expressed by the narrative thread about squatters who occupied Potsdamer Platz after the Berlin Wall came down and before construction began. The squatters are interviewed on Potsdamer Platz standing with their backs to the camera when they explain their protest against the controversial business agreements with the two transnational companies. Their turned backs signal the lived experience of power relations in contrast to the fetishization and feminization of rootlessness in the character Marion in Wender's Der Himmel über Berlin. The squatters are aware of their transitory presence, since they know that the police will move them. The film contextualizes the interviews with squatters with a narration about Moses Mendelssohn's unsuccessful attempt to enter the gates to the city. Die leere Mitte thus questions how public space is constituted, and who has access to it. The fate of Moses Mendelssohn is juxtaposed with contemporary immigrants in Germany embodied by an interview with a Jamaican woman selling souvenirs at Potsdamer Platz and a contemporary demonstration against the need for children of immigrants to obtain a visa. The narrator relates the history of individual buildings on Potsdamer Platz, such as Haus Vaterland, to investigate the connection between exploitation, immigration, exoticization, and exclusion. During the Weimar Republic, Haus Vaterland included "exotic" interior spaces and events, such as a Turkish coffee house and jazz performances by black performers. The account of Haus Vaterland's history is accompanied by images of the architectural model for the new building on Potsdamer Platz that are intended to take up the architectural features of Haus Vaterland. The voice-over narration moves from the history of international cultural workers in the Weimar Republic to the conflict between the Berlin construction workers and the international illegal workers hired by the transnational companies on the contemporary construction site. The protests of the Berlin construction workers are not represented in the dominant discourse around the Potsdamer Platz, neither in Strom's book on urban planning in the new Berlin, nor in books about Potsdamer Platz that fetishize architecture and the architecture debate, such as Ein Stück Großstadt, City of Architecture/Architecture of the City, and City of Objects/Designs on Berlin. Strom claims that capital determines urban planning in the United States and design in Germany (135). Steyerl's film, however, makes design, embodied by the model of the Debis building, the backdrop for the violent encounter between national and international workers and thus teases out the symbolic violence of architecture. German construction workers, in interviews shot with unsteady hand-held cameras, reveal their anger at chancellor Helmut Kohl and the labor unions for increasing unemployment for German construction workers during Europe's biggest construction project. The workers passionately criticize the unions for their inaction, hold a vigil, and attempt to storm the fence around the

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construction site. The film captures the public articulation of frustration and dialogue that will disappear with the completion of Potsdamer Platz, a space organized around capital and consumption. Carrying this critical depiction of the project further, the film links modes of exclusion to the symbolic violence of architecture by projecting the heading "Auslese" ("selection") onto the image of the architectural model of the Debis building. The intertitle connects the selection in architectural competitions, the selection of workers in a historical perspective, and the neo-Darwinian "selection" processes during National Socialism. The crosscut between the historical accounts of excluding black entertainment workers and a domestic scene of happy white Germans on the billboard for the construction site links the exclusion of black workers to the normalcy of whiteness in representations of Germanness. These connections between history and contemporary representation frame the interview with an international student, who tells about Germans attacking him. The sound of the interview is connected with the visual image of the architectural model, suggesting a relationship between architecture and lived experience of the city, between individual and symbolic violence. The film negotiates manifestations of power in spatial politics and urban architecture, which it connects to the exploitation of labor by intercutting the history of Potsdamer Platz during National Socialism with the escalation of violence by the contemporary construction workers. At the demonstration on the construction site, the construction workers are yelling "Jetzt gehts los" ("now it starts") and are trying to storm the fence that protects illegal workers. In one of the few moments when the film's image and sound are synchronous, one of the construction workers addresses the camera "Gewalt ist die Lösung, nur Gewalt" ("violence is the solution, only violence"). The shaky camera reflects the increase in tension, while the voice-over states in a neutral tone: "Die Bauarbeiter stürmen die Reichstagsbaustelle, auf der sie illegale Bauarbeiter vermuten. Einige versuchen ihrer ausländischen Kollegen habhaft zu werden um sie zu verprügeln."8 Even though the construction workers express their anger against the government and the labor unions, their violence is acted out against underpaid foreign workers. Die leere Mitte relates the manifestations of past and present violence and power to each other, when, after a fade to black, the first intertitle "Zentrum" ("center") and then "der Gewalt" (of power/violence) appears over the image of the construction site. The split intertitle puts the notion of a neutral and geographical center evoked with the first screen into play with the notion of power and violence named on the second screen. The subsequent narrative of the history of Potsdamer Platz

8

"The construction workers storm the gate of the construction site of the government building where illegal construction workers are working. Some of them try to capture their foreign colleagues in order to beat them up."

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during National Socialism begs the spectator to question continuities and discontinuities of violence against those defined as marginal. Die leere Mitte provides a local history of Potsdamer Platz as a window into global developments. By contrasting images of the fall of the Berlin Wall and German unification with the exclusion of migrants and exploitation of laborers, the film demonstrates how the ideology of unification disavowed the development of global capitalism and the European Union that created new boundaries with exclusionary effects. Thus, the film concludes: "Nach innen gibt es keine Grenzen, aber nach außen gibt es die Festung Europa." 9 A complex set of relations of exclusion and inclusion made invisible in the New Berlin Republic substitutes for the visible East-West division that was symbolized by the Berlin Wall, and therefore shifts the simplistic notion of margin and center. Steyerl appropriates the space of the empty center in the midst of political power struggles between workers, architects, investors, and politicians to document marginal voices and excavate historical narratives. Thus, in contrast to Redupers, which negotiates politics from the margin, and Der Himmel über Berlin, which exoticizes the margin and dissolves politics in the unmarked center, Die leere Mitte illustrates the dialectics of margin and center. Ich Chef, Du Turnschuh employs a similar political strategy of articulating marginal voices at the emerging center of the new German capital, Potsdamer Platz, but as a comedy that foregrounds the absurdity of the contemporary situation of migrant workers and asylum seekers. As Göktürk has shown, Ich Chef, Du Turnschuh exaggerates ethnic stereotypes in order to subvert and deconstruct them; similarly, its narrative relies on unexpected and unbelievable turns (Göktürk, forthcoming). Produced for and shown on German television, the film tells the story of a group of illegal workers who attempt to gain political asylum in Germany. The main character, the Armenian Dudie, played by the film's director Hussi Kutlucan, awaits his asylum in Hamburg but escapes to Berlin. There, he moves in with four refugees, Kofi from Ghana, Saddam from Iran, and Arpad from Afghanistan, all who work on the Potsdamer Platz construction site. The first half of the narrative takes place on the construction site and portrays the conflicts between the German superiors, the Turkish legal migrant workers, and the illegal workers, represented by the four friends. In the words of Göktürk, "territorial rights are being negotiated between old and new immigrants" (11). They have not been paid since they began to work and their landlord demands his rent for their overpriced apartment. To force payment of their salary, the friends occupy a piece of land on the construction site. In the meantime, Dudie has become romantically involved with a German woman, Nina, who was previously married to Dudie's racist foreman Hermann and now intends to marry Dudie for money. When 9

"Towards the inside there are no more borders, but to the outside there is the fortress Europe."

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Hermann kills Nina in a rage, the police arrive at the construction site to investigate Hermann for the murder, but realize that illegal workers labor there. A massive chase ensues in which all but Dudie are arrested. Dudie finds Nina's orphaned son Leo and remembers a scam he read about in the newspaper: Asylum seekers enter the apartments of old women who live alone in Berlin with falsified government documents. Dudie and Leo, pretending to be father and son, move in with elderly Frau Dutschke, and a friendship develops among the three. When the neighbor calls the police on the illegal immigrants, Dudie and Leo are arrested. Dudie insists that Leo is not his son, but the officers do not believe him. Leo wants to stay with Dudie and claims that he is his father. Yet, the final shot shows both of them being escorted by the police to an airplane. In a film that thoroughly exaggerates ethnic roles and narrative developments, the construction site establishes a backdrop of realism. Neutral, medium-long shots of the construction site contrast with close-ups and extreme close-ups that exaggerate the physiognomy of the characters. Dudie's arrival in Berlin is marked by a sequence of three establishing shots, each a composition around a symbol for Berlin: first, a shot from above with the Friedrich Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche and Kurfürstendamm·, second, a shot from above with the Fernsehturm on the Alexanderplatz·, and third, a long shot of the construction site looking onto the old Reichstag, a shot that is repeated throughout the film. In quick sequence, we are shown a symbol of the former West, a symbol of the former East, and the construction site as a signifier for Berlin, now the capital of Germany. Göktürk analyzes a Muslim worker's prayer against the backdrop of the Reichstag building as a "subversive perspective on the core of the 'reunified' Republic" (12). As is typical for an immigration comedy, the main character's exploitation serves as backdrop for his comedie and absurd adventures in the face of adversity. The film emphasizes the resistance of the characters while showing the hardship of their lives, their small, run-down apartment, and the two bikes they share to get to work. When they do not get paid, they mark off "their" part of the Potsdamer Platz with police tape. The space appropriated by the asylum seekers becomes the site for an exaggerated performance of foreignness, as they occupy the space in different stages of undress, playing music, dancing wildly, and having a barbecue. When the boss demands access, he is told: "Stop, hier ist die Grenze. Das ist unser Land." ("Stop, this is the border. This is our country.") The four main characters make visible the implicit borders inside Germany and around Europe by highlighting the double meaning of "Land" for "soil" and "country." The appropriation of space on the construction site literalizes the processes of the filmmakers who insert themselves into the discourse around the construction site of Potsdamer Platz. This inscription of multicultural ethnicity, not as victimhood and exploitation in a melodrama, but as appropriators of the land reverses the traditional account of margin and center in Germany as well as the very foundations of

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that discourse. Göktürk sees in the barbecue on the squatted land a concrete reference to the: longstanding controversy about prohibiting barbecues in the neighboring Tiergarten, the park where immigrant families like to hold their picnics, arousing opposition from environmentalists who are concerned about detrimental effects on the lawn as well as conservatives who object to the unruly crowd on the doorstep of the president's residency.

(13) In addition, she sees the music played on the site, which is "scornfully referred to as 'bimbo music' by the boss," as a reference to "the multiculturalist agenda of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt which is also located close to this site and has established itself as a popular venue for 'world music'" (13). Göktürk's concrete references add another layer of analysis to the discursive isolation of Potsdamer Platz in the architectural debates and the implied discursive segregation of ethnic spaces in Berlin. Ich Chef, Du Turnschuh challenges the boundaries between German and non-German, asylum seekers and immigrant workers, boss and laborers, tragedy and comedy, center and margin, not by dissolving differences and hierarchies but by exaggerating and reversing them playfully. In contrast to Die leere Mitte, Ich Chef, Du Turnschuh takes place not only on the Potsdamer Platz, but also in Kreuzberg, relying on the topography between margin and center that characterized earlier Berlin films, such as Redupers and Der Himmel über Berlin. Dudie meets Nina, a white German who is a single mother, and Frau Dutschke, a retired widow, both of whom live in Kreuzberg. Potsdamer Platz is coded as a male public sphere where the image of the German nation is rebuilt and labor hierarchies are negotiated, whereas Kreuzberg is primarily represented through domestic interior scenes. Ich Chef, Du Turnschuh focuses on asylum seekers and the discrimination they experience in Germany, but also creates a connection to those Germans in the margins of German society. Since Kreuzberg has become more closely identified as a "Turkish" neighborhood in the 1980s-1990s, the film reverses assumptions of ethnic coding in center and margin. Thus, while the film relies on the Berlin topography of margin and center, it nevertheless reverses the political signification, and thus ultimately questions the productivity of margin and center as political categories. The relationship between urban margin and center has shifted significantly through the unification of Berlin. Redupers made the Berlin Wall and the margin of West Berlin a productive site of counter culture reflecting feminist aesthetics. Der Himmel über Berlin exoticizes the margin in the figure of Marion, mourns the loss of a center in the disappearance of Potsdamer Platz, and finally resolves the loss in the mythic account of romantic love, which takes place on Potsdamer Platz. The construction of Potsdamer Platz as the political, economic, and urban spatial center of Berlin and therefore Germany has created an empty space that can be filled with images, which are, however,

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always already contextualized by history, as Steyerl demonstrates in Die leere Mitte. Die leere Mitte and Ich Chef, Du Turnschuh are important representations of an historical moment when shifting discourses created a space for minority voices that questioned the conditions of the discourse of national identity. With the completion of Potsdamer Platz, the discourse of the nation and transnational capital has recuperated the formerly empty space. Those who "squatted" in the real and cinematic space have disappeared, and we are left with the cinematic images of an important intervention. Works Cited Alsop, William, Bruce McLean, Jan Stornier. City of Objects: Design on Berlin. Zurich: Artemis, 1992. City of Architecture: Architecture of the City Berlin 1900-2000. Thorsten Scheer, Josef Paul Kleihues and Paul Kahlfeldt, eds.. Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, 2000. Beicken, Peter, Robert Phillip Kölker. "Wings of Desire: Between Heaven and Earth." The Films of Wim Wenders: Cinema as Vision and Desire. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993: 138-160. Berger, Joachim. Berlin: Freiheitlich & Rebellisch. Stadt-Lese-Wander-Buch. Berlin: Goebel, n.d. Bromley, Roger. "Borderline Identities and the Experience of the Stranger." From Alice to Buena Vista. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2001: 71-95. Cook, Roger F. "Angels, Fiction, and History in Berlin: Wings of Desire." The Cinema of Wim Wenders: Image, Narrative, and the Postmodern Condition. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1997: 163-190. Fenner, Angelica. "Turkish Cinema in the New Europe: Visualizing Ethnic Conflict in Sinan Cetin's Berlin in Berlin." Camera Obscura 44 (2000): 104-148. Göktürk, Deniz. "Migration und Kino—Subnationale Mitleidskultur oder transnationale Rollenspiele?" Interkulturelle Literatur in Deutschland. Ein Handbuch. Ed. Carmine Chiellino. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000: 329-347. —. "Strangers in Disguise: Role Play beyond Identity Politics in Anarchic Film Comedy." Forthcoming in New German Critique. Special Issue on "Multicultural Germany: Arts, Media and Performance." Ed. Deniz Göktürk and Barbara Wolbert. Pagenumbers from unpublished manuscript. —. "Turkish Delight—German Fright: Migrant Identities in Transnational Cinema." Transnational Communities—Working Paper Series (Jan. 1999) [An Economic and Social Research Council Programme at the University of Oxford.] —. "Verstöße gegen das Reinheitsgebot: Migrantenkino zwischen wehleidiger Pflichtübung und wechselseitigem Grenzverkehr." Multikulturalismus und

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Populärkultur. Ed. Ruth Mayer and Mark Terkissidis. St. Andrä/Wördern: Hannibal Verlag, 1998: 99-114. hooks, bell. "Representing Whiteness, Seeing Wings of Desire." Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics. Boston: South End Press, 1990: 165171. Kaak, Heinrich. Kreuzberg. Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1988. Kutlucan, Hussi. Ich Chef, Du Turnschuh. Germany, 1998. Lampugnani, Vittorio Magnago and Romana Schneider. Eds. Ein Stück Großstadt als Experiment: Planungen am Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje, 1994. Majer O'Sickey, Ingeborg. "Cinematic Ciphers, Potsdamer Platz, Berlin." German Politics and Society 61,4 (Winter 2001): 65-87. Mayne, Judith. "Screen Tests." The Woman at the Keyhole: Feminism and Women's Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990: 49-86. McArthur, Colin. "Chinese Boxes and Russian Dolls: Tracking the Elusive Cinematic City." The Cinematic City. Ed. David B. Clarke. London: Routledge, 1997: 19-45. Rich, Ruby B. "She Says, He Says: The Power of the Narrator in Modernist Film Politics." ChickFlicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement. Durham: Duke UP, 1998: 238-252. Ruttmann, Walter. Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt. Germany, 1927. Sanders, Heike. Die allseitig reduzierte Persönlichkeit—Redupers. West Germany, 1987. Schadt, Thomas. Berlin Symphony (Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt). Germany, 2002. Steyerl, Hito. Die leere Mitte. Germany, 1998. Strom, Elizabeth A. Building the New Berlin: The Politics of Urban Development in Germany's Capital City. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2001.

Wenders, Wim. Der Himmel über Berlin ( Wings of Desire) West Germany, 1987. Wenders, Wim and Peter Handke. Der Himmel über Berlin: Ein Filmbuch. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987.

ERIC JAROSINSKI

University of Wisconsin

Building on a Metaphor: Democracy, Transparency and the Berlin Reichstag At the outset of his most influential essay, Siegfried Kracauer, an observant walker and sensitive reader of Berlin's streets, writes in 1927, "Der Ort, den eine Epoche im Geschichtsprozeß einnimmt, ist aus der Analyse ihrer unscheinbaren Oberflächenäußerungen schlagender zu bestimmen als aus den Urteilen der Epoche über sich selbst" (57).1 Often taken as Kracauer's epistomological-methodological credo, the challenge and urgent task he assigns to cultural criticism in "Das Ornament der Masse" ("The Mass Ornament") is to analyze what a culture is saying about its position in history by listening to that which is not being said and, in the words of his friend Walter Benjamin, to read that which has never been written. But how to accomplish what could easily be thought of as an impossible task? Kracauer never spells this out directly, but one can follow him in his many essays on Weimar-era Berlin architecture and popular culture as he slowly, carefully, and at times mournfully scrutinizes what he terms "the surface," the minute crystallization of an age's unconscious assumptions and desires. Walking through the streets of Berlin today, or rather, what the city's glossy marketing campaign would now have us know as the "New Berlin" (one of at least four that have existed in the last century), one cannot help but feel Kracauer's haunting presence. In the years following the fall of the Wall, the city has proudly proclaimed itself "Europe's largest construction site," a place capitalizing on, and at times suffering from, the trope of Berlin as a lively metropolis constantly im Werden (becoming).2 Due to a number of financial crises, the city was forced to declare bankruptcy in late 2002, yet it continues to polish its new lustrous glass and steel image the best it can. Throughout the last decade, however, money posed much less of a problem. Massive government subsidies and the hefty bank accounts of international corporate headquarters alike led to the construction of building after building serving the creation of a new urban identity and a language that would seek to 1

2

"The position that an epoch occupies in the historical process can be determined more strikingly from an analysis of its inconspicuous surface-level expressions than from that epoch's judgment of itself." Kracauer, The Mass Ornament. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

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proclaim Berlin as the new, the open, the democratic, and the transparent— especially in its highly metaphorical government architecture. Against these plate glass walls and windows is perhaps where Kracauer's critical call casts its longest shadows, yet with quite new inflections. Transparenz has become one of the most dominant metaphors in attempts to confront the past and to thematize explicitly the nation's democratic institutions in the emerging image of a New Berlin. This taste for see-through facades builds on a tradition of demure, glass government architecture established in Bonn along with a use of the term "transparency" that has made it, as one critic has recently commented, "the most revered word in western Germany" in the postwar era (Kramer 37). In terms of architectural expression, this is indeed a preoccupation with surface, exactly where Kracauer would have critical readers of an age's self-representation train their eye. Yet, far from inconspicuous, structures such as Berlin's new Reichstag cupola are meant as objects of display and spectacle, enacting what some have called a new "Sehnsucht nach Symbolen" (longing for symbols) and a sense of pathos previously taboo in Bonn's architecture of self-effacement (Wefing 1). The city's new representative architecture is to serve as a clear statement of Germany's commitment to openness, comprehensibility, and public participation in the age of the Berlin Republic. In short, these structures articulate what Kracauer refers to in the citation above as the "epoch's judgment of itself," leaving us not so much to ask about the accuracy of such assessments as to scrutinize the desires and promises built into their staging. My examination here will ask why transparency has attained such broad appeal in the contemporary branding of Berlin and what might be at stake— perhaps even in peril—in embracing it so enthusiastically, no matter how noble the intentions of its advocates. In approaching this question the essay draws largely on Walter Benjamin's analyses of urban experience and representation in Einbahnstraße (One-way Street). In this and other works he outlines a changing structure of perception in which a distracted, self-alienated audience seeks a vision of a permanent, comprehensible, transparent whole. By insisting that the reader develop a keen awareness of mediation, Benjamin challenges us to pay as much attention to the way in which representation occurs, that is, to language and rhetorical framing strategies, as to the object of representation itself. Though constructed several decades after Einbahnstraße"s first publication, the see-through government architecture of today's Berlin deserves just such scrutiny. In these buildings' airy, uplifting qualities, they seek to deny their own materiality in many ways by offering supposedly unmediated access to truth, a carefully calculated political promise that is usually recognized as such, yet celebrated nonetheless. The discussion further examines the importance of mediation in representation in then turning to Theodor W. Adorno's Minima Moralia, in which Adomo locates the greatest hope for insight in the recognition of its own limitations and the openness to an understanding still to come. Within "das

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beschädigte Leben" (damaged life) the greatest knowledge available is that of one's own complicity with a system that is structured to deny experience, stunt critical capacities, and prohibit change. In upholding the principle of "nonidentity," the fundamental disjunction between concepts and objects, Adorno bases his mode of negative and immanent critique on the task of outlining the cracks and fissures within what he sometimes refers to as the "Zellophan-Modeme" (cellophane-modernity), the false appearance of cohesion and clarity within a society characterized by injustice and reified relations. For Adorno, modernity's "glasklare Ordnung" (crystal-clear sense of order) offers a seductive promise of insight that is its most nefarious lie. The task of critical thought is then to become estranged from itself through a process of negative thinking in order to question the authenticity of that which might seem the most natural. This requires a departure from the belief that insight is to be found in the absence of mediation—the truth claim of the transparent—but rather in an examination of mediation itself. In its place, Adorno offers us a model of perception and reflection that departs from a valorization of immediacy in favor of a radical reassessment of the incomprehensible. The essay concludes by examining transparency as an example of what Paul de Man and others have called "aesthetic ideology," the attempt to translate a linguistic or aesthetic construct into an empirical reality or political program. While this may at times seem a worthy, even democratic effort—and certainly much can be said about the good intentions of those who have championed democratic transparency in particular—the attempt also comes with several problems. Foremost among them are a naive sense of the relation between intention and representation, an oversimplified understanding of the act of reading, a conception of change that may in fact be more representative of the status quo, and the rise of abstract notions of social or political transformation that are in danger of overlooking the real work required to achieve a liberation that is more than merely symbolic. As Michael Z. Wise has written of glass in his study of New Berlin architecture, "German politicians have often showed a tendency to take the symbol for the reality itself' (19). My study seeks to put such an equation into question, asking to what degree the translation of an aesthetic construct such as the transparent into the language of the political might well work against the democratic ideals such an attempt ostensibly seeks to embody. While much of the current discourse surrounding glass architecture sees it as a deliberate rejection of the Third Reich's taste for monumentality and as the endorsement of the new, the open, and the participatory, it is important to remember at the outset that this is a design vocabulary with a complex and contradictory history. Simply looking at its role in state architecture in the last century, we see that glass design and its attendant metaphors have played widely varying roles in the rhetoric of numerous ideological positions, not all of them democratic. While the current discourse takes its cue from such

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Modernist visionaries as Bruno Taut, Paul Scheerbart, and Mies van der Rohe, who saw glass architecture bringing about a radically democratic society, the Russian novelist Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel We (1920-21), for example, paints quite a different picture. The work offers a distopian vision of the twenty-ninth century city-state of One State, an oppressive society whose conformity is enforced by means of the "immovable and everlasting glass" used in the construction of all of its see-through buildings (15). Their walls "seem to have been fashioned out of bright air," placing a crushing weight on attempts at originality or critical thought, a satirical critique aimed as much at Stalinism as Western middle-class respectability and the conformist technological apparatus of Fordism and Taylorism (15). In a society structured around "all sky-blue crystal regularity," the individual's only moments of privacy come in the few hours on Sex Day when one is allowed to lower the blinds in order to facilitate intercourse with one's assigned partner (18). Such tyrannical visions for glass would not simply remain fictional, however, as the state architecture of Italian fascism would demonstrate shortly after the publication of Zamyatin's novel. Designed by Giuseppe Terragni, the Casa del Fascio, the party's provincial headquarters in Cuomo, was built between 1933-1936 to embody "Musslini's concept that 'Fascism is a house of glass into which all can look'" (Etlin 439). Likewise, Germany's National Socialists continued to employ glass and steel Bauhaus design elements in factories and other utilitarian structures and made political use of the transparency metaphor, though the regime is mainly known for Albert Speer's neoclassical granite monumentalism. In numerous architectural and propaganda texts of the period, Nazi propagandists often contrasted visions of the darkness and incomprehensibility of Weimar-era Berlin with the bright, clear, orderly and understandable atmosphere of Hitler's "New Berlin." As Joseph Goebbels writes in 1934 in Das erwachende Berlin (The Awakening Berlin), for example: "Eine Nüchternheit ohnegleichen macht die Atmosphäre der Reichshauptstadt klar und durchsichtig wie Glas. Hier gibt es keine Linien, die ineinander verschwimmen und Farbe statt Umriß geben; hier sind die Konturen scharf und deutlich gezeichnet und trennen unbarmherzig voneinander, was nicht zueinander gehört" (12).3 Foucault would of course later examine the coercive potential of the transparent, most explicitly in Discipline and Punish, in which he examines the construction of a societal panopticon. In it a "transparency" is brought about that is at once a diffuse and invisible presence, yet also a highly disciplinary network of power, which "must act while concealing itself beneath the gentle form of nature" (106). Finally, in our own time, the sociologist Richard Sennett has pointed to the way in which the widespread use of glass in the urban environment has led to 3

"An incomparable sobriety renders the atmosphere of the Reich's capital as clear and transparent as glass. Here there are no lines that blend into each other and yield color instead of outline; here the contours are drawn sharp and distinctly, unmercifully separating that which does not belong together."

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greater social separation than communal participation. "Though technology has heightened visibility through plate glass, the world made visible through this window has been devalued in its reality," he argues. "[S]ight is more routinely isolated from sound, and touch from other human beings" (109). These examples indicate that the transparent is by no means inherently democratic, as much of its current usage in Berlin seeks to imply. At the same time, they also fail to implicate the metaphor and design vocabulary as necessarily harmful or fascist, however defined. Rather, they point to the transparency metaphor as an element of aesthetic design's figurative language that may at once help or hinder a political program, but can never be entirely subsumed by it. As Kracauer writes of Berlin's Lindenpassage in the late 1920's and the challenge with which its see-through facade confronts its readers: "Alle Gegenstände sind mit Stummheit geschlagen. Scheu drängten sie sich hinter der leeren Architektur zusammen, die sich einstweilen völlig neutral verhält und später einmal wer weiß was ausbrüten wird—vielleicht den Faschismus oder auch gar nichts. Was sollte noch eine Passage in einer Gesellschaft, die selber nur eine Passage ist?" (265). 4 Kracauer's commentary on the readiness with which the transparent lends itself to widely divergent inscriptions brings questions of reading to the fore, challenging critics to explore the rhetoric accompanying the architecture and to be wary of the political potential of the aesthetic. Today the term "transparency" circulates widely among a number of divergent discourses, frequently carrying connotations of comprehensibility, progressive modernity, high technology, and popular participation. In architecture, a German glass company equates its see-through materials with "innovative thinking, solid knowledge of materials, and exact statistical calculation" (Adco-Mueller). In other fields of design as well, visually transparent or translucent glass and plastic products have become a major trend, ranging from crystalline house wares to see-through computers and clothing. In the business world, numerous German investment banks declare transparency a "commandment," or as one mortgage company puts it in a print ad featuring the see-through wing of a dragon fly, "ein Wert, auf den Sie bauen können" (Bayerische Hausbau). 5 Such ethical connotations of "transparency" are the hallmark of its (both liberal and conservative) political mobilization, for example in the growing expectations of (and increasing disappointments in) the scandal-free integrity of the paradigmatic Gläserner Abgeordnete (parliamentarian of glass) and in the rhetoric of the German branch of Transparency International, a recently founded citizens' action group dedicated to exposing government corruption. It has issued a "Berlin Declaration of 4

5

"All the objects have been struck dumb. They huddle timidly behind the empty architecture, which, for the time being, acts completely neutral but may later spawn who knows what perhaps fascism, or perhaps nothing at all. What would be the point of an arcade in a society that is itself only a passageway?" Kracauer, The Mass Ornament 342. "A value you can build on."

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Transparency for Public Administration," stating in part: "Transparenz der öffentlichen Verwaltung ist eine der Grundlagen jeder demokratischen Gesellschaft. Politik und ihre Umsetzung durch die Verwaltung müssen transparent und nachvollziehbar sein, anders lässt sich demokratische Kontrolle nicht ausüben [...]" (Transparency International Germany).6 Institutionalized dictionary definitions share these connotations, defining Transparenz as "die Durchschaubarkeit, das Erkennen-, Nachvollziehenkönnen."7 In such articulations the concept demonstrates a conflation of seeing with understanding and, much to the reformers' dismay, has proved itself highly useful in political discourse, with its ideological saturation extending into the Duden's own sample sentences, this one from the Neue Kronen Zeitung in 1984: "Die Transparenz ist das Mittel, um aus einer Scheindemokratie eine echte Demokratie zu gestalten."8 Transparency is thus a supposedly natural guarantor of authenticity, yet it is also a device, a technique, even a patented method—an instrumentalized and mediated construction of the supposedly unmediated. Considering this paradox, the concept may itself be in need of some heightened "transparency." Planners and patrons of the new Reichstag cupola and the Christian Democratic Union's (CDU) Bundesgeschäftsstelle (Federal Party Headquarters), two new government-related structures in Berlin that perhaps make the most use of the political transparency metaphor, however, do not seem greatly troubled by any potential philosophical contradictions. Given the suspicion with which German reunification has been observed outside of its borders, they are much more concerned with distancing their designs from gestures of Wilhelminian or Nazi monumentality. As a result, an ideological ontology of building materials has emerged, with glass praised as the antithesis to the heavy granite thought to typify past edifices of the imperial or fascist state. At the same time, however, the ubiquity of the Gewächshaus-Look ("greenhouse-look") throughout Berlin has given rise to something of an Architekturstreit, an impassioned (and perhaps characteristically German) fight among planners between a taste for stone facades, thought to be in keeping with local traditions, and the resurgence of glass, a material prized for newly increased energy-efficiency, durability, and quite simply, decorative cachet. Perched atop the battle scarred nineteenth century Reichstag , Sir Norman Foster's crystalline cupola has in many ways successfully bridged this gap between past and present, finding broad acceptance in widely divergent camps. It was unveiled with great acclaim in spring 1999 and has quickly become the leading symbol of the New Berlin and a readily marketable logo for 6

7 8

"The transparency of public administration is one of the foundational elements of any democratic society. Politics and its administrative enactment must be transparent and understandable, otherwise no democratic control can be exercised." "The quality of being see-though, recognizable and comprehensible." "Transparency is the means by which a surface-level democracy can be changed into a real one."

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democracy, gracing everything from campaign posters and beer advertisements to tourist souvenir coffee cups and the covers of guidebooks. For Foster, the message he hopes the transparency of the structure to send is quite clear: "Seht her, der Deutsche Bundestag, das Parlament eines nun durch und durch demokratisch verfassten Gemeinwesens, zieht in den Reichstag ein, und dieser verkörpert in seiner Architektur die neue Zeit" (132). 9 The cupola is indeed impressive, drawing thousands of visitors daily to walk up its spirals for a wonderful view of the Berlin skyline or for lunch in its terrace restaurant. Designed to maximize energy efficiency, the structure also boasts outstanding green credentials, a must in Berlin's highly politicized architectural landscape. Yet many also make the disappointing discovery that while they do indeed stand high above the plenary chamber of the German parliament, there is little they can actually see inside. This is due in part to filters added for the benefit of television cameras, which had trouble with the variations in natural lighting in broadcasting from the parliament. Any compromise in terms of clarity, however, does not seem to have tarnished the luster with which policymakers invoke the see-through cupola as an emblem of high ideals. Gerhard Schröder, who inherited the renovated Reichstag from plans drawn up under Helmut Kohl, has been quick to make it his own. Soon after the cupola was opened to the public, he declared it emblematic of Germany's "neue Mitte" (new center) and a renewed commitment to openness and democracy, promising citizens in Fall 1998 that in this new seat of government "findet [der Diskurs] nicht hinter den verschlossenen Türen der Gremienvorstände statt." 10 For him, Schröder continued, the transparency of the new cupola is not merely a "hübsches architektonisches Detail," but rather "ein Symbol fur neue Offenheit und fur demokratische Renovierung dieses so sehr geschichtsbeladenen Gebäude" as well as for "die moderne Kommunikation einer staatsbürgerlichen Öffentlichkeit" ("Regierungserklärung von Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder vom 10. November 1998 vor dem Deutschen Bundestag"). 11 How exactly this symbol is to translate into reality, or what the establishment of a new form of political communication might imply, are questions the Chancellor would, quite literally, leave open to speculation. Michael Cullen, an architectural historian who served on the jury of the design competition for the renovated Reichstag, is a strong supporter of the building's facelift, yet is also quite aware of some of the problems one might well find with such a political aesthetic. He refers to the automatic equation of glass with democracy as a "Trugschluss" (false conclusion): "Zu wenig Glas ist nicht automatisch 9 10 11

"Look here, the German Bundestag, the parliament of a thoroughly democratic society is moving into the Reichstag, a building whose architecture embodies our new age." "Discussions do not take place here behind committee chairs' closed doors." The transparent cupola is not merely an "attractive architectural detail," but rather "a symbol for a new openness and the democratic renovation of this heavily historically burdened building" as well as for "the modern communication of a participatory public discussion."

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demokratiefeindlich, und viel zu viel Glas ist keine Garantie für inhaltliche Transparenz," he comments. "Freilich: Glas ist auch nicht schädlich für die Demokratie—frei nach dem Bonmot über das Beten—es hilft nicht immer, aber schaden tut es auch nicht" (Blickpunkt).12 Despite any doubts, even many of Schroder's political opponents share his belief in the political capital to be gained in the transparent. When the CDU officially unveiled the glazed facade of its new administrative offices in Fall 2000, the tone of an open, accountable, and accessible government was remarkably similar.. Among others, then mayor Eberhard Diepgen (CDU) spoke of the building standing for the "Transparenz und Offenheit für unsere Gesellschaft," while also confiding in a reporter that the building with its markedly triangular shape reminded him of a battle ship (Richter 12).13 Both figures were perhaps equally fitting for the party at the time, embattled as it was by the controversy about "schwarze Kassen" ("black" or illegal bank accounts) which, it had recently become known, the Kohl administration had used to finance past election campaigns. Be that as it may, the building's airy facades also simply fit into what had become a standard show of political honesty and accessibility, what has been called a "politically correct architecture" that is to symbolize concepts never as clearly defined as they are staged. Thus, it was almost a matter of course that the party's convention declaration that the German citizen is someone who "wünscht sich einen schnellen, transparenten, flexiblen und entscheidungsstarken Staat" should be embodied in the crystalline form of its new headquarters in Tiergarten ("Starke Bürger, Starker Staat").14 Such rhetorical invocations of the transparent have not been without their critics, who assail the naiveté of the symbolism. "Dass man auf Transparenz als Tugend stehen muss, ist Verlegenheit," writes one Berlin architecture critic. "Transparent aber kann die Politik ohnehin nur für diejenigen sein, die sie verstehen wollen. Und das sind verzweifelt wenige. Längst nicht alle Politiker gehören dazu" (Koch 18).15 Similarly, another comments: "Die inszenierte Nähe von Regierenden und Regierten bleibt ein leeres Versprechen [...] Beide Welten bleiben wie ehedem sorgsam getrennt, trotz dem Transparenz verheissenden neuen Wahrzeichen Berlins" (Gujer 7).16 Finally, during the fall 2002 parliamentary elections, Lucky Strikes cigarettes offered its own 12

13 14 15

16

"Too little glass is not automatically anti-democratic, and far too much glass is no guarantee for any substantive transparency. Admittedly, glass also is not harmful to democracy—just as in that bon mot about praying—it doesn't always help, but it doesn't hurt either." "Transparency and openness for our society." The German citizen "desires a quick, transparent, flexible, and decisive state." "It is an embarrassment that transparency is supposed to be considered a virtue." "Politics can only be transparent for those who want to understand it. And there are desperately few people like that. Not even all politicians by far." "The staged intimacy between the governing and the governed remains an empty promise [...] Both worlds remain, as always, carefully separated, despite Berlin's new emblem and its promises of transparency."

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commentary to the numerous posters picturing smiling Chancellor candidates Schröder and Stoiber in front of the Reichstag cupola. Above a photo of a cellophane cigarette pack wrapper, the ads posted all around Berlin mused "Wenn Politik doch auch so leicht zu durchschauen wäre." 17 Ultimately, it would seem, anyone possessing a healthy sense of cynicism would be suspect of the idea that political decision-making no longer takes place in back rooms, but rather in the full view of a concerned and actively involved public. As the critic Buchanen writes of the Reichstag, for instance: Insgesamt ist allerdings schwer vorauszusagen, welche bestimmte Semantik der vielfaltigen Symbolsprache des Bauwerks in Zukunft zugeschrieben wird. Denn eine Symbolsprache kann mehrdeutig sein und ist dem historischen Wandel unterworfen. Es muss sich im Einzelnen noch erweisen, ob die beim Reichstag intendierte Symbolik überzeugen kann und von der Öffentlichkeit auch angenommen wird." (170)"

Indeed, evidence is easily found for the possible ambivalence Buchanen detects in this glazed aesthetic (while some visitors to the cupola feel welcomed into the Parliament's discussions, he writes, others may perceive a "glass ceiling" keeping them from any true involvement). Just blocks from the Reichstag in the restored glitz and glamour of Berlin's Friedrichstraße, a new glass and steel "Lifestyle Club" is going up, design elements chosen by the architect to accentuate its "exclusivity" (Aulich 29). Still, these doubts do not appear to have diminished the appeal of the "transparent," as it speaks to what can only be considered a deep-seated desire for understanding, honesty, and participation. The problem, of course, is how to define such a term and decide what it truly means to be open and democratic. Though it may seem an unlikely source, no less than the European Central Bank has confronted this question perhaps most bluntly, concluding in a working paper: "The term 'transparency' as commonly used is vague and often contradictory" (Winkler 26). While used as a "catch-all phrase" for political accountability and forthrightness, values no one can openly disparage, the editor laments that the concept is indeed far more complicated: "Transparency means different things to different people [...] Transparency is ultimately about understanding and it has to do with language" (Winkler 26). It is indeed this role of language and communication, central to any notion of transparency be it in Berlin or elsewhere, that has led to its most extensive philosophical critique, perhaps nowhere more vehemently and equally enigmatically than in Walter Benjamin's Einbahnstraße (1928). Written at a time when glass architecture was truly coming into its own, the text puts into question the very mechanics of spectatorship (shop window, advertising 17 18

"If only politics were also so easy to see through." "In sum, it is quite difficult to predict what meaning will be ascribed to the diverse symbolic language of the building in the future. The language of symbols can be ambiguous and is subject to historical change. It still has to be seen in detail if the intended meaning of the Reichstag's symbols can be found convincing and accepted by the public."

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poster, cinema), which would emerge as characteristic of modern and postmodern urban visual culture. Here the reader's navigational skills are tested, forcing the wanderer in his passages constantly to undergo a process of confusion, criticism, and adjustment. Throughout the text Benjamin continually undercuts notions of the autonomous validity of factual observation, as viewing is set forth as a necessary first step in gaining critical insight, but is not posited as its simultaneous fulfillment. In so doing, the text works at a formal and thematic level against the notion of transparency. It offers no overview of its rambling route from "Tankstelle" ("Filling Station") "zum Planetarium" ("To the Planetarium"). Instead, the reader is to navigate in the folds of a montage, a structure inviting, perhaps even necessitating, a new form of reading and recognition of the complexity and at times duplicity of language and mimetic representation. Any whole the work might represent is only that created by the labors of the reader. Benjamin addresses transparency already at the outset of Einbahnstraße, positioning it as a highly determined and politically opportunistic maneuver masquerading as the natural. The section "Tankstelle" begins: "Die Konstruktion des Lebens liegt im Augenblick weit mehr in der Gewalt von Fakten als von Überzeugungen. Und zwar von solchen Fakten, wie sie zur Grundlage von Überzeugungen fast noch nie und nirgends geworden sind" (7).19 Crucial to this passage are the notions of power, convictions, and seeing within the context of life as a construction, an unnatural semblance of the natural. The conflation of the two ideas under the concept "Augenblick," which can be interpreted as the "present" as well as the literalized "gaze," postulates a temporal, fleeting present that is defined by the act of seeing. Regulating this definition are what are taken to be facts, the observable, which are set in opposition to convictions. The latter begin with seeing, zeugen in the sense of "witnessing," but then proceed über or beyond themselves, beyond sensory perception, to become convictions. The facts that currently hold sway are unlikely ever to spawn convictions, however. They are alienated from zeugen in the sense of reproduction. Hence, the introductory section continues, "Unter diesen Umständen kann wahre literarische Aktivität nicht beanspruchen, in literarischem Rahmen sich abzuspielen—vielmehr ist das der übliche Ausdruck ihrer Unfruchtbarkeit" (7).20 That which is considered "literarische Aktivität" (literary activity) is not what it may want or at least pretend to be. The conjecture of "wahre" (true or authentic) writing implies the existence of the false. Its product, der "übliche Ausdruck" (the standard expression), that transparency which requires no elaboration, is only a mundane reflection of its own alienation. As such, it is not to be trusted for 19

20

"The construction of life is at present in the power far more of facts than of convictions, and of such facts as have scarcely ever become the basis of convictions." Benjamin, Selected Writings 444. "Under these circumstances, true literary activity cannot aspire to take place within a literary framework; this is, rather, the habitual expression of its sterility" (444). .

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insight. Vital, effectual writing demands a change of scene, a departure from the "Rahmen" (frame) that is the expression and condition of its sterility. This passage is, in effect, Benjamin's critique of Weimar-era Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) and its belief in redemption through a sober unveiling of social realities in the form of reportage and in progressive transformation through a highly technologized rationality. Yet it applies equally well to the transparency of structures such as the Reichstag cupola. Within its see-through spirals, we are witness to what is in essence a highly technologized frame, a platform offering Einblicke-Ausblicke (insightsoutlooks), the title of the tourist pamphlet given to the cupola's visitors. Though one might be tempted to revel in the structure's heights, Benjamin would have us search for its shadows, the material and mythical desires encoded within the supposed absence of mediation. As the section continues, the shift Benjamin seeks to set in motion implies a movement away from the consumption and representation of transparent "facts" to an active examination and illumination of the opaque. In contrast to the sterility of the factual, this is a mode of criticism that depends on change, rebirth, and generation, as it is still to come. As the passage continues, "Die bedeutende literarische Wirksamkeit kann nur in strengem Wechsel von Tun und Schreiben zustande kommen." 21 This is an extremely active, interventionist mode of critique (bedeutend as opposed to bedeutungsvoll or von Bedeutung) that calls for a radical rethinking of both praxis and writing, a streng[er] Wechsel, or rigorous reversal, fluctuation, or change von Tun und Schreiben (between action and writing). At the same time, it is an appeal for a Wechsel of the two in the sense of "exchange" or "interplay" with each informing the other in the conception ("das zustande Kommen") of a new way of reading and writing. What the child of this union might be is not clearly identified, however, as the potential Wirksamkeit (effectiveness) is located in the kinetic tension of the Wechsel itself. The task of this new activity, reading and writing as continually engaging, always incomplete praxis, is to unsettle the disarming ideology of transparency, a view that insists on fixed correspondences between objects and representations, a connection ( Verbindung) rather than an alternation between action and writing. Looking beyond the objective reportage of the factual, "sie muß die unscheinbaren Formen, die ihrem Einfluß in tätigen Gemeinschaften besser entsprechen als die anspruchsvolle universale Geste des Buches in Flugblättern, Broschüren, Zeitschriftenartikeln und Plakaten ausbilden."22 Much as the reader labors to comprehend the contorted, performative syntax of this sentence—in which the verbs ausbilden and entsprechen appear in 21 22

"Significant literary effectiveness can come into being only in a strict alternation between action and writing..." (444). "It must nurture the inconspicuous forms that fit its influence in active communities better than does the pretentious, universal gesture of the book - in leaflets, brochures, articles, and placards" (444).

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unorthodox, unexpected positions—the reader of die unscheinbaren Formen (inconspicuous forms) in a larger societal context must also engage in an act of interpretation and elaboration. If one then seeks to translate this "Tun" into "Schreiben," an equally contingent representational strategy is required to capture language in motion, that of the ephemeral posters, pamphlets and newspaper articles, which can offer only fleeting, fragmentary perspectives. "Nur diese prompte Sprache zeigt sich dem Augenblick wirkend gewachsen," Benjamin writes, setting their language in opposition to the "universal" of the serious, high-brow book, with its pretensions of imparting definitive, transparent, well-ordered insight (8).23 Using the language "of the moment" is the only way to make it readable, to articulate the historical specificity which is the blurred snapshot of language in motion. In Minima Moralia Adorno provides the outlines of what a non-mimetic philosophical critique might look like through a collection of Denkbilder (thought images), in whose unfolding truth is not revealed but only hinted at through his critique of untruth. In the work's very title, an inversion of Aristotle's Magna Moralia, Adorno plots a new course for philosophy. This means the emergence of thought not easily simplified, passively received, or prone to paraphrase. With its content fully linked to its ideas, it is inscribed in a performative, figurative language, whose metaphors enact the nuanced and contradictory relation between concepts, and objects, the universal and the particular. Further, Adorno's paratactic style refuses conceptual hierarchy and places ideas within constellations and force fields that highlight tensions and contradictions instead of smoothing them out. The work of such thought is the critical disruption of "transparent" truths. An important aspect of Adomo's attack on "transparency" is his critique of immediacy in both perception and representation. That which readily presents itself as the authentic, the self-evident, or the common-sensical is for Adorno that which is in need of greatest mediation in order to arrive at its truth content. In response to those who insist on stable, immediate modes of thought and communication, Adorno writes in the section "Lücken" (Gaps): Erkannt wird vielmehr in einem Geflecht von Vorurteilen, Anschauungen, Innervationen, Selbstkorrekturen, Vorausnahmen und Übertreibungen, kurz in der dichten, fundierten, aber 24

keineswegs an allen Stellen transparenten Erfahrung" (100).

It is only in deferral, through distance and mediation, that the work of critical thought—the weaving and unraveling of contradictions—can take place. This necessitates the thinking subject to remain "drei Schritte vom Leibe" (at a

23 24

"Only this prompt language shows itself actively equal to the moment" (444). "Rather, knowledge comes to us through a network of prejudices, opinions, innervations, self-corrections, presuppositions and exaggerations, in short through the dense, firmly founded but by no means uniformly transparent medium of experience." Adorno, Minima Moralia. 1974. 80.

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distance), to estrange oneself in order not to succumb to the false presence of transparent truths. Adorno challenges subjective reason to take on a negative "Monogram" that denies self-identity and recognizes that "Wahr sind nur die Gedanken, die sich selber nicht verstehen" (254).2:> Such thinking can only be communicated through an exploration of opacity, a "zweite Lese" (second harvest or second reading) available only to those readers who wait for the incomprehensible to bear fruit and labor for its harvest. As Adorno writes, this explains the critical afterlife of a text: "Durchsichtigkeit, Einfachheit eines Textes steht in keinem geraden Verhältnis dazu, ob er in die Überleiferung eingeht. Das Verschlossene, stets erneute Interpretation Begehrende mag eben die Autorität abgeben, die sei's einen Satz, sei's ein Werk den Nachlebenden zueignet" (142). 26 Attempts at Sachlichkeit or "matter-of-factness," he argues, come at the expense of both matter and fact. For Adorno this point is critical, because the language of a text is inseparable from its engagement with concepts and materiality, making the stakes high for the use and abuse of language. "Was an Worten und Sprachformen von Gebrauch verdarben ward," he writes, "gelangt beschädigt in die zurückgezogene Werkstatt. Dort aber lassen sich die geschichtlichen Schäden nicht reparieren. Geschichte tangiert die Sprache nicht nur, sondern ereignet sich mitten in ihr" (293). 27 Finally, in the section headed "Hinter den Spiegel" (literally, "Behind the Mirror," but translated in the English edition as "Memento"), Adorno takes us to the far side of mimetic perception and reflection, offering what might be a new way of thinking "transparency." He describes illuminating writing not in terms of its clarity, but rather its porous nature. Inscription that entangles language, concepts, and arguments, that binds them to their object, is that which offers the hope of communication of something beyond banal, affirmative reflection. He writes: Anständig gearbeitete Texte sind wie Spinnweben: dicht, konzentrisch, transparent, wohlgefügt und befestigt. Sie ziehen alles in sich hinein, was da kreucht und fleucht. 28

Metaphern, die flüchtig sie durcheilen, werden ihnen zur naturhaften Beute."(108)

Here the "transparent" is a figure of mediation, rather than its denial. It does not deny its material existence, but insists upon it, sucking in matter with a

25 26

27

28

"True thoughts are those alone which do not understand themselves" (192). "The transparency and simplicity of a text bears no direct relation to its capacity to enter tradition. It may be its very impenetrability, demanding constantly renewed interpretation, that confers on a sentence or a work the authority which dedicates it to posterity" (111). "Words and phrases spoilt by use do not reach the secluded workshop intact. And the historical damage cannot be repaired there. History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it" (219). "Properly written texts are like spiders' webs: tight, concentric, transparent, well-spun and firm. They draw into themselves all the creatures of the air. Metaphors flitting hastily through them become their nourishing prey" (87).

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magnetic, predatory force. In so doing, the transparent web clings to its object, winding it in its folds, and offering up a faint illumination: "Er bewährt seine Beziehung zum Objekt, sobald andere Objekte sich ankristallisieren. Im Licht, das er auf seinen bestimmten Gegenstand richtet, beginnen andere zu funkeln" (108). 29 With the possibility for insight lodged in the tangles of a web between gaps in concepts and objects, Adomo's text conveys a fragile hope and an urgent demand. Readers must proceed slowly, dialectically, but must also act quickly, before illumination falls prey to the spider minding its traps, the tangled condition of its own possibility. The mode of reading Adorno posits here finds its antipode in the promise of redemption encoded in Berlin's glass government architecture. Applying his critique of transparency to structures such as the Reichstag cupola would have us examine its limitations as much as its promises, its materiality as much as its nearly unearthly defiance of the borders between inside and outside, presence and absence. The visitor to the Reichstag can read in the Bundestag's official tourist guide to the building, for instance, that the introduction of light and glass into the structure "verleihen dem ganzen Haus trotz seiner massiven historischen Formen ein leichtes, oft silbriges Flair;" the cupola an apparation of "ein leichtes und luftiges Rund, wie eine schwebende Raumhülle" (Kaiser, 4, 24).30 As the weight of the building dissolves in these depictions, so too does its historical specificity. Politicians and designers alike have been careful to insist on the renovated Reichstag's historical consciousness, demonstrated most prominently in the graffiti left by conquering Russian soldiers in 1945 found scrawled on interior walls that is now carefully preserved and displayed. Numerous depictions of the building's ethereal aura, however, speak against the commitment to historical gravitas. In reading such descriptions, one should of course remember that this is an extremely heavy, quite expensive, and highly engineered mass of air, one that in fact closes its doors for two weeks every year for the difficult task of scouring away numerous layers of accumulated dust and debris. It is also one that can only be entered after having passed through extensive security screening, as all purses and bag packs are carefully x-rayed before admittance. Outside a new glass shopping arcade in nearby Friedrichstraße, lunch hour strollers were given a vivid reminder of the materiality of glass in late 1998 when two large sheets popped out of their frames and shattered on the sidewalk. Officials said it was a miracle no one was seriously injured. The architectural critic Raoul Eshelmann has recently devised what seems the most compelling term for an architecture such as that of the cupola and taking shape elsewhere in many quarters Berlin: "performatism." He defines as the aesthetic experience of transcendency, an effect created largely by the 29 30

"It proves its relation to the object as soon as other objects crystallize around it. In the light that it casts on its chosen substance, others begin to glow" (87). They "lend the entire building, despite its massive historical forms, a light, often silver flair"; "a light and airy circle, like a floating hollow of space."

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heavy use of glass to suggest movement and dematerialization. "The performatist narrative doesn't just depic acts of transcendence, it confronts us with an incredible, aesthetically mediated construct which we are challenged to accept as truth. In short, we are made to experience belief as an aesthetic fact" (Eshelmann). In this way, the experience of transparency becomes more a structure of belief than one of knowledge: visitors to the cupola are most likely fully aware that they are not being granted any meaningful behind the scenes access to the workings of political power, yet often report being positively impressed, awed, even stunned by the experience nonetheless. It is perhaps no coincidence that descriptions of contemporary glass structures as "temples," "shrines" or "cathedrals" are so often inflected by a discourse of the spiritual. Here the original modernist promise of glass architecture offering revelation through highly rational and technological means reverts very much to myth, a movement few have traced with more foreboding than Adorno. Of course many more people will read about the cupola, hear mention of it in news reports, and see its printed or electronic image than will ever visit the site itself. Here as well, however, a similar mystification is likewise discernable in the political rhetoric surrounding Berlin's new see-through seats of power. In the language used to convey the significance of structures such as the Reichstag cupola, the phenomenological effect of transparency's dematerialization is further advanced in the disembodiment of metaphor. We might consider this by invoking Paul de Man's critique of "aesthetic ideology" and his analysis of rhetorical figures in "The Epistemology of Metaphor." In equating transparent glass with democracy, the preferred reading of the New Berlin claims a certain immodest, name-giving authority over the figure it has chosen to represent itself. Yet as de Man argues in his analysis of "gold," such metaphor has a life of its own. "Properties, it seems, do not properly totalize, or, rather, they totalize in a haphazard and unreliable way. It is indeed not a question of ontology, of things as they are, but of authority, of things as they are decreed to be" (39). Upon entering the realm of figurative language, a concept becomes fluid, opening itself to any number of new formations. As de Man describes it, "tropes are not just travelers, they tend to be smugglers and probably smugglers of stolen goods at that. What makes matters even worse is that there is no way of finding out whether they do so with criminal intent or not" (39). Where does this leave us? In a moment of resignation, or one of critical engagement? We can find at least a faint hope for the latter if we conclude by returning to Benjamin and his famous essay "Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit" ("The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"), a work which begins to articulate the challenge of reading figures such as the transparent within the context of highly technological mediation. Here he diagnoses modernity's separation of sight from insight, leaving a split between the individual, the senses, and one's critical capacities. "Die Aufgaben, welche in geschichtlichen Wendezeiten dem menschlichen

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Wahmehmungsapparat gestellt werden, sind auf dem Wege der bloßen Optik, also der Kontemplation, gar nicht zu lösen," he writes. "Sie werden allmählich nach Anleitung der taktilen Rezeption, durch Gewöhnung, bewältigt" (41).31 It is of course difficult to imagine what a tactile sense of vision might entail, and Benjamin would surely have it no other way. One provisional answer might be a mode of perception and criticism that is keenly aware of the work of mediation, of the hand and the pen, in what might strike us as being the most immediate. In reading the promises encoded in structures such as the Reichstag cupola in this way, we might indeed have to ask ourselves to what extent its transparent panes of glass are in fact acting as a mirror of a desire for coherency, recognition, and participation rather than as a window of discovery or empirical confirmation of belief. If we think of democracy as being a stable essence which can be isolated, pointed to, clearly recognized, and embodied in Berlin's glass government architecture, we are in danger of overlooking notions of difference, struggle, and change that would seem central to any meaningful sense of the term. The task we are beckoned to assume in Berlin and elsewhere is the critical reading of that which might seem the most transparent and self-evident. To follow Benjamin's lead, contemplation must be combined with Gewöhnung in a double sense: Careful scrutiny of that which we might be most used to and most familiar with, yet which we are also called to inhabit, as if strangers in our own house, by critically tracing the movement of our dwelling's many rhetorical figurations. Works Cited Adco-Mueller Home Page. 15 Aug. 2002 . Adorno, Theodor W. Eingriffe. Gesammelte Schriften. 1963. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Vol. 10. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1977. —. Minima Moralia. 1951. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1977. —. Minima Moralia. 1974. Trans. E.F.N. Jephcott. London and New York: Verso, 1997. Aulich, Uwe. "Very Exclusive: 'Lifestyle Club' zieht in die Friedrichstraße." Berliner Zeitung 25 Oct. 2000: Berlin 29. Bayerische Hausbau. Advertisement. Der Spiegel 45 (2001): 95. Benjamin, Walter. Einbahnstraße. 1928. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997. —. Illuminations. Essays and Reflections. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, 1969. ."Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit." 1936. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1997.

31

"For the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation alone. They are mastered gradually by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation. Benjamin, Illuminations 240.

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—. Selected Writings, vol. I. 1913-1926. Eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Trans. Edmund Jephcott, Rodney Livingstone, et al. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Buchanen, Roger. "Wenn Demokratie baut." Der neue Reichstag . Trans. Jochen Gaile. Ed. Norman Foster. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 2000. 164-173. Cullen, Michael S. "Die Demokratie als Bauherr." Blickpunkt Bundestag 20 Jan. 2003 . Eshelman, Raoul. "Performatism in Architecture. On Framing and the Spatial Realization of Ostensivity. Anthropoetics 7.2 (2001-2002) 10 Jan. 2002 . Etlin, Richard A. Modernism in Italian Architecture, ¡890-1940. Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 1991. Foster, Norman. "Architektur und Demokratie." Der neue Reichstag. Trans. Jochen Gaile. Ed. Norman Foster. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 2000. 130-143. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: Birth of the Prison. 1975. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1995. Goebbels, Joseph. Das Erwachende Berlin. Munich: Eher, 1934. Gujer, E. "Treibhaus unter der Reichstagskuppel·, Wie die 'Berliner Republik' die Politik verändert." Neue Zürcher Zeitung 17 June 2000: 7. Kaiser, Carl-Christian. Einblicke-Ausblicke: Ein Rundgang durch den Deutschen Bundestag. Cologne: Media Consulta, 2000. Koch, Claus. "Die grosse Ratlosigkeit. Noten und Notizen." Süddeutsche Zeitung 17 Sep. 1999: 18. Kracauer, Siegfried. The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays. Trans, and Ed. Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1995 —. Schriften. Ed. Inka Mülder-Bach. Vol. 5.2. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1990. Kramer, Jane. "Private Lives: Germany's Troubled War on Terrorism." New Yorker lì Feb. 2002: 36-51. de Man, Paul. Aesthetic Ideology. Ed. Andrzej Warminski. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1996. Richter, Christine. "Ein Fernglas fur Hausherrin Angela Merkel." Berliner Zeitung 17 June 2000: 12. Schröder, Gerhard. "Rede von Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder bei der Schlüsselübergabe im neuen Bundeskanzleramt am 2. Mai 2001 in Berlin." Homepage of the German Chancellor's Office. 20 Jan. 2003 < http://www.bundeskanzler.de/Reden-.7715.31430/Rede-von-Bundes kanzler -Gerhard-Schroeder-bei-der.. .htm>. "Regierungserklärung von Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder vom 10. November 1998 vor dem Deutschen Bundestag." Homepage of the German Chancellor's Office. 20 Jan. 2003

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Sennett, Richard. The Conscience of the Eye: The design and social life of cities. New York: Knopf, 1990. "Starke Bürger—Starker Staat. Zur Fortentwicklung unserer gesellschaftlichen und gesamtstaatlichen Ordnung. Diskussionspapier der CDU-Präsidiumskommission 'Spielraum für kleine Einheiten.'" CDU Homepage. 10 Nov. 2002 . Transparency International Germany Homepage. 10 Aug. 2001 Wefing, Heinrich. "Abschied vom Glashaus." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 17 April 1999: Feuilliton 1+. Winkler, Bernhard. Which Kind of Transparency? On the Need for Clarity in Monetary Policy-Making. European Central Bank Working Paper No. 26. Frankfurt a.M.: ECB, 2000. Wise, Michael Z. Capital Dilemma: Germany's Search for a New Architecture of Democracy. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1998. Zamyatin, Yevgeny. We. 1921. Trans. Clarence Brown. New York: Penguin, 1993.

SIMON W A R D

Aberdeen

"Neues, altes Tor zur Welt": The New Central Station in the "New" Berlin1 The relationship between the railroad station and the urban environment in which it is located, and which it also helped to create, has been a permanently shifting one. According to Wolfgang Schivelbusch, the railroad "terminated that intimate relationship between the means of transport and its destination" that had existed with the stagecoach (171). Located outside the traditional city limits, it was, to begin with, an alien appendage. Nevertheless, as Hermann Glaser has observed, the railroad also radically altered the economic structure of the city. As the railroad station became an economic and communications' center, it also began to develop its aesthetic aura (34). This aesthetic aura always existed in tension with its required high level of functionality, for, as many commentators have noted, the railroad station was a hybrid space (Schivelbusch 172). In terms of the spatial practice of those who passed through it, the railroad station was a gateway. Although the platforms were covered with steel and glass, the reception building that faced the city was made out of stone. By means of this two-facedness, the station's function as a gateway found its architectural expression. Schivelbusch argues that this twofacedness reflected the railroad station's function as a "stimulus shield" protecting the passenger who was confronted by two fundamentally different realms: city space and railroad space (175). The neoclassical character of these facades was, in this line of argument, an expression of the nineteenth-century desire to disguise the industrial aspect of buildings and processes through ornamentation. The railroad station, as the most visible and most publicly accessible building of the industrial age, was also a building representative of the power of industrial capital. The oft-rehearsed cliché of the railroad station as the "cathedral of the nineteenth century" has its roots not only in the fact that, as the architectural historian Ulrich Krings argues, they were modeled on the structure of sacred buildings (63-4). It is also a clear indication of the shift in the organization of urban life that the railroads produced, the railroad station

1

"New, old gate to the world." Unless otherwise noted, all translations are the authors.

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representing the shift of power from the town hall, the market and the church towards industry, modernity and the circulation of capital. This is perhaps most strikingly illustrated in the relationship between Cologne Cathedral and the city's main railroad station (Kähler 205). Within Germany, however, the railroad station of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had a further representative function imposed by the architects and planners, as Krings has shown. Although the increasingly grand designs were originally an expression of the competition between the various privately-run rail companies, by 1907 Albert Hofmann, writing about the plans for Leipzig Main Station, was arguing that the design should not place the transport-technical issues in the foreground, but rather concentrate on the production of a "cultural monument" which would set the standard for "German culture" in the twentieth century (Krings 78-82). When we talk of the railroad station in Germany as a representative building, it must be remembered that its symbolic value lay not only in its status as an emblem of industrial progress and civilization but also in what it symbolized for the nation. Berlin, like many other European capitals of the nineteenth century, did not possess one grand terminal, but a whole series of termini, each one belonging to the individual rail company whose line ended in the city. The building of the Stadtbahn in the 1880s began to solve the technical problems created through such commercial practices. However, within the context of a Berlin, which was to become the capital of the Wilhelmine Empire in 1871, railroad stations were one form of cultural expression of the Gründerzeit. On Julius Campe's Monumental Map of Berlin of 1896, alongside the various monuments and palaces of the era that decorate the border of the map, one also finds the railroad stations. The Lehrter Bahnhof, completed in 1871, was one of the grand stations built in the eclectic historicist style of the period. I shall use it as an example for the symbolic significance of the railroad station in Berlin as it lay, for reasons that will become clear, on the site of the new central station, which is (still) in the middle of construction. That new station is almost always referred to as the new Lehrter Bahnhof, a peculiarity given that the name originates from the small town in Lower Saxony which was the destination for trains leaving Berlin from the station when it first opened. The name, now robbed of any significance, might be considered to be the only trace of the site's history that makes itself present in the new construction. Although in some ways breaking with the traditions of railroad station construction in Berlin, as the architectural historian Ulrich Krings has argued, the Lehrter Bahnhof was nevertheless typical of its period (127-37). 2 It was, for

2

The station was chosen for the frontispiece o f the 1896 edition o f Berlin Eisenbahnen (repr. Berlin: Verlag für Ästhetik und Kommunikation, 1982).

und

seine

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some twentieth-century critics, the worst expression of the eclectic historicism through which architects attempted to decorate (or mask) the iron construction, which, in raw form, the railroad station was. It made use of pillars, arcades and allegorical and mythical figures both on the grand triumphal arch and in the vestibules and other significant rooms inside the station. This was the only triumphal arch in Berlin's railroad architecture; for the most part they were built in the Rundbogen (round arch) style, as is most famously still visible in the ruin of the Anhalter Bahnhof. Its internal structure, like those other stations, was marked by the fact that it was clearly modeled on the design of other "higher" profane buildings of the period. The historicist construction of the Lehrter Bahnhof was doubtless a symbolic expression of the self-importance of the railroad company in its competition with others, but as a representation of the social order towards the end of the nineteenth century, it also spoke a clear language. It not only had the usual division of waiting rooms into first, second, third and fourth class, but it also had, at one end of the spectrum, a separate entrance and room for his majesty the Kaiser, and at the other, a room for those emigrants who were waiting for trains to take them to the international ports of Hamburg and Bremerhaven. Aesthetic conflicts and demands marked the construction of the station. According to Krings, this architectural conflict was most evident in the juxtaposition of the decorated stone walls and the iron roof construction. The pressure imposed by the station's symbolic status found expression in other ways. The soon-to-be Kaiser insisted that the station frontage be situated parallel to the nearby Humboldt harbor. But that frontage itself, although resembling a giant portal arch, was in fact wholly decorative: on the right-hand comer a small sign had to be mounted pointing the way to the entrance for departures. In the original tradition of railroad stations, the Lehrter Bahnhof had one side for arrivals and another for departures, rather than the style that would develop whereby arrivals and departures took place through the same main entrance. The fate of the Lehrter Bahnhof, from its completion in 1871 until its final demolition in 1959, is in many ways typical for the fate of railroad stations in general, and in Berlin in particular. For the "grand period" of the Berlin railroad stations, it was the site of historic events—Bismarck's departure from Berlin on leaving office in 1890, the arrival of revolting sailors from Kiel on 4 November 1918—as well as the point of arrival for state visits from 1905 onwards, right down to the arrival of Benito Mussolini on 29 September 1937, and Hitler's own return from Italy in May 1938 (Engel 348-52). It was also connected, in the public imagination, with the era of the "Schienenzeppelin" and the "Fliegender Hamburger," which traveled between the Lehrter Bahnhof and Hamburg as the swiftest passenger train in the world from 1933. The Lehrter Bahnhof was also, like all other main railroad stations in Berlin, heavily bombed during World War II; its functional role, not its

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symbolic value, made it a target. Nevertheless it was kept in use after the war, out of practical necessity as the population of Berlin undertook "Hamsterfahrten" ("hoarding trips") into the surrounding countryside in the socalled "Kartoffelzüge" ("potato trains"). Although on average 17 trains a day left the ruined station after 1945, like the rest of the railroad system in Berlin after World War II, the trains running from the Lehrter Bahnhof were under the administration of the Deutsche Reichsbahn, 7 run from the Soviet Zone, and after ' · 1949 the GDR (Engel, 354). The Reichsbahn closed down travel from the Lehrter Bahnhof in 1951. In the context of a traffic policy more directed towards automobiles than trains, the demolition of the Lehrter Bahnhof, begun in 1957 and completed in 1959, shows that in the immediate post-war context, the symbolic significance of railroad stations—whether ruined or still in use, like the station at the Zoologischer Garten—had sunk as low as it could possibly go (Stimmann 251). Reports of the demolition process in both 1957 and 1959 have a general tone of nostalgia for the "grand old times" of the station, though it is more the trips to the Baltic Coast than trains to the front, and the visits of statesmen other than Mussolini, which are recalled.3 The architects of railroad stations in the nineteenth century used historicist styles, as these were the dominant architectural language of the period, and also helped them to make sense of buildings whose functional needs were so radically new. In a different way, lines of tradition and continuity can be drawn for the period of planned rail renewal in Germany after 1990, and this will be the focus of the remainder of this chapter. In Berlin after 1990, the railroad and railroad stations have become one referent for the past that can be invoked in thinking about the lines of continuity for the new capital because the stations are, unlike the airports, right at the heart of the city. The rhetoric of continuity within the context of rail travel is true not just of Berlin, as Helmut Kohl demonstrated in 1989: Über den Ausbau der Eisenbahnstrecke Hannover-Berlin wird weiter verhandelt. Ich bin allerdings der Auffassung, daß dies zu wenig ist und daß wir [...] uns einmal sehr grundsätzlich über die Verkehrs- und Eisenbahnlinien in der DDR und in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland unterhalten müssen. Vierzig Jahre Trennung bedeuten ja auch, daß sich die Verkehrswege zum Teil erheblich auseinanderentwickelt haben. Das gilt nicht nur für die Grenzübergänge, sondern beispielsweise auch fur die traditionelle Linienführung der Verkehrswege in Mitteleuropa, für die Ost-West-Verbindungen. Es ist nicht einzusehen, weshalb die klassische Route Moskau-Warschau-Berlin-Paris, die j a immer über Köln führte und zu allen Zeiten große Bedeutung hatte, im Zeitalter schneller Züge [...] nicht mit eingebracht werden sollte (13510-13514). 4

3 4

See for example BM; Geisler. "Discussions will continue about the development of the rail line between Hanover and Berlin. Nevertheless 1 am of the opinion that this is too little, and that we must have serious and fundamental discussions about the lines of traffic- and rail communication in the GDR and the Federal Republic. Forty years of division mean, of course, that the lines of

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North-South, East-West (disregarding the economic benefits of air travel for the individual passenger at least): these axes meet in Berlin, and the Pilzkonzept ("mushroom concept") which was devised for dealing with the expected increase in rail traffic had at its heart a new central station—not a terminal, but a site from which passengers could be directed around the city network (Remmert 6-11). The lines of continuity express themselves in a number of ways with reference to the Lehrter Bahnhof. Although it might be thought that the Lehrter Bahnhof was a well-established station for the eighty years of its functioning, this is in fact not entirely the case. Berlin grew considerably between 1871 and 1900 when its population reached the two million mark, by which time the first plans for a radical restructuring of circulation in the city were underway. In a succession of plans from both Hermann Jansen and Martin Mächler in 1910 to the architects collective around Hans Scharoun in 1946, not to forget Albert Speer's plans for Germania, the Lehrter Bahnhof would have had to make way for the new rationalized rail structure that was to be established on the NorthSouth axis through the city (Schmoll 24-42). That the site for the new station was the same one that had been considered time and again over the past century is less an indication of nostalgia for the grand old Lehrter Bahnhof, and more a sign of the obstinacy of Berlin's geography, the networks that have been laid over it in the past one hundred and forty years and the solutions that have been sought to address it. The site of the Lehrter Bahnhof lay empty for thirty years: its transport function had become increasingly irrelevant with the growing divide between east and west which had meant that Berlin was a political flashpoint, but that those sites near the border, later the wall, became economically redundant as they were disconnected from the circulation of people and commodities. The unification of Berlin suddenly placed these empty sites in its center at a premium, as multinational companies sought to reestablish circulation in Berlin and establish connections further east. The auratic power of the Reichstag and the idea of Potsdamer Platz are relatively self-evident when compared to that of a railroad station at the end of the twentieth century. It is therefore highly significant that the project concerning the new central station dovetailed with the urgent need to revamp the state-run railroads, which in the West as the Deutsche Bundesbahn, were seen as a moribund loss-making state-run company, but which now had to take over an incomparably decrepit East German railroad system which had still

communication have, in part, developed without reference to one another. This is true not only of the border-crossing points, but, for example, also for the traditional routes for travel in Central Europe, and the connections between East and West. It is not clear to me why the classical route Moscow-Warsaw-Berlin-Paris, which always went via Cologne and had at all times a major significance, should not be brought into the discussion in an era of such swift trains."

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been running under its pre-1933 name of the Deutsche Reichsbahn (Schwarz 377-420). In 1994 the Deutsche Bundesbahn was privatized, under very different conditions from the disastrous return to. the fragmentation of the nineteenth century as has occurred in Great Britain. It was not broken up into many different companies, nor was there the same distinction made as in Great Britain between Railtrack and the operating companies. Relevant for this chapter is the way in which the new head of the DB, Heinz Dürr, addressed the question posed more than 20 years before by the then head of the building construction division of the DB, Theodor Dirksmeier, whether the Bundesbahn should continue—as building history has shown—to create buildings as monuments, or whether it would not be more appropriate to look at a building as a commodity which, after having served its purpose, may disappear again without too much of an effort or expense and be replaced by a new and more up-to-date commodity (Müller 83). Dürr established a new policy under the title the Renaissance der Bahnhöfe ("Renaissance of the Railroad Station"), also the title of an exhibition and catalogue. Behind the plan was not only an awareness that in post-war Germany the railroad station had been reduced to a bleak shelter for the marginalized members of society, but also acute financial acumen in the awareness that until now the railroad had been an extraterritorial area, out of reach of communal and regional planning. Under Dürr's new plan, not only would railroad stations be renewed, but also 90% of the land within cities currently owned by the railroad would be made available for building projects. The renaissance of the railroad station should, simultaneously, mean a renaissance of the urban environment in general (Dürr 13-15). In the exhibition catalogue, the contributions by architects and architectural historians circle around a number of key themes: a rejection of the "functional modernism" of railroad architecture since 1945, which has led to "architektonischer Profanisierung und ästhetischer Banalisierung"; a call to (re-)discover the "metaphysischen Moment im Wertestatus der Architektur" (Gerkan, "Renaissance" 27) and the "symbolische Ausstrahlung" (Weiss 264) of the railroad station; a need to understand and rework the traditions of railroad architecture; and a need to rediscover the railroad station as a central public space and as a location of circulation.5 There are projects going on throughout the East and West of Germany, but the Lehrter Bahnhof project is one of the largest-scale and also, given its location, most media-prominent, as it has taken on a symbolic significance for the New Berlin which no commentator has failed to mention.

5

"architectural profanity and aesthetic banality"; "metaphysical moment in the status and worth of architecture"; "symbol glow."

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The Berlin Senate building director outlined the context for the project, stating that the plan for the railroad station also should include a plan for the surrounding city quarter. (Stimmann, 5-6). This is to say that the Lehrter Bahnhof project concerned the whole area between Moabit and the governmental quarter: this area was to be "mixed use," i.e. offices, entertainment, and living quarters along with the railroad station. The representatives of the DB also proclaimed their eagerness to find a symbiosis between the conditions that derive from the station's function as a rail terminus and as a commercial organization and the demands of establishing transport connections and the requirements of town planning. All investment that went beyond what was necessary to run the railroad station in its primary function would have to be planned, financed, built and run through private funding. If the site itself denoted a line of continuity (if not quite in the way in which it was characterized in the press, which focused on photographs of the old Lehrter Bahnhof), then a further line of continuity is to be found in the building's representative function. It was intended first and foremost to be representative of and for the Deutsche Bundesbahn. This was underlined in 1997. Another star architect, Oswald Matthias Ungers, had originally designed the plan for the mixed-use quarter around the station in 1994. In 1997, however, the Bundesbahn directors demanded that the 47 meter high hotel to the south of the station be made smaller and moved to another site, so that from the parliamentary quarter one could see Gerkan's "glass railroad cathedral" and equally those in the railroad station (and in the Bundesbahn offices) could gaze upon the river and down to the Chancellery and further south to the other glass and steel structures at the center of Berlin, the Reichstag and Potsdamer Platz (Cb). Such aesthetic considerations eventually gave way to the realization in 2000 that the Bundesbahn could not afford to pay for the building of the Bügelbauten, the two large office blocks which were to frame the long station hall. For the Bundesbahn itself, the decision not to build the Bügelbauten has had important and ironic consequences, demonstrating the interlinking of the circulation networks of transport and consumer goods. In his paean to the work of Meinhard von Gerkan, the architect of the Lehrter Bahnhof, John Zukowsky argues that buildings for air transport and the new railroad stations have become the equivalent of cathedrals in our era, perhaps even more than skysqrapers, for the latter are representations of corporate or commercial ego as opposed to the new transport architecture, which "project the cosmopolitan image of the cities and nations that they serve" (20). The failure of this distinction to apply to the center of the new Berlin is demonstrated by the fact that the directors of the DB, who had hoped to be housed in the Bügelbauten above the Lehrter Bahnhof, have now taken up residence in the archetype of an

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arrogantly homogenized Berlin, the glass Sony Tower, which now bears the discreet legend Bahn Tower.6 Whereas the Lehrter Bahnhof was to represent the position of the Bundesbahn on a par with the politicians in the governmental quarter and the multinational companies on Potsdamer Platz (Neumann), the representative quality of the architecture had a different meaning for the architect, Meinhard von Gerkan, and his associates. Gerkan, who wrote the major think piece for the Renaissance der Bahnhöfe exhibition volume, is a prominent member of that group of architects described by Brian Edwards in the following terms: "The new railroad age has ushered in the epoch of the universal designerarchitects able to create memorable stations anywhere in the world. The station is an important building type within the classless, nationless global village of the future, and their designers are celebrated in increasingly ubiquitous professional journals" (181). Gerkan has designed numerous international airports and railroads stations, and his thoughts on the process of designing for transportation correspond to Edwards' assertion that the "design needs to reflect the values and image aspirations of the modern railroad age." In his writings, Gerkan argues "[the] level of mobility and with it the volume and density of traffic can be used as a direct indicator of progress, civilization and standard of living, although we are all aware of the disastrous implications caused through this mobility" (Gerkan, Architecture 14).7 "After a period of primacy of pure traffic management and road planning, which up to the present time has resulted in pure transport—space, without any regard for its further consequences, we have emerged into a more comprehensive view and everyone would now accept that 'transportation spaces' are not only seen as functional channels for the delivery of technical goods but above all 'living spaces.' [...] Railroad stations and airports are not simply dispatch facilities, but above all should be seen as major parts of our environment which have a clear right to be designated as 'environmental space'" (Gerkan, Architecture 16). Gerkan argues that railroad stations are "ein Stück Kultur, und Kultur 'rechnet' sich nur gesellschaftlich, nicht ökonomisch." (Gerkan, "Renaissance" 52).8 The concept of Kultur has proved as changeable over the decades as the cultural significance of railroad stations, but behind Gerkan's thinking is the assumption that he, as an architect, creates environments that have positive effects on behavior, engendering a culture, as it were. In his plans for the railroad station itself, Gerkan stresses the importance of lived experience for 6 7

8

It now appears that private finance has been found, despite the massive oversupply of office space in Berlin, to build the Biigelbanten. See n.n. "Bürohäuser." In these passages, transport and traffic are translations for Verkehr, which has these connotations of circulation also given expression in the loan word Mobilität— mobility.Gerkan however also uses this mobility as a synonym for globalizing economic practices (12). "a piece of culture, and culture 'pays its way' in social and not economic terms."

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the space of the railroad station, highlighting such aspects as the public character of the railroad station; the lack of compulsion in the construction, i.e. the individual should be able to choose his own route through it (though this is in fact argued for as a better strategy for selling things); and the need for natural daylight and indeed sunlight (Gerkan, "Nördlich" 354-58). Gerkan's design for the Lehrter Bahnhof is largely steel and glass, which, as one of his engineers argues, is itself a conscious line of continuity. One can see "die geistige Herkunft dieser großen, rund 66 Meter weit gespannten und 400 Meter langen Bahnsteighalle. [Das] hoffentlich als schön und angemessene Dach sieht sich in der Tradition der großen Bahnsteighallen des letzten Jahrhunderts" (Schiaich 273). 9 While there is no doubting the aesthetic preference for glass roofs and natural light over low ceilings and fluorescent tubes, it is the leap then to terms such as culture and democracy, which is less transparent. Both Gerkan and Edwards share the rhetoric of the railroad station as democratic, public space: "The station, with its democratic open structure, its public spaces inside and out, and its corridors of movement etched upon the face of the city, represents an important civilizing element" (Edwards 172). This rhetoric is joined by another discourse, that of the station as place of leisure: "The spectacle of travel, expressed both in mechanical forms of trains and in the human drama of rushing people, is an entertainment to many. Stations are part of the world of leisure: a resort for the urban tourist, the shopper and the unemployed" (Edwards 173). It would seem, then, that the new railroad station as a piece of culture reflects cultural change, marking the shift of emphasis from production to consumption. What distinguished the railroad station in the past, according to Schivelbusch, was the circulation of people. As an architectural type, the railroad station belongs clearly and exclusively to the category of nineteenthcentury steel and glass edifices that have been termed traffic buildings: The "traffic" function found its architectural expression in a far more immediate way in the railroad station than it did in other types of steel and glass architecture. In market halls, exhibition pavilions, arcades and department stores the traffic of goods took place in a stationary fashion, in the form of storage and display; in the railroad station, the human traffic literally poured through, actively, in the form of travelers streaming in and out of the trains. (Schivelbusch 172)

This is becoming secondary to its function as a site of consumption, a place from which to consume not only goods, but also the representative architecture of the district. This then is a third line of continuity (circulation), but with a strong sense of discontinuity as well. The train station is no longer primarily a gateway, despite Gerkan's argument that the station functions as a gate 9

"the intellectual heritage of this great railroad hall, 66 meters wide and 400 meters long. This roof, which will hopefully be seen as beautiful and appropriate, sees itself in the tradition of the grand railroad halls of the previous century."

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between the parliamentary quarter and the marginalized quarter of Moabit ("Lehrter Bahnhof' 110). Gerkan's design for the Lehrter Bahnhof is a design for a specific kind of lived experience; it directs the traveler/ consumer/office worker towards certain forms of living. It is no longer a case of tracks in the city, but arcades in the station. It is a specific kind of public which inhabits that space, as was made clear in one of the few newspaper articles to describe the present space of the area around the future Lehrter Bahnhof The journalist began with the following description: Das künñige Bahnhofsviertel an der Invalidenstraße: Zu Fuß sind hier fast nur Bauarbeiter unterwegs. Der Verkehr übertönt den Lärm der Großbaustelle von Lehrter Bahnhof und Tiergartentunnel. An der Heidestraße, die am Humboldthafen nach Norden führt, befindet sich in einem Gebäude des ehemaligen Lehrter Güterbahnhofs ein Trödelmarkt. Mit Radiomusik, Skat und viel Bier schlagen die Verkäufer die Zeit tot. Gegenüber eine Imbißstube in waldgrünem Bretterverhau: Auf karierten Wachstüchern verbreiten Blumen fahle Gemütlichkeit. Nachts bieten Frauen an d¿r Ausfallstraße ihre Körper an. Berliner «Umland» in Sichtweite des Reichtstags. Dieser Öde soll der neue Lehrter Bahnhof Leben einhauchen. Tor zur Stadt und Tor zur Welt—so kann die frühe Geschichte und die neue Utopie des Bahnhofs auf den Begriff gebracht werden. (Hillenkamp) 10

This description is wonderful in the way the margins of Berlin are precisely the opposite of a sanitized consumer experience: the wooden shack, the unnecessary quantities of beer, the plastic tablecloths, the flea market, and the shabby prostitution. The renaissance of the railroad station appears to signify a civilizing influence, but by removing the obstinate bodies, it constructs a spatial practice which privileges the visual over the other senses, and therefore transmutes the sensual into a merely visual experience of phallically representative architecture. The transparency of the Lehrter Bahnhof and its new environs plays a major role in the sanitized re-construction of the urban imagination. They will enable the consumer to gaze in filtered natural daylight upon the other representative buildings at the center of Berlin, looking upon the steel and glass which conjure up the illusion of the transparency of the democratic process and the circulation of capital, where, as Henri Lefebvre observed, everything seems to be openly declared, but in fact there is very little to be said (49). The consumer will not be confronted with the "other side" of

10

"The future railroad district by the Invalidenstraße: Only construction workers move about on foot. The traffic drowns out the noise from the building site at the Lehrter Station and the tunnel through the Tiergarten. On the Heidestraße there is a flea market in one of the buildings of the former Lehrter Goods Station. The stallholders kill time by listening to the radio, playing cards and drinking lots of beer. Opposite is a snack bar in a green-painted wooden shack. On checkered tablecloths flowers create a sense of comfort. By night women on the nearby street offer their bodies. The 'margins of Berlin' within sight of the Reichstag. This desolate space should have life breathed into it by the new Lehrter Station. Gateway to the city, gateway to the world—in this way the early history and the new utopia of the station can be summed up."

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urban reality. He or she will, however, be encouraged to forget that this other side has not simply disappeared; it has been moved to another, marginal space out of the line of sight. The new kind of railroad station envisaged by both the Deutsche Bundesbahn and architects such as Gerkan carries the rhetoric of democracy and transparency that marks Norman Foster's reworking of the Reichstag. When considering in what ways the new central station will be a representative piece of architecture, we should avoid confusing what we, as critical observers, consider that it represents with what it seeks to symbolize. Whereas elsewhere the "Renaissance" philosophy of the Bundesbahn has to negotiate with already existing spatial practices, the new Central Station is located in a space that has had almost no practical function since the late 1950s. While Gerkan seeks to construct experience within his environments, the Bundesbahn has found it more complex when trying to impose its cultural renaissance on those spatial practices that are long established. This policy of "gentrification" of the railroad stations hit upon practical opposition, for example, the debate concerning Deutsche Bundesbahn boss Hartmut Mehdorn's plans for the Bahnhofsmissionen as detailed in a number of German newspapers in October of 2001. Mehdom is keen to keep the homeless and drug-addicts away from his re-born railroad stations. In an interview with Bild am Sonntag, he said that homeless people were not "bösartige Leute" ("evil people"), but they did not belong in railroad stations. For that reason he wanted to close down the points where food was provided to the homeless in the Bahnhofsmissionen. At the same time, Mehdorn also made the point that he had the feeling that the authorities "die Junkies am Bahnhof haben wollen, weil sie sie da auf einem Fleck haben" ("they want to have the junkies at the station, because then they have them all in one place"). According to Mehdorn, however, the stations were not responsible for the problems in Germany's towns and cities, (n.n., "Obdachlose" 96) There is another side to this story, as represented by those who run and those who use the missions. The FAZ reported the perspective of Helga Fritz, who runs the mission at the infamous Zoologischer Garten station: "Herr Mehdorn vergißt, daß für viele Menschen der Bahnhof ein Stück Heimat bedeutet. Viele erleben hier ihre sozialen Kontakte, lieben den Trubel und all das. Der Bahnhof bleibt—auch wenn die Bahn privatisiert ist—ein öffentlicher Raum" (Pottharst).11 In the nineteenth century, train travel was simultaneously a sign of revolutionary potential and a rigid class system, as Walter Benjamin recognized in his Passagen-Werk, for, whereas the car and airplane only carried small groups of passengers, the historical significance of the train lay in

11

"Mr. Mehdorn has forgotten that for many people the railroad station means a piece of home territory. Many have their social contact here; love the hustle and bustle and all that. The railroad station remains, even if the railroads are privatized, a public space."

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the fact that it was the last form of transport which allowed the formation of masses (744). In the twenty-first century, it might be thought that neither revolution nor the class system applies. Yet the transformation of public space into leisure spaces with a clearly-displayed Hausordnung ("set of house rules") cannot be divorced from certain rhetorical invocations of democracy that have also been applied to other glass buildings in this new quarter of the capital. In his governmental declaration from 10 November 1998, Gerhard Schröder suggested that the new Reichstag, with its glass cupola, could be come a symbol "für die moderne Kommunikation einer staatbürgerlichen Offenheit" ("for the modern communication forms of an open republic"), while Norman Foster suggested that "as night falls and the glass cupola glows, the building becomes a beacon, signaling the strength of the German democratic process" (Schulz 14). The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman sees the trend of development in Western democracies (of which the New Berlin is indeed intended to be representative) somewhat differently: "The growth of individual freedom may coincide with the growth of collective impotence in as far as the bridges between private and public life are dismantled" (2). The railway station is still, potentially, a space where the public and the private might interact. But whereas nineteenth-century railroad stations cloaked their industrial origins and the process of circulation in stone, they now are designed to let the consumer gaze upon the circulation in a fashion similar to a visitor to the Reichstag or Potsdamer Platz-, they aestheticize that circulation, but effectively offer an anesthetic to dull the pain of exclusion and impotence which the consumer/tourist/citizen might otherwise experience. The issue is not so much that railroad stations are being turned into "shopping centers with rail station attached." Railroad stations were always sites of commercial activity. To treat this as either the key point of attack or the point to be defended, as often happens in the catalogue volume to the Renaissance der Bahnhöfe and in the press discussion of the new station, is a red herring. It is more pertinent to consider the meanings generated by what is intended as a representative, public space in the new German capital. The new Central Station being built at the center of Berlin thus not so much continues the "grand tradition" of the railroad stations, but brings up once more the complex issues concerning public space, representation, culture and power which have been associated with these buildings that are poised, in hybrid fashion, between function and representation. Railroad stations in the nineteenth century were decked out in allegorical figures, often allegories of motion and dynamism. While some new European railroad stations, notably Caltravas' station in Lyon, use animal imagery as an allegory of dynamism, it is in fact the steel and glass which the stone facades used to mask that have themselves become the bearers of allegorical significance. They seek to operate as allegories of democracy, transparent social relations and civilized public space. As with all allegories, however, there is a potentially fatal gap between

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the signifier and what is alleged to be signified in an era when "the most powerful powers float or flow, and the most decisive decisions are taken in a space remote [...] even from the politically institutional public space" (Bauman 6). Klaus-Dieter Weiss has argued that in the future the railroad station will no longer be a station, but "doch eine Stadt, oder ein Stadtviertel" ("rather a town, or a town quarter") (265). If this is the case, then the steel and glass Berlin Central Station /Lehrter Bahnhof, with that peculiar trace of history remaining in its name, may be an all too representative symbol of the complex negotiations about the meaning of the modern metropolis and the nation state which are refracted at the heart of contemporary Berlin.

Works Cited Bauman, Zygmunt. In Search of Politics. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999. Benjamin, Walter. Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 5.2. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991. BM. "Abschied vom Lehrter Bahnhof." Stimme der Arbeit, 20 Dec. 57. Bund Deutscher Architekten, Deutsche Bahn AG, Förderverein Deutsches Archiktekturzentrum DAZ. Meinhard von Gerkan, Renaissance der Bahnhöfe. Die Stadt im 21. Jahrhundert. Ed. Meinhard von Gerkan. Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1996. Cb. "Bahn-Chef kippt Pläne rund um den Lehrter Bahnhof." Berliner Morgenpost, 31 Jan. 1998. Dietz, Thomas. "Berlin bekommt ein neues Herz implantiert." Die Welt. 31 Jul. 1997. Dürr, Heinz. "Bahn frei fur eine neue Stadt." Renaissance der Bahnhöfe. 1315. Edwards, Brian. The Modern Station. New approaches to railway architecture. London: Spon, 1997. Engel, H. et al, eds. Tiergarten. Vol. 2. Berlin: Nicolai, 1987. Geisler, K. "Lehrter Bahnhof - eine Erinnerung." Berliner Morgenpost, 24 Dec. 1959. Gerkan, Meinhard von. Architecture for Transportation. Hamburg: Birkhäuser, 1997. —. "Lehrter Bahnhof, Berlin." Renaissance der Bahnhöfe 110. —. "Nördlich des Spreebogens - Der Lehrter Bahnhof und das neue Quartier." Süss 354-58. —. "Renaissance der Bahnhöfe als Nukleus des Städtebaus." Renaissance der Bahnhöfe 17-63. Glaser, Hermann. Industriekultur und Alltagsleben. Von Biedermeier zur Postmoderne. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1994.

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Hillenkamp, Sven. "Neues, altes Tor zur Welt." Berliner Morgenpost 10 Mar. 1999. Kähler, Gert, '"...die Fläche unseres Landes zur Größe einer einzigen Metropole zusammenschrumpfen.' Eisenbahn und Stadt im 19. Jahrhundert." Renissance der Bahnhöfe. 201-207. Kohl, Helmut. Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 11. Wahlperiode, Stenographische Berichte, ¡77. Sitzung. 28 Nov. 1989. Klings, Ulrich. Bahnhofsarchitektur. Deutsche Großstadtbahnhöfe des Historismus. Munich: Prestel, 1985. Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Blackwells, 1991. Müller, Karl-Haus. The Architecture of Transport in the Federal Republic of Germany. Bonn: Inter Nationes, 1981. Pottharst, Jens. "Heimat der Wohnungslosen." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 17 Oct. 2001. n.n. "Bahnchef Mehdorn: Obdachlose raus aus den Bahnhöfen!" Bild am Sonntag 14 Oct. 2001: 96. n.n. "Bürohäuser am Lehrter Bahnof." Berliner Zeitung 20 June 2002. Neumann, Peter. "Der Lehrter Bahnhof konkurriert mit dem Bundeskanzleramt." Berliner Zeitung 11 Apr. 2001. Remmert, Werner. "Vorwort." Lehrter Kreuzungsbahnhof Projektstudien. 611. Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Railway Journey. The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19>h Century. Berkeley: U. of California P., 1986. Schiaich, Jörg. "Lust an der Konstruktion: Bahnsteighallen - leicht, weit und hell." Renaissance der Bahnhöfe. 266-273. Schmoll, Franz. Weichenstellungen. Geschichte und Zukunft der Lehrter Strasse. Berlin: STERN, 1990. Schulz, Bernhard. The Reichstag. The Parliament Building by Norman Foster. New York: Prestel, 2000. Schwarz, Hans-Peter. "Wiedervereinigung und Bahnreform 1989-1994." Die Eisenbahn in Deutschland. Von den Anfangen bis zur Gegenwart. Eds. Lothar Gall and Manfred Pohl. Munich: Beck, 1999. 377-420. Lehrter Kreuzungsbahnhof. Projektstudien. Ed. Senatsverwaltung fiir Bau- und Wohungswesen Berlin: Senatsverwaltung für Bau- und Wohnungswesen, 1994. Stimmann, Hans. "Eine Zukunft fiir die Eisenbahnstadt Berlin." Renaissance der Bahnhöfe. 250-257. —. "Vorwort." Lehrter Kreuzungsbahnhof. Projektstudien. 5-6. Süss, Werner, ed. Hauptstadt Berlin. Vol. 3. Metropole im Umbruch. Berlin: Berlin-Verl. Spitz, 1996. Weiss, Karl-Dieter. "Zukunft und Architektur der Eisenbahnreise." Renaissance der Bahnhöfe. 259-265.

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Zukosky, John, "Meinhard von Gerkan." Architecture for Transportation. 1724.

KAREIN GOERTZ A N D MICK KENNEDY

University of Michigan

Tracking Berlin: Along S-Bahn Linie 5 Today, intervention in the existing city, in its residual spaces and folded intensities can no longer be either comfortable or efficacious in the manner postulated by the modem movement's efficient model of enlightened tradition. [It must rather be] through attention to the continuity of flows, energies and rhythms established by the passing of time and loss of limits [...] We should treat the residual city with contradictory complicity that will not shatter the elements that maintain its continuity in time and space. Architecture's destiny has always been colonization, the imposing of limits, order and form, the introduction into strange space of the elements of identity necessary to make it recognizable, identical, universal. In essence, architecture acts as an instrument of organization, of rationalization, and of productive efficiency capable of transforming the uncivilized into the cultivated, the fallow into the productive, the void into the built. Ignasi de Sola-Morales "Terrain Vague"

The process of rebuilding Berlin has been enmeshed in highly politicized public debates about the fate of vacant, residual spaces that abruptly shifted from marginal positions in the divided city to the urban center after the fall of the Wall. These urban voids, product and ever-present reminder of a complex and turbulent past, are crucial components of Berlin's unique historical and spatial identity. They exist in juxtaposition to the rational baroque grid of Friedrichstadt, the undulating urban edge along the River Spree, and the network of primary roads that connect the city's once independent boroughs. Lamentably, recent architectural projects that seek to fill in these voids, such as the Potsdamer Platz complex and the reconstituted Friedrichstrasse, are presented as signifiers of the new city. Diminishing are the empty and indeterminate spaces that exist as "unincorporated margins, interior islands or oversights [within the] planned, efficient and legitimated city" (de SolaMorales).1 The value and allure of these terrains vagues are not measured

1

De Sola-Morales defines "terrain vague" etymologically in terms of a void and absence, yet also promise, the space of possibility and expectation. These spaces are internal to the city, yet external to its everyday use; apparently forgotten, strange places that exist outside the city's effective circuits and productive structures.

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primarily by standards of efficiency and profit. Instead, they represent spaces of possibility, expectation and poetry.

The ongoing debate about the ontological status of Berlin as a selfproclaimed Weltstadt can be traced through recent acts of construction in the city. Post-unification "critical reconstruction," promoted through the writings and work of architect Joseph Paul Kleihues and the former city building commissioner Hans Stimmann, self-consciously attempts to refill the physical voids left by war, division, and competing theories of urban design. Paradoxically, critical reconstruction explicitly adopts the late nineteenth century urban form of Berlin as the optimal paradigm, privileging a defined set of urban elements and assemblies to reconstruct the historical streetscape with buildings of a particular density and prescribed dimension. Numerous recent publications that focus on historical Berlin, as well as the popularity of postcard imagery of the idealized, prewar city, suggest popular support for the aims of critical reconstruction. This nostalgia for an architecturally coherent and less politically burdened city, epitomized by the ongoing initiative to rebuild the Stadtschloß (Royal Palace), threatens to embalm the city. The image of the city becomes a melancholic souvenir of a remote age that obscures a more nuanced historical, spatial and cultural understanding of the city. In particular, such an image ignores the unique reality and potential of Berlin's terrains vagues. The reliance on architecture as a generator of specific forms and figures in the urban landscape—either as infill in the Mitte (center) district or as selfreferential objects at the new Sony Center—neglects an example set by a significant urban counterstrategy: the reconnection of the city's elevated

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railway line, known as the Stadtbahn (S-Bahn). Paradoxically, this action in 1990 completed a physical link between the once separate halves of Berlin while simultaneously uniting a spatial void through the city. This linkage signaled an end to the bipolar experience of the city in geo-political terms, East and West, and initiated a rediscovery of the topological multiplicities of urban space in Berlin. Coursing through different neighborhoods of the historically segmented city, the S-Bahn leads along, between and across significant urban spaces, offering panoramic views that are layered and tempered by movement, light and reflection. The twelve-kilometer-long stretch of viaduct arches, or Stadtbahnbögen, that support the S-Bahn are an under-examined slice and suture across the city's historical, physical and political fault lines. The dual nature of the elevated railway itself—an inhabitable structure, as well as a path of movement—stands in contrast to the fixed condition of recent architecture and contemporary conceptions of Berlin. This static character is particularly evident in the iconic architecture one passes, such as the Chancellery and the renovated Reichstag, which stand as conventionally determined symbols of Berlin's new urban identity as the German capital. Moving along the S-Bahn, we develop a complex understanding of Berlin that undermines the reified position of such controlled and limited urban figures. The train line cuts through Berlin to expose views into the city's private spaces and unofficial views of the public face of government, commerce and culture. The city becomes a complex surface of activities and interactions that are usually dismissed as anomalous in conventional representations of the urban. Traditional architectural identities of front and back thereby become inconsequential. Public space is no longer privileged over the private realm. Rear windows and courtyards are juxtaposed with façades and fleeting iconic vantages of buildings with more official architectural importance. The superimposition of official and unofficial, private and public, planned and unplanned views generates a new and fundamentally dialogical urban consciousness. In transit, one enjoys views of the city that are not confined to a singular or fixed frame, but that are open to multiple and fluid interpretations. From the mobile and elevated vantage point of the train, one observes the changing face of the city and reciprocally one's own mutable position within it. The city's hybrid and syncretic character becomes apparent through parallax views of buildings, places and identities. Spatial paradoxes and ironic perspectives challenge official characterizations of "productive space." Traveling through Berlin's terrain vague along the SBahn reveals the latent potential in marginal, non-coopted urban spaces that one never fully inhabits, but only temporarily occupies.2 The process of moving along this line demonstrates a strategy of seeing, experiencing and,

2

Parallax, a term used to define the apparent shifting in position of an object viewed from multiple vantage points, may also refer to notions of memory and identity, considered from different subject positions.

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ultimately, rebuilding the city that counters the overly rational, efficiently planned paradigm of development. As the writer and film director Alfred Behrens once stated, every ride on the S-Bahn imparts an experience of history that is both sensory and concrete (7). It offers the opportunity for spatial and conceptual investigations that draw on fleeting visual impressions, sounds, as well as mental associations and narratives to generate unique and personal mappings of the city. This reliance on experience to develop a fluid model of an empowered urban consciousness provides an antidote to conventional norms of mapping. Rather than supplying fixed meanings of place and experience that characterize traditional cognitive mappings, we propose the term spatio-narratives to describe the hybridized understanding of body and memory, phenomena and text with which we describe and navigate urban space. This dialogical relationship between the phenomenal city and the textual city is akin to Deleuze and Guattari's relationship between the physical city (of architecture and other urban features) and the articuable city (the tactile city of exchange and interaction) with neither having representational or analytical priority over the other. We present spatio-narratives as a response to what the urban theorist Rob Shields identifies as the "crises of urban representation." Shields is concerned with the limited applicability of current means of representation, targeting the inherent social and political biases of graphic maps, as well as psychologically-based cognitive mappings of the city. Verbal, symbolic or abstract representations are "treacherous metaphors," he argues, because they reduce the complexity of physical interactions into an elegant, but simplified model, which then becomes a substitute for experience, thereby displacing the actual city. In his pre-unification novel, The Wall Jumper, Peter Schneider offers a stark illustration of biases in such abstracted models. Maps of the divided city reflected two radically different socio-political value systems that were embedded into the minds of Berlin's citizens: The Wall was hard to find on a city map in West Berlin. Only a dotted band, delicate pink, divides the city. On a city map in East Berlin, the world ends at the Wall. Beyond the blackbordered, finger-thick dividing line identified in the key as the state border, untenanted geography set in. (13)

While Berlin was ideologically split into two half cities, the narrator recognizes that this enforced difference is at odds with his actual experience of the city: "The half-city beyond the Wall struck me from the start as thoroughly familiar. Not only the garbage cans, the stairwells, the door handles, the radiators, the lampshades, the wallpaper, but even the muted, distrustful lifestyle over there seemed to me boringly familiar" (13). While the subway maps posted in the train cars and stations today have less politically-charged implications, their visual streamlining of urban topography, distances and locations present a similar disjunction. The abstracted plans of the S-Bahn system belie the highly sophisticated spatial understanding required to translate

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these into the physical world.3 The simplified, reductive abstraction supplants the physical and experiential. Shields laments that one ends up dealing with the city through a "surrogate level of signs" (229). We present a new kind of physical-cognitive mapping of Berlin that describes the body's position in space and the city, privileging the experiential and sensory over the abstract and determined. Similar to Michel de Certeau's claim that walking spatializes the city, we reveal how the city is mapped as we physically move through it, negotiating the abstract and represented against the concrete and visible city. Our individual "spatio-narratives" of the city are created by dynamically synthesizing physical and phenomenological stimuli. Essential to framing the temporal and spatial character of an urban experience that crosses back and forth between the real and the represented is Bakhtin's notion of chronotope. Bakhtin uses this term to describe how time and space become visible, expressive and plastic elements in literature, allowing the reader to imaginatively inhabit the Actional world. With time and movement demanding a continual re-mapping, we assemble a chronotopography by layering the literal and spatial descriptions of our urban experience. These chronotopographic maps provide a site for our activity and a navigational tool for moving through the city. Contrary to our use of static maps, we constantly adjust these maps to changes in the body's physical position; to fragmentary, contradictory and partial urban stimuli that do not necessarily form a cohesive whole; and to one's own memories and textual associations that are triggered by external cues. Sensitized by our experience of traveling the S-Bahn, we offer a methodology for mapping the city that draws on sensory and cognitive information.

Historical Overview Having remained physically intact for over a century, the line of the S-Bahn viaduct is a metaphor for continuity in the urban fabric of Berlin. In the fragmented city, split by different patterns of development, war and division, class and ethnicity, it continues to provide an opportunity to witness Berlin's physical and demographic diversity along a structure that dates back to the 1880s during the Gründerjahre, the early nation-building years. Running from east to west, the masonry viaduct forms a continuous permeable membrane in the city, supporting movement along and across it. It not only connects parts of the city that were once divided by the Wall, but re-situates Berlin as a central point along a larger east-west continuum that stretches from Moscow to Paris. 3

Deleuze and Guattari's description of smooth and striated space is useful here. The abstracted S-Bahn route maps, forced into a linear projection due to the demands of their location within the train car, emphasize the points along the line, a distinct characteristic of striated space. Our own time/space dependent experience of travel, however, necessarily biases the interval between the points, an integral aspect of smooth space.

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Although the rhetoric of critical reconstruction promotes Berlin's historic urban texture of small lot development, discussion of the incongruously largescale projects at Potsdamer Platz and Neues Kranzlereck have been clouded by senseless debates over which materials best represent the city's identity. In contrast, the framework of the arcaded viaduct arches provides a network of spatial receptacles for the insertion of a flexible mix of programs. The commercial inhabitation of these Bögen reflects the distinctive, albeit rapidly changing socio-economic character of Berlin's different neighborhoods. Turkish markets, warehouses and automobile repair shops line Lüneburgerstraße in working class Moabit-, an architectural gallery and bookstore serve Savignyplatz in Charlottenburg; a fast food restaurant and a temporary employment center are located in the far eastern end of the viaduct at Ostbahnhof. The S-Bahn, with multiple river and street crossings through the city, contrasts with the unbroken rail lines above with the discontinuity below. Integrated into neighborhood life, particularly at the various train stations, the S-Bahn line nevertheless also forms a complete and independent element in the city. Its consecutively numbered vaults maintain a coherent and separate identity, irrespective of changing street names and adjacent addresses, free from the competing logic of place in the city.

A brief overview of the history of the S-Bahn reflects economic, political and cultural developments in Berlin during the last 120 years. The railway has had a longstanding and variable role in the city, both physical and symbolic. In 1882, Kaiser Wilhelm established a metropolitan railway system to connect the inner city with new suburban areas that had developed in the rapidly expanding city. Most of the east-west line was built on a viaduct that extended

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between the railroad junctions of Westkreuz and Ostkreuz, ultimately connecting local trains to the larger inter-city rail termini. When first built, this brick viaduct was celebrated in euphoric and nationalistic terms as a technological marvel; a building of the future, embodying the political aspirations of the new Germany and helping shape the city's metropolitan image. 4 It frequently appeared as a motif and descriptive element in novels, poems and paintings about Berlin, symbolizing the modem age. In Max Kretzer's novel, Meister Timpe (1888), the S-Bahn signaled a break with the securities of the past and the arrival of industrialized capitalism. It also represented the democratization of public space. Riding the elevated train brought people of different classes together and offered views into private places otherwise inaccessible at street level. In a feuilleton for a Berlin newspaper in 1922, journalist Joseph Roth described the Stadtbahn as a life pulse that seeps into the cracks of the walls and into the lives of the people who inhabit the houses along the tracks. For the S-Bahn traveler looking out onto the city and into houses, the trip can be as educational and satisfying as long-distance travel: "Manchmal ist eine Stadtbahnreise lehrreicher als eine Fahrt über Meere und Länder. Ich bin so erfüllt von dem Leben vieler schöner und trauriger Dinge, wenn ich von einer Stadtbahnfahrt zurückkehre, und stolz wie ein Weltumsegier, wenn ich ein Stückchen Stadt umsegelt habe" (129). 5 Like the commercial arcades of the late nineteenth century, one could intermingle in the train cars and stations to circulate gossip, news, propaganda and political dissent. 6 For those who embrace city life, the S-Bahn signified urban dynamism, change, mobility, freedom, and the possibility of escape. It embodied the transitory nature of urban life and the modernist aesthetic of ephemeral beauty. In his poem "Berlin," Joachim Ringelnatz evokes a startling image of an elevated train driving into one house and reappearing on the other side, epitomizing the city's nervous and chaotic energy. One ought to visit this city once, if not for long, the speaker urges, where everything is excitingly and dangerously buzzing with the sound of trolleys, cars and trains. 7

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"Ein gewaltiges Bauwerk hat sich vor uns erhoben; seit den Mauern Babylons und dem Bau der römischen Wasserleitung sind vielleicht nicht wieder so viele Ziegelsteine aneinandergelegt worden, wie sie hier geschehen" (Binger 106). "A tremendous structure has been built. Not since the walls of Babylon and the construction of the Roman aqueducts have so many bricks been assembled as they are here." Unless otherwise noted, all translations are by the authors. "Sometimes a trip on the Stadtbahn is more educational than travel across oceans and lands. When I return from a Stadtbahn trip, I am filled with the life of beautiful and sad things. I am as proud as someone who has sailed around the world when I have sailed around a piece of the city." Translation by Michael Hoffmann. Other novels that describe the political public sphere of the S-Bahn include Jan Petersen's Unsere Straße (1947), Klaus Neukrantz Barrikaden am Wedding (1931), as well as the 1931/2 film by Bertolt Brecht and Slatan Dudow, Kuhle Wampe. "Da fahrt die Hochbahn in ein Haus hinein. Und auf der andern Seite wieder raus. Und blind und düster stemmt sich Haus an Haus. Einmal—nicht lange—müßtest du hier sein. Wo das aufregend gefährlich flutet und wimmelt. Und tutet und bimmelt" (Ringelnatz 171). "There,

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With almost 600 inhabitable Bögen (vaulted arches) below, the S-Bahn serves both as transportation medium and as commercial infrastructure. The interior of interconnecting vaulted spaces have dual-sided orientation towards spacious sidewalks and strategic access to the local and long-distance commercial trains utilizing the tracks above. Initially, the Bögen were rented out to a variety of businesses: fish and meat markets, wholesale warehouses, horse stables and later car garages, animal shelters, antique dealers, restaurants, pubs and other small enterprises. These rental contracts were terminated during World War II when the solid Bögen served as bomb shelters and storage for military equipment. In the decidedly anti-modernist, anti-urban climate of Nazi Germany, the S-Bahn disappeared from literary references, appearing only in association with lurid crime scenes in detective novels, as in Axel Alt's Der Tod fuhr im Zug (1944). As its enforced intermingling of classes was shunned, it was devalued as a place in the city. After World War II, the S-Bahn became a source of nostalgia for a way of life that existed before war and division. Still physically linking the city, the S-Bahn became a metaphor for the post-war crisis and increasing alienation between the two Berlins. Its familiar yellow and red painted cars provided a sometime surreal image of continuity amidst the destruction in Berlin. Describing the bittersweet experience of returning to visit Berlin after forty years in exile, the poet Mascha Kaleko recalls the S-Bahn among her memories of the prewar city she once called home. The sound of the S-Bahn serves as the backdrop to a time of normalcy and happiness that abruptly came to an end with the Nazis.8 After the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the line was interrupted at the border station, Friedrichstrasse, an emblematic site of the city's division. Over the next two decades, the S-Bahn played different roles within the city's transportation system and, as a result acquired different symbolic meaning in the East and West. For East Berliners, less reliant on automobiles, it was the primary means of transportation. It was a self-evident part of everyday life and awareness, an integral feature in the urban landscape. With competition from busses, the subway and proliferating automobiles, the use of the S-Bahn in West Berlin declined dramatically. The reduction of service led to virtually empty cars stopping at increasingly neglected stations (Hardy 21).9 For the painter Gerd Jedermann, the dead tracks and dilapidated stations

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an elevated train rides into a house and back out on the other side. Houses press against each other blindly and gloomily. Once, though not for long, you ought to be here. In this excitingly dangerous place where everything is flooding, teeming, honking and ringing. "Hier war mein Glück zu Hause. Und meine Not. Hier kam mein Kind zur Welt. Und mußte fort. Hier besuchten mich meine Freunde Und die Gestapo. Nachts hörte man die Stadtbahnzüge. Und das Horst-Wessel-Lied aus der Kneipe nebenan" (Kalecko 21). "Here my happiness was at home. My sorrow, too. Here my child was bom. And was forced to leave. Here my friends visited me. The Gestapo, too. The sound of the S-Bahn trains could be heard at night. As well as the Horst-Wessel-Lied in the pub next door." Hardy adds, that in contrast to the situation in West Berlin, the S-Bahn continued to operate successfully in East Berlin, providing almost half of all local transportation.

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represented painful wounds in the Western cityscape. His depictions of foreign guest workers, the S-Bahn's primary passengers during the 1970s, convey an atmosphere of emptiness and isolation. In a series of essays dedicated to the SBahn, the writer Uwe Johnson described how this historical relic invited introspection into the city's and one's own past: "Die S-Bahn gehört zu unseren Intimitäten [...] Es hält uns die Vergangenheit der Stadt im Gedächtnis" (43).'° Due to its unique historical and cultural relevance, its overdue revival was championed by politicians in local elections and became the focus of several publications and exhibitions.11 West Berlin assumed control of its portion of the S-Bahti in 1984 and initiated a gradual physical renovation and extension of service. Counter to their former, more organic neighborhood-related occupancy, since unification, the real estate office of the Deutsche Bahn railway administration has sought to develop the S-Bahnbögen according to a thematically oriented master plan. Viaducts along Georgenstraße in the central historical district, Berlin Mitte, that once served as antique stores, commercial storage spaces and garages have now been designated as the Kunst- und Kulturmeile, the mile of art and culture. The viaducts in the vicinity of the Humboldt University are leased to services for the student population: pubs, nightclubs, bookstores and photocopying businesses. Where fishmongers and butchers were once located before the war, boutiques, nightclubs, cafes and antique stores now cater to the regentrified Hackescher Markt area. Businesses that occupied the Bögen during the years of division have all closed or been reappropriated for new commercial uses. Many, however, sit sealed and uninhabited, their contents unknown.

Shifting Frames Various historical forces have shaped the current urban form of Berlin: late medieval roots; the formalist ordering of the Baroque; the commercial streetscapes of the late 19th century; the politicization of urban space, particularly during the period of the GDR; the prioritization of traffic management in urban design strategies in the West; and the radical re-shifting of center and margin that occurred during division and reunification. Once held as a paradigmatic position to witness the growth of the modern city, the SBahn is again relevant as a vantage point from which to observe and 10 11

"The S-Bahn belongs to our intimacies [...] It keeps the history of the city present in our memory." Notable among these is the catalogue that accompanied an exhibit of the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst (The New Society of Fine Arts) entitled Die Berliner S-Bahn: Gesellschaftsgeschichte eines industriellen Verkehrsmittels. This interdisciplinary volume includes an oral history of the S-Bahn, technical and architectural details about itsconstruction, as well as essays about its presence as literary and art historical motif.

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understand the contemporary city. While no longer a technological novelty, the S-Bahn is unique in its public and social inclusiveness, and through its now relative slowness as an urban transportation option. With reconstruction to bias the movement of the automobile, the image of the city is increasingly formed by the view behind the steering wheel, marked by speed, physical and psychological distancing. The reliance on the automobile and the reactionary urban model proposed by critical reconstruction both reduce our repertoire of active urban movement and limit our perspectives of the city. Traditional architectural or urban imagery relies on the singular vantage point of Renaissance perspective, as well as the depopulated and optimized photography of architectural journals. In contrast to these fixed-point orientations, our perception remains in a constant state of disruption and incompletion as we move along the elevated S-Bahn. Sociologist Erving Goffman describes our perception and interpretation of events in terms of "frames" that we are inclined to transform or "re-key" for purposes of fun, experimentation, deception, fantasy, or analysis (24). Similarly, architect Bernard Cache proposes that architecture's primary contribution is the identification and construction of perceptual frames within which we comprehend our spatial environment (10). Rather than delimiting the nature and character of our activities, the concept of architecture as frame illuminates the potential phenomenal and conceptual realms that shape our often-transitory inhabitation. These frames shape opportunities of movement, light, spatial flow and material perception and play a less deterministic role in defining hierarchies of use or social and fixed urban identity. Form and function perform an ongoing pas de deux, not only adjusting to changes in the environment or in patterns of use, but also encouraging them.

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On the S-Bahn, our frames are constantly shifting and cellular in the sense of film, circumscribed by the train car windows and shifting perspectives. Disparate elements are perceived in a permanently non-resolving arrangement, with each superceding view denying the dominance of any one particular position. Views from the train window open to the narrow spaces of building windows and courtyards as the S-Bahn moves through the denser stretches of the city between Alexanderplatz and Friedrichstrasse or between the Zoologischer Garten and Charlottenburg stations. Broader vistas of the city open up as the line exits Mitte and enters the spreading terrain vague of the Spreebogen. The iconic architecture of the Federal Strip, the Reichstag and Potsdamer Platz merges with the green expanse of the Tiergarten. The stroboscopie shift through spatial layers of the fixed station windows or the moving windows of passing trains reinforces the cinematic nature of the mobile frames. These frames generate layered and unstable images of the city that depart from identifiable typological models or consistent urban artifacts, giving rise to new possibilities of seeing. At certain precise moments, these frames dissolve and the space of the traveling car meshes with personal space and the space of the city. In these moments, décadrage, or un-framing space becomes wide and expansive or intimate and personal as we fix on a detail or lock eyes with residents in a passing window. This indeterminate flow of perspectives is a primary feature of the metropolis. The resulting disorientation forces on us an awareness of our own movements, as well as our spatial relationship to others. We are called upon to coalesce and interpret the spatial fragments of this disjunctive experience. In this ambiguous situation, fragments always retain some reference to their original sources, while situating themselves in a radically different structure of space. These objects lose their rigid identities and become part of a newly articulated city. We experience the hybrid, syncretic quality of the urban that eludes fixed categories and is invisible from static viewing positions. As we negotiate our way through Berlin, we measure the physical city of our experience against an abstracted city that in our minds confronts prior expectations and is shaped by our imagination and memory. This metaphorical city, nurtured by its varied representations in literature and film, exists as a surrogate to the physical city. A scene in Wim Wenders Der Himmel über Berlin ( Wings of Desire, 1988) illustrates how the imagined city can exist separate from and prior to our actual experience of it. A voice-over conveys the thoughts of Peter Falk as he descends upon the city by plane. The very name "Berlin" conjures up a series of mental associations for him. People, places and events blur personal memories: "That wasn't in Berlin! What difference does it make, it happened. If Grandma was here she'd say: 'Spazieren, go spazieren!' [...] Tokyo, Kyoto, Paris, London, Trieste [...] Berlin" (Wenders and Handke 11). The camera then shifts to show expansive aerial views of the city itself, as if the mere naming of it brought the city into being. Marcel Proust suggests that this intertwining of imagination, memory

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and experience shapes our understanding of place. He describes the incantatory power of place names to unleash a stream of associations about a place we may have only imagined. Names can then serve as mnemonic nodal points for orienting ourselves within the narrated city. Along the S-Bahn line, the names of the different stations evoke specific moments in the city's urban history and cultural development, while remaining part of the present. Friedrichstrasse, for example, might recall the halcyon days of the "enlightened" period of royal patronage under Friedrich the Great, as well as the "rational" urban grid of Friedrichstadt. The name also evokes Ludwig Kirchner's Expressionist streetscapes when Friedrichstrasse was the fading axis of the commercial and entertainment district in the late 19th century. It could elicit living memories of the train station that served as the rupture point along the S-Bahn line in divided Berlin. Other stations names such as Stettiner-, Schlesischer- or Lehrterbahnhof reference connections long severed and forgotten that describe the city's unique position in Central Europe, not limited to its former identity solely in terms of the East-West political division.

Spatio-Narratives We use words to articulate and construct a literal and sensible world. Spationarratives draw from language, verbal imagery and the narratives of writers who model processes of observing and interpreting the city. This textual relationship between the city and the observer is made explicit in seminal writings about Berlin. Walter Benjamin describes how the city itself generates the text that serves as our guide. When we cede control to the physical

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environment and allow ourselves to get lost in the city, we must rely on our senses to navigate through it. The city becomes a text with a decodable language: it speaks through street names, billboards, house facades and shop windows. In "A Berlin Chronicle," these external textual markers function as triggers that open up the fan of memories. The narrative's associative and meandering structure mimics Benjamin's imaginatively reconstructed wanderings through the neighborhood of his childhood; his personal, spatial mapping of "lived Berlin." For poet Günter Kunert, the city is full of historical clues that he seeks to unearth like an archeologist. In "Gleisdreieck," he describes how a ride on the S-Bahn exposes the present-day city as saturated with a sinister past that is only superficially occluded from us: Dieser Ort ist renovierter Abgrund: Keiner ahnt

bei einer Fahrt mit der S-Bahn das metaphysische Ausmaß der Reise. Klappernd und schwankend im Rhythmus altertümlicher Prothesen hängen die beiden Teile des zerschmetterten Corpus Berolinese zusammen. Verhüllt von unheilbarer Geschäftigkeit schleppen sich scheppernd graue Erinnerungen hin und her die vom vielen Gebrauch ganz entkräftet sind. (37) 12

While Benjamin and Kunert describe a city that constantly evokes its past through signs we are left to decode, Alfred Döblin presents the city as an endless and overwhelming cacophony that disturbs the coherent flow of memory. Through the technique of montage and stream of consciousness narration in Berlin Alexanderplatz, he reveals how simultaneous, disorderly and competing texts—signage, newspapers, telephone books and advertisements—vie for attention in our heads. They intrude upon and shape our internal conversations, frustrating any attempt at forming a holistic understanding of the city. From literature, we obtain various models to determine and describe our position and role as observers within the city. In "My Cousin's Window," E.T.A. Hoffmann suggests that, in order to discern a pattern and logic within the bustling activity of urban life, the observer must develop an "art of seeing." This not only involves detailed observation, but also embellishment and interpretation through storytelling and invention. Movement on the S-Bahn

12

"This place is a renovated abyss: no one suspects the metaphysical dimension of the trip on the S-Bahn. Clattering and swaying to the rhythm of antiquated prostheses, the two parts of the Berolina's shattered body hang together. Veiled by incurable activity and completely weakened by their overuse, gray memories drag themselves rattling back and forth."

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necessarily accelerates this process. Details are distilled from quickly glimpsed scenes and then woven together through imaginative speculation. We draw on stories, texts, poems and other fragments to compose these narratives. Paul Gurk describes the steady stream of images and lives that pass by his train window: "Es war ein unaufhörliches, lautloses Vorbeihuschen von winzigen, viereckigen Lichtflecken. Aber hinter den glasigen Häuten dieser Lichtquadrate waren Bilder, mehr: Geschehnisse" (325). /J Christopher Isherwood refuses such emotional invention and speculation. He presents the position of an outsider who registers scenes and events with cool detachment: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking" (1). Likewise, we might look out upon the city without as an object of study completely separate from ourselves.

In The Wall Jumper, Peter Schneider furnishes a language to describe our position on the S-Bahn—in transit, along the terrain vague, cutting across natural and socio-economic boundaries of divided Berlin—in terms that transcend their particular place or the literal act of traveling. His characters jump physical and metaphorical walls to recognize that the political and psychological differences these walls are meant to enforce are mere constructs, not solid truths. This in-between zone offers a different paradigm for understanding the relationship between east and west, self and other, movement and stasis, state and individual that is not based on mutual exclusion or hierarchy. Likewise, in transit on the S-Bahn, we constantly receive visual,

13

"Tiny squares of light rushed by constantly and silently. But behind the glassy skin of these lit squares were pictures. Even more: events!"

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aural and textual cues that are consciously and unconsciously woven together in our internal narratives. Conversations in the train car interrupt a book we are reading, so we discretely look up into the window's reflections to find a face to match the voice. The speaker's profile is superimposed upon a wall outside, briefly fuses with our own reflection, and then dissolves as the window opens out onto a wide view. Our imaginative faculties primed by our prior reading, we construct an elaborate tale out of fragments of eavesdropped conversation, but are distracted by the moving pattern of cars, trams and pedestrians viewed below. Headlines from a passenger's newspaper recall an interview heard on the morning radio. We remember old photos and return to our book. The nonlinear and fluid character of our thoughts reflects the flow of external impressions that are in constant flux relative to the passage of time and our movement through space. In our perception and consciousness, the city is process.

For a building to be motionless is the exception: our pleasure comes in moving about so as to make the building move in turn while we enjoy all these combinations of its parts. As they vary, the column turns, depths recede, galleries glide: a thousand visions escape. Paul Valéry, "The Method of Leonardo"

The Italian Futurist, Umberto Boccocioni speaks of a double concept of motion and physical form: form in movement (relative movement) and movement in form (absolute movement.) These are hybridized in the experience of the moving space of the S-Bahn car. Boccocioni's work celebrated the art of the perishable, transitory and expendable, challenging the notion that buildings, and by extension the city, have been traditionally associated with stability and permanence. Motion along the S-Bahn allows us to experience the facades of generic Mietshäuser (apartments) and Plattenbauten (pre-fabricated apartment buildings) as a horizontal blur, embodying what the architect Erich Mendelsohn once sought to represent in his expressionistic representation of motion in the Mosse-Haus on Jerusalemerstrasse. This is a healthy disorientation from the norm. These spatial adventures are a truly inclusive experience in an increasingly privatized city; a public architecture lacking the didactic character of Daniel Libeskind's addition to the Berlin Museum or the increasingly self-congratulatory private spaces typified by Frank Gehry's bank at Pariser Platz. Moving along the S-Bahn line, the observer occupies a position between the flaneur and voyeur. The elevated line offers a distanced viewpoint from above. We are still within the terrain vague of the city, moving through this inhabited void of the rail line, simultaneously observing and being observed. In his poem "Wenn wir Stadtbahn fahren," Walter Mehring describes the interconnection between time and space. The acceleration of time is directly proportionate to movement through space. As the narrator passes by on the S-

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Bahn, he looks into the hearts of houses to see centuries of historical time collapse into a moment of clear insight about the transitory nature of life. As well, we are keenly aware of the playing out of Einstein's famous train experiment, with mutual voyeurism between moving train car and static building.14 The life of the city modulates to the relative simultaneity of positions within these urban figures and voids. Equally promoting this selfconscious urban identity is the passenger's own reflection in the train car glass, observing the changing perspectives of the city. Unable to form a totalizing view of the city, we are like Michel de Certeau's walkers, our "narrative footsteps" rewrite the city through movement that simultaneously spatializes it.

Smooth and Striated Space Inhabitation of the S-Bahn viaducts is inherently paradoxical: The space of the Bahn (the line of movement above) and the Bögen (the vaulted spaces below) illustrate two fundamentally differing spatial conditions that are analogous to the dichotomous description of space posited by Deleuze and Guattari. They contrast the space of the nomad, based on the flows of people across space, with that of the State, the coded and determined space of the administrative city. Within the train car yet open to the city, we are in a contained, framed space in motion along an urban continuum, literally, a nomad in the city. Trajectories of movement in space define our identity. Below, within the Bögen, the static arched spaces of the viaduct, we are connected to the city streets and urban blocks, the physically defined and properly delimited space of the State. Deleuze and Guattari's description of smooth and striated space invokes a manner of being-in space. Their distinction provides a theoretical framework to discuss the relationship of the simultaneity and dialogical proximity of these static and dynamic S-Bahn spaces. The smooth space of Berlin's terrains vagues is amorphous rather than homogenous. The multinucleated city is a 14

Einstein's train experiment was used to show that simultaneity is relative. Einstein understood that a consequence of his Principle of Relativity was that our understanding of the nature of time needed to be revised. The set of events that are simultaneous to one observer are not simultaneous to another observer. He proposed a thought experiment whereby lightning is presumed to strike the front and back ends of a moving train, leaving marks on the train and on the tracks. One observer stands on the ground halfway between the marks on the tracks. The other observer rides in the middle car of the train. The first observer receives ("sees") the light emitted from events, two lightening strikes simultaneously, and concludes that since he is midway between the marks on the tracks, and since the speed of light is a constant, these events (the lightening strikes) are simultaneous. The second observer receives ("sees") the light emitted from the two lightening strikes and concludes that since he is midway between the marks on the train, and since the speed of light is a constant, then the events (the lightening strikes) are NOT simultaneous: one occurred before the other. Thus, each inert observer will have a different sense of which events are simultaneous. Simultaneity has become a relative, observer-dependent concept.

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"patchwork" of spaces conforming to Deleuze and Guattari's paradigmatic description of smooth space. Space is described as a textile with warp and woof intersecting to create distinct points. Analogously, in Berlin, streets and urban blocks intertwine to form a fixed urban fabric, dimension-able and distinct, defined by addresses in the weave of street and block. 15 The emphasis of critical reconstruction on the streetscapes of 19th century Berlin, by contrast, epitomizes their description of striated space, where lines or trajectories become subordinate to fixed locations.

The vaulted form of the Bögen embodies their essentially striated character. The arches eliminate dynamic structural tension and carry all loads in compression. Any particular Bogen may connect itself to a fixed place within the striated matrix of property, street and block. Its unique number between 1 and 605, however, identifies each Bogen. Numbers are not associated with dimension or quantification, with division of a fixed space, but locate individual Bogen along the length of the S-Bahn, in the smooth space of the continuum of this terrain vague. While inhabiting the Bogen, with each end of the vault open to the order of the striated city space, we are reconnected through sound and vibration to the movement along the Bahn above and our position along a physical and transportation network. From inside, the trains passing by above are like signals from a phantom limb. They create a unique 15

Rather than the analogy inhabitation of the Bögen the relationships between the Bögen spaces. Author

of a woven fabric, Berlin architect Gerhard Spangenberg sees as "parasitic" condition, using the metaphor to positively describe the activity in the surrounding neighborhoods to the utilization of interview with Gerhard Spangenberg in June 2002.

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ambience and poetic awareness of parallel lives: rapid or slow movement, the Berliner and the traveler. Meandering and lingering below are coupled with the speed and fleeting presence of nervous city energy above. We simultaneously inhabit a fixed and compartmentalized space while being transported through reveries to distant places. Berhold Schüttle, the owner of the Weitzmann restaurant and Artenschutz experimental theater located in the two Bögen on the Lüneburgerstrasse, aptly describes this phenomenon: "Things happen here. Trains drive by above. Local and long-distance trains. There are destinies up there. When a train passes, I see its reflection in the window. With a little bit of imagination, you can read something into this. I don't even have to sit inside; I can experience everything in my mind." 16

Applying Deleuze and Guattari's dichotomy to the S-Bahn helps distinguish spatial differences. However, their reality is more complex. While an abstract distinction between the Bahn and Bögen may clarify some aspects of these spaces, it is through the more difficult interruptions, alternations and superimposition of these striated and smooth spaces during their inhabitation that we gain meaningful insight into Berlin. These are not static conditions of space. Rather, the smooth is always in the process of being dimensioned, delimited or territorialized by the striated. Likewise, an intensive and dense striation eventually reforms smooth space. The Bahn and the Bögen exhibit characteristics of both conditions of space as our experience evolves between these two poles. The physical and sublime realities of these spaces are intertwined, particularly when the alternate positions of the S-Bahn, above and 16

Author's interview with Berhold Schüttle in June 2002.

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below, are sequentially occupied. Consisting of a series of fixed points, the stations, along its line, the Bahn may physically be mistakenly considered to exemplify striated space. However, movement along the Bahn subverts this understanding. The interval between points becomes the dominant spatial realm with variations in time/space intervals along the route being a primary catalyst of experience. Likewise, as an ever-changing and fugitive cityscape enfolds outside, our own bodies and meditations within the space of the train car become the constant. The contradictory nature of the modern city has rooted this dialogical organization into the spaces of the Nomad and of the State. Our attraction to the city, however, oscillates between a fixed urban community and the anonymous flow of people, media and phenomena. This quality of simultaneity of experience and the relationship between fixed position and movement are an analog for a new spatial conception of Berlin.

Parallax Views Ongoing discoveries in science and the arts and their representations in the media alter our perception of urban space. In particular, the phenomena of light, reflection and digitization have radically changed our views of physical space, and in turn, continuously redefine our psychological space. While the body remains our primary reference, our spatial perception is not limited to the eyes and ears. We are not passive receptors of sensation. Our senses are aggressive, data gathering mechanisms: active, mobile and exploratory. Perception in the smooth space of the S-Bahn is based less on objective observation and more on a shifting sense of qualitative evaluation of stimuli. Our perceptions are characterized by their relative intensities rather than measurable properties or quantifiable character. Architect Steven Holl speaks of the critical relationship between the body, time and its particular orientation in space. He describes the "virtual body," the system of nerves and senses, as our mechanism for understanding our physical position. The S-Bahn seat subverts the basic symmetrical positioning of the body/sensory system towards external stimuli, enforcing an asymmetry whereby urban order is repeatedly modulated and upset through return movement along S-Bahn routes. Sitting forward or backward, left or right within the car presents differing sequences, reflections and subsequent re-framings of the city. The complexity of urban spaces cannot be objectified precisely or consistently. In the shifting light and reflections of Berlin, particularly at night, space dissolves before our eyes, only to reform again within seconds. In this modulation, the position of the body and its perceptions are constantly reset.

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Space, the fundamental medium of architecture and the city, is simultaneously many things: the voids within buildings, the space around and between buildings, as well as the vast expanse of landscape. Its qualities are both intrinsic to local experience and in relation to other spaces. Neither physical dimensioning nor architecturally manipulated and situated material alone creates space. Rather, space is inextricably bound to our perception, memories and life narratives. The movement of the body as it crosses through overlapping perspectives is the elemental connection between architecture, the city and ourselves. These parallax views are uniquely formed within and outside of the moving S-Baftn train cars. In motion, we see the city with shifting scopic perspectives and panoramas, oblique views and cut angles. Berlin, like many cities, obscures the consistent feature of a visible horizon. Open voids in the city do, however, expose stretches of the horizon to reorient us. Between Friedrichstrasse and Bellevue, the long curving line of the S-Bahn allows a multitude of different perspective views of the Regierungsviertel. The Siegessäule advances and retreats in view closely appearing above the treetops and then falling back along Altonaer Strasse. The rectilinear volumes of the Chancellery and the Reichstag constantly are repositioned relative to essential urban markers, such as the Fernsehturm, the International Trade Center and the Europa Center. Poet Gerald Bisinger reveals how these once served as powerful signifiers of political difference in the divided city: Schrifttafeln im Osten an Häusern Parolen in weiss und auf rot Sowjetsterne fünfzackig und rote bunte Lichtreklamen im Westen hoch auf

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dem Europa-Center dreizackig in weiss der Mercedes-Stem der sich dreht dort mit dem ihn umgebenen blau leuchtenden Kreis Ausdruck von Macht und von Glauben hüben wie drüben. (179)

No longer political or ideological markers in the unified city, these now function as spatial and geographical reference points amidst the shifting perspectives. This is a profoundly different means of orientation in space than the use of polar coordinates, typically a guide through the grids of Manhattan or Chicago, which rely on a Cartesian system of spatial relationships emphasizing precision over qualitative understanding of position and place.18 In Berlin, these shifting perspectives provide us with abrupt spatial reconfigurations of our own relative body space in the city. Particular parallax views, as the S-Bahn winds through Mitte over the Museuminsel (Museum Island), present the static neo-classical buildings as a series of neo-cubist masses, revealing a form far more fascinating than their elaborate facades. This experience continuously readapts our cognitive mappings, leading to new and more complex spatial and architectural understandings of the city. These redefinitions of space are compounded further by the action of natural and artificial light, as well as the reflections caught in the frame of the S-Bahn car windows. Reflections undermine our north-south, east-west ordering systems, as buildings are magically transported, repositioned and superimposed across this mirror plane. Prominent new government buildings are resituated across the River Spree in the worker's housing in Moabit. Tiergarten trees implant themselves in building facades and the Protestant Dom mysteriously finds itself next to the Neue Synagogue. Positively evoking Karl Scheffler's now clichéd lament that Berlin "is always becoming but never is," the city is in a constant, exciting state of completion and disruption through our shifting perceptions.19 The ever-changing arrangements of surfaces that define spaces equally define the city. Our understanding of its physicality is continuously intertwined with our consciousness of its identity. Within the train, with the doubling refraction of glass, we observe Berlin as a montage of our own reflections and those of fellow passengers that are superimposed upon the city. We see other Berliners, as they travel with us, the changing character of the city is reflected in the faces and dress of riders as we move through neighborhoods from West to East and back again. We make intermittent connections with others; those standing still as we pass or in other 17

18 19

"Signposts in the East, on walls slogans in white, and the five-pointed Soviet star in read, and bright red neon advertisements in the West, high on top of the Europa Center, three-pointed Mercedes star in white that turns surrounded by a blue-lit circle, expression of power and ideology, here as over there." The Chrysler Building and the former World Trade Center served as a similar means of parallax spatial navigation in New York. "All progress is made by and in striated space, but all becoming occurs in smooth space" (Deleuze and Guattari 486).

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trains whose speed allows a temporary freezing of the relative motion between cars. We are no angels, like Wender's Damiel and Cassiel, and cannot see into the minds and hearts of others in Berlin. Our imagination constructs what is behind these doors and windows and we must generate our narratives from fragments and phantom clues.

Conclusion

Architecture is forever on the side of forms, of the distant, of the optical and the figurativewhile the divided individual of the contemporary city looks for forces instead of forms, for the incorporated instead of the distant, for the haptic instead of the optic, the rhizomatic instead of the figurative. Ignasi de Sola-Morales "Terrain Vague"

The dynamic voids generated by the movement of the S-Bahn line through the city fabric form a stark contrast to the static, formal role that architecture has played in recent reconstruction in Berlin. From the unique vantage of the train car, elevated and in motion we gain haptic and narrative understandings of the city—fleeting, shifting, hybrid and illusory. As a physical entity itself and as a flexible infrastructure, the Stadtbahn and Bögen present an alternative to the static formality and programmatic specificity of an architecture based on shape and symbol. Experiencing the city in motion and stimulated by literature, film and architecture, allows us to visualize and propose new paradigms for further reconstruction in Berlin. It also provides an exhilarating experience and a dynamic model for developing critical spatio-narratives, enabling us to negotiate the changing urban spaces and empowering us to develop new methods of designing and inhabiting current and future cities.

Works Cited Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. Michael Holquist. Austin: U. of Texas P., 1981. Behrens, Alfred. Berlinerstadtbahnbilder. Ed. Volker Noth. Berlin: Ullstein Verlag, 1981. Benjamin, Walter. "Berlin Chronicle." One Way Street and Other Writings. London: Verso, 1985. Binger, Lothar. "Stadtbahnbögen." Exerzierfeld der Moderne. Eds. Jochen Boberg, Tilamn Fichter and Eckhart Gillen. Munich: Beck, 1984. 106113. Bisinger, Gerald. "Untitled poem." Speier. 179.

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Cache, Bernhard. Earthmoves: The Furnishing of Territories. Boston: MIT, 1995. De Certeau, Michel. "Walking in the City." The Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. Simon During. London: Routledge, 1993. 126-133. De Sola-Morales Rubio, Ignasi. "Terrain Vague." Anyplace. Ed. Cynthia C. Davidson. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995. 119-123. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota P., 2000. Döblin, Alfred. Berlin Alexanderplatz. Berlin: Fischer, 1929. Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. New York: Harper and Row, 1974. Gurk, Paul. Berlin Berlin. Berlin: Agora, 1934. Hardy, Brian, ed. The Berlin S-Bahn. Middlesex: Capital Transport Publications, 1996. Hickethier, Knut. "Die literarische Stadtbahn." Die Berliner Stadtbahn: Gesellschaftsgeschichte eines industriellen Verkehrsmittels. Katalog zur Ausstellung der Neuen Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst. Berlin: Verlag Ästhetik und Kommunikation, 1982. Hoffman, E.T.A. "Des Vetters Eckfenster." Gespenster in der Friedrichstadt. Eds. Günter de Bruyn and Gerhard Wolf. Berlin: Buchverlag der Morgen. 1986. Holl, Steven. Parallax. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000. Isherwood, Christopher. The Berlin Stories. New York: New Directions Books, 1963. Johnson, Uwe. Berliner Sachen: Aufsätze. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975. Kalecko, Mascha. "Bleibtreustraße heißt die Straße." Rosenkranz. 65. Kunert, Günter. Berlin Beizeiten. Frankfurt: Fisher, 1989. Mehring, Wlater. "Wenn wir Stadtbahn fahren." Im Zeichen des Bären. Ed. Hugo Stummel. Hamburg: Classen, 1964. 373. Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way. Trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. New York: The Modern Library, 1992. Ringelnatz, Joachim. "Berlin." Speier. 171. Rosenkranz, Jutta, ed. Berlin im Gedicht. Husum: Husum Verlag, 1987. Roth, Joseph. What I Saw: Reports from Berlin, 1920-1933. Trans. Michael Hoffmann. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003. Trans, of Joseph Roth in Berlin. Cologne: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1996. Schneider, Peter. The Wall Jumper. Trans. Leigh Hafrey. Chicago: The U. of Chicago P, 1983. Trans, of Der Mauerspringer. Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1982. Shields, Rob. "A Guide to Urban Representation and What to Do About It: Alternative Traditions of Urban Theory." Re-presenting the City: Ethnicity, Capital and Culture in the 21st-century Metropolis. Ed. Anthony King. New York: New York University Press, 1996. 227-252.

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Speier, Hans-Michael, ed. Berlin! Berlin! Eine Großstadt im Gedicht. Berlin: Reclam, 1987. Valéry, Paul. Introduction to the Method of Leonardo. London: Rodker, 1929. Wenders, Wim and Peter Handke. Der Himmel Über Berlin: Ein Filmbuch. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1989.

Experiential Space

EVELYN PREUSS

Yale University

The Collapse of Time: German History and Identity in Hubertus Siegert's Berlin Babylon (2001) and Thomas Schadt's Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt (2002) On the map of German history, all roads lead to Berlin. As the capital, successively, of Prussia, the Wilhelmine Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime and the East German state, Berlin has functioned as a pivot of power. The city's eminence in the Weimar Republic—as metropolis, seat of volatile governments and the site of brutal political clashes-—linked it to modernity, but also to a failing democracy and the emergence of fascism. Although the Nazi leaders were not entirely comfortable with the modem urbanity and the avant-garde impetus of Berlin, they nevertheless designated the city to become the center of their new world order. Rather than leaving it unclaimed, they set out to redesign it entirely and to rename it Germania. In the post-war years, the coexistence of the two juxtaposed walled-in cities of East and West Berlin epitomized a world at once ripped apart and united by the Cold War. As this history shaped the cityscape of Berlin, it stands—if perceived with historical consciousness—as a ghostly monument to the recent past, as the historian Brian Ladd explains in the voice-over to the opening sequence of the documentary film Nach dem Fall (1999): "You could say that any city has old ghosts. Berlin is special, because there have been so many layers of change, destruction, trauma just in the course of the 20th century and one can find remnants of those everywhere in the city." After the German reunification, the legacy conveyed by Berlin's topography turned into the defining idiom of the German state, which soon came to be called after its new capital, the "Berlin Republic." Whether pursuing revisionist agendas or acting on a professed historical and social conscience, German politicians and intellectuals have declared Berlin to be the face on which the national state of mind could be and should be read. Changes to Berlin's cityscape, such as the obliteration of sites dating from the Nazi regime, the building of a Holocaust memorial, the destruction of the East German Palast der Republik (Palace of the Republic) and the rebuilding of the Stadtschloß (Royal Palace) of Prussia's Hohenzollern dynasty, sparked a series of public debates that focused on architecture as a material manifestation of Germany's memory, identity and political program. As the redefinition of Berlin lacked a broad political

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consensus, the city acquired the air of a battleground on which Germany's political future would be decided. 1

In Need of Legitimation More or less directly, these disputes addressed questions raised in the wake of German unification in 1990. As Germany was about to overcome its postwar division, at least in terms of its legal status, the specter of the Nazi regime prompted anxieties regarding Germany's future role within Europe and European transatlantic relations. The choice of Berlin as capital exacerbated these concerns: it could be read as an acknowledgement—and in the light of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's revanchist policies, even as a tacit endorsement—of historical and political continuities.2 Given Germany's past, unification begged for legitimation and, thus, for new identity constructions. To counteract the apprehensions about an expansionist and xenophobic Germany once again trying to dominate Europe, Berlin had to showcase a functioning democracy able to address its legacy. However, the debates raging about the visual and material rendering of democracy in Berlin, i.e. about what characterizes "democratic architecture," largely excluded those who are supposed to be represented by it. Paradoxically or not, democracy remained a catchword in the installation of its display. The many grass roots initiatives spawned by post-1989 demolition and construction projects could bring their concerns to bear and successfully influence city politics in a few cases only. As their overall impact has been limited and legislative procedures only allow(ed) for a highly mediated participation of citizens in the design of the city, Berlin architecture and its aspects of memorial culture became the domain of politicians, investors and ambitious architects (Strom 10).3 Ideology turned into stone, glass and steel, obliterating 1

2

3

For an overview of the recent public debates on Berlin architecture, see Brian Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin, Elizabeth Strom, Building the New Berlin and Michael Wise, Capital Dilemma. Although the Social Democrat Willy Brandt had pleaded along with Helmut Kohl for the selection of Berlin as capital because of these continuities, Brandt, who had been the mayor of Berlin during the Berlin crisis, saw the choice as a confrontation with the past. However, the Social Democrats were in opposition from 1982 to 1998, and the political tone of the conservatives in power was marked by gestures, such as awarding the "Federal Cross of Merit" to the Nazi profiteer and political mentor of Kohl, Fritz Ries, the ceremony at the Bitburg cemetery of the Waffen-SS, which marked the 1985 state visit by US President Ronald Reagan, and political profiteering from a flurry of Neo-Nazi violence. Correspondingly, Michael Webb suggests that Hans Stimmann, as Senate Director for Construction and Senate Secretary for City Development, remained unencumbered by democratic concerns when dubbing him "the housing czar of Berlin" (16). The decision making process, as delineated by Stimmann's fiercest defender and co-planner Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm, is indeed devoid of democratic negotiations, and Stimmann unreservedly evades the question when pressed to describe his democratic legitimation

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certain traces of the past, while seeking to retrieve others. Yet, what Germany stood and stands for has been defined not only through building materials and styles, but also through the political process by which they have come to change Berlin's topography. Not surprisingly, the capital's facelift proved to be inexpressive of the national disposition, as it was articulated in public spaces that unfold beyond the dictates of commercialism and the state apparatus. Berlin's artistic scene, for instance, articulated its disapproval by demonstratively refusing to partake in the city's reinvention. Artists and intellectuals from both East and West, despite otherwise growing animosities, united in protest against the erasure of authentic sites such as the Berlin Wall and against the dazzling architecture of Potsdamer Platz and the Regierungsviertel (Government Quarter). Christoph Tannert sums up the momentum of the 1990s art scene, pointing out that "[a]ll of the groups and initiatives react with the same dislike to the beautiful, colorful, and exclusive sandbox games played by those marketing the city of Berlin" (84).

German Film in the 1990s Given governmental intervention in the German film industry and its considerable dependence on funding, it may come as a surprise that even the movie screen did not conform to political and commercial interests, but instead reflected the widespread cultural resistance to the inscription of exclusive power structures in Berlin's topography. While financial support from the Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg was supposed to promote "the representation of the region in Germany and abroad," the films it sponsored rarely presented a glossy image of Germany's new capital.4 Explorations of the city's fringes and undersides, as well as inquiries into Berlin's Nazi past, prevailed in post-1989 productions. Films such as Michael Klier's 1991 Ostkreuz, Wolfgang Becker's 1997 Das Leben Ist eine Baustelle (Life Is All You Get), Andreas Dresen's 1998 Nachtgestalten (Night Shapes), Andreas Kleinert's 1999 Wege in die

4

(Stimmann 237-238). Moreover, on more than one occasion, Stimmann has shown his understanding of democracy to be problematic. For instance, he deems political symbols to be an adequate response to the demand of East Germans to participate in the political process: "Of the voters in East Berlin, more than forty percent voted for the former communist party. Why? Perhaps we need still more symbols in politics" ( Stimmann 52). His political solution to the underrepresentation of East Germans in public offices not only fails to address the representational inequality, but also endorses the aestheticization of politics for which both the East German and the Nazi regime were notorious. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. The Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg was established in 1994 by the states of Berlin and Brandenburg as a limited liability company owned by investment banks of both states. While it is financed by Berlin and Brandenburg, the states benefit from additional federal funds for the cultural image making of the capital. ("An Introduction to the Filmboard").

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Nacht (Paths in the Night), Achim von Borries's 2000 England! and Hannes Stöhr's 2001 Berlin Is in Germany deal with the unfulfilled promises of western consumer society and capitalistic democracy.5 These unfulfilled promises are highlighted as such by the predominantly Eastern backgrounds of their protagonists.6 Underprivileged, unemployed and unwanted, they are never shown participating in the power that manifests itself on the construction sites of Berlin. Instead, they are more or less hapless victims in a game that is not their own, living far from the sites the Berlin Republic chooses to mark with its grand gestures. Andreas Dresen summarizes the impetus of this movement, when he rejects the universal idiom of contemporary cinema as a Hollywood construct that promotes escapism. A German filmmaker, he claims, can only reach an international audience by telling concrete stories about local problems and life perspectives: "Real life is universal, and films about it will be understood by people in France, Portugal, the United States, everywhere in the world." 7 Like their counterparts dealing with contemporary subjects, films addressing the past also avoid master narratives and, instead, try to reconstruct what had been largely ignored in official accounts: the everyday experience of life under the Nazi regime.8 In films such as Max Färberböck's Aimée und Jaguar (Aimée and Jaguar), Joseph Vilsmaier's The Comedian Harmonists and Didi Danquart's Viehjud Levi (Jew Boy Levi), all released in 1999, political opportunism, rather than blind belief or racial fanaticism, creates the social forces that victimize colleagues, friends and lovers when they become identified as Jewish. In place of Nazi leaders, more or less ordinary citizens emerge as political agents and, again, hapless victims. Through their particular perspectives, these films assert individual and collective accountability and deliberately refrain from any abstract or generalized blame that—in the

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The influence of the Filmboard, however, became noticeable in German film productions by 1995. Whereas post-1995 productions center in on Berlin, pre-1995 productions tend to circumvent the newly elected capital conspicuously (cf. Andreas Dresen's 1992 Stilles Land [Sileni Country] Peter Welz's 1994 Burning Life, and Andreas Kleinert's 1992 Verlorene Landschaft [Lost Landscape] and 1995 Neben der Zeit [Outside of Time]). A notable exception is Wim Wender's 1993 In weiter Ferne, so nah! (Far away, so close!), the sequel to his 1987 Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire), which problematizes the different layers of history that converge in contemporary Berlin. Of the films mentioned, only the protagonists of Becker's Das Leben ist eine Baustelle (Life Is All You Get) are not explicitly characterized as Eastern Germans or immigrants from the former Eastern Bloc countries. Film Discussion at Curzon Soho, London, 5 Dec. 2002. These films also echo a more recent interest in scholarship, exemplified by works such as Detlev Peukert's Inside the Nazi Germany, Alison Owings's Frauen and Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners. In addition, the publication of Victor Klemperer's diaries of the Nazi era, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten, drew much public attention and inspired a theater adaptation (Bartenieff, George, and Malpede, Karen, I Will Bear Witness, 2001) and a television series (Kleinert, Andreas, and Wessel, Kai, dirs. Klemperer: Ein Leben in Deutschland).

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absence of a culpable subject—implies closure. In this way, they directly respond to the debates on Berlin. The films not only configure Berlin as the site of Nazi power and re-sensitize spectators to the historical layering of the city's fabric, but they also argue against abstraction from concrete history; that is, in the terms of the Berlin debates, the erasure of authentic sites and the reconfiguration of historical narrative as monument, as abstraction beyond answerability. Finally, the documentaries that portray Berlin's urban landscape articulate an even more pronounced critique, as they directly address the post-unification debates. In his 1991 Die Mauer (The Wall), Jürgen Böttcher literally projects history—in the form of film—onto the Berlin Wall, while he records in real time its dismantling by citizens, tourists and demolition crews. Following a young East German photographer through the wastelands and over the construction sites of Berlin, Helga Reidemeister's 1998 Lichter aus dem Hintergrund (Lights from Afar) asks disturbing questions regarding the state of democracy and the perspective of the individual in unified Germany. Similarly, the 1999 Nach dem Fall (After the Fall) by Frauke Sandig and Eric Black investigates the significance of the Wall and its vanishing through the perceptions of Berliners and others involved with its history. Images filmed within one kilometer of where the Wall once stood comment on the contemporary state of affairs through metaphor and evocation and underscore the accounts of interviewees, who conceive of architecture as the surface expression of underlying fixations and dangers, and as the concrete instrument of politics, a Tatwerkzeug. In contrast to this cultural resistance movement, Hubertus Siegert's Berlin Babylon (2001), and Thomas Schadt's Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a City, 2002) assume an arresting political acquiescence. Although both filmmakers see themselves, according to their own accounts, in a continuum with film's criticism of the dominant political discourse, the filmic means and strategies that they use to convey their views in fact abandon the entrenched critique that German film put forward throughout the 1990s. The filmic genre they adopt, the city symphony, suggests a harmonization between the depicted historical, social and political contradictions. Moreover, it places these two documentaries in a tradition that earned its reputation through its peculiar combination of formalizing film aesthetics with propaganda and advertisement and, in light of its reception history, seems inadequate to counteract contemporary commercial and political impositions.9 However, it is exactly the history associated with this tradition and reception that Siegert and Schadt circumvent. Recreating idioms of Weimar 9

Examples are, of course, Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of City, 1927) and Melodie der Welt (Melody of the World, 1929), Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (Cheloveks Kinoapparatom, 1928), and, although seldom explicitly referred to in this context, Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1934).

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film, they hearken back to a time presumed free from historical guilt. To bridge, or rather: to dissimulate, the gap between the 1920s and the present, they pose Berlin as a paradox of unchanging change: the circularity of history propels the city beyond time. Through this denial of linear temporality, Berlin loses its historical specificity and emerges as the victim, or the mere exemplar, of a universal principle. Social contrast and political contradictions are subsumed under an atemporal totality that obscures the transmissions and effects of power. While they adopt the posture of critical art works, Siegert's Berlin Babylon and Schadt's Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt are not oriented towards intervention in the debates outlined above. Instead, they are made with the international market and film history in mind, using German history as a selling point, while, at the same time, seeking to normalize it. Through recourse to universal idioms of montage, myth and Weimar modernity, they cast off Berlin's particular space and time coordinates and take the term democracy lightly.10 Arguably, commercial pressure and ambition for international recognition drive them to surrender the concrete in favor of a universal. While it remains to be seen to what extent Berlin Babylon and Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt present a paradigm shift, their correspondence is striking and seems to announce a common artistic program to solve the predicament of the German film industry, as addressed—albeit with entirely different conclusions—by Andreas Dresen.

Reassembling Berlin: Montage As film form translates into ideology, Hubertus Siegert's montage technique replicates the subject matter of Berlin Babylon: the construction of Berlin's city center as a rewriting, and even erasure, of German history. In Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt, Thomas Schadt's use of montage similarly results in a timeless and dehistoricized image of Germany's capital. The aesthetics of montage equalizes images from past and present as well as from opposing ends of political issues and the social and political spectrum.

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My argument refers back to Immanuel Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason), in which he describes time as a basic condition of experience. Consequently, manipulating the coordinates of our experience also means manipulating our cognitive faculties and, thus, our experience itself. Hence, the conception of time plays a crucial role in most ideologies, shaping human experience according to the respective system of belief. Considering the impact of time models on the interpretation of data, it becomes a crucial factor in the constitution of knowledge. As information and knowledge are, in turn, the bases of decision-making, concepts of time have an immediate impact on the political makeup of a society and should be constructed in such a way as to minimally limit the perception of data, because democracy without unfettered access to information is mockery.

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Yet, despite the form's ideological implications, both directors privileged this type of editing and adapted other aspects of the film to it." Most significantly, it has to be accommodated by the frame composition, which needs to generate a quasi-narrative interest in order to compensate for montage's lack of both narrative cohesion and suspense. Siegert opts for a "National Geographic aesthetic" that finds beauty in depiction, regardless of its subject. As a result, his footage equally valorizes construction and destruction, and does not differentiate between politicians, investors and construction workers. Moreover, for the sake of montage, Siegert also has to cut crucial elements of the dialogue. What remains is highly provocative, but scrambled tid-bits that do not permit further analysis.12 The subordination of argument, plot development and intelligibility to the imperative of assemblyready segments augments their equalizing effect. Likewise, Schadt's well-balanced frame compositions do not distinguish between subjects. Consequently, the Kreuzberg Carnival of Cultures, a NeoNazi demonstration, a rally by owners of fighting dogs, an anti-globalization protest, people at a soup kitchen and high society outings appear as undifferentiated variants of the ethnic display. The shot length and frame composition required by montage ultimately renounce any claim to analytical filmmaking. Like the directors of Direct Cinema, Siegert and Schadt use unobtrusive equipment, stay in the background and observe, and Siegert even lets his subjects speak without guidance or interruption, but their subjects do not reveal themselves as they would in the documentary style developed in the 1960s in the US by filmmakers such as Robert Drew, Richard Leacock and Frederick Wiseman. Direct Cinema's principal strategy does not succeed in Berlin Babylon and Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt, because the montage principle forbids long takes that would allow events and behaviors to unfold and give the spectator time and material to form an opinion herself. The fragmentation of shots defeats a cinema of self-exposure. To offset the loss of narrative tension, Siegert and Schadt rely on a fragmenting shot composition in order to create an absence within the frame

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In spite of a frugal budget, Siegert amassed 30 hours of costly 35mm footage before Berlin Babylon came to the cutting table in 1999. According to the filmmaker, the wealth and quality of the material were geared towards one principle: montage ("Blickwinkel"). Similarly, Schadt spent an entire year shooting in Berlin to reassemble the city in filmic montage. In order to be able to afford the editing ratio of 30:1, his team even had to find an alternative technical process to save funds (Schadt 17). For instance, the architect of the Chancellery, Axel Schuttes, states that "die ganze Republik nur noch Angst hat" ("the entire republic is in fear") and Berlin's Senator for Construction involuntarily reminds the spectator of the Nazi and the GDR regime's self-legitimation rituals when she says about the square in front of the Chancellery: "jeder, der Abitur macht, muß hier durch und wahrscheinlich sogar jeder, der nur die Volksschule besucht" ("every high school student will have to go through here once, and probably even everyone who only attends grade school").

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that will suture the spectator into the flow of images (cf. Silverman). Thus, they often show only small sections of objects or scenes and thereby create the need for context. For example, the implosion of a Plattenbau (high-rise built out of ready-made concrete segments ) in Berlin Babylon is rendered by a screen filled with a surface of concrete and what subsequently turns out to be a vertical line of windows. But only at the moment of its destruction, when the explosion causes the building to collapse, does it become visible as such. Although this fragmentation of the filmic object could serve as an alienation technique that prompts the spectator to gain a novel perspective, Siegert's framing has the opposite effect. It perplexes the viewers by withholding the context. To orient themselves, they are driven to find the familiar, and the pleasure of watching is thus configured as discovering the already known. A similar dynamic is at play with respect to Schadt's rendering of memorial sites. Fragmentary views of buildings and spaces reveal their relevance only to the spectator who is familiar with the places; to others, these shots resemble a collage of shards that refuses to provide a more complete picture. Schadt's aesthetic introduces an inclusion/exclusion dynamic into the reception and gives those familiar with the places depicted "bewußt oder unbewußt, das wärmende Gefühl [...], durch ein Sonderwissen, einen Sonderkonnex aus der allgemeinen Masse herauszuragen, als Eingeweihter einer besonderen Gemeinschaft anzugehören" (Klemperer 99).13 The applicability of Victor Klemperer's critique of Nazi language to Schadt's film highlights the precariousness of his aesthetic construct. It becomes especially poignant in his shots of a seemingly unremarkable piece of wasteland. While some viewers will marvel at why Schadt has intercut these images into scenes from the Jewish cemetery at Prenzlauer Berg and may see it as an expression of emptiness left by the Nazi murder, others will recognize the flattened-out site of Hitler's former Führerbunker. This confusion is heightened by Siegert and Schadt's use of montage to elide the temporal dimensions of the images. Despite the documentary context of the films, historical images are left without dates, rendering them as ghostly apparitions outside of time. In fact, by intercutting undated archival material, they slide past and present into one another, erasing temporal distinctions. Moreover, Siegert privileges graphic qualities and rhythm over the chronology of his footage. Consequently, the dates he supplies for selected contemporary shots disorient the viewer with regard to the temporal relations between these scenes because of the frequent and irregular jumps back and forth in time. Ultimately, his montage technique suggests that past and present are interchangeable: it is the principle of violent destruction and brutal construction that prevails and renders the specifics of history irrelevant. In

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"consciously or unconsciously, the warm feeling [...] to be distinguished from the general crowd through a special knowledge, a special connection, to be initiated into a special community."

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other words, the tautological relationship between past and present, which Berlin Babylon constructs, dehistoricizes the city's development. Abandoning time as a structuring element, it forsakes historical narrative and instead becomes a Bilderbogen, a set of images of supposed simultaneity. Schadt's use of montage results in a similar breakdown of the temporal. Although he introduces a timeline into his film by intercutting five historic photos of the Reichstag and featuring material vestiges of the respective eras, each sequence of these historic or memorial sites dissolves unproblematically into the contemporary through a short series of cuts.14 Similar to the use of archival footage in Berlin Babylon, the insertion of the Reichstag photos also destabilizes the distinction between past and present, because they seamlessly blend with the static and distinctly photographic quality of his shots.15 Schadt further blurs historical differences by leaving memorial sites, such as the Hohenschönhausen Prison, the Prenzlauer Berg Jewish cemetery and the site of the former Führerbunker, unmarked.16 This strategy is poignantly illustrated by the sequence featuring the stadium that was built for the 1936 Olympics, an event the Nazis exploited to their propagandistic advantage. Following still images of architectural details, Schadt first shows workers in front of the stadium and then a sign cropped by the camera so that the name of the location has become undecipherable: it reads "iastadion" instead of Olympiastadion (Olympic Stadium). Since Schadt neither provides an establishing shot nor contextualizes or even clearly names the Olympiastadion, it is up to the viewer to recognize the site, to uncover its references to the past, its history, and to place it in the contemporary debates surrounding Berlin's topography.17 The abstracting and aestheticizing impetus of Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt renders the reliance on the audience's knowledge a questionable

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The first photo shows the Reichstag (German Parliament) before its destruction by the Nazis. The second obviously dates from February 1933, as it shows the Reichstag in flames. In the third, the building is burnt out and in the fourth, a huge banner covers it with the words "Berlin kennt keine Mauer" ("Berlin knows no walls"). The fifth photo again shows the Reichstag burnt out, but from a slightly greater distance than the third photo, and it is followed by shots of Berlin memorials. Like in Berlin Babylon, the editing of Schadt's Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt reinforces these equations of the past and the present by treating shots relating to the past the same way as shots with purely contemporary references. Through this lack of differentiation, Siegert and Schadt's montage amounts to a kind of conflation. Although Hohenschönhausen is an exception to Ihe extent that it is actually named by a sign that serves as a diegetic intertitle, only a historically aware viewer will recognize its significance and role in German history. In addition to the debates surrounding the Nazi legacy, which I discussed above, Berlin's bid to host the 2000 Olympics had sparked massive critique, protest demonstrations and even fire bombings, because many Germans thought Germany should assume a more modest role in the international arena and cited the Nazi precedent as a parallel to the Kohl administration's gusto for grand gestures (Firth). The 1936 Olympiastadion had been earmarked as a prime facility for the 2000 games, but Berlin lost out to Sydney.

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strategy. Unless the audience can recognize and connect the places to historical narrative, the reception process strips them of the memories associated with them, because the film decontextualizes and dehistoricizes the material remnants of the past. In fact, Schadt's images already betray that loss of memory. As the shots of historical and memorial sites tend to be devoid of people, they present no agent to carry on the remembrance. In Schadt's Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt, history is a deserted country. The impression of stillness that renders these places as if they were outside of time largely owes to Schadt's static camera. Many of his shots completely lack movement. Alternately, Schadt moves the camera to keep mobile subjects in the same position within the frame, producing a stabilizing, demobilizing effect. Camera movement here arrests the subject in the frame. In the absence of movement, film loses the temporal dimension that defines it and cannot relate time as an experiential category to the spectator. Considering the abandonment of time in Schadt's film, the end of the Olympiastadion sequence is as paradoxical as it is revealing: while refusing to place his images into temporal and spatial coordinates, Schadt renders one line in the sign marking the site fully legible: "iastadion—Eine Investition in die Zukunft," ("iastadion—An Investment in the Future"). Finally, both films manipulate the spectatorial experience of time through recording speed, camera angle and soundtrack. Speeding up, slowing down (through time lapse and slow motion photography) and looping through time (by way of editing), in combination with the points of view changing from extreme high angle to extreme low angle shots, from floating through streets well above the usual eye level to submerging in muddy water, Berlin Babylon takes the spectator on a visual roller coaster ride, underscored by the decidedly harmonious soundtrack of the formerly experimental band Einstürzende Neubauten. While Schadt's Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt is not as exuberant in its affective design, the musical score by Iris ter Shiphorst and Helmut Oehring suggests speeds, rhythms and even emotions to the audience, at times aurally supporting the visual, at times contradicting it. In Oehring's opinion, the soundtrack is supposed to achieve highly incongruous effects: it should enable the spectator "sich [...] zu orientieren," "zur Auseinandersetzung mit dem aktuellen Puls der Großstadt Berlin zu finden," but also "zu berauschen." 18 These contradictory claims correspond to the divergent demands the filmmakers strive to meet. On the one hand, the domestic audience expects films to inform, depict the social and political situation and offer critique, and 18

The full quotation is: "Jedem Zuhörer soll die Möglichkeit gegeben werden, sich an den neuen Rhythmen zu orientieren, an ungehörten Urbanen Klängen zu berauschen und zur Auseinandersetzung mit dem aktuellen Puls der Großstadt Berlin zu finden" (SWR 18-19); "Every listener shall have the opportunity to orient herself on the new rhythm, to get high on the unconventional urban sounds and to confront the contemporary pulse of the city of Berlin."

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thus, in Oehring's terms, provide orientation and allow for confrontation. 19 Hence, we find highly politicized subject matter in Berlin Babylon and Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt. On the other hand, Siegert and Schadt try to accommodate commercial pressure for the films to be internationally marketable, i.e. to attract and entertain a socially, culturally and politically undetermined audience—what Oehring translates into "berauschen" ("getting high"). Hence, the film form designed to appeal to an international art house audience.20 In other words, commercial considerations lead to a discrepancy between form and subject that crucially affects the role that the films assign to their audiences. By the same token, the extent to which and the ways in which spectators are encouraged to engage with the films reflect the political underpinnings of film production as well as their larger social context. In this respect, moviemaking strikingly correlates to the pivotal issue of the postunification debates, namely the general public's participation in representative power, that is, ultimately, Germany's commitment to democracy. Schadt takes up this discourse when he literally mirrors himself in the symbol of the Federal Republic. In a remarkable shot, he photographs the Federal Eagle facing the hall of the Reichstag through a pane of glass that reflects his own silhouette. As the audience is aligned with the camera, it—supposedly—looks directly at its own reflection. However, while the image represents the photographer, i.e. "the représenter," the audience is missing in the picture. The spectators can assume and even merge with the cinematic point of view, but not share in the control it embodies—neither in the power of the cinematic apparatus, which created it, nor in the power of the subject position that it feigns. This self-reflexive shot brilliantly illuminates Jean-Louis Baudry's contention that simulated control is no control (295, 315). The audience remains excluded even when it is let in. Upon closer analysis, this inclusion/exclusion stratagem also applies to the filmmaker himself, as Schadt's self-projection onto the eagle is not a straightforward symbolic union with the state. Instead, the superimposition is only possible because a translucent screen captures the contours of the filmmaker's image. While this screen allows for visual access and self-reflection, it also represents a border that delimits the inside from the outside, distinguishes the insiders from the outsiders, and establishes stratagems of lack and desire, like a shop window that both advertises to and refuses a window shopper the commodities she cannot afford. The political dimension of this set-up becomes even more pronounced in a second shot that shows a politician addressing theReichstag. Photographed 19

20

With only 12-18% of the market share in Germany, domestic productions play more or less to a specialized audience and rely on distribution via public television, which in tum is cosponsored by the federal and the regional governments. This strategy is comparable to the exploitation of expressionism by the German Cinema of the 1920s in order to increase the export of German productions.

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also through a pane of glass that, this time, reflects visitors to the Reichstag building, their reflection is superimposed over the speaker. Thus, Schadt produces an image of "the people" virtually walking towards their representative, both approaching the center of power like apparitions. Those who are supposed to rule the state in a democracy—the people—have become as ghostly as the past in Brian Ladd's description of Berlin, in Siegert's archival footage and in Schadt's "dead" historic sites. Silent and shut out, they have come to haunt the seat of power that should per definitionem be theirs. The demarcation of inside and outside illuminated in this shot, makes visible the film's own dynamic of inclusion/exclusion that the images of unmarked spaces introduced. However, this visibility also harbors a facile solution to a grave representational and political problem, since the superimposition, which brings the film's overriding principle of montage into a single shot, takes the spectator on an ideological shortcut by configuring those included and those excluded from the administration of power as a synthesis, as the two sides of the same windowpane.21 The ubiquitous presence of glass in Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt reveals the ideology inherent in the form of both films. As Siegert and Schadt remain at the surface of the recorded phenomena by eliminating their spatial and temporal coordinates, they frequently feature glass that reflects the outside rather than permits the camera to penetrate into the interior.22 Glass projects Berlin as a surface without depth and, in doing so, performs contrary to its defining characteristic: instead of being transparent, it blocks the view. In the same sense, the films' particular selection of footage and editing prevent the audience quite literally from watching. Even when glass makes good on its promise of transparency, it still keeps the shine of a reflection that, on the one hand, allows for a kind of montage within the shot and, on the other, marks the "ideologischer Werkstoff' ("the ideological building material") of the new Berlin as constructing a new border, as resurrecting a wall.23 The glare reminds the audience that it has to stay out, that the spectator is not a full participant. 21

22 23

Sergei Eisenstein in fact describes montage as a form of superimposition: "each sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other. For the idea (or sensation) of movement arises from the process of superimposing on the retained impression of the object's first position, a newly visible further position of the object. [...] From the superimposition of two elements of the same dimension always arises a new, higher dimension" (Eisenstein's emphasis; 49). Schadt's repeated use of this shot composition is perhaps motivated by the fact that it points to the limits of his own filmmaking. Formulation by Jean Nouvel; the more complete quote in German is: "Le verre, le verre, le verre, das ist ein ideologischer Werkstoff! Glas ist Transparenz, selbstverständlich. Aber ich habe schon gesagt, daß Glas wesentlich mehr ist als nur Transparenz. Vieles wird künftig aus Glas sein, ob man will oder nicht. [...] Ob der Einsatz von Glas im öffentlichen Raum das Empfinden beeinflußt, weiß ich nicht. [...] Wir sind noch ganz am Anfangeines Abenteuers" (Stimmann 227) ("Glass, glass, glass, it is an ideological building material! Glass is transparency, of course. But I have already said that glass is substantially more than transparency. In the future, many things will be out of glass, whether one wants it or not. [...]

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In terms of the film, this border is delineated by the cut, because it prevents the unfolding of the scene, and, according to André Bazin, restricts the spectators' access to the image, and their control and orientation within the scene (Andrew, Major 163, 175). As a consequence, the cut also curtails the spectators'agency: they are reduced to the position of consumer of the image instead of being prompted to become a co-producer of meaning. In political terms, the cuts and their visual materialization as windowpanes function like transformed and multiplied versions of the Berlin Wall. Indeed, the films can be read to epitomize the political conditions of post-1989 Germany and Europe, in which, according to Barbara Barsch, "[ijnstead of fewer, there are more and more borders; and as it opened to the West, the border between Eastern and Western Europe became a new transparent wall facing east" (47). Corresponding to Barsch's conception of the new political borders, the windowpane is a wall that dissimulates itself by virtue of its material. In this way, it is similar to the cut that appears immaterial, but nevertheless has a material effect, as revealed by the superimpositions it facilitates in Schadt's Symphony. The interface of the glass blurs and distorts both the images that are overlaid and, thereby, assimilates them formally. Although their separation cannot be overcome, they are nevertheless projected onto the same plane. Rendered in the same formal terms and with their spatial and political coordinates conflated, the two sides of the pane—like those of the cut within the shot—are equalized and, to a certain extent, equated. The discontinuous appears in a form that bestows continuity upon it. Thus, montage constructs homogeneity and asserts totality.

Universal Truth or the Use of Myth In this sense, the windowpanes of reunified Berlin in Schadt's film compensate for the loss of the Wall that divided the city before 1989. The media of both East and West had rendered the notorious concrete barrier semi-transparent, but, at the same time, had turned it into a projection screen of Self and Other that obstructed the perception of reality. According to Olesya Turkina and Viktor Mazin, the existence of this screen made grand narratives—or, in their terminology, "Great Stories"—possible and held them in place (75). For both sides of the former demarcation line, the fall of the Wall destroyed the "completeness of narration" represented by these stories, and turned it, for many, into a desideratum (75-76). Resurrecting the Wall in a figurative and filmic sense, montage lends itself to the project of reclaiming that lost completeness. Siegert and Schadt retrieve the reassuring certainty of historical perspective that the master narratives of the Cold War era projected by I don't know whether the use of glass in public spaces influences feelings and perceptions. [... ] We are still at the very beginning of an adventure.").

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embedding Germany's past and present in a mythical framework. "Die babylonische Zivilisationsfabel lebt fort in der wiedervereinten Metropole an der Schwelle zum 21. Jahrhundert," the press materials for Berlin Babylon state, identifying the two mythologies on which the films draw: Babylon and the city ("Berlin Babylon"). 24 Accordingly, the title of Siegert's movie equates Berlin with the legendary city of Babylon, and a preface of rolling titles, with some liberty, recounts the biblical story: Die Zukunft des Turms von Babylon lag in den Händen von Fachmännern, denen keine Last zu groß war. Sie waren entschieden zu vollenden, was sie begonnen hatten, obgleich sich ihre Sprache während des Bauens verwirrte. Ihre Gesichter waren gezeichnet von den Spuren der Last, als der gewaltige Turm unter Nebukatnezar vollendet wurde. Der Turm stand noch bis sich Alexander der Große nach der Art der Bauleute der Stadt Babylon bemächtigte. Er befahl den babylonischen Turm bis in die Fundamente abzubrechen, um einen Neuen zu bauen. Doch er hinterließ den Bauplatz leer.25

The mythology of Siegert's prologue discredits the concreteness of his footage, once more dehistoricizing both the contemporary and the past. Since the film recasts the representation of contemporary reality as ancient myth, it removes Germany's leaders and bureaucrats from their distinct context and implicitly transposes them to the legendary status of the Old Testament's protagonists. Mixing-up perpetration and victimhood with respect to the events of the 1930s and 40s, Siegert's reference likens Germans to the people exiled from their native soil and dispersed across the continents on account of their insolence. Moreover, it reconfigures German responsibility as universal guilt, a guilt that has befallen humanity in toto since the beginning of its historical consciousness. 26 Schadt's Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt also quotes the Babylon legend through a shot featuring the legendary Berlin cinema of the same name, but its overarching theme is an abstract concept of the city. This abstraction had played a central role in the Berlin debates, which Siegert summarizes as follows: "Man ging davon aus, daß zum einen ein funktional besserer Zustand immer der richtigere und zum anderen die historisch frühere Stadt wiederherzustellen sei. Es ging um die Idee der Vollendung der neuen Stadt"

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"The story of Babylonian civilization lives on in the re-united metropolis on the threshold to the 21 a century." "The future of the Tower of Babel was in the hands of specialists, for whom no burden was too great. They were determined to finish what they had started, although their language became confused during the construction project. Their faces were marked by the burden when the gigantic tower was finished under Nebuchadnezzar. The tower was still standing when Alexander the Great overtook the city as construction workers do. He ordered the tower to be razed to the ground in order to build a new one. But he left the construction site empty." Such contentions remain buried in allusion and insinuation, but may be more effective because of their obliqueness.

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("Blickwinkel")· 27 According to Michel de Certeau, such "rationalization of the city leads to its mythification" (155). As the ideal type of the city is "made possible by the flattening out of all data in a plane projection" (154), it removes the city from its particular history. Furthermore, it neglects the initiatives and contributions of individuals and conceives the city as "a universal and anonymous subject" (154-155). Oscillating between the Berlin topos and the idea of the city as such, Schadt does not focus on the Berlinspecific even when he depicts it.28 Instead, the particular comes to be seen in terms of the general and is thus abstracted from its concrete historical and political context: "das Motiv des Films ist die 'Stadt,' erst dahinter erscheint 'Berlin,'" Schadt explains his strategy (SWR 25; Schadt 12).29 Through his abstract notion of urbanity, he reduces Berlin to the smallest common denominator it shares with any other metropolis or, more accurately, to the rationalized model of the city, thereby ignoring the distinctive history of the German capital.30 Both films reinforce the abstraction by selectively and fragmentarily depicting the processes of construction and destruction, production and consumption. Although Siegert finds that "[i]n der Euphorie über das Bauen in Berlin existierte die wirkliche, die ganz aktuelle Stadt gar nicht," he reinscribes this erasure in his film by showing nothing but the course of construction and destruction ("Blickwinkel"). 31 He fetishizes these processes, since his film cautiously evades the larger historical and political connections to which they allude. Similarly, Schadt underscores the rational model of the city by enumerating its functions, as if his task were to supply a cinematic encyclopedia for Berlin's bureaucrats, or some similar "functionalist administration" (Certeau 155). Berlin vanishes in the commonplace practices, utilities and spaces that Schadt portrays. After all, there are also police, firefighters, politicians, workers, assembly lines, zoos, bakeries, restaurants, newspapers, housing projects, monuments and wastelands in Säo Paulo, Beijing, Sydney, Paris and New York. Privileging the synchronicity of

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"The assumption was, on the one hand, that the more functional design is always the better one, and, on the other hand, that the historically earlier city had to be reconstructed. The idea was to perfect the new city." In this way, Schadt describes the effect of his technique: "Suche ich nach der 'Stadt,' sehe ich das Brandenburger Tor mit anderen Augen, als würde ich nach 'Berlin' suchen" (SWR 26); "When I am searching for the 'city,' I see the Brandenburg Gate differently than if 1 were searching for 'Berlin.'" "the motif of the film is the 'city,' 'Berlin' only appears behind that." Relevant in this respect is the discussion concerning the "normality" or "abnormality" of German history, which has dominated the Historians' Debate as well as post-unification discourse. Both sides of the argument overlook the fact that normality—like the ideal type, but unlike "the average"—does not have any quantitative or qualitative reference in the material world. Instead, it is an abstract standard, a myth. "The euphoria about construction in Berlin eclipsed the existence of the real, contemporary city."

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exchangeable city functions, Schadt renders history and its place within contemporary coordinates irrelevant. For the philosophical endorsement of this effacement of history, Siegert refers to Walter Benjamin. A voice-over (by Angela Winkler) recites the ninth of his "Theses on the Philosophy of History," the meditation on Paul Klee's Angelus Novus, at the temporal center of Berlin Babylon (cf. Benjamin 257258). A stop-motion sequence rendering a thunderstorm over the construction site at Potsdamer Platz illustrates Benjamin's contention that progress is destruction brought about by a storm generated from the lost promise of a perfect world, of Paradise. As Benjamin's angel is driven backwards by progress, historical change is suspended in the paradox of forward and backward motion. Movement (movens)—the storm from Paradise—holds Benjamin's "Angel of History" in stasis, and restricts its capacity for selfdetermination. In the context of Berlin Babylon, the paradox comes to mean that political subjects are paralyzed (analogous to Benjamin's angel) and construction amounts to destruction (in keeping with the ruins left by historical progress in Benjamin). Thus, Siegert translates Benjamin's philosophy of history into an ideology that justifies consigning concrete instances and historical differences to the "ever-same"—a principle beyond time. The filmic images corroborate this thesis: history is like the water cycle, a natural and perpetual sequence. Benjamin's storm of history does not remain a mere metaphor in the film: "A hurricane would help," says the West German developer Claus Bachmann while standing at the Metropol Theater in the Eastern part of the city. That the historical theater has been closed since 1997 due to loss of public funding, and that this might be indicative for the state of the res publica, remains as much beyond the interest of Bachmann as beyond that of the film. Instead, Berlin Babylon suggests that Bachmann, like Benjamin's angel, has no agency. The developer simply does the job of the hurricane. Schadt's Sinfonie einer Großstadt presents history in terms of natural phenomena as well. Using the temporal frame of a day, a naturally recurring segment of time, Schadt renders the depicted as part of a repetitive, natural cycle. The set of topoi that dominate Schadt's film reinforce this perception, as they center on the idea of fluidity and regeneration. Assembly lines provide a constant flow of products, bands of newspaper seemingly float through the printing hall, trains run across the urban landscape, people stream through the city's space, and donuts move along on conveyor belts. Food production and consumption, which the film features prominently, emphasize regenerative energy. Likewise, Schadt's ubiquitous use of the ancient metaphor of water suggests death and birth and constant flow. Associating this metaphor with the city of Berlin, Schadt develops the River Spree running through the cityscape into a recurrent motif. At the end of the film, shots of water, or rather: the surface of water, mutate into circles of light through a change in focus. At once a natural occurrence, a metaphor for regeneration and an abstract principle of

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circularity, the film's final dissolve drives home its message through symbolic excess: the already abstract transcends into pure form glimmering on the screen. The ideology inherent in the formalizing aesthetics markedly reveals it's problematic in shots of the sunlight dancing on the stones of the Jewish cemetery. In the context of German history, these images—however tranquil and picturesque they may appear—trigger associations with the fire of Nazi crematoria and thus venture beyond what might be considered a questionable aestheticization. This allusion recasts crimes committed under the Nazi regime in terms of a natural occurrence, as opposed to presenting them as a result of human agency. Schadt's Sinfonie thus rejects the efforts made by German film in the 1990s to challenge historical determinism and intangible notions of guilt. Moreover, oblivious to the problematics entailed by comparative historiography, which—justifiably or not—has been accused of "normalizing" German history (Habermas), Schadt's film naturalizes the Holocaust. In this way, both Siegert and Schadt reverse the trend towards what Olesya Turkina and Viktor Mazin call "small stories" (76-77). While German film of the 1990s focused on individuals' perspectives and behaviors, Berlin Babylon and Sinfonie combine abstraction and fragmentation with myth and metaphor in order to reinvent grand narratives. The beginning of Siegert's film is programmatic: after a prolonged shot of heavily dripping water before a dark background, the camera moves over what appears to be a huge wet and slowly rotating drill, onto which is gradually superimposed an overhead traveling shot over a landscape that changes from a completely undetermined rural landscape to an equally undetermined urban landscape and finally reveals Berlin through the city's landmarks.32 As the rotation slowly fades out, the linear movement across the landscape fades in. One symbol merges with and reinforces the next. Water in a womb-like space, doubly signifying regeneration, is linked to rotation that denotes the circularity of the historical process and, in turn, dissolves into the move on the center of political power in contemporary 32

The audience, if unacquainted with building machinery, can at best make an educated guess as to which sort of machinery the fragment shown by Siegert is a part of. Interestingly, it represents equipment that was the subject of the largest white-collar crime of the Federal Republic to date, known as the "Flowtex Scandal." Over the course of ten years, Manfred Schmider's firm KSK had sold 3,200 pieces of drilling equipment to Flowtex, which he also owned. However, only 300 drills had actually existed. The banks and leasing firms that financed these transactions in reliance on falsified documents lost about $2 billion. The fraud first became public with the arrest of Schmider on 4 February 2000. Yet, a number of government officials of the State of Baden-Württemberg, some of which subsequently enjoyed remarkable business careers in Eastern Germany, had known of these virtual deals at least since 1995. But since Schmider had sponsored government and party officials, they suppressed evidence and even obstructed investigations launched from outside the state. Thus, the case highlighted the problematic of a democracy in which campaign contributions can buy political favors. Moreover, it challenged the legitimation of the Federal Republic as a Rechtsstaat, as a state under the rule of law. For more information, see "Chronik der Flowtex-Afïare" and Klar.

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Germany. Reaffirming that all roads lead to Berlin, the film restores a visual regime that creates a pivot of power by centering the gaze upon it. In the same way, Schadt turns rotation into a central motif that reverts to the grand narrative of human impotence vis-à-vis the—however configured— spiritus movens. Machinery rotates in seemingly self-generated movement, rendering Janet Ward's characterization of Walter Ruttmann's Berlin. Die Sinfonie der Großstadt as "modern film poem of machinic celebration" (16) a more apt description of Schadt's remake than of the 1927 original. Subordinated to technology, people's movements are dictated by machines to the extent that they have become a mere extension of them. By implication, human agency resembles that of a machine. Movement is part of a natural perpetual motion rather than caused by self-directed individuals. Through the parallel cutting of completely static exteriors and interiors bustling with activity, Sinfonie suggests that motion even underlies stillness and resonates with Siegert's paradox of "stasis in movement." Evolution and devolution emerge as eternal principles beyond human control—and accountability. In the end, even the filmmakers absolve themselves of responsibility for their movies and the grand narratives they construct, because myths are "stories that have no teller" (Andrew, Concepts 78).

Weimar Revisited Authorial self-effacement, on the one hand, and the reconstruction of authority, on the other, is underscored by Siegert and Schadt's reliance on Ruttmann's model. Like Ruttmann, they adapt all other aspects of filmmaking to montage, establishing it as the overriding principle within the film. Moreover, they model their opening sequences on Ruttmann's renowned approach to the city, and quote his film by drawing on the metaphorical magic of water and abstracting movement from its social and historical context. 33 Siegert's title references Ruttmann's film through the Babylon topos that dominated Weimar culture and film and associates the legendary "Babylon" movie theater, which opened the same year Ruttmann's city symphony was released. 34 Schadt, whose film features this theater, even bases his selection of shots on the 1927 movie, and, showing a day in the life of Berlin, organizes his film within the

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Like the first shots in Ruttmann's film after an abstract sequence introducing the concept of flow, water is the first image in Berlin Babylon and runs throughout the credits and the prologue. While Ruttmann's beginning changes from the abstract to the concrete, Schadt, explicitly referring to this sequence at the end of his film, moves from the concrete to abstract, as if closing the cycle. Babylon as an association of the Metropolis in Weimar culture appears, for instance, in Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, Harry Graf Keßler's Diaries (quoted in Brian Ladd 118) and Fritz Lang's Metropolis, where the city and monopoly capitalism are rendered in the metaphor of the tower of Babel.

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same temporal frame as Ruttmann. Finally, the aesthetics of Siegert and Schadt's photography borrow heavily from New Objectivity and Constructivism, the artistic movements of the Weimar era that inspired Ruttmann; and the dominance of the visual and music in Siegert and Schadt's films revisits the film form of the silent era, whose technological limitations both conditioned and stimulated Ruttmann's work/ 5 Siegert and Schadt's readiness to latch onto a Weimar classic certainly marks the ambition of their projects and allows them to capitalize on the film's international critical acclaim; however, it also has an ideological ripple effect. Their dependence on Ruttmann's model increases the time warp caused by their use of montage and myth. Schadt's close re-rendering of Ruttmann's film effectively denies the historical interim between the late 1920s and the early 2000s. Put bluntly: "there are rich and poor in 1927 as there are rich and poor in 2002; the world has not changed in 75 years." Furthermore, remaking Ruttmann's film allows Siegert and Schadt to employ a model that has been appreciated for its universal qualities and is rarely seen in its specifically German context. 36 Most striking about Siegert and Schadt's film projects is that they ignore the criticism of Ruttmann's film.37 For instance, Siegfried Kracauer's analysis, although perhaps not entirely valid, raises concerns about the use of montage that apply to Schadt and Siegert's films as well (184-188). Even Ruttmann's scriptwriter, Carl Mayer, had criticized the film for its superficial treatment of social problems (Goergen 26, 115). More recently, Klaus Kreimeier put Ruttmann's aesthetic program in a continuum with Nazism: he points out that following Ruttmann's aestheticization of the social,

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Siegert de-emphasizes and even phases out dialogue. Schadt's film, apart from the musical score, completely lacks synchronous sound. In addition, Schadt also uses black and white 35mm material (SWR 6; Schadt 11). For instance, film histories generally omit the fact that Ruttmann continued his city portraits under the Nazi regime and was involved in other propagandistic projects as well, e.g. Deutsche Panzer (German Tanks, 1940) and Triumph des Willens. Ruttmann did not command the artistic possibilities that sound film—let alone simultaneous sound and visual recording—affords. However, he was interested in expression beyond composing optical music, as evidenced by his visual puns, which, at least partially, compensate for the lack of the spoken word. His montage of cattle and workers is not merely a graphic match cut as Kracauer claims (184), but is instead a parallel cut of cattle being led to the slaughterhouse with workers "being led" to the factories that alludes to proverbs such as "Nur die allerdümmsten Kälber wählen ihre Metzger selber" ("Only the most stupid cows choose/vote for their own butcher"), which, at the time, was prominently used in anti-Hitler propaganda. Another example is the smoking stacks that associate the German idiom "jemanden verheizen," i.e. "to use someone for firing material." This sequence bears a political charge against the capitalist system that perhaps even anticipates historical events to come. Despite this critique of industrialism, Schadt sees Ruttmann as a filmmaker affirmative of technological progress, and, deriving from that judgment, emphasizes his distance to him in his accompanying essays. However, Schadt does not address any of the critiques to which Ruttmann's Symphony has been subjected and his film, contrary to his own reading and stated intention, closely mimics Ruttmann's model (SWR 7; Schadt 13).

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the Nazis went on to aestheticize the political (272). Finally, the difference between Ruttmann's film and the city symphonies of the new millennium lies precisely in the dimension that Siegert and Schadt try to efface: the historical coordinates in which their films were conceived. Thus, rather than promote historical consciousness, Siegert and Schadt's numerous allusions to the culture of the Weimar Republic work to erase the specifics of the German past and press it into a timeless mold.

Conclusion The reference to Ruttmann and the political alternatives of the Weimar Republic also brings to mind the aesthetic program of Bertolt Brecht, which— contrary to Ruttmann's social commentary—aimed at making the spectator aware of her agency and the political choices at hand. Interestingly, such awareness had been the starting point for Berlin Babylon, which, according to Siegert, was inspired by the void in Berlin's center after the fall of the Wall in 1989: "Durch die Leere schien alles offen und vieles möglich." 38 Reading architecture as a metaphor for the social and political, Siegert, like the other documentary filmmakers, understands the void as a moment of political openness, the opportunity for renewal. However, he departs from Brecht and many contemporaries, whose projects "deal with conceptual alternatives" and "have less to do with building institutional memorials to power, and [are] more about freeing the brain: 'hole-thinking'" (Tannert 84), 39 by not searching for the political alterity this open space could have posed, but instead taking its closure for granted: "Diese Offenheit war mit der IBA der 80er Jahre im Berliner Dogma der 'historischen Rekonstruktion' eigentlich schon

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The complete quote in German is: "Die Idee zu Berlin Babylon entstand Anfang der 90er Jahre. Berlin zeigte sichtbar die Spuren der Leere, die Krieg und Nachkriegszeit hinterlassen hatten. Für Hubertus Siegert war die Stadt damals 'in vielem kaputt, aber einzigartig, mit der Schönheit des Unvollkommenen und Unfertigen. Durch die Leere schien alles offen und vieles möglich" ("Blickwinkel") ("The idea for Berlin Babylon came about in the beginning of the 1990s. Berlin showed the traces of emptiness, which the war and post-war era had left. To Hubertus Siegert the city at that time was 'in many respects ruined, but unique, with the beauty of the imperfect and unfinished. Because of the emptiness, everything seemed open and much possible."). Taking a critical stance towards the politics of memorialization, artists also applied this "hole-thinking" to the culture of commemoration, as James Young explains in his discussion of German counter-monuments, which literally are monuments that create holes. Even some architects have become aware of the promise harbored by the void. Identifying presence as architecture's dominant and domineering ideology, Dominique Perrault, whose only Berlin project to date is the sunken sports complex at the border of the Prenzlauer Berg district (which has the appearance of an apple orchard), for instance, finds: "Berlin actuellement avec le travail de Christo fait la démonstration que l'absence c'est parfois plus que la présence" (Stimmann 213); "with the work of Christo, Berlin shows at the moment that absence can be sometimes more than presence."

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Vergangenheit, in den Bauplänen spätestens seit 1995. Neue Leute würden in die Stadt kommen, um Geld und eine Hauptstadt daraus zu machen," Siegert states ("Blickwinkel").40 Yet, Siegert and Schadt not only resign themselves to recording the architectural and political closure of the void, which Siegert considered so promising, but, through their film form, also exercise closure themselves. While, for instance, the extremely slow pace of Jürgen Böttcher's Die Mauer (The Wall)—following a Brechtian agenda—makes the spectators aware of their own political paralysis and thus incites their urge to intervene, Siegert and Schadt capture their audience. Whereas Boettcher allots the spectators ample time to examine their own feelings and pursue their own thoughts, Siegert and Schadt rehearse paralysis with her and, at the same time, try to make her forget it. As their aesthetics reinforce spectatorial, and by analogy political, passivity, their films turn into the defeatist acknowledgement of powers beyond the audience's and the filmmakers' control. Radicalizing the slogan that Berlin is a city that is perpetually becoming through abstraction, both films set out to record history in order to erase it. The generalization of destruction and rebuilding, production and consumption, entails the obsoleteness of concrete fact, of the genesis of events, of definable responsibilities. Caught in stasis, history has come to an end; and the very dimension upon which cinema is based—time—collapses.

Works Cited Andrew, Dudley. The Major Film Theories. London; Oxford: Oxford UP, 1976. —. Concepts in Film Theory. Oxford; New York: Oxford UP, 1984. "Anteil inländischer Filme bei den Kinobesuchen 2001." Der Spiegel. 7 Dec. 2002

Assmann, Aleida. Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses. München: Beck, 1999. Barsch, Barbara. '"Constancy Is Our Comfort'—Between Globalisation and National Separatism: About Phenomena of Our Times." After the Wall:

40

IBA is the abbreviation for "Internationale Bauausstellung, " in English: "International Building Exhibition," which dealt with the reconstruction of the Kreuzberg quarter from 1981-1987. As it was finished before the fall of the Wall, which created the openness of Berlin in the first place, Siegert contradicts his own inspiration. Siegert's misquote of the IBA's doctrine—it is not "historische Rekonstruktion," but "kritische Rekonstruktion"—is interesting as well. "This openness had been already a part of the past since the IBA of the 1980s with the Berlin dogma of 'historical reconstruction' at the latest since 1995. New people would come to the city to make money and make a capital out of it."

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Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe. Ed. Bojana Pejic and David Elliott. Stockholm: Moderna Museet, 1999. 47-49. Baudry, Jean-Louis. "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus." Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. Ed. Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia UP, 1986. 286-298. —. "The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality in Cinema." Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. Ed. Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia UP, 1986. 299-318. Becker, Wolfgang, dir. Das Leben ist eine Baustelle. Senator Film; WDR; XFilme, 1997. Benjamin, Walter. "Theses on the Philosophy of History." Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, 1968.253-264. "Berlin Babylon." Arne Hoehne: Presse + Oeffentlichkeit.Berlin. 3 Feb. 2002 . "Blickwinkel." Berlin Babylon. Ed. Piffl Medien. 3 Feb. 2002 . von Borries, Achim. England! DFFB; Studio Babelsberg Independents; Tossell Pictures, 2000. Böttcher, Jürgen, dir. Die Mauer. DEFA, 1991. de Certeau, Michel. "Walking in the City." The Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. Simon During. Londonand New York: Routledge, 1993. 151-160. "Chronik der Flowtex-Affáre " Der Flowtex Skandal. Ed. Karl Ewald. 22 Nov. 2002 . Danquart, Didi. Viehjud Levi. Dschoint Ventschr; Lotus Film; DRS, 1999. Dresen, Andreas, dir. Stilles Land. Max Film; HFF "Konrad Wolf'; MDR; SWF, 1992. —. dir. Nachtgestalten. MDR; ORB; Peter Rommel Productions, 1998. Eisenstein, Sergei. "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form." Film Form: Essays in Film Theory. Trans., ed. Jay Leyda. New York: Harcourt, 1949. 45-63. Färberböck, Max. Aimée und Jaguar. Senator, 1999. Firth, Willi. "Berliners Say 'No' to Olympics." Green Left Weekly. 23 Jan. 2003 Förderverein Deutsches Architektur Zentrum Berlin, ed. Neue Architektur/New Architecture, Berlin 1990-2000. 1997. Berlin: Jovis, 1998. Goergen, Jeanpaul. Walther Ruttmann: Eine Dokumentation. Berlin: Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek, 1989. Goldhagen, Daniel. Hitler 's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germany and the Holocaust. New York: Knopf, 1996. Habermas, Jürgen. Die Normalität einer Berliner Republik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995. Hoffmann-Axthelm. "Warum sind die Bündnisgrünen gegen das Planwerk Innenstadt?" Von der Architektur- zur Stadtdebatte: Die Diskussion um das Planwerk Innenstadt. Ed. Hans Stimmann. Berlin: Braun, 2001. 8393.

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Silverman, Kaja. "Suture." Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. Ed. Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia UP, 1986. 219-235. Stimmann, Hans, ed. Babylon, Berlin etc. : Das Vokabular einer europäischen Stadt. Basel and Berlin: Birkhäuser, 1995. Stöhr, Hannes, dir. Berlin Is in Germany. DFFB; FBB; Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen, 2001. Strom, Elizabeth. Building the New Berlin: The Politics of Urban Development in Germany 's Capital City. Lanham, MD; Boulder, CO: Lexington Books, 2001. SWR [Südwestrundfunk], ed. Berlin: Sinfonie einer Großstadt. Baden-Baden: SWR, 2002. Tannert, Christoph. "The Holes of Berlin." After the Wall: Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe. Ed. Bojana Pejic and David Elliott. Stockholm: Moderna Museet, 1999.80-85. Turkina, Olesya, and Mazin, Viktor. "In the Time When the Great Stories Collapse." After the Wall: Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe. Ed. Bojana Pejic and David Elliott. Stockholm: Moderna Museet, 1999. 75-79. Vertov, Dziga. Man with a Movie Camera [Chelovek s Kinoapparatom]. VUFKU, 1928. Vilsmaier, Joseph, dir. The Comedian Harmonists. Bavaria Atelier; Bavaria Film; Beta Film, 1999. Ward, Janet. Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 2001. Webb, Michael. "Undivided: The Projects of Moore Ruble Yudell in Berlin 1980-2000." Moore Ruble Yudell: Building in Berlin. Ed. Adrian Koffka and Wendy Kohn. Mulgrave, Victoria: Images, 1999. 8-21. Wenders, Wim, dir. Der Himmel über Berlin. Argos Film; Road Movies; WDR, 1987. —, —, dir. In weiter Ferne, so nah! Bioskop; Road Movies, 1993. Welz, Peter, dir. Burning Life. Antaeus Film- und Fernsehproduktion Babelsberg, 1994. Wise, Michael. Capital Dilemma: Germany's Search for a New Architecture of Democracy. New York: Princeton Architectural P, 1998. Young, James. "The Counter-Monument: Memory against Itself in Germany Today." Art and the Public Sphere. Ed. W.J.T. Mitchell. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1992. 49-78.

ELIZABETH JANIK

James Madison University

The Symphony of a Capital City: Controversies of Reunification in the Berlin Music Community On 12 April 1929, the thirteen year-old violinist Yehudi Menuhin made his European concert debut with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, performing concerti by Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. The concert drew rave reviews and catapulted the young musician to international stardom. Menuhin later recalled that this performance had been a critical turning point in his career "because Berlin was then the musical capital of the 'civilised' world, its prestige founded on the music of the past and flourishing still in the great orchestras and conductors, not to mention the most informed audiences to be found anywhere" (Schultz 7). Seventy years (and several German governments) later, the American magazine Newsweek depicted the reopening of the Reichstag and the symbolic "debut" of the new Berlin Republic. Journalist Andrew Nagorski related the numerous anxieties faced by the new capital city, including the financial and political pains of East-West unification, as well as the struggle to come to terms with the National Socialist past. If one thing seemed secure, however, it was the city's brilliant musical reputation. According to one member of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, speaking in 1999, "Getting a job in Berlin was like dying and going to heaven [...] This is a musical paradise" (Nagorski 55). Clearly the prestige of Berlin as Germany's musical capital survived unification unchallenged, just as it had survived four decades of division intact. Reunified Berlin is home to no less than six professional symphony orchestras, three opera houses, two musical conservatories, a prestigious Akademie der Künste (Academy of the Arts), and numerous choirs and chamber ensembles. International celebrities like Simon Rattle, Daniel Barenboim, Christian Thielemann, and Kent Nagano conduct on the city's orchestral podiums. In addition to its wealth of highbrow musical culture, Berlin boasts a rich alternative music scene centered around the city districts of Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg. The annual Love Parade, a mass musical event that bills itself as a political protest for love and peace, lures thousands of young ravers and techno lovers to the city each summer.

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Before and after the tumultuous events of 1989/90, Berlin has thrived on a reputation as a "city of music." The German (formerly Prussian) Staatsoper (State Opera) traces its roots back to the eighteenth-century patronage of King Frederick the Great; the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra rose to international prominence during the late nineteenth-century boom years of the German Empire. In the 1920s, Berlin distinguished itself through these and other institutions of elite musical culture, as well as now-legendary cabarets, music revues, and jazz clubs. Renowned conductors like Wilhelm Furtwängler, Erich Kleiber, and Bruno Walter made the city their home, as did modernist composers like Arnold Schoenberg, Paul Hindemith, Hanns Eisler, and Kurt Weill. Hitler's rise to power halted the radical aesthetic experimentation that characterized Weimar Berlin, but not the city's musical significance. Berlin became the center of an extensive National Socialist cultural bureaucracy, as Nazi leaders elevated musical patronage to a matter of national priority, coordinating formerly private, municipal, and Prussian state institutions under central party administration. 1 After the fall of the Third Reich, divided Berlin became a playing field for the divergent cultural policies of its four Allied occupiers, and after 1949, of the two postwar Germanys. East Berlin was the musical as well as political capital of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) generously funded institutions of elite musical culture such as the German Staatsoper and Orchestra, reserving the right to monitor, guide and even censor these institutions' activities. The East Berlin music community discouraged unfettered aesthetic experimentation, emphasizing instead artists' social responsibility to their audiences and SED patrons. West Berlin, by contrast, imagined itself as an island of intellectual freedom amidst a sea of eastern repression. Berlin's western half was integrated only tenuously into the political structures of the Federal Republic of Germany, yet precisely because of the city's "exceptional" status, a generous lifeline of municipal, federal, as well as international subsidies supported its cultural life. New music festivals, research institutes, and artists' programs were established in the Cold War era, allowing West Berlin to thrive both as an outpost of "free" German culture and as a cosmopolitan showcase of the West. 2 Berlin's musical past is of great consequence to its musical future, and not merely because of the challenge of reconciling East and West German cultural traditions within a suddenly reunified city. For two hundred years, music has assumed a prominent role in expressions of German national cultural identity. As contemporary scholars have recently emphasized, the acceptance and cultivation of music as a "serious" art form occurred side-by-side with the

1 2

Recent studies of musical life in Weimar and Nazi Germany include Kater, Drummers, Twisted Muse·, John; Levi;Thrun; Potter; and Rathert and Schubert. See Kunz, Seeger and Bökel, and "Musikmetropolen: Berlin." For recent scholarship on music and politics in divided Berlin, see Poiger, Janik, and Thacker.

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growth of German cultural nationalism in the early 19th century. 3 By the century's end, German-speaking composers such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, and Wagner had come to dominate the repertoire of concert halls and opera houses in Berlin and around the world. The maintenance of Germans' special status as a "people of music" has informed German state patronage throughout the 19th and 20lh centuries. In addition to serving as sites of musical enjoyment and contemplation, Berlin's distinguished musical institutions today are powerful symbols of political prestige and German national representation. Like other national historical icons in Berlin, such as the Reichstag or the grounds of the Hohenzollern Stadtschloß (Royal Palace), the future of the city's elite musical institutions have inspired intense debates in the decade after reunification. In this article, I will examine the controversies that developed around the city's two Academies of the Arts and its three public opera houses in the 1990s, as these elite institutions of East and West German musical culture struggled to assert their continued aesthetic and political legitimacy within the new terrain of reunified Berlin. If the initial spark that ignited these controversies was the financial strain of unification, the controversies were kept afire by deep-seated tensions in Berlin's musical past, including the appropriate relationship between art and the state, the definition of "German music," and a longstanding tradition of rivalry between eastern and western cultural institutions. In the aftermath of unification, artists and audiences reassessed the musical legacies of divided Germany in order to pave the way for a shared future in the new Berlin Republic.

I The immediate aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 was accompanied by public events and celebrations that asserted music's special role as a symbol of both German national unity and international reconciliation. Moved by television images of East and West Berliners reunited at the Wall, the distinguished cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, who had been stripped of his Soviet citizenship in 1978, flew from Paris to Berlin on a private jet. Bringing his cello to the newly breached Wall, he gave an impromptu concert of Bach sonatas for all who passed by. That same weekend, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the German Opera held free performances for East German visitors in West Berlin; Mozart and Beethoven filled the programs. Such spontaneous gestures of musical celebration were soon followed by carefully orchestrated, gala events. In December, the American conductor Leonard Bernstein led musicians from the two Germanys, England, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union in performances of 3

See Pederson; Applegate, "How German is it?"; Applegate and Potter; and Gramit.

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Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in both East and West Berlin. Bernstein amended the text of the symphony's finale, Schiller's "Ode to Joy," to an "Ode to Freedom," stating "I feel this is a heaven-sent moment to sing 'Freiheit' wherever the score indicates the word 'Freude'. If ever there was a historic time to take an academic risk in the name of human joy, this is it, and I am sure we have Beethoven's blessing." 4 Months later, Berliners' exuberance over the Wall's demise and the heady prospects of German unification gave way to more sober disputes over artistic standards, and sometimes bitter competition for public attention and limited funds. The German Unification Treaty of 1990 pledged to protect the "cultural substance" of the former East German territories, stating that "Stellung und Ansehen eines vereinten Deutschlands in der Welt hängen außer von seinem politischen Gewicht und seiner wirtschaftlichen Leistungskraft ebenso von seiner Bedeutung als Kulturstaat ab" (Ackermann 54).5 At the same time, however, the Federal Republic's commentary accompanying the treaty emphasized that die kulturelle Entwicklung in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik nahm teilweise einen anderen Verlauf als die in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Nicht alle künstlerischen Aktivitäten in dem beitretenden Gebiet können in der bisherigen Form weitergeführt werden. Die kulturelle Substanz soll jedoch bewahrt werden. (Ackermann 55-56)'

The challenge of acting upon these contradictory guidelines fell to Land (state) and local authorities in unified Germany. In contrast to the SED's coordination of cultural affairs throughout the GDR, the decentralization of arts patronage was a constitutional mandate of the Federal Republic. Because the two Cold War Berlins had developed parallel sets of theaters, galleries, museums, artists' academies, and symphony orchestras, the reunified Land Berlin inherited a rich (or as some have since argued, an "overfed" or "overstuffed") cultural infrastructure (Jähner and Speicher; Thielemann, "Berlin ist überfüttert."). One of the most heated cultural disputes in the New Berlin concerned the proposed merger between the city's two Akademien der Künste (Academies of the Arts) in the early 1990s. Some Berliners supported the merger as a necessary gesture of German-German reconciliation, while others argued that artists who had enjoyed the privileges of academy membership under the SED regime ought not to continue to do so after its demise. In early 1992, numerous

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Bemstein was drawing upon speculations that it had been Schiller's original intent to compose an 'Ode to Freedom." See liner notes, Bemstein, Ode to Freedom. "The international status and prestige of a united Germany depend not only upon its political weight and economic achievement, but equally upon its importance as a cultural state." Unless otherwise indicated, all translations in this article are my own. "Cultural development in the German Democratic Republic took, in part, a different path from that in the Federal Republic of Germany. Not all artistic activities in the acceding territory can be continued in their previous form. The cultural substance, however, should be preserved." See also Carr and Paul 327-34.

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artists and intellectuals, including former GDR dissidents Wolf Biermann and Hans Joachim Schädlich, signed an open letter of protest to members of the western academy, insisting that jede Aufnahme in die Akademie Parteiapparat möglich war und wollen, eine Auslese im Sinne Affront gegen alle Künstler dar, richtet in der Kulturszene des ("Protest") 7

der Künste der DDR nur nach Billigung durch Staats- und die ausgewählte Gruppe, die Sie ungeprüft übernehmen des SED-Regimes darstellt [...] Ihr Versuch stellt einen die in der DDR wirklich Widerstand geleistet haben, und vereinigten Deutschland einen bleibenden Schaden an.

Public debate over the academies' fusion centered around the party ties of GDR artists, yet the issues at stake were broader and deeper, concerning not only the legitimacy of separate East and West German cultural traditions, but also the appropriate relationship between art and the state, and the degree to which political demands ought to shape an artist's creative output. The two Akademien der Künste had been founded in East and West Berlin in 1950 and 1956 respectively, but each claimed to be the rightful heir of an institutional tradition stretching back to the 17th century. The justifications for maintaining a publicly subsidized pantheon of elite artists had varied widely over time, but in the 1990s as in the three hundred years prior, these justifications were informed by the political motivations of the academies' patron states. Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg (later King Frederick I of Prussia) established the Royal Akademie der Künste in Berlin in 1696, as a site of advanced artistic training and a means to gather talented creative artists in service to his court. Like the royal opera house on Unter den Linden that was founded by Frederick's grandson in 1742, the Akademie der Künste was intended to honor and reflect the majesty of the Prussian kings. The Hohenzollem monarchs, in turn, supervised and guided the Academy's affairs. The political and aesthetic obligations of Academy artists went hand-in-hand. The definition of these obligations shifted in the early decades of the 19th century, as Berlin artists and scholars began to style themselves as representatives of a distinctively German cultural tradition. The conductor and composer Felix Mendelssohn played a key role in asserting music's place of honor within this tradition. Local critics lauded Mendelssohn's performance of Bach's Matthäus-Passion (St. Matthew Passion) with the Berlin Singakademie in 1829 as a seminal moment of German music history; his "rediscovery" of the neglected ^ - C e n t u r y composer was celebrated as a kind of national cultural awakening. Four years later, Mendelssohn became a founding member of the newly established music section within the Akademie der Künste. 7

"Every admission into the Akademie der Künste of the GDR was possible only with the approval of the state and party apparatus, and so the chosen group that you want to admit without further evaluation represents a selection in the sense of the SED regime [ . . .] Your effort represents an affront to all artists who engaged in actual resistance in the GDR, and inflicts lasting damage on the cultural scene of unified Germany."

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(Akademie der Künste 253-54; Applegate, "Bach Revival" 139-62) More than just a showpiece of the Hohenzollem monarchs, the 19lh-century royal academy presented itself as a proud symbol of German cultural accomplishment. The national significance of Berlin's Akademie der Künste increased after the unification of the German Empire in 1871. William II, who assumed the German imperial throne in 1888, was an enthusiastic and opinionated patron of the arts, arguing that art ought to portray the beautiful and admirable, inspire patriotism, and be readily comprehensible to a wide audience. "Wenn nun die Kunst, wie es jetzt vielfach geschieht, weiter nichts tut, als das Elend noch scheußlicher hinzustellen, wie es schon ist, dann versündigt sie sich damit am deutschen Volke," William asserted in 1901 (Penzier 61-62). 8 During his thirty-year reign, the Academy excluded most modernist painters and composers. Only after the collapse of the German Empire in 1918 did the Academy welcome a wider spectrum of artistic perspectives within its ranks. Oncescomed artists of the Berlin Secession, including Max Liebermann, Ernst Barlach, Käthe Kollwitz and Heinrich Zille were accepted as members; adventurous composers like Ferrucio Busoni and Arnold Schoenberg held master classes in composition at the Academy alongside traditionalists like Hans Pfitzner and Georg Schumann. The Academy relinquished its "royal" prefix to become solely an institution of the Prussian state, although its relationship to political authority remained as tangled as ever. By the end of the 1920s, infighting within the Academy's section of visual arts had rendered it all but incapable of electing new members. In 1931, Academy president Max Liebermann appealed to authorities in the Prussian Ministry of Culture to bring modern artists like Otto Dix, Emil Nolde, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe into the Academy over the objections of its conservative membership. The initiative succeeded, but the fragility of the institution's political independence had been exposed. The following year, the reactionary and anti-Semitic composer Max von Schillings succeeded Liebermann as president, setting the stage for a housecleaning of politically, racially, and aesthetically undesirable members that began to take effect even before the National Socialists' rise to power in January 1933. By the following year, 31 of the Academy's 163 members had departed voluntarily or been dismissed. Between 1933 and 1945, the rump Academy served as a willing—if increasingly marginal—appendage of the Nazi cultural bureaucracy, as the institution fell subject to constant infighting and turf wars waged between Prussian state and Nazi party officials (Akademie der Künste 508; Stadler 67).

8

"But when art, as often happens today, shows us only misery, and shows it to us even uglier than misery is anyway, then art commits a sin against the German people." The translation is from Paret 27.

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After the fall of the Third Reich and the dissolution of Prussia, the future of Berlin's Akademie der Künste was uncertain, until the founding of two postwar Germanys paved the way for separate successor academies on the eastern and western sides of the city. In 1950, SED authorities approved the creation of a "German Academy of the Arts" 9 that aspired to broad national legitimacy, although virtually all of its founding members were residents of the GDR. A core of these artists—including Johannes R. Becher, Bertolt Brecht, and the musicians Hanns Eisler and Ernst Hermann Meyer—were committed socialists who had survived the Third Reich in exile. These artists did not have previous ties to the Prussian academy, in either its Weimar- or Nazi-era incarnations. The SED Central Committee vetted all candidates for membership, ensuring that only politically and aesthetically tolerable artists would gain admission. Members of the GDR Academy were held accountable to a party-defined ideal of socialist realism that only gradually eased in the late 1960s, yet these artists' relationship to the SED regime was complex and sometimes contradictory. If the academy regularly issued statements in support of SED cultural policy and measures like the construction of the Berlin Wall, individual members used their positions to challenge the party line in quieter ways. Through his master classes at the academy, sometime Brecht collaborator Paul Dessau supported young GDR musicians who were interested in twelve-tone composition and other "decadent" techniques of the western avant-garde, and it was at an academy-sponsored poetry reading in December 1962 that the regime-critical songwriter Wolf Biermann first attracted the ire of high-ranking SED authorities. Stephan Hermlin, the event's organizer, lost his post as head of the academy's literature section as a result of the ensuing controversy. On the opposite side of the German-German border, an Akademie der Künste in Berlin was established in 1956. Although municipally funded, the young academy received a generous grant from the German-American businessman Henry Reichhold enabling the construction of an ultra-modern academy residence in the Hansa quarter of West Berlin, designed by the architect Werner Düttmann. The academy had a loose mandate to advise the West Berlin municipal government in artistic affairs, but otherwise enjoyed the freedom to pursue its own initiatives and elect new members without external interference. Political autonomy was as critical to the identity of the western academy as was political engagement to its eastern counterpart. Yet the academy's function as a cultural showpiece of Cold War-era West Berlin rendered its assertions of political independence problematic, as did the background of its members. Whereas a core of the eastern academy's founding members were returning émigrés, most initiates of the young western academy

9

In 1972, the academy was renamed the "Academy of the Arts of the German Democratic Republic."

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had been active in German cultural life between 1933 and 1945. Boris Blacher, Werner Egk, Wolfgang Fortner, Ernst Pepping, and Heinz Tiessen—all wellknown composers during the Third Reich, if not Nazi party members—were among the music section's founding members. The western academy did not distance itself from the National Socialist past through a radical purge of its personnel, but rather through its rehabilitation of artistic styles that had been derided as "degenerate" during the Third Reich. In order to distance themselves from both Nazi and SED cultural politics, western academy members reinvented themselves as aggressive advocates of free expression and the aesthetic experiments of the 20 lh -century avant-garde. In the early Cold War era, membership in the two academies was almost mutually exclusive. This strict separation broke down in subsequent decades, as western European artists with socialist sympathies (notably, the composers Hans Werner Henze and Luigi Nono) gained admittance into the GDR academy, while adventurous and internationally influential East-Bloc composers like Paul Dessau, Siegfried Matthus, Witold Lutowslawski, and Krzysztof Penderecki accepted membership to the academy in West Berlin. As relations between the two Germanys gradually thawed in the era of détente, eastern as well as western artists accepted membership in the "other" academy as a sign of cultural (if not necessarily political) solidarity. Under the auspices of the German peace movement, members of both academies engaged in Berliner Begegnungen ("Berlin dialogues") in the early 1980s. Cooperation between the two academies brought the institutions closer together, but simultaneously drove a wedge between them. By accepting the legitimacy of separate eastern and western academies, German artists and their governments tacitly acknowledged the existence of separate standards of artistic achievement. In the early 1990s, reunified Berlin thus found itself in possession of two academies with different histories and ideological motivations, and only a handful of common members between them. Most Berliners conceded that the continued existence of separate academies was untenable; financial considerations notwithstanding, the prestige of a representative artists' academy rested upon its singularity. During coalition negotiations for the first reunified city government in January 1991, politicians from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD) agreed to subsidize only one academy. Legal preparations for the dissolution of the Akademie der Künste of the GDR were underway by the summer, and in October Berlin's Senator for Cultural Affairs, Ulrich Roloff-Momin, announced that the institution would lose its public funding at the end of March 1992 (Roloff-Momin, Zuletzt 201-03). GDR artists argued that their academy was not an illegitimate instrument of the SED regime, but rather the most prominent exponent of the "cultural substance" of the new federal states that the Unification Treaty had pledged to preserve. Faced with their academy's imminent extinction, a committee of

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twenty leading artists lobbied on behalf of their colleagues for the creation of a unified "Akademie der Künste Berlin-Brandenburg," asserting that GDR cultural traditions must not be suppressed or ignored in a unified Germany: Ökonomisch, rechtlich und politisch vollzieht sich die Einheit nach einem Muster, dem westlichen, jenem, das sich im Wertevergleich der Systeme als das überlegene erwiesen hat [...] Aber in der Kultur herrscht nicht das Gesetz des Beitritts und kann es nicht herrschen, selbst wenn man es wollte. Homogenisierung und Identitätsbildung in der Kultur kann nicht nach dem Muster nur einer Seite erfolgen, sondern hat durch beide ein gemeinsames neues Maß zu bilden [...] Die kommende neue gemeinsame deutsche Kultur kann nicht anders entstehen als durch ein aus ähnlicher und aus verschiedener Herkunft gleichzeitiges Aufeinanderzugehen in die Mitte eines neuen Verstehens und einer neuen Übereinkunft. (SAAdK, Zwischen 598)10

The tenability of this vision in post-Wende Berlin rested upon the eastern artists' repudiation of SED politics. In December 1991, the eastern academy took the controversial step of placing its entire membership up for re-election; only those members whose artistic (rather than party) credentials were affirmed by a majority of their colleagues might retain their affiliation and thus be eligible to participate in a future "Akademie der Künste BerlinBrandenburg." The move split the academy. Twenty-two artists resigned in protest; others refused to participate in the election on principle. Although seeking to raise the eastern academy above party politics, the exclusion of "undesirable" members raised an uncomfortable parallel with the actions of the Prussian Academy in 1932-33. At worst, the apparent need to "clean house" in the eastern academy undermined, rather than underscored, the legitimacy of GDR culture. In the end, 69 of 106 artists were re-elected. Composers such as PaulHeinz Dittrich, Friedrich Goldmann, Georg Katzer, and Udo Zimmermann dominated the reconstituted music section. These musicians had risen to prominence (and raised the eyebrows of older colleagues) in the 1960s and 1970s by embracing serialism, electronic composition, and other innovations of the western avant-garde, reclaiming these techniques for the "socialist musical culture" of the GDR. Those not re-elected in December 1991— including Hans Pischner, Eberhard Rebling, Kurt Schwaen, and Joachim Werzlau—were nearly all over 70 years old and little known outside the GDR (SAAdK, Zwischen 609-11, 715). Most were party members who had been pillars of the East German musical community since the early 1950s. The vote

10

"Economically, legally, and politically, unity is being carried out according to a single, western model that has proven itself superior in a comparison of the systems' values [...] But in the realm of culture, the law of accession does not and cannot prevail, even if one so desired. Cultural homogenization and identity formation cannot be achieved according to the model of only one side, but instead a new, mutual standard ought be constructed through the influence of both [...] The new, mutual German culture still to come can arise only through a simultaneous merging—from similar and different backgrounds—at a midway point of new understanding and agreement."

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thus asserted the legitimacy of second-generation, western-oriented GDR musicians over older colleagues whose careers had been defined by Stalinistera standards of socialist realism. The proposed union of the two academies was no less controversial on the city's western side. The West Berlin academy's decision to admit the reconstituted eastern membership "en bloc," rather than on a case-by-case basis, prevailed only by the narrowest of margins. Eighty-eight (of 256 total) academy members attended the special meeting that was convened on 2 February 1992 to rule on the matter. A bare two-thirds majority of those present voted in favor of unification; despite being approved by only 59 of 256 members, the resolution passed. The outcome unleashed a wave of protests among western artists who objected to the joining of the two academies on aesthetic, political, as well as procedural grounds. On 6 February 1992, György Ligeti became the first of 26 artists to resign from the West Berlin academy in protest. Ligeti, who had fled his native Hungary after the failed workers' rebellion of 1956, was one of the most celebrated composers of twentieth-century art music. His experimentation with orchestral clusters and "micropolyphony," innovations that would have been unacceptable in Hungary, earned him a place of honor in the early 1960s among the western avant-garde. Ligeti equated the suppression of artistic freedom in communist Eastern Europe with the crimes of National Socialism. During World War II he had been drafted into a Jewish forced labor unit and narrowly escaped execution by the SS; his father and younger brother were killed in Nazi concentration camps. In 1992, it was unthinkable for him to participate in an academy in which members of the former GDR academy were appointed "en bloc," rather than according to their individual artistic qualifications. "Dann fühle ich mich ein bißchen so," he later remarked, "ich war auch Nazi-Verfolgter—, als wenn ich nach 1945 nach Deutschland gekommen wäre und dann die Ehre hätte, in die Reichsmusikkammer aufgenommen zu werden. Diese Scheinvereinigung ist eine Ohrfeige, ein Schlag ins Gesicht für alle Verfolgten aller Diktaturen" (SAAdK, Vergangenheit 550)." Yet the tangled political histories of both academies and their members made it difficult to draw moral absolutes. Kurt Schwaen, one of the senior composers and SED functionaries who lost his academy membership in December 1991, also suffered at the hands of the Nazi regime. A communist activist in the Weimar Republic, during the Third Reich he spent three years in jail as a political prisoner and then was drafted into a punishment battalion for former convicts. Fifty years later, he considered himself a proud anti-fascist

11

"Then I would almost feel—I was also persecuted by the Nazis—as if I had returned to Germany after 1945 and then had the honor of being accepted into the Reich Culture Chamber. This false union is a slap, a strike in the face to all those who have been persecuted by dictatorships everywhere." See also Ligeti 33 and Toop 19-22.

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and was as appalled as Ligeti at the prospect of the academies' merging (2528, 155-58). His musical oeuvre, including numerous children's operas and compositions for amateur performance, could hardly have been more different from Ligeti's challenging avant-garde creations. Establishment of a new, unified Akademie der Künste required the approval of both the Berlin and Brandenburg governments, the securing of which was by no means assured. The most vocal political opposition to the academies' reunification came from the members of the CDU, including the party's cultural-political speaker in Berlin, Uwe Lehmann-Brauns, and Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Skeptics of the merger argued that acceptance of former GDR artists ought to be made contingent upon an investigation of their political backgrounds by the "Gauck authority" responsible for administering the records of the Stasi, the East German secret police. Lehmann-Brauns even assembled a list of politically acceptable artists—including Wolf Biermann, Sarah Kirsch, and Hans Joachim Schädlich, as well as international dissident celebrities like Vaclav Havel and Alexander Solzhenitsyn—arguing that they ought to be brought into a new academy in order to counteract the dangerous influence of SED-sanctioned artists.12 Leaders of both academies and Berlin's Senator for Cultural Affairs, Roloff-Momin, resisted these proposals on the grounds that they injured the principle of political autonomy that they ostensibly sought to defend (SAAdK, Vergangenheit 535-48; Roloff-Momin, Zuletzt 210-17). After months of testimony and debate, in September 1993 Berlin's House of Delegates approved the establishment of a unified "Academy of Arts Berlin-Brandenburg" by a 154-61 margin. Bruised but not broken, the Akademie der Künste weathered the political stresses of the Wende in time to celebrate its 300th anniversary in 1996 as a single institution. The milestone presented the Academy with an opportunity to take stock of its past, as well as to look forward into the future. An extensive exhibit of the Academy's history, accompanied by the publication of several volumes of previously unpublished material from the Academy's archive, encouraged artists and their public to reflect upon their cultural and political past (Akademie; SAAdK, alle; Vergangenheit, Zwischen). A close relationship—sometimes hostile, but more often cooperative—had existed between the Academy and its government patrons for the past three centuries. Controversy surrounding the consolidation of the new Academy in the early 1990s was representative of the cultural disorder that had been unleashed by

12

Sarah Kirsch declined an invitation of membership in the Fall of 1992, responding that she "konnte wirklich keine Freude empfinden, daß mich die Akademie der Künste Berlin durchsichtig motiviert als Mitglied gewählt hat [...] Wird diese Akademie doch in absehbarer Zeit eine Schlupfbude für ehemalige Staatsdiener und Zuträger der Staatssicherheit sein" (JGJ 27). "really could feel no joy at my transparently motivated election to membership by the Berlin Akademie der Künste [...] After all, in the foreseeable future this academy will be a hideout for former public servants and informers of the State Security."

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the sudden disappearance of separate East and West German patron states. In the end, Berliners exchanged their two Cold War-era academies for a single institution that was grounded upon a set of new political imperatives, namely, the demands of unification and the desire for German-German reconciliation. These imperatives received powerful physical expression in May 2000, when ground was broken for a single, new academy building on the site adjacent to the Brandenburg Gate (and Berlin's former east-west border) where the Prussian Akademie der Künste had stood before 1945. The Academy's most challenging work of construction, however, has barely begun: determining the future direction and goals of an elite, state-supported assembly of artists in the Berlin Republic of the 21st century.

II The future of the Akademie der Künste was not the only issue to trouble Berlin's cultural administrators in the aftermath of reunification. Between 1991 and 1995 annual cultural spending ranged from DM 0.91 to 1.2 billion, comprising 2 to 2.7% of the Land's total budget—a high sum, even by the traditionally generous standards of arts patronage throughout the Federal Republic (Immergut A6; Roloff-Momin, Zuletzt 93). Faced with budget constraints and the loss of federal subsidies intended to cover the transitional costs of unification, in June 1993 the Berlin Senate announced its decision to close the Schiller Theater, one of the most prominent stages on the western side of the city. The Schiller Theater had been a pillar of the West Berlin theater community since the early Cold War era, although its critical reputation and box-office receipts had suffered in recent years. "Buchstäblich über Nacht," reported the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, "ist Berlins Kultursenator Ulrich Roloff-Momin zum vermutlich meistgeschmähten Mann des Landes geworden" (Zimmer 60).13 Roloff-Momin earned the enmity of local (and particularly western) artists, who believed that he had failed in his duty as an advocate for the arts. The label "Schiller Killer" plagued Roloff-Momin throughout his remaining three years in office, providing his successors with little initiative to trim back or otherwise tame the unruly cultural landscape of reunified Berlin. The excesses as well as artistic distinction of this landscape were particularly evident in Berlin's elite music community. As is often pointed out, no other city in the world supports three major opera houses. Together the Staatsoper (State Opera), the Deutsche Oper (German Opera), and the Komische Oper (Comic Opera) raise their curtains nearly 500 times a year, providing space for up to 4500 music lovers to enjoy the performance of live 13

"Literally overnight, Berlin's cultural senator Ulrich Roloff-Momin became the country's presumably most reviled man."

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opera on a single evening. In the late 1990s, the Land Berlin spent close to DM 250 million per year on its opera houses—a sum approaching one-fifth of its entire cultural budget (Umbach 145; Jena 749-53). If a growing number of journalists and cultural administrators wondered aloud whether the opportunity to attend three different stagings of Mozart's Magic Flute and Verdi's Falstaff within a single season was a sign of unnecessary cultural expenditure, few proposed specific measures of reform. Berlin's embarrassment of musical riches was not merely a result of city officials' reluctance to make tough financial decisions; it was also indicative of music's privileged role in elite German culture, and the national prestige that had long distinguished Berlin's opera houses. For nearly a century these musical stages had competed with one another for public funds and critical attention, as well as for recognition as the leading opera house in Berlin, and by extension, throughout Germany. These tensions spiked after reunification, as tightening budget constraints and the redefinition of Germany's borders destabilized the comfortable existence to which Berlin's opera houses had grown accustomed in four postwar decades. At the same time, the city's newly appointed status as the capital of reunified Germany upped the stakes of its operatic rivalry. The result was an off-stage drama as emotional and politically charged as the musical spectacles that were regularly performed on stage in Berlin's opera houses. East-West rivalry and disputes over the leadership of German musical tradition were not new to the post-unification era. The German Staatsoper was the oldest of the city's musical stages, founded in 1742 as the Royal Court Opera of Frederick the Great. The opera house, which bore the inscription "Fridericus Rex Apollini et Musis" on its portico, was intended to reflect and magnify the eminence of the Prussian kings and their court. The Court Opera embodied the uncontested pinnacle of music-theatrical prestige in Berlin for over a century and a half. This position was challenged in 1912, when a new German Opera House opened its doors in the western suburb of Charlottenburg—geographically as well as socially far removed from the old royal thoroughfare Unter den Linden. The German Opera House was a private institution, founded by a circle of well-to-do opera lovers. The new money flowing into the western districts of a rapidly industrializing Berlin fed its boxoffice receipts. In contrast to the older French and Italian music favored by the Court Opera, the German Opera House self-consciously emphasized the work of German composers, and above all, Richard Wagner; an important early triumph was beating the Court Opera to the local premiere of Parsifal by exactly four days in January 1914. Competition between the two opera houses continued throughout the short life of the Weimar Republic, as both competed for limited public subsidies in troubled economic times. In 1927, the Staatsoper opened an experimental second house, the "Kroll Opera," which distinguished itself through the promotion of contemporary music and avant-garde stagings of familiar

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classics. A lightning rod for conservative critics, the Kroll Opera was forced to close its doors just four years later, after Prussian authorities withdrew its funding amidst denunciations of "cultural bolshevism." The Kroll Opera was an early casualty of the shifting political tides within Berlin. The Jewish conductors Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer were forced to resign their positions at the city's remaining opera houses shortly after the National Socialists' rise to power, even before passage of the infamous law for the "restoration" of the civil service in April 1933. The National Socialists' "coordination" of culture may have allayed the opera houses' immediate financial concerns, but it gave new impetus to their artistic rivalry. In 1933, Prussian Minister President Hermann Goring assumed personal control of the former Court Opera (now the PrussiaoStoateoper) on Unter den Linden, while Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels adopted the Deutsche Oper and Berlin Philharmonie as his pet national ensembles. Power struggles within the National Socialist cultural bureaucracy breathed new life into old rivalries. Goring and administrators at the Staatsoper became ardent supporters of a young conductor named Herbert von Karajan, who first drew national attention in 1938 after being hailed as a musical "miracle" in the Berlin press. Karajan was built up as a challenger to the mantle of Berlin Philharmonic's senior conductor, Wilhelm Furtwängler, as the city's outstanding musical talent. After 1945, both conductors came under public scrutiny for their close ties to the Nazi regime. If Karajan (who later succeeded Furtwängler on the podium of the Berlin Philharmonic) was long haunted by his Nazi party membership, Furtwängler was more successful at styling himself as an apolitical, "good" German who had kept the humanist tradition of Mozart and Beethoven alive during the dark days of the Third Reich (Prieberg 238-66; Kater, Twisted Muse 56-61, 195-203). After 1945, Nazi cultural rivalries gave way to Berlin's division between East and West and the emerging tensions of the Cold War. Berlin's western Allies administered the opera house in Charlottenburg (first revived as the Stadtsoper (Municipal Opera), then renamed the Deutsche Oper (German Opera) in 1961), while the Staatsoper fell under Soviet jurisdiction. In the immediate postwar era, the Soviets attracted Berlin's best musical talent to their sector of occupation through the promise of extra food rations and other perks; in 1947 they invited the renowned Austrian stage director, Walter Felsenstein, to establish a second opera house, the Comic Opera, within their city sector as well. After the currency reform of 1948, Berlin's musical balance of power reversed, as the western opera house, with the assistance of the new West German Mark, became the more lucrative site of employment for Berlin artists. The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 intensified political tensions but defused musical ones. No longer in a position to compete with one another for musical talent, critical attention, and box-office success, the Deutsche Oper and the Staatsoper became the foremost musical stages in their respective

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halves of Berlin. (The Komische Oper carved out a specialty niche for itself by emphasizing "lighter" musical works, realistic stagings, and performance in the vernacular.) The eastern and western opera houses cultivated distinct artistic profiles in Cold War Berlin. If both the Deutsche Oper and the Staatsoper promoted the familiar eighteenth- and nineteenth-century repertoire by composers like Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, they parted ways dramatically when it came to contemporary musical performance. While the German Opera premiered works by West German musicians like Boris Blacher, Werner Egk, Hans Werner Henze, and Aribert Reimann, its sister institutions in East Berlin promoted the music of GDR composers like Paul Dessau, Jean Kurt Forest, Günter Kochan, and Kurt Schwaen. German music split into distinct eastern and western varieties on the city's opera stages. After 1990, the flagship musical institutions of the two Berlins found themselves adrift in the unfamiliar waters of post-Wende Berlin. "Beide Häuser waren gehätschelte und wohlgenährte Prestigeobjekte des Ost-WestKulturkampfs," remarked one critic in 1996. Beide verteidigen hartnäckig ihre Pfründe. In [the German Opera's manager Götz] Friedrichs Worten schwingt immer der ganze Stolz auf die (West-) Vergangenheit mit. In der Chefetage der Lindenoper kann man das Selbstbewußtsein spüren, sowieso zum repräsentativen Prunkstück des vereinigten Berlin zu avancieren. (Spahn, "Klein-Bayreuth") 1 4

Determined to burnish the reputation of the Staatsoper on Unter den Linden, Roloff-Momin installed an international musical celebrity, Daniel Barenboim, as the institution's artistic director in 1992. The German Opera, no longer a lavishly subsidized bastion of western musical culture at the front lines of the Cold War, risked sinking to the level of junior partner in a trio of municipal opera houses. By the decade's end, the opera houses' competition for limited funds had grown unbearable. On 13 October 2000, the city's recently appointed cultural senator, Christoph Stölzl, announced a radical reform plan for the municipal operas. All three houses would remain open, but the personnel of the Deutsche Oper and the Staatsoper would pool their resources under the umbrella of a new, more cost-efficient entity, the "Opera Stages Berlin." Stölzl sought to trim costs and provide the eastern and western opera houses with more distinct artistic profiles. In keeping with the relatively small size of its stage and its historic setting on Unter den Linden, the Staatsoper would henceforth focus on the performance of Classical and early Romantic opera, leaving the larger and boxier German Opera to tend the late Romantic, modern, and contemporary repertoire. Yet few members of the opera houses' personnel were pleased with

14

"Both houses were coddled and well-fed objects of prestige in the east-west cultural struggle. Both are obstinately defending their privilege. Pride in the (western) past still resonates in Friedrich's words. Among the management of the Linden opera, one can sense the selfassurance of advancing to become the representative showpiece of unified Berlin."

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the proposed restructuring, nor with the loss of jobs that this restructuring would entail. Even as Stölzl proposed to trim DM 20 million from their annual budgets, Daniel Barenboim argued that the Staatsoper required DM 10 million more per year in order to maintain its level of outstanding musical achievement. Should this request not be granted, Barenboim announced that he would leave the Staatsoper upon the expiration of his contract in 2002 (Barenboim; Spahn, "Grandhotel Tristesse"). Four days after Stölzl's announcement, his predecessor Roloff-Momin addressed an open letter to Barenboim in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Roloff-Momin criticized Stölzl's proposed course of reform, suggesting that the planned merger would destroy the integrity of the opera houses' individual musical traditions, and he urged the world-renowned conductor not to abandon his post in Berlin. Moreover, Roloff-Momin asked, täusche ich mich, oder macht sich nicht schon klammheimliche Freude darüber breit, daß Sie in der künftigen Opemplanung offensichtlich keine Rolle mehr spielen sollen? Und ist es nicht wirklich unerträglich, daß selbst verantwortliche Politiker stets und ständig den Juden Daniel Barenboim, nicht aber den Künstler von Weltformat betonen—ob es sich nun um Ihr Bleiben oder Ihr Weggehen handelt? M u ß man das sagen? Ist es schon fahrläßiger Antisemitismus, wenn die Glaubenszugehörigkeit in den kulturpolitischen Prozessen eine Rolle spielt? Oder kommt der Antisemitismus nicht schon wieder ganz offen daher, wenn man jene von vielen Ohrenzeugen gehörte, aber nur hinter vorgehaltener Hand weitergereichte Bemerkung eines fahrenden Berliners bedenkt: "Jetzt hat die Juderei in Berlin ein Ende"? (Roloff-Momin, "Kämpfen Sie" BS1 )15

A Berlin newspaper suggested that the German Opera's principal conductor, Christian Thielemann, had been the source of the "Juderet' comment—a charge that he denied. The CDU party leader in the Berlin Senate, Klaus Landowsky, did concede that he had once compared the "young Karajan Thielemann" to the "Jew Barenboim," but he insisted that he had intended only to emphasize the diversity of Berlin's cultural scene. All of the necessary ingredients were thus present for a major flare-up in Berlin's longstanding tradition of operatic rivalry: financial pressures, anti-Semitism, conflict between East and West, clashing artistic temperaments, and dispute over the future of German musical tradition. There were at least superficial similarities between Thielemann and the young Herbert von Karajan; the 41-year-old Thielemann was a photogenic rising star in the Berlin music scene known for his performances of Wagnerian

15

"Am I mistaken, or aren't many secretly pleased that you apparently no longer will be involved in future opera planning? And isn't it intolerable that even responsible politicians constantly emphasize the Jew Barenboim, but not the world-renowned artist—regardless of whether your staying or departing is under discussion? Must that be mentioned? Is it negligent anti-Semitism when religious affiliation plays a role in cultural-political matters? Or perhaps anti-Semitism is already becoming quite open again, if one considers the off-hand comment made by a leading Berliner that was heard by many witnesses: ' N o w there's an end to Jewishness in Berlin?'" See also Grütters.

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music dramas. His engagement for the music of Hans Pfitzner—an outspoken anti-Semite, opponent of musical modernism, and opportunist in the Third Reich—raised the eyebrows of many contemporaries. Though never substantiated, rumors about Thielemann's own supposedly xenophobic or antiSemitic views had surfaced on and off for years (Roloff-Momin, Zuletzt: Kultur 88-89; Fuhrmann). Thielemann rejected such political characterizations, but refused to apologize for his promotion of late Romantic German music. 16 Ironically, he had once studied under his older colleague Barenboim, an Israeli citizen who was born in Argentina, although the two had not maintained a personal relationship. Both men asserted their professional respect for the other and sought to defuse the musical and political drama that had claimed them as its principal actors, yet commentators in the media remarked upon the differences between the two conductors in much the same way thát journalists and critics had once monitored the (much more overt) Karajan-Furtwängler rivalry in the 1930s and 1940s (Fuhrmann; Büning 44; Kramer 138-45). Thus, debate over cultural spending in Berlin was soon overshadowed by a more tantalizing controversy: What was German music, and who best could represent it? Barenboim, like Thielemann, specialized in conducting the music of Richard Wagner, the composer whose personal anti-Semitism and aggressive nationalism rendered him the most controversial of all German musical icons. Just a few months earlier, in fact, Barenboim had announced his intention to conduct all ten major operas by Wagner at the Staatsoper in the spring of 2002, a project that would have fallen outside the designated musical emphasis of the Staatsoper, according to the suggestions of Stölzl's reform plan. 17 If Barenboim did not shy from performing Wagner's music, neither did his musicians hesitate to refer to themselves as members of a uniquely "German" orchestra. State Opera musicians rejected the legitimacy of an EastWest merger by asserting that their orchestra was the oldest in all Germany and representative of a special "German" sound: dark, rich, and particularly suited to the Romantic repertoire. Defense of this sound was simultaneously an assertion of eastern over western cultural tradition; whereas West Berlin institutions like the Deutsche Oper and Berlin Philharmonic had "internationalized" themselves after 1945, East Berlin institutions like the Staatsoper remained comparatively isolated and relied chiefly on GDR musicians (Büning, "Gibt es"; Strittmaier). 16

17

Thielemann countered his critics: "Was hat cis-moll in Pfitzners 'Palestrina' mit Faschismus zu tun? [...] Mich persönlich interessiert nur, ob mir die Partitur gefallt. Wenn es ein Propagandastück wäre, würde ich mir natürlich überlegen, ob ich das dirigiere. Aber gewisse Dinge stehen gar nicht drin. Mich fasziniert das Stück" (Thielemann, "Tristan"). "What does C sharp minor in Pfitzner's 'Palestrina' have to do with fascism? [...] I'm personally only interested in whether I like the score. If it were a propaganda piece, I'd naturally consider whether or not to conduct it. But certain things aren't at all there. I'm fascinated by the piece." In July 2001, Barenboim became the first conductor to perform the music of Richard Wagner in a major public concert in Israel. See Bollmann; Witzhum; and Rehders.

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Defenders of the Staatsoper thus argued that its sound ought to be preserved not merely because it was unique, but because it was at once uniquely German and East German. The personnel of all three musical stages rallied behind their institutions, forming a powerful consensus against an eastwest operatic merger. It appeared that the renewal of old enmities among Berlin's eastern and western musical institutions, as well the public relations debacle of losing a major musical celebrity due to a revived Semitism in the new German capital, might cost the city more dearly than the DM 20 million per year that Stölzl had hoped to save with his reform plan. By early 2001, Stölzl retracted his proposal to create a unified "Opera Stages Berlin," and Barenboim announced that he would renew his contract as musical director of theStaatsoper. Despite the financial scandals that rocked the city government later that year, Berlin's trinity of opera houses survived intact. Like the union of the two Academies of the Arts nearly a decade before, the proposed fusion of the Deutsche Oper and the Staatsoper stirred up old passions concerning the relationship between East and West German musical traditions, the quantity and quality of public financing for the arts, as well as the political responsibilities of creative artists. The different outcomes of the proposed mergers provide a powerful reminder that Berlin's cultural unification—like its political one—is an ongoing and uneven process. If the representative nature of the Akademie der Künste rendered the survival of separate eastern and western institutions a political impossibility, the city's continued patronage of three opera houses—even as it flirted with financial ruin—affirmed its self-image as an international musical mecca and a progressive haven of German musical tradition. The successful public projection of this image depended upon downplaying or discrediting rumors of anti-Semitism in the local music community, something that nearly all involved parties—conductors, critics, and cultural administrators—moved quickly to accomplish. Nonetheless, the resonance of the BarenboimThielemann controversy in the German and international press demonstrated that the darker elements of Berlin's musical past continue to cast a long shadow. Berlin has not only been an incubator for Germany's most celebrated musical masters and institutions, but also the site of grave aesthetic and political persecution. In response to this troublesome legacy, contemporary artists and politicians alike have emphasized that it is the Land Berlin's responsibility to subsidize music generously, with as few external constraints as possible. At the turn of the 21st century, most Berliners did not question the continued existence of multiple opera houses and a publicly supported artists' academy in their city, but rather asked what variations on these institutions they ought to promote: eastern or western, old or new, separate or unified. The cultural controversies of the 1990s underscored the unabated significance of the city's elite musical institutions to its new identity as the capital of the Berlin Republic.

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Works Cited Ackermann, Manfred. Der kulturelle Einigungsprozess, Schwerpunkt: Substanzerhaltung. Forum Deutsche Einheit 7. Bonn: Friedrich-EbertStiftung, 1991. Akademie der Künste and Hochschule der Künste Berlin, eds. "Die Kunst hat nie ein Mensch allein besessen ". Berlin: Henschel, 1996. Applegate, Celia. "Bach Revival, Public Culture, and National Identity." A User's Guide to German Cultural Studies. Ed. Scott Denham, et. al. Ann Arbor: Michigan, 1997. 139-62. —. "How German is it? Nationalism and the Idea of Serious Music in the Early Nineteenth Century." 19>h-Century Music 21 (1998): 274-96. — and Pamela Potter, "Germans as the 'People of Music': Geneaology of an Identity." Music and German National Identity. Eds. Applegate and Potter. Chicago, 2002. 1-35. Barenboim, Daniel. Interview. "Mehr Geld macht die Kunst nicht unbedingt besser." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 16 Sept. 2000: 53. Bernstein, Leonard, cond. Ode to Freedom: Bernstein in Berlin, Symphony no. 9 in D minor. By Ludwig van Beethoven. Deutsche Grammophon 429 861-2. 1990. Bollmann, Ralph. "Wahnsinns-Szenen in Berlin." die tageszeitung 31 July 2000: 4. Büning, Eleonore. "Braune Blase." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 28 Oct. 2000: 44. —. "Gibt es den deutschen Klang?" Frankfurter Zeitung 12 Oct. 2000: BS1. Carr, Godfrey and Georgina Paul. "Unification and its Aftermath: The Challenge of History." Ed. Rob Burns. German Cultural Studies. New York: Oxford, 1995. 325-48. Fuhrmann, Wolfgang. "Vergiftetes Stille-Post-Spiel." Berliner Zeitung 21 Oct. 2000. Gramit, David. Cultivating Music: The Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical Culture, 1770-1848. Berkeley: California, 2002. Griitters, Monika. "Grausame Peinlichkeit mit Nebenwirkung." FAZ 20 Oct. 2000: BS3. Immergut, Debra Jo. "Berlin Spends Zillions for Kultur..." Wall Street Journal 10 Feb. 1995: A6. Jähner, Harald and Stephan Speicher. "Eine gewisse Sattheit im alten Berlin." Berliner Zeitung 5 Feb. 2000. Janik, Elizabeth Koch. "Music in Cold War Berlin: German Tradition and Allied Occupation, 1945-1951." Ph.D. Diss. Georgetown University, 2001. von Jena, Hans-Jörg. "Zwischen Grauzonen und Glanzepochen: Berlin als Kulturmetropole." Berlin. Die Hauptstadt: Vergangenheit und Zukunft

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einer europäischen Metropole. Eds. Werner Süß and Ralf Rytlewski. Berlin: Nicolai, 1999. 739-70. JGJ. "Schlupfbude." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 31 Oct. 1992: 27. John, Eckhard. Musik-Bolschewismus: Die Politisierung der Musik in Deutschland /975-1938. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1994. Kater, Michael H. Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford, 1992. —. The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich. New York: Oxford, 1997. Kramer, Jane. "Opera Wars: How German should German Music be?" The New Yorker 20-27 Aug. 2001: 138-45. Kunz, Harald, ed. Musikstadt Berlin zwischen Krieg und Frieden. W. Berlin: Bote & Bock, 1956. Levi, Erik. Music in the Third Reich. New York: St. Martin's, 1994. Ligeti, György. "Offener Brief an Jens und Diepgen." Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 7 Feb. 1992: 33. "Musikmetropolen: Berlin," Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 140 (1979): 453-95. Nagorski, Andrew. "City on the Edge." Newsweek 19 April 1999, Atlantic ed.: 55. Paret, Peter. The Berlin Secession: Modernism and its Enemies in Imperial Germany. Cambridge: Belknap, 1980. Pederson, Sanna. "A.B. Marx, Berlin Concert Life, and German National Identity." 19>h-Century Music 18 (1994): 87-107. Penzler, Johannes, ed. Die Reden Kaiser Wilhelms II. Vol. 3. Leipzig: Reclam, 1907. Poiger, Uta G. Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany. Berkeley: California, 2000. Potter, Pamela M. Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society from the Weimar Republic to the end of Hitler's Reich. New Haven: Yale, 1998. Prieberg, Fred. Trial of Strength: Wilhelm Furtwängler in the Third Reich. Trans. Christopher Dolan. Boston: Northeastern, 1994. "Protest gegen En-bloc-Wahl." Der Tagesspiegel 1 Feb. 1992: 15. Rathert, Wolfgang and Giselher Schubert, eds. Musikkultur in der Weimarer Republik. Mainz: Schott, 2001. Rehders, Helge. "Der Marathonmann." Die Zeit 21 March 2002: 57. Roloff-Momin, Ulrich. "Kämpfen Sie, bleiben Sie!" Frankurter Allgemeine Zeitung 18 Oct. 2000: BS1. —. Zuletzt: Kultur. Berlin: Aufbau, 1997. Schultz, Klaus, ed. Yehudi Menuhin und das Berliner Philharmonische Orchester. W. Berlin: Berliner Philharmonisches Orchester, 1979. Schwaen, Kurt. Stufen und Intervalle: Ein Komponist zwischen Gesellschaftsund Notensysteme. Essen: Blaue Eule, 1996. Seeger, Horst and Ulrich Bökel. Musikstadt Berlin. E. Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1974.

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Spahn, Claus. "Klein-Bayreuth im Etatloch: Die Berliner Opernhäuser wissen finanziell nicht mehr weiter." Süddeutsche Zeitung 10 April 1996: 13. —. "Grandhotel Tristesse." Die Zeit 19 Oct. 2000: 56. Stadler, Peter. "Der Komponist in der Politik: Max von Schillings und die Säuberung der Preußischen Akademie der Künste im Frühjahr 1933." Neue Zürcher Zeitung 26 Feb. 1994: 67. Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Künste (SAAdK), ed. "...alle, die zu diser Academie Berußen ": Verzeichnis der Mitglieder der Berliner Akademie der Künste 1696-1996. Berlin: Henschel, 1996. —. "...und die Vergangenheit sitzt immer mit am Tisch": Dokumente zur Geschichte der Akademie der Künste (West). Berlin: Henschel, 1997. —. Zwischen Diskussion und Disziplin: Dokumente zur Geschichte der Akademie der Künste (Ost) 1945/1950 bis 1993. Berlin: Henschel, 1997. Strittmaier, Judka. "Wagner im Westen: Der Lohn macht die Musik." Süddeutsche Zeitung 23 Oct. 2000: 12. Thacker, Toby. "Music After Hitler: Politics, Society, and the Reconstruction of an Art in Germany, 1945-1955." Ph.D. Diss. Cardiff University, 2002. Thielemann, Christian. "'Berlin ist überfuttert.'" Focus 28 Aug. 2000: 92-95. —. "'Tristan' ist die Herzattacke." Berliner Zeitung 29 Aug. 1997. Thrun, Martin. Neue Musik im deutschen Musikleben bis 1933. Bonn: Orpheus, 1995. Toop, Richard. György Ligeti. London: Phaidon, 1999. Umbach, Klaus. "Mehltau über den Linden." Der Spiegel 21 Dec. 1998: 14447. Witzhum, David. "Die Wagner-Mission." Die Zeit 12 July 2001: 34. Zimmer, Dieter E. "Berliner Aufstände und Abgründe." Die Zeit 10 Sept. 1993: 60.

J E N S SCHNEIDER

Universidade Federal do Rio de Janiero

Mutual Othering: East and West Berliners Happily Divided? Question: What do France and the GDR have in common? Answer: They were both invaded by the Germans. (French joke from the early 1990s) 1 I was leaving Berlin and preparing to enter Berlin. (Borneman 9) A wall was coming down. It was something to do with history. It was an historic occasion. No one really knew quite who had put it up or who was tearing it down or whether this was good, bad or something else; no one knew how tall it was, how long it was, or why people had died trying to cross it or whether they would stop dying in the future, but it was educational all the same; as good an excuse for a get-together as any. It was a Thursday night, Alsana and Clara had cooked, and everybody was watching history on TV. (Smith 237)

A wanderer in search of the remains of the Berlin Wall will find himself walking most of the time on railway tracks and canal banks. In Bernauer Straße, one of the few places where the Wall had crossed a residential area, the open space created by the Todesstreifen ("death strip") is now a park, and the small road, which was used by the GDR-border guards, has become a bicycle path. The Wall itself, before it was hastily removed in 1989/90, had been hidden from the Western side behind a hedge of small, compact trees—also still there, still "hiding the East." The two parts of Berlin continue to have problems of mutual perception. Until 1996, at least, flight passengers to Berlin, choosing West Berlin's liberal newspaper Tagesspiegel as their travel reading, found an enclosed downtown map, that lacked the Eastern center around Alexanderplatz. Among West Berliners from the time before the Wende (the political turn-over)—"natives" and migrants alike—one can observe a certain "fear of contact" with the East. On their "mental maps" the Eastern part of the city is still neglected—only some neighborhoods and parts of the surrounding countryside have been added. Much of this applies also to the East. Many East Berliners, after 1

I am indebted to Pascale Hugues for the joke.

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unification, retired in the GDR-typical postwar Plattenbau neighborhoods on the city's periphery where Westerners would not go voluntarily. Of course, rising rents in the Eastern inner city residential areas contributed to this movement, but for many it was a search for the own Milieu. For them, most of the West is a "no-go-area," which is too snobby, too expensive, and too strange. The relationship between the inhabitants of the "two Berlins" (Borneman), which within less than two years had changed from a very strict and static division into a highly dynamic ground for urban and cultural transformations, was the subject of an ethnographic field study, which I carried out for approximately 20 months in 1995/96. Five to six years after unification, my research analyzed constructions of Germanness as represented in media and political discourse, and in the everyday speech of Easterners and Westerners. A special emphasis was placed on individual and collective strategies for coping with a city that according to official statements was "returning" to what it had been before 1945, but which at the same time was perceived as something completely "new." This perception was far less based on the city's regained status as the German capital (anyway, a new status only for the Western half), but on the "sudden" presence of the respective "other part" of the city and its population. The relationship between East and West Berliners is a good example of the ethnographic observation that "ethnic" (and other similar) boundaries can be constructed almost regardless of the degree of cultural differentiation between groups. In fact, cultural differences must generally be considered a result, rather than a motive of boundary formation (Barth 15). In this sense, the ethnography of identities (national, regional, local, and/or ethnic) will find parameters for boundary construction in discourses of belonging or exclusion, rather than in specific social or cultural practices. Therefore, the following analysis focuses particularly on narratives and discursive realizations of identity as a Eastern or Western Berliner. During this research project, a set of narratives was collected through interviews with producers of public discourses (i.e. leading East and West Berlin journalists, politicians and cultural performers). All interviewees belong to the German "baby boom generation," the generation which more than any other experienced growing up with the Berlin Wall as a fait accompli. In contrast to most other Western countries, the German "baby boomers" were between the ages of 35 and 45 at the time this research was conducted.2 Some 2

The generational perspective of my research follows John B o m e m a n ' s observation that "(experiential) tropes achieve their full meaning not at an individual level, but as part of a generational gestalt" (37). In the total number of 35 interviews, women and men, East and West Germans, left- and right-wing representatives of political parties and mass media were almost equally represented. The interview group included some randomly chosen journalists of Berlin-based mass media and also some distinguished personalities in leading functions of parties or newspapers and some well-known cultural performers, especially writers.

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members of this group were interviewed again in summer 2002 in order to reveal how the passage of six more years affected the relationship between Berliners of Eastern and Western origin.

German-German Relations Berlin has repeatedly been called "the laboratory of German unification." In fact, being the only urban space in Germany where East and West are so close together, many general effects of German unification find their clearest expression in Berlin. This is especially true of the "unification" process itself, a euphemism for the rather bureaucratic procedure of acceding the ex-GDR to the "purview of the Grundgesetz," the constitutional law of the FRG (Senfft). 3 Therefore, it is necessary to look at East-West relations in a more general perspective as well. West Germany "incorporated" the ex-GDR with virtually no alteration of its own constitutional, political, or social framework. Symbolically, this affected the expectations with regard to the so-called "inner unity" of East and West Germans: East Germans were expected to "become Westerners." It therefore continues to surprise many Westerners that Easterners still insist on their "cultural individuality" (Wagner; Engler, "Habitus"). Part of that surprise is that, before the fall of the Wall, East and West Germans were never identified as being so different—the national discourses on both sides made reference to the same "remote historical origins" and "ethno-cultural fundament." When the late Willy Brandt—on the night of November 9—expressed his hope that "now will grow together what belongs together," he did not imagine that 40 years of living in two different political and economic systems would have had such an impact. Additionally, the process of mutual recognition between East and West Germans is obstructed by a dominant definition of "Germanness" that strongly relies on mechanisms of "Othering." A precise understanding of what is not German counterbalances the difficulty of an active and direct definition of "Germanness," due to diverse historical reasons. The most basic and general

3

Although the number of interviewees allows no statistical accounts, the interview group represents a prototypical range of narratives used in public and everyday discourse (For the concept of "prototypicality" see Bomeman 47; Schneider, "Vom Persönlichen" 37-45 ). The analysis of the interview texts juxtaposed general discursive references, as they were used in the interviews, with individual strategies of positioning, revealing the discursive rules for constructions of belonging in post-unification Germany and Berlin. For a complete account of the research results and methodology see Schneider Deutsch sein. Also East Berlin "acceded" to the former Western part of the city, taking over its administrative structure, copying its district constitutions, and sending additional deputies to the city's parliament Only recently, the district boundaries were reformed, among the new Großbezirke (greater districts) there are two, Mitte-Tiergarten and KreuzbergFriedrichshain, which comprise districts formerly belonging to the East and the West.

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category of Otherness in both Germanys is Ausländer (foreigner), which functions to draw a line between "Germans" and "Non-Germans." This line is constructed as much along cultural criteria (language use, visible attributes of a non-Christian belief, etc.) as it is along "physical" attributes (like skin color, names, etc.). To have a slight accent apparently not connected to any German regional dialect is an indication of not having been born and raised in Germany. To have darker skin and/or black hair, or to bear a strange name are indications of being of non-German decent. All these criteria suffice to question the person's belonging to "Germanness." As a result, for example, second-generation Turkish immigrants or Black Germans are labeled as Ausländer, in spite of their actual citizenship or their perfect command of the German language (Schneider "Talking" and "Discourses").4 The comparison with other nationalities or degrees of "foreignness" thus becomes the ultimate parameter to construct Otherness in Germany, which not only applies to immigrants, but also, for example, to German Jews. Now, interestingly enough, even in the case of the East Germans, discursive figures can be observed, "foreignizing" or "de-nationalizing" them—a strong indicator that "Ossis "5 play a certain role as the Others (Berg 1996). In the following two interview quotes, the speakers involuntarily link Easterners with "nonGermanness": [...] also die (Ossis), die ich bis jetzt kenne, aber ich hab' ja auch nicht jeden nach seinem Pass gefragt, beziehungsweise nach seinem [...] (lacht). (Michaele, 32: 112)6 Welche hier lebenden Gruppen sind dir besonders fremd? Ich sag mal böse, ich kann mit aus Rumänien hierher gekommenen Roma und Sinti genauso wenig anfangen, wie ich mit dem eingefleischten Ossi anfangen kann. (Tobias, 21: 183)7

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Following the ius snngui/i/s-principle (blood descent), which until its recent reform constituted the basic element in German citizenship legislation (Soysal), a person is German primarily because of her/his parents' or grandparents' nationality and not because of having been born and raised in Germany. "Ossi " was originally just a sort of Post-'89-extension of the existing denomination "(Vessi " in West Berlin. West-Berliners used "fVessis" to refer to people from West Germany, underlining the special status of Berlin during the Cold War (see also Preisendörfer). This use was completely replaced by the often slightly disparaging mutual denomination between East and West Germans today. The two most popular invectives to describe the mutual stereotypes are "Besserwessi" (a word-game with "Know-it-all") and "Jammerossi" (alleging wide-spread "self-pity" among Easterners). "Well, I've known some Ossis until now, but I didn't ask everyone for his passport, I mean, for his [...] (laughs)." The author translated all original quotations in German. For the sake of preserving anonymity, names of all interviewees have been changed. The citations for the interviews include the following information: name of interviewee, number of interview and the exact place on the transcript. "Question: Which groups living here are especially strange to you? Answer: To express it maliciously, 1 don't know what to do with Romani and Sinti coming here from Romania as much as I don't know what to do with the inveterate Ossi."

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Although the question is about "strangeness," Tobias, an East German conservative politician (the fact that he himself is an East German indicates the hegemony of West German discursive habits in public discourse), continues sketching "the inveterate Ossi" as a "typical proletarian": Also mit eingefleischtem Ossi meine ich den Typus des Lethargischen, des Duldenden, desjenigen [...] dessen Lebensinhalt darin besteht, am Sonntagmorgen mit seinem bunten Jogginganzug sein Auto [...] zu putzen, bis zum Mittagessen, bis dann Mutti ihn reinruft, er soll essen kommen, und der dann Fußball guckt mit der Dose Bier."

This description is not all that different from the image that any Westerner would use to decribe a "typical German" (referring, of course, to the negative aspects of "Germanness," generally summarized by the German word spießig9). In a peculiar way, the interviewee thus linked "the typical Ossi" not only to no/j-Germanness, but also to the dominant discursive construction of typical Germanness. From this perspective, the East today functions as a reminder of the West's own "pre-postwar modernization" past, like West Germany in the 1950s. Just as Johannes Fabian (1983) observed with regard to colonial relationships, this discourse also is based on the construction of temporal distance. Another interviewee notes, Wenn man hier 'η echten Deutschen untersuchen wollte, sollte man in 'n Dorf in der DDR gehen. Da wird man ein Deutschland finden, so wie es hier war, bevor in Westdeutschland die amerikanischen, italienischen Einflüsse und so was alles kamen. Also das ist alles sehr viel authentischer. Und spießiger, (lacht) (Andrea, 2: 98)'°

This general idea is supported by the discursive representation of the GDR as a continuation of Germany's prewar anti-democratic tradition. If there is anything West Germans across the political spectrum are proud of, it is the "sustainable democratization" after 1945—symbolically most prominently represented by the Grundgesetz. In this way, the Ossis, similar to the Jews,"

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"With the inveterate Ossi I mean this lethargic and self-indulgent type, this guy whose life consists of putting on his jogging suit on a Sunday morning, washing his car until noon when Mommy calls him for lunch, and then watching soccer with a beer can in his hands." Pohrt, konkret 5/90: 43; Münch 14. A "Spießer" is a sort of culturally intolerant conservative and "hanger-on" in authoritative and hierarchical structures. "If one would like to investigate a real German, one would have to go to a village in the GDR. There one would find a Germany as it was before there were all these American and Italian influences and so on. There everything is much more authentic. And more spießig. (Laughs)." For the role of Jews as Others in German self-definitions in my interview group see Schneider Deutsch sein, 251 -62, 274f and "Discourses" 15. Of course, in the function as reminders of the past, Jews play a completely different role. They (and the Shoah) symbolize the impossibility of German nationalism to cope with its atrocities. The implicit discursive "foreignization" of the German Jews seems to double the "national trauma" of having annihilated a significant portion of Germany's own population—an unreconcilable fact for a German national discourse (to be found throughout the political spectrum) which insists on

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belong to the dark side of the past, and serve as a counter-image to the dominant self-representation of West Germany as the most democratic, open and wealthy society in German history. Supposedly, the GDR did not go through this "modernization process" which in the FRG had been induced by the student rebellion of 1968. Differences in the electoral behavior of East Germans today (the stronger tendency to vote on personalities rather than party programs) and widely spread xenophobic and racist attitudes (which are expressed differently in the West) are frequently taken as evidence that in East Germany the "authoritarian personality" could survive more easily:12 Das war vor sieben Jahren für mich auch im Kopf dieses Erschrecken über die DDR, ja? (when racist attacks in the GDR became known; J.S.) Dass ich ein ungemein flächendeckendes autoritäres Denken entdeckt habe, wo ich gedacht habe: wenn das man gutgeht, ja? (Sabine, 25: 101)13 In der DDR gab es einen sehr geregelten Tagesablauf, ich würde es nicht direkt als spießig bezeichnen, obwohl vielleicht auch dieser Begriff der ganzen Sache sehr nah kommt. Böse Zungen würden dann sicherlich jetzt in diesem Zusammenhang sagen, "typisch deutsch." Die DDR-Gesellschaft war wesentlich deutscher als die westdeutsche Gesellschaft, in diesem negativen Gebrauch des Wortes, manche benutzen "deutsch" ja wie ein Schimpfwort. (Christian, 29: 50)' 4

This retrospective image of the GDR-society—whatever its empirical value may be—offers West Germans the opportunity to present themselves as modern democrats—a welcomed counter-image to the constant suspicion of neighboring countries that Germans are still more or less camouflaged Nazis.

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demanding "unquestioned" positive national feelings (Schneider Deutsch sein, 195-205; 269f.; 344f.). The term "authoritarian personality" can be traced back to a project realized during World War II at the Institute for Social Research of Max Horkheimer at the Columbia University (Adomo, et al.). Curiously, in Germany it is generally believed that the project dealt with German fascism, while it actually used its famous "F-scale" to measure the susceptibility of US-Americans to fascist ideology. The book was published in Germany only in 1973 under the title Studien zum autoritären Charakter (Studies of the Authoritarian Character)—a translation which makes quite an important semantic difference: a "personality" is always individual (and so it was meant by the authors!), but a "(national) character" can be collective. The term "authoritarian character" entered German public and everyday discourse as a reference to the German "character trait" held as mainly responsible for the Nazi's success. In fact (and surprisingly), there were hardly any applications of the "F-scale" to Germans—exceptions include a half-page article by Thomas Cohn and Henry Carsh in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology (1954) and the methodological inspiration of Wolfgang Pohrt's half satirical application to post-unification Germany (Pohrt 1990-91). "There was also, seven years ago, in my head this consternation over the GDR. When I discovered this extremely widespread authoritarian thinking which made me think, I wonder, if this is going to tum out well." "In the GDR people had a very regular daily routine, I wouldn't call it spießig, although that word comes pretty close to it. Evil tongues would wag and in this context would certainly say 'typically German.' The GDR-society was much more German than the West German society, in this negative meaning of the word, you know, some people use 'German' as a cuss-word."

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For East Germans, of course, this is quite a surprising turn; after all, they had been the "officially recognized" German anti-fascists, and it was their democratic dissatisfaction that brought about a peaceful end to the totalitarian GDR-system. Apparently, the East German influence on the post-unification construction of national identity and "Germanness" has been rather small, especially on the level of public discourse, where their lack of access and hegemonic power is most apparent (See below and Schneider, Deutsch sein, 276ff.). The formal "dissolution" of the GDR into the FRG was accompanied by the imposition of a discourse system that was (and continues to be) almost exclusively Western. Not only does it not offer any space for Eastern narratives, histories and biographies, but it also places the Ossis beside the Turks, Russians and other "foreigners" with regard to their position as Others. Together with the fact that after unification most key positions in the new Eastern public administrations, politics, universities and companies were occupied by Westerners, it is enough of a reason for Easterners to express their opinion of "unification" in terms of a "colonial relationship." 15

East German Identities Before unification, West German public and everyday discourse always spoke of "Germany," even when referring only to the West, and thus discursively negated the existence of the other German state (or, at least, its "Germanness"). As John Bomeman has shown, taking as an example the comparison of the subway maps in both Berlins in 1989, the Western neglect of the East was, in fact, inclusive·, it always put an implicit claim on the territory of the GDR. On the other side, the East German diction avoided the attribute "German" in most contexts: Public and everyday discourses used primarily the abbreviation "DDR" (GDR). Its strategy to cope with the West

15

The Western dominance in these positions was mainly due to a lack of Eastern professionals trained in the Western way, especially in the fields of public administration and law. But, on the one hand, many of these Western professionals were quite young, so they will continue in these positions for approximately another 20 years. On the other hand, especially in universities, many distinguished scientists were forced to resign regardless of their personal history, some of them even were in opposition to the ruling system. Also West Germans occasionally confirm that they see their relationship to the East in "colonial terms": in the Eastern federal state Saxony, for example, it is said that high ranking officials met monthly in a so-called "Colonial Club"—sharing the fact of being Western and disliking the East (Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 23/24, 1998: 11). For the 40 Λ anniversary of the Berlin Wall in August 2001, Berlin's Eulenspiegel-Verlag edited a satirical puzzle game for "the reconstruction of the Wall." Its manual warns that one major disadvantage for the West would be that "in the other colonies nobody understands German" (Mauerpuzzle: Die Mauer zum Selberbauen, Variante Ost & Variante West. Berlin: Eulenspiegel 2001).

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was an attempt to exclude everything that was possibly linked with West Germany or their common past: Official East German [...] maps of subway and street-car lines showed West Berlin as a selfcontained blank, diminished in size with no streets and no entry points from the GDR. West Berlin maps, on the other hand reduced East Berlin, wherein the old city center lies, to the margin of the larger city, decentered but still connected to the whole; the territorial boundary between the two halves was but lightly marked. (Bomeman 1992: 25ff.)

Also after unification, the label "Deutschland" has continued to be primarily a reference to the West, which, of course, causes a certain discomfort among Easterners. This discomfort is reflected in the reactions of my Eastern interviewees with relation to their "new" nationality: Ich kann mit dem Wort "Deutschland" nicht so sehr viel anfangen und [...] "Bundesrepublik" ist auch so merkwürdig. Früher hab ich immer " D D R " gesagt und jetzt sag ich immer "Berlin." damit wissen alle, wo sie es hinstecken sollen, da muss ich gar nicht groß erklären. (Ina, 30: 2 9 9 ) " Also für mich hat dieser Begriff "Deutschland" wenig damit zu tun, wo ich eigentlich herkomme, sondern der ist eigentlich was Fremdes. (Stefan, 35: 8) 17 ... mir ist zum Beispiel aufgefallen, daß ich das schon schwierig finde, wenn ich was ausfüllen muß, j a ? Da steht dann Herkunftsland, ja? Oder so. Und da "Bundesrepublik Deutschland" reinzuschreiben, ist ein ganz ulkiges Gefühl. (Silke, 11: 163)"

Although "Federal Republic of Germany" would be the correct name for the country they are now living in, a more precise description of their sociocultural background is provided by the expression "ex-GDR," a distinction especially used in encounters with citizens from Eastern European countries: Ich verbinde natürlich mit den Leuten in Polen und in Ungarn und so viel mehr Gemeinsamkeiten als mit denen in Italien oder Frankreich oder so. Also, wenn ich überhaupt Identitätsgefuhle habe, dann eher mit denen, mit den Tschechen und so. (Stefan, 35: 119)" Und ich komm mir auch Scheiße vor, wenn ich also z.B. in Prag bin oder in Moskau. [...] Da würde ich schon eher sagen, (ich komme aus der) Ex-DDR, weil dann wissen die auch, dass ich hier nicht zu den reichen Brüdern und Schwestern gehöre und durchaus nachvollziehen kann, in welcher Situation sie sich befinden, [...] weil in der Situation war ich auch mal. Aber

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"The word 'Germany' does not say much to me and 'Federal Republic' is also strange. Before, I always said ' G D R ' and now I say 'Berlin,' so that everyone knows where to put it and 1 don't have to explain much." "Well, for me the term 'Germany' has nothing to do with where I am from. It's rather something foreign." "For example, I found out that for me it's difficult when I have to fill out a form. And then it asks for the country of origin, or so. And then to fill in 'Federal Republic of Germany' is a very funny feeling." "Naturally, I feel more connected with people from Poland or Hungary and I have so many more things in common with them than with those from Italy or France. So, if I have (European) identity feelings at all, then rather with those, with the Czechs and so."

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was witzig war, ich bin also in New York aus dem Flugzeug ausgestiegen und in 'ne Taxe rein und dann redete er da über Funk und redete auf einmal Russisch, der Taxifahrer. Das war total heiß. Und dann habe ich den auf Russisch angesprochen: er spricht Russisch und das wäre toll und woher er käme, und der war völlig irgendwie [...] Und woher ich dann käme und ich habe gesagt: " N a j a , aus Berlin." Und dann sagte er: "Na, aus Ostberlin. Da hattet ihr das ja an den Schulen." (lacht) Also das war irgendwie heiß, j a ? Du fliegst um die halbe Welt, steigst da in 'ne Taxe und dann redet der Russisch, ja? (Silke, 11: 163-65) 20

Both interviewees mobilize an "Eastern" identity, referring to a non-Western cultural universe, which in Germany—at least in public discourse—seems to have disappeared. East Germans saw themselves placed in a completely different society and value system, many of them without having left their homes even in the most intense moments of the fall of 1989. On the other hand, especially for the generation of my interview group, unification meant an immense and highly appreciated increase in opportunities for personal and professional development. The "Fall of the Berlin Wall" turns out to be a sort of collective rite de passage for Easterners of this generation, who had lived a remarkably uneventful and stable childhood in the GDR: Also diese großen historischen Zäsuren, also das mit Biermann z.B. war für mich überhaupt keine Zäsur, weil ich es nicht begriffen habe, [...] ich hab überhaupt nicht gewusst, wer Biermann ist, ich wusste das nicht. [...] Da gab's auch keine Verschärfung in der Politik oder Entspannung oder sowas, die ich also nachdrücklich irgendwie bemerkt hätte. (Pause) Ich hab irgendwie wie so'n Kind gelebt eigentlich bis [...] ja, bis zum Mauerfall eigentlich. (Stefan, 35: 54) 21

This image of monotonous "uneventfulness" is not negative. The few ups and downs also meant less stress and insecurities. Youth generally is considered a happy and carefree time, but, due to this radical change of system, those typically nostalgic transfigured images of childhood (which are not at all different among Westerners) became connected to the GDR itself:

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"I really feel like shit when, for example, I'm in Prague or Moscow. There I'd rather say that I'm from the ex-GDR, so they know that I'm not one of those rich brothers and sisters, and that I can understand the situation they are in, because I have also been in that situation before. But, what was funny, I got off the airplane in New York and took a cab, and then the driver talks over the radio and suddenly starts speaking Russian. That was really weird. And then I spoke to him in Russian and commented that he was speaking Russian and that was great, and I asked where he was from. And he was totally [...] he asked me where I was from, and I said 'Berlin', and then he said 'Ah, East Berlin, you had Russian in school' (laughs). So, that was weird, you fly halfway around the world, take a cab, and the guy speaks Russian." "Well, all these great historical events, for example Biermann [Wolf Biermann, a singersongwriter who was refused re-entry into the GDR after a concert in Cologne, West Germany, in November 1976; J.S.], for me was no event at all. I didn't even know who Biermann was. For me, there was also no freezing in politics or thawing or something that 1 would have noticed. (Pause) I actually lived like a child until [...] well actually until the fall of the Wall."

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Experiential Space Es gibt Punkte, wo ich sentimental werde sozusagen, der DDR wirklich echte, sentimentale Gefühle bis zum jetzigen Tag entgegenbringe. Aber da vermischt sich auch so viel, es hat auch damit zu tun, dass ich natürlich in meiner Jugend schöne Zeiten da ja doch verbracht hab, ganz normal. Das ist eigentlich 'ne schöne Zeit gewesen. [...] Das hat vielleicht nichts mit der DDR zu tun, bei mir hat es nur zufallig gerade in der DDR gespielt. (Stefan, 35: 133, 137)22

The fall of the Wall for my Eastern interviewees marks the transition to "adulthood" and "real life" with all its positive and negative aspects. For most of my interviewees the transition was far from smooth, and frequently meant a complete re-orientation in professional and other activities, regardless of whether they had actively participated in the political turmoil of autumn 1989. The deep impact can also be illustrated by the fact that for many of them the Wende caused a far-reaching re-arrangement of their social networks, a "new life" with a new set of criteria for choosing their inner circle of friends: [...] es sind viele weggefallen, mit denen ich vor der Wende noch zu tun hatte, einfach weil sich Lebenswege geändert haben oder Lebensentwürfe sich anders gestalteten, als man sie eigentlich mal im Kopf hatte. (Ina, 30: 293)23 Es sind weniger alte Bekannte aus Vorwendezeiten, aber die gibt es natürlich auch noch. Und dann gibt es viele Bekannte und Freunde aus Wendezeiten, die Du da irgendwie kennengelemt hast, und wo das erhalten geblieben ist. (Silke, 11: 78)24

This is completely different when talking to West Germans. Here, even today, twelve years after unification, the apparent absence of Easterners among the Westerners' closest friends is mostly due to the lack of dynamics in one's social network outside or following the university. As a general pattern, the most intimate friends of Westerners can be traced back to school and university, which during the time the Wall came down, my interviewees were finishing or had finished: Nun prägt sich ja ein Freundeskreis sehr massiv in der Schulzeit, in der Studentenzeit danach, und weniger im Bereich des Berufslebens. Mindestens ist das bei mir so. [...] Und zu

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"There are some things which make me sentimental, where I get real sentimental feelings with regard to the GDR even today. But, it's also all mixed up, it has got as much to do with the fact that I spent a beautiful time there in my youth, very normal. It actually was a nice time. This has probably nothing to do with the GDR, only that in my case, by chance, it happened to occur in the GDR." "Many (friends) dropped off, with whom I was together before the Wende, simply because life paths changed or life projects tumed out differently from what one had in mind some time before." "There are fewer old friends from the time before the Wende, but of course, some of them are still there. And then there are many acquaintances and friends from the time of the Wende itself, whom you somehow met at that time and they stayed."

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diesem Zeitpunkt, um das jetzt mal sehr profan zu sagen, gab es in der Wahrnehmung im Freundeskreis natürlich nichts. (Monika, 1:1:12)" Meine Freunde wohnen auch alle im Westen, [...] weil ich sie auch von der Uni kenne, also keiner ist in den Osten gezogen (lacht). Und es ist mir einfach vertraut, da bin ich eben sozialisiert. (Susanne, 6:2:33) 26

After unification, East Germans very quickly had to develop a "new identity"—obviously without being able or willing to deny the old one. Similar to processes in "classical" colonial relationships, Easterners were faced with two options for self-positioning: either they assimilated, sometimes even "over-assimilating" to become a sort of "Oberwessis " (quote from one of the interviews), or they emphasized their Eastern identity and "invented" their cultural traditions as former GDR-nationals (Hobsbawm and Ranger). Of course, to do this, they needed to borrow many elements from the GDR past. Both mechanisms can also work at the same time: they adopted an identity as a new citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany while creating a specific Eastern identity in order to secure pre-unification experiences of life as valid references. Obviously, this is based as much on a generalized opposition to the West as on a retrospective "re-invention" of everyday culture in the GDR. 27 Some clear indicators for a deepening separation between East and West were already evident by 1995/96. For example, in the following classified ad, a young Eastern woman laments not yet having found an Eastern man who, like her, still believes in the values and dreams of those former times: Leider begegnete Ost-F (26) stud, bisher kein allerliebster Ost-M um 30, stud, mit viel Gefühl, glauben an die angeblich überlebten Werte und Traum vom Teilen zum gegenseitigen Bewundern und zum gemeinsamen Bestaunen der Welt. Chiffre 12/312. (contact ad in Berlin 's major program magazine zitty—1995). :s

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"Well, a circle of friends develops mostly in university or school, and less in your professional life. At least in my case. And, to state it quite bluntly, at that time there was nothing of that sort in my circle of friends." "My friends all also live in the West, because 1 know them from university, and none of them moved to the East. And for me, the West is also more familiar, it's there where I was socialized." It generally also leaves out of consideration that especially the generation between the ages 45 and 60 in 1990, which had the greatest problems arising from unification (e.g. being forced to early retirement, being too old for an easy adaptation), ironically also had been the generation least identified with the GDR before the turnover. An Eastern friend exemplified this with the soccer preferences of his father: Like most members of his generation, his father rooted for the West German national team in international competitions. He announced matches between the FRG and the GDR as follows: "Today our boys play against those from here!" "Unfortunately, Eastern F (26), student, did not yet meet a very kind Eastern M around 30, student, with much sentiment, believing in those supposedly outdated values and the dream of sharing—wanting a mutual admiration and a shared amazement about the world."

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East-West was becoming the main dividing line for social relations. In 2002, this division has become even more marked. Western expectations that Eastern peculiarities would disappear over the years have vanished. At the same time, the East has developed and strengthened its sense of the Self. Dirk, a Westerner who has lived and worked in the East now for more than ten years, made the following observation: Die Gegensätze werden immer klarer und eindeutiger. Meinst du eher kulturelle Gegensätze oder Interessengegensätze? Eigentlich kulturelle. Du merkst halt einfach, du hast einen anderen Background, 40 Jahre anders. Und so ist es. (Dirk, 8:1.37)"

One of the strongest dividers is language. Isolated elements, like words or expressions, become identifiers for a mutual internal recognition (Dieckmann; Engler)—even though they may, in fact, not even be of GDR-origin. This is the case in the following examples provided by Carmen, an Eastern journalist working for a TV channel in the West: Also "viertel vor drei" oder "14 Uhr 45" und solche Sachen, so Uhrzeiten, die einfach nicht verstanden werden, da hab ich mich angepasst. Ich weiß aber zum Beispiel von meiner Schwester in Brandenburg, die also ganz allergisch reagiert auf so bestimmte westdeutsche Begrifflichkeiten, wie "Team." Da gibt's eine Abwehr, das heißt "Kollektiv." Also da gibt's eine massive Abwehr. Oder "außen vor lassen." Also was so als typisch westliche, arrogante Begriffe empfunden wird. [...] Es ist immer das eigene Vertraute. Und dann wird (alles Fremde) assoziiert, das wäre westdeutsch oder so. Ist es gar nicht. Also auch bei diesen Uhrzeiten [...], das hat man aber gar nicht DDR-weit gesagt, das ist eine Süd-Nord-Schiene, ja? Und das ist ganz merkwürdig, das wird so empfunden, als ob die Westdeutschen den Ostdeutschen jetzt auch noch die Sprache vorschreiben, und dann wird alles, was man nicht kennt, damit codiert, als ob das westdeutsch war, und abgelehnt. [...] Und dann natürlich auch in diesem ganzen PC-Bereich. [...] Das war selbst in den Kreisen meiner Schwester noch nicht bekannt, dass "Neger" ein diskriminierender Begriff ist, oder "Zigeuner." Bloß das hab ich, ehrlich gesagt, schon zu DDR-Zeiten gewusst, weil ich mich dafür interessiert hab. (Carmen, 13:2:22)30

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"The differences are getting clearer and more apparent all the time. Question: Do you mean specifically cultural differences or differences in interests? More cultural. You simply recognize that you have a different background, 40 years of difference. And so it is." "Also like 'a quarter to three' or '14:45' and so, the ways to tell the time which are simply not understood, but to which 1 have adapted. But I know from my sister in Brandenburg, for example, who really reacts frantically to certain Western expressions, like 'team.' It has to be 'collective.' There's a massive rejection of all those expressions which are seen as being typically Western and arrogant. It always has to be the familiar, and anything strange is associated with West German—although, in fact, it isn't. Also with these ways of telling time, it was not the case in the whole GDR; this is more a South-North thing. And that's really strange, because there is a sense that the West Germans are even proscribing the language. So, everything unknown is codified as being West German and therefore rejected. Of course, this is also the case with the whole political correctness thing. Even in my sister's circles, it wasn't known that 'Negro' or 'gypsy' is a discriminating term. But, to be honest, I already knew that, while living in the GDR, because I was interested in that." Please note that the one way of telling the time referred to here is, for example, "viertel e l f ' (literally: "quarter towards eleven"), "halb e l f ' ("half towards eleven") and "dreiviertel e l f '

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This mechanism of the "folklorization of difference" may also explain part of the infallible good election results of the PDS, the successor of the socialist ruling party. The continuous attempts of all Western parties to de-legitimize the PDS by emphasizing its institutional continuity to the former GDR-regime actually developed into one of its major attractions for all those Easterners looking for a "genuine" Eastern political representation.

Berlin: One or Two Cities? In 1995/96, although they were proud of the great international attention and the dynamic developments in their "new city," East and West Berliners were also still practicing a highly separated social life (Wochenpost 41/96: 4-7). Obviously, very few, respectively, had gained close friends from the other side, but also professional relationships often proved to be difficult. While differences between East and West Germans were frequently explained as "normal regional differences," not greater or different in respect to those between the North and the South, people were surprised to discover that "real" cultural differences existed even between East and West Berliners, even though they belonged to the "same region." A French interviewee, for example, admitted that, after living in East Berlin for some years, she moved back to the West because she finally felt that being a stranger in a double sense, French and Western, was too much for her. Similarly, an interviewee from East Berlin thought that moving to, for example, Cologne (the main city in the "Far West" of the FRG) would be a step too risqué. Though not as far as Cologne, in contrast to most of his "compatriots," he actually ventured to move to West Berlin—but only temporarily: Also ich kann jetzt noch nicht nach Köln ziehen, das war mir immer noch zu fremd, ich muß erstmal richtig klarkommen damit. Damit ich den Westen kennenlerne, bin ich ja extra nach Schöneberg gezogen und hab in Westberlin gelebt. Um einfach mal zu sehen wie es ist, weißte? Du wohnst jetzt auch noch in Schöneberg? Nee, ich wohn jetzt wieder am Prenzlauer Berg. (Micha, 4: 203-5)31

31

("three quarters towards eleven") for the hours 10:15, 10:30 and 10:45 respectively. The other way would be "viertel nach zehn" (literally: "quarter past ten"), "halb e l f ' ("half towards eleven") and "viertel vor e l f ' ("quarter to eleven"). The linguistic division line for these two ways runs, in fact, between North and South: all Northern states, including Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (ex-GDR) use the latter, but in the Southern states the first way is more common, including Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg in the ex-FRG. "Well, I couldn't move to Cologne now, that would be too strange, I first have to leam how to deal with it. In order to get to know the West, I moved to Schöneberg and lived in West Berlin. Just to see how it is, you know? Question: And you're still living in Schöneberg? No, I moved back to Prenzlauer Berg."

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The tendency to segregate is supported by a sort of "general retreat" to the Kiez or "home turf."32 After the first years of excitement about all the changes in architecture and urban planning, discoveries of restaurants, bars and cinemas in unknown districts, Berliners of both sides tended to return to their familiar surroundings. Für mich ist es so, ich wohne seit 1984 in Westberlin und bin auch dort sozialisiert, das hat sich auch nicht geändert. Also, ich fahre viel natürlich in den Osten zur Arbeit, [...] wenn ich aber von zuhause aus weggehe, dann gehe ich eher im Westen weg. [...] Ich fahr dann nach Schöneberg oder Kreuzberg, wo ich natürlich genauso gut dann auch nach Mitte oder Prenzlauer Berg fahren könnte. [...] Das geht vielen so, dass sie eigentlich sich hauptsächlich im eigenen Kiez bewegen. Es gab natürlich nach der Wende und auch die ersten paar Jahre danach so eine Neugier auf den Osten, und man hat sich geme im Osten bewegt, aus Neugier und um zu gucken und auch um zu staunen, was sich dort alles bewegt, weil das interessant war, wie schnell sich das entwickelt hat. Aber inzwischen sind es nicht mehr so ganz grundlegende Veränderungen [...] und man glaubt sich auszukennen im jeweils anderen Stadtteil, glaube ich, man wird jetzt wieder bequemer. (Susanne, 1:1:33)" Mental ist es trotzdem, ich finde diese Mauer ist nach wie vor da. Also es gibt einen großen Teil in Westberlin, der einfach sozusagen in Westberlin verbleibt, sich nicht in den Osten bewegt. Und genauso im Osten [Leute], die auch nicht in den Westen gehen. Das ist jetzt keine Feindschaft oder so, aber man hat sich so eingerichtet, man bewegt sich einfach so in seinen Kreisen. [...] Man geht sich irgendwie aus dem Weg. Es ist auch nicht mehr so, dass jetzt im Osten noch die große Ostalgiewelle schwappt, die geht auch zurück. [...] Man versucht mit dem Anderen sozusagen nicht unbedingt in Berührung zu kommen und auch nicht in Konflikt zu kommen. (Carmen, 1:0:52)34

There are some areas where the topicality of this basic division becomes clearly visible, for example, in the print media market: West Berliners still read only "their" newspapers B.Z., Tagesspiegel and Morgenpost, and East Berliners stick to "their" Kurier and Berliner Zeitung—even though, of course, 32

33

34

Kiez in Berlin refers to the immediate neighborhood, understood as a sort of hometown within the city, and thus associated with extreme "cultural intimacy" (Herzfeld 1997) and emotional bonds. "For me it's like this, I have lived in West Berlin since 1984 and there I was socialized as well, thathasn't changed. Of course, I go to the East a lot for work, but when I go outin my freetime, then I prefer to go out in the West. I'd rather go to Schöneberg or Kreuzberg, although I could easily go to Milte or Prenzlauer Berg too. This happens to many people, they mainly move within their own Kiez. Of course, there was this curiosity about the East when the Wall came down, and also some years later. People liked to go to the East, out of curiosity, or just to watch and be amazed about what was going on there, because it was really interesting how fast everything changed. But now, the changes are not so radical anymore and you think you know those neighborhoods pretty well, so you're getting indolent again." "Mentally, I think, the Wall is still there. There are many people in West Berlin who stay in West Berlin and don't move to the East. And the same in the East, there are people who don't go to the West. There is no hostility or so, one has just established oneself in that way and moves accordingly only within ones own circles. You try to avoid the other. It's also not so that there would still be some great "eastalgic" wave [for Ostalgiewelle see note 36 below; J.S.] splashing around, that's almost over. You simply try to avoid contact with the other, and not to get into trouble."

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both today are Western owned and have radically changed their appearances (.Leseranalyse; interview with Susanne, 2:0:50). This is also true with regard to the East-West representation in the main political parties. One can see the distinction by looking at the composition of the Abgeordnetenhaus, Berlin's state parliament, with regard to the number of Eastern members of parliament in the different parties after the elections in 1995 and 2001 respectively. In 1995, the representation of East Berliners in all former Western parties was clearly below the demographic weight of Easterners in Berlin's total population (East Berlin provided the city with approximately 1.5 million of its 3.5 million inhabitants). It ranged from 3.5 Westerners for every Eastern MP in the case of the CDU to 2.3 in the case of Bündnis 90/Griine, the Greens' parliamentary group. This situation was radically inverted in the case of the PDS, where one could find 5.8 Easterners for every West Berliner. Also after the elections in 2001, the Eastern parliamentary underrepresentation has not diminished, on the contrary: The number of MPs from East Berlin has decreased in all formerly "Western" parties (CDU: 7.75 Westerners for every Easterner, SPD: 4.5, Greens: 6, FDP: 4). The total ratio of Westerners to Easterners in the parliament went up from 1.78 to 2.44. Interestingly, not even the PDS escapes this "westernization." today more than one third of its representatives are Westerners! 35 The increased number of Westerners in the PDS indicates that the "starting point" for integration is quite different for East and West. It is the East Berliners who have had to find their way in a radically changed environment with different perspectives for career planning, a different educational system, completely new relationships between landlords and tenants and between employers and employees, and so on. For Easterners, fulfilling even the most trivial everyday necessities has changed: new products in different sorts of shops and supermarkets, and a new currency. Some of my interviewees actually complained that no journalist or politician ever bothered to mention the fact that for Easterners the introduction of the Euro was the second new currency in twelve years! One result of the feeling of domination in the East is Ostalgie, the nostalgia for things emotionally linked with the GDR-past. 36 One of the most popular signs of "cultural resistance" against Western hegemony in the unified city is the Ampelmännchen, those symbols in Eastern traffic lights for pedestrians, which in 1996 were in danger of extinction, in favor of the more

35

36

These number were calculated by the author on the basis of biographical informations extracted from the parliamentary handbooks for the two legislative periods (.Abgeordnetenhaus Berlin 1996, 2002). "Ostalgie" is a word-game composed by Osten (East) and "nostalgia." The re-gained popularity of GDR-specific elements in the (re-) construction of a post-unification Eastern identity became known in public discourse as Ostalgiewelle ("eastalgic wave")(e.g. Spiegel 27/95: 40-64; see also below).

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"rational" and "less charismatic" Western version. The resulting movement ("Save the Ampelmännchen") was incredibly successful, both politically and commercially. Even today, products with the symbols (T-shirts, caps, cups, postcards, key chains etc.) sell very well—also among Westerners and foreign tourists. In their "natural environment" the Eastern Ampelmännchen continue to exist; they are not only preserved but even re-produced (Spiegel 2/97: 92f.; Die Zeit! 191: 32).

Perspectives Today, Ostalgie has gone out of fashion, at least according to my interviewees. But, this does not mean that the differentiation between either side, or better, the need for distinction, has diminished (Bernt). It has only ceased to be a hot issue. One generally ignored issue is that the West also cultivates its forms of "nostalgia." What was lost for West Berliners is, for example, the feeling of, as Bruno Preisendörfer calls it, the "ex-territoriality" of space and time in West Berlin in the 1980s: In der umschlossenen politischen und geschichtlichen Exterritorialität Westberlins hatte man unendlich viel Zeit und unendlich viel Raum. Erst die Ö f f n u n g brachte die Enge. Nirgendwo auf der Welt gab es soviele ortlose Plätze, soviel zeitlose Ewigkeit. Kam Besuch aus "Wessiland"—als es noch keine "Ossis" gab, nannten die aus Westdeutschland zugezogenen Westberliner die Westdeutschen "Wessis"—stieg man auf hölzerne Plattformen und wies mit einem seltsamen Stolz von diesen Jagdständen der Geschichte hinab auf Niemandsland und Todesstreifen. ( 6 3 ) "

The fall of the Wall did put an end to what retrospectively can be considered West Berlin's "golden years" in the 1980s. Yet, West Berliners have gladly accepted the new Umland (surroundings) and for some time even found it attractive to go out into the "shabby charm" of central Eastern neighborhoods, like Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg and—more recently—Friedrichshain. But, at the same time, the Western perspective towards the East lacks of empathy and understanding. Take, for example, the following quotation from the interview with Monika, a former deputy of the conservative party (CDU): Ich freue mich riesig darüber, dass wir ein Umland haben und endlich Tomaten vom Strauch essen können [...]. Also ich vermisse immer das positive Denken dabei. Also ich finde es immer noch eine wahnsinnige Sache mit einer Gruppe nach Beelitz zu fahren, auf den

37

"In the enclosed political and historical ex-territoriality of West Berlin people had an endless amount of time and an endless amount of space. Only the opening brought the narrowness. Nowhere else in the world were there so many placeless squares, so much timeless eternity. When visitors from "Wessiland" came (when there were still no "Ossis." those West Berliners originally from West Germany called the West Germans "Wessis") you climbed up wooden platforms and pointed with a curious pride from these hunting posts of history down to no-man's-land and the death zone." See also Borneman 334.

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Spargelhof [...] und dort eben halt den Spargel zu kaufen bzw. da essen zu gehen. Ich finde das immer noch wie ein Geschenk, ich hab das Gefühl, dass aber viele Ostdeutsche das eigentlich als Last empfinden. [...] Die ehemaligen Westdeutschen, sie sind lauter, sie sind dominanter. Sie hören schlechter zu. Und sie überrennen, aber sie überTennen nicht bösartig, sondern sie merken nicht so recht, was sie tun. (Monika, 5:2:20)"

Monika is not aware that all the elements she mentions indicate that the unification is only a gift for West Berliners. Of course, before unification, East Berliners could go to Beelitz (a small village close to Berlin) to buy asparagus, only that today this is much more expensive and maybe even unaffordable for the almost 20% unemployed in Brandenburg and the surroundings of Berlin. Easterners have to face a spending power that has been reduced by almost 40% in comparison to the West Berlin neighborhoods like Monika's.39 Even though she concedes that the lack of sensitivity and understanding frequently characterizes West German attitudes, she fails to respond with more openness or tolerance. Monika presumes that the major reason for misunderstandings between both sides is the lack of communication, but in the end, for her, it is always the others who avoid contact: Zum Beispiel im Sommer jetzt auf Rügen. [...] Da bin ich jetzt drei Jahre hintereinander gewesen, da wissen Sie nicht, wer im Strandkorb nebenan sitzt. Das interessiert mich ehrlich gesagt auch nicht, ob deijenige aus Dresden, aus Stralsund, aus Berlin oder aus Hamburg kommt. Ich fahr da mit meiner Schwester hin, die hat kleine Kinder, und kleine Kinder sind wie kleine Hunde oder junge Hunde, da fangt man an miteinander zu reden. Die, mit denen Sie ins Gespräch kommen, sind immer die Westdeutschen. Aber mit den anderen kommen Sie auch gar nicht ins Gespräch. [...] Die lachen nicht oder lächeln mal freundlich, wenn da so ein Wurm angekrabbelt kommt. Die haben immer solche (runtergezogenen) Mundwinkel. (Monika, 6:2:42) 40

Interviewees living on the respective other side seem to confirm Monika's mentioned hypothesis above. It apparently makes a difference when people have a chance to communicate and to interact. Consequently, negative mutual 38

39 40

"I enjoy so much that we have a surrounding area now and that we can eat vine tomatoes. I always miss the positive thinking. I still feel it is something really crazy to go with a group of people to Beelitz, to the asparagus-farm and to buy or eat asparagus there. I still think it's like a present, but I have the feeling that many East Germans think of it rather as a burden. The former West Germans are louder, they are more dominant. They don't listen. They overrun, but they don't overrun with bad intentions, they simply don't realize what they're doing." www.arbeitsamt.de/hst/services/statistik/index.html; Handbuch zur deutschen Einheit 1996: 786. "For example, last summer on Rügen [a holiday island in the Baltic Sea], a place I've been to now three years in a row. You don't know who your neighbor is in the next beachchair. And it is not of interest to me at all, if that person is from Dresden, Stralsund, Berlin or from Hamburg. I go there with my sister, she has little kids, and little kids are like puppy dogs, they break the ice, you start talking just like that. But those, with whom you enter a conversation, are always West Germans. With the others you can't even manage to enter a conversation. They don't laugh or give a friendly smile, when there is such a little thing approaching them. They always have the comers of their mouth like that (turned down)."

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stereotyping becomes more apparent further away from the "border." As Dirk, the Westerner in East Berlin, stated above, the cultural and biographical differences between Easterners and Westerners are more than obvious, but, at the same time, sharing the same geographical space, the East and the West also develop common interests, for example, as parents or tenants: Das spielt dann eine Rolle, wenn es um soziale Kontakte geht. Und dann sind manche Dinge bindender: gleichaltrige Kinder sind bindender, als Ossi oder Wessi zu sein. [...] Im gleichen Haus zu wohnen, ob in Ostberlin oder in Westberlin, den gleichen Feind zu haben, einen Vermieter, der dich wegsanieren will, ist bindender, als ob du Ossi oder Wessi bist. Ist ja eigentlich positiv, weil es heißt, ob wir wollen oder nicht, wächst was zusammen. Da wo es direkt aufeinander trifft. (Dirk, 9:2:23)41

Germans from both sides find it difficult to cope with the cultural complexity brought into society by migration from other countries and cultures. In the same way, West Germans do not have a clear model of how to deal with people who are Germans, as much as they are, but also different at the same time. However, from my point of view, there is no reason why the Eastern stubbornness about its particularities should be considered a problem at all (Rutschky). Even Ostalgie in its most backward "nostalgic" way should not be misunderstood as a real objection to unification. West Berliners tend to misinterpret the Eastern refusal to assimilate as a lack of individual ability to cope with the new life in the West, completely neglecting the tremendous amount of adaptation already accomplished by Easterners over the last twelve years (Reiher and Läzer; Spiegel 12/97: 88). It is also the "ethnic" construction of Eastern Germanness (Howard, "Die Ostdeutschen," "Ethnisierung"; Stellmach; Brauer) that causes major irritation and incomprehension among West Berliners. According to John Borneman, the only anthropologist who did ethnographic fieldwork in both Berlins before 1989, the East-West distinction and opposition had played a central role in the definition of West and East Germanness throughout the forty years of division: Perhaps one reason why unity is so difficult, from the West German perspective, lay in resentment at the disintegration of their mirror-image, and the collapse of a moral order that always ascribed to them superiority—at least over the Ossis. And perhaps, from the East German perspective, the difficulty lay in their ignorance of and inability to decipher and manipulate a sign system whose construction, in part, was predicated on this very ignorance and inability; in other words, on the very inferiority they bring with them into every interaction with West Germans. Given these initial terms of unity, it appears that durable forms of division have now been built into the East-West distinction. ( 334)

41

"It plays a role when it's about social contacts. And then some things are more connective; having kids of the same age is more uniting than being Ossi or Wessi. To live in the same house, be it in East Berlin or West Berlin, to have a common enemy, a landlord who wants you out of the apartment for luxury renovation, is more uniting than being Ossi or Wessi. In fact, this is a positive development because it means that, wanted or not, something is growing together. There, where both sides directly meet."

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In this sense, striving for the famous "inner unity." the official goal of all governmental measures directed specifically at the East, automatically had the effect of questioning German self-definitions as such—on both sides. But, as Dirk explains, communication in "equality-of-terms" can lead to a mutual understanding, as well as the possibility to discover similar cultural preferences and common reminiscences to the past. His account of his family's holiday is basically optimistic, quite different from Monika's: Wir waren mit einer Gruppe von etwa gleichaltrigen ostdeutschen Familien im Urlaub, wo wir und noch ein Pärchen die einzigen Wessis waren. Und das war eine sehr schöne Erfahrung, weil man in so einer Gruppe, wo man sich so menschlich ganz gut versteht, dann auch über diese unterschiedlichen kulturellen Erfahrungen, die man hat, sehr viel Spaß haben kann. [...] Dann kommt halt so raus, bist du Wessi oder Ossi, [...] und wo man darüber natürlich schmunzelt, dass der eine aus dem Osten auf seiner Gitarre Reinhard Mey-Lieder singt, die er aber nur damals bekommen hat, weil sie ihm jemand handschriftlich aufgeschrieben hat und so Geschichten. Und man lernt Lieder von Gerhard Schöne kennen, der der Reinhard Mey des Ostens war in den 80er und 70er Jahren, die man toll findet und gut, aber wo man merkt, dass man die nie bekommen hätte damals, oder dass die nicht zu unserem kulturellen Background gehören. So Sachen, die sind kein Grund sich zu hassen oder einen Gegensatz aufzubauen. An diesen Sachen hat man Spaß, und man akzeptiert das Nebeneinander, die andere Geschichte. (Dirk, 8:2:10) 42

Works Cited Abgeordnetenhaus Berlin, 13. Wahlperiode 1995-1999. Rheinbreitbach: NDV 1996. Abgeordnetenhaus Berlin, 15. Wahlperiode 2001-2005. Rheinbreitbach: NDV 2002. Adorno, Theodor W. Studien zum autoritären Charakter. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1973. Adorno, Theodor W., Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson & R. Nevitt Sanford. The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper, 1950. Barth, Fredrik. "Introduction." Ethnic groups and boundaries. The social organization of culture difference. Ed. Fredrik Barth. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969. 9-38. 42

" W e went on vacation with a group of East German families of roughly the same age, where we and another couple were the only fVessis. And that turned out to be a very nice experience, because in such a group, where people understand each other well, you can have a lot of fun precisely because of the different cultural experiences. So it turns out, 'you're Wessi,' 'you're Ossi,' and then you smile, when one of the guys from the East sings songs by Reinhard Mey [a Western singer-songwriter; J.S.] on his guitar, which he had been able to get only because someone wrote them down for him by hand, and stories like that. And then you get to know the songs by Gerhard Schöne, who was the Reinhard Mey of the East in the 1980s and 70s. You like it much, but then you have to realize that you never would have heard them before and that they're not part of our cultural background. Things like that are no reasons to hate each other or to build up an antagonism. You have fun with these things, and you start to accept the co-existence and the other history."

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Berg, Stefan. "Die neue deutsche Sippenhaft." Spiegel 39/96: 51-53. Bernt, Matthias. "Ostalgie dient der Emanzipation." Jungle World 13/99: 6. Bomeman, John. Belonging in the two Berlins: Kin, state, nation. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge UP, 1992. Brauer, Kai. "Einmal Ossi—immer Ossi?" Freitag 51/98: 12. Cohn, Thomas S. and Henry Carsh. "Administration of the F-scale to a sample of Germans." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 49.3 (1954): 471. Dieckmann, Christoph. "Das wahre Leben im falschen. " Geschichten von ostdeutscher Identität. Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2000. Engler, Wolfgang. "'Sie sprechen doch Deutsch.' Trotzdem verstehen Ost und West einander nicht. Anmerkungen zu einem Kulturkampf." Die Zeit 35/2000: 9. —. "Der stolze Habitus der Selbsthelfer." die tageszeitung. 9 August 1996: 10. Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How anthropology makes its object. New York: Columbia UP, 1983. Handbuch zur deutschen Einheit. Eds. Werner Weidenfeld and Karl-Rudolf Körte. Bonn: Bundeszentrale fur politische Bildung, 1996. Herzfeld, Michael. Cultural Intimacy. Social Poetics in the Nation-State. New York: Routledge, 1997. Hobsbawm, Eric J. and Terence Ranger. Eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge UP, 1983. Howard, Marc Alan. "Die Ethnisierung der Ostdeutschen. Ein Blick von außen." Freitag 43 (1998): 12. —. "Die Ostdeutschen als ethnische Gruppe? Zum Verständnis der neuen Teilung des geeinten Deutschland." Berliner Debatte INITIAL 4/5 (1995): 119-131. Leseranalyse Berlin 1995, im Auftrag des Verlags Der Tagesspiegel, durchgeführt von GFM-Getas, Hamburg und Media Markt Analysen, Frankfurt (Januar bis März 1995). Mauerpuzzle: Die Mauer zum Selberbauen, Variante Ost & Variante West. Berlin: Eulenspiegel 2001. Münch, Paul. Ordnung, Fleiß und Sparsamkeit: Texte und Dokumente zur Entstehung der "bürgerlichen Tugenden. "München: dtv, 1984. Pohrt, Wolfgang. "Der Weg zur inneren Einheit I-X." konkret 5-11(1990); 1-4 (1991). Preisendörfer, Bruno. "Die Eingeschlossenen von Berlin." Freibeuter 56 (1993): 63-72. Reiher, Ruth and Rüdiger Läzer. Eds. Von "Buschzulage" und "Ossinachweis": Ost-West-Deutsch in der Diskussion. Berlin: Aufbau, 1996. Rutschky, Michael. "Ein Lob der Unterscheidungslust." die tageszeitung, 15 August 1996: 10.

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Schneider, Jens. Deutsch sein. Das Eigene, das Fremde und die Vergangenheit im Selbstbild des vereinten Deutschland. Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 2001. —. "Talking German: Othering strategies in public and everyday discourses." Gazette 63.4 (2001): 351-363. —. "Discourses of exclusion: Dominant self-definitions and 'the Other' in German society." Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe 3.3 (2002): 13-21. —. "Vom Persönlichen zum Allgemeinen: Diskursivität und Repräsentativität in Interviews." Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research 3.3 (2002). Available at: http://www.qualitativeresearch.net/fqs/fqs.htm. Senfft, Heinrich. "Die Wüstenei der Westler. Von der DDR ist fast nichts übriggeblieben—der seelische und wirtschaftliche Schaden ist groß." Süddeutsche Zeitung 14/15 August 1999: 10. Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. London: Penguin, 2001. Soysal, Yasemin. Limits of Citizenship. Migrants and Postnational Membership in Europe. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994. Stellmach, Claudia. "Deutsche Ethnien—sind nur die Ostdeutschen anders? Ergänzungen zu Marc Howard." Freitag 47 (1998): 12. Wagner, Wolf. "Der Ossi, das unbekannte Wesen." die tageszeitung 8 August 1996: 10.

M A R G I T M . SINKA

Clemson University

Heinz Bude's Defining Construct for the Berlin Republic: The Generation Berlin Though it may be trae, as the most cited Berlin saying goes, that Berlin has never merely been and is always in the state of becoming, the same cannot be said about Berlin discourses. Rather than representing change, many of them show surprisingly tenacious staying power. Much as mildewed suitcases repeatedly resurrected from the cellar, musty Berlin images continue to be regenerated and tossed into textual landscapes. For example: Berlin as Chicago on the Spree—that is, as a city with no traditions, always in pursuit of the new, however crass, or Berlin as Babylon, mutilated because of its excessive sins. We continue to read of a Berlin exuding irrepressible vitality because of its unique blend of foreign and national cultures or of a Berlin suffering from its many historical fragmentations, of a Berlin floundering in the political and societal stagnation that had characterized it during the latter part of the Cold War. By now, however, such recycled images have become useless for identity formation in the New Berlin.1 The sociologist Heinz Bude (Head of the Federal Republic Division of Hamburg's Institut für Sozialforschung and since 2002 also Professor of Sociology at the University of Kassel) not only recognizes this clearly but also radically departs from accustomed Berlin discourses. Before discussing his self-imposed charge to change the very nature of the word "Berlin," I will, however, focus on the prevalent ways of foregrounding Berlin after the fall of the Wall. As has often been noted, the fall of the Wall and the subsequent reestablishment of the German national state through German unification have meant the return of history to Berlin—Prussian history, Weimar history, Nazi 1

In the 1990's it became commonplace to label post-Wall Berlin a "new" Berlin. But, "Das Neue Berlin"("The New Berlin"), with the word "new" capitalized, was an advertising slogan introduced on 23 May 1998 by Partner fur Berlin (Partners for Berlin), the marketing agency of the city consisting of public and private enterprises closely aligned with the Berlin Senate. The slogan was immediately utilized in posters of the German postal and railroad system and in those of the Berlin fire department and police ("Neue Strategien für Berlin"). See also „Wir über uns—Partner für Berlin." Not impressed, the cultural critic Diedrich Diederichsen lashed out at the term "The New Berlin," calling it a "retro-mythos" and a stupid slogan (Heine).

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history, the history of Jewish life. This has triggered many discourses on the role of continuity in identity formation, as well as on the ways of dealing with irreparable breaks, disjunctions, and absences.2 Weimar culture in particular was perceived by many as having represented the golden age of Berlin, the age when Berlin was a cultural metropolis teeming with productive creativity, artistic and cinematic images from this era have been resuscitated hastily in order to suggest a Berlin linked to history but still moving forward dynamically. Today it is difficult, for instance, to remember that the battles during the Cold War to name a significant West Berlin street after Marlene Dietrich used to end in failure, for now Marlene is ubiquitously present in prominent cityscapes—supposedly at least in spirit at the Marlene Dietrich Plaza of the Potsdamer Platz area and more tangibly in poster form in countless eating and drinking establishments. The nagging doubt remains, however, that Marlene is not essential to the locations where she has been placed, that she in fact represents nothing more than an arbitrary citation, much as Billy Wilder, another popular figure associated with Berlin's Weimar era, seems inessential to the bar on the Potsdamer Platz named after him. Neither Dietrich nor Wilder succeeds as a symbol of past identity propelling contemporary Berlin forward. At most, they represent commercialized nostalgia, as do the attempts to recreate 1920s Jewish life in the Scheunenviertel-area of Berlin. Yet, particularly the 1991 decision to make Berlin rather than Bonn the political capital of unified Germany generated the need to develop representations of Berlin more commensurate with these new realities and more capable of galvanizing the positive attitudes needed for shaping the future. Thoroughly analyzing the Bundestag speeches leading to this decision, Klaus Naumann of the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung convincingly demonstrates that the references to Germany's past—commonly thought to be the decisive factor shaping the decision in favor of Berlin as the capital—were overshadowed by arguments depicting Berlin as the site of a desired new beginning (Naumann 36-46). Bonn, long representing the new postwar Germany, was suddenly turned into the site of the old and outdated, a onedimensional location synonymous with conducting business as usual. Berlin, on the other hand, long functioning as "Bekenntnisort der Nation" due to the airlift and later its infamous Wall, was suddenly transformed into an "Erwartungsort" signaling new challenges, daring experimentation, and above 2

Andreas Huyssen compellingly claimed in a landmark article that due to its ruptured histories Berlin has become a city of voids. A year later Richard Shusterman makes an excellent case for Berlin's architectural "Abwesenheiten" (absences) frequently constituting "Anwesenheiten" (presences)—for example, the old, demolished city palace in Berlin-A/i'Me is now more present in the people's consciousness because of the controversies surrounding the GDR Palast der Republik ("Palace of the Republic") that had taken its place. Now lying fallow, the Palast der Republik is a stronger reminder of history than the building would be with a reconstructed palace façade (30).

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all a multi-faceted future.3 In keeping with the new start symbolized by Berlin, new Berlin images were instantly generated, but—like their predecessors—most have lingered on long after their usefulness has passed. To be sure, the image of Berlin as the workshop for unification may have all but disappeared from Berlin discourses, but it left in its wake vague phrases such as "Ost-West-Metropole," one of the five marketing slogans adopted in 2000 by Partner fur Berlin, the official marketing agency of the city. 4 Not yet discarded, the hope that Berlin would become the axis of east-west commerce has an increasingly hollow ring, for the New Berlin has neither attracted industry pivotal to the East and West nor does it boast the shipping ports that have made Hamburg a major hub of East/West trade.5 Metaphors such as Berlin as "Baustelle"6—that is, Berlin as the largest construction site in and of the nation—or Berlin as a "Schaustelle" ("showplace")7 of incessant construction and, by implication, identity formation8 have in the meantime merged with all the other customary discourses characterizing Berlin as a transitional city—perhaps the most persistent image associated with Berlin. 3

4

5

6

7 8

"Bekenntnisort" roughly translates into the "site of testimonials or confessions," a site where one professes beliefs publicly, whereas "Erwartungsort" alludes to a location suggestive of hope and expectation (Naumann 46). Here, as well as in the remainder of my paper, the English translations and explanations of German terms are my own. In an attempt to lure more business investors to Berlin, Partner fur Berlin launched its marketing campaign in 2000 with five slogans, each meant to spotlight the attractive future of Berlin: "Hauptstadt" ("Capital"), "Kreative Stadt" ("Creative City"), "Kulturmetropole" ("Cultural Metropolis"), "Lebenswerte Stadt" (roughly "A City in which Life is worth living"), and "Ost-West-Metropole" ("East-West-Metropolis"). A billboard consisting of collages was designed for each slogan. Even in the fall of 2002, many areas of Berlin remained splattered with one or all five of these billboards (e.g., in the areas around subway stations). Lest the billboards did not penetrate consciousness, many poster- and postcardsized versions of the billboards were also placed in public locations throughout Berlin. Still, the slick collages appear just as bland as the slogans themselves, and often even the Berliners confronting them on a daily basis find it difficult to recall either the slogans or the collageimagery illustrating them. See "Werbung für Berlin." Heinz Bude is particularly tired of Berlin being represented as "Drehscheibe zwischen Ost und West" ("turntable between east and west"), for Hamburg is the city to have profited far more than Berlin from the opening to the eastern markets (Amend and Lebert) Soon not only the city but also the individual lives of Berliners became equated with construction sites, most effectively perhaps in Das Leben ist eine Baustelle (1997), a critically acclaimed Berlin film directed by Wolfgang Becker and produced by X-Filme, a Berlin film production firm that Becker had founded along with Tom Tykwer (Lola rennt) and two others. See Carol Anne Costabile-Heming's comments on the former Info-Box on the Leipziger Platz embodying this "showplace"—mentality (499-500). Particularly West Germans engaged in the popular "political tourism" to the Info-Box. The view from the Info-Box enabled them to be awed at the extensive construction activity all around them, while the exhibit in the Info-Box, which interrelated feats of technology with Berlin's postwar history up to German unification, seemed to invite identification with the impressive preparations to turn Berlin into Germany's political capital and thus generated a certain political pride (Bornemann and Bude 31).

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Above all, Berlin was again not depicted as a place to live, but as a site generating non-stop discourses on the past and on the future (Morshäuser 139142). On the one hand, Berlin continued to be highlighted as a place constantly ensuring confrontations with the past; on the other, the construction projects in Berlin's center were said to eradicate references to Berlin's past. Others stressed a more holistic view—that is, that the past and the future were forming a unique, symbiotic relationship. None of the discourses seemed to cancel out other discourses. Rather, each contributed to the cacophony keeping the city alive and each was utilized by the media, particularly by its TV branch, to erase past impressions of a stagnating Berlin.9 Yet it was no longer all of Berlin that was talked about, as Bodo Morshäuser points out in Liebeserklärung an eine hässliche Stadt (1998), but only Berlin-A/iMe—the projected seat of the government—and perhaps the Prenzlauer Berg and Friedrichshain districts (116). Other Berlin sites, even sites such as Charlottenburg that were frequented each day by thousands of city dwellers, no longer mattered in the proliferating TV productions of "representational" Berlin images (116). The Berlin district to have suffered the highest loss of population since the end of the Cold War, Mitte had become the location with the lowest number of Berliners and the one with the highest number of newcomers. In other words, the site least representative of today's Berliners was turned into the most representative of Berlin. When the politicians from Bonn and many other newcomers started populating the Mitte district of Berlin, another Berlin image turned up with increasing frequency in the media—that is, Berlin-Mite as a gigantic projection screen rapidly displaying a multitude of film scenarios invented by individual nightmare and dream factories. Thus Dorota Paciarelli remarks on Berlin's capacity to gather all possible fears, needs, expectations, and aggressions onto this gigantic, imaginary screen (811). Writing in Die Zeit in the fall of 1998, Thomas Assheuer observes: "Es ist, als sei im Spreebogen eine riesige Leinwand aufgespannt, auf der Aufgeregte und Abgeklärte die Zukunft projizieren."10 While Assheuer still sees intrusive German history and German fears interlaced with the scenarios of hopeful futures projected onto the proverbial screen stretched out on the Spree river, younger newcomers to Berlin—unhampered by strong roots and close ties—view the screen more one-dimensionally and more affirmatively. Thomas Krüger, a young SPD politician from the East, seems to speak for them as he writes in Die bewegte Stadt (a book introduced to the Berlin public with great fanfare one week before the 1998 federal elections), that the metaphorical screen of the 9 10

See Jochen Thiess for one of the best of the many discussions on Berlin having been turned into media events since the fall of the Wall. "It is as if a giant screen was installed on the Spree River onto which the excited and the enlightened project the future."

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newcomers projects, quite simply, new biographies and new ideas (22)." Dispensing with the gigantic movie screen of flickering individual projections but affirming the rhetoric of Berlin as the site of a new beginning, Heinz Bude refers to the soon-to-be capital as the "Signal eines gewagten Ganzen und einer ungewissen Zukunft" (Bornemann and Bude 25). 12 Despite the symbolic ring of these words, Bude, whom Susanne Gaschke, an editor of Die Zeit, had called the "Stichwortgeber" of the Berlin Republic, has no intention of enshrouding contemporary Berlin into yet another myth or into yet another symbol. 13 Even more radically than Dorota Paciarelli, who advocates the deconstruction of Berlin myths that have lost their validity for contemporary identity formation (822), Bude contends that Berlin is no longer merely a symbol (Generation Berlin 25-26), but a real city in the process of real upheaval. The night the Wall fell, says Bude, was also the night when Berliners again temporarily claimed the city as their own, briefly positing their own experiences and memories against surrender to an abstract symbol (Bude, Generation Berlin 78). Or, as Klaus Härtung expresses it, the disappearance of the Wall meant the return of the actual city ("Doppelgesicht" 16). But Bude maintains that Berlin irrevocably lost its name—that is, its Cold War designation as a symbol of division—only through the 1991 decision to move the federal government from Bonn to Berlin (Generation Berlin 68). From then on, it was Berlin's fate to be a future-oriented city in search of an idea to define it (80). Because Bude recognizes the validity of viewing Berlin's past as an "Experiment ohne Hypothese," 14 a past in which history has played a far larger role than tradition, he was perhaps particularly bothered by the senseless recycling of traditional symbolic images in a city he now considered stripped of symbols. Thus he took the lead in defining the altered Berlin. His aim was to launch an utterly new definition—one that would bring dynamic movement into stagnant Berlin discourses and, by implication, into the life of the city. With this intent, Bude followed in the footsteps of former Federal President Roman Herzog. Roughly one year before, Herzog's "Berliner Rede" ("Berlin Address"), held in the Hotel Adlon, had jolted the entire nation into reflecting seriously about its societal ills: among them, the culture of complaint, the prevalence of rigid behavior, and the unwillingness to initiate reforms of fossilized institutions. Exhorting his fellow citizens to self-renewal—to actively create a society that encourages risk taking and does not punish initial failures, and above all, to assume personal responsibility in all aspects of their 11

12 13 14

Michael Naumann, who was soon to become Germany's first Cultural Minister, introduced this book at an official ceremony with the kind of media-hype now associated with Berlin's "events-culture." "Signal of a daring whole and of an uncertain future." The word "Stichwortgeber" conveys the idea of someone advancing key words and/or phrases to explain or highlight important phenomena. "Experiment without hypothesis." (Oswalt 28)

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lives, Herzog implored "Durch Deutschland muss ein Ruck gehen" (11). 15 The following year, apparently in accord with Herzog's "Ruckrede," the first Cultural Minister of Germany, Michael Naumann, also issued a call to the German nation to abandon its inertia: "Raus aus eurer Schwermutshöhle!" (Lau 16)16 Already immersed in the spirit of optimism in what he perceived as Berlin's culture of new beginnings—not the least of these being the expectation of an SPD win in the 1998 federal elections and the prospect of Gerhard Schröder governing from Berlin, Bude himself did not need such exhortations. As a sociologist, moreover, he felt compelled not merely to diagnose the times but to create definitions to shape the debates most relevant to the times—definitions to shape even the politics of the national SPD. 17 Thus, partly on the basis of observing trends already occurring in Berlin and partly as a wishful assertion, Bude launched the term "Generation Berlin" in the context of the upcoming federal elections of 1998 (Generation Berlin 7). Much as Johannes Gross had invented the term "Berlin Republic" in 1995 to signal the inner changes that would have to occur as a result of the Bonn government moving to Berlin, Bude coined the term "Generation Berlin" in June 1998 to define the new inhabitants of the "new" Mtte-district of the New Berlin (Bornemann and Bude 33). Believing that the completion of the federal government's move from Bonn to Berlin would constitute the founding act of the Berlin Republic (Bornemann and Bude 27) 18 and this, in turn, the beginning of the reinvention of Germany, Bude wanted to focus on the attitudinal qualities needed to participate in the challenging project such reinvention entailed ("Generationen" 578-579). First, however, he needed to convince skeptics (and there were many who wished to regard the Berlin government as a continuation of the Bonn government) that the governmental move to Berlin signified a completely new chapter in German history. Just as Bonn was not Weimar, Berlin could not be Bonn, Bude has often reiterated. Yet, because he believes strongly that there is no break without continuity, the problem arose of how to integrate the Bonn period into the Berlin Republic while also achieving a sense of closure. Thus Bude firmly advocates historicizing the Bonn period. By reducing the role of 15 16 17

18

"A jolt must go through Germany"—that is, all Germans should be jolted in order to change their ways. This speech came to be known as the "Ruckrede," i.e., the speech about the jolt. "Get out of your melancholy hovels !" In a November 1999 podium discussion with Peter Gross, Claus Offe, Armin Pongs, Harry Nutt, and Christine Pries, sponsored by the Frankfurter Rundschau, Bude again underlined his belief that the task of sociology is neither to remain objectively outside of events nor to reiterate the tenets held by society, but to involve itself in social processes at times of change by offering definitions for political deliberations ("Eine Art Oktoberfest mit Kühen"). Jan Müller notes that due to the relative drawn-out period between German unification and the final move of the Federal Parliament to Berlin, intellectuals had "ample opportunity to formulate normative frameworks for the new republic and to provide [...] a legitimation narrative" (151).

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the Bonn government to that of a mere buffer state between the Third Reich and the Berlin Republic, Bude relegates it to history. This was a stance that caused an outcry in many quarters, for it was interpreted as a backhanded way to reduce the importance of World War II history in fashioning German identity. That is not, however, what Bude had in mind. In essence, Bude stresses that it was time to regard the Bonn government as the provisional state it had always claimed to be. Though it had turned western Germany into a practical, denationalized, decentralized, post-fascist state with no particular mission, it had awakened the ire of the 1968 generation that was bent on destroying all remaining vestiges of authoritarian structures in German society. It was a generation that had an enormous latent need to catch up on disobedience. Shaped by critical stances on Germany's World War II past and saddled with attendant identity problems and ideologies, the members of the 1968 generation—now firmly ensconced in the establishment as its political leaders—did not have, in Bude's view, the requisite optimistic attitudes to provide workable models for what he likes to call the "Jetztzeit" (the "NowPeriod"). Though they could not have attained power without turning away from their own former ideals, their previous rebellious attitudes toward society and its dealings with the past necessarily made them unresponsive to the demands of the present. They remain, in short, the heroes of yesterday, incapable of the new attitudes needed for shaping the emerging Berlin Republic. Bude notes that a skewed relationship between government and society has thus resulted. Society, he stresses, is now ahead of its politicians. The New Berlin will be shaped by the newcomers comprising the Generation Berlin, rather than by its politicians. While the representatives of the 1968-generation will dominate the center of the political stage, the generation of people born between approximately 1960 and 1970 is already waiting in the wings, ready to appropriate the Berlin Republic as its own. Its representatives have thus far only had roles as bystanders, but their vigilant observing has enabled them to recognize weaknesses in the tenets of the 1968 generation, such as the rhetoric of equal opportunity camouflaging inequality of achievements or the vocabulary of protest often being paradigmatic for conformity rather than rebellion.19 In 1998, most of those regarded as Generation Berlin representatives were not over the age of 40, but Bude stresses that his 19

Heinz Bude, "Was ist die Generation Berlin? Gesucht wird eine Haltung jenseits von Formschwäche und Identitätswahn," Berliner Republik 1 (1999): 8. Bude expresses this thought as "Dagegensein" ("being against") functioning as a "Form des Dabeiseins" ("a form of being there/of participating"), a catchy wording that has circulated so liberally that it is difficult to pinpoint its originator. This article is a reprint of an article Bude published one month before: "Abschied von der rheinischen Vergangenheit: Was will die Generation Berlin? Einige Anmerkungen zu einem Neuanfang jenseits überkommener Konfrontationen," Frankfurter Rundschau 22 Sept. 1999: 8-11.

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Generation Berlin construct—influenced by the same Volkswagen Golf ads of the nineties that had inspired Florian lilies' "Generation G o l f ' concept 20 —was not meant to be a biological one. Not age or even commonality of experience—such as participation in a significant historical event or societal movement—but attitude qualifies one as a member of the Generation Berlin. This emphasis has of course led to accusations that the Generation Berlin does not exist and has not ever existed, that it is a phantom rather than reality. Such skepticism has not, however, deterred Bude from the defining tasks he had set for himself. Though not shunning confrontations with Germany's warped past, the representatives of the Generation Berlin are no longer marked by them. If at all, they rebel against rebellion. Not turning to the German past as a reference point for decisions on the future, they consider confrontational attitudes toward their state, toward their government, as hopelessly outdated and unrealistic. The Communist states and the ideologies they generated have collapsed. In a post-ideological world where capitalism dominates, there is nothing beyond power, knowledge, and money, says Bude (a committed member of the SPD!), and thus no alternative to affirmation and participation ("Abschied" 8). Having no use for non-productive negativism, the Generation Berlin mentality had already proceeded even beyond its stance of "Kritik der Kritik" ("criticism of criticism," i.e., criticism of negativism, protest or rebellion). Its representatives incorporate the change in attitude admired by Bude: from unproductive negativity to pragmatic definition, from indecision (a characteristic often associated with Cold War Berlin) to decisiveness, from theoretical abstractions to committed actions. Bude draws the model for the Generation Berlin personality from the business world rather than the artistic and political worlds, for he is convinced that mainstream society no longer turns to literature for making sense of the world and that politics has become hopelessly outdated. Thus, in August 1998, Bude coined the term "unternehmerische Einzelne" ("entrepreneurial individuals") to describe the Generation Berlin representatives (Generation Berlin 21-22; Monath). In Bude's view, entrepreneurs are the ones who now provide galvanizing models for change. Instead of looking backward or saddling themselves with too many situations necessitating conpromise solutions—as politicians do— the "unternehmerische Einzelne" comprising the Generation Berlin are above all optimistic, enterprising doers fueled by existing realities. Reveling in risktaking, they seek the unfinished, the unpredictable. For them the world consists of options to be taken and, if needed, to be discarded. Because they expect failures, they are not thwarted by errors. Defeat enables them to be resilient. Much as Lola in Tom Tykwer's film Lola rennt ( 1998), they actively seek a way out of a quandary at practically any cost. Also like Lola, Bude's entrepreneurial individual is a "Figur der Unruhe, die Dinge und Kräfte 20

Heinz Bude, personal interview, 4 Aug. 2000.

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kombiniert, um neue Möglichkeiten zu schaffen und andere Verbindungen herzustellen."21 Or, somewhat more specifically: "Er ist ein Virtuose des Kombinierens von Erwerbseinkommen, Sozialbeziehungen und von Zukunftsentwürfen" (Bude, "Abschied" II). 22 This kind of combinatory talent in the service of the future is, in fact, the basis for all progress, Bude claims ( Junge Eliten 74). Judging from the frequency of Bude's written and oral protestations that his "entrepreneurial individual" is not an artist figure, it seems clear that Bude's formulations—e.g., his emphasis on the figure as a creative virtuoso— have at times lent themselves to such an interpretation. Thus Bude takes pains to emphasize that he has not defined an artistic ideal, but a modal from everyday reality concerned with self-assertion, success, changing course, and new discoveries ("Abschied" 11). His introduction to his book on the Generation Berlin, published in 2001, again takes up this thread as he writes that the world of the Generation Berlin is not the world of the aesthetically created human being of endless possibilities in life but most decidedly the world of entrepreneurial individuals situated in the real world (Generation Berlin 8). This distinction is particularly important for Bude, since he does not want to increase the already vast stockpile of "Ewigkeitsbegriffe" (universal concepts meant to have eternal validity). It was, after all, his intent to smash reliance on symbolic discourses to describe Berlin. His definition of the Generation Berlin person as an entrepreneurial individual was meant to provide a distinctly new orientation, to act as a catalyst for feasible deeds in the present. He reiterates his basic aim, this time in plain terms not likely to be misconstrued: To provide modals for engagement with this world that reap benefits for the individual within the individual's life span (Generation Berlin 8).

In the July/August 2000 issue of neue deutsche literatur—that is, after many articles, many interviews, many speeches, and many media appearances during the two previous years—Bude felt it necessary to give concrete examples of the kinds of individuals meriting the description "entrepreneurial individuals" (143). Coming from the advertising, the journalistic, and even political fields—much as the individuals chosen by the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel in its fall 1998 series on Generation Berlin individuals23—they 21

22

23

Essentially "a figure of unrest" able to draw upon a multitude of phenomena and ideas in order to create new possibilities and new interrelationships. (Bude, "Die Hoffnung auf den 'unternehmerischen Unternehmer'" 73); see also Bude, "Auf der Suche nach Elite" 15. A rephrasing in English rather than a translation: Displaying virtuosity in combinatory talents, the entrepreneurial individual finds imaginative ways to interrelate the world of work, social concerns, and blueprints for the future. Der Tagesspiegel ran its series on Generation Berlin representatives on a weekly basis in August and September of 1998. It highlighted Berlin inhabitants such as Cultural Manager Anja Follmer (helps artists and firms to form partnerships for the purpose of sponsorship), Christoph Links (the founder of the Ch. Links publishing company), Sebastian Turner from

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have in common the ability for new differentiations and new scenarios for decision-making. They are most certainly not the self-centered hedonists outfitted with designer labels and bereft of societal goals described by Florian lilies in his book Generation Golf (2000). 24 Generation Berlin members are not content with being—as the saying goes, "deutsch aber glücklich" ("German but happy"). 25 Because they value the assumption of personal responsibility more than the egotistical cultivation of the self or the carefree immersion in a culture of fun, Bude contends that many of them—implicitly he too—will feel the tug of politics. They will wish political self-determination and a role in societal decision-making. In turn, their entrepreneurial attitudes will enable politics not only to catch up with societal changes but also to provide new guidelines, new models, and new options to citizens. No more but no less either is what Bude himself expects of politics. Despite occasional skeptical comments by Berlin analysts—Klaus Härtung, for example, initially felt that it was too early and too inflated to talk of a Generation Berlin ("Berliner Übergangszeit" 845) 26 —Bude's expectations of political influence by Generation Berlin protagonists seemed justified well into the fall of 1999. In his article titled "Meine Berliner Republik," published in Stern one week before the official completion of the federal government's move to Berlin, Gerhard Schröder mentions Bude by name and highlights essential characteristics of his Generation Berlin construct (39). He focuses in particular on its affirmative attitudes, its pragmatism, and its joy in experimentation, its innovative practices, and its orientation toward the future. Bude felt validated by this promising beginning. He was convinced that a new era had indeed started, and it is safe to say, I think, that he expected to be called by the Chancellor to help shape it. Even when the invitation never arrived, Bude kept defending the Chancellor. When others complained of Schroder's amorphous nature, Bude praised his flexibility. When others criticized Schroder's clumsiness with Germany's remembrance culture, Bude defended the absence of ritualistic behavior in Schroeder and his relative freedom from the shackles of tradition. When others disparaged the staging of politics as mere media events, Bude counseled them to be patient. In his view, Schröder could be praised for opening the windows, so to speak, but by 2002 Bude also faulted Schröder for not looking outside.

24

25 26

the advertising industry, and T o m Tykwer, co-founder of X-Filme and director of Lola rennt (1998). In the paragraph on the Generation Berlin in his own book, Florian lilies stresses that its representatives, consisting of authors, journalists, and others from the humanities, continue to represent a distinct minority in Berlin. Only this minority has truly interpreted the onset of the new millennium as an opportunity for fresh debates on the future of work, the family, and politics. But his own Generation Golf, consisting of the majority of the young, believes that society functions well enough without its help and sees no need to contribute it (lilies 191). The phrase is also the title of a book by the Berlin 7ngeü/w'ege/-joumalist Bernd Ulrich. Härtung does concede, however, that Berlin activists are getting younger and that they are increasing the competition levels in the city.

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When, moreover, Schröder started the practice of inviting "yesterday's heroes" for discussions in the Chancellery (e.g., Günter Grass and Peter Schneider) or in the Willy Brandt SPD building (Martin Walser), Bude could no longer hide his exasperation at Schroder's guest list. During an interview with a Tagesspiegel reporter in September 2002, Bude burst out with the comment that particularly Schneider had no clue about the present, prompting the interviewer to remark that Bude seemed miffed at not having been invited by the Chancellor himself (Amend). To his credit, Bude did not deny this, remarking that if the Chancellor had chosen to meet with members of a younger generation—his generation—the Chancellor would have had the chance not only to come to terms with history yet again but also actually to make history. In 1998, when Bude launched his Generation Berlin construct, he had hoped that Schröder would view the governmental move as a historical moment to be seized for societal transformation—with the help of the new elite intellectuals of the Generation Berlin for whom he had, perhaps unsurprisingly, coined the term "entrepreneurial intellectuals" (Generation Berlin 33). Bude firmly plants them too on the soil of reality. A high degree of combinatory capacities is expected of them, but they need to interrelate what already exists, though certainly in a spirit of experimentation. Deconstructionists of certitude, they should in fact motivate experimentation in others (40). Bude thought of many areas the SPD government could tackle in its first legislative period in Berlin with the help of the "entrepreneurial intellectuals" of the Berlin Republic. Above all, in view of the radical changes that had occurred, he believed that government needed to respond to growing discrepancies between social benefits (rights) and individual options—to name one example, the unwillingness of many of the young, relatively few in number, to foot the bill for the pensions of the large numbers of the retired. And government certainly had to confront changes in the workplace. In the move from the industrial to the service and information society, lifelong work and lifelong social benefits are no longer guaranteed and seniority rights at the work place less respected. New forms of societal consensus on social justice must be created, especially because the consensus that had existed during the postwar reconstruction of Germany no longer prevailed. Bude did not merely advocate a different parceling out of existing resources or less governmental help in the lives of citizens, the latter an almost heretic stance for a Social Democrat in a country with a strong tradition of the state acting as provider. Clearly, his "unternehmerischer Einzelne" was not meant to become an "unternehmerischer Vereinzelte," abandoned by the government in crisis situations. 27 27

I heard the term "der unternehmerische Vereinzelte" from Helmut Hartwig, who was teaching a course titled "Von der Soziokultur zum 'unternehmerisch Einzelnen'" during the

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Still, Bude did advocate something construed as heresy against SPD tenets: Rather than equality—equality of results—he championed the concept of freedom, underlining that inequality of results would of course ensue. Bombarded with charges of heartless neoliberalism (illustrations from the U.S. not far from the minds of many), Bude repeatedly felt compelled to defend himself as a Social Democrat. No, he did not want anyone to fall out of the social net permanently. Yes, the government's assumption of social responsibility remains necessary, but it should be tackled in more promising ways. Above all, the government should limit its activities as controller or provider and instead assume the role of activator. Its fundamental mission, as Bude expressed it to me in an interview in August 2000, is to make the assumption of responsibility appealing, especially to entrepreneurial intellectuals, whose participation in redefining the precise role of government to meet today's societal needs is mandatory. In concert with its entrepreneurial intellectuals, government should provide viable, creative options for second chances—that is, enable possibilities for reentry into productive societal participation to those who seem to have fallen by the wayside. Schröder may not have heeded Bude's call for Generation Berlin participation in government, but others heeded it more quickly in the SPD than he had probably hoped. In the middle of September 1999, a group of younger SPD politicians—mainly those under 40 who had been voted into Parliament largely due to the SPD rule requiring a quota of younger members—staged a media event to introduce themselves both as the "youngsters" of the SPD and as the SPD's representatives of the Generation Berlin. Approximately one month later, this second time without the presence of Bude, they staged another media event to launch their journal, titled Die Berliner Republik. For this, they chose the TV tower at the Alexanderplatz, explaining in their press release how appropriate the site was: "Mitte, Osten, Berlin, Bewegung, offen, ganz oben" ("Mitte [the district], East, Berlin, Movement, open, completely at the top"). Unfortunately, several of the articles written in the first three issues by the self-proclaimed youngsters, particularly those attempting to define beliefs shared by members of the Generation Berlin, were not of a significantly higher intellectual level. Rather than providing the new models of societal and political activism that Bude had hoped for, there were pleas to return to family values, to the concept of duty, and so forth. Much of the press responded with ridicule. An article by Richard Herzinger in Die Zeit, written after the "youngsters" had first introduced themselves to the Berlin Republic as a Generation Berlin entity (September 1999) but shortly before the first issue of Die Berliner Republik appeared (October 1999), had already set the stage for scathing criticism. Rather than forward-looking, experimental, and dynamic, claims Herzinger, the Generation Summer Semester 2 0 0 0 at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. Helmut Hartwig, personal interview, 8 July 2 0 0 0 .

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Berlin protagonists were small time petit bourgeois, their earnest advocacy of staid values actually destroying the intellectual excitement and flair of metropolitan Berlin. And Bude too, insisting that he was after all a leftist, emphatically distanced himself from the views expressed by the "youngsters." 28 By the summer of 2000, the media staging and key articles in the journal Berliner Republik had created a non-desired effect: The term Generation Berlin lost its glamour. Though it is treated in a course on German generations at the Humboldt University and was treated in one at Berlin's Hochschule der Künste under the rubric "unternehmerisch Einzelner,"29 in the media it increasingly became lumped with one of the other generation labels that have had such an inflationary rise (e.g., Generation Golf, Generation '78, Generation '89, Generation Net-Kids, Generation @, Bubble Generation, Generation Ich-AG, Generation Möllemann, and because Bude is now a professor at the University of Kassel, Generation Kassel). Nonetheless all the major non-regional German newspapers (e.g., FAZ, Frankfurter-Rundschau, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Süddeutsche, taz), as well as the Berlin Tagesspiegel, periodically continue to publish Bude's comments on the state of the nation or to print interviews with him containing pointed questions about his latest thoughts on the Generation Berlin. In several of these publications Bude concedes that he underestimated the hold of history on the mentality of Berliners. Though, in his view, the National Socialist era was no longer an appropriate reference point for decisions on the future involving topics such as globalism and biotechnology, issues pertaining to the Nazi era kept resurfacing and kept determining the major discourses: the debates on the Holocaust Memorial, the Walser-Bubis controversies, the arguments related to the concept artist Haake's installation "Der Bevölkerung" ("To the inhabitants") in the Reichstag (meant to contrast with the inscription "Dem deutschen Volke"—'To the German people'—at the entrance to the Reichstag), the bickering about German "Leitkultur" ("model culture") or the phrase "proud to be a German," the anti-Semitism discussions, the war-on-Iraq controversies—all these by no means comprising an exhaustive list. Bude had, in short, overestimated the Berlin Republic's readiness to focus on the present and its willingness to prepare for the future. Thus, now with undisguised impatience, he continues to alert others to transformed realities and to the fact that discourses once relevant no longer adequately express the New Berlin.30 A decade after the decision to move the capital to Berlin, Bude soberly views the Berlin landscape and concludes that the rhetoric of new beginnings 28 29 30

Personal interview. Here the word "unternehmerisch" functions as an adverb rather than an adjective, suggesting that the individual is isolated—almost existentially so—in entrepreneurial activities. Criticizing Volker Hassemer, the previous Managing Director of Partner fur Berlin, for clinging to his concept of Berlin as "showplace" during a podium discussion in late summer 2002, Bude impatiently stated that the days of Berlin as "showplace" are over (Amend).

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has run its course (Generation Berlin 82; "Berlin muß"). The city no longer feeds on expectations of the new. The many empty offices in the center of Berlin glaringly signify greatly reduced expectancy. Clearly, Berlin is no longer on the way to becoming a global player in the world of business. In research, development, logistics, design, marketing, and many additional areas it lags behind other European metropolitan centers. It is not a magnet for doers, thinkers, or traders. The center in the sprawling metropolis that had arisen so suddenly and toward which new populations had gravitated so quickly no longer denotes power and money. Now it draws those who only want to test something rather than those who want to accomplish something. And the most scathing comment of all: It is wrong to designate Berlin as the center of anything, for it is merely a perspective of the Third Republic (Bude, Generation Berlin 84). Perhaps even more disillusioning is Bude's March 2001 suggestion for a solution to Berlin's woes: the revival of Berlin's "Hinterhof' ("courtyard") economy. Among its past virtues he lists that it initiated Germany's first publication for advertising second-hand products and its reputation for dubious trading ("Berlin muß"). While Bude of course does not advocate the continued promulgation of dubious practices, he does urge using the Hinterhof inventively: It could be appropriated for developing and marketing, for example, boutique technologies! To prevent the arrival of multitudes of willing practitioners, Bude provides cautionary comments. He emphasizes that his advocacy of a new Hinterhof economy is not directed at those who merely want to expand their businesses or those who want to replicate what they have done elsewhere (the "verifiers" of society). The Hinterhof should instead function as the ideal domain for those able to vary and combine creatively—in short, for entrepreneurial individuals. Because the Hinterhof has the potential of uniting hybrid populations (Berliners and the descendants of the many migrant groups that had previously settled in Berlin) and generating hybrid forms of business (those unifying disparate ways of production, thinking, and trading), the Generation Berlin personality would be needed more than ever ("Berlin muß"). Susanne Gaschke, who has an excellent record of analyzing Bude's writings and keeping up with political and cultural developments in Berlin, is nonplused at what Bude has written. (The galvanizing Generation Berlin construct reduced to a boutique economy conducted in sequestered courtyard areas, the Generation Berlin reduced to mere courtyard chic? Could it be that Bude is distancing himself from the Generation Berlin construct? Or, even worse, could it be that he is actually giving up, and so soon? When the possibility of a Generation Berlin has not even registered in the provinces? ("Kommt" 5) While she concedes that Bude's apparent disillusionment may have valid causes, she admits that the self-proclaimed Generation Berlin representatives have been unable to determine the discourse in Berlin, partly because of far too conformist behavior and partly because of a lack of

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coherent, imaginative political concepts for the future. Yet Bude had not really given up. Throughout 2001 he remains an author in search of his text—in search of a new name or definition for Berlin, in search of a new calling for Berlin ("Berlin einen neuen Sinn geben"). But only retrospective historical debates are circulating in the air around him. By June 2002 Bude complains that the Germans seem to have lost belief in the primacy of politics. Who, asks Bude, should and can provide models? The political class is dependent on intellectuals for formulating stimulating definitions, but the intellectuals remain too absorbed by the past and reject work on a new design for the future ("Erschreckender Konformismus"). Still, Bude continues to offer suggestions to politicians with deaf ears (e.g., to aim for a politics that bases its programs on maintaining or promoting the dignity of the individual), suggestions that land only in muddy waters devoid of currents to propel them forward. His pleas for definition do not reach a Chancellor bereft of ideas and enveloped in the fog of imprecision later represented by his two-hour, second inaugural address. No concepts, no policies of vision far and wide, laments Bude—none for foreign affairs, for unemployment, for the collapse of markets, for the collapse of curiosity and promise that Berlin had represented in a not yet distant past. Abandoning references to the potentials of the courtyardeconomy, Bude concludes at the beginning of September 2002 that no recourse remains for Berlin other than to ask for subsidies on the basis that it is the center of power in Germany and that important topics could be aired only there (Amend). Two months later, at the beginning of November 2002, after the disastrous beginnings of the second legislative period of the Red-Green government, Bude begins his article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung with the devastating sentence that Germany is a land without promise ("Land"). No fresh winds circulate in the Berlin air. Conformity and predictability are valued again. Ideas and visions are mistrusted. Those who had energetically wanted to participate in the forming of a new era are shunned, condemned to insignificance ("Land"). Somewhat later in the same month, in his eulogy to Rudolf Augstein and Siegfried Unseld, Bude compares the accomplishments of his generation to that of Augstein and Unseld. The history of the Federal Republic is unthinkable without their contributions, Bude writes. But every member of his own generation—Bude minces no words—can be dispensed with ("Ihr Helden"). None have left an indelible mark. It is not necessary to include any of them in the grand narrative of the Federal Republic. Maybe it would comfort Bude to know that he already is in the narrative: The splendid game started by the Generation Berlin—as Bude had conceived it—is nothing less than the reinvention of Berlin.31

31

"Aber das große Spiel, das diese 'Generation Berlin' angefangen hat, heißt: die Erfindung Berlins" (Härtung, "Doppelgesicht" 26).

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Works Cited Amend, Christoph and Stephan Lebert. Interview with Heinz Bude. "Stoiber beraten? Klar, wenns ums Land geht." Der Tagesspiegel 1 Sept. 2002: SOI. Assheuer, Thomas. "Das Deutschlandspiel. Viel Abschied, wenig Ankunft— Der Streit um die Deutung einer Berliner Republik." Die Zeit 37 (1998). 16 October 1999 . Berlin. Die Hauptstadt. Vergangenheit und Zukunft einer europäischen Metropole. Eds. Ralf Rytlewski and Werner Süß. Berlin: Nicolai, 1999. Bornemann, John, and Heinz Bude. "Gründung durch Umzug." Mittelweg 36 6 (1998): 25-35. Bude, Heinz. "Abschied von der rheinischen Vergangenheit: Was will die Generation Berlin? Einige Anmerkungen zu einem Neuanfang jenseits überkommener Konfrontationen." Frankfurter Rundschau 22 Sept. 1999: 8-11. Rpr. as "Was ist die Generation Berlin? Gesucht wird eine Haltung jenseits von Formschwäche und Identitätswahn" in Berliner Republik 1 (1999): 6-11 and as "Auf der Hinterbühne" in Heinz Bude, Generation Berlin. Berlin: Merve, 2001: 23-32. —. "Auf der Suche nach Elite," Die neuen Eliten. Kursbuch 139 (2000): 15. —. "Berlin einen neuen Sinn geben. Eine Ermunterung." FAZ. 31 Oct. 2001: BSl. —. "Berlin muss wieder belebt werden. Ein Hilferuf in den Hinterhof." FAZ. 16 March 2001: BSl. —. "Das 'übertriebene Wir' der Generation." neue deutsche literatur 4 (2000): 136-143. —. "Der Name Berlin." Generation Berlin. Berlin: Merve, 2001. 68-86. —. "Der unternehmerische Intellektuelle." taz 2 Apr. 1998. Rpr. in Generation Berlin. Berlin: Merve, 2001. 33-40. —. "Die Hoffnung auf den 'unternehmerischen Unternehmer.'" Junge Eliten. Selbständigkeit als Beruf Eds. Heinz Bude and Stephan Schleissing. Berlin: W. Kohlhammer, 1997. 71-80. —. "Ein erschreckender Konformismus im Denken." Frankfurter Rundschau 14 June 2002. 17 June 2002 . —. Generation Berlin. Berlin: Merve, 2001. —. "Generationen im 20. Jahrhundert. Historische Einschnitte, ideologische Kehrtwendungen, innere Widersprüche." Merkur 7 (2000): 567-579. —. "Ihr Helden und wir Leute. Die Generation der 40-Jährigen nach dem Tod von Augstein und Unseld." Der Tagesspiegel 20 Nov. 2002: 008. —. "Kapitalismus ohne Leitbild—Nach dem Arbeitnehmer: Der Einzelne und sein Experiment." FAZ. 13 Aug. 1998. Rpt. in Generation Berlin (Berlin: Merve, 2001)15-22.

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"Land ohne Versprechen. Versinken wir im Dämmerschlaf der Restauration?" Süddeutsche Zeitung 2 Nov. 2002. 3 Nov. 2002 . —. "Zur Einfuhrung." Junge Eliten. Selbständigkeit als Beruf. Eds. Heinz Bude and Stephan Schleissing. Berlin: W. Kohlhammer, 1997. 11-19. Costabile-Heming, Carol Anne. "Peter Schneider's Eduards Heimkehr and the Image of the 'New Berlin.'" German Studies Review XXV (2002): 497510. "Eine Art Oktoberfest mit Kühen. In einer Podiumsdiskussion fragte die Frankfurter Rundschau: In welcher Gesellschaft leben wir eigentlich? Auszüge aus der Debatte." Frankfurter Rundschau 27 Nov. 1999: 11. Gaschke, Susanne. "Der Stichwortgeber," Die Zeit 11 March 1999. 24 July 1999. . —. "Kommt jetzt die Generation Kassel?" Berliner Republik 3 (2001): 4-6. Härtung, Klaus. "Berliner Übergangszeit. Entwickelt sich in der Hauptstadt eine Stadtgesellschaft und eine neue intellektuelle Kultur?" Berlin. Die Hauptstadt. Vergangenheit und Zukunft einer europäischen Metropole. Ed. Ralf Rytlewski and Werner Süß. Berlin: Nicolai, 1999. 835-867. —. "Doppelgesicht. Über die Paradoxien Berlins." Berlin. Metropole. Kursbuch 137(1999): 7-36. Heine, Matthias. "Langer Wege, kurzer Sinn. 'Pop-Philosoph' Diedrich Diederichsen hält die Berliner Republik fur einen Schwindel." Die Welt 30 Apr. 1999. 19 Jan. 2003. . Herzinger, Richard. "Berliner Mief. Die selbst ernannte 'Generation Berlin' fordert die Verspießerung des intellektuellen Klimas." Die Zeit 23 Sept. 1999. 16 Oct. 1999. Herzog, Roman. "Ich rufe auf zur inneren Erneuerung: Berliner Rede '97." Berlin '97: Das Jahr im Rückspiegel. Ed. Berliner Morgenpost. Berlin: Ullstein, 1997. 8-11. Huyssen, Andreas. "The Voids of Berlin." Critical Inquiry 24 (Autumn 1997). 57-81. lilies, Florian. Generation Golf. Eine Inspektion. Berlin: Argon, 2000. Krüger, Thomas. "Die bewegte Stadt." Die bewegte Stadt. Berlin am Ende der Neunziger. Ed. Thomas Krüger. Berlin: FAB, 1998. 21-26. Monath, Hans. Interview with Heinz Bude. "Ab in die Berliner Republik!" Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt. 13 Nov. 1998. 20 Oct. 1999 . Lau, Mariam Lau. "Neues aus der Schwermutshöhle." Süddeutsche Zeitung 5 Sept. 1999: 16. Morshäuser, Bodo. Liebeserklärung an eine hässliche Stadt. Berliner Gefühle. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998.

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Müller, Jan. "Preparing for the Political: German Intellectuals Confront the New Republic." New German Critique 72 (1997): 151-176. Naumann, Klaus. "Das Herz sagt ja, doch der Verstand sagt nein. Interessen und Leidenschaften in der Hauptstadtdebatte des Deutschen Bundestages am 29. Juni 1991. Mittelweg 36 6(1998): 36-46. "Neue Strategien für Berlin." Presseinformationen von Partner für Berlin 11 Jan. 2000, 19 Jan. 2003 . Oswalt, Philipp. Berlin—Stadt ohne Form. Strategien einer anderen Architektur. München: Prestel, 2000. Paciarelli, Dorota. "Mythos Berlin. Über die Unmöglichkeit der Objektivität in der Wahrnehmung der deutschen Hauptstadt." Berlin. Die Hauptstadt. Vergangenheit und Zukunft einer europäischen Metropole. Ed. Ralf Rytlewski and Werner Süß. Berlin: Nicolai, 1999. 809-822. Schröder, Gerhard. "Meine Berliner Republik." Stern Magazin 36 (1999): 3840. Shusterman, Richard. "Äesthetik der Abwesenheit. Der Wert der Leere: Pragmatische Überlegungen zu Berlin." Lettre International 30 (1998): 30-32. Thiess, Jochen. "Berlin als Medienereignis." Berlin. Die Hauptstadt. Vergangenheit und Zukunft einer europäischen Metropole. Ed. Ralf Rytlewski and Werner Süß. Berlin: Nicolai, 1999. 702-714. Ulrich, Bernd. Deutsch aber glücklich. Berlin: Fest, 1997. "Werbung für Berlin. Volker Hassemer verkauft nun die fünf Stärken dieser Stadt." Der Tagesspiegel 12 January 2000. 13 January 2000 . "Wir über uns—Partner für Berlin." .

RACHEL J. HALVERSON

Washington State University

Living Berlin: Autobiography and the City1 The undulations of twentieth-century German history have wrapped Berlin in layers of historic upheaval from the struggles of the Weimar democracy and the ravages of the National Socialist dictatorship to the deep scars of German division and now the city's rebirth as united Germany's new capital. As Brian Ladd points out in the introduction to The Ghosts of Berlin ·. "Memories often cleave to the physical settings of events" (1). This is certainly true in the case of the memories proffered in the autobiographies and autobiographical fiction published by East German authors following unification, including Günter de Bruyn's Zwischenbilanz: eine Jugend in Berlin (1992) and his Vierzig Jahre: ein Lebensbericht (1996), Christoph Hein's Von allem Anfang an (1997), Hermann Kant's Abspann: Erinnerung an meine Gegenwart (1991), Stephan Krawczyk's Das irdische Kind (1996), and Heiner Müller's Krieg ohne Schlacht: Leben in zwei Diktaturen (1992). In these works, not only do memories of historic and personal events reveal the intricacies of the life stories the authors tell, but also the settings which stage these events disclose the many facets of life in the German Democratic Republic, including the harsh reality of divided Berlin. For East Germans and their government, Berlin-Hauptstadt der DDR ("capital of the GDR")-served as an icon for their national pride, functioning as the central locus from which economic, political, intellectual, and cultural trends radiated throughout the rest of the country. On the surface, East Berlin embodied the realization of socialist ideals not only for East Germans but also for foreign visitors, many of whom would base their opinion of life in the German Democratic Republic on their daytrips to East Berlin. Yet, under the veneer of Eastern Bloc prosperity, the city also was home to significant counter culture movements, such as the writers' and artists' community in Prenzlauer Berg, and was geopolitically positioned as the gateway to the West. It therefore is not surprising that Berlin, with these contradictions, figures prominently in autobiographical texts published by East Germans following unification. 1

I would like to thank my fellow editors, Dr. Carol Anne Costabile-Heming and Dr. Kristie Foell as well as my colleague, Dr. Bernadette Hyner, for their careful reading of this manuscript and their thoughtful suggestions for its improvement.

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In the following pages, I examine the role Berlin plays in four representative post-unification East German autobiographies: de Bruyn's Zwischenbilanz: eine Jugend in Berlin and his Vierzig Jahre: ein Lebensbericht, Hein's Von allem Anfang an, and Krawczyk's Das irdische Kind. De Bruyn, born in 1926 in Berlin, represents the older generation of GDR authors, while Hein and Krawczyk, bom in 1944 in Heinzendorf (Silesia) and in 1955 in Weida respectively, bring the eyes of the middle and younger generations to their life stories.2 To uncover the significance of Berlin in each life story, I evaluate each text's presentation of the city in terms of its position in the chronology of the narrator's life, the reasons for the narrator being in the city, and the insights each author offers into the significance of Berlin in the GDR and in his own life or that of his fictional Doppelgänger. The sum of these evaluations articulates not only the unique position Berlin held in the individual authors' lives, but also presents a collection of multiple meanings for the city which existed beneath the officially sanctioned text of East Berlin. At a time when the city of Berlin is still establishing its identity as the capital of united Germany, understanding the range of meanings embodied in the city and its history is key to fathoming its role in united Germany and united Europe. Günter de Bruyn was an established literary voice in both East and West Germany. Several of his works, such as Buridans Esel (1968), Märkische Forschungen (1979), and Neue Herrlichkeit (1984), are considered to be part of the East German literary canon, and over the years he has been the recipient of numerous awards, including Heinrich-Mann-Preis ("Heinrich Mann Prize") in 1964, Lion-Feuchtwanger-Preis ("Lion Feuchtwanger Prize") in 1981, the Heinrich-Böll-Preis ("Heinrich Boll Prize") in 1990, and the Literaturpreis der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung ("Konrad Adenauer Foundation Prize for Literature") in 1996. De Bruyn's numerous publications following November 1989, such as Jubelschreie, Trauergesänge: Deutsche Befindlichkeiten (1991), Das erzählte Ich: Über Wahrheit und Dichtung in der Autobiographie (1995), and Deutsche Zustände. Über Erinnerungen und Tatsachen, Heimat und Literatur (2001) position him as one of the prominent voices in postunification Germany.3 The two completed volumes of de Bruyn's autobiography—Zwischenbilanz: Eine Jugend in Berlin and Vierzig Jahre: Ein Lebensbericht—capture Berlin at key points in the twentieth century: the Berlin of de Bruyn's childhood in the 1930's and 1940's; the divided Berlin of de Bruyn's young adulthood in the 1950's before the Wall was built; and the 2

3

In his article "The End of Autobiography? The older generation of East German authors take stock," Tate provides a closer examination of generational differences in post-Wende autobiographies. For an examination of de Bruyn's prominence in the literary landscape of post-unification Germany, including the success oí Zwischenbilanz and Vierzig Jahre, de Bruyn's essayistic contributions to major newspapers such as Die Zeit and the FAZ, as well as his selection for numerous literary awards, see Tate, "Günter de Bruyn."

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unifying Berlin of 1989 and 1990. Creating an inseparable bond between his formative years and the city, the subtitle of the first volume of de Bruyn's autobiography alerts the reader to Berlin's importance to the author's identity. As a fellow Berliner, Ursula Reinhold comments on the accuracy with which de Bruyn depicts Berlin in Zwischenbilanz·. [...] vor allem auch durch die topographische Genauigkeit, mit der der Kiez, hier die Siedlungen und Straßen von Britz und Neukölln, erfaßt ist. Sie hält zugleich einen kulturgeschichtlichen Punkt der Entwicklung des großstädtischen Lebens fest, der durch Eingemeindung von Umland, Bebauung bäuerlichen Ackers, kurz der beginnenden Ausuferung der Großstadt gekennzeichnet ist. (30)·1

De Bruyn has experienced the evolution of Berlin first hand, and the two volumes of his autobiography frequently evidence the city's developing contours in response to different regimes and political agendas. The Berlin of de Bruyn's childhood is centered in the family's BerlinBritz apartment, framed by memories of going to the movies and frequenting local bookstores to satisfy his hunger for reading. After harrowing years of war, de Bruyn spends his first night back in Berlin at the Babelsberg Studios. His description of his reentry into Berlin underscores the significance of the city in his life: Für die Gefühlsintensität meiner achtzehn Jahre war diese Heimkehr in die Stadtlandschaft einer abrupt beendeten Kindheit eine arge Strapaze gewesen. Das Karstadt-Hochhaus am Hermannplatz, wo Hannes und ich unermüdliche Rolltreppenfahrer gewesen waren, hatte genauso wie meine Schule neben dem Böhmischen Dorf in Trümmern gelegen, aber viel stärker als diese Zerstörungen hatte mich deren Ausbleiben in Britz bewegt. Da hatte fast alles noch so wie vor Jahren gestanden. [...] Unser Wohnblock, in den die Bomben nur eine Lücke gerissen hatten, war mir kleiner als früher erschienen, und lächerlich winzig war der Schutthügel gewesen, der von unserem Haus Übriggeblieben war. Mein Kindheitsalptraum war Realität geworden: Ich laufe zum Buschkrug, um einen Brief in den Kasten zu werfen, und wenn ich zurückkomme, ist das Haus nicht mehr da. (305)5

4

5

"[...] above all through the topographical exactness, with which the Kiez, in this case the settlements and streets of Britz and Neukölln, are included. This simultaneously captures a cultural-historical point in the development of metropolitan life, which is characterized by the incorporation of surrounding areas, construction on farmable acreage, essentially the beginning expansion of a large city." (Please note that all translations have been done by the author.) "This return home to the cityscape of my abruptly ended childhood was a painful ordeal. The Karstadt building on Hermannplatz, where Hannes and I had been inexhaustible escalator riders, had lain in ruins like my school next to the Bohemian village, but the absence of destruction in Britz affected me much more strongly. Almost everything there was as it had been years ago. Our block of apartments, in which the bombs had only torn a hole, had appeared smaller to me than earlier, and the pile of rubble, the remains of what had been our house, was ridiculously small. My childhood nightmare had become reality: I'm walking to the Buschkrug [a local pub], in order to mail a letter, and when I return, our house is no longer there."

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De Bruyn's childhood fear of loss and abandonment has become a reality in immediate post-war Berlin. This reality forces him to return to school and eventually complete teacher training. Following an obligatory three-year teaching assignment in West Havelland, de Bruyn recounts his return to East Berlin to study library science at the end of Zwischenbilanz. There, his instructors vigorously indoctrinate him and his fellow students to accept the SED and its monopoly on leadership. He concludes this part of his autobiography with the rebuilding of East Berlin, which he sarcastically refers to as "ein besseres, neues Berlin" ("a better new Berlin") (387). Specifically, he mentions the demolition of the Stadtschloß, which later was replaced by the Palast der Republik to house the SED government. In noting this, de Bruyn symbolically marks the end of one era and the beginning of another, both in his life and in German history, thus setting the stage for the continuation of his autobiography hinted at in the beginning of Zwischenbilanz and again promised in the concluding chapter. The second volume of de Bruyn's autobiography, Vierzig Jahre: ein Lebensbericht, spans the forty years from the GDR's founding on 7 October 1949 to 9 November 1989, the date which, for de Bruyn, is the official end of the GDR. The Berlin of this phase in de Bruyn's life story serves two main purposes, one cerebral and one emotional. West Berlin offers de Bruyn a source for intellectual stimulation in the form of books, magazines, and films, and psychologically, the city as a whole envelops him in a sense of home and completeness. Setting the stage for his account of the early years in East Germany, de Bruyn describes Berlin not only as a city of divided administrations and currencies, but also as a city of fluid movement between East and West, for both entertainment and work. This Berlin of the Fifties, reminiscent of the Berlin so clearly depicted in Gerhard Klein's East German film Berliner Romanze (1956), is a city of harmonious co-existence for de Bruyn, a city which retains some semblance of its former self, the pre-World War II Berlin of his childhood, and allows him to a certain degree to ignore the divisive acts of the Allies and the professional tedium of his day job. As de Bruyn notes, "Freilich konnte ich das eintönige Bibliotheksdasein nur deshalb so gut ertragen, weil ich in dienstfreien Stunden ein anderes Leben führte, [...] an den Abenden bei Freunden aus Kindertagen, in Buchhandlungen, Kinos, Theatern, vorwiegend im Westen Berlins" (33).6 To a certain degree, de Bruyn's residence in East Berlin at this time also affords him the illusion of a completeness he had last experienced in the comforts of his childhood home in Berlin of the Thirties. The building of the Wall, however, destroys Berlin's semi-normality and torments de Bruyn both in his dreams and daily life. In his dreams, it is the 6

" T o be sure I really only could tolerate this monotonous library existence, because I led another life in my o f f duty hours, [ . . . ] in the evenings with childhood friends in bookstores, cinemas, and theaters predominantly in West Berlin."

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Wall with its uniformed guards and its barbed wire, bayonets and concrete, which prevents him from returning to his childhood home in Berlin-Britz, now inaccessible in the West. Once again, his nightmares have become reality. In his daily life, de Bruyn never comes to terms with the Wall: "Um sie als normal empfinden zu können, war ich zu sehr mit dem ganzen Berlin und dem ganzen Deutschland verbunden [...]" (109).7 In the closing chapter of Vierzig Jahre, de Bruyn writes the sober subtext for the photos of the jubilant masses and the videos depicting the ecstasy of East and West Germans as they meet, many for the first time, at the now open Wall and on the teeming streets of West Berlin. On 10 November 1989, when de Bruyn crosses to the West, he contemplates: Für sie [die jungen Leute] war das Kreuzberger Ufer mit seinen schäbigen Häuserfassaden und seiner türkisch geprägten Armut sicher eine erste Enttäuschung, mich aber führte es zurück in die Kindheit und brachte mir die banale Erkenntnis näher, daß ich bald zu denen gehören würde, deren Erfahrung nur noch Historiker interessiert. Meine Erinnerungen, die auch die meiner Eltern und Großeltem mit einbegriffen, waren inzwischen fast museal geworden; sie reichten zurück bis zum Einweihungsfest dieser Brücke, von dem meine Großmutter mir erzählt hatte, als ich vier oder fünf Jahre alt war. (259)"

For de Bruyn, this bridge offers more than simply access to West Berlin. It is cloaked in layers of memories spanning from his grandmother, who witnessed its ceremonial opening, to the young East Germans who will recall it as their first passage to the West. Here de Bruyn differentiates between the experiences of his generation, which lived through the rule of two immoral regimes, and the generation of young people, who only know Berlin as a city divided by the Wall and now experience West Berlin for the first time. In these early days of post-Wall Berlin, de Bruyn already suspects the fleeting nature and significance of his own memories in the face of Berlin's bright future. In the decade following the tumultuous fall of 1989, Christoph Hein like de Bruyn has maintained a consistent and productive voice through his publications: Die Ritter der Tafelrunde und andere Stücke (1990), Als Kind habe ich Stalin gesehen. Essais und Reden (1990), Das Napoleon-Spiel. Ein Roman (1993), Exekution eines Kalbes (1994), Randow. Eine Komödie (1995), and Von allem Anfang an (1997). In addition, Hein has also received a number of literary awards in the course of his career. He was the first recipient of the Kritikerpreis (Critics' Prize) from the Verband der Deutschen Kritiker 7 8

"I was much too tied to Berlin and Germany in their entirety to ever perceive of it [the Wall] as normal." "Kreuzberg with its shabby facades and its Turkish-influenced poverty was certainly a first disappointment for them [young people]. It, however, led me back to my childhood and brought me closer to the banal realization, that I soon would belong to those, whose experiences only interested historians. My memories, which also included those of my parents and grandparents, almost belonged in a museum; they extended back to the dedication ceremony of this bridge, which my grandmother had told me about, when I was four or five years old."

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("Association of German Critics") in 1983, and in the years following unification he has been awarded the Austrian Erich-Fried-Preis für Literatur und Sprache ("Erich Fried Prize for Literature and Language") in 1990, the Ludwig-Miihlheims-Preis für religiöse Dramatik ("Ludwig Mühlheim Prize for Religious Drama") in 1992, and the Peter-Weiss-Preis ("Peter Weiss Prize") in 1998. These awards, coupled with his publishing success in both East and West Germany with novels such as Horns Ende (1985), Der fremde Freund (1982) and Der Tangospieler (1989), have established Hein as a high profile author in contemporary German literature. In November 1998, Hein became the first president of the conjoined PEN Center in Germany, a development in the literary communities of East and West Germany that symbolically signaled the unification of German authors. When asked by Der Spiegel why he had taken a position that would clearly take time away from his writing, Hein answered: Das mag mit meiner Herkunft aus einem protestantischen Pastorenhaus zu tun haben. Eine Art Pflichtgefühl, das ich nicht loswerde. Vor ziemlich genau zehn Jahren saß Kurt Vonnegut, damals im Präsidium des amerikanischen PEN, hier auf diesem Sofa und sagte, er kenne aus der Leitung des ostdeutschen PEN-Zentrums niemanden. Es hat mich schon beeindruckt, als er mir aufzählte, wer alles in anderen Ländern sich fur diese undankbare Aufgabe nicht zu schade ist. ("Spiegel-Gespräch" 277)'

This response clearly evidences Hein's awareness of the connection between his past and his present professional life, speaking for the symbiosis between his autobiography and his writing. When the same interviewer engaged Hein in a discussion of the autobiographical content in his then most recent publication Von allem Anfang an, Hein responded with a firm-"[...] wie jedes Buch!" ("like every book") (278), stressing the inseparability of his lived experiences and all his writing, be it autobiographical, fictional, essayistic, or dramatic.10 David W. Robinson echoes this sentiment in the final pages of his Deconstructing East Germany: Christoph Hein's Literature of Dissent. Robinson points to the political potential inherent in Hein's depiction of seemingly non-political events in his novel and maintains that Hein's novel 9

"It may have to do with my roots in a Protestant pastor's family. It is a sense of obligation I cannot get rid of. Almost exactly ten years ago, Kurt Vonnegut, who was president of the American PEN at the time, sat here on this sofa and said that he knew no one from the administration of the East German PEN-Center. It really impressed me when he listed for me all the authors in other countries who are not too good for this thankless task."

10

Many of the initial reviews of Von allem Anfang an classify the book as autobiographical and point to the similarities between Hein and his young protagonist. Both were b o m in Silesia into families who were forced to flee at the end of the war. Both were sons of pastors, grew up in small towns, and went to West Berlin for high school. See for example "Leuchtschrift am Kudamm," Speicher, and Jacobs. For some reviewers, however, the autobiographical character of Von allem Anfang an is a point of criticism. See Baier, Grus, and von Matt. For these reviewers, reading Von allem Anfang an as an autobiography, or at the very least, as autobiographical fiction detracts from the novel's ability to make a literary or political statement on East Germany.

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can be read as evidence "that East Germans, too, led fully human lives" (215). As such, the text contributes to a greater understanding between East and West Germans. Yet to diminish the cultural and historical specificity of Von allem Anfang an, in terms of both the time it was published in Germany and the narrative perspective from which it was written, lessens the potential impact the novel has as a commemoration of life in a country, which has a lasting legacy but no longer exists geopolitically. Similar to the young man de Bruyn has become by the end of Zwischenbilanz and the beginning of Vierzig Jahre, Daniel, the pubescent narrator of Christoph Hein's Von allem Anfang an, discloses in the opening frame of this fictional autobiography that the Berlin which will figure most prominently in his young life is West Berlin in the 1950's. Daniel's departure for West Berlin to attend the Gymnasium, where his brother is already studying, frames memories of his childhood in East Germany. As his narration unfolds, the reason for Daniel's rejection from the Gymnasium in East Germany and his need to study in West Berlin becomes apparent: his father is a minister. Although the city of Berlin remains a touchstone throughout the novel against which the reader measures the current restrictions on Daniel's life and the promise of West Berlin, it does not figure prominently in his life story again until the end of the novel. The final chapter of Von allem Anfang an brings not the expected completion to the book's opening frame by showing Daniel's departure for the Gymnasium in West Berlin. Instead the chapter entitled "Glace Surprise," a reference to a delicious ice cream Daniel's mother had on a previous visit to West Berlin, contextualizes the family's necessary decision to send their sons to West Berlin and chronicles their visit there to see Daniel's brother at the Gymnasium he will attend in two years. It repeatedly has been made clear in the book that the family's Christian beliefs and the fact that Daniel's father is a minister have influenced negatively their position in East German society. However, the immediate impact that this has on Daniel becomes most apparent in the opening paragraph of the final chapter: Die meisten Jungen aus meiner Klasse gingen sonntags auf den Sportplatz. Zwei oder drei von ihnen ließen sich gelegentlich in der Kirche sehen, wenn es wichtige familiäre Ereignisse wie eine Hochzeit oder eine Taufe gab, die mit einem Kirchenbesuch verbunden waren. Doch nur zwei Jungen erschienen jeden Sonntag in der Kirche und gingen nie auf den Sportplatz, selbst dann nicht, wenn unsere in der Kreisliga spielende Mannschaft gegen einen besonders gefurchteten Gegner antreten musste. Sie besuchten den Gottesdienst, obgleich sie sehr viel lieber neben ihren Freunden an der Holzbrüstung gelehnt hätten, um die eigene Mannschaft anzufeuern oder mit sachkundigen Kommentaren zu glänzen. Es waren mein Bruder David und ich. (168)"

11

"On Sundays, most of the boys from my class went to the athletic field. Two or three of them were occasionally seen in church, whenever there were important family events associated with a church visit like a wedding or a baptism. Only two boys attended services every Sunday and never went to the sport field, not even when our team, which played in the

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The narrator's noticeable toggle between the first person and the third person in narrating this aspect of his childhood underscores the significance of the family's religious beliefs for Daniel. Attending church services not only set him and his brother apart from the normal world of their peers, but it also on a certain level alienated him from himself, creating a division between his external physical compliance with his family's practices and his internal desire to conform to the norms of the society he was growing up in. As the book comes to a close, Daniel recounts his family's trip to West Berlin to visit his brother. His memories of this time are rife with dualities, capturing the personal and political dimensions of such a visit to the West in the fifties. As the family drives to Potsdam to catch the streetcar to West Berlin, the police stop the family car, search the trunk and interrogate Daniel's father as to their destination. When Daniel's father answers to visit his son in Berlin, the officer inquires as to which Berlin David lives in. Daniel's father then replies: "Im demokratischen Berlin. Im demokratischen Berlin selbstverständlich" ("In democratic Berlin. In democratic Berlin of course.") (177). This provides another opportunity for Daniel's father to pass on to his children his words of wisdom for survival in East Germany: "Er drehte sich während der Fahrt zu uns um und sagte: 'Man sollte nie lügen und man muss nie lügen. Man muss sich nur manchmal genau überlegen, was man sagt'" (178).12 Recognizing the ambiguity of language and the need to speak and read between the lines was key in East Germany. As becomes clear as the family's trip to Berlin progresses, this is also an essential lesson for Daniel in dealing with perspective and the reporting of current events, in this case the 1956 uprising in Hungary. After visiting David at his school, the family heads to the Kudamm for window-shopping and a café visit. From their table in the café, they can see a lighted marquee scrolling through the day's news, including details of the Soviet squelching of the Hungarian independence movement in 1956. This current event is also a topic of discussion when Daniel returns to school. Since Daniel has shared the details of the family's trip to West Berlin with his friends on the playground, Lucie, one of his classmates, suggests to the teacher that Daniel share his experiences and insights with the rest of the class. The teacher has little patience with Daniel's account of the technical wonders of the lighted marquee: Die Lehrerin unterbrach mich bald, sie sagte, dass sie sich mit mir nicht über eine technische Spielerei unterhalten wolle, dafür sei die internationale Lage viel zu ernst. Dann redete sie

12

district league, was up against a particularly feared opponent. They attended church services, although they much rather would have leaned against the wooden railing next to their friends to cheer on their team or showed off with their expert commentaries. They were my brother David and I." "He turned to us during the trip and said: 'One should never lie and one never has to lie. One has to consider only occasionally exactly what one is going to say."'

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über Ungarn und darüber, dass dumme und naive Menschen wie ich auf die feindliche Propaganda hereinfielen, wenn sie aus einem Elternhaus kämen, das politisch indifferent sei und in dem man nicht als Staatsbürger geschult werde. ( 1 9 2 ) "

Even as a child Daniel can see the difference in the West German and East German reporting of this event. The public humiliation of his teacher's reprimand attacks not only the West German view of this event but also Daniel's family, once again clearly relegating them to a position outside of the officially condoned structures of East German society and demonstrating to Daniel that a trip to West Berlin is much more than a stroll along the Kudamm. Ultimately, Daniel's move to West Berlin concretely represents the distance his family experienced from politically sanctioned mainstream life in East Germany. In contrast to de Bruyn and Hein, Stephan Krawczyk is a relative newcomer to the German literary scene. Periods of great favor and great disfavor have marked his career as an East German Liedermacher and political activist. He received first prize at the sixth Tage des Chansons der DDR ("GDR Song Festival") in 1981. Yet by 1985 the SED had had enough of his sharply critical texts and issued him an Auftrittsverbot ("performance ban") and from that point on Krawczyk was allowed to perform only with great difficulty in churches (Kirchenwitz 129-130). Relying on the sanctuary of East German churches for their performances, Krawczyk and his wife Freya Klier persisted in their efforts for change, and their continued involvement in the East German opposition movement culminated in Krawczyk's arrest on 17 January 1988. Krawczyk's photo on the cover of the 1 February 1988 issue of Der Spiegel entitled "DDR-Jugend: Rebellion hinter der Mauer" ("GDR Youth: Rebellion Behind the Wall") speaks for Krawczyk's prominence in the West and its perception of the East German opposition movement. On 3 February 1988, a few days after this issue of Der Spiegel hit the newsstands, both Krawczyk and Klier were expatriated. Following the initial media frenzy surrounding their deportation, the West German public lost interest in Krawczyk's brand of brusque political ballads. The television documentary "Ein Jahr danach. Freya Klier und Stephan Krawczyk," broadcast by NDR a year after the couple was forced to leave East Germany, portrays both artists as distraught individuals torn from their cause and their home in East Germany, alienated from their West German surroundings, and plagued by the uncertainty of their creative and personal futures in the West ("Ein Jahr danach").

13

"The teacher soon interrupted me and said that she did not want to converse with me about a technical frivolity, the international situation was much too serious for that. Then she talked about Hungary and about the fact that dumb and naïve people like I fell for enemy propaganda, if they came from a home, which was politically indifferent and in which one was not properly schooled as a citizen."

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In the years following the release of his first recording, Wieder Stehen (1988; re-released as a CD in 1996), Krawczyk has explored several different forms of artistic expression. His second recording, Terrormond, was released in 1993, and his third, Milonga, in 1995. In 1996, he published his first work of prose, Das irdische Kind, a collection of untitled autobiographical vignettes depicting his childhood in East Germany. His second novel, Bald, appeared in 1998, and his third Steine hüten in 2000. It is important to note that Krawczyk's musical and literary careers are entwined. On his CD Terrormond he recites two texts, "Onkel Alfred" and "Onkel Jorg," which also appear in Das irdische Kind. In addition to his nascent literary career, Krawczyk has become active in recent years in the fight to eliminate chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and has even performed at PDS election rallies, prompting much criticism from fans, friends and family. As Krawczyk's first venture into publishing prose, Das irdische Kind received a limited number of mixed reviews in the German press, and literary scholars have yet to include an analysis of the book in their scholarly publications. Some reviewers praise Krawczyk's style. Ralf Schuler lauds Krawczyk for offering his readers something other than the "ultimativen Wende-Roman" ("ultimate unification novel"): "Er hat nicht geliefert, was man erwartet hätte und damit fur stille Bewunderung gesorgt. In kurzen, stimmungsvollen Episoden erinnert er sich an seine Jugend im thüringischen Weida und verbindet sie im Roman zur großen literarischen Form" (Schuler).'4 In his review for FAZ, Ralf Konersmann recognizes the autobiographical nature of the book: "Stephan Krawczyks Roman erzählt von Kindeijahren in Weida, und wie in all diesen Geschichten, die teils autobiographisch, teils Heimatroman sind, geht auch hier das Besondere und Einmalige eine Verbindung mit dem Typischen und Bezeichnenden ein" (Konersmann 28).15 The reviewers' almost unanimous characterization of Das irdische Kind as an essentially apolitical collection of Krawczyk's childhood memories initially appears to be a fair judgment of the book's contents. Yet, the striking contrast between Krawczyk's controversial career as a Liedermacher and his focus on the seemingly idyllic moments of his childhood in Das irdische Kind demands a closer examination. Similar to Hein's Von allem Anfang an, Krawczyk's account also focuses on childhood memories. In Das irdische Kind, Krawczyk's participation in the "Treffen junger Sozialisten [...] in der Hauptstadt der Deutschen

14

15

"He didn't deliver what one would have expected and therefore ensured silent admiration. In short moving episodes, he remembers his youth in Thuringian Weida and connects these episodes to create a novel of great literary form." "Stephan Krawczyk's novel tells of his childhood in Weida and how in all these stories, which are partly autobiographical and partly a work of regional literature, the special and once in a lifetime is connected to the typical and characteristic in life." See Klein, Scheer, und Soldat for critical reviews of Krawczyk's narrow depiction of his childhood in Das irdische Kind to the exclusion of the larger political milieu of life in East Germany.

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Demokratischen Republik" ("Meeting of young Socialists in the capital of the German Democratic Republic") (153) reveals his youthful political awareness. In explaining how he was selected to travel to East Berlin, Krawczyk narrates an extensive political hierarchy: In Wirklichkeit mußte der Klassenverband ideologisch organisiert sein, was bedeutete, daß er dem Gruppenrat unterstellt gewesen ist, dieser der FDJ-Leitung der Grundorganisation, dieser der Kreisleitung der Freien Deutschen Jugend, diese der Bezirksleitung selbjeniger, diese der Bezirksleitung der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands und dem FDJZentralrat in Berlin, diese allesamt dem Zentralkomitee der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei, dieses dem Politbüro, dieses dem Ersten Sekretär und Vorsitzenden des Staatsrates der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, dieser dem Ersten Sekretär der Kommunistischen Partei der Sowjetunion und dieser Gott oder seinem guten Gewissen. (153-154) 16

This inclusion is striking on two counts. Up to this point, he has made no detailed statements about the SED and the governing of East Germany, and it therefore stands out starkly from the more implicitly political stories of his family, such as Krawczyk's description of his father, a blue-collar uranium miner who eventually succumbs to a debilitating lung disease typical of his profession, and his pride in his working class status. Furthermore, it serves not only to circumscribe succinctly the actual party structure but also illuminates Krawczyk's position as a young member of the FDJ near the bottom of the East German power pyramid. Although the reasons for the election were not transparent to the young East Germans and the simple thrill of being elected appealed to general human nature, the higher powers clearly dictated that this election was to take place. In addition, the power politics at play in the country were communicated to young people on both an organizational as well as geographical level. In both cases, all roads led to East Berlin. Apart from Krawczyk's description of the socialist bonding experience during the train ride to East Berlin, his account of the time spent in the city reflects a political awareness that extends beyond the intended observations expected of a member of the FDJ. Krawczyk suitably is impressed by his first subway ride, the masses on Alexanderplatz, the mural on the Haus des Lehrers ("House of the Teacher"), which Krawczyk recognizes from Meyers Lexikon in drei Bänden, and the television tower. What is most striking about his impressions of East Berlin is the contrast he notices between the center of the city and the Hans-Loch-Viertel, where he is housed with a host family during 16

"In reality the class association had to be organized ideologically, which meant, that it was placed under the section council, this under the Free German Youth administration of the organization, this under the county administration of the Free German Youth, this under the state administration of the organization, this under the state administration of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and the Central Council of the Free German Youth in Berlin, all of which were under the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party, which was under the Politbüro, which was under the First Secretary and president of the cabinet of the German Democratic Republic, who was under the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, who was under God or his good conscience."

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his stay: "Die Gegend war fremd und tot-Betonquader, Straßen und flimmernde Fenster" ("The area was foreign and dead-concrete blocks, streets, and flickering windows") (156). Bom in Weida in 1955, Krawczyk represents a generation that only knew Berlin as a divided city, a symbol of the parameters of the Cold War. His brief visit to East Berlin presented him with memorable impressions of great inequality in a country officially committed to a classless society. Krawczyk's youthful observation is particularly relevant to his life story in light of his eventual expulsion from East Germany. In retrospect, it demonstrates Krawczyk's awareness of his country's problems and allows us to read Das irdische Kind as a statement on the origins of Krawczyk's political convictions. It explains on the one hand his loyalty to East Germany and the promises of socialism and on the other hand his consciousness that the reality of his homeland was far removed from the ideals of the official party line. Das irdische Kind closes with the two vignettes explicitly stated to have taken place in 1995 following Krawczyk's dramatic forced exit to the West in 1988 and German unification. The first of these two vignettes takes place in a bar in Berlin and is a sort of reunion of Krawczyk's childhood friends from Weida, where he allows his friends to read parts of the manuscript for Das irdische Kind before it has been published. This event explicitly confirms the validity of Krawczyk's accounts of their shared childhood and implicitly documents the freedom of movement German unification has brought with it. This brief four-page vignette speaks volumes on the transformation of Berlin in the course of Krawczyk's lifetime from a rigidly divided to an open metropolis where expatriated East Germans once again can meet with friends from whom they were separated forcibly. The celebratory mood of this vignette set in Berlin contrasts sharply with the grim reality of life in the new German states immediately following unification portrayed in the final vignette. Krawczyk concludes Das irdische Kind with one last visit to Weida, the city of his birth and childhood. Although not specified, it is clearly following unification. Many of the former businesses are closed and several features of the village have become monuments: "Das Viadukt ist ein Industriedenkmal, die Pestkanzel ein Kulturdenkmal, die Schwedeneiche ein Naturdenkmal" ("The viaduct is a Memorial to Industry, the pulpit a Memorial to Culture, the Swedish oak a Memorial to Nature") (266). The words of destruction and finality ("abgesägt" ["sawed off'], "dichtgemacht" ["closed down"], "abgehackt" ["chopped off'], "geschlossen" ["closed"], "zugemauert" ["bricked up"], "vernagelt" ["nailed up"]) Krawczyk uses to describe Weida create a ghost-town atmosphere in the village that once was the site of Krawczyk's most vivid memories. His former stomping grounds familiar at one time have mutated into a foreign world for Krawczyk as he describes driving through Weida: "Es ist wie im Simulator-außerirdisch" ("It was like a simulator-extraterrestrial.") (266). This observation emphasizes the alienation Krawczyk feels from a world that he previously knew on the

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most intimate level. Closing Das irdische Kind on such a note pointedly speaks to Krawczyk's position in unified Germany, a world that is essentially another planet for him. This casts a different light on the childhood memories he presents on the preceding pages. Memories once detached from the present world of unified Germany contrast with that world and emphasize the alienation experienced by many East Germans when they observe the transformation of their once most intimate environment. These two contrasting vignettes also point to the touchstone role Berlin has played in Krawczyk's life. It is his trip to Berlin as a schoolboy that opens Krawczyk's eyes to the double standard of living present in his country's capital. Whereas his return as an adult from Berlin to his hometown in Weida confronts him with the changes and inequities unification has brought to the new German states. What are we to make of the portrayal of Berlin in these four autobiographical works? None of the texts examined here offers a heretoforeunknown view of the city. It is well documented that there was great fluidity of movement between the two halves of the city before the Wall was built and certainly no secret that the official party line in East Germany on political uprisings in other Eastern Bloc countries supported the Soviet crackdowns in contrast with the Western view of these events as acts of oppression. The center of East Berlin was also widely recognized as East Germany's showcase to the world, a price that was paid by other neglected sections of the city and country. Yet, when one juxtaposes each author's memories of the city with his generation and relationship to the SED, the individual portrayals of the city gain distinctive profiles. As representative of authors who experienced Nazi Germany, WWII and Germany's occupation and division, de Bruyn's memories of the city capture its essence before its final division by the Wall and mourn the loss of the wholeness of an undivided Berlin. De Bruyn, born and raised in the city, feels violated and traumatized by the foreign powers and their creation of occupation zones and Ulbricht's building of the Wall, and yet he acknowledges in the closing pages of Vierzig Jahre that unification comes too late for his generation. As a representative of the middle generation of authors, Hein brings his readers the divided Berlin of his childhood; a Berlin where East met West and the differences in the two political blocs of the Cold War were readily apparent in crossing from one side of the city to the other. Krawzcyk's generation knew only a Berlin divided by the Wall and for those like Krawczyk, who were not allowed to travel to the West, their familiarity with the city remained limited to its eastern half. When viewed together, these distinct representations of Berlin offer a continuum of the city's history and remind readers that unified Germany's capital with its recent history of colossal construction sites, the Christo wrapping of the Reichstag and the new Kanzleramt ("federal chancellery") nicknamed "die Waschmaschine" ("the washing machine") has a convoluted history. This exists not only on the printed page of schoolbooks and academic studies, but also within the life

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stories of authors who contributed to the intellectual and political fabric of a country, which no longer exists. As Karen Remmler notes in her introduction to a special issue of The German Quarterly on sites of memory: "Witnessing an event does not necessarily give one the last word or authority over the memory, but it does give one the right to authenticity—something those who come after do not share" (337). It is the very authenticity that de Bruyn, Hein, and Krawczyk bring to their lived experiences in Berlin that renders them significant. Ultimately, the collective commemorative act resulting from the sum of their life stories presents and preserves layers of life in Berlin, key not only to remembering the city's past but also to understanding their implications for the future of Germany's chosen new capital. Works Cited Baier, Lothar. "Nackte Brüste und die Partei der Bestimmer." Rev. of Von allem Anfang an, by Christoph Hein, die tageszeitung 15 Oct. 1997: ν. de Bruyn, Günter. Buridans Esel. Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1968. —. Das erzählte Ich: Uber Wahrheit und Dichtung in der Autobiographie. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1995. —. Deutsche Zustände. Über Erinnerungen und Tatsachen, Heimat und Literatur. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2001. —. Jubelschreie, Trauergesänge: Deutsche Befindlichkeiten. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1991. —. Märkische Forschungen: Erzählung für Freunde der Literaturgeschichte. Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1979. —. Neue Herrlichkeit. Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1984. —. Vierzig Jahre: Ein Lebensbericht. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1996. —. Zwischenbilanz: Eine Jugend in Berlin. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1992. "Ein Jahr danach. Freya Klier und Stephan Krawczyk." Mod. Uwe Heitkamp. Kulturreportage. NDR. Germany. 15 January 1989. Eine Berliner Romanze. Screenplay by Wolfgang Kohlhaase. Dir. Gerhard Klein. Perf. Annekathrin Bürger, Ulrich Thein, Uwe-Jens Pape, Erika Dunkelmann, and Erich Franz. DEFA, 1956. "Erinnern, sterben." die Tageszeitung 14 Dec. 1996: 18. Grus, Michael. "Protestantismus & Speiseeis." Rev. of Von allem Anfang an, by Christoph Hein. Frankfurter Rundschau 8 Dec. 1997: 18. Hein, Christoph. Als Kind habe ich Stalin gesehen. Essais und Reden. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1990. —. Exekution eines Kalbes. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1994. —. Der fremde Freund. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1982. —. Horns Ende. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1985, and Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1985.

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Das Napoleon-Spiel. Ein Roman. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1993. Randow. Eine Komödie. Berlin: Henschelschauspiel, 1995. Die Ritter der Tafelrunde und andere Stücke. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1990. "Spiegel-Gespräch." Interview with Martin Doerry and Volker Hage. Der Spiegel. 9 Nov. 1998: 277-281. —. Der Tangospieler. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1989, and Frankfurt am Main: Luchterhand, 1989. —. Von allem Anfang an. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1997. Jacobs, Peter. "Von der Bindungslosigkeit der Artistentruppe." Rev. of Von allem Anfang an, by Christoph Hein. Die Welt 2 Sept. 1997: 10. Kant, Hermann. Abspann: Erinnerung an meine Gegenwart. Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1991. Kirchenwitz, Lutz. Folk, Chanson, und Liedermacher der DDR: Chronisten, Kritiker, Kaisergeburtstagssänger. Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1993. Klein, Erdmute. "Stoß ins Herz. Stephan Krawczyk, Liedermacher und Schriftsteller." Rev. of Das irdische Kind, by Stephan Krawczyk. Der Tagesspiegel 10 Aug. 1996: 20. Konersmann, Ralf. "Frau Hase und Frau Hahn." Rev. of Das irdische Kind, by Stephan Krawczyk. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 9 Aug. 1996: 28. Krawcyzk, Stephan. Bald. Berlin: Verlag Volk & Welt, 1998. —. Das irdische Kind. Berlin: Verlag Volk & Welt, 1996. —. Steine hüten. Berlin: Verlag Volk & Welt, 2000. Ladd, Brian. The Ghosts of Berlin. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997. "Leuchtschrift am Kudamm." Rev. of Von allem Anfang an, by Christoph Hein. Der Spiegel 25 Aug. 1997: 178. von Matt, Peter. "Fort mit der Taschenguillotine." Rev. of Von allem Anfang an, by Christoph Hein. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 14 Oct. 1997: L7. Müller, Heiner. Krieg ohne Schlacht: Leben in zwei Diktaturen. Cologne: Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1992. Reinhold, Ursula. "Authenzität und ästhetische Distanz: Elemente des Erzählens in »Zwischenbilanz. Eine Jugen in B e r l i n « . " in Text und Kritik. Sonderheft Günter de Bruyn 127 (1995): 27-35. Remmler, Karen. Introduction. Sites of Memory. Spec, issue of The German Quarterly 74.4 (2001): 336-342. Robinson, David W. Deconstructing East Germany: Christoph Hein 's Literature of Dissent. Rochester: Camden House, 1999. Scheer, Udo. "Hübsches Familienalbum zollt dem augenblicklichen Trend zum Unpolitischen Tribut: Stephan Krawczyk." Rev. of Das irdische Kind, by Stephan Krawczyk. Der Tagesspiegel 18 Aug. 1996: W5. Schuler, Ralf. "Ist Kunst nicht das Höchste ? Liedermacher Stephan Krawczyk blickt zurück - in seinem Roman." Rev. of Das irdische Kind, by Stephan Krawczyk. Die Welt 27 July 1996: G2.

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Soldat, Hans-Georg. "Stephan Krawczyk: Das irdische Kind. Skizzen eines Lebens." Rev. of Das irdische Kind, by Stephan Krawczyk. Berliner Zeitung 1 Oct. 1996: 3. Speicher, Stephan. "Als man sich auf alles einrichtete, als man sich gegen alles wappnete." Rev. of Von allem Anfang an, by Christoph Hein. Berliner Zeitung 20/21 Sept. 1997: V. Tate, Dennis. "Günter de Bruyn: The 'Gesamtdeutsche Konsensfigur' of PostUnification Literature?" German Life and Letters 50.2 (1997): 201-213. —. "The End of Autobiography? The older generation of East German authors take stock." Legacies and Identity. Ed. Martin Kane. Bern: Peter Lang, 2002. 11-26.

Representation

STEPHEN BROCKMANN

Carnegie Mellon University

Divided and Reunited Berlin in Peter Schneider's Fiction Peter Schneider is one of the best-known contemporary German writers in the English-speaking world. His works, unlike those of most other contemporary German authors, are regularly translated into English, and he has written articles for prestigious publications in the United States such as The New York Times Magazine and Harper's. Schneider therefore has a presence in the English-speaking world that is disproportionate to his presence in Germany itself, where other authors, such as Friedrich Christian Delius, are just as prominent or even, in the case of Martin Walser, significantly more prominent. However neither Delius nor Walser is regularly translated into English, and both are relatively unknown among non-specialists in the United States. Schneider is viewed in the English-speaking world as a major spokesperson on questions of German national identity generally and on the formerly divided and now reunited city of Berlin specifically. Schneider's status as expert is due primarily to his authorship of Der Mauerspringer (1982). That book was followed by two other literary fictions about Berlin and Germany over the course of the subsequent decades: Paarungen in 1992 and Eduards Heimkehr in 1999. These three works are advertised on the jacket cover of the latter book as a literary "Chronik der letzten drei Jahrzehnte in Berlin,"1 and they have been treated by critics as forming a kind of literary unit, especially since Paarungen and Eduards Heimkehr, in spite of major chronological inconsistencies between the two novels, appear to have some of the same characters.2 In this essay I explore the development of Schneider's

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"chronicle of the last three decades in Berlin"—my translation. In spite of many similarities, the characters and stories of Paarungen and Eduards Heimkehr are connected to each other only very loosely. In the penultimate chapter of Paarungen Eduard is represented as having married, moved in with, and had a child with a woman named Jenny. The fact that Eduard meets Jenny shortly after the Soviets shot down a Korean Airlines passenger jet (Paarungen 98)—i.e., if the novel is historically accurate, in September of 1983—would suggest that Eduard's and Jenny's first child cannot have been born earlier than late 1984. In Eduards Heimkehr—most of which appears to take place in 1993—, Eduard and Jenny have three children, the oldest of whom must already be well into her teens, and the youngest of whom—a son named Loris—must be at least eleven. This

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explorations of Berlin specifically and of the German question more generally in the three works. I contend that because of its open form and multiple narrators Der Mauerspringer is a successful exploration of a divided Berlin and a divided Germany, but that because of their self-absorbed and narcissistic single narrators and closed narrative structure the two later novels are significantly less successful at addressing the complexity of problems in Germany and Berlin. In Der Mauerspringer, which takes place during the period 1979-1980, the "German Question" appears primarily as an absent pain, and the divided city of Berlin is the perfect location for exploring that absence.3 Having arrived in Berlin from West Germany shortly after the construction of the Wall in the early 1960s, like Schneider himself, the story's narrator has lived in the divided city for two decades. He takes an anthropological-scientific interest in exploring the habits and mentalities of the city's residents as well as his own responses to life in what he calls the "siamesischen Stadt" (Mauerspringer 6).4 This attitude is also to be found in Eduard Hoffmann, the main character of the later novels, whose professional training as a natural scientist would seem to predispose him, at least in his own opinion, toward an objective, detached, analytical approach. Informing his friend Robert, an "Übersiedler" from the GDR, of his intention to collect "Geschichten über die geteilte Stadt" (.Mauerspringer 18),5 the narrator of Der Mauerspringer subsequently admits: "Ich bin mir meines Vorhabens nicht sicher. Nicht die Empfindimg einer unerträglichen Situation hat mich dazu gebracht, sondern das Mißtrauen in die Abwesenheit einer solchen Empfindung" (Mauerspringer 19).6 The narrator has long since gotten used to the existence of the Wall, and it does not seem to bother him: "Tatsächlich sehe ich die Mauer nicht mehr: dies, obwohl sie nächst der chinesischen das einzige Bauwerk auf der Erde sein dürfte, das sich vom Mond aus mit bloßem Auge erkennen läßt" (Mauerspringer 8).7

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would suggest that the Eduard of the latter book must have had his first child at least five years earlier than the Eduard of the earlier book. The 1979-1980 date is based on the fact that during the course of Der Mauerspringer the GDR celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, Soviet troops invade Afghanistan, and the United States and the Soviet Union play ice hockey against each other at the winter Olympics. "Siamese city" (Wall Jumper 5). McDonald notes: "The neutral position that our walljumping narrator would like to assume is basically that of a disinterested anthropologist [...]" (143). "stories about the divided city" (Wall Jumper 20). "Übersiedler" was a word used to refer specifically to Germans who had left East Germany to live in West Germany; it contrasted to "Umsiedler," which referred (and still refers) to Germans who have left Eastern European countries other than the GDR to settle in the Federal Republic. "I'm not sure of my purpose in collecting these stories. It isn't the sense of an unbearable situation that has pushed me to the project; rather, my uneasiness at the absence of that sense" (Wall Jumper 20). "I really don't see the Wall anymore, even if it is the only structure on earth, apart from the Great Wall of China, that can be seen from the moon with the naked eye" (Wall Jumper 7).

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The ability not to see such a massive object would seem to suggest an unconscious act of repression, and many of the German-German reflections in the book center around the possibility of such repression. The narrator's humorous search for stories of people crossing the Wall is an attempt to explore the vestiges of a missing and probably repressed feeling of wounded national identity. Thirty years after the division of Germany and twenty years after the construction of the Wall, Germans living in the Federal Republic and West Berlin—for whom the narrator becomes the story's primary representative—have lost any feelings of pain that they once may have associated with national and urban division. "Die deutsche Frage hat also in dreißig Jahren Speck angesetzt, und man kann nicht behaupten, daß sich die Deutschen westlich der Elbe sonderlich damit quälen" (Mauerspringer 26). 8 All attempts by politicians to revive feelings of national identity "wirken künstlich" (Mauerspringer 27), 9 and tend to put the West German public to sleep. If phantom pain reminds human beings of limbs that are missing, then what the narrator and other Germans in the Federal Republic and West Berlin are experiencing is a kind of phantom painlessness or anesthesia. Rather than feeling a pain that they ought not to be feeling, they are not feeling a pain, which they ought to be feeling. They have, in other words, a false sense of well-being and wholeness. The narrator admits that in the past he has gone out of his way to avoid being reminded of national division. "Seit ich in Westberlin lebe," the narrator informs us, "ist das Bauwerk, das drüben als Staatsgrenze und hüben als Sehenswürdigkeit gilt, für mich nur ein Grund zum Abbiegen gewesen" (Mauerspringer 24). 10 This admission reinforces the impression that the narrator is driven by a powerful need to repress the fact of the Wall's existence; his decision ultimately to begin collecting stories about the Wall is thus a kind of amateur psychotherapy: intentional memory work. The narrator does not make his first visit to the Wall—about which he is simultaneously writing a book—until twenty years after its construction. There he finds little but tourists and guards inspecting each other with binoculars. The Wall is thus a kind of narcissistic "Spiegel, der [...] Tag für Tag sagt, wer der Schönste im Lande ist" (Mauerspringer 12)." What West Germans and West Berliners see when they look at the Wall is an all-too-flattering image of themselves, not the real lives and problems of people living on the other side. It is the narrator's declared intention to move beyond this short-circuit and achieve both self-

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"The German question has put on weight in thirty years, and you can't claim that Germans west of the Elbe fret over it much" (Wall Jumper 29). "seem artificial" ( Wall Jumper 27). "As long as I've lived in West Berlin, I have treated the structure that is considered a state border over there and a tourist attraction over here as simply an inconvenience" (Wall Jumper 26). "mirror that told them, day by day, who was the fairest one of all" ( Wall Jumper 12).

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knowledge and knowledge of the ideological and national Other beyond the Wall. The narrator's desire to explore the nature of German division is rooted in a crisis of identity at once national and personal. Both his former girlfriend Lena and his drinking buddy Robert are originally from the GDR, and the narrator attributes his difficulties in communicating with them to different forms of socialization in the East German state. Whereas Robert assumes the existence of an all-powerful state and thus tends to create and believe in conspiracy theories—virtually any event can be attributed to a carefully thought-out and nefarious government plan, he thinks—, the narrator, like Schneider a veteran of the West German student movement of the 1960s, inhabits a more anarchistic political world in which spontaneity and chance play a significant role and the state is just as subject to historical uncertainty as individual human beings. The narrator's difference of opinion with Lena is similar. Whereas Lena insists on absolute linguistic clarity, the narrator favors irony, metaphor, and word play. The narrator attributes Lena's fear of ambiguity to an authoritarian education in the GDR: "In dieser Sehnsucht nach Klarheit und Entschlossenheit setzte sich noch bei seinen Gegnern die Erziehung eines Staates zu unverbrüchlicher Treue, kämpferischem Einsatz, eiserner Entschlossenheit durch" (Mauerspringer 87).12 However the narrator's recognition that human nature in the GDR is agreeable ultimately leads him to the suspicion that such malleability is equally prevalent among inhabitants of the German West. He therefore begins to question the very basis for individual identity in both German states: Daß es gelungen war, in einem Volk, an dessen Wesen einmal die Welt genesen sollte, innerhalb von dreißig Jahren zwei entgegengesetzte Gesellschaftssysteme zu etablieren, war vielleicht schon erstaunlich genug. Erstaunlicher war, in welchem Maß dieser äußere Gegensatz in das Verhalten und in die Reflexe jedes einzelnen eingedrungen war. (Mauerspringer 14)'3

Finally the narrator begins to wonder to what extent he himself is a product of western society: Die Erkenntnis von der Formbarkeit des einzelnen in diesem Land erkennt die Mauer nicht an und sucht früher oder später die Ich-Form: Was wäre aus mir geworden, wie würde ich denken, wie sähe ich aus, wenn. (Mauerspringer 14)14

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"This longing for frankness and resolution revealed the effect, even on dissidents, of a state education in steadfast loyalty, militant commitment, and iron determination" (Wall Jumper

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"It was surprising enough that two antagonistic social systems could have been set up in a span of thirty years and among a people whose spirit was once supposed to 'heal the world.' That this external antagonism had permeated the behavior and reflexes of each individual in the two systems was even more so" (Wall Jumper 14). "An awareness of individual plasticity in this country doesn't stop at the Wall; and sooner or later, one approaches it in the first person: What would I have become, how would I think,

102).

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The narrator thus becomes alienated from the roots of his own identity. In the words of Edward R. McDonald, he must "confront the existence of his own social indoctrination and its byproduct, his own inflexible value judgments and their ongoing influence" (128). The narrator comes to understand that just like his East German writer-friend Pommerer, whom he frequently visits in the other half of the divided city, he too is influenced and even formed by a specific state identity. Ultimately the narrator asks himself "Wo hört ein Staat auf und fängt ein Ich an?" {Mauerspringer 80), 15 only to repeat this question even more pointedly slightly later: Wo hört ein Staat auf und fängt ein Ich an? Wir sind wieder wer. In diesem Satz stört immer das "Wieder." Wer endlich wer wird, muß einmal niemand gewesen sein. (Mauerspringer 107)' 6

The neurotic impulse constantly to compare the one state to the other appears to have its roots in a fundamental loss of identity. Because Germans do not have a positive sense of who they are—because they have perceived themselves at least temporarily as "niemand"—, the narrator believes they have to seek their identity in a negative way, through the specification of what they are not. . The other German state provides such a negative identity, and therefore the two states are, he concludes, caught in a psychopolitical endless loop that has profound effects on the two populations. In the narrator's explorations, the political and social differences between the GDR and the Federal Republic have replicated themselves at most levels of the social structure, from the top to the bottom, so that there are now, in essence, not only two different German states but also two different kinds of German people; and the two kinds of Germans do not understand each other. The national-political slogan of the Federal Republic—"zwei Staaten, eine Nation"—would therefore seem to be wishful thinking. 17 Life in the GDR is far more incomprehensible to the narrator than life in some foreign countries: "Das Leben dort war nicht nur der äußeren Organisation nach verschieden; es gehorchte bis in die Reflexe hinein einem anderen Gesetz. [...] In New York würde ich mich besser zurechtfinden als in der halben Stadt, die fünf Kilometer Luftlinie von meiner Wohnung entfernt war" (Mauerspringer 13).18 The differences between East

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how would I look, if?" (Wall Jumper 14; italics in the published English-language translation). "Where does a state end and a self begin?" (Wall Jumper 95). "Where does the state end and a self begin? We're somebody again. The 'again' always bothered me in that phrase. If you finally become somebody, you must have been nobody once" (Wall Jumper 125-126). "two states, one nation"—my translation. "Life there didn't differ simply in outward organization; it obeyed another law. To attribute this to a different social order and pace of development was to label it too hastily. I could orient myself better in New York than in the half-city just a little over three miles from my apartment" (Wall Jumper 13).

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and West Germans are now self-perpetuating, the narrator suggests; they no longer depend on the existence of two different states. In a thought experiment which, in the early 1980s, probably seemed entirely hypothetical, the narrator asks himself what would happen if the two German governments, the border guards, and the official television commentators were simply to disappear for a year, leaving East and West Germans alone with each other. His conclusion: Sie würden—nach einer kurzen Umarmung—herausfinden, daß sie ihren Regierungen viel ähnlicher sind, als sie vielleicht hofften. Es würde sich herausstellen, daß sie den biographischen Zufall, in verschiedenen Besatzungszonen aufgewachsen zu sein, aus denen dann zwei gegensätzliche Gesellschaftssysteme wurden, längst zu ihrer Sache gemacht haben. Spätestens bei der Frage, in welcher Hälfte ein Leben vorzuziehen sei, würde sich der Streit, den beide Staaten täglich Uber die Medien fuhren, in den Wohnzimmern fortsetzen. Wer bisher Zuhörer war, müßte nachträglich beginnen, in den zweidimensionalen Sprechern im Femseher den eigenen, stark vergröberten Schatten zu erkennen. (Mauerspringer 6 2 ) "

Germans in the two states are thus far more similar to their respective leaders than they would like to think. Towards the end of his story, the narrator sums up the seemingly irreconcilable differences between East and West Germans in words that have become famous in the post-Wall period: "Die Mauer im Kopf einzureißen wird länger dauern, als irgendein Abrißunternehmen für die sichtbare Mauer braucht" (Mauerspringer 102).20 After the Wall's elimination, McDonald noted: "As events in the wake of the political unification still unfold, we must somberly acknowledge Schneider's perspicacity" (127). Since neither of the two Germanys offers its inhabitants a positive sense of national identity, the various stories about Wall jumpers—told by the narrator, by Robert, by Pommerer, and by others—revolve around the one structure that seems, paradoxically, to guarantee individual and national identity: the Wall itself. Far from being what Marilyn Sibley Fries called "that unknowable center that prohibits identification of self and place" (37), the Wall in Schneider's narrative becomes the source of personal and national identity. Taken in their entirety, the various characters in the stories form the outline of a more allencompassing German character who has become "mißtrauisch [...] gegen die hastig ergriffene Identität" offered by the two rump states (Mauerspringer 21). This is a character "der sein Ich verliert und anfängt, niemand zu 19

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"After a brief embrace, they would discover that they resemble their governments much more closely than they care to admit. It would become evident that they have long since made their own crusade out of the biographical accident of growing up in different occupation zones—later, different social systems. As soon as someone asked which half offers a better life, the fight that both states carry on daily in the media would break out in the living room. Those who until then had acted as bystanders would be forced to recognize their own crudely amplified shadows in the two-dimensional figures on TV" (Wall Jumper 72). "It will take us longer to tear down the Wall in our heads than any wrecking company will need for the Wall we can see" ( Wall Jumper 119). "Having come to distrust the hastily adopted identity" (Wall Jumper 23).

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werden" (Mauerspringer 21 ),22 just as Germans themselves have become "niemand." But this narrative loss of identity is at least partially positive, because it implies that the stories' "niemand" also gives up all partial and inauthentic forms of individual and state identity. As Susan Anderson has noted, the "repeated deferral of the object prevents the main narrator from settling into his desired role of subject and from setting a boundary around his own identity" (365). The narrator's self-questioning opens up the liberating possibility of playing with different subject positions and articulating the contingency of identity itself. It is precisely at the Wall—"nur noch auf der Grenze" {Mauerspringer 21)23—that the narrator's unidentifiable "niemand" who has lost his "Ich" feels at home, because the Wall offers at least a reminder of a fuller, more positive German identity that is lacking. Although the main characters in all the stories perform various kinds of Wall jumping, their acts of prowess do not have their origin in a need to reaffirm the value of western freedom or to reject Communist tyranny; rather, the Wall is the one place in Germany where the identity of both German rump states can be perceived as inadequate and oppressive, and where the jumpers can, paradoxically, begin to have a sense of personal fulfillment and identity. In no man's land the "niemand" can truly become "wieder wer." And yet in spite of the differences between the two German societies and the narrator's conviction that these differences will continue to exist even in the absence of the Wall, there are occasional hints throughout the story that Germans in East and West share more similarities than they might like to imagine. As Gisela Shaw has noted, "what disconcerts the narrator most is the juxtaposition of similarity and total contrast which characterizes the relation between the two halves" of Germany (195). It is this sense of an underlying German identity that persists in spite of all differences that is missing in Anderson's analysis of Der Mauerspringer, which focuses exclusively on nonidentity. In the story's opening paragraphs, which describe Berlin from the point of view of a passenger flying into the Tegel airport in West Berlin—a journey in which the airplane must cross over the Wall no fewer than three times, and in which the freedom to travel enjoyed by the airplane's shadow on the ground is lost when the airplane finally lands and becomes one with its shadow—, the narrator takes on the objective tone of a distanced scientific observer, for whom "das Stadtbild kaum Anhaltspunkte fur eine politische Zuordnung [bietet]" (Mauerspringer 6).24 The two parts of Berlin would seem to be substantially similar to any objective viewer. "Auch im Niedergehen des Flugzeugs wird der Ortsfremde die beiden Stadtteile nicht voneinander

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"who loses himself and starts turning into nobody" (Wall Jumper 22). "only on the border" (Wall Jumper 23). "the cityscape offers hardly any guide to political affiliation" ( Wall Jumper 4).

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unterscheiden," the narrator informs us (Mauerspringer 5-6).25 Ultimately it is only the persistent duplication of major public institutions such as "Fernsehturm, Kongreßzentrum, Zoo, Rathaus, Sportsstadion" that points to the possibility of two different political entities in the midst of a city "in der der gleiche Geschmack dasselbe zweimal hervorgebracht hat" (Mauerspringer The narrator's friend Robert also insists on focusing on German similarities rather than on German differences (Mauerspringer 20); and even the narrator recognizes when he visits relatives in Dresden that there are significant family resemblances between East and West: "stärker als das Trennende war die Gemeinsamkeit, die der Erfolg stiftete" (Mauerspringer 105).27 Such resemblances, however, are highly problematic, because they point to a dark German past in which the most successful members of the narrator's family were always unscrupulous enough to land on the top rung of the social ladder, no matter what the moral cost. Finally, Berlin as a city is a potent reminder of German-German commonalities, and of the German past, which is an important part of such commonalities. In comparison to Berlin all West German cities seem to the narrator "verfälscht" (Mauerspringer 6), and what is particularly authentic about Berlin is the closeness of the past: "es gibt immer wieder Risse im Asphalt, aus denen die Vergangenheit wuchert" (Mauerspringer 7).28 The Wall is ultimately the most powerful reminder of an absent German unity; hence Berlin is the most German of German cities. Only in Berlin is the narrator confronted with both the presence of the past and the presence of the other Germany—itself to a large extent a reminder of the German past. In the cities of West Germany, these traces have been hidden, making it possible for West Germans to live in the illusion of wholeness. Precisely as a divided city, Berlin is a reminder of the lost German whole. The narrative structure of Der Mauerspringer, with its multiple and frequently confused narrators inhabiting a "textual world of disjointed subjects and objects" (Anderson 366), reinforces the sense of a lost wholeness and encourages readers not to identify completely with any one narrator. It is precisely this openness that is lacking in Schneider's two subsequent novels. Paarungen deals much less intensively with questions of German national identity and addresses, instead, one year in the life of Eduard Hoffmann, who is presented as a fairly typical representative of the educated male elite in West Berlin. This is a limited third-person narration, and it is Eduard's perspective that governs the structure of the novel, which takes place in 1983. The novel 25 26 27 28

"even as the plane begins its descent, the stranger still can't distinguish the two parts of the city" (Wall Jumper 4). "television tower, convention hall, zoo, city hall, and sports stadium"; "in which the same taste has brought forth the same things twice" (Wall Jumper 4). "the community of their success was stronger than any separation" (Wall Jumper 123). "artificial" ( Wall Jumper 5); "there are always new cracks in the asphalt, and out of them the past grows luxuriantly" (Wall Jumper 6).

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covers in particular detail Eduard's love affairs with three women—Klara, Jennifer and Laura—; his intellectual and personal disputes about family history and genetic similarity with his historian-brother Lothar; and his close friendship with two men who ultimately prove to be of Jewish heritage: Theo, an East German poet with travel privileges; and André, a sophisticated, successful, and cosmopolitan composer who, together with Theo, is working on a contemporary German operatic adaptation of the Don Juan story. Eduard's primary personal concern throughout the novel is not the status of East-West German relations but, rather, his ability or inability to procreate. It is only the fear that he might be infertile—a fear reinforced by the results of a laboratory test—that leads Eduard to wish for the possibility of a child. When, to his surprise, the second of his three girlfriends, Jennifer, reports that she is indeed pregnant, he happily decides to break up with Klara and marry the woman who bears his seed within her, a woman so fertile that she declares: "Wenn ich verliebt bin [...], genügt es, daß mich ein Mann zweimal scharf anschaut" {Paarungen 288). The story of Eduard, André and Theo's various sexual liaisons and breakups, which forms the primary narrative material for Paarungen, is a kind of sexual comedy of errors, creating the picture of a narcissistically self-involved western male elite for whom, as Eduard reflects toward the beginning of the narration, "Die Geschichte hatte sich irgendwann heimlich davongemacht und meldete sich nur noch am Zeitungskiosk" (Paarungen 9).30 Unlike the selfquestioning primary narrator in Der Mauerspringer, Eduard seems relatively uninterested in life on the other side of the Wall. Whereas Der Mauerspringer had begun with a panoramic view of the divided city, Paarungen begins with an exploration of Eduard's sleeping patterns: "Das wichtigste Ereignis der vergangenen Jahre war die Veränderung seiner Schlafstellung" (Paarungen 7).31 The primary division in the novel is not the division between East and West Berlin or the GDR and the Federal Republic; rather, it is the division between the male and female sexes. Eduard takes a mock-scientific interest in examining the "Trennungsvirus" that seems to be so pervasive "in der ummauerten Stadt" (Paarungen 14), and he comes to the preliminary conclusion "daß eine Paarbeziehung [in Westberlin] eine durchschnittliche Lebenserwartung von drei Jahren, einhundertsiebenundsechzig Tagen und zwei Stunden hatte" {Paarungen 14),32 an average length achieved only because less

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"when I'm in love it's enough for a man to look at me twice in a certain way" (Couplings 246). "History had at some point secretly stolen away, and apart from an occasional appearance at the newsstand, it kept its distance" (Couplings 5). "The most important event of the past few years was the change in his sleeping position" (Couplings 3). "separation virus;" "walled city;" "that any given relationship had a maximum average life expectancy of three years, one hundred and sixty-seven days, and two hours" (Couplings 9).

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sophisticated city residents in the outer districts manage to stay in relationships longer than the Charlottenburg elite. In Paarungen, however, the division between Eduard and his female companions is presented more as a natural result of sexual differentiation than of social factors like the division of Germany or long-term changes in German family structure. At one point the narrator notes that Eduard has toyed with the idea of bringing the political division of Berlin into conjunction with the private divisions between the sexes: Vor seinem inneren Auge war das Bild einer Stadt entstanden, die sich gleichsam von den Rändern gegen das Zentrum ausdehnt, einem Programm der Zellteilung folgend, das ein Wachstum ausschließlich nach innen, durch fortwährendes Teilen und Stückeln gestattet. Am seltsamsten erschien ihm, daß die Einwohner ihren Mauertick nicht zu bemerken schienen; als führten sie mit ihrem rastlosen Trennen und Teilen ein Muster aus, das in ihren Seelen eingegraben war. (Paarungen 33-34)"

Such an image seems to make the Wall itself a product of natural development, not of historical contingency, as if all that were necessary for national, urban, and personal reconciliation were the eradication of some as-yet-to-be-identified virus. In the debate between Eduard and his brother Lothar about the root causes of human behavior, Eduard takes a strictly genetic standpoint, asserting that human behavior is determined primarily by ingrained biological factors. The two brothers are particularly interested in the development of twins; in Eduard's eyes the fact that twins frequently show similar characteristics is proof of the strength of genetic ties. For Lothar, on the other hand, the primary factor in human behavior is milieu and social conditioning. It is Eduard's genetic perspective and not his brother's social-constructionist approach that ultimately prevails. The arguments between the two brothers take on particular significance because of the death of Eduard's father. Spurred on by this event, Lothar conducts research into family history, which leads him briefly to the erroneous suspicion that his and Eduard's maternal grandfather may have been a Nazi "Judenreferent" ('Officer of Jewish Affairs," Couplings 204). Eduard's concern about a possible genetic connection between himself and a racist criminal leads him to painful reflections on "die Geschichte seiner Wissenschaft während des Dritten Reiches" (Paarungen 240), 34 including the inhumane genetic research of Josef Mengele at the Auschwitz concentration

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"[...] he developed a mental image of a city expanding evenly from the edges toward the center, following a program of continuous cell division that seemed exclusively designed for inward expansion. The strangest thing was that the inhabitants appeared not to notice their own Wall complex, for their unceasing separations seemed to trace a pattern that was etched inside their souls" (Couplings 26-27). "the history of his own science during the Third Reich" (Couplings 204).

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camp.35 In Paarungen, the connection between Eduard Hoffmann and the "Judenreferent Reiners" turns out to be a false lead; as Lothar writes to his brother, "Wir haben Glück gehabt [...], aber auch nichts weiter als Glück" (Paarungen 255).36 Even if the two brothers are not related to one Nazi criminal, they could very well be related to another. Their personal family history is thus implicated at least hypothetically in the larger history of Germany during the 1930s and 1940s. Eduard and Lothar's research into their family history is part of a collective German effort to explore the Nazi past. For Eduard, research into family history specifically and German history more generally is part of an attempt to understand the roots of his identity. If Lothar's belief in historical conditioning seemingly allows Germans with former Chancellor Helmut Kohl's "Gnade der späten Geburt" 37 an escape from questions about personal connections to German crimes, Eduard's genetically based understanding of human behavior permits no neat separation between himself and possible criminal forebears. Eduard is accordingly critical of youthful left-wing German condemnations of older generations, because he sees these as attempts to escape the problem of personal responsibility. Eduard's attempts to understand his own identity and the German past are placed into perspective by the fact that his two best friends, Theo and André, are of Jewish background—Theo as an East German atheist critical of the Jewish state and André as a cosmopolitan westerner fervent in his devotion to Israel. At André's wedding Eduard realizes that for the first time in his life he is "in einer größeren Gesellschaft [...], die in der Mehrzahl aus Juden bestand" (Paarungen 177).38 In the debates between Theo and André, Eduard usually takes André's side, whereupon Theo informs him that his philosemitism is a typical product of the guilty conscience of non-Jewish German elites—"daß nur das durchschnittliche schlechte Gewissen aus ihm spreche" (Paarungen 179).39 While concerned about the possibility of a Nazi forebear, Eduard suddenly reflects on the fact "daß zwei seiner besten Freunde Juden waren" (Paarungen 243), acknowledging to himself that there may be a connection between his family history and his present social preferences.40 "Waren es wirklich nur Zufälle, spontane Anziehungen, die seine Wahl bestimmt hatten?" Eduard asks himself (Paarungen 243).41 Shortly thereafter he witnesses Theo's attempts to butter up an influential critic and bursts out: "Wenn ich dich sehe, 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

In his 1987 novella Vati, based substantially on the reflections of Mengele's son Rolf, Schneider had already addressed the problem of genetic similarity in the case of Mengele. '"It was all a matter of luck [...], no more and no less'" (Couplings 217). "grace of late birth"—my translation. "in a largish gathering made up mostly of Jews" (Couplings 153). "that it was only his typical bad conscience that was speaking" (Couplings 154). "that two of his best friends were Jewish" (Couplings 206). "Was it really just chance, spontaneous affinity, which had determined his selection?" (Couplings 206).

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wie du dich mit allen gutstellst, verstehe ich fast, wie so etwas wie Antisemitismus entstehen konnte. Dieses Ranschmeißertum! Du bestätigst exakt das Vorurteil!" (Paarungen 245)42 This sudden outburst unifies Theo and André in the recognition "daß bei unserem liebsten Goi hin und wieder der Nazi durchkommt," and Eduard is forced to acknowledge that in spite of all efforts to normalize German-Jewish relations in general and his own personal relations with individual Jewish friends in particular, "eingestandene Befangenheit war in diesem Verhältnis bis auf weiteres wohl das Normale" (Paarungen 246).43 However in spite of such hints that Eduard's attempts to understand the German past and his own contemporary identity as a German are part of a much larger German panorama, Paarungen has its center in an apparently timeless narcissistic milieu in which any wounds created by history are seen more as individual than as social problems. If Eduard and his two male friends—the East German poet of Jewish background and the western Jewish composer—are representatives of contemporary European culture, then this is a culture of self-love and self-absorption in which the larger political questions raised in Der Mauerspringer have ceased to be asked, and in which the only valid subject of inquiry is the "Beziehungskiste" ("relationship box"). In this culture women exist chiefly as appendages of male vanity, and for the men in their lives they are representatives of the only truly foreign culture. As Eduard's rejected lover Klara informs him, the two sexes "fahren in Kettenfahrzeugen aneinander vorbei, das Wesen im Innern des Panzers bleibt unsichtbar" (Paarungen 262).44 Eduard does not seem to feel the need to explore this foreign female culture in the way that the narrator of Der Mauerspringer had been driven to explore the GDR. Indeed, the fact that his own moral failings seem to be endemic to the male sex in general appears to absolve him of any personal responsibility. If the narrator of the earlier book had distrusted his own sense of personal identity and well being, the primary character of Paarungen is a narcissist perfectly willing to lead an unexamined life. This is not in and of itself a literary problem; indeed, if the narrative perspective of the novel encouraged readers to distance themselves from Eduard, it could be an advantage. Instead, however, Schneider chooses to keep the third-person narration limited in an almost claustrophobic way to Eduard himself, and he introduces no devices, which might problematize the limited perspective. Der Mauerspringer had been at least partially a critique of both West German and East German socialization and an attempt to make evident 42

43 44

"When I look at you, the way you get in good with everybody, the way you schmooze, I can almost understand how people could come up with something like anti-Semitism. This fawning! All you're doing is proving the stereotype" (Couplings 208). "that every now and then you can see a bit of Nazi in our beloved goy;" "In this situation a simple admission of embarrassment was probably still the norm" (Couplings 209). "Armored tanks passing in the night, we don't see who's inside the tanks" (Couplings 223; translation modified).

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and therefore bridgeable "die Mauer im Kopf." In Paarungen there is no attempt to make any Wall visible, let alone to overcome it. The problem of narrative self-satisfaction is even more pronounced in Eduards Heimkehr—also a third-person narration with limited perspective—, in which the fall of the Wall has erased any self-doubt that may once have existed in the protagonist's mind as to the superiority of his own social and economic system. In Eduards Heimkehr, history and national identity suddenly burst into Eduard Hoffmann's placid life in California—where he has been working at Stanford University for eight years—in the form of a lawyer's letter informing Eduard that, due to the reunification of Germany, he and his brother Lothar have become the rightful heirs to a large apartment house in East Berlin which, during the 1930s, had belonged to Eduard's paternal grandfather Egon Hoffmann. Suddenly Eduard discovers that there are a great many more heirs in the world than he had ever imagined, but he learns from an acquaintance who is also an heir that "ein Erbe [...] könne ein Verhängnis sein [...], ein Fluch, ein Unglück, das unaufhörlich neues Unglück produziere" (Heimkehr 21).45 Upon his return to Berlin Eduard quickly finds himself involved in a prolonged legal dispute with anarchist squatters who have occupied the building in question, and who claim that, because his grandfather, a member of the Nazi party, had acquired the building from a wealthy Jewish businessman shortly after the Nazis' rise to power, Eduard has no legitimate legal claim to their living space. As with the problem of the "Judenreferent Reiners" in Paarungen, this uncomfortable encounter with the possibility of a Nazi forebear proves to be conveniently illusory. However, it leads Eduard to conduct extensive research into the history of Nazi expropriations of Jewish property in Berlin during the 1930s. As Eduard learns from his lawyer Klott, a former sectarian Communist who has now become fat and specializes in cases of property restitution, "Große Teile der Berliner Mitte—also im früheren OstBerlin—sind das ehemalige Eigentum deutscher Juden" (Heimkehr 323).46 The same is true in the West: Schau aus dem Fenster. Schräg gegenüber siehst du das Hotel Kempinski, geh weiter den Ku'damm hinauf zu Karstadt, zu Wertheim, zu Hertie—dem ehemaligen Kaufhaus Tietz—, zum KaDeWe. Ist dir klar, daß diese und tausend andere Berliner Betriebe einmal von deutschen Juden aufgebaut und ihren rechtmäßigen Besitzern von arischen Denunzianten und Konkurrenten [...] gestohlen worden sind [...]? (Heimkehr 321-322) 47

45 46 47

"A bequest [...] could prove a calamity, a source of [...] tribulations, a misfortune productive of ever more misfortunes" (Homecoming 12). "Large tracts of central Berlin—i.e. in East Berlin—used to be owned by them [German Jews]" (Homecoming 243; translation modified). "Look out the window. Nearly opposite you can see the Hotel Kempinski. Further along the Ku'damm there's Karstadt, Wertheim's, KDW, and Hertie's—formerly the Tietz department store. Don't you realize that they and thousands of other Berlin businesses were built up by German Jews and stolen from their rightful owners by Aryan informers and competitors [...]?" (Homecoming 242).

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Whereas the legal situation of former Jewish property in the West had—for better or worse—largely been cleared up in the postwar decades, the situation in the East is still uncertain and flexible because, as Klott puts it, the GDR's Communists had simply carried on with "Nazi-Unrecht," transferring property stolen by the Nazis from the Jews into "['Volkseigentum,'] wie es in der großartig verlogenen Sprache der Funktionäre hieß" (Heimkehr 323). 48 Therefore the collapse of the GDR and German reunification bring the ugly history of Nazi property theft into public consciousness, and into Eduard's personal life. Just like the Eduard of Paarungen, so too the Eduard of Eduards Heimkehr proves to be historically lucky. As it turns out, his paternal grandfather Egon Hoffmann, although a member of the Nazi party, had in fact done all he could to help his friend the Jewish businessman Kasimir Marwitz. Moreover, Egon Hoffmann had purchased the disputed property in Friedrichshain not only in good faith but actually at higher than market value. Eduard learns this reassuring news while on a trip to Florida that he undertakes in order to meet Marwitz's daughter Edita, who, as it turns out, had once enjoyed a passionate love affair with Eduard's grandfather, a man as charmed by female diversity, and as prone to sexual infidelity, as Eduard himself. "Einen solchen Mann zum Großvater zu haben und von ihm auch noch ein Haus zu erben, das ist wie sechs Richtige im Lotto" (Heimkehr 3 66), 49 Edita tells Eduard, urging him to make the most of his sudden inheritance. Although hardly a paragon of virtue, Egon Hoffmann had at the very least been a decent human being in a society filled with scoundrels and conformists; Eduard should therefore respect his memory, Edita Marwitz urges him. Her appeal corresponds to Eduard's own feeling that his grandfather, while not a hero, had, in a small way, obstructed the path of Nazi barbarity. Most contemporary Germans, Eduard believes, like to see only two possibilities for human behavior in the face of a dictatorship: heroic opposition or unprincipled conformism. But minor, nonheroic opposition figures like his grandfather or his East German boss Professor Riirup—director of the biochemical institute in Berlin-Buch where Eduard is now working-—demonstrate that there is indeed a middle path between these two extremes. As Riirup—who had unintentionally become persona non grata in the GDR due to his refusal to sign a commitment to avoid friendships with westerners—notes during a discussion with Eduard: "Die kleinen Verweigerer, die nicht gleich ihr Leben riskieren und sich spontan, ohne einen Plan oder den Rückhalt einer Organisation widersetzen,

48 49

"Nazi injustice;" "['national property,'] to use communist officialdom's magnificently mendacious term" (Homecoming 243). "It's like winning the lottery, having a grandfather like Egon and inheriting a property from him as well" (Homecoming 275).

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das sind die Spielverderber" (Heimkehr 317), 50 because they demonstrate clearly to the conformist majority that minor forms of resistance are not necessarily lethal—and that abject conformism is therefore morally repugnant. All of these reflections force themselves upon Eduard "kraft einer Zauberformel namens 'Restitution,'" which brings "die Geschichte der letzten sechzig Jahre" home with a vengeance to him and other German heirs (.Heimkehr 106).51 Thanks to his historical research and the approval of the Americanized German Jew Edita Marwitz, Eduard is permitted to indulge in positive, indeed self-congratulatory, feelings of family—and national—pride. In addition to dealing with problems of the Nazi past, Eduard is forced to address his own contemporary identity as a German. In California he had been blissfully forgetful of these problems; but with the sudden and unexpected opening of the Wall it is the Americans celebrating in Eduard's office who remind him of his own German identity. During the afternoon of 10 November 1989, Eduard's colleagues repeatedly approach him in the hallways and offer him their congratulations, "als hätte er persönlich den Befehl zur Öffnung der Mauer gegeben" (Heimkehr 16).52 When his colleagues offer him a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of champagne, Eduard realizes to his dismay "daß das kleine Ritual Gefühle in ihm wachrief oder erst entstehen ließ, von denen er sich frei geglaubt hatte" (Heimkehr 17).53 Eduard had left Germany eight years earlier, "halb im Zorn" iHeimkehr 15),54 and in the intervening time he has managed successfully to repress troublesome reflections on the German fatherland. The fall of the Wall, the discovery of his inheritance, and the offer of a job at a research institute in Berlin-Buch all help to make Eduard more aware of, and positive about, his German identity. The approval of the outside world conveniently allows Eduard to enjoy a self-congratulation that he might otherwise feel opportune to deny himself. At his new workplace Eduard meets a beautiful East German woman named Marina, who introduces him to the former GDR as a repository of the German cultural heritage. On a trip with her to Weimar, Eduard realizes that he is cheating on his wife Jenny—revealed to be an American Jew of Italian background—not just sexually but also culturally, by allowing himself an admiration for his own national Kultur. "Weimar, das war die Adresse für neudeutsche Parzivals, das Camelot für die Beschwörer eines besseren, heilen

50

51 52 53 54

"The petty dissidents who didn't actually risk their lives but opposed the regime spontaneously, without any set plan or organized backing—they're the spoilsports" (Homecoming 238; italics in the published translation). "thanks to a magic formula termed 'restitution;'" "the history of the last sixty years" (Homecoming 75). "as if he himself had ordained the breaching of the Wall" (Homecoming 9). "that this little ritual aroused or reawakened emotions he thought he'd outgrown" (Homecoming 9). "half in anger" (Homecoming 8).

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Deutschland" (Heimkehr 327).55 The primary personal problem in Eduard's relationship with Jenny is, he believes, her inability to have an orgasm with him. He suspects that this sexual dysfunction may in some way be connected to "Jennys nie beruhigtem Mißtrauen gegen die Deutschen," as well as to suspicion of "einen selbstmißtrauischen Vertreter [der Deutschen] namens Eduard" (Heimkehr 341).56 Although Eduard calls himself self-doubting, the only evidence in the novel that he is correct in this self-assessment is his seemingly constant search for self-validation. His sexual liaison with Marina is a case in point: Eduard finds to his delight that he is able to satisfy his East German lover sexually—her cries of orgasmic ecstasy during a sojourn at no less a symbol of German political and cultural history than the Elephant Hotel in Weimar are embarrassingly loud—, and through her he also rediscovers a part of the German heritage that he sees himself as having unjustly repressed: Wie aus Versehen hatte Marina eine Lücke aufgedeckt. War es nicht merkwürdig, wie leicht, ja fast triumphierend er und eine ganze Generation den Verzicht auf diesen Teil der deutschen Geschichte ertragen hatten und nicht einmal hatten wahrhaben wollen, daß ihnen etwas fehlte? Plötzlich ließ er den Gedanken zu, wie prächtig sich die Schülerallergie gegen die Heiligen der deutschen Klassik mit der Hinnahme der Teilung vertragen hatte. Es war ja nicht nur die Abtrennung von einem Stück Land, die da bußfertig hingenommen worden war. Sie hatten auch eine liebenswürdige Denk- und Lebensart großzügig aufgegeben und über den Rand gekippt. (Heimkehr 341-342) 57

These reflections suggest that Eduard, far from having made a discovery "aus Versehen," is seeking to exchange the personal and national self-questioning of the student movement for an unambiguous, positive identity. If the exiled Germanist Richard Alewyn had famously argued in 1949 that "Zwischen uns und Weimar liegt Buchenwald" (335), 58 then Eduard has simply eliminated that inconvenient obstacle to untroubled national self-congratulation. His rediscovery of Weimar is unmarred by even the memory of Buchenwald. Through his relationship with Marina, as well as his discoveries about his grandfather, Eduard finds himself on the path to reconciliation with his fatherland. When, at the end of the novel, Eduard's personal problems seem to

55 56 57

58

"Weimar was the home of the new German Parsifals, the Camelot of those who invoked a better, more wholesome Germany" (Homecoming 247). "Jenny's unallayed mistrust of the Germans;" "a self-mistrustful German named Eduard" (Homecoming 257). "Inadvertently, as it were, Marina had put her finger on a hiatus. Wasn't it remarkable how easily, indeed, almost triumphantly, he and an entire generation had accepted being deprived of this part of German history without even realizing that they were missing something? Remembering how allergic schoolchildren were to the saints of German classical literature, he suddenly thought how splendidly compatible that allergy had been with acceptance of the country's division. It wasn't just separation from a piece of land they'd penitently accepted. They'd also been generous enough to renounce an engaging mode of thought and existence and let it go hang" (Homecoming 257-258). "Between us and Weimar lies Buchenwald." My translation.

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be at least temporarily solved—his wife and children have joined him in Berlin, and Jenny is finally able to have an orgasm with him—, all seems to be well with both individual and nation. If the Eduard of Paarungen, two Jews' "liebster Goi," had still occasionally revealed himself to them as a "Nazi," then the Eduard of Eduards Heimkehr appears to have banished that identity completely: he can sexually satisfy both his Jewish-American wife and his East German lover. Eduard's apparently successful marriage represents in miniature a reconciliation between Jews and Germans. The West German man is able to reaffirm the cultural heritage and the positive national identity embodied in Weimar while at the same time preserving his enlightened cosmopolitanism. His East German lover assures his of his German heritage and identity, and his Jewish wife assures him of his moral purity; both wife and lover confirm his manly prowess. As Edita Marwitz tells him, Eduard has indeed, or would at least like to think he has, won "sechs richtige im Lotto." That it is an American Jew who urges Eduard to indulge in feelings of self-satisfaction no doubt helps to legitimate them. Although not a major part of the novel, the conflict between East and West Germans in Eduards Heimkehr also seems susceptible to a far too neat solution. At the beginning of the novel, during his first full day in the reunified Berlin, Eduard realizes that "die Luft des anderen deutschen Landes, in dem er Arbeit genommen hatte, war offenbar mit einem feinen, hochexplosiven Gas durchmischt" (Heimkehr 15).59 Another West German colleague in California had warned him that East Berlin was the "deutschen Busch" (Heimkehr 18),60 and Eduard's problems with squatters, anti-vivisection activists, political demonstrators, police bureaucrats, and office intrigue all seem to suggest that there are ongoing, profound difficulties in East-West German relations. However none of these problems force Eduard to reconsider his own comfortable identity as a German. Ultimately this novel offers a picture of a non-conflicted [West] German identity. The two primary representatives of East German identity in Eduards Heimkehr, aside from Eduard's lover, are Eduard's ubiquitous poet friend Theo, who dies toward the end of the novel, and Vera Rheinland, the leader of the squatters in Eduard and Lothar's Friedrichshain building. By the end of the novel, the squatters have purchased the building, thus investing in the very capitalist system they had previously rejected. And Theo, seen by his East German admirers as a bitter opponent of West German capitalism and of "MacDonald's-Zivilisation" (Heimkehr 376),61 in fact becomes, after his death, a privileged member of the cosmopolitan elite, to which Eduard also belongs. His "Zorngesänge auf das Leben der Zombis, der Untoten" (Heimkehr 376) in the West are—in spite of eastern protests—

59 60 61

"The air of the other Germany in which he had taken a job was obviously mingled with a rarefied, highly explosive gas" (Homecoming 8). "the German boondocks" (Homecoming 10). "McDonald's civilization" (Homecoming 283).

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reconciled with West German reality, and Eduard is allowed to recognize that in death Theo has become "der Dichter der Vereinigung" (Heimkehr 375).62 During the memorial service for Theo, the Volksbühne am Rosa-LuxemburgPlatz—previously described as the primary center of recalcitrant East German identity—is transformed into a place of reconciliation on West German terms between East and West Germans of all political stripes; and a West Berlin politician's declaration that for Theo as "fur alle wahren Dichter war die Realpolitik am Ende nur Spielmaterial für ihn, eine Kulisse" (Heimkehr 379) becomes the last word. 63 As Eduard learns from a West German journalist, the distinction "Wessis—Ossis, das ist langweilig" (Heimkehr 219);64 the only really interesting areas of dispute exist between various kinds of East Germans. At any rate, Eduard is told, it is "eine verblüffend einfache Weisheit" that the West German system is the clear winner in the cold war battle between the two Germanys because of its willingness to recognize "das Prinzip des Irrtums und der ständigen Korrekturbedürftigkeit menschlichen Planens" (Heimkehr 224).65 This is a comforting and easy lesson indeed. However readers see little evidence that Eduard applies this principle, with its supposed insistence on "Korrekturbedürftigkeit," to himself or his own system; it appears to apply only to others and their systems. Hence Eduard's trip from California to Berlin is a reentry into a positive and normalized German community in which the nation's primary historical and political problems have been—rather unconvincingly—solved, and in which Eduard's own personal problems are also put temporarily to rest, just as dubiously. At no point—neither in his personal nor in his professional nor in his political life—