Potdamer Platz

A few photos of the new Potsdamer Platz, from Monday evening...

It's difficult for me to understand and then to explain why Potsdamer Platz is so controversial - it was apparently a transit and cultural center for Berlin before the war, then completely devastated, and then the Todesstreifen (= death strip) of the Wall ran directly through it. For 30 years it was a total wasteland - apparently only birds and rabbits lived in the gravel & scrub there. It symbolized, I think, just how the city was divided, and how severely. But then it also symbolizes the explosive development of 21st century Berlin.

After the Wende (= when the wall fell, lit., change or turning), everything changed. Potsdamer Platz was to be a center again, and big investors put money into big buildings. The German railway system has its headquarters there, and there's a Ritz, a shopping arcade, and the Sony Center, which is architecturally fascinating but a bit of a mall, really. Some people have explained to me that it was a great opportunity for new European architecture, and it still isn't really aesthetically good. Others say that attempting to create a new center is a wasted effort - there is a center in the former West (the Zoo & Ku'damm) and the former East (Alexanderplatz), and so a contrived urban center in the middle is just sort of stupid. I think the other problem is that the growth was explicitly inorganic - there are no little neighborhood shops, it's a slick urban center. And Berlin nearly beats out New York as a city of neighborhoods. Here, though, the 'skyscrapers' that so controversially tower over the rest of the urban architecture are all of 25 stories tall. And you can see them from everywhere in the city center.

But, in the end, the new urban architecture is interesting. The Sony Center was also one of the public viewing areas during the WM, and it's pretty cool, really. Riding through Potsdamer Platz is not such a big deal, but on foot, you see just where the wall went, you see how earnest the attempt to create a comfortable but modern urban space has been. Standing on a traffic island, you can see the Brandenburger Tor in one direction, and still the track of the wall continuing south. (I tried, but the photos didn't come out). The shops may cater to the 16-and-under set, and the restaurants to tourists, but it will be interesting to see what happens. For one, the fact the Berlin still has a comprehensive set of memorials/museums about the Wall in the works make for an interesting few years.

So - here is the center and station, with chunks of the wall marking where it once stood.



A close-up view of a chunk of the wall. The clock in the background stands in the same spot as a central clock from the 30s, when it was a major transportation hub.



The canopy/ceiling of the Sony Center, looking up from a neat public area with benches you could lie on and (predictably) a really amazing flat screen with short films playing.



A billboard from the subway, which I sort of found amusing. "Our urban landmarks are bigger than your urban landmarks, you British and French posers..." Yes, that's Big Ben on the left, and the modernist wonder on the right is the Fernsehturm, Berlin's big TV tower. The quote reads 'This is the capital. We are the newspaper."



Tomorrow (Wednesday), I go back to the Bundesarchiv to look at actual documents, which I am just about beside myself over - there's a LOT there, and it runs so nicely. I can appreciate just how helpful and diligent the archivist I worked with was, after working in our national archives for a little while. It's a bit crazy to pack it into my last week here, but that's how it unfolded. Hopefully I'll get a change to sneak a peek at the Koch Institute archives as well, to see what there is to work with. Other than that, it is a time of mad errand running and stemming the tide of my panic about another big trip. I have a bunch of wonderful contacts in Dar-es-salaam so far, and the possibilities of research are just beginning to set in. It also brings me closer to seeing people I know again, and to home. I do feel like my German is just getting good, and so it's a bit frustrating to leave, I'll just hope that it bodes well for any future return. I haven't yet dreamed in German, which is everyone's gold standard for language immersion, but I do find myself translating whatever I write in English into German. At least the less complicated stuff...