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| Philipp Oswalt (Translation Tas Skorupa) | 2000 | |
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'Berlin_City without Form' | Automatic Urbanism |
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 Since
it had no tradition and only a weak identity, Berlin absorbed the powers
of the twentieth century like no other city: first the monarchy, the World
Wars, and the revolts, then Fascism, Stalinism, and the Cold War, and
finally the resolution of the confrontation between East and West. The
unintentional side effects of political, economic, and militaristic actions
have marked the city. But it wasn't ideal plans or organic growth that
formed Berlin, because in the repetitive process of inventing, destroying,
and rebuilding, the original intentions of all large-scale planning were
soon lost. What formed Berlin instead was an automatic urbanism. Like
in a photograph that has been multiply exposed, new figures emerged from
the superimposition of different motifs. Up to the present, the opposing
powers have created unplanned structures and activities, urban phenomena
which are beyond the categories of urban planning and architecture. Precisely
this is the characteristic feature of Berlin. Berlin
is a city of extremes, a city without middle ground. Its unsteady development
has alternated between racing tempo and paralyzing standstill. As a late-coming
metropolis, Berlin pulled off in the shortest time what took other cities
decades or centuries, only to subsequently freeze. Episodes of euphoria
were followed by depression: from the rejoicing at the start of World
War I to defeat, from the intoxication of the twenties to the world economic
crisis, from the Nazis' seizure of power to the capitulation, from the
joy over the fall of the Berlin Wall to the disillusionment of the nineties. In its
rootlessness Berlin sways between sober pragmatism and radical ideology.
Be it industrialism or historicism, modernity or totalitarianism, nationalism
or cosmopolitanism, cold war or modernization, mass culture or rebellion:
in the capital of ideologies these spread more uninhibitedly than elsewhere.
Due to the simultaneous existence of opposing forces, the city developed
into a vector field in which every regime shifted the coordinates, directions,
and centers anew, as the history of monuments and magistrates in Berlin
reveals. [ 1 ] Precisely because
Berlin was always subject to new regulations, the city became a manifesto
of paradoxes, transformations, and instabilities. This extreme
ideologization is countered by a radical pragmatism. Due to the lack of
cultural continuity, especially in the abrupt phases of change in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the city has demonstrated very little
creative power and forming opposition. This stance proved to be both a
weakness and a strength: a weakness because the new things being created
were not put into a context, and a strength because the city developed
a great vitality and openness for the forthcoming. After 1900 Berlin was
considered an 'America in miniature' and a 'Chicago on the Spree.' [ 2
] 'Berlin was able to and had to Americanize, because it was not hindered
by deep-rooted traditions from developing economic materialism and because
it had been a pioneer city in the East, similar to the cities of the New
World,' [ 3 ] as Karl Scheffler
wrote in his long essay 'Berlin - Destiny of a City' of 1910. Scheffler
is referring to Berlin's peripheral position when he speaks of the pioneer
city. For years it lay on the edge of the German cultural zone, in a desolate,
thinly populated region on the border to the East which had been settled
quite late. [ 4 ] Even today
the city is an island-like agglomeration in the middle of the hardly populated
region of Mark Brandenburg. It thus more resembles a city like Calgary
or Las Vegas in the prairie or desert than it does a center in an urbanized
city-region like Paris, London, or Frankfurt am Main. In its location
on the edge of Central and Eastern Europe, Berlin is far from the European
economic corridor extending from London to Milan. Berlin
is a city of immigrants, a city that did not develop on its own, but due
to the flow of people from far-off regions. At the end of the seventeenth
century, it was fortified by the active recruitment politics of the Great
Elector Frederick William, who welcomed not only the Huguenots from France,
but also Danes, Dutch, Scots, Bohemians, and Jews. In the nineteenth century,
the expansion of Berlin's population to a million was especially due to
the arrival of Silesians, Poles, and Russians, among which were many Jews.
The English writer Stephen Spender called Berlin 'a city in which tradition
was a joke.' And in reference to the 1920s he wrote: 'In this city without
any style or tradition it was clear that everybody had to start each day
at zero. The strength of the Berliners was that they could start a totally
new life—because there was nothing big before anyway.' [ 5
] Due to
political events, the rootlessness of the population has continued until
today. The Nazis murdered and expelled hundreds of thousands of Berliners,
including a large part of the cultural elite. At the end of World War
II, a wave of refugees arrived in the city from the East. The fluctuation
from East to West continued until the construction of the Berlin Wall.
During the division, two-thirds of all West Berliners left the city, while
practically just as many new citizens immigrated from West Germany. Since
the changes of 1989 more than 100,000 people leave 'New Berlin' annually,
while others are attracted by the new old capital. As earlier,
they often consider themselves pioneers. 'Berlin tasted of future, and
for that you were willing to put up with the dirt and cold,' wrote Carl
Zuckmayer about the situation in Berlin before 1933. [ 6
] Today, in spite of its historical ballast, it once again attracts people
since there still aren't any established structures. This is why the legendary
party organizer Cooky came to Berlin in 1992, because 'everything was
so open, it wasn't all so neat and clean.' [ 7
] And for fashion designer Jürgen Frisch, Berlin was the 'only place
which came into consideration, because Berlin is a desert in terms of
fashion.' [ 8 ] Thanks
to its eccentric position, Berlin is ready for the eccentric. Its lack
of form provides 'leeway for unlimited possibilities.' [ 9
] Berlin is an experiment without hypothesis. Multiple identities enable
it to absorb the 'other.' This openness, however, is accompanied by ugliness.
The city is direct, without any agreeableness whatsoever. It calls forth
constant denial. It lacks self-confidence and a calm treatment of itself.
It appears like the body of a masochist who is constantly submitting himself
to new battering, destruction, humiliation, and violence. The middle
ground of cultivated articulated is practically unknown in Berlin. What
is expressed here is either extremely controlled or of vulgar directness.
On this mental terrain, the forms and behavioral manners of coldness appear:
the sobriety of New Objectivity, the static Neoclassicism of the Nazis,
the coarse hardness of punk, the machinelike rigidity of techno. At the
latest it was World War I which made coldness into the subject of Berlin:
a feeling of homelessness in light of loss and emptiness. [ 10
] Most buildings of the nineties are also characterized by the already
mentioned lack of cultivated articulation; they are either extremely controlled
or extremely coarse. Berlin
is ugly, but intense. Its qualities were never intended. There is not
a single idea, a single concept, or a single geometry which characterizes
this city as a whole. Berlin is the prototype of a city in which opposites
coexist. For filmmaker Wim Wenders, Berlin is a city which 'keeps you
awake since, instead of entering a closed system like in other cities,
you are constantly shaken.' [ 11
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Notes : [ 1 ] See Alexander Moers, 'Ein Denkmalasyl in Berlin,' thesis, Department of Architecture, Technical University Berlin, unpublished typescript, Berlin 2000. [ 2 ] The statements of art dealer Herwarth Halden, politician Walter Rathenau, and writer Kurt Tucholsky are exemplary. [ 3 ] Karl Scheffler, Berlin - ein Stadtschicksal, Berlin 1910, reprint 1989, pp. 118 f. [ 4 ] Erwin Anton Gutkind, Urban Development: International History of City Development, vol. 1: Central Europe, London 1964, pp. 418 ff. [ 5 ] Stephen Spender, European Witness, London 1946, quoted after Ian Buruma, Lettre International (winter 1998), p. 37. [ 6 ] Carl Zuckmayer, Als wär's ein Stück von mir. Horen der Freundschaft, Vienna 1996, pp. 313 f. [ 7 ] Cookie, in Children of Berlin: Voices (catalogue of the exhibition at P.S.1 in New York), Berlin 1999, p. 16. [ 8 ] Berlin 1999 (see note 7), p. 20. [ 9 ] Scheffler 1910 (see note 3), p. 19. [ 10 ] Helmut Lethen described the phenomenon of coldness borrowing from the anthropologist Helmuth Plessner. See Helmut Lethen, Verhaltenslehren der Kälte: Lebensversuche zwischen den Kriegen, Frankfurt am Main 1994, pp. 75 ff. [ 11 ] Wim Wenders, The Act of Seeing. Essays, Reden und Gespräche, Frankfurt am Main 1992, p. 147. |
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Philipp Oswalt published in : 'Berlin_Stadt ohne Form, Strategien einer anderen Architektur' | MŸnchen/ New York | 2000 Location: http://www.oswalt.de/en/text/book/b_autourb1_p.html |
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