CHAPTER 4

WEST BERLIN (1949-1989)

In May 1949, the three sectors of Germany governed by the Western Allies (France, England,
and the U.S.) merged into a single entity: the Federal Republic of Germany. Considering itself
merely an interim, provisional state with a provisional Grundgesetz (a Basic Law instead of a
constitution inscribing nationhood), the Federal Republic chose Bonn, a small city rather than a
metropolis, as its provisional capital.

The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was founded in October 1949. East Berlin was
pronounced its capital, a step that indicated, despite official protestations to the contrary, that
East Germany and the Soviets (who were behind its every move) had already abandoned the
goal of a unified Germany. Viewing itself, more or less, a bona fide nation, the GDR refused to
call its capital East Berlin, a designation implying a West Berlin. To avoid association with a
stunted capital, it expediently removed the word East from its title. After 1961 it went further:
it eliminated West Berlin from its maps, substituting it with a white spot. For the GDR, then,
there was officially no Berlin other than its own Berlin. Whereas East Berliners were taught to
call themselves citizens of the GDR and had passports that validated them as such, West
Berlinersstill living in French, British, and U.S. zoneswere not permitted to consider
themselves West Germans, a fact reflected in their special passports. But, the Federal Republic
did extend most of its laws and also its currency to West Berlin (the latter a bygone conclusion
after the Airlift). In addition, though the Federal Republic did not grant West Berlin voting
rights, West Berlins political representatives could at least be seated in the Bonn Parliament.
Despite lacking West German status, the island in the Red Sea was expected to be West
Germanys staunchest representative in the Cold Warthis illustrative of the countless
paradoxes associated with West Berlin. In the harsh competition between the two radically
different German systems, each waged propaganda attacks against the other, grimly and
unrelentingly. The east railed against what it regarded a selfish, decadent, consumer-oriented
society manipulated by big business, the west against communism and its abridgements of
personal freedoms. In Berlin, the only location where east and west had contact with each other,
at least until the Berlin Wall went up on August 13, 1961, loyalties to ones own system were to
be demonstrated, not merely asserted. Thus, if one Berlin did something well, the other tried to
outdo it. Since this pertained to topographical matters as well, we will start our walk at a West
Berlin site that arose from the competition of the two systems: the Hansaviertel (northwest of
No. 53).

In response to the GDRs efforts to turn the heavily bombed Frankfurter Allee (renamed
Stalinallee) into a grandiose boulevard in the Stalinist neo-classical manner, West Berlin
within the framework of Interbau, the international architecture exhibit of 1957rebuilt the
severely war-damaged Hansaviertel into an ensemble of 36 starkly modernist high-rises, each
designed by a renowned architect. All face the street, but in a slanted manneras if in
unanimous defiance of the unimaginative rectangular buildings lining so many of Berlins
central streets. Close to the Spree River (always a plus), the Hansaviertel boasts its own stores,
restaurants, church, and since 1969 the youth theater Grips.

Propaganda battles with the east extended to demolitions of buildings representative of
unsavory German history. Particularly the GDRs destruction of the war-ravaged but still
reparable palace in Berlin-Mitte in 1950 reverberated in West Berlin. The GDR demolished the
palace due to its unwelcome reminders of Prussian militarism; soon afterward West Berlin
razed the similarly damaged Kroll Opera across from the Reichstag (No. 81) because of negative
historical connotations (after the Reichstag fire, it had served as the seat of the Nazi
government). From the Hansaviertel, though, our walk will take us to a location where the
leveling of a history-laden building proceeded far less smoothly: to the site of the Anhalter
Bahnhof, once Berlins most important train station (off the map, close to No. 102). Though the
demolition of the castle prompted decisive steps to raze the Anhalter Bahnhof, the strong
objections of West Berliners prevailed, at least temporarily. Thus it was finally torn down in
1961, even then, however, not without the protests of those outraged at yet another erasure of
the past. As a concession to them, the portal of the Anhalter Bahnhof was left standing,
providing a gateway for entering the past at least in ones imagination. Public opinion against
the demolition of at least Prussian history triumphed with Charlottenburg palace (No. 4);
though more damaged than Berlin-Mittes palace, it was reconstructed in the early fifties.

From the Anhalter Bahnhof, we will walk to a building that was also resurrected: the KaDeWe
(Kaufhaus des Westens--No. 68). This consumer paradise was one of the first major buildings
restored by West Berlin after the founding of the Federal Republicin 1950 its first two floors,
in regular periods afterwards its additions. Even in the minimally prosperous early 1950s, its
gourmet section could boast of almost 1000 cheeses. By 1964, it was again the largest
department store in continental Europe. However, in contrast to its unabashed self-promotion,
the KaDeWe does not surface positively in literary works of the Cold War period, for West
Berliners, continuously admonished in the fifties and early sixties to flaunt their economic well-
being in the east/west propaganda war, often reacted with revulsion to the crass materialism
continuously expected from them. Across the street from the KaDeWe, we notice a large
rectangular board fastened to a metal contraption embedded in the Wittenbergplatz (Nr. 69).
On its front we read Orte des Schreckens, die wir nie vergessen drfen (Sites we should never
be allowed to forget), followed by Auschwitz Theresienstadt Buchenwald Dachau
one concentration camp after another. Placed on the Wittenbergplatz in 1967, the plaque was
meant to counter the many memorial plaques in West Berlin dedicated to all casualties of war,
these of course including Nazi perpetrators. By contrast, the one on the Wittenbergplatz recalls
Nazi Germanys specific crimes and thus remembrance of its victims. That its proponents were
able to place such a shocking message in such close proximity to West Berlins grandest
consumer haven was a featone that signaled more honesty for West Berlins memorial
culture.

Turning left from the Wittenbergplatz, we find ourselves on the Tauentzienstrae, a street
showcasing West Berlin as the display window of the West. This message is at its most
emphatic in the Europa Center (No. 64), which houses approximately 100 businessesstores,
restaurants, bars. When opened to the public in April 1965 by Willy Brandt, then West Berlins
mayor, the Europa Center was touted as a spectacular city within a city, a one-of-a kind
building capable of providing inspiration for urban architects. Above all, though, the ten-ton, 14
meter high, rotating Mercedes star on the roof of the 21-story building left no doubt about the
agenda of its proponents: to broadcast West Berlins economic miracle and, by implication, the
towering success of its political system. East Berlin was meant to see and envy the shining,
rotating star, but certainly not to emulate it. On a small scale, this is nonetheless what happened
when the BE sign on top of the Berliner Ensemble, the legendary Bertolt Brecht theater, started
rotating as well. Stepping out of the Europa Center, we join the crowds headed in the direction
of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (No. 62). It is a symbol both of the Berlin damaged by
the 1943 bombs and fires and of the horrors the Third Reich unleashed. Yet none of the
passersby pause to gaze at the landmark so reminiscent of a horrific past. The disinterest is in
marked contrast to the passions the Memorial Church had aroused in the 1950swhen the city
council, preferring to divert high restoration costs into the construction of an entirely new
church building (scheduled for completion in 1956), planned its complete destruction. Unlike
West Germans, ever anxious to remove reminders of Nazi atrocities, West Berliners were prone
to retaining them, even in the midst of their most commercial areas. Thus the imposing ruins of
the neo-Roman Memorial Church, soon affectionately labeled hollow tooth, remained the
centerpiece of the minimalist buildings comprising the new church ensemble on the
Breitscheidplatz.

Much as West Berliners tacitly accepted ruins, most adjusted to the Wall in their midst, which
arose because of Cold War politics beyond their control. Drastic measures had been dreaded
since 1958, when Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev started insisting that the Western Allies leave
West Berlin and allow it to govern itself (in the doublespeak of politics, this signified Kruschevs
desire to annex West Berlin to East Berlin). But, rather than annex one Berlin to the other, the
Wall, which went up on August l3, 1961, cemented their division and that of Germanyby
extension also that of the capitalist and communist worlds. Though the Western Allies moved
their tanks to the border between East and West Berlin, they were wary of triggering a war (in
contrast to the Blockade days, the Soviets now had the atom bomb). A war was indeed averted
because the three points U.S. President John F. Kennedy had posed, not long before, as a
sinequanon for avoiding U.S. intervention had not been violatedabove all, the demand that
West Berlin remain free. In fact, behind the scenes the U.S. lamented the Wall far less than it did
in public, for the Wall signified that the Soviets had decided against spreading communism
throughout Europe. But, the troubled West Berliners needed strong assurances that, if need be,
the West would stand at its side, all the more so when the Soviets continued to voice their desire
to have West Berlin govern itself on its own.

Two years later, in June 1963, Kennedy finally provided the needed pledge of support with his
powerful Ich bin ein Berliner speech. From the Memorial Church we will therefore proceed to
the site of Kennedys historic speech, the Rathaus Schneberg (off the map, south of Nr. 68).
This building was chosen not only because it had turned into the city hall for all of West Berlin
during the Cold War but also because it boasted the Freiheitsglocke, the replica of the Liberty
Bell of Philadelphia given by the U.S.in 1950 in commemoration of the Airlift. Each Sunday
thereafter (until 1993), Berliners in the American sector heard this bell ringing in the tower of
Schnebergs city hall, if not in its vicinity then in the noon program of the U.S.-sponsored radio
station RIAS, its motto likewise resonant with the concept of freedom: A free voice of the free
world. Berlin thus became a symbol of freedom, both of the inhumane restrictions on freedom
imposed by the Wall and of defiant, fervent affirmations of freedom. For many West Berliners,
though, the Wall was less a symbol than an all-too-real incursion into their everyday lives.
Personal tragedies resulting from the Wallsuch as family separationseased only with
Chancellor Willy Brandts call to risk more democracy and his Ostpolitik. For his efforts at
rapprochement with Poland, the Soviet Union, and the GDR, he received the l971 Nobel Prize
for Peace. Particularly the Four Power Agreement on Berlin, signed in 1972, lifted many travel
and communication restrictions between East- and West-Berliners.

To obtain a sense of the distances depicted on the map, we will walk at least one stretch of the
Wallfrom the Oberbaum Bridge, the border crossing reserved for West Berlin pedestrians (off
the map, southeast of Nr. 102) to the Potsdamer Platz (Nr. 102). Behind the Gropius Building
(off the map, close to Nr. 102), we will be able to examine the actual Wall. There, on the Prinz-
Albrecht-Terrain, members of the Berlin group Aktives Museum (one of several dedicated to
finding and maintaining traces of Berlins Nazi past) had unearthed Gestapo torture chambers
in 1986. But, to gain more understanding of the significance of the Wall, we will seek out the
Wall Museum at Checkpoint Charlie (off the map, close to Nr. 102). Opened two years after the
Wall went up, the museum aims to present the definitive history of all events pertaining to the
Wall (for example, escape attempts from the GDR and retaliatory shootings by East German
border guards). But we need to be aware of a caveat: the crowds of Wall tourists respond far
more positively to its exhibits and their pathos-laden accompanying texts than the generally
ironic West Berliners.

After the Wall was built, the Charlottenburg district turned into West Berlins center, especially
the area around the Memorial Church and the long avenue extending northward from it, the
Kurfrstendamm or simply KuDamm (Nr. 37-45). This heavily frequented boulevard
functioned as a particularly elegant shopping avenue, as well as the demonstration/parade site
for all important events. The train station Bahnhof Zoo (Nr. 32) also drew many crowds, but its
hookers and drug dealers were the wrong kinds of crowds. Still, they largely disappeared after
Christiane F.s description of the drug scene and its teenage victims in We Childrem from
Bahnhof Zoo (1981) shocked the city into battling crime more rigorously. For addicted readers,
though, the most favored Charlottenburg location was the Savigny Platz (above Nr. 35, to the
right). Its many cafs and restaurants were just as hospitable to the reading flaneur as the small
and middle-sized bookstores on its side streets. A listening flaneur, on the other hand, was best
served at the restaurant Zwiebelfisch, where radicals of the 1968 student movement gathered to
discuss works critiquing capitalism, such as the popular One-Dimensional Man (1964) by the
political theorist Herbert Marcuse.

From the Savigny Platz we will move on to the Deutsche Oper (above Nr. 13). It was there that
Benno Ohnesorg, merely a bystander at the June 2, 1967 student demonstrations against the
Shah of Persia, was brutally killed by a policeman while the Shah was enjoying a production of
Mozarts Magic Flute. A photo of another bystander holding up Ohnesorgs bloodied head in a
Piet-like pose went around the world. In West Berlin it mobilized many for the student
movementat the Technical University in Charlottenburg (Nrs. 55-56) and the Free University
(southwest of the map), where Rudi Dutschke held his galvanizing talks against capitalism, the
Vietnam war, and the German higher education system. Inspired by Dutschke, many students
vehemently attacked German societys silences about the Nazi past. Soon they confronted their
fathers, demanding explanations of their roles in the Third Reich. Above all, they railed against
a holdover from the fascist past: the authoritarianism of the state, its educational institutions,
and its family life.

Viewing the family entity as destructive to the development of personality and intent on
politicizing the personal, one branch of the student movement founded a counter-model to the
family, the Kommune I. It became known for its hedonistic life style and its satiric
provocationsfor example, its April 1967 plan to assassinate visiting U.S. Vice President
Hubert Humphrey with bags of pudding. At that time, the Kommune 1 lived at Kaiser-
Friedrich-Strae 54 (fourth street west from the Deutsche Oper). We will pass their lodging as
we head back to the KuDammthis time to Nr. 140, the office of the SDS (the socialist student
organization that helped to form APO, the extraparliamentary opposition to Bonns
CDU/SPD coalition government). This is where a confused ultra-rightist attempted to
assassinate Rudi Dutschke in April 1968 (Dutschke remained alive but was incapacitated for
several years). Students blamed the incendiary, anti-Dutschke crusades of the Springer Press
for the assassination attempt and thus stormed the building of the publishing company, which
had moved close to the border in order to taunt the leaders on its other side. This building on
the Lindenstrasse (east of map, parallel to Nr. 102) will be the last stop of our walking unit
focused on the student movement of the sixties. The Easter Sunday demonstrations protesting
the assassination attempt on Dutschkeamong the biggest in Berlins demonstration- packed
history--were held in front of it and on the Kurfrstendamm. But by the end of 1969, the student
movement fell apart. Without Dutschke, its iconic center, it could not hold.

For West Berliners, life quieted down by the middle eighties. By then, they barely lamented the
reduction of urban topography caused by the Wall. Many reduced their topography even more
by restricting their movements to their Kiez, their neighborhood within a neighborhood.
Clearly, those restricting their world into ever more manageable fragments and repeatedly
walking around in areas they knew so well that there was nothing left to explore lacked the
disposition of the urbane, urban flaneur. Yet, because past and future nonetheless remained
intertwined in West Berlin, each in continuous, referential dialogue with the other, West Berlin
still retained the ability to induce change. We see this best in the ending of Wim Wenderss
West-Berlin film Wings of Desire (1987). There we encounter the Homer figurethe only one
who has not forgotten the days before, during, and immediately after the war and the only one
unwilling to accept the barren wasteland Berlins Potsdamer Platz had become. At the end, he
has finally figured out how to write a peace epic rather than the war epics that had made him
famous. In the last shot of the film, he walks, decisively, confrontationally, toward the Wall. He
means business. As we know with hindsight, the film was prophetic.




INGEBORG BACHMANN, EIN ORT FR ZUFLLE (1964)

Listeners rather than readers were the ones first confronted with Ingeborg Bachmanns Ein Ort
fr Zuflle (A Place for Incidents, 1964), for it is the speech she gave in Darmstadt in October 1964
as recipient of the Bchner Prize, the most prestigious of Germanys many literary awards.
None of the academics, writers, media representatives, and political dignitaries in the audience
even pretended to understand it. In their view, Bachmann had not followed the directive to talk
about the author Georg Bchner (1813-1837), or herself or about both Bchner and herself. Yet,
this should not have come as a surprise, for in the comments prefacing her reading, Bachmann
had already specified her intent to focus not on an individual but on a singular area, one whose
severe physical and spiritual damages preclude identifying it as any other than Berlin.
Bachmann, an Austrian, also warned her audience not to expect her to deliver a foreigners
impressions of Berlin (as recipient of a generous Ford Foundation scholarship initiated to
reinvigorate the cultural life of Berlin, Bachmann had already spent more than a year in Berlin).
She then attacked the symbolizing that flourished in Berlin during the first half of the sixties
for example, designating Berlin as the frontier of the West. She stressed that Berlins damages
were far too severe for mystifications of any sort, including the tendency to cast Berlin into a
symbol. Thus she underlined that she would not be providing yet another inconsequential
treatise on the Berlin Wall. Lashing out at the word Teilung (division), Bachmann claimed
that it was already far too overused, that it was convenient for evading personal responsibility
and, worse, that it inhibited thinking. Suggesting neither permanence nor irreparable personal
damage, the word Teilung, Bachmann emphasized, was incapable of truly jolting anyone. In
her view, it did not begin to touch on the illnesses that really matterthose whose causes lie in
a more distant past. Clearly Bachmann signaled to her illustrious gathering that she intended to
confront the Nazi eramoreover, in ways that had nothing to do with the empty slogans of the
Cold War period. How, then, can a depiction of Berlin be commensurate with the experience of
its severely damaged essence? Above all, it must be radical, Bachmann insisted.

The clashing Berlin images Bachmann then hurled at the audiencemost connected with
specific sites--were indeed radical. What, in other words, was one to make of women clad in
greased paper at Berlins Lake Wannsee followed by trembling patients leaning over hospital
balconies, terrified of the airplanes flying through their hospital rooms, or of waitresses in the
Caf Kranzler, their high heels stuck in whipped cream, who were preceded by the
assassination of Walther Rathenau, the Weimar Republics Foreign Minister, on the
Knigsallee? Confusing even on their own, particularly since they remain unexplained, the
images are not linked to each other, least of all into a traditional speech or seamless, linear
narrative. Instead, they seem to have been forcibly jammed together, much as a hurricane might
have jammed trucks, baby buggies, limousines, and shopping carts into each other. Bachmanns
jumbling of sites would frustrate a flaneur as well; it does not provide the continuum needed to
treat sites like unfolding texts. Her accumulated site constructs are equally useless for the
average city walker, who could not possibly plan a walk based on them.

In its most important aspects, Bachmanns radicalism draws heavily on Bchners novella Lenz,
posthumously published in 1839. Even the word Zuflle in Bachmanns title is a direct
borrowing from Lenz, where it does not refer to chance occurrences as opposed to fatethat is,
not to the popular German dichotomy Schicksal (fate) or Zufall (chance). Instead, the word
Zuflle designates Lenzs incurable illnessa madness resulting from his conviction that a
rupture runs through the entire world, dividing both the world and his own self into
incompatible parts. Like the excessively sensitive Lenz, Bachmann relentlessly pursues this
rupture. Thus her Place for Incidents presents 25 to 28 Krankheitsbilder (images of sickness), the
exact number not entirely clear in her pile-up of images.

Juxtaposing discordant sites, incongruous occurrences, and incompatible people, Bachmann
creates images with Lenzian ruptures. The oppositesone part generally referencing Berlin in
the Nazi era, the other the Berlin of the early sixtiesturn into images of sickness or madness
when they connect with each other. Their merger is never a seamless joining but always a
sudden, aggressive entanglement, much like cinematic collision montages. As the first,
unhealthily long sentence of Bachmanns text highlights (a sentence that is the verbal equivalent
of a filmic panorama shot), a certain it has infected Berlin and continues to spread,
unannounced, over its entire terrain. Infected sites thus pop up in the text without warning,
occasioning one jolt after another. For example, one sentence suddenly couples Potsdam and
Tegelthe former widely considered the seat of Prussian militarism, the latter associated with
West Berlins civilian airport Tegel (built during the Airlift, it opened for regularly scheduled
civilian flights only in 1960). In geographical skidding and sliding, the text informs us, the
houses of Potsdam somehow end up in the houses of Tegel, much as its pine trees, suffering
from similar geographical dislocations, had already become entangled with those of Tegel.
From this we infer that Prussia did not simply disappear when the Allies had dissolved it as a
territorial entity. In the spirit of Potsdam, its militarism continues to infiltrate Berlin, even its
new civilian airport. Tegels airplanes, then, cannot help but be reminiscent of the horrifying
war planes of the Nazi era.

Many other passages associate similarly incongruous occurrences with jarring couplings of
Berlin sites. In one instance, elegantly attired waiters are washing the feet of disheveled,
agitated customers in the restaurant of the five-star Hotel Kempinski on the KuDamm
(Kurfrstendamm) while people are being hanged in the prison of Pltzensee (though both
locations are in the district Charlottenburg, they are situated miles apart). Who are the
disheveled, agitated customers? Are they the prisoners of Pltzenseea site associated with the
Nazi erawho have resurfaced, dislocated, in the elegant Hotel Kempinski? Or, do they belong
to the large cast of mentally ill people populating Bachmanns Berlin-text who are occasionally
allowed to leave their hospitals? Emotionally defenseless, they are the ones attuned to the
horrors lurking from the palimpsests that constitute Berlin.

The first excerpt in Berliner Spaziergnge also illustrates Bachmanns technique of merging past
and present in clashing combinations of geographical sites. In a single paragraph, the
Ltzowplatz is joined to the KaDeWe department store, close to the Wittenbergplatz. Yet the
resultant whole is fractured. Other than an occasional human bone, there are no signs of life left
on the Ltzowplatz. The restored KaDeWe, however, is packed with people unable to control
their lust for commodities. Despite their differences, both sites had once been associated with
the affluent and both had been bombed and destroyed by fire in WWII. With their raw audio
and visual sensibilities, the mentally ill experience the WWII Ltzowplatz fire as if it were
occurring in the present, whereas the consumers in the recently rebuilt KaDeWe (one that
shows no traces of past damages) are so bent on repressing the past that they live only for the
unrestrained, bizarre accumulation of unnecessary goods.

The horrors of the past reassert themselves even in the new Kreuzberg district described in
Berliner Spaziergnge. The rebellion of Kreuzbergs societal dropouts against the Berlin
establishment turns into (military) posturing against subsidized agony (the image Bachmann
also uses for her own Ford Foundation-sponsored life in Berlin). They too wish to banish rather
than confront the past (the text states that a whole age is ordered into the closet), but the past
reasserts itself in sudden, seemingly inexplicable violence against others. In the Krankheitsbilder
included in Berliner Spaziergnge that jarringly juxtapose West Berlin, the city of agents and
spies, and East Berlin, the location governed by the Stasi (the GDRs state security system that
had turned into its secret police), Bachmann also stresses the commercialism and the latent
violence of the new age predicated on Berlins past. Bachmann clearly sides with the damaged
people and the radical ways in which they perceive Berlin. Only their fragmented, often
aggressive visuality comes close to doing justice to the fractured selfhood of Berlin.



STEN NADOLNY, EIN TAXIFAHRER DANKT DER ZENTRALE (1981)

In 1980, Nadolny was the recipient of the Ingeborg-Bachmann-Preis, a prestigious Austrian
award granted since 1976 for an unpublished work of German prose. At the public reading in
Klagenfurt (Bachmanns birthplace), Nadolny read a chapter of a book he was to publish only in
1983, but one that instantly made him even more famous than the Bachmann Prize did: The
Discovery of Slowness. His praise of slowness went counter to the prevailing scientific and
technological currents of the times, much as the Weimar flaneur went against those of his era by
slowly strolling through cityscapes, not allowing the distractions of urban life to interfere with
his careful examination of his surroundings.

Slowness and rejection of purposeful behaviorboth enduring qualities of the flaneuerwere
already important aspects of Nadolnys first published novel, Die Netzkarte (1981), a book often
mentioned as the paradigmatic example for a type of reinvented flaneur: the railroad flaneur. Its
protagonist buys a train ticket that allows him to travel around in Germany for several weeks.
For much of the journey, he is lost in thoughts triggered by people he does not wish to speak
with and by landscapes he has no urge to explore. The train no longer represents the speed of
modernity, as it had in Walter Ruttmanns Sinfonie einer groen Stadt (1927); rather, it is the
vehicle to evade progress while enabling the kind of associative, imaginative thinking that has
long been the hallmark of the flaneur. Because the taxicab in Nadolnys Ein Taxifahrer dankt der
Zentrale (published in the same year as Die Netzkarte) has the same kind of function, it is
possible to claim that Nadolny resiliently invented the taxicab driver as yet another type of
flaneur.

On a winter day, on dangerously icy roads, a cab driver takes a passenger from Rudow, a
locality in the southeastern part of Berlin, to Frohnau, in Berlins northeastern part. Frohnau is
as rural as the garden city Rudow, but West Berlins most famous urban sites are located on
the taxi route. These include old historic sites such as the Reichstag and the Siegessule, as well
as West Berlins signature Kulturforum, an ensemble of cultural sites (e.g., the Philharmonic
Hall and the New National Gallery) designed by the architect Hans Scharoun (1883-1972) that
was meant to be West Berlins equivalent of East Berlins Museumsinsel (museum island). The
route thus seems ideal for the passenger from West Germany who had not been in Berlin for ten
years (the text conveys no other information about him).

The cab drivers ironic playfulness with concepts and words is evident even at the beginning of
the ride when he proclaims that for once a trip will proceed from top to bottom. On a map,
Rudow is of course at the bottom and Frohnau at the top, but the cab driver is referring to the
state of things in West Berlin, which often seems to go downhill instead of upward. Yet he
himself neither longs for nor expects changes of any sort. He is satisfied with his life in the
midst of an ossified population that treats him well as long as he makes no demands on it. As a
section reproduced in Berliner Spaziergnge informs us, the cab driver is not criticized in West
Berlin for not having made something of his life. After years of turbulence, Berlin has become
like a grandmother who either doesnt see well or prefers to close her eyes to unpleasant things.
This pertains to the political front too. Even when there are provocations, each side tends to
look the other way rather than risk a war through belligerence.

Much like the flaneur of the past, the cab driver perceives magic in street names and often uses
them as springboards for his flaneur-like discursive commentaries. In the second paragraph of
Nadolnys text, included in Berliner Spaziergnge, the driver remarks that all side streets on one
side of the Neuklln Street are named after flowers, causing him to curve around in them like a
bee would (in all likelihood, he is offering this excuse for his taxi skidding on the treacherous
ice). In another section, one not excerpted in Berliner Spaziergnge, he guesses the meaning of a
street name, first inferring that it stands for a particular flower but then suggesting that it could
just as well be the last name of a Huguenot, the Jewish Huguenots having populated large areas
of Berlin in 1685, when Elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg offered them a safe haven
from the anti-Semitic persecutions prevalent at that time in France. Whether he interprets the
name of the street correctly or not does not seem to matter to the driver, as long as the site
enables him to slip into a historical discourse.

Well-versed in history like Nadolny (who received his doctorate in history and had once also
been a taxicab driver), the driver attributes Berlins days of exemplary urbanism to the
Huguenots and Berlins lack of metropolitan significance in the postwar period to their absence,
calling this the revenge of history. Talk of the Huguenots awakens associations pertaining to
anti-Semitism. Based on personal experience, he knows that the horrible things that happened
in the Nazi era will not go away: at various times he catches himself wondering what people
looked like when they did not open their mouths to protest. In typical flaneur-fashion, the taxi
drivers reflections highlight the primacy of the optic. He is not, however, interested in the
highly profiled landmarks of Berlin. Rather than talk about the Wall when the cab passes the
part running along the Teltowkanal, the cab driver perfunctorily points out only the
Teltowkanal. When the cab reaches the area of the Reichstag, he mentions simply that it is to the
right (a building that the passenger surely would have recognized on his own) and then
immediately deflects his passengers attention to a building that interests him far more: the
Kongresshalle (a conference center).

He does not refer to its history (that it was given as a gift by the U.S. in 1957 and that it was
meant to be the lighthouse of freedom), but he relishes telling a visually-based joke about it.
The rim of its hat simply fell down, he says incredulously, thereby obliquely referring to 1980,
the year when its unusually protruding roof had caved in. This is the kind of statement the
driver regards as the voice of the people (rather than the empty Wall-slogans tourists mistake
for the peoples voice). In general, though, the cab driver does not engage with the passenger
more than the solitary flaneur engaged with those around him. He has, moreover, found a way
to continue his incessant talk in his leisure time as well.

By the end of the narrative, the driver is at one of his regular sessions with a psychiatrist,
uninterruptedly examining why he stays in Berlin when hed actually like to leave, apparently
his main psychological ailment. His perfectly normal neurosis is normal for the West Berlin of
the early eighties. Certainly his psychiatrist shares it, a guarantee that the driver need not fear a
cure. Debating Berlin-related issues back and forth has become a pastime that expresses the
political standstill in West Berlin, much as it reflects the standstill in the taxicab drivers life. As
flaneur, then, the taxicab driver does not represent an alternate way of approaching life but the
dominant mode of behavior in West Berlin.



PETER SCHNEIDER, DER MAUERSPRINGER (1982)

Peter Schneiders Der Mauerspringer (The Wall Jumper, 1982), the only noteworthy West
German literary treatment of the Berlin Wall, consists of a loose mixture of hybrid components:
anecdotes, news articles, TV commentaries, fictitious tales, documentary evidence, and self-
analysis. They focus on a nexus of complex east/west national and personal identity questions,
most arising from behavior predicated on the political system people had lived in during their
formative years. Like the narrator in Schneiders Lenz (1973)a significant treatment of Berlins
student movementthe Mauerspringer-narrator learns to doubt views he had previously
regarded unassailable. This time, however, not abstract concepts but a very concrete structure
(the double entendre is intended) provides Schneider with his focal point. How the narrator
perceives Berlin and the Wall within it thus begins the Schneider-selections in Berliner
Spaziergnge.

The airplane bringing the narrator to Berlin circles the entire city three times, turning him into a
temporary airplane flaneur. The narrator is every bit as fascinated by what he sees from
above, at a considerable distance from the city, as he would have been by sites scaled to more
human proportions on city streets. Like the flaneur, he responds associatively to what he
experiences visually. Since there is no companion at his sidethis too in keeping with the
image of the flaneurhe expands ideas without interruptions, eventually casting them into
literary prose forms. What, then, does he see?

From afar, he perceives an undivided area of regulated linearity. The view indicates unity. But,
due to the endlessly reproduced rectangular buildings dominating the center of the city terrain,
unity becomes synonymous with uniformity. At the outskirts of the city he sees even less
attractive buildings. They seem more like cement blocks hurled down at the city by either the
Soviets or the western Allies than the outcome of imaginative architectural designs. Their most
striking feature is also uniformity. The narrators panoramic view from the skies erases
distinctions. There are no signs of spatial discord and certainly none suggesting two different
political spheres. The duplicate structures in east and westsuch as the two television towers,
sport stadiums, and city halls--suggest identical tastes rather than divergent political views.

When the plane descends, the narrator of course detects the Wall, but its outward appearance
does not indicate a ruptured world. Rather, from the sky the Wall appears to be the most
creative, most attractive structure of the city. Similar to the way art protests rigid, established
norms, the anarchically zigzagging Wall seems to protest the existence of so many
unimaginative, endlessly multiplied, severe rectangles. For the flaneur in the sky, the Wall is an
aesthetic experience. That the Wall is in reality a construct of division becomes apparent to him
only after the plane lands at the Schnefeld-Airport (in the southern border of the eastern
sector). There, from separate waiting lines, East- and West Germans are directed into their own
half of the Siamese city and therefore into one of the two national identities preordained by
the two differing German Cold War systems.

Like Nadolnys cab driver, the narrator is typical of the members of the young generation who
began arriving in Berlin soon after the Wall was built in 1961. While some came because of
customary reasons (to join a friend, to escape provincial life), others, including the narrator,
came because of a new policy instituted to attract the young generation to West Berlin: by
moving to West Berlin, men could escape mandatory enlistment in the armed services.
Strangely, exemption from the military was sanctioned only in West Berlin, which remained the
most dangerous Cold War territory in the west even after the Wall reduced the risk of military
confrontations. Thus, as representatives of big business fled in droves, the particularly pacifistic
and creative young flocked to West Berlin, where they shaped the many pockets of alternative
life styles that contributed so immensely to differentiating the Cold War island from the Federal
Republic of Germany. Many stayed for the reason Schneiders narrator also underlines in
Berliner Spaziergnge: Berlin seemed far more authentic than West German cities because its
multilayered past remained inscribed in its topography.

The endless talk of unification prevalent in official speeches, along with the constant reminder
that each Berlin was only one half of a desirable whole, might have prompted the narrator to
reflect on nationhood and on his own ruptured personal identity. Thus, in direct contrast to his
former avoidance of the Wallwhen it had been reduced from a massive, intrusive, corporeal
structure to a wispy metaphor comfortably housed in the recesses of his mindhe concerns
himself with the Wall more and more. Somewhat similar to the way that Walter Benjamin
gathered his vast store of citations, the narrator collects anecdotes about Wall jumpers, one of
these the fictional tale of Mr. Kabe included in Berliner Spaziergnge. Why Mr. Kabe feels the
need to scale the Wall and jump to its other side, which in his case happens to be west to east
(perceived as an anomaly even by East Germans) never becomes clear, not even to him, but
jump over it he must. Both East- and West Berlin authorities are able to interpret his deed only
by ascribing political motives to it. In this instance, as in many others, east and west
interpretations of the same incident diverge widely, along with the meanings of the words used
to explicate them (for example, there is no agreement on the meaning of the word freedom).
Because the Wall stories offer the narrator too many differing perspectives, they ultimately do
not supply him with the key to unlock the secrets of personal and national identity.

In the process of accumulating more and more Wall jumper stories, the narrator increases the
frequency of his own Wall jumpingthat is, crossing the border for one-day trips to East
Berlin. But, his encounters with easterners prove how very much he too is conditioned by the
western state and they by the eastern one. This insight leads him to utter, in 1982 (!), the
sentence that has become the most prophetic German sentence on post-Wall Germany: To
demolish the Wall in the head will take longer than any demolition company will need to
dismantle the visible Wall.

Another passage from the book, this one a succinct question, has become almost as famous as
the above quote: Wo hrt ein Staat auf und fngt ein Ich an? In other words, what aspects of
ones personal self are ones own and what aspects of the self are conditioned by ones political
system? Though appearing toward the end of Schneiders narrative, this important identity
question could very well have motivated it. Not surprisingly, Schneiders assiduous
explorations of topographical and mental borders, along with border crossings pertaining to
both, highlight it as a question resistant to a satisfactory answer.



SVEN REGENER, HERR LEHMANN (2001)

In the many interviews Sven Regener has given since his first novel Herr Lehmann (Berlin Blues,
2001) turned into an instant bestseller, he consistently emphasizesincreasingly with
irritationthat Herr Lehmann is not a novel about West Berlins Kreuzberg district (where most
of the action takes place). Perhaps Regener, the founder, songwriter, singer, and trombone
player of the Berlin rock group Element of Crime, feels compelled to repeat this so often because
no one believes him. Regardless of his assertions, the book is viewed as the quintessential novel
about the Kreuzberg of the 1980s, representative of the unique Kreuzberg mix and the
Kreuzberg feel. Since Regener refers only to existing Kreuzberg locations (e.g., Wiener Strae,
Lausitzer Platz, Urbankrankenhaus) and to existing Kreuzberg establishments, such as the
Einfall (inspiration/ idea) and Abfall (refuse/garbage/waste), it was not long before Mr.
Lehmann was here signs cropped up and tourists of every ilk were walking through
Kreuzberg on Mr. Lehmann Tours.

It is ironic that the Kreuzberg sites mentioned in Herr Lehmann have assumed such an important
life of their own, for the book rarely comments on them. The locations simply contextualize Mr.
Lehmann in a real environment. We are informed of the street name whenever Mr. Lehmann
first appears on it, and we know the name of the streets where he turns right or left and, often,
how many blocks he walks on each particular street. The precise locations and the fact that he
can walk to all of them denote a well-defined, secure life. In the course of the novel, however,
Mr. Lehmanns stable life becomes completely unmoored.

The entire first chapter points to the probability of imminent changes. At the outset of the novel,
as Mr. Lehmann heads home from a serious drinking bout in the Einfall (where he is a
bartender), we learn of his irritation at everyone other than his mother suddenly addressing
him as Mr. Lehmann rather than calling him by his first name. He correctly assumes that the
last name and the title Mr. prefacing it signify that others have lost patience with his arrested
development and are signaling that it is time for him to become an adultmoreover, at the very
latest on his impending 30
th
birthday. Unexpectedly, Mr. Lehmanns homeward careening is
interrupted at the Lausitzer Plaza: a particularly ugly, ferocious dog suddenly plants itself in
front of him. For the first time during his nine years in Kreuzberg, Mr. Lehmann is unable to
continue walking in a trusted neighborhood location. Dangerin the form of a dog that has no
namebares its teeth at him, arresting his physical mobility (his inner mobility had been
arrested long ago). How the terrified Mr. Lehmann averts the danger, negotiating with the dog
in a myriad of unsuccessful ways before finally getting the dog drunk with the brandy he had
stolen from the bar, must certainly be one of the most humorous episodes in modern German
literature. This same dog does turn friendly only in a passage in which Mr. Lehmann assumes
responsibility.

In the first Herr Lehmann-excerpt of Berliner Spaziergnge, we encounter Mr. Lehmann on the
way to meet his staid parentsa meeting he mightily dreads not only because he is afraid that
they will call his unimpressive life into question. His parents, having come to Berlin with a tour
group from the Federal Republic, are staying in a hotel at the corner of Charlottenburgs
Schlterstrae and Kurfrstendamm, an area of Berlin that Herr Lehmann detestsbecause of
its consumer temples, commodities, large numbers of touristsin short, because it is everything
that Kreuzberg was not. Understandably, therefore, everything not only seems wrong but also
goes wrong on the way to his parents hotel. Exiting the subway at the Wittenbergplatz, he
catches sight of the most famous West Berlin tourist attractions: the KaDeWe department store
immediately in front of him, the senseless shopping paradise Europa Center at a distance,
and beyond that the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which he considers even worse (in
terms of crowd pleasers), and in-between, on the Tauentzienstrae, all the mass-replicated shoe
stores bearing mass-produced names such as Leiser and Stiller.

Only the thought of walking to the hotel calms Mr. Lehmann somewhat (here, as elsewhere,
walking represents the individuals confidence in the ability to maintain control, a conviction
that proves to be illusory). Not included in our excerpted selection: the semi-disastrous meeting
with his parents and his dinner with them in the Einfalla highly humorous episode because
his girlfriend Katrin and his best friend Karl pretend that Herr Lehmann is the manager of the
place and treat both him and his unsuspecting parents with utterly fake, servile deference.

Despite her willingness to humor his parents, Katrin has no sympathy for Mr. Lehmanns lack
of ambition--a character trait that had generally been welcomed rather than criticized among
the many artists and societal dropouts who populated Kreuzberg, the rather poor, southeastern
part of West Berlin encased by the Berlin Wall on three sides. Unlike Mr. Lehmann, we are not
surprised when she leaves him for another man. This occurs on Mr. Lehmanns 30
th
birthday.

Much worse, though, than his loss of Katrin, is the loss of his best friend Karl, who suffers a
nervous breakdown and sinks into madness. Seeing no other recourse, Mr. Lehmann has him
committed to a mental hospitalmoreover, on the same day that Katrin leaves him. As if those
calamities were not enough, on that very same dayNovember 9, 1989the Berlin Wall comes
down. The last Herr Lehmann passage of Berliner Spaziergnge shows how Mr. Lehmann
experiences this event. Late in the evening, he is finally having his birthday drink in a bar.
When the bartender informs the customers of the fall of the Wall, no one seems particularly
interested. But, after Mr. Lehmann and a friend drink another beer, they do decide to
investigate the novel event at Kreuzbergs two border crossingsfirst at the Oberbaumbrcke,
then at the Moritzplatz, close to the Heinrich Heine crossing. Mr. Lehmanns reaction differs
vastly from the spontaneous outpouring of joy that satellite systems spread around the world.
He feels only profound emptiness. He senses that West Berlin will no longer be an island and
Kreuzberg no longer its most comfortable enclavein short, the fall of the Wall signifies the end
of Mr. Lehmanns life as he had known it. With the loss of borders and the influx of people from
the east, Mr. Lehmanns streets, plazas, and bars would also change their character. In an
unpredictable world, they too would become unpredictable, incapable of providing him with
the firm anchoring he had come to take for granted.

Whether the final line of the novel, also excerpted in our selections, connotes hope or immense
sadness has proven to be a matter of contention among critics. Those who sense sadness tend to
classify Herr Lehmann as a novel of nostalgia or Westalgie, the western variant of the Ostalgie that
gripped the eastern part of Germany several years after unification. But, it becomes difficult to
affix the Westalgie label to Regeners novel if one remembers Mr. Lehmanns depression after
Katrins defection and how devastated he was at the severe mental breakdown of his best
friend Karl. In addition, as Herr Lehmann stresses in two seminal passages of the novel, life in
Kreuzberg had somehow stopped being any fun. For a Kreuzberg without fun nostalgia is
simply out of place.



QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY

1. Both East Berlins Frankfurter Allee and West Berlins Hansaviertel were heavily
damaged in WWII. The architecture of the rebuilt Hansaviertel (1957) was a direct
response to the urban rebuilding on the Frankfurter Allee, renamed Stalinallee in 1949
and Karl-Marx-Allee in 1961. Each of the rebuilt areas were meant to reflect the
political/social system of its new Berlin. To obtain an impression of their new
architecture please, examine the Bundesarchiv (Federal Archive) photos on the
following websites http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Karl-Marx-Allee and
www.berlin.de/geschichte/historische-bilder/suche/index.php?place=Hansaviertel.
Mention two differences between the buildings on the Stalinallee and those in the
Hansaviertel. How does the Hansaviertel project reflect democratic principles? For help
in answering this question, you may turn to the article The Hansaviertel vs. the Karl-Marx-
Allee on the following website http://architectureinberlin.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/the-
hansaviertel-vs-karl-marx-allee/

2. Unlike the Prussian castle in Berlin-Mitte, the Prussian Charlottenburg Palace was
reconstructed in the 1950s. For views of this palace, turn first to an interactive video at
the following site: www.earthpano.com/germany/Berlin/charlottenburg/charlottenburg.htm.
Then go to this site: www.spsg.de/index.php?id=134. How does this castle fit into the
image of West Berlin as the frontier of freedom?

3. Starting with the early fifties, debates on WWII and Holocaust remembrance surfaced
frequently in West Berlin. Which buildings mentioned in this chapter provided a focus
for these debates in the 1950s? Still, debates on remembrance became far more
widespread with the 1968 student movement. What traces of these debates do you see in
the Sten Nadolny and Peter Schneider selections?

4. In Ingeborg Bachmanns view, West Berlinersincluding politiciansfound it much
easier to talk about the Berlin Wall than about the Nazi era. Why was the one topic much
less threatening than the other?

5. In your opinion, why did Bachmann choose to present the West Berlin of the early
sixties through the perceptions of the mentally ill? Why did she feel that only they could
do justice to the reality of Berlin?

6. Do you agree or disagree with the statement that Bachmanns presentation of Berlin is
radical?

7. The student movement of the 1960s not only originated in West Berlin but was also at its
strongest in West Berlin. Given the strong American presence and influence in West
Berlin, does that make sense?

8. In 1996, a part of Kreuzbergs Lindenstrasse was renamed Axel-Springer-Strae; in 2008,
after four years of heated debates, a part of the Kochstrasse was renamed Rudi
Dutschke-Strae. As the photo on the following site shows, these two streets intersect
www.flickr.com/photos/linksparker/2456851472. Based on West Berlin history of the
late sixties, why is the combination of these two names at one intersection surprising?
Read the texts on the following sites http://theragblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/rudi-dutschke-
strasse-from-our-man-in.html and www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t95050.html.
Also watch the You Tube video of the street party held on the day when the Rudi-Dutschke-
Strae street sign was put up. What represents surprising new information to you in regard to
naming a street after Rudi Dutschke?

The website of the Axel Springer publishing company includes the following in the car
directions to its Berlin premises: The publishing house is in Axel-Springer-Strasse, on the
corner of Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse, in the Berlin Mitte/Kreuzberg district, not far from
Friedrichstrasse and Checkpoint Charlie (the italics are ours).
www.axelspringer.de/en/artikel/How-to-Find-Us_96642.html. Was it necessary to
mention the Rudi-Dutschke-Strae in the directions?

9. Compare Nadolnys cab driver, Schneiders wall jumper, and Regeners walking Mr.
Lehmann. Why is each representative of the West Berlin of the 1980s? Which two have
the most in common with each other?

10. Each of the following websites focuses on the Berlin Wall. How are they similar and
how do they differ? www.berlinermaueronline.de, www.mauer-museum.com,
www.berliner-mauer-dokumentationszentrum.de/eng/index_dokz.html.