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CHAPTER 4WEST 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 itselfmerely 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 ametropolis, as its provisional capital.

The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was founded in October 1949. East Berlin waspronounced its capital, a step that indicated, despite official protestations to the contrary, thatEast Germany and the Soviets (who were behind its every move) had already abandoned thegoal of a unified Germany. Viewing itself, more or less, a bona fide nation, the GDR refused tocall its capital East Berlin, a designation implying a West Berlin. To avoid association with astunted 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 tocall 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 considerthemselves West Germans, a fact reflected in their special passports. But, the Federal Republicdid extend most of its laws and also its currency to West Berlin (the latter a bygone conclusionafter the Airlift). In addition, though the Federal Republic did not grant West Berlin votingrights, 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 WestGermanys staunchest representative in the Cold Warthis illustrative of the countlessparadoxes associated with West Berlin. In the harsh competition between the two radicallydifferent German systems, each waged propaganda attacks against the other, grimly andunrelentingly. The east railed against what it regarded a selfish, decadent, consumer-orientedsociety manipulated by big business, the west against communism and its abridgements ofpersonal 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 tooutdo it. Since this pertained to topographical matters as well, we will start our walk at a WestBerlin site that arose from the competition of the two systems: the Hansaviertel (northwest ofNo. 53).

In response to the GDRs efforts to turn the heavily bombed Frankfurter Allee (renamedStalinallee) into a grandiose boulevard in the Stalinist neo-classical manner, West Berlinwithin the framework of Interbau, the international architecture exhibit of 1957rebuilt theseverely war-damaged Hansaviertel into an ensemble of 36 starkly modernist high-rises, eachdesigned by a renowned architect. All face the street, but in a slanted manneras if inunanimous defiance of the unimaginative rectangular buildings lining so many of Berlinscentral 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 ofunsavory German history. Particularly the GDRs destruction of the war-ravaged but stillreparable palace in Berlin-Mitte in 1950 reverberated in West Berlin. The GDR demolished thepalace due to its unwelcome reminders of Prussian militarism; soon afterward West Berlinrazed the similarly damaged Kroll Opera across from the Reichstag (No. 81) because of negativehistorical connotations (after the Reichstag fire, it had served as the seat of the Nazigovernment). From the Hansaviertel, though, our walk will take us to a location where theleveling of a history-laden building proceeded far less smoothly: to the site of the Anhalter

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Bahnhof, once Berlins most important train station (off the map, close to No. 102). Though thedemolition of the castle prompted decisive steps to raze the Anhalter Bahnhof, the strongobjections of West Berliners prevailed, at least temporarily. Thus it was finally torn down in1961, even then, however, not without the protests of those outraged at yet another erasure ofthe 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 buildingsrestored 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, itsgourmet section could boast of almost 1000 cheeses. By 1964, it was again the largestdepartment 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 WestBerliners, 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 materialismcontinuously expected from them. Across the street from the KaDeWe, we notice a largerectangular 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 neverbe allowed to forget), followed by Auschwitz Theresienstadt Buchenwald Dachauone concentration camp after another. Placed on the Wittenbergplatz in 1967, the plaque wasmeant 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 recallsNazi Germanys specific crimes and thus remembrance of its victims. That its proponents wereable to place such a shocking message in such close proximity to West Berlins grandestconsumer haven was a featone that signaled more honesty for West Berlins memorialculture.

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 mostemphatic 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 Berlinsmayor, the Europa Center was touted as a spectacular city within a city, a one-of-a kindbuilding capable of providing inspiration for urban architects. Above all, though, the ten-ton, 14meter high, rotating Mercedes star on the roof of the 21-story building left no doubt about theagenda of its proponents: to broadcast West Berlins economic miracle and, by implication, thetowering 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 happenedwhen the BE sign on top of the Berliner Ensemble, the legendary Bertolt Brecht theater, startedrotating as well. Stepping out of the Europa Center, we join the crowds headed in the directionof the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (No. 62). It is a symbol both of the Berlin damaged bythe 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 inmarked contrast to the passions the Memorial Church had aroused in the 1950swhen the citycouncil, preferring to divert high restoration costs into the construction of an entirely newchurch building (scheduled for completion in 1956), planned its complete destruction. UnlikeWest Germans, ever anxious to remove reminders of Nazi atrocities, West Berliners were proneto retaining them, even in the midst of their most commercial areas. Thus the imposing ruins ofthe neo-Roman Memorial Church, soon affectionately labeled hollow tooth, remained thecenterpiece of the minimalist buildings comprising the new church ensemble on theBreitscheidplatz.

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Much as West Berliners tacitly accepted ruins, most adjusted to the Wall in their midst, whicharose because of Cold War politics beyond their control. Drastic measures had been dreadedsince 1958, when Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev started insisting that the Western Allies leaveWest Berlin and allow it to govern itself (in the doublespeak of politics, this signified Kruschevsdesire 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 Germanybyextension also that of the capitalist and communist worlds. Though the Western Allies movedtheir tanks to the border between East and West Berlin, they were wary of triggering a war (incontrast to the Blockade days, the Soviets now had the atom bomb). A war was indeed avertedbecause the three points U.S. President John F. Kennedy had posed, not long before, as asinequanon for avoiding U.S. intervention had not been violatedabove all, the demand thatWest Berlin remain free. In fact, behind the scenes the U.S. lamented the Wall far less than it didin public, for the Wall signified that the Soviets had decided against spreading communismthroughout 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 desireto have West Berlin govern itself on its own.

Two years later, in June 1963, Kennedy finally provided the needed pledge of support with hispowerful Ich bin ein Berliner speech. From the Memorial Church we will therefore proceed tothe 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 Berlinduring the Cold War but also because it boasted the Freiheitsglocke, the replica of the LibertyBell of Philadelphia given by the U.S.in 1950 in commemoration of the Airlift. Each Sundaythereafter (until 1993), Berliners in the American sector heard this bell ringing in the tower ofSchnebergs city hall, if not in its vicinity then in the noon program of the U.S.-sponsored radiostation RIAS, its motto likewise resonant with the concept of freedom: A free voice of the freeworld. Berlin thus became a symbol of freedom, both of the inhumane restrictions on freedomimposed 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 atrapprochement with Poland, the Soviet Union, and the GDR, he received the l971 Nobel Prizefor Peace. Particularly the Four Power Agreement on Berlin, signed in 1972, lifted many traveland 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 theWallfrom the Oberbaum Bridge, the border crossing reserved for West Berlin pedestrians (offthe 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 tofinding and maintaining traces of Berlins Nazi past) had unearthed Gestapo torture chambersin 1986. But, to gain more understanding of the significance of the Wall, we will seek out theWall 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 theWall (for example, escape attempts from the GDR and retaliatory shootings by East Germanborder guards). But we need to be aware of a caveat: the crowds of Wall tourists respond farmore positively to its exhibits and their pathos-laden accompanying texts than the generallyironic West Berliners.

After the Wall was built, the Charlottenburg district turned into West Berlins center, especiallythe area around the Memorial Church and the long avenue extending northward from it, theKurfrstendamm or simply KuDamm (Nr. 37-45). This heavily frequented boulevard

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functioned as a particularly elegant shopping avenue, as well as the demonstration/parade sitefor all important events. The train station Bahnhof Zoo (Nr. 32) also drew many crowds, but itshookers and drug dealers were the wrong kinds of crowds. Still, they largely disappeared afterChristiane F.s description of the drug scene and its teenage victims in We Childrem fromBahnhof 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 smalland middle-sized bookstores on its side streets. A listening flaneur, on the other hand, was bestserved at the restaurant Zwiebelfisch, where radicals of the 1968 student movement gathered todiscuss works critiquing capitalism, such as the popular One-Dimensional Man (1964) by thepolitical theorist Herbert Marcuse.

From the Savigny Platz we will move on to the Deutsche Oper (above Nr. 13). It was there thatBenno Ohnesorg, merely a bystander at the June 2, 1967 student demonstrations against theShah of Persia, was brutally killed by a policeman while the Shah was enjoying a production ofMozarts Magic Flute. A photo of another bystander holding up Ohnesorgs bloodied head in aPiet-like pose went around the world. In West Berlin it mobilized many for the studentmovementat 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, theVietnam war, and the German higher education system. Inspired by Dutschke, many studentsvehemently attacked German societys silences about the Nazi past. Soon they confronted theirfathers, demanding explanations of their roles in the Third Reich. Above all, they railed againsta 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 onpoliticizing the personal, one branch of the student movement founded a counter-model to thefamily, the Kommune I. It became known for its hedonistic life style and its satiricprovocationsfor example, its April 1967 plan to assassinate visiting U.S. Vice PresidentHubert 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 studentorganization that helped to form APO, the extraparliamentary opposition to BonnsCDU/SPD coalition government). This is where a confused ultra-rightist attempted toassassinate Rudi Dutschke in April 1968 (Dutschke remained alive but was incapacitated forseveral years). Students blamed the incendiary, anti-Dutschke crusades of the Springer Pressfor the assassination attempt and thus stormed the building of the publishing company, whichhad moved close to the border in order to taunt the leaders on its other side. This building onthe Lindenstrasse (east of map, parallel to Nr. 102) will be the last stop of our walking unitfocused on the student movement of the sixties. The Easter Sunday demonstrations protestingthe assassination attempt on Dutschkeamong the biggest in Berlins demonstration- packedhistory--were held in front of it and on the Kurfrstendamm. But by the end of 1969, the studentmovement 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 thereduction of urban topography caused by the Wall. Many reduced their topography even moreby restricting their movements to their Kiez, their neighborhood within a neighborhood.Clearly, those restricting their world into ever more manageable fragments and repeatedlywalking around in areas they knew so well that there was nothing left to explore lacked thedisposition of the urbane, urban flaneur. Yet, because past and future nonetheless remainedintertwined in West Berlin, each in continuous, referential dialogue with the other, West Berlinstill retained the ability to induce change. We see this best in the ending of Wim WenderssWest-Berlin film Wings of Desire (1987). There we encounter the Homer figurethe only one

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who has not forgotten the days before, during, and immediately after the war and the only oneunwilling to accept the barren wasteland Berlins Potsdamer Platz had become. At the end, hehas finally figured out how to write a peace epic rather than the war epics that had made himfamous. In the last shot of the film, he walks, decisively, confrontationally, toward the Wall. Hemeans 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 Ortfr Zuflle(A Place for Incidents, 1964), for it is the speech she gave in Darmstadt in October 1964as 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 audienceeven pretended to understand it. In their view, Bachmann had not followed the directive to talkabout 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, Bachmannhad already specified her intent to focus not on an individual but on a singular area, one whosesevere 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 foreignersimpressions of Berlin (as recipient of a generous Ford Foundation scholarship initiated toreinvigorate 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 sixtiesfor example, designating Berlin as the frontier of the West. She stressed that Berlins damageswere far too severe for mystifications of any sort, including the tendency to cast Berlin into asymbol. Thus she underlined that she would not be providing yet another inconsequentialtreatise on the Berlin Wall. Lashing out at the word Teilung (division), Bachmann claimedthat it was already far too overused, that it was convenient for evading personal responsibilityand, worse, that it inhibited thinking. Suggesting neither permanence nor irreparable personaldamage, 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 ina more distant past. Clearly Bachmann signaled to her illustrious gathering that she intended toconfront the Nazi eramoreover, in ways that had nothing to do with the empty slogans of theCold War period. How, then, can a depiction of Berlin be commensurate with the experience ofits severely damaged essence? Above all, it must be radical, Bachmann insisted.

The clashing Berlin images Bachmann then hurled at the audiencemost connected withspecific sites--were indeed radical. What, in other words, was one to make of women clad ingreased paper at Berlins Lake Wannsee followed by trembling patients leaning over hospitalbalconies, terrified of the airplanes flying through their hospital rooms, or of waitresses in theCaf Kranzler, their high heels stuck in whipped cream, who were preceded by theassassination of Walther Rathenau, the Weimar Republics Foreign Minister, on theKnigsallee? 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, linearnarrative. Instead, they seem to have been forcibly jammed together, much as a hurricane mighthave jammed trucks, baby buggies, limousines, and shopping carts into each other. Bachmannsjumbling of sites would frustrate a flaneur as well; it does not provide the continuum needed totreat sites like unfolding texts. Her accumulated site constructs are equally useless for theaverage 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

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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 wordZuflle designates Lenzs incurable illnessa madness resulting from his conviction that arupture runs through the entire world, dividing both the world and his own self intoincompatible parts. Like the excessively sensitive Lenz, Bachmann relentlessly pursues thisrupture. Thus her Place for Incidentspresents 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, Bachmanncreates images with Lenzian ruptures. The oppositesone part generally referencing Berlin inthe Nazi era, the other the Berlin of the early sixtiesturn into images of sickness or madnesswhen they connect with each other. Their merger is never a seamless joining but always asudden, aggressive entanglement, much like cinematic collision montages. As the first,unhealthily long sentence of Bachmanns text highlights (a sentence that is the verbal equivalentof 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 andTegelthe former widely considered the seat of Prussian militarism, the latter associated withWest Berlins civilian airport Tegel (built during the Airlift, it opened for regularly scheduledcivilian flights only in 1960). In geographical skidding and sliding, the text informs us, thehouses of Potsdam somehow end up in the houses of Tegel, much as its pine trees, sufferingfrom 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 aterritorial entity. In the spirit of Potsdam, its militarism continues to infiltrate Berlin, even itsnew civilian airport. Tegels airplanes, then, cannot help but be reminiscent of the horrifyingwar planes of the Nazi era.

Many other passages associate similarly incongruous occurrences with jarring couplings ofBerlin 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 thedisheveled, agitated customers? Are they the prisoners of Pltzenseea site associated with theNazi erawho have resurfaced, dislocated, in the elegant Hotel Kempinski? Or, do they belongto the large cast of mentally ill people populating Bachmanns Berlin-text who are occasionallyallowed to leave their hospitals? Emotionally defenseless, they are the ones attuned to thehorrors lurking from the palimpsests that constitute Berlin.

The first excerpt in Berliner Spaziergnge also illustrates Bachmanns technique of merging pastand present in clashing combinations of geographical sites. In a single paragraph, theLtzowplatz is joined to the KaDeWe department store, close to the Wittenbergplatz. Yet theresultant whole is fractured. Other than an occasional human bone, there are no signs of life lefton the Ltzowplatz. The restored KaDeWe, however, is packed with people unable to controltheir 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 audioand visual sensibilities, the mentally ill experience the WWII Ltzowplatz fire as if it wereoccurring in the present, whereas the consumers in the recently rebuilt KaDeWe (one thatshows no traces of past damages) are so bent on repressing the past that they live only for theunrestrained, bizarre accumulation of unnecessary goods.

The horrors of the past reassert themselves even in the new Kreuzberg district described inBerliner Spaziergnge. The rebellion of Kreuzbergs societal dropouts against the Berlinestablishment turns into (military) posturing against subsidized agony (the image Bachmann

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also uses for her own Ford Foundation-sponsored life in Berlin). They too wish to banish ratherthan confront the past (the text states that a whole age is ordered into the closet), but the pastreasserts itself in sudden, seemingly inexplicable violence against others. In the Krankheitsbilderincluded in Berliner Spaziergnge that jarringly juxtapose West Berlin, the city of agents andspies, and East Berlin, the location governed by the Stasi (the GDRs state security system thathad 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 damagedpeople and the radical ways in which they perceive Berlin. Only their fragmented, oftenaggressive 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 Austrianaward granted since 1976 for an unpublished work of German prose. At the public reading inKlagenfurt (Bachmanns birthplace), Nadolny read a chapter of a book he was to publish only in1983, but one that instantly made him even more famous than the Bachmann Prize did: TheDiscovery of Slowness. His praise of slowness went counter to the prevailing scientific andtechnological currents of the times, much as the Weimar flaneur went against those of his era byslowly strolling through cityscapes, not allowing the distractions of urban life to interfere withhis careful examination of his surroundings.

Slowness and rejection of purposeful behaviorboth enduring qualities of the flaneuerwerealready important aspects of Nadolnys first published novel, Die Netzkarte(1981), a book oftenmentioned as the paradigmatic example for a type of reinvented flaneur: the railroad flaneur. Itsprotagonist 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 speakwith and by landscapes he has no urge to explore. The train no longer represents the speed ofmodernity, as it had in Walter Ruttmanns Sinfonie einer groen Stadt (1927); rather, it is thevehicle 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 derZentrale (published in the same year as Die Netzkarte) has the same kind of function, it ispossible to claim that Nadolny resiliently invented the taxicab driver as yet another type offlaneur.

On a winter day, on dangerously icy roads, a cab driver takes a passenger from Rudow, alocality in the southeastern part of Berlin, to Frohnau, in Berlins northeastern part. Frohnau isas rural as the garden city Rudow, but West Berlins most famous urban sites are located onthe taxi route. These include old historic sites such as the Reichstag and the Siegessule, as wellas West Berlins signature Kulturforum, an ensemble of cultural sites (e.g., the PhilharmonicHall and the New National Gallery) designed by the architect Hans Scharoun (1883-1972) thatwas meant to be West Berlins equivalent of East Berlins Museumsinsel (museum island). Theroute 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 ofthe 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 thestate of things in West Berlin, which often seems to go downhill instead of upward. Yet hehimself neither longs for nor expects changes of any sort. He is satisfied with his life in themidst of an ossified population that treats him well as long as he makes no demands on it. As asection reproduced in Berliner Spaziergnge informs us, the cab driver is not criticized in West

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Berlin for not having made something of his life. After years of turbulence, Berlin has becomelike 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 tolook 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 ofNadolnys text, included in Berliner Spaziergnge, the driver remarks that all side streets on oneside of the Neuklln Street are named after flowers, causing him to curve around in them like abee would (in all likelihood, he is offering this excuse for his taxi skidding on the treacherousice). In another section, one not excerpted in Berliner Spaziergnge, he guesses the meaning of astreet name, first inferring that it stands for a particular flower but then suggesting that it couldjust as well be the last name of a Huguenot, the Jewish Huguenots having populated large areasof Berlin in 1685, when Elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg offered them a safe havenfrom the anti-Semitic persecutions prevalent at that time in France. Whether he interprets thename of the street correctly or not does not seem to matter to the driver, as long as the siteenables him to slip into a historical discourse.

Well-versed in history like Nadolny (who received his doctorate in history and had once alsobeen a taxicab driver), the driver attributes Berlins days of exemplary urbanism to theHuguenots 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 toanti-Semitism. Based on personal experience, he knows that the horrible things that happenedin the Nazi era will not go away: at various times he catches himself wondering what peoplelooked like when they did not open their mouths to protest. In typical flaneur-fashion, the taxidrivers reflections highlight the primacy of the optic. He is not, however, interested in thehighly profiled landmarks of Berlin. Rather than talk about the Wall when the cab passes thepart running along the Teltowkanal, the cab driver perfunctorily points out only theTeltowkanal. When the cab reaches the area of the Reichstag, he mentions simply that it is to theright (a building that the passenger surely would have recognized on his own) and thenimmediately 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 wasmeant 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 thedriver regards as the voice of the people (rather than the empty Wall-slogans tourists mistakefor the peoples voice). In general, though, the cab driver does not engage with the passengermore than the solitary flaneur engaged with those around him. He has, moreover, found a wayto 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 ofthe early eighties. Certainly his psychiatrist shares it, a guarantee that the driver need not fear acure. Debating Berlin-related issues back and forth has become a pastime that expresses thepolitical standstill in West Berlin, much as it reflects the standstill in the taxicab drivers life. Asflaneur, then, the taxicab driver does not represent an alternate way of approaching life but thedominant mode of behavior in West Berlin.

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PETER SCHNEIDER, DER MAUERSPRINGER (1982)

Peter Schneiders Der Mauerspringer (The Wall Jumper, 1982), the only noteworthy WestGerman 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 theirformative years. Like the narrator in Schneiders Lenz(1973)a significant treatment of Berlinsstudent movementthe Mauerspringer-narrator learns to doubt views he had previouslyregarded unassailable. This time, however, not abstract concepts but a very concretestructure(the double entendre is intended) provides Schneider with his focal point. How the narratorperceives Berlin and the Wall within it thus begins the Schneider-selections in BerlinerSpaziergnge.

The airplane bringing the narrator to Berlin circles the entire city three times, turning him into atemporary airplane flaneur. The narrator is every bit as fascinated by what he sees fromabove, at a considerable distance from the city, as he would have been by sites scaled to morehuman proportions on city streets. Like the flaneur, he responds associatively to what heexperiences visually. Since there is no companion at his sidethis too in keeping with theimage of the flaneurhe expands ideas without interruptions, eventually casting them intoliterary 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 lessattractive buildings. They seem more like cement blocks hurled down at the city by either theSoviets or the western Allies than the outcome of imaginative architectural designs. Their moststriking feature is also uniformity. The narrators panoramic view from the skies erasesdistinctions. There are no signs of spatial discord and certainly none suggesting two differentpolitical 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 appearancedoes not indicate a ruptured world. Rather, from the sky the Wall appears to be the mostcreative, most attractive structure of the city. Similar to the way art protests rigid, establishednorms, the anarchically zigzagging Wall seems to protest the existence of so manyunimaginative, endlessly multiplied, severe rectangles. For the flaneur in the sky, the Wall is anaesthetic experience. That the Wall is in reality a construct of division becomes apparent to himonly after the plane lands at the Schnefeld-Airport (in the southern border of the easternsector). There, from separate waiting lines, East- and West Germans are directed into their ownhalf of the Siamese city and therefore into one of the two national identities preordained bythe 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 ofcustomary 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: bymoving 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 themost dangerous Cold War territory in the west even after the Wall reduced the risk of militaryconfrontations. Thus, as representatives of big business fled in droves, the particularly pacifisticand creative young flocked to West Berlin, where they shaped the many pockets of alternativelife styles that contributed so immensely to differentiating the Cold War island from the Federal

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Republic of Germany. Many stayed for the reason Schneiders narrator also underlines inBerliner Spaziergnge: Berlin seemed far more authentic than West German cities because itsmultilayered past remained inscribed in its topography.

The endless talk of unification prevalent in official speeches, along with the constant reminderthat 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 hisformer avoidance of the Wallwhen it had been reduced from a massive, intrusive, corporealstructure to a wispy metaphor comfortably housed in the recesses of his mindhe concernshimself with the Wall more and more. Somewhat similar to the way that Walter Benjamingathered his vast store of citations, the narrator collects anecdotes about Wall jumpers, one ofthese the fictional tale of Mr. Kabe included in Berliner Spaziergnge. Why Mr. Kabe feels theneed 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, butjump over it he must. Both East- and West Berlin authorities are able to interpret his deed onlyby ascribing political motives to it. In this instance, as in many others, east and westinterpretations of the same incident diverge widely, along with the meanings of the words usedto 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 donot 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 thefrequency of his own Wall jumpingthat is, crossing the border for one-day trips to EastBerlin. But, his encounters with easterners prove how very much he too is conditioned by thewestern state and they by the eastern one. This insight leads him to utter, in 1982 (!), thesentence that has become the most prophetic German sentence on post-Wall Germany: Todemolish the Wall in the head will take longer than any demolition company will need todismantle the visible Wall.

Another passage from the book, this one a succinct question, has become almost as famous asthe 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 politicalsystem? Though appearing toward the end of Schneiders narrative, this important identityquestion could very well have motivated it. Not surprisingly, Schneiders assiduousexplorations of topographical and mental borders, along with border crossings pertaining toboth, 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 withirritationthat Herr Lehmannis not a novel about West Berlins Kreuzberg district (where most

of the action takes place). Perhaps Regener, the founder, songwriter, singer, and tromboneplayer of the Berlin rock group Element of Crime, feels compelled to repeat this so often becauseno one believes him. Regardless of his assertions, the book is viewed as the quintessential novelabout the Kreuzberg of the 1980s, representative of the unique Kreuzberg mix and theKreuzberg feel. Since Regener refers only to existing Kreuzberg locations (e.g., Wiener Strae,Lausitzer Platz, Urbankrankenhaus) and to existing Kreuzberg establishments, such as theEinfall (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 throughKreuzberg on Mr. Lehmann Tours.

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It is ironic that the Kreuzberg sites mentioned in Herr Lehmannhave assumed such an importantlife 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. Lehmannfirst 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 abartender), we learn of his irritation at everyone other than his mother suddenly addressinghim as Mr. Lehmann rather than calling him by his first name. He correctly assumes that thelast name and the title Mr. prefacing it signify that others have lost patience with his arresteddevelopment and are signaling that it is time for him to become an adultmoreover, at the verylatest on his impending 30th birthday. Unexpectedly, Mr. Lehmanns homeward careening isinterrupted at the Lausitzer Plaza: a particularly ugly, ferocious dog suddenly plants itself infront of him. For the first time during his nine years in Kreuzberg, Mr. Lehmann is unable tocontinue walking in a trusted neighborhood location. Dangerin the form of a dog that has nonamebares its teeth at him, arresting his physical mobility (his inner mobility had beenarrested long ago). How the terrified Mr. Lehmann averts the danger, negotiating with the dogin a myriad of unsuccessful ways before finally getting the dog drunk with the brandy he hadstolen from the bar, must certainly be one of the most humorous episodes in modern Germanliterature. This same dog does turn friendly only in a passage in which Mr. Lehmann assumesresponsibility.

In the first Herr Lehmann-excerpt of Berliner Spaziergnge, we encounter Mr. Lehmann on theway to meet his staid parentsa meeting he mightily dreads not only because he is afraid thatthey will call his unimpressive life into question. His parents, having come to Berlin with a tourgroup from the Federal Republic, are staying in a hotel at the corner of CharlottenburgsSchlterstrae and Kurfrstendamm, an area of Berlin that Herr Lehmann detestsbecause of

its consumer temples, commodities, large numbers of touristsin short, because it is everythingthat Kreuzberg was not. Understandably, therefore, everything not only seems wrong but alsogoes wrong on the way to his parents hotel. Exiting the subway at the Wittenbergplatz, hecatches sight of the most famous West Berlin tourist attractions: the KaDeWe department storeimmediately 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 (interms of crowd pleasers), and in-between, on the Tauentzienstrae, all the mass-replicated shoestores 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 convictionthat proves to be illusory). Not included in our excerpted selection: the semi-disastrous meetingwith 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 theplace 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 lackof ambition--a character trait that had generally been welcomed rather than criticized amongthe many artists and societal dropouts who populated Kreuzberg, the rather poor, southeasternpart of West Berlin encased by the Berlin Wall on three sides. Unlike Mr. Lehmann, we are notsurprised when she leaves him for another man. This occurs on Mr. Lehmanns 30thbirthday.

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Much worse, though, than his loss of Katrin, is the loss of his best friend Karl, who suffers anervous breakdown and sinks into madness. Seeing no other recourse, Mr. Lehmann has himcommitted to a mental hospitalmoreover, on the same day that Katrin leaves him. As if thosecalamities were not enough, on that very same dayNovember 9, 1989the Berlin Wall comesdown. The last Herr Lehmann passage of Berliner Spaziergnge shows how Mr. Lehmannexperiences 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 particularlyinterested. But, after Mr. Lehmann and a friend drink another beer, they do decide toinvestigate the novel event at Kreuzbergs two border crossingsfirst at the Oberbaumbrcke,then at the Moritzplatz, close to the Heinrich Heine crossing. Mr. Lehmanns reaction differsvastly 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 andKreuzberg no longer its most comfortable enclavein short, the fall of the Wall signifies the endof Mr. Lehmanns life as he had known it. With the loss of borders and the influx of people fromthe east, Mr. Lehmanns streets, plazas, and bars would also change their character. In anunpredictable world, they too would become unpredictable, incapable of providing him withthe firm anchoring he had come to take for granted.

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

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY

1. Both East Berlins Frankfurter Allee and West Berlins Hansaviertel were heavilydamaged in WWII. The architecture of the rebuilt Hansaviertel (1957) was a directresponse to the urban rebuilding on the Frankfurter Allee, renamed Stalinallee in 1949and Karl-Marx-Allee in 1961. Each of the rebuilt areas were meant to reflect thepolitical/social system of its new Berlin. To obtain an impression of their newarchitecture please, examine the Bundesarchiv (Federal Archive) photos on thefollowing websites http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Karl-Marx-Allee andwww.berlin.de/geschichte/historische-bilder/suche/index.php?place=Hansaviertel.Mention two differences between the buildings on the Stalinallee and those in theHansaviertel. How does the Hansaviertel project reflect democratic principles? For helpin 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 wasreconstructed in the 1950s. For views of this palace, turn first to an interactive video atthe 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 theimage of West Berlin as the frontier of freedom?

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

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

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

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

7. The student movement of the 1960s not only originated in West Berlin but was also at itsstrongest in West Berlin. Given the strong American presence and influence in WestBerlin, 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 RudiDutschke-Strae. As the photo on the following site shows, these two streets intersectwww.flickr.com/photos/linksparker/2456851472. Based on West Berlin history of thelate 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 tonaming a street after Rudi Dutschke?

The website of the Axel Springer publishing company includes the following in the cardirections to its Berlin premises: The publishing house is in Axel-Springer-Strasse, on thecorner of Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse, in the Berlin Mitte/Kreuzberg district, not far fromFriedrichstrasse and Checkpoint Charlie (the italics are ours).www.axelspringer.de/en/artikel/How-to-Find-Us_96642.html. Was it necessary tomention 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 havethe most in common with each other?

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