Berlin - City of Displacement

WEIMARPOLIS, Multi-disciplinary Journal of Urban Theory and Practice
Vol. 1, Issue 2, pp. 53-64, ISSN 1869-1692
City of Displacement:
On the unsteadiness of Berlin sites and sights1
Marc Schalenberg
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Email: schalenb@mappi.helsinki.fi
Abstract
This essay starts from the observation that the city of Berlin, throughout the 20 th century, has
been particularly prone to shift buildings in their entirety or in parts to other sites. These
shiftings have to be seen against their specific backgrounds, such as war destruction,
technological refurbishment, myth making, symbolic or memory politics by the respective
political regime, resuming the “spirit” or name of a place for reasons of identification or
marketing. But beyond those, the disposition to translocate can be understood as
symptomatic in a city whose narratives, images and practices have been explicitly oriented
towards the “new”, “unsteady” and “shiftable”. Attempts to remove material objects – not less
than their meanings – are to be found in completely diverse political and cultural contexts. It
seems an interesting challenge, therefore, to transcend the level of individual instances of
displacements and try to test some concepts recently suggested in Urban Studies, like
“habitus” or “intrinsic logic” for Berlin.
Zusammenfassung
Der Beitrag geht von der in Berlin vor allem im 20. Jahrhundert auffallenden Bereitschaft aus,
Bauwerke oder Teile von ihnen an andere Orte der Stadt zu versetzen. Jenseits der
konkreten Hintergründe (z.B. Kriegszerstörung, technische Modernisierung, „Mythenbildung“,
Symbol- und Erinnerungspolitik des jeweiligen politischen Regimes, Anknüpfen an den
„Geist“ eines Ortes bzw. Namens aus identifikatorischen oder kommerziellen Gründen) wird
diese Disposition als symptomatisch verstanden für eine Stadt, deren Narrative, (Selbst-)
Bilder und Praktiken stark am „Neuen“, „Unsteten“ und „Verrückbaren“ orientiert waren und
sind. Da sich Bemühungen um die Translozierung von materiellen Objekten - und damit von
Bedeutungen – in ganz verschiedenen politischen und kulturellen Kontexten finden lassen,
scheint es eine reizvolle Herausforderung, die reine Fall- und Ereignisebene zu
überschreiten und etwa die in der neueren Stadtforschung vorgeschlagenen Konzepte wie
„Habitus“ oder „Eigenlogik“ für die „Verschiebungen“ der deutschen Hauptstadt auszutesten.
Keywords: Berlin, capital cities, shifted monuments and buildings, symbolic politics,
memory politics, intrinsic logic/”habitus” of cities, materiality
53
Copyright © WEIMARPOLIS 2009
M. Schalenberg: City of Displacement
One of the recurring topoi in descriptions and interpretations of Berlin is the protean and
unfinished state of that city, irrespective of the changing political and cultural context. Being
chronically “on the move”, more oriented towards the future than the past, is certainly an
undue personification of a cityscape containing about 900 square kilometres and 3.4 million
people, but it appeared and appears plausible just the same. As a city of restless “change”,
of “becoming” (Karl Scheffler), of new scenes, Berlin has laid claim to be part of a global
metropolitan (or Weltstadt) discourse for well over a century now. In fact, the notion of
creative unsteadiness and free development has constructed an identity in its own right,
noticeably more so than in more “established” metropolises, producing a plethora of
narratives, slogans and images. It has also – so this paper will argue – found an expression
in the city’s physical space, which strikingly often saw the translocation of buildings and
monuments, and not only for reasons of engineering problems with the notoriously unstable
sandy and watery soil.
Alert to the importance of both politics and culture for such translocations, this essay aims to
build upon the by now extensive literature on memory politics (Erinnerungspolitik,
Geschichtspolitik), which has gained attention and plausibility in post-reunification Berlin (see
Ladd 1998; Huyssen 2003; Nolan 2004; Frank 2009). It deserves to be complemented by
recent attempts by urban sociologists to ascertain the “habitus” (Rolf Lindner, Lutz Musner)
or the “intrinsic logic” (Helmut Berking, Martina Löw) of cities. Besides, more culturalist
approaches assessing the implications of translocations for the city’s image/s and identity/ies
should be heeded in their essentially constructivist understanding of the interplay of various
practices, discourses and interests (see Biskup & Schalenberg 2008; Färber 2005).
Focussing on material manifestations, this paper finally wants to take up the recently
renewed interest in “things” and “evidence” throughout the social and cultural sciences (see
e.g. Böhme 2006; Miller 2006; Harrasser et al. 2009). Within its confines, however, neither
extensions nor the “mere” demolition of buildings or monuments and possible replacement
by new ones (of which there were many) can be considered in the following. As a sort of
running theme throughout urban history, and emphatically so in modern times, such
instances of conversion or Denkmalsturz are less specific than the phenomenon to be
considered here. So, what fruits can a history of conspicuous displacements in Berlin reveal?
There are a number of interesting cases for the premature dismantling of public buildings in
early modern times, like the fortifications devised by Memhardt in the mid-17th century, which
soon became an unwanted barrier for the westward expansion of the city from the later 17 th
century onwards; or the failed mintage tower (Münzturm) conceived by Schlüter as a new
landmark in the early 18 th century which eventually lost him his job as royal architect.
Ephemeral buildings for official court events, such as marriages or coronation ceremonies
54
Vol. 1, Issue 2, pp. 53-64, Copyright © WEIMARPOLIS 2009
were another case in point. But for reasons both of technological means and of political
culture, the deliberate translocation of entire building structures was still unheard of.
The trail was blazed more effectively with the dismantling of Schadow’s Quadriga on top of
the then recently constructed Brandenburg Gate by French troops in 1806; especially Vivant
Denon, Napoleon’s influential art councillor and “eye”, contrived this coup for the Louvre,
where the massive sculpture was sent by ship Fig. 1: Quadriga on top of Brandenburg Gate
(Cullen & Kieling 1999, p.41ff.). Maybe no other
single item encapsulated the reverse of fortunes in
the Napoleonic Wars more aptly than the return of
the Quadriga in June 1814. Hailed as an essential
symbol of victory (and hence no longer of peace,
as intended before), it was to play a pivotal role in
Prussian and later German history and mythology.
The female figure acting as central charioteer of
the sculpture was given an additional staff with an iron cross encircled by an oak wreath and
topped by the Prussian eagle with crown, all of which were designed by Schinkel [Fig. 1].
Apart from everything else, this was a major leap forward for the capital city of Berlin, as a
politically coded urban space; the experience and very possibility of removing crucial parts of
that space, in any case, was to have repercussions.
The 19th century saw a burgeoning of memorial culture, which also manifested itself in a
growing number of monuments in public urban space. The identity politics of the Prussian
monarchy proved largely defining for Berlin up to the First World War. It is revealing in social
historical terms how the number and range of individuals remembered by monuments
expanded: from members of the royal family via the higher echelons of the military and
statesmen to authors, scientists and scholars, engineers and beyond in the 20 th century; their
selection and positioning often proved highly Fig. 2: Royal Colonnades
controversial.2 Once in place, however, a

translocation was a rarity. For much of the second
half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the
frenetically growing city of Berlin, capital of the
German Kaiserreich since 1871, resembled a
single construction site, with large-scale
interventions in its physical appearance above
and below ground, notably for traffic
improvements or extensions, including manifold
demolitions of historical structures. One of the more complex translocations in that context
was the shifting of the Royal Colonnades (Königskolonnaden), a representative structure of
55
colonnades designed by Karl von Gontard errrected in the late 1770s. As part of the
ambitious measures to turn Alexanderplatz into a truly modern traffic and business hub, they
were displaced in their entirety in 1910 to adorn – without any obvious bearing to the site –
the new Kleistpark in Schöneberg, itself a replacement for the Botanic Garden, which was
about to be transferred to more spacious premises. The Prussian superior Court of Justice,
whose stately neo-Baroque building adjacent to Kleistpark was completed in 1913, may have
borne a vague stylistic resemblance to the colonnades, but it has remained a curious
juxtaposition ever since [Fig. 2].
An even bolder step was the displacement of the Victory Column (Siegessäule) by the Nazi
government in 1938-39. A monument to the three successful Prussian “unification wars”
against Denmark (in 1864), Austria (1866) and France (1870/71), 61 metres high, integrating
some of the cannon captured from the enemy and topped by a golden Victoria figure
moulded by Friedrich Drake, it was placed in 1873 Fig. 3: Victory Column, as seen from the
in the centre of the purpose-built Königsplatz, a underground footpath
large-scale roundabout right between the Kroll

opera house and what was to become the
Reichstag. The place marked the beginning of a
750-metre-long Victory Alley (Siegesallee)3 that
was to receive statues of 32 Hohenzollern
princes. Later, this structure was used as a
pretext for Nazi chief architect Albert Speer to
propose a much broader and longer North-South
axis, as a pivotal part of his megalomaniac plans for Berlin revamped as Germania, with an
inhumanely cold and brutal colossal architecture. Within this concept, unlike more “civic”
works, the signs of former successes by the Prussian military were to be retained, but
relocated to another prominent place. So as an initial measure the Victory Column was
shifted to the middle of the Grosser Stern roundabout at the intersection of five major
avenues, necessitating new underground footpaths for access and the construction of an 8-
metre-high granite base [Ill. 3]. It was “joined” by “iron chancellor” Bismarck as well as Roon
and Moltke, two important generals in the wars commemorated. The three statues, unveiled
in the early 20th century, were shuffled together with the column and placed along the
northern half of the roundabout.
After the end of World War Two and Nazi rule, the shattered and divided city was open to
and indeed in need of a new definition. Formerly existing structures were largely erased and
planners like Hans Scharoun encouraged to envisage an entirely new urban landscape along
a grid of motorways and alleged geological patterns. While only parts of these proposals
were realised (most conspicuously on the Culture Forum, but even there only partially), the
56
more material aspects of the redistribution of Fig. 4: Statue to the Great Elector, in front of
Prussia’s and Berlin’s cultural heritage had to be Schloss Charlottenburg
accommodated somehow; a New National

Gallery, other new museums, concert halls,
libraries and archives came into being in West
Berlin, mostly in new purpose-built structures. The
equestrian statue of the “Great Elector” Frederick
William by Andreas Schlüter (1696), rescued from
its traditional site on Lange Brücke close to the
City Castle (Stadtschloss) during the Second
World War, was reinstalled in the cour d’honneur
of Charlottenburg Castle in 1952 [Fig. 4], not least
because of the persistence of director Margarete
Kühn. This relocation (via a depot) was not
appreciated by everyone, but it somehow matched
the period around 1700, which is under-
represented in the architectural remains of the city.
The more “historical” remains of the city’s history were, in fact, situated in what became East
Berlin: a heritage about which the new socialist regime, eager to justify a completely new
start, was rather unsentimental, even vindictive. One of the most striking and curious
translocations was inflicted upon “Gate 4” of the City Castle, which was erected and
extended by Schlüter and Eosander, on the Spree island in the early 18 th century. The
political decision by Walter Ulbricht in 1950 to tear down the – not at all inconsiderable –
remains of the City Castle spared this particular Fig. 5: former GDR State Council Building
gate for reasons of intended socialist mythology with “Gate 4” of the Hohenzollern castle
[Fig. 5]. As Karl Liebknecht had proclaimed a

“socialist republic” from the balcony of the gate on
9th November 1918 – in repudiation of the
“German republic” proclaimed from the Reichstag
by the social democrat Philipp Scheidemann – the
young GDR was eager to integrate these “spoils”
into their own State Council Building
(Staatsratsgebäude) some hundred metres to the South-West of the former castle in the
early 1960s. This post-religious, yet chiliastic story-telling found an equivalent on the rear
side of the building with the large-scale stained glass windows by Walter Womacka [Fig. 6],
traditional in form, naïve-modern in style (and in the political message conveyed, it could be
57
argued). The displaced gate, which no longer Fig. 6: Womacka’s stained glass windows in
consisted exclusively of the original stone, figured the former GDR State Council Building
as a risalit in an otherwise plain, modern façade

and has served as an eye-catcher inviting
historical quizzing ever since. On the former site of
the castle, in contrast, all historical traces were
annihilated. The resulting Marx-Engels-Platz,
which in practice served more as a car park than
as a venue for political gatherings, formed an
over-sized vacuum, which even the huge Palace
of the Republic (Palast der Republik), opened in
1976, could fill only partially (Siemann 2004, p.
126). The remains of the equestrian statute and
colonnades of the Emperor William National
Memorial to the west and the Neptune Fountain to
the south of the castle building, both designed by
the sculptor Reinhold Begas and dating from
around 1890, were dismantled. While the former was melted down completely, the latter,
which with personifications of the four “German” rivers Rhine, Elbe, Oder and Vistula was no
less potent a witness of Wilhelmine self-assurance Fig. 7: Neptune Fountain close to
than the Emperor’s statue, underwent a lengthy Alexanderplatz
restoration and was re-inscribed, somewhat

surprisingly, into the new topography of the GDR
capital between Alexanderplatz and the right bank
of the Spree. It was relocated there in 1969, in the
vicinity of the City Hall as well as of the brand-
new, huge television tower and the planned
Memorial for Marx and Engels (finally unveiled in
1986). The historicist fountain thus attained an
urban prominence somewhat at odds with the vast square and the modern buildings around
it [Fig. 7].
Even more surprising, but in line with the “historicist turn” that official GDR memory politics
took from the 1970s onwards (see Ladd 2002), was the re-integration of a sculpture by
August Kiss devoted to the Christian martyr St. George fighting a dragon, dating from 1853
and formerly placed in one of the City Castle’s courts. It was moved to Friedrichshain park in
1951 and restored in the 1980s before being located in 1987 in the Nikolai Quarter, the
“Prefab old town” (Urban 2006, p. 7) that was one of the urban flagship projects to mark
58
Berlin’s 750-year-celebrations that year. Peter Fig. 8: St. George fighting the dragon in the
Goralczyk, East Berlin’s chief conservationist at Nikolai Quarter
the time, who sought a synthesis of reconstruction
and reinvention, emphasised the “particular
memory value” (quoted from Urban 2006) of the
monumental bronze statute, now placed on a
central square at the Spree promenade [Fig. 8].
While these examples reveal Berlin as a politically

coded and loaded space above all, due to the
particular attention it has received as a capital city
and showcase of changing political ideologies,
there were other instances of translocations, more
“unpolitical” at first sight, but no less interesting.
The most spectacular and expensive was
probably the shuffling of the remains of the
Esplanade into the new Sony Center in the mid-1990s. Built as a neo-Baroque Grand Hotel
in the early 20th century, the building was destroyed almost completely in 1944, with only the
Emperor’s Hall (Kaisersaal) (actually sometimes used before the First World War by William
II for social events) and a few other structures Fig. 9: Former Emperor’s Hall, integrated into
surviving. Provided with a temporary roof and Sony Center
used as a venue for cultural events, the

Esplanade was one of the few pre-war remains on
the wasteland area around Potsdamer Platz,
figuring notably in the Wim Wenders’ movie
“Wings of Desire”. Conservationists secured the
listing of the remains of the Esplanade on the eve
of the fundamental rebuilding of the Potsdamer
Platz area after 1990. In the context of the
euphoric mood and the great expectations for
Berlin in the early 1990s Sony, the main investor,
decided to translocate the refurbished pompous
Emperor’s Hall – together with parts of the
Esplanade’s façade – into their new “Center”. This
75-metre transfer on special rails, carried out in
1996, cost the company some 75 million Deutschmarks. This element forms today in the airy,
ultra-modern steel-and-glass construction by architect Helmut Jahn, a stark contrast and
59
unlikely pastiche [Fig. 9], even though as a café, restaurant and ballroom space it is
functionally well integrated into the Sony Center (see Kreuder 2000).
Something of a precursor for this, under non-capitalist conditions, was the translocation of
Ermelerhaus, a stately 18th-century mansion, revamped with a classicist façade in the early
19th-century and owned by a wealthy tobacco merchant whose salons also attracted Berlin
intellectuals. Owned by the city of Berlin since 1914, this town house suffered severe
damage in the Second World War, but was largely reconstructed in the 1950s. Its move
some 300 metres south-eastwards in 1967 resulted from the decision to construct a new
modernist block for government office space on its original location. Ermelerhaus kept its
name, façade, staircase and some of its internal layout but it was reduced in its overall size
and has served as an inn and hotel since. It can justifiably be questioned in how far such
shifts with modifications still merit the label of “displacement”. Taking less of a
conservationist stance, but one of cultural history and memory politics, however, it appears
more important that and how such continuities were sought. Under a market economy, to
which East – and to a degree also West – Berlin had to adjust again after 1989, this has
increasingly led to attempts at “place branding”. Ermelerhaus, for example, played host to the
Berlin Salon (1995-97), which the organising “Foundation New Culture Berlin” intended as a
cultural reference to its 19 th century precursor, and to an even more ambitious and exclusive
Future Salon organised by the literature scholar and manager Bettina Pohle since 1999. The
hotel of the same name, which uses the premises today (and has added a decidedly modern
extension) also aims to capitalise on its assumed “arts” tradition by furnishing it with works by
Georg Baselitz and design by Johanne Nalbach.
Still bolder in terms of an invented tradition is Hotel de Rome, opened in 2006 in a
refurbished bank building from the late 19 th century. It lies some 100 meters south-east of the
homonymous establishment on the corner of the central boulevard Unter den Linden. This
“original” was founded as Hotel Stadt Rom in 1755, remained in business until 1910, and
was Berlin’s most luxurious hotel before the Adlon. Silent about its predecessor, whose
resonant name – but not its site or building – it took over, the newcomer brags on its website:
“This is one of the few luxury hotels in Berlin located in an original building making use of its
full architectural splendour and thereby offering guests an authentic Berlin experience.” This
ease at re-interpreting, not to say manipulating historic topographies and sites of memory,
doubtlessly bolstered by the caesuras in Berlin’s history, is hard to conceive in other capitals.
Who could imagine locating London’s Savoy Hotel elsewhere than on the Strand, the Paris
Ritz away from the Place Vendôme or the Waldorf-Astoria anywhere else than on New
York’s Park Avenue? Many other examples of “displaced” Berlin cafés or restaurants whose
names have left their mark on the city’s cultural memory (e.g. Kranzler, Josty, Lutter &
Wegner) could be given. And the case of Kempinski, taken away from its Jewish owner by
60
the Nazis in 1937, is a timely reminder that the displacement of sites could also mean
dispossessing and – at the worst – even deporting people. Berlin played a sadly “capital” role
in that, too. Still, the re-integration in the late 1950’s of the original main portal into the new
Jewish synagogue in Charlottenburg – on exactly Fig. 10: Statues of Schinkel, Beuth and Thaer
the same spot of Fasanenstraße as its 1912 in front of the (projected) Building Academy,
with the former GDR State Council Building to
predecessor, destroyed in the 1938 Pogroms and
the left and the German Ministry of Foreign
the War – can be seen as an unflinching attempt
Affairs to the right
by the Jewish community to remind of its thriving
state before the Nazi terror.
This essay does not intend to enlarge on the
human tragedies resulting from forced
translocations, but rather stick with reflecting
about the readiness to “shift” as a symptom of
(political) culture. This readiness, noticeable
across political regimes, has certainly not
vanished since the fundamental changes of 1989;
rather, Berlin’s sites have continued to appear
Fig. 11: Original gate of the Building
disposable to a staggering degree. For instance Academy, integrated into garden pavilion of
Rauch’s monument to Frederick II (“the Great”), the Crown Prince’s Palace
placed on the middle strip of Unter den Linden in
1851, dismantled, but retained in storage by the
GDR regime in 1950, positioned in the gardens of
Potsdam-Sanssouci in 1962 and returned to the
Linden in 1980, was recently shuffled back and
forth according to the needs of the street crossing.
In turn the memorial statues for Schinkel, Beuth
and Thaer from the mid-19th century returned,
after a brief spell on Lustgarten and another
restoration, to their pre-war location on
Schinkelplatz in the late 1990s. Against the
background of the – as yet only virtual – facade of
the Building Academy (Bauakademie) building to
be re-erected, even this attempt to restore the
original topography appears curiously “displaced”
[Fig. 10]. And it remains to be seen what, in the case of its complete reconstruction, would
become of the one original gate by Schinkel which had been kept and integrated into the
garden pavilion of the Crown Prince’s Palace in the 1960s, some 100 metres to the west
61
[Fig. 11]. Political debates in unified Berlin about its Prussian (military) heritage, as
symbolised by the area around the Arsenal and New Guard House were mirrored in the re-
positioning of the statues of early 19th-century generals, which advanced from their hiding-
place under the trees to the pavements of Unter den Linden.
Fashionable and “underground” clubs were peregrinating almost by necessity, not only by
the logic of the real estate market, but also of the image they were eager to convey of
themselves as trendsetters in an “open city”. In turn, the propagation of this slogan has
become a catchword of official municipal politics, as has the widening issue of “temporary
uses” (Zwischennutzung) of sites abandoned or about to be demolished (see Overmeyer
2007). Even an entire river was relocated for the purpose of building the new central railway
station of Berlin. More socio-economic factors could be included to underline this overall
picture of a city essentially “on the move”: Berlin has seen well over a million migrants since
1989, with squatting and other semi- or non-legal forms of residence only adding to a sense
of metropolitan confusion.
While all this evidence seems strong already, a systematic comparison with other capitals
past and present in Germany, Europe and indeed world-wide would be desirable to further
develop and possibly differentiate the thesis of Berlin as a city with a pronounced disposition
for displacements (see Rausch 2006). A conceptual typology would be generally desirable.
The four types emerging from the examples referred to above are: 1) triumphant trophy-
collecting away from the city and the ensuing “phantom pain”; 2) memory politics or historical
pedagogy by objects in public urban space; 3) art historical and conservationist concerns –
not necessarily in line with the political ideology of the day; 4) the use of the cultural
resonance / myth of a building’s structure or “place” for business and marketing. In addition it
is open to discussion how far an “unreflective”, apolitical, pragmatic and functional dealing
with translocations may be regarded as a type of its own.
Even this perusal of symptomatic instances of displacements undertaken in Berlin, however,
recalls the initial observation that the personification of a city and its “spirit” is a problematic
yet welcome means of identification, for outsiders no less than for the inhabitants
themselves. Different as the measures, actors and motivations presented above were, all
willingly – and perhaps “habitually” – took up the chance and the precedence of
displacements as symbolic acts at politically or culturally resonant spots and areas in the
capital. To this extent the readiness to translocate monuments, physical structures and the
mythology attached to them, notably in the 20 th century, can be considered a “Berlin
speciality”, a reflex of the city’s particular history, discord and myth. Beyond their specific
circumstances and the political rationales behind them, relocations were attempts to suggest
continuities or re-appropriations of a genius loci allegedly inherent in the relocated objects.
Equally plausibly, this may be interpreted as rootlessness, boldness or even hubris as it can
62
be considered part and parcel of Berlin’s determination, dynamism, and metropolitan flavour
as a stage for novelties. Images and narratives such as these, resulting from both “politics”
and “culture”, can gain further dynamics, when persons in charge feel indebted to them and
persons in search of a new beginning feel attracted by the notion of unsteadiness.
References
Alings, R., 1996. Monument und Nation. Das Bild vom Nationalstaat im Medium Denkmal –
zum Verhältnis von Nation und Staat im deutschen Kaiserreich 1871-1918. Berlin & New
York.
Biskup, T. & Schalenberg, M. (eds.) 2008. Selling Berlin. Imagebildung und Stadtmarketing
von der preußischen Residenz bis zur Bundeshauptstadt. Stuttgart.
Böhme, H., 2006. Fetischismus und Kultur. Eine andere Theorie der Moderne. Reinbek.
Cullen, M. S. & Kieling, U., 1999. Das Brandenburger Tor. Ein deutsches Symbol. Berlin.
Färber, A. (ed.), 2005. Hotel Berlin. Formen urbaner Mobilität und Verortung. Münster.
Frank, S., 2009. Der Mauer um die Wette gedenken. Die Formation einer Heritage-Industrie
am Berliner Checkpoint Charlie. Frankfurt a.M./New York.
Goschler, C., 1998. Die ‚Verwandlung’: Rudolf Virchow und die Berliner Denkmalskultur im
Kaiserreich. Jahrbuch für Universitätsgeschichte, 1: 69-111.
Harrasser, K., Lethen, H. & Timm, E. (eds.), 2009. Sehnsucht nach Evidenz. Zeitschrift für
Kulturwissenschaften, 1.
Huyssen, A., 2003. Present pasts. Urban palimpsests and the politics of memory. Stanford.
Kreuder, F., 2000. Hotel Esplanade. The Cultural History of a Berlin Location. PAJ: A Journal
of Performance and Art, 22/2: 22-38.
Ladd, B., 1998. The Ghosts of Berlin. Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape.
Chicago.
Ladd, B., 2002. East Berlin Political Monuments in the Late German Democratic Republic:
Finding a Place for Marx and Engels. Journal of Contemporary History, 37: 91-104.
Miller, D. (ed.), 2006. Materiality. Durham/NC.
Nolan, M., 2004. The Politics of Memory in the Bonn and Berlin Republics. In: D. J.
Walkowitz & L. M. Knauer (eds.), Memory and the impact of political transformation in
public space. Duke University Press, pp. 105-125.
Overmeyer, K. (for Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung Berlin), 2007. Urban pioneers:
Stadtentwicklung durch Zwischennutzung. Berlin.
Rausch, H., 2006. Kultfigur und Nation. Öffentliche Denkmäler in Paris, Berlin und London
1848-1918. München.
63
Siemann, W., 2004. Parlamentsarchitektur als politische Konfession. In: M. Schalenberg &
P. Th. Walther (eds.), “…immer im Forschen bleiben”. Stuttgart, pp. 101-133.
Urban, F., 2006. The Invention of the Historic City. Building the Past in East Berlin. PhD
thesis at the Technical University of Berlin, available online: http://opus.kobv.de/tuberlin
/volltexte/2006/1204/pdf/urban_florian.pdf.
List of Figures
Figure 1: Quadriga / Brandenburg Gate (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sivo/289466 4671/)
Figure 2: Königskolonnaden (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jason_whittaker/ 3317405804/)
Figure 3: Siegessäule, as seen from the underground footpath (http://www.flickr.com
/photos/wolf-foto/2491727021/)
Figure 4: Statue to the Great Elector, in front of Charlottenburg Castle (http://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schloss_Charlottenburg_2005_285.JPG)
Figure 5: Former GDR State Council Building, incl. „Gate 4“ of former City Castle
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolf-rabe/3141392860/)
Figure 6: Womacka’s stained glass windows in the former GDR State Council Building
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/11801206@N00/381024928)
Figure 7: Neptun fountain close to Alexanderplatz (http://de.wikipedia.org/w
/index.php?%20title=%20Datei:Neptun_1a_%202.jpg&filetimestamp=20060924103021)
Figure 8: St. George statue in Nikolai Quarter (http://www.flickr.com/photos/waltzing
_broonhilda/1026244499/)
Figure 9: Former Emperor’s Hall, Sony Center (http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title
=Datei:Berlin_-_Sony-Center_-_Kaisersaal.jpg&filetimestamp=20060502194645)
Figure 10: Statues of Schinkel, Beuth and Thaer in front of the (projected) Building Academy
(http://www.berlin.citysam.de/fotos-berlin/berlin/schinkelplatz/schinkelplatz-3.jpg)
Figure 11: Original gate of the Building Academy, integrated into garden pavilion of the
Crown Prince’s Palace (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolf-rabe/3571711728/)
1
I am indebted to Kirsi Reyes, Glen Newey, Alexa Färber, Thomas Biskup and the two anonymous
referees for their helpful suggestions.
2
A telling example in that respect is the prolonged debate about whether and where to erect a
monument to either or both of the two Humboldts, who finally made it to Unter den Linden, as a sort of
ideal programme for the (Friedrich-Wilhelms-) University (see Goschler 1998).
3
For a „monumentography“ in the contemporary context see Alings 1996.
64

Berlin - City of Displacement

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Berlin - City of Displacement

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

WEIMARPOLIS, Multi-disciplinary Journal of Urban Theory and Practice

Vol. 1, Issue 2, pp. 53-64, ISSN 1869-1692

controversial.2 Once in place, however, a

large-scale roundabout right between the Kroll

accommodated somehow; a New National

[Fig. 5]. As Karl Liebknecht had proclaimed a

as a risalit in an otherwise plain, modern façade

restoration and was re-inscribed, somewhat

While these examples reveal Berlin as a politically

used as a venue for cultural events, the

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen