Some Helpful Books

These are all pretty cheap. Excuse the ads--buy them where you will. Amazon is quick, has most everything (often "used" or new), and happens to autolink to Blogger.

 1. Looking back, sorting through the debates on Nazi "legacy" buildings in post-war Berlin, and their gradual de-toxing over time, Ladd's "Ghosts" is good. Not everyone may love it cover to cover, but the index gets you to specific topics, sometimes scattered topically vs. chronologically. (Also available in Kindle format).

2. Looking forward, on how to design NEW government buildings in a more democractic spirit, try Wise's "Captiol Dilema."

3.  For a detailed architectural guide to the new (and old) Berlin, with large cross referenced maps, this is excellent, but hard to find. (This 2000 original is still useful, but now dated. Several more recent guides are listed--which I don't know. Anyone have a current take?).
 
 Amazon still lists this as "unavailable."
 Berlin: Open City: The City on Exhibition

 The 2005 update is temporarily "unavailable," too.
Berlin: open city. The City on Exhibition. The guide. (Berlin: offene Stadt).

This German language edition was very expensive when I first posted this, but a few cheap copies are now listed. Perhaps others are available from European sources.

1. Speer's Projects: Gone Without A Trace?

Clearly not forgotten--the huge models, Berlin plans, photos, memoirs remain. But on the ground. With all the furious activity of those years, is there nothing--a choice, a direction, a concept--that has left its mark on today's cityscape?

I kept coming back to this, after a three week trip to Berlin (in 2000), and some time to size up "then" and "now." I'm thinking there are some things, though not where we (or he) might think to look--unintended consequences.

(A note:  I am providing German names  where ever I can, not only for fuller documentation, but to give those doing German language searches more access points to our discussion. Certainly Berliners are a prime interest group, people from every walk of life--and largely bi-lingual, or more. I want to smooth the way for you, using your normal working tongue. And would love your feedback, participation in our give and take.)

One example of an "unintended consequence" comes easily to mind, now that I've seen the "new" Berlin, the post-unification capital:  the diplomatic quarter (Diplomatenviertel) that runs today along the southern edge of Tiergarten, west of the Philharmonie/Culture Forum (Wikimapia_Berlin Diplomatic Quarter). 

It was really peripheral to Speer's core focus: a monumental North/South boulevard--a German Champs Elysee, with it's larger-than-Paris Triumphal Arch, and a Great Hall near the Reichstag. The diplomatic quarter was a side issue. But let's rewind.

I did not visit Berlin during my original dissertation research in the 1970's. There was practically nothing to see.

Only one building on Speer's proposed 5 mile North/South Boulevard was built and survived the war. The House of German Tourism (Hauses des Fremdenverkehrs, my logo at the top of my home page--also shown in fuller view at top of this post), stood on the Runde Platz until 1966, when the site was cleared for the new National Library (Staatsbibliothek). Speer's own New Chancellery Wing (Neue Reichskanzlei), on Voss Strasse, was leveled by the Soviets soon after the war, and it's marble "quarried" for two war memorials in the city. (The Chancellery lay just east of his N/S Boulevard, as did the next two buildings--neither of which is a "Speer" design).

Hermann Goering's Air Ministry is in fact still with us, now home to the Federal Finance Ministry (Bundesministerium der Finanzen), but this was already "in the ground" in 1936, when Speer started his work, though it was integrated into the Plan.

The same is true for the New Tempelhof Airport, built from 1936-39. Both these buildings were designed by Ernst Sagabiel, who was office manager for the Expressionist architect  Erich Mendelsohn, and who took over the business when Mendelsohn emigrated.

So, does anything remain of Speer's own ideas or vision, in today's Berlin? I'd say nothing of what he INTENDED, the massive boulevard bookended with the Great Hall and Triumphal Arch.

Still, while Speer didn't BUILD much of this vast plan, he did CLEAR existing construction to make way for it.  Neighborhoods were demolished, rail yards pulled up and moved.  This COLLATERAL work reshaped the cityscape. 

Even the subsurface. During a "startup" phase, foundations for Speer buildings were tested and laid down, transit tunnels bored--leaving "surprises" for later decades. A massive concrete core was built near present day Kolonnenbruecke, in the area of Tempelhof Airport, intended to test the load bearing capacity of the very soft soil in the area planned for the Speer's huge Triumphal Arch, and is still visible.

The clearance process also created something, in terms of architecture and land use. It forced the selective "replacement" of some buildings destroyed (embassies), producing the enlarged diplomatic quarter (Diplomatenviertel) south of the Tiergarten. A modest, but significant design element dating from the Speer years. Speer did not invent the idea, but strongly developed the Tiergarten site up until the war.

In the 18th and 19th Centuries, this had gradually become an area of luxury villas for high ranking state officials, the Privy Councillor Estate (Geheimratsviertel). Then, after WWI, diplomatic usage began to take hold, during the 1920's. Speer chose this nascent embassy row as a distinguished, quality setting, with space to expand. "In 1938, 37 embassies and 28 consulates settled here, and by 1943 nine new embassy buildings had been added" (See, "Berlin: open city," Nicolai, 2000, pp. 221-222).

And why so much demand?  Partly because some neighborhoods that lay in the path of Speer's Plan contained embassies, especially in the Alsen Quarter (Alsenviertel) around the Reichstag. They had to find new homes. (Then too, by 1938, everyone wanted the status and "access" to the Nazi bureaucracy that a diplomatic presence offered).

One of the Alsen Quarter embassies moved was that of Japan. As befitted one of Hitler's totalitarian partners, a large space was provided for this impressive structure south of Tiergarten. Nearby, Mussolini's Italian embassy rose.

The embassy of Spanish Generalissimo Franco was build far west in this area--still rather remote, up against the Zoo. The Soviet embassy in the early Hitler years seems to have been the building of the old Imperial Czarist court, on Unter den Linden, so it was well away from Speer's boulevard.  Of course, Hitler broke his non-aggression pact in 1941, when he invaded Russia, and the embassy issue was moot.

In any case, Speer's diplomatic quarter burgeoned during the years he was preparing to build the new Berlin. The area was heavily damaged during WWII. In the post-war period, the West German government moved to Bonn, so only a few consulates were gradually re-opened. There was no NEED for embassies, until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, Germany was re-united, and Berlin was again the national capitol.

In the decades since then, this diplomatic quarter has slowly come back to life. The old Italian and Japanese embassies have been wholly renovated and reopened. More particularly, many modern embassies have been added, beginning with the striking Nordic compound (Nordische Botschaften). Representation buildings for various German States (Laender) also have joined the mix, along with some government offices and headquarters associated with political parties.

Is this a true Speer "legacy"? Not exactly. The seed idea was there, but the densely build up pattern of his Tiergarten diplomatic quarter--densely populated due to huge pressures the Speer Plan itself was exerting--this pattern has been revived and re-envisioned, to great advantage, most would agree. What had mushroomed out of necessity, has flowered into a richly varied, handsome stretch of the new Berlin.

2. Kaiser Wilhelm II's VICTORY AVENUE Sculptures Reappear

Don't confuse this with today's Victory Column (Siegessauele)--a close relative. And for those who don't know that both Victory monuments stood in the way of Speer's urban plans, stay tuned. First, the "news."

What remains of some 100 sculptural portraits (32 figural groupings) has begun restoration and is going on public view at Spandau Citadel. At least, a small first installment seems to have appeared August 2010, with a complete, permanent exhibit promised by 2012.

From a  footnote in an English language Wikipedia article. It cites no references/sources for the astonishing back story it tells--which reads like a mystery thriller (Victory Avenue). However, the German language version, Liste der Figurengruppen in der Berliner Siegesallee, includes an exhaustive catalog of the entire Spandau collection.

So, if you live close enough, do track down the exhibition, in Spandau Citadel newsletters (the website was not too helpful). Enthuelt--Berlin und seine Denkmaeler is the exhibition title to look for. This brief snapshot notice of the August 2010 event lists Magui Kampf as Architect Scenographer--I would guess the designer of the exhibit as well as "curator" perhaps.

And, please, I'd ask those closer to the scene and local materials to check the history and post back what you may know. Thanks for any help.

Readers in English speaking areas at some distance from Germany could easily have missed all this--especially those, like myself, whose main connection is via the Nazi plans for Berlin. It's a bit of a reach.

I first worked on captured German documents in the US Library of Congress in the 1970's, as a grad student at Cornell University, and used them as the basis of a dissertation on the Speer Plan, and later book. We know the painstaking fact checks involved--mountains of them.

So I was stunned to find, years later, I had never really accounted for the Victory Avenue--post War. It did not show up on maps inventorying wartime destruction, so, like much else, seemed simply "erased." By 2000, when I visited Berlin, the trail was very dead, though according to Wikipeida, the sculptures had been literally dug up and were languishing in a sewage pumping station turned museum, The Lapidarium.

I was not alone in losing track, I'd guess. By the time Berliners, and others, in the 40's had gotten their bearings, the Victory Avenue had simply disappeared.

According to Wikipedia, all the Victory Avenue sculptures had been buried in the Tiergarten for safe keeping. So "out of sight, out of mind" ruled, for me, and others.

And if the Avenue was missing from its original location, on post-War maps, it seems that Speer had moved it to a NW/SE lying "Grosser Stern Allee" running off the Grosser Stern, and renamed that leg New Victory Avenue (Neue Siegesallee). I have verified that much on Berlin maps of the time.

Speer made this move, since the Victory Avenue lay in the path of his new N/S Boulevard. We know the logic, from the Victory Avenue's now famous cousin, the Victory Column which Speer removed from the then Platz der Republik in front of the Reichstag building, to clear space for his own Great Hall.

So distraction played a role. The Victory Column (Siegessaeule) survived, and has won the hearts of many Berliners, as a perfect  city-wide, outdoor  meeting place (President Obama spoke there in 2008). A riveting visual focus for today's Berlin.

By contrast, the Victory Avenue lay deep sixed under ground, or out of view--until now. At least, that's the tale. Stranger than fiction. I would love to hear if the story is all true, as would anyone who follows Berlin planning generally, or the Speer Plan. Tantalizing. Please help.