By Alex Marshall and Sally Young
Globe Correspondents
11/5/2000
BERLIN – The guard tower and wooden sign over the street warning ”You Are Now Leaving The American Sector!” were still there, as was the narrow bridge over a ravine, where prisoners, dissidents, and spies were exchanged. But beyond these carefully preserved memorials to another time and era, it was difficult to distinguish the famous Checkpoint Charlie from any other intersection in this bustling city. Now, what was once a bleak no-man’s land has been recarved into streets and blocks. And on these streets, new buildings have risen up, many of them designed by the best, or at least the most famous, architects on the planet. Within a two-block radius of Checkpoint Charlie, Aldo Rossi, Philip Johnson, Rem Koolhaas, and Peter Eisenman have all tried their hand. Widen that circle further, and you encounter buildings by Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, Rafael Moneo, and Richard Rogers. We had traveled to the new Berlin to see this new city being remade, the choices its leaders faced, the ones they made correctly, the ones that might be regretted in future years. We were the Loeb Fellowship, all 13 of us, from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
For a week we examined this city from the inside out, often with personal tours by top planners and architects. We saw a new city coming out of the ground, spurred on by the torrents of money, both public and private, rushing in to fill the blank spaces now that the dikes of communism and the Cold War have been broken and breached. For a traveler, Berlin is a great place to spend a weekend or a week, particularly if you like contemporary architecture. But it’s also a great place to eat spicy German sausage from street vendors, drink great beer, shop for high fashion, and people watch.
What’s more, with the dollar at an all-time high, it’s surprisingly affordable. Eating at a nice restaurant, staying in a hotel, is much less expensive than in Boston or New York. How to get across the reality of the New Berlin? It’s as if 50 blocks of mid-town Manhattan had been forcibly cleared, and left vacant for 50 years. Then one day, development rushed back in. Signs still remain of this city’s remarkably violent past. Walk in almost any older section of the city, past the domed Reichstag or on the elegant Friedrichstrasse, for example, and you’ll see pockmarks, dents, and chips, left over from the bullets and shrapnel that shattered this city.
They are evidence of when a mustachioed-man in this city started, and then lost, a war that consumed more lives than any other in history. It left this city destroyed, and divided. It is finally reuniting, physically, culturally, politically, and socially. Even so, divisions remain. A local architect told us that few West Berliners would go to a restaurant in East Berlin, and vice versa. West Germans, raised under a capitalist democracy, say East Germans are lazy. East Germans, raised under communism and now suffering high unemployment, say they are treated like second-class citizens. But these divisions should blur as this city takes on its new role not only as the political capital of a united Germany, but as one of the commercial and cultural capitals of the European Union.
A wonderful place to begin a tour is a gentle cruise down the river that bisects the city. You can take in the highlights of the city in just an hour or two. Do it on the first day you arrive, while you are still jet-lagged. It’s a nice, undemanding activity. There are several boat companies and itineraries. A good one leaves from the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures), conveniently located in the city’s central park, the Tiergarten, on John Foster Dulles Alle 10. The Number 100 bus stops there. This Number 100 bus, a double-decker, is another easy way to see the city. A regular city bus, it winds through the Tiergarten, around the Brandenburg Gate, and down to Alexanderplatz in the heart of East Berlin. Alexanderplatz, a stark modernist plaza reminiscent of Boston’s City Hall plaza, once had banners draped from its surrounding tall apartment towers proclaiming the triumph of socialism. Now, neon signs for Sony and other multinationals adorn them.
At Alexanderplatz, you can take an elevator to the top of the ornate radio tower, the Berliner Fernsehturnc, visible throughout the city. It gives you a 360-degree view of Berlin and its environs. After you take in the view, buy the brochure, Berlin: A Panoraminc View, at the Ferneshturm gift shop. It is a great guide to what to see when you are back on the ground.
In general when traveling throughout the city, be sure to use the great public transport system. It is a four-part system: the S-Bahn (Bahn means train) or aboveground trains are great for sightseeing, the U-Bahn or underground trains, the yellow local trams that are only in the former East Berlin, and the buses. You can buy passes good for a day, several days, or a week. The system is extensive.
Herbert Muschamp, the architecture critic for The New York Times, recently observed that the nation’s largest city lacks much ambitious contemporary architecture. The same holds true for every American city, including Boston. It’s hard to realize how true this is, until one sees the shapes, colors, and materials used in Berlin. And they are used not just for fancy museums, as is the case here, but for offices, apartments, embassies, public buildings, and department stores. Pretty much any place is a good place to start. Directly across from our hotel, the Savoy, for example, was the Ludwig-Erhard-Haus, the home of the Berlin Stock Exchange. This dramatic building, designed by British architect Nicholas Grimshaw, has floors that are not erected, but suspended from two giant steel arches. But there are some architectural must-sees, including the areas around Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, and Potzdamer Platz. All three are places of enormous new construction. The Brandenburg Gate is the giant ceremonial arch, similar to Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe in Paris. During the Cold War, it stood naked, stripped of its urban context. With the reunification, the city has reconstructed the elegant Pariser Platz that fronts on the Gate. Being rebuilt on and around this classic public square are the American Embassy, the Hotel Adlon, the Academy of Arts and other buildings. To accommodate the American Embassy’s security concerns, the city had to alter its setback rules.
Frank Gehry, currently the country’s, and perhaps the world’s, most famous architect, designed the DG Bank on the square. From the outside, it meets the city’s design guidelines that new buildings have stone facades, rows of exterior windows, and height and massing similar to the historic buildings that once occupied the square. But inside, Gehry has stuffed the building with an amoeba-like auditorium, that is vaguely like a fish, covered with steel and glass. It is a definitively weird structure. It’s as if a glass and chrome tumor erupted in the middle of a bank’s grand lobby. A beautiful tumor.
The Potzdamer Platz, until destroyed in World War II, was a Parisian-style meeting of six major boulevards in a star-shaped intersection. After the war, it stood vacant for 45 years, a monument to cold-war tensions. Today, it is being built anew. Mostly finished now are the huge agglomerations built by Sony and DaimlerChrysler. Architecturally, these complexes are stunning. The Sony complex by Chicago-based architect Helmut Jahn features a double glass wall building that merges into a huge plaza under a high-tech canopy. The Daimler complex includes a brick-clad skyscraper, a shopping mall, the Daimler headquarters, apartments, general offices, an IMAX cinema, a Broadway-style theater, a hotel and other functions. In all, the Daimler complex, whose master plan was by Renzo Piano, takes up 19 blocks, with buildings by Piano, Rafael Moneo, and Sir Richard Rogers. The diversity of the materials and shapes is stunning. But the overall feel is corporate, bland and controlled.
The two corporations own and maintain many of the ostensibly public streets and spaces. At the Sony Center’s central plaza, we asked our guide what would happen if one of us passed out political leaflets for, say, a local city council race. We would carry you out, came the quick reply from a security guard at the guide’s elbow. This somewhat Orwellian interchange indicated the degree of control exercised over these public spaces. One public architect associated with the projects called them a high level of failure.
As part of the Potsdamer Platz reconstruction, the state is building a new regional railway station at the Platz, all underground, where three types of rail service, basically local, regional, and national and international, will meet on three levels. Its gleaming structures, which we saw under construction, were a testimony to German planning and design.
For any architecture lover in Berlin, an indispensable guide book is ”Berlin: Open City, The City as an Exhibit,” available in English and German in most bookstores and news kiosks. Its skinny, blue covers are stuffed with information, including maps and architectural details on every major building.
Of course, one can look at architecture while strolling, shopping, and eating, all of which can be done aplenty in Berlin. You can check out the fancy shops on the grand boulevard Friedrichstrasse, the gardens and fancy shops around Savignyplatz in West Berlin, or the Soho-like charm, galleries, and fancy shops of Hackescher Market.
Savignyplatz is a small park through which pass many of the central streets of West Berlin’s downtown. Some of the fanciest shops in the city are here. Eating is good too. The Paris Bar (on Kanstrasse between Fasanenstrasse and Uhlandstrasse) is a famous Berlin institution that has been in existence for about 40 years. The owner is a serious art collector and the place is filled with art, much of it from the regular patrons. This is a good place for people watching.
Be sure to check out Depot at Bleibtreustrasse 48 for cosmopolitan European home and garden furnishings. Mechtild Stange, the proprietor, has a well-trained eye for good design, and the prices are affordable. Also check out Art and Industry, at Bleibtreustrasse 40, which specializes in furnishings, jewelry, and pottery from the ’50s.
Another favored haunt is Literaturcafe on Fasanenstrasse just off Kurfurstendam next door to the Kathe Kollwitz Museum. The spacious garden is a perfect spot to spend an afternoon reading or sketching. There is a good bookstore below the cafe, and there are frequent book and poetry readings in the cafe.
Under communism, the Friedrichstrasse in East Berlin was a shadow of its former self as the premier shopping street of the city. Now, rundown buildings are being renovated and new ones built. The new ones include an almost block-long Galeries Lafayette, the French Department store. This grand center is worth seeing as much for its architecture as its superior shopping. It features a hollow-glass core, shaped like two ice-cream cones placed mouth to mouth, around which one can stand and peer into the building’s multiple floors.
Hachescher Markt, just over the river from the Friedrichstrasse, has more old stone buildings that have yet to be renovated. This district of narrow streets and crumbling buildings has a Soho-like flavor, with its mixture of galleries, shops, and restaurants.
A bit further out is the Kathe Kollwitz Platz in Prenzlauerberg, a classic European square with mixed low-rise residential buildings, restaurants and bistros with outdoor cafes, galleries, and antique shops. Fewer tourists have discovered this area, so you can feel smug about having done so. This is an in place for students, and is on the S-Bahn.
Although strolling is nice, pedaling is great too. Bicycling is a wonderful way to see Berlin, and the inhabitants do it a lot. You can rent bikes behind the Zoogarten Station at the entrance to the Tiergarten and bike around this lovely central park with a stop at the biergarten at the Neuer See (Lichtensteinalle).
Eating is perhaps the purest expression of German culture, and one of the most intimidating to outsiders. At lunch one day, we watched as one of the more adventuresome of our group was served an enormous pink football of what appeared to be pure fat. But she sliced into it, peeled back the inch-thick layer of fat – and revealed a glistening center of moist roast pork. Ahhh, German food at its best. Course, meaty, and intimidating. This dish was called Schinken-Eisben. It was the butt of a pig, shrouded in its own fat, and cooked with sauerkraut and potatoes. It was being eaten at the Wirthaus Moorlake (Moorlakeweg 1, tel. 805-58-09), a lovely old timber-framed lodge overlooking a peaceful lagoon. It is a few miles outside Berlin, in a major public park well off the tourist track, but actually accessible by bus.
If you aren’t ready for Schinken-Eisben, eat some wurst at the glorified hotdog stands that abound on the street. The vendors serve their sausages not on a roll, but cut up with toothpicks on a paper plate, with just a smidgen of bread on the side.
If one is not into German food, though, you can do as Germans do, and eat Italian, Asian, or French food. There is plenty of it. Germany is more like America, in this regard, in that many natives disdain their own cuisine and reach for those of other countries.
What else can be said about this lovely city? That it’s still inventing itself. In another decade, the giant cranes that fill much of the skyline will be gone. The residents will settle into using their new train lines, parks, and buildings. And the world will see in what fashion this city resumes its place as one of Europe’s great capital cities.
Alex Marshall is a freelance journalist and author of ”How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl and The Roads Not Taken.” Sally Young is the coordinator of Harvard’s Loeb Fellowship at the Graduate School of Design. This story ran on page M1 of the Boston Globe on 11/5/2000. Copyright 2000
The above is a story that ran on the front of the Travel Section in today’s (Sunday) Boston Globe. My friend Sally and I wrote it, based around our trip there last May.