One of the high points of West Berlin’s commemoration was an exhibition on the history of Berlin since its foundation, which took place in the Martin-Gropius-Bau hard by the Wall. To their credit, the organizers did not neglect the less savory side of Berlin’s history. Considerable attention was paid to the Nazi period and the exodus of Berlin’s Jews, which, as the exhibition catalog correctly noted, “destroyed more [of Berlin’s spirit] than the Allied bombing.” By devoting so much space to Berlin’s place in the Nazi system, the exhibition organizers hoped partially to make up for the city’s tendency in the immediate postwar era to “repress its recent history, wipe out historical traces, and demolish the buildings associated with the perpetrators.”
Visitors to the Gropius-Bau show who wanted to see physical remnants of the Nazi perpetrators did not have far to go: close by was the site of the Gestapo and SS headquarters, from which the Nazi terror was orchestrated. Surface ruins of the buildings had long been carted away, but plans to cover over the site were shelved in 1985 when excavations uncovered some cells belonging to the Gestapo jail. This provided the impetus for the “Topography of Terror” exhibition, which opened in time for the 750th anniversary commemoration. The exhibition complex included pathways through the weed-infested grounds and signs instructing visitors where the important installations had been. Along the former Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, now bounded by the Berlin Wall, could be seen some foundations of the Gestapo kitchen and supply rooms. There was also a modest documentation center containing pictures and written records pertaining to the site. The exhibition was meant to be temporary, but popular demand kept it in place after the anniversary commemoration.
A more positive dimension of Berlin’s past was displayed in an exhibition called “Reise nach Berlin” (Journey to Berlin) held in the ruins of the Anhalter Bahnhof, the old capital’s principal terminal. The show recalled the days when the Spree metropolis was a destination for travelers from all over Europe, and it carried the subtext that Berlin was still “worth a trip.” Another exhibition, “Mythos Berlin,” examined the ways in which observers, native and foreign alike, had imagined the city. Presciently, one of the displays imagined a reunited Berlin with a linear park marking the path where the Wall had once run.
The most ambitious part of the 750th anniversary celebration was the Internationale Bauausstellung (International Building Exposition, IBA), an architectural competition featuring restoration work and new dwellings by star architects from around the world. Unlike the Hansaviertel project of 1957, the IBA sought to recapture architectural traditions rather than to impose a single modernist vision on Berlin’s battered landscape. Rob Krier’s small villas in the Tiergarten district and Hinrich Bailer’s apartment complexes in Kreuzberg were justly touted as “models of modest urban renewal.”
The IBA designs won broad approval from the Berlin public, but there was much criticism in conservative circles for another anniversary project, the so-called “Sculpture Avenue” along the Kurfürstendamm. The seven giant sculptures, costing a total of DM 1.8 million, included a pile of police barricades by Olaf Metzel and Wolf Vorstell’s montage of two Cadillacs partially embedded in cement. The main point of the Sculpture Avenue, it seemed, was to tell the world that when it came to the outrageous and the provocative, West Berlin was still at the forefront.
Yet once again, the city may have been trying too hard. For all its bold new buildings and artworks, the most provocative and arresting structure in town was still the Berlin Wall. Over the years it had turned into an artwork in its own right. Its western flank was almost entirely covered with graffiti, giving it the look of a very long New York City subway car. There was also some intriguing Wall art, including paintings that sought metaphorically to defeat the structure’s purpose by showing holes or zippers on the surface. Viewing platforms along the western side allowed chilling glimpses of the Communist East. It was this infamous structure, not the Neue Philharmonie or the IBA dwellings, that tourists most wanted to see when they came to West Berlin.
Protesters, Terrorists, and Squatters: the “Alternative City”
The visitors who came to West Berlin in the 1970s and 1980s generally did not hail from the other parts of the Federal Republic. True, West German overland visits to the city increased between the early 1970s and the mid-1980s (due largely to reduced hassles on the transit routes), but the vast majority of West Germans still preferred to take their holidays anywhere but in West Berlin. Among their reasons for avoiding this destination was undoubtedly its reputation as the favored turf of Germany’s pampered student radicals and riotous Chaoten (anarchist crazies). West Berlin might not boast the strongest economy, the brightest politicians, nor even the most accomplished artists in Germany, but it had the most volatile “alternative” scene in the country.
When the Federal Republic created its new army, the Bundeswehr, in the mid-1950s, conscription did not apply to West Berlin because of its continuing status as an Allied protectorate. This meant that thousands of young West Germans moved to West Berlin to dodge the draft. Not surprisingly, they constituted a ready reservoir of protest sentiment in the walled city. West Berlin’s higher educational scene, especially the Free University (FU), also provided a breeding ground for antiestab-lishment politics. Although the founders of the FU had hoped to build a different kind of university, free of old-fashioned hierarchical thinking, the institution soon fell into the same patterns prevailing at other West German schools, with the added disadvantage of extreme overcrowding. The result was a high level of frustration and discontent, fanned by junior faculty who saw little chance for advancement. The FU received considerable financial backing from America, but this created resentment among a new generation of students who regarded the United States as a pernicious influence in world affairs. The fact that America and its wartime allies still functioned as occupation powers in West Berlin added to the sense of grievance, as did the ubiquity of American culture. Initially, U.S. styles had been welcomed as a breath of fresh air, but in the German counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s the American juggernaut was perceived as a corrupting imposition of hypercapitalism, materialism, and kitsch.
The Vietnam War was the crucial factor in bringing these undercurrents of resentment to the surface. From the outset, however, the hostility of West Germany’s youthful antiwar protesters was aimed not only at America but also at older Germans who had left the younger generation with a legacy of guilt and shame. Having been too young to protest against National Socialism, the student radicals of the mid-1960s sought the coveted status of “resisters” by campaigning against Washington and the political establishment of their own country, which they accused of repressing or even repeating the crimes of the Nazis.
Berlin’s first major anti–Vietnam War demonstration occurred on February 5, 1965. About 2,500 protesters, mainly students, marched through the city along a route preapproved by the authorities. A smaller group split off from the main column and headed for the Amerika Haus. Upon reaching the building they lowered the American flag to half-mast (in honor of the North Vietnamese killed in U.S. bombing raids) and pelted the facade with eggs. They tacked up posters accusing the Bonn government of supporting Washington in its policy of “murder through napalm and poison gas.”