Michael Kimmelmann on the Berlin Stadtschloss & Bruno S.

Michael Kimmelmann, the New York Times' excellent roving Euroculture reporter, is on a tear recently. Here is his fine, feisty piece about the Stadtschloss [h/t Ed Philp]:

The saga of the Schloss, a cultural misadventure from the start, captures Berlin in a nutshell, as a city forever missing the point of itself. The original Stadtschloss, partly damaged during the war, was ripped down in 1950 by the Communist East Germans as a loathed emblem of Prussian militarism and imperial power. They replaced it in the mid-’70s with the Palace of the Republic, a bronzed glass-and-steel behemoth, the last remains of which were torn down, at eye-popping cost, during this past summer and fall....

When it was shuttered after the wall fell (asbestos was the official excuse), artists remade the abandoned space into a hot spot for new art shows and performances. The derelict palace epitomized hipster Berlin, a capital of second chances and opportunistic subcultures. Clubs in former Nazi bunkers, bars in Communist-era high rises, theaters in disused factories, art galleries in empty tenements — like the bygone Palace of the Republic they are what has attracted young people since the wall fell to a city that, historically, has kept failing to become the metropolis it aspired to be, and instead always became something more interesting.

Does Kimmelmann have any opinions on other Berlin city-planning decisions? Funny you should ask:

...Potsdamer Platz today is a trash bin for big-name modern architects who did some of their worst work there.

The same cluelessness caused officials last year to mothball Tempelhof, an ingenious work of ’30s design, a functioning airport with a soaring, light-filled terminal in the very heart of town, a 15-minute taxi ride from the Brandenburg Gate, where Gary Cooper and Errol Flynn descended into a scrum of flashbulbs on the tarmac — now empty, made useless toward no clear end....

Did I mention that the original, 18th-century Stadtschloss, by Andreas Schlüter and Johann Friedrich Eosander von Göthe, was a hulking, unlovable pile?

...Berlin decided during the 19th century to construct an appalling wedding cake of a cathedral next to, and all out of proportion with, Schinkel’s landmark Altes Museum, which is across the street from the Schloss.

Three well-aimed blows. Potsdamer Platz looks like a hastily-clapped-together exurb of Milwaukee.

Coming soon to this space: Max Goldt's opinions on the new Berlin Central Station. But while I apply the finishing touches to that, here's a very cool Kimmelmann piece on Bruno S., the actor who starred in a couple of Herzog films (including the unforgettable Caspar Hauser) in the 1970s, and then dropped out of sight:

And so we began to visit him in his cluttered apartment on a street full of prostitutes where he lives alone. During the summer he sang for us. During the fall he showed us a painting he was working on. He is an outsider artist, a good one. Endart, a gallery in town, sells his work. The proceeds supplement his small government pension.

Comments

[Koch]

@ Don

Beer on us, if you choose to visit. And not the tourist Berliner Kindl crap either.

I think you are bang on in your 'centers' notion for one reason and with one implication. Reason: Yes, history messed with Berlin. It is the most vivid urban representation on Earth of the Western 20th century, with all evidence of virtually all of the socio-political and historical movements, and that history is available on practically every street. Not just the Nazis and Communism, but tenement housing, urban industrial zones, multi-ethnic neighbourhoods, mass highrises and suburbs and intimate human-sized courtyards. Europe's most innovative airport facility in the 30s, and a pre-planned university 'campus' from the 50s and 60s.

Berlin has no center whatsoever. No-one here would be able to point to a single focal point of the whole city. People who live here tend to avoid the natural center - the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, and if you come, you'll notice that even the central train station is surrounded by derelict fields or open park space, or weird industrial things and a hospital grown beyond its original urban ribcage. People here identify strongly by neighbourhood, and one of the first questions anyone is asked here is 'where do you live'. It tells you more than 'where are you from'.

Second, how many countries with a recent history of becoming or consolidating as a state have a 'center'? In the US, government and finance are divided between the twin poles of Washington and New York. Same with Canada (Ottawa / Toronto), same with Italy or Spain, as you pointed out, and the same with Australia, China, India. I can only think of a few examples of major countries where central government shares urban space with the major financial hub, namely Tokyo, London, Paris and Moscow. I'm sure this suggestion doesn't hold water the further down one goes on the 'major significance' level, but it is what it is. In my opinion, the government's arrival in Berlin effectively precluded the establishment of Berlin as a financial or other business center (flawed argument, relying on cause and effect that weren't demonstrated, but I don't see a major push to turn any of the government capitals I mentioned into thriving complements of their sister financial centers).

We'll see how Berlin goes. In the meantime, the cracks and derelict spaces in between the neighbourhoods are still a fantastic playground.

[Don]

A very interesting discussion this i, thanks to Koch and Sebastien.

The impression I'm getting is of Berlin as a city which has been sundered by history and which is still groping for an identity.

The planners (and perhaps the government) seem to have visualised Berlin becoming a cultural and business rival to Paris or London, but that transmutation either hasn't occurred or is at best happening very slowly. It perhaps would have eventually happened except for the imposition of the Third Reich and aftermath.

Berlin seems to ba an exciting city, though unfortunately I've never visited and cannot therefore express why. But it seems to have a bit of the buzz of places like New York's Soho or the East End of London, though perhaps one might also compare it to cities like Antwerp and Newcastle - cities which used to be industrial centres and now becoming arts centres.

One might also compare Berlin with Rome, though the parallel between Germany and Italy is extremely imperfect. Italy really has two centres (Rome for government and Milan for business), while Germany seems to have many (or no) true centres.

One could also compare it to the US, which is quite decentralised, but the US does have a few centres - notably Washington, DC and New York, although US cities like Miami, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Seattle can lay claim to being regional and even international centres.

[Koch]

@ Don

You're absolutely right that Berlin isn't a financial centre in Germany. I'd even argue that Germany has no true financial / corporate centre at all. As a foreigner, I always viewed Frankfurt as the business node for the country, until I met Düsseldorf, which essentially functions as a form of corporate brain. Frankfurt is the wallet for the country, but major decisions are often made in the Rheinland. Regional centres like Hamburg, Stuttgart, Cologne and Munich (and Berlin) have disproportionately high influence here, each with their own specialties (Hamburg = media, shipping and private banking, Munich = private equity, IP/IT and customer service / retail, etc) but each interlinked into regional economies servicing about 10 million people each and each with their own export markets. Plus, they are all deeply interconnected. It isn't like the UK or the US, where London or New York can essentially do their own thing without relying too much on Sheffield or Leeds or Atlanta. Instead, Berlin thrives on business generated in Dortmund and Leipzig, while Stuttgart also needs Munich, Frankfurt and Karlsruhe. It's more like a collection of Chicagos and Atlantas and Seattles, instead of having a Washington, a New York and an LA, or a Paris, for that matter.

[Koch]

Actually...

From someone whose firm is looking at relocating in Berlin soon (125 or so employees), I understand that there is good space available on PP. Maybe not for a PWC or a Deutsche Bahn, but PP needs mid-sized tenants too.

In any event, I (unfortunately) strongly doubt that Berlin will be able to attract anything like a vibrant financial and consultancy community in the next 10 to 20 years. Regionally, as a hub for Eastern Germany, maybe, but not nationally, which is what granted Frankfurt and Düsseldorf to their pole positions in these areas.

This is a shame, since enough bright young people would like to live here, although probably not those who also visit clubs in former Nazi bunkers, and Berlin overheads are still extremely low, meaning that a moderate salary takes you much further. As a symbol, though, in the past few years, a considerable number of global law firms disconnected their Berlin offices, choosing to focus instead on Frankfurt, Düsseldorf or elsewhere.

The only field other than governance I see gaining considerable prominence in Berlin is pharma, which lends itself less to prestigious office space than to low-lying multi-use office and research park facilities.

Although, if things get really bad, and the federal government nationalizes a whole slew of industries, I suppose I could see more headquarters moving to Berlin to be closer to their primary stakeholder...

I don't know what will happen with PP. I suppose the international business trade (Ritz Carlton, embassies, major headquarters, tourist attractions) probably keeps it alive right now, but not happy.

[Don]

I'm happy to hear that, Sebastian. This blog post got me interested and so I started googling about the Platz, and what I saw from goole seemed to indicate that the Platz had an economic problem.

But you are surely far closer to the situation than I (or google) are - so I'll take your word for it.

[Sebastian Koppehel]

@Don:

Whether the Platz is a livable, useful urban landscape is another question. I understand that many of those expensive office buildings are only half-occupied

That's not true. Your information is probably several years old, there are no big vacancies in the Potsdamer Platz complex today, depite the high rents.

Ok, I think perhaps one of three things happen in Postdamer Platz. The finance/consultancy industry comes, the government takes the office space over (Berlin is the capital of Germany after all), or eventually the Potsdamer Platz developments go financially bust - and local companies or squatters take it over piecemeal and convert it into something very different....

Meanwhile, in the real world ... SEB (of Sweden) has bought Daimler AG's property on the Potsdamer Platz for 1.2 bn euros.

[Don]

Thanks for the explanation, Koch. It helps to visualize Potsdamer Platz and where it fits (or doesn't fit) into the Berlin cityscape.

It sounds a little like Canary Wharf - in the city but kind of out of it too. Canary Wharf is a commercial success, but not a neighborhood. It has chain stores and a mall but lacks the cheap but good Indian restaurant which a neighborhood will have.

The difference is that London has the big international financial and consultancy firms. Well, Berlin does too but Berlin doesn't seem to be at the centre of the German economy the way that London is for th UK or New York is for the US. So there is less of that kind of business in Berlin, because the big financial corps aren't there (maybe in Frankfurt?).

Berlin might have been in that role except for being cut off from the rest of the country for 50 years and physically cut in half for 30 years.

Ok, I think perhaps one of three things happen in Postdamer Platz. The finance/consultancy industry comes, the government takes the office space over (Berlin is the capital of Germany after all), or eventually the Potsdamer Platz developments go financially bust - and local companies or squatters take it over piecemeal and convert it into something very different....

[Koch]

Perhaps, Don, but I think PP's development and future success will more likely be predicated on the relative lack of success of other Berlin neighbourhoods to maintain their present liveability and workability.

PP is a prestige address - but mainly for businesses that are not from Berlin. I'd suggest that three other regions would be preferable for any business up to about 300 people, namely the Gendarmenmarkt / Friedrichstraße area, the Kudamm and, if you need it affordable, the northern Kreuzberg region (possibly also the nether joinder with Friedrichshain where Universal is located). All of those regions have vibrant shopping areas, a wide variety of restaurants and are located in embedded communities. By contrast, PP is pretty much surrounded by largely sterile buildings (such as the Landesvertretungen), streets with little human-scale activity and the Tiergarten with its embassy row. Its restaurants are almost without exception dull and uninspired, catering mainly to tourists and transient business clientele, and hardly anyone lives anywhere near PP.

Given that Berlin's commercial vacancy rate is still around 25%, I doubt if even cut-rate prices will lead many people to select PP as a primary business location in the near or imtermediate future - at least not while the alternatives mentioned are still in play.

[Don]

I spent much of my childhood in Milwaukee, Sebastian, though not the prosperous newer areas. The crack comparing Potsdamer Platz to a Milwaukee exurb is unkind to both places.

Firstly, Milwaukee has no exurb resembling the modern incarnation of Postdam Platz. Some of Milwaukee's city center has something of the look although nothing so spectacular. Peering at old photos of the Platz from the 20's and 30's I could readily see the old Platz as a part of Milwaukee, which was perhaps the foremost Germanic city in the US.

Milwaukee has a few exurbs, but nothing like as spectcular as the Platz today.

Whether the Platz is a livable, useful urban landscape is another question. I understand that many of those expensive office buildings are only half-occupied, but I suspect that has as much to do with the German economic landscape as much as anything; money and enterprise doesn't seem to have flowed into Berlin to the degree that was anticipated. Berlin is something of a Brasilia in that respect - today.

I suspect that the inflow will occur at aome point, possibly the recession may facilitate that by forcing rent cuts for those fancy offices, allowing small business to move in and help it become a cultural & artistic busness center, as much of New York is.

You know what Potsdamer Platz reminds me architecturally> Canary Wharf in East London. Canary Wharf is a big hit today, but it took at least 20 years to become that. New city centres don't just appear by magic, they grow over time. And the developer with the grand vision usually goes bankrupt before the realisation of the vision....

[Sebastian Koppehel]

So, uh, Kimmelmann's suggestion for Berlin city planners is to leave Nazi bunkers and disused factories standing everywhere so there can be hip clubs in them? That's a great idea, only not for those 98% of Berliners who don't go to those hip clubs (and if they went, the clubs wouldn't be very hip anymore).

By the way, this characterisation:

Potsdamer Platz today is a trash bin for big-name modern architects who did some of their worst work there

... is ridiculous nonsense. If the Sony Center is Helmut Jahn's worst work, then what is the Messeturm in FFM? Which, incidentally, looks like it was airlifted straight out of the Central Business District of some mid-size American city (except beautiful Milwaukee of course).

[Don]

"Three well-aimed blows. Potsdamer Platz looks like a hastily-clapped-together exurb of Milwaukee."

Andrew, I'm sure you just pulled Milwaukee's name out of the air as an examplar of a cruddy american city that nobody in his right mind would want to live in - but actually Milwaukee's exurbs (such as they are) aren't too bad.

Milwaukee doesn't actually have too many exurbs because it hasn't precisely been a growth center in recent decades. One could point to any number of cities in Texas, California, Florida, Or Georgia as examples of unlovely urban sprawl, but out of the places I have lived Milwaukee doesn't stand out in that respect.

There are unlovely parts of Milwaukee which might be described as 'sprawl', but these are hardly exurbs. More along the line's of Pete Seeger's 'little boxes made of ticky-tacky' than modern sprawl, as they date to the 60's and 70's. And I very much doubt that Milwaukee's 'sprawl' either of the 70's or today's (such as it is) resemble's Potsdamer Place in the slightest.