Читаем Berlin полностью

The Stalinallee stood a good distance from the old governmental quarter in Berlin-Mitte, which was the part of the city most devastated by the war. In the first years of its existence, the East German regime did not try to reclaim this quarter for its own headquarters, settling instead in the northern district of Pankow. Yet if the Communists did little building in the city center at this point, they did not hesitate to demolish the quarter’s signature structure, the Royal Palace, which during the Weimar era and Third Reich had served primarily as an art museum. Allied bombs had badly damaged parts of the building, but enough of it remained intact for a number of public exhibitions to be held there between 1946 and 1948. The GDR leaders might have made use of this property themselves, much as the Soviets had appropriated the Kremlin, but they had other ideas for the land it occupied. Ulbricht dreamed of building a giant skyscraper on the site to rival the Stalinist towers in Moscow. There was also talk of moving Marx’s remains from London’s High-gate cemetery to a mausoleum on the former palace square, creating an answer to Lenin’s tomb on Red Square. Pending the realization of such grandiose schemes, the area was converted into a stage for mass rallies. As Ulbricht said in a speech in July 1950: “The center of our capital, the Lustgarten and the area of the palace’s ruins, must become a grand square for demonstrations, upon which our people’s will for struggle and for progress can find expression.” A few weeks later the government announced that the palace would be demolished. The announcement prompted widespread protest, even within the GDR. The regime sought to deflect the protest by claiming that the palace had been too badly damaged by “Anglo-American terror-bombers” to be salvaged. But everyone knew that the real issue was the building’s political associations. As Neues Deutschland editorialized: “May it [the palace] no longer remind us of an unglorious past.” The demolition began in September 1950. When it was completed four months later, a gaping void occupied the former center of royal and imperial power. Aside from hosting demonstrations, the area served mainly as a parking lot, with little Trabant cars standing where the masses had once cheered the kaiser.

The public outcry over the demolition of the Royal Palace helped convince the authorities in West Berlin to proceed differently with their main Hohenzollern palace, the Gharlottenburger Schloss, which had also been heavily damaged in the war. Rather than knock it down, they embarked in 1951 on a long and painstaking restoration process that eventually yielded one of postwar Germany’s preeminent historical showplaces. Shortly after the work began, Andreas Schlüter’s famous equestrian statue of the Great Elector, which heretofore had graced the Lange Brücke outside the Royal Palace, was installed in the forecourt of the Schloss.

Schloss Bellevue, a beautiful palace on the edge of the Tiergarten, which had been built in the 1780s for Frederick the Great’s brother, Prince August Ferdinand, was also restored at this time. Although it had been used by the Nazis as a guest house for foreign dignitaries, the West German authorities decided that it would make an ideal residence for their federal president when he stayed in Berlin. By putting the elegant property to this use, the Federal Republic staked out its first official presence in the divided city.

Of course, the most symbolically significant building in West Berlin—indeed in the whole city—was the Reichstag, which sat just inside the British sector. As we have seen, Hitler had refused to allow the building to be torn down after the fire in February 1933. In the wake of World War II the edifice was in truly sad shape, a rotting hulk of stone and iron, its facade pockmarked with bullet holes and its interior covered in Cyrillic graffiti. The Russians had proposed that it be exploited like a quarry for building projects in the city, but the Berliners preferred to use it for one of their black markets. During the blockade it served as a backdrop for the rallies at which Ernst Reuter hurled his defiance at the Soviets. With the division of Germany, sentiment arose in the West to restore the building as a symbol of the Federal Republic’s determination to make Berlin the capital of a reunified nation. In 1949 Jakob Kaiser spoke of it as “a crystallization point for German reunification.” But at this stage there was no money for restoration, and the only alteration to be carried out in the 1950s was the demolition of the sagging dome.