TIME OUT
The once and future metro
VEENA MUTHURAMAN
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Berlin’s unique history has enabled the city to reinvent itself constantly, remaining forever young…
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Photo: AFP
Surviving a century of turmoil: The Brandenburg Gate.
Berlin is the newest city I have come across. Even Chicago would appear old and grey in comparison.” That was Mark Twain in 1892, writing in the Chicago Daily Tribune. 1892 was an important year for Chicago — it was the year that the city raised itself from the ashes of the Great Fire 20 years earlier to host the World Fair which drew millions of people from across the world. And yet, Twain found Berlin to be newer than the then newest city in the world. Five score and 15 years later, I went to Berlin and came back with the same impression. Berlin is the newest city I have come across. The most ubiquitous things in the Berlin of today are the cranes — everywhere you look, something new is being built.
But it is not just the novelty that is striking; it’s also the bleeding edge architecture of the city’s new museums, embassies, railway stations, and government and commercial structures. What makes this city so new and so different from the other cities of Europe? Centre of two World Wars in the first half of the last century, and home to the world’s most famous Wall during the second half, that’s what. It is because of her unique history that Berlin can physically grow and reinvent unlike other cities of the developed world. And it is this history that I sensed all around me one lovely autumn morning as I stood between the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate, right where the Wall once was, at the tail of Berlin’s magnificent boulevard of Unter den Linden.
Symbolic of the city
We had just come out of the Reichstag, the seat of the unified German Parliament (Bundestag), a building that more than any other signifies the changing nature of the city it belongs to. Built in the latter part of the 19th century as the parliament of the German Empire, it was burned down in 1933 under circumstances that are still far from being clear. The Nazis used the fire as an excuse to suspend constitutional rights in the Reich, and later, the building was repeatedly bombed during World War II by the Allied forces until the Red Army hoisted the Soviet flag over its remains, signifying the end of the war in the Western Front. There the building remained through the next 50 years in no-man’s land between East and West Berlin until the Wall came down, and it was restored in 1999 and once again made the seat of united Germany’s Bundestag.
From afar, the Reichstag looks like a spaceship inside a stone-walled fortress. Only the outer walls remain of the original construction. As you go near, you realise that the spaceship is a metal and glass structure with a ramp that spirals up to the glass cupola. The roof terrace has the best views of Berlin. The central idea behind the redesign is that the government should be transparent and accessible so that the mistakes of the past will not be repeated. To symbolise this, the main chamber of the Bundestag is visible from the cupola and the Parliament floor is lit by natural light radiating from above.
Iconic landmark
In front of us is the Brandenburg Gate, possibly the most recognisable structure in Berlin. It was originally built as a peace memorial with the Quadriga at the top driving a peace chariot. This neoclassical structure consisting of 12 columns was based on the gate to the Acropolis in Athens. That little French horse thief, as the Germans (fondly, no doubt) refer to Napoleon, stole the Quadriga and took it to Paris. When the Germans got it back after the defeat of Napoleon, they gave the Quadriga an Iron Cross to make it a Victory memorial. The Russians put the Gate on their side of the Wall in 1961; JFK used it as a background for his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, and when the Wall went down, the Chancellor walked through it to shake hands with the Prime Minister. The Gate used to be one of the ceremonial entrance ways into Berlin which led directly to the palace residences, and we walked through the columns to the Pariser Platz and the boulevard of the lime trees, Unter den Linden (Unter – Under, Linden – lime trees).
Pariser Platz, the cobble-stoned square in front of the Brandenburg Gate is lined with cafes and souvenir shops. The prime real estate to our right was taken up by construction; the board said “future site of the Embassy of the United States of America”. In unified Germany, the U.S. definitely commands a better location than the once-powerful Soviet (now Russian) embassy a block further down. The Stalinist era architecture of the Russian embassy was striking and I turned around to my friend to point it out. He seemed trigger happy clicking pictures of the leafless trees which he was sure were linden though he had never seen lime trees before.
“It wouldn’t be called Unter den Linden if these trees aren’t linden.”
“It originally had linden trees. But the Nazis cut them down during the 1940s. These look like they have been planted recently.”
We were arguing over lime trees when out of nowhere came thundershowers. We were almost completely drenched. We ran into the nearest shop which looked like a generic souvenir store from outside but it turned out that they had one of the best collections of books on Berlin. We happily spent the next hour perusing them — me in the English section, while my friend pretentiously spent some time in the German section before joining me. By the time we came out, the sun was up again and it was as if the rain had never happened.
Photo: AP
IMPOSING FACADE: The redesigned Reichstag.
We crossed Wilhelmstrasse and Friedrichstrasse, two of the major north-south roads of East Berlin which has undergone major redevelopment since the reunification, and were dotted with restaurants and High Street shops. A couple of blocks further east, on our right were the stately buildings of oldest university of Berlin, the Humboldt University. There were two statues in front of the building — Wilhelm von Humboldt, the founder and of his brother Alexander. On Alexander’s statue an inscription in Spanish reads, “The second discoverer of Cuba”. Who said Germans aren’t given to vanity like the rest of us?
Pages from the past
Across the street from the university, next to the Opera House, was the square of Bebelplatz. It was where, in 1933, the Nazis burnt nearly 20,000 books including those of Marx, Hemingway and Mann. Today, as you walk through this huge square, you come across a small glass plate under which you get a view of empty bookshelves. A few metres away, inscribed on the ground is a prescient Heinrich Heine quote from the 1800s. It translates to: “That was merely a prelude. Wherever they burn books, eventually they will burn people too.”
Further ahead of us on Unter den Linden is Museum Island (currently under restoration) which is home to a large subset of the museums of Berlin. The most popular among these is the Pergamom Museum with its spectacular 42-ft tall reconstruction of Gate of Ishtar based on excavations from Babylon. One can go on about the museums of Berlin but that’s a different Berlin than the historical boulevard that we set out to discover that day. Berlin, as I see it, is made up of many Berlins, and it is worth digging into each of these cities but that cannot be done in a day. I will have to come back.
Quick facts
Getting there: Most airlines flying into Europe fly to Berlin with changes at Frankfurt. From inside Europe, Eurail also offers rail services into Berlin.
Places to see
Brandenburg Gate, Berlin’s most recognisable landmark in the centre of the city
Reichstag: Unified Germany’s Parliament, rebuilt after unification
Unter der Linden: A walk down the boulevard which has many of Berlin’s historical attractions
Holocaust Memorial: Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, this takes up a large area next to the Brandenburg Gate
Jewish Museum: Covers two millennia of Jewish history in Germany
Diplomatic Quarter: Embassy buildings built recently, showcasing cutting edge architecture
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