archBOSTON ARCHIVE

[Roxxma]

I went to Berlin last year and finally got around to downloading the images. I thought I would share them here..

The World Time Clock is in Alexanderplatz, which was East Berlin's main square. It is a popular meeting place.


Schloss Charlottenburg is in the Charlottenburg district.


This is Belvedere, a house on the grounds of Charlottenburg


Museum Island in the middle of Berlin.


Kaufhaus des Westens or KaDeWe is a large department store on the Ku'damm, which was the center of West Berlin


Some new construction just outside of Potsdamer Platz, which has since been rebuilt after being razed during WWII and the construction of the Berlin Wall.



A preserved section of the Wall in Potsdamer Platz

The Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz



Stra?e des 17. Juni is a major boulevard that runs from the Brandenburg Gate through the Tiergarten



Some jackass stood in the middle of the street when this picture was taken.


The Reichstag building, home to the Bundestag the lower house of Germany's parliament.

The roof and dome of the Reichstag are accessible to the public





The Chancellery is the home and office of the Chancellor. The living space for the Chancellor is in the highest section of the building


The River Spree (pronounced "schpray") runs through the center of the city.


Evening comes to Berlin.


Coming soon: remnants of the East.

[Roxxma]

After the German Democratic Republic was formed from the Soviet zone of East Germany; the Communist government, heavily underwritten by the Soviet Union, decided that the new Berlin would be a showcase of modern Marxist Socialism.

It was decided that a new kind of city would be built, one with broad boulevards with large squares, plenty of housing for the workers with cultural and entertainment venues along the way.

In the mid 1950s construction was started on Karl-Marx Allee (originally known as Stalinallee, but renamed after a German in the early 1960s when they realized that Stalin wasn't such a good guy after all)



Most of the buildings along Karl-Marx Allee are large apartment blocks with ground floor retail, but along the way there are a few nightclubs and other institutions.

Cafe Moskau, considered the poshest of clubs in der Hauptstadt, complete with Sputnik motif and Soviet style mosaic mural, an obvious tribute to East Germany's primary benefactor.

Close up of the mosaic outside of the entrance


This is now known as "bar in der karl-marx allee 36". I went out there one night with some German friends, they told me that in the DDR days it was an exclusive bar for SED (Communist) party members. It was very cool, it has large open front room where the bar is and a floating staircase in the back that of the room that goes up to some smaller lounge rooms.


This is Kino International, which was apparently the primary movie house in East Berlin and was host to many DEFA film premieres. I don't think they play many DEFA films there anymore


As the capital city, the new Berlin had to have some monuments to some East German ideas.

Marx-Engels Platz pays homage to two famous German political philosophers.



This building, which overlooks Alexanderplatz is the Lehrerhaus, dedicated to the teachers.


What German city would be complete without a Fernsehenturm (TV tower)? The East Germans built a really tall one in the center of the city.


In the big ball, about two thirds of the way up, there is an observation deck which offers a pretty good view of the city.




And what Eastern Bloc country would be complete without its own hideously ugly government buildings?

Palast der Republik, or " Palace of the Republic" aka "the Peoples Palace". It was home to the rubber stamp East German parliament.



Some government buildings sported murals to remind the population how happy they were under the socialist state (one Easterner told me that "most people were so miserable [under the socialist system] that they forgot how happy they were").



Unfortunately for the folks in power at the SED, they didn't count on losing large chunks of the population in the late 1950s and early 1960 to emigration to the West (it is said that on one day the entire Mathematics Department of the University of Leipzig defected to the West), so they built a wall to protect the East German citizens from the evils of the West (IE: decent jobs, metal cars, bananas, opportunity, Coca-Cola, self determination, etc).




For the first few years, only troops from the four powers which administered the city (English, French, American and Soviet) could pass through the wall.

This was a famous checkpoint between the boroughs of Kreuzberg, in the West and Mitte, in the East.


Eventually, in the autumn of 1989, people in the East got pissed and began to demonstrate in the streets for more freedom to travel and get things like bananas, Coca-Cola, toilet paper and cars that weren't made out of plastic. At around the same time, Hungary announced that it would open its border with Austria which resulted in tens of thousands of East Germans fleeing to the West German Embassy in Vienna. On November 9, 1989 during a rare press conference, G?nter Schabowski the East German minister of propaganda, after being handed a note that stated that travel restrictions would be relaxed, told the press that travel by East Germans to the West would be allowed. When asked when he replied "As far as I know effective immediately, right now" (the note said that travel would be allowed the next day with proper paperwork -He didn't read it closely). At that point the wall was pretty much gone.

By the time I got there it was long gone.

[patrick0000]

interesting photo-tour. I saw a movie called berlin in motion or something or other, made in the early 20th century, which showed its industrial strength as a German city, with no words, just everything you could imagine that is urban, set to classical music. very interesting.

[garbribre]

Ausgezeichnet! Roxxma

I love that Kino has Farenheit 911 advertised. Perfect in every way.

Been a while since I visited Berlin. Was the land of cranes when I was last there. Is it still under massive re-construction boom or has that dissipated?

[garbribre]

[Roxxma]