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
