The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape

by Brian Ladd

One peculiar fact about this ancient neighborhood should be noted, however: it is brand new. In 1979, it was mostly empty land. The ruins of the church and a few scattered buildings were all that stood in one of the more desolate patches of central Berlin. It was at this time that the East German authorities authorized a plan by the architect Günter Stahn to re-create the neighborhood. In addition to restoration of the church, the project entailed the careful re-creation of entire rows of long-destroyed houses. Some of these could lay claim to particular historical significance—the home of the eighteenth-century writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, for example—but most were simply typical examples of merchants’ houses from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.