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

by Brian Ladd

On the Western side, most of the damaged buildings had already been demolished during the 1950s. Then, after the Wall went up, West Berlin turned its back on Potsdamer Platz. Beginning in the 1960s, the vacant area to its west was rebuilt with a widely dispersed array of buildings known as the Kulturforum, featuring the New National Gallery (designed by Mies van der Rohe) and two sprawling gold-roofed buildings by Hans Scharoun, Philharmonic Hall and the State Library. In building the Kulturforum, the West even rearranged the old streets to shift the focal point away from the dead end at Potsdamer Platz. Little remained at the square itself other than the souvenir stands that catered to busloads of tourists. Visitors came to gawk at the Wall and to buy postcards (or, for a time, see a billboard) showing contrasting pictures of Potsdamer Platz “then” and “now.” Tour books and tour guides told them that this had been the busiest intersection in Germany, or Europe, or the world, dubious claims repeated enough to acquire the ring of authority. Visitors marveled at the power of the Wall to turn a central place into a marginal one. Along the hundred miles of the Berlin Wall, nowhere was it more clearly revealed as a physical and symbolic barrier stemming the motion of modernity