West Berlin’s industries only limped through the decades during which the half-city was a subsidized political symbol and an economic absurdity. But East Berlin remained a major industrial center until 1990. Only the demise of the East German economy shut down the old factories along the upper Spree and jerked it over to the Western European norm of empty factories and unemployed proletarians. Despite war and urban renewal, the valley of the Spree across much of Berlin remains a landscape of old industrial structures. Among them are the innovative and influential factory buildings built for
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