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

by Brian Ladd

the best way to get some sense of the preindustrial city is to take an excursion to nearby Potsdam, the garrison town and royal residence largely built up under Friedrich Wilhelm I and his son, Friedrich II. There was an older part of Potsdam, but that old center was virtually wiped out in the one major Allied bombing raid that struck the city in 1945. The substantial eighteenth-century town extensions to the north and west were mostly spared, and they have survived the ravages of several regimes largely intact. That is, here one still finds streets lined almost entirely with two-story houses from the 1700s, most of them exhibiting little variation in style from their neighbors (fig. 24). After four decades of East German control, most looked terribly dilapidated, which at least suggests that they had been little altered during those years. (Their fate under the Federal Republic is another matter. Potsdam suddenly went from backwater to attractive Berlin suburb; amid skyrocketing real estate values, battles raged over badly needed redevelopment and badly needed historical preservation.)