“The tourists coming to Berlin see only the earnestness of the Wall and its inherent gigantacism. To make this visible did not suffice for the Wall-builders. On the draft tables in their planning offices, there was evolved a new wall...one that would permanently replace all preceeding ones...one that would demonstrate MIGHT, GREATNESS, AND DURABILITY, and which because of all that would prove that it could become both transient...and also comical.”
(fig. 1) Onlookers during construction of the Wall.
(fig. 2) Brandenburg Gate and Pariser Platz looking south toward Potsdamer Platz and the Death Zone, 1960’s.
(fig. 3) Children peering over a temporary barricade at their playmates, 1961.
(fig. 4) Pariser Platz and Brandenburg Gate looking northwest toward the Reichstagsgebaude, 1945.
(fig. 5) Potsdamer Platz looking north, with Mendelsohn’s Columbus Haus left of center, 1932.
(fig. 6) View down Leipzigerstrasse from the Potsdamer Platz. Schinkel’s Gate Houses are still standing in the foreground, Spring 1935.
(fig. 7) Potsdamer Platz and Leipziger Platz, Spring 1967
(fig. 8) Checkpoint Charlie, the gate for American passage into the Eastern Sector, made famous by the opening scene in the film Spy Who Came in from the Cold starring Richard Burton and based on a John le Carre novel.
(fig. 9) Checkpoint Charlie being razed during a ceremony following the Wall’s collapse.
(fig. 10) View of the fernseeturm (TV Tower), from Palast der Republik looking east towards Alexanderplatz, 1993
fig. 11) The Berliner Rathaus, 1993
(fig. 12-13) Multinational signage lighting the night sky ini the former Eastern Sector near Alexanderplatz, 1993.
(fig. 14) Model of the winning schemes for Daimler Benz and the Sony Corporation Headquarters at Potsdamer Platz, 1993.
(fig. 15) Siegessaule in its original location at the Platz der Republic, adjacent to the Reichstagsgebaude.
(fig. 16-17) Winning scheme for the Spreebogen competition, the national capitol, by Axel Schultes (one of eight hundred entrants), 1993.
(fig. 18) Goddess of Victory
(fig. 19) Speer’s model for Die Grosse Hall, viewed through the Triumphal Arch, 1940.
(fig. 20) Hitler/Speer, model of the master plan for Berlin, 1940.
(fig. 21) Soviet Memorial looking northeast towards the Reichstagsgebaude, 1946.
(fig. 23) Soviet Memorial looking north towards Platz der Republic, 1946.
(fig. 24) Trummerfrauen (rubble women) clearing the debris following WWII.
(fig. 25) Trummerfrauen.
under the Unter den Linden
virtual center...virtual plane...holes in holes...stairs...repositories
Introduction
The next city, Berlin, is a city deemed significant by the GNP Corp. Given Berlin’s intense historical evolution, including its breaks or ruptures, it represents a complex case whereby the exchange of the GNP Corp encounters an internal as well as a global dynamic. A case in which, following the dismantling of the wall in 1989, the economy as well as the political, social and psychological aspects of the city remain highly stimulated if not under siege. A case in which points or moments of intensity are the normative and therefore will not serve as the desired aim, (i.e. Savannah). Rather, a case in which points of silence seem to be called for. Berlin is a city which has served during most of the twentieth century as a site of global contestations, both internally as well as externally. Following the collapse of the wall, a regression or crisis of identity can be seen co-commitant with a renewed drive to re-represent itself ‘autonomously’ as both a site for the Olympics in 2000 (a bid it lost) and as the site of the Capitol for the Reunified German Nation.
I will begin by outlining what I consider to be crucial inscriptions or props in the current reconstitution of Berlin’s identity, together with the displacements and eradications, of the reconstitution now taking place. When seen together, these inscriptions or props, as I call them, serve to map the ‘Stadtmitte’ (or city center), much of which resided on the former East German side of the wall -- the DDR. This outline will uncover these inscriptions or props, not in an attempt to detail the dissolution or devolving of the various forms of socio-economic structures historically; but rather, to project a series of preparations in which Berlin as the reunified Capitol seeks to reconstitute itself as a unified nation and re-enter the global exchange. These preparations seek not to displace the drive to reconstitute; but rather, seek to co-exist in a virtual plane rendered transparent by the contradictions inherent in this reconstitution; the displacement and or eradication of artifacts deemed by the Reunified German Government as inappropriate for their reconstituted Capitol. To proceed, I will first locate the fields of events and then define the artifacts these events displace(d), ‘their wakes’ if you will. In this process there will emerge a program of pre-investiture which seeks to reutilize these artifacts, currently or already, programmed for displacement and eradication by the new Government. The first area of preparation will be the Wall Zone; the current frontier of Western capital, the ‘death zone,’ the area that for twenty-eight years delimited the struggles of the twentieth century paradigmatically. Initially constructed by the DDR in 1961 to stem the flow of East Germans into the western sector and to block the advance of capitalism into the eastern sector, the wall became a frozen although highly effective barrier that served to define the social bodies and their division through its’ absolute negativity (fig. 1-3). It served simultaneously as a barrier for containment from within and a barrier of denial from without. It was the locus of the cold war struggle, structurally defining east from west and thereby defusing or backgrounding the many ethnic fragmentations that we are witnessing today, following its collapse. The second area of preparation will be the Contested Axis running north south in the Tiergarten adjacent to the Wall Zone. A site which has been symbolically loaded on four separate occasions; from Prussia’s first struggle for German Unification under Bismarck up to and including the current reunification. Together these preparations provide Berlin with a context in which an alternative exchange with the Global Non-Profit Corporation can emerge. This exchange will manifest itself in two series of repositories: The first series will occupy sites programmed by the new Government for its administrative offices in the Stadtmitte -- the former DDR. The second repository will constitute itself under the Unter den Linden, the triumphal East West Axis of Berlin.
I
The Wall Zone
Tabula Rasa: the Western Frontier
The siting of the Wall severed Berlin down the center and effectively isolated West Berlin as an island of capitalism within East Germany. My focus is in the Stadtmitte where the former Wall Zone incorporated two of the three squares that defined the historical city in the nineteenth century. The first square, Pariser Platz, is the site of the Brandenburg Gate and Quadriga, the processional entrance into the city via the Tiergarten (fig. 3-4). The second square is the Potsdamer Platz/Leipziger Platz, which formed the commercial heart of the city prior to World War II (fig. 5-7).
This Wall Zone (the space delimited by the Berlin Wall, later to be called the death strip or death zone) comprised numerous sites formerly held in private hands; many of which, particularly in the area surrounding the Stadtmitte had tremendous value both monetarily and communally. While under the control of the DDR, private property was taken by the State and remained State property until the Wall’s collapse. What interests me here is not the argument between public vs. private, Capitalism vs. Communism, but rather the interesting phenomenon that have occurred within these dichotomies and which serve to inform the GNP Corp. Of particular interest to the Global Non-Profit Corp is the site for Checkpoint Charlie. Located just east of the Potsdamer Platz at the southern edge of the Stadtmitte, Check- point Charlie served as the gate for American citizens entering and exiting the eastern sector of the city (fig. 8-9). Following the collapse of the Wall the site for Checkpoint Charlie, as with many other sites in the former DDR, awaited claim by its previous Owner(s) and was given over to a German citizen to maintain and continue operating as a tourist site in the interim (see fig. 2 in forward). It was operated by this individual from 1989 until early 1994. On 29 December 1995 an advertisement in the NY Times stated that anyone with the financial backing necessary to relocate the tower could be permitted to do so: Furthermore, he preferred the new Owner be an American; a preference that served to negate the speculative nature of the GNP Corp.
The preparation of the Wall Zone concerns the collapse of the East Block and subsequent reclamation and recolonization by the West in its aftermath, the siege as it were. I visited Berlin in the fall of 1993 and was struck by the amount of redevelopment in the Stadtmitte, although this redevelopment was uneven. An unevenness manifest on the one hand by neon signs, one and two stories high, lining the tops of the modernist housing slabs along the ceremonial park of the former DDR (fig. 10-11). Neon signs displaying logos such as Coca a’ Cola, Panasonic, Sony, Denon etc. (fig. 12-13). An unevenness which on the other hand, finds the former Wall Zone serving as the current frontier for Western Capital. The site not only for the renewed attempt on the part of Berlin to reclaim its’ place as the National Capitol, but also, and one could say more conspicuously, by the necessary alignment of Capital with this attempt; an alignment manifest by the location of the proposed headquarters of Daimler Benz and the Sony Corporation adjacent to the new Capitol on the one side and straddling if not infilling the Wall Zone on the other (fig. 14). An unevenness privileging sites in the former Wall Zone where both Corporations, as well as the National Capitol, were the subjects of international design competitions; thereby disclosing the current intentions of the Reunified Nation to world scrutiny (fig. 16-17).
Preparation One: Registration
This uneven development and reclamation -- in affect eradication -- the subject of the initial preparation, will be marked by an event space which serves to register the movement of capital within this process of reconstitution. As such, the eastern side of the former Wall Zone (the wall zone being a space contained between two walls) will remain flush with the eastern plate of the City; while on the western side of the former Wall Zone, the western plate of the City will be excavated to a depth equaling the height of the former Wall. The resulting slope, descending from east to west -- a fault, will mark the submergence of the eastern plate beneath the ongoing siege of the west. The entire space of the ‘Prepared’ Wall Zone will then be left to its natural growth, what is called ‘climax community’ in botanical terms. Utilizing Alan Sonfist’s Time Landscape in Manhattan, from 1965, as a point of departure; this Time Landscape by contrast, will remain open and accessible, and as such, serve to register the effects of all future transgressions as Berlin struggles to reconstitute itself.
II
virtual plane
Symbolic Loading: The Contested Axis
The Wall, from its inception, has occupied a vast space in the intellectual and political spheres; a fascination still active following its collapse. From my point of view however, the Wall; its location, means of construction, height, width, weight, even its surveillance were ‘real.’ What is symbolically loaded in terms of my thesis is not the Wall, but the site running north/south in the Tiergarten and bisecting the Unter den Linden just west of the Pariser Platz. This historically contested site will be the focus of the second preparation. It is here, at the eastern end of the Tiergraten, that we find the virtual plane. The plane of highest symbolic investiture vis-à-vis the movement and transformation of ideology in Germany’s past, as well as by foreign powers. I will begin this phase of the preparation by outlining the three axis of symbolic investiture leading up to the current efforts to once again occupy this site with the Capitol of the Reunified German Government.
The symbolic loading of this site follows tragic events: Bismarck’s military campaigns against northern Europe, the rise of the Third Reich, the occupation of the city by the Soviet Union together with the Allied Forces (Britain, France, and the United States) and currently the struggle to reunify and represent the German Nation following the collapse of the Wall. From my point of view, it is here that we find the crucial site, the site in which formations occur from both internal and external forces and it is here that an alternative exchange begins to emerge.
Contested Axis 1. Siegesalle
In commemoration of Prussia’s campaigns against Denmark (1864), Austria (1866), and France (1870-71) and the first attempt under Prussian rule to unify German-speaking states— to reconfigure the social body this site received its first inscription, the Siegessaule (fig. 15). The Siegesalle (or victory column) served to terminate the Siegesalle (or victory lane), a north/south promenade that was lined by statues of Berlin’s and Prussia’s heroic figures (fib. 28). It was here, in the Koningsplatz now the Platz der Republik that the Reichstagsgebaude was constructed and the first axis of contestation was formed. The Siegessaule once again holds a particularly significant place in the current reconstitution of Berlin’s identity. Two recent films of Wim Wenders also dealt with the Siegessaule. In his films, “Wings of Desire” and “Faraway So Close,” the Siegessaule plays a central role in the metaphysical presence of the angels, their presence as signs of continuity with a past troubled by the events of the twentieth century, a past against which Berlin struggles to reconstitute itself. A past in which even the symbolic value of this monument, (a forty-five meter high column sitting on top of a circular colonnaded base), is marked: The Goddess of Victory which stands atop this monument was reconstituted from French cannons melted down following their retreat from German soil in the nineteenth century (fig. 18). A process of particular interest to the GNP Corp, the reconstitution of material: taking one value of exchange, the power to destruct the social body (the cannon) and transforming it into another; the power to reconstitute, or reconstruct a social body (the symbolic monument). The spoils of war reconstituted to symbolically construct the German Nation under Bismarck, (the iron Chancellor).
Contested Axis 2. North/South Axis
For the next fifty years this Prussian Nation, formed in 1871, the year of Bartholdi’s first foray into New York, (the French sculptor responsible for the Statue of Liberty), struggled through the industrialization of Berlin. Following the defeat of Germany in the first World War and the failed attempt of the communist revolution in Germany in 1918, the Weimar Republic was formed; a coalition government that for security reasons was displaced to Weimar. This period, c. 1920’s, was a time of immense artistic activity in Berlin, prior to the burning of the Reicshtag and the subsequent rise to power of Hitler and the National Socialists in 1933. Hitler and Speer’s desire to construct a monumental North/South Axis and completely reconfigure the landscape of Berlin constitutes the next phase of symbolic loading on this site (fig. 19-20). In an attempt to symbolize the ‘Thousand Year Reich’ their axis would have been crowned by a dome fifty stories in height and capable of seating over 100,000 people. The Dome was to have been located on the Spree Bogen (or bend in the Spree River), at the northern end of the axis; adjacent to and thus dwarfing the Reichstags- gebaude (fig. 19). As for the Siegessaule: Hitler claimed it spoilt his view of the crowds in front of the Reicshtag and in 1938, the same year as Kristallnacht, he ordered it relocated to the Groβer Stern (or Great Star), further to the west in the Tiergarten. This displacement would also facilitate the construction of the North/South Axis in which the Siegessaule would have — had it remained, occupied the center of the monumental platz in front of the Dome. A displacement in which the Siegessaule now occupies a key site along the Unter den Linden (the monumental east/west axis of the City) at the western end of the Tiergarten; a point where the former royalty positioned themselves at a time when the Tiergarten was still the royal hunting grounds, while the peasants (the story goes) chased the prey down the radial alles towards them for slaughter. The Unter den Linden was constructed in 1695 to accommodate the triumphal procession of the Royal Hunting Parties as they returned, through the Brandenburg Gate, beneath the Quadriga and back to their Schloss.
Contested Axis 3. Sowjetischer Ehrenmal
The next inscription immediately followed the defeat of Hitler and Germany in 1945: The Sowjetischer Ehrenmal (or Soviet Memorial). Soviet Forces, accepting heavy casualties in their drive to repel Hitler’s Werhmacht, found themselves occupying Berlin in advance of the Allied Forces still fighting their way through western and southern Europe. The first act following their victory and the subsequent suicide of Hitler, was to construct the Soviet Memorial alongside the Unter den Linden — directly in line with the North/South Axis of Hitler and Spear. Since then, this monument has served to block symbolically any future attempts by Germany to construct the North/South Axis. The materials utilized in the construction of this memorial serves as an additional example of reconstitution, the stone facing was extract- ed from the debris of Hitler’s Reichskanzlei (or state council building housing his office, fig. 21). The Soviet Memorial stood polished and sturdy against a background of desolation and despair (fig. 22,23): A background in which the Trummerfrauen (or rubble women, fig. 24-25) were busy clearing the streets of debris from the bombing; where pet- ting looting was common; and the Tiergarten now decimated— was recultivated as a potato field to sustain the population now absent any signs of infrastructure (fig. 26).
Summary: Contested Axis
I have outlined three of the four events or symbolic investitures that define the axis of contestation: First, the Siegesalle (now a path through the woods, fig. 27-30) and Siegessaule (displaced by Hitler from the Platz der Republik to the Groβer Stern); second, the North/ South Axis of Hitler and Speer never realized beyond the roundel located further south, adjacent to the National Gallery by Mies van der Rohe, long since lost in the war; third, the Soviet Memorial, the only extant structure that remains in its original location. All three investitures serve to define the immense dynamic underlying the current efforts to reclaim this site as the appropriate site for the Reunified German Government. An international design competition was sponsored in 1992, which attracted over eight hundred entries from Architects around the world. From this pool Axel Schultes, a Berlin based Architect, emerged the winner with a scheme indicating a long double wall structure with closed ends that spans the Spree Bogen at the northern end of the Contested Axis, from the Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof in the east to the Hansaviertal District in the west (fig. 16-17). A structure that will house all the primary if not symbolic functions of the new Capitol complex, its center initially left open where it crosses the Contested Axis to serve as an entrance for a future U-Bahn station (subway) planned for below. A structure whose orientation runs perpendicular to and thus aligns with the axis of the former Siegesalle (the nineteenth century promenade). An orientation which finds Germans reaching back to the nineteenth century, as if in Wenders Wings of Desire, in their struggle to reclaim an identity not yet troubled by the twentieth century.
(fig. 26) Tiergarten following WW II.
(fig. 27) Gorser Stern-Allee with Siegessaule in the back- ground, 1945.
(fig. 28) Siegessalle (victory alley), 1903
(fig. 29) Siegessaule looking south from the Unter den LInden, 1993.
(fig. 30) Soviet Memorial looking north from the Unter den Linden, 1945.
(fig. 31) Opening of the Berlin Wall near the Spree, 1989.
(fig. 32) Brandenburg Gate, November, 1989, (compare with figure one taken twenty-eight years earlier).
(fig. 33) Brandenburg Gate and the Quadriga, New Years Eve, 1990
(fig. 34) Friederich Gilly, perspective of Monument for Frederick the Great, 1797.
(fig. 35) Gilly’s final plan for the monument.
(fig. 36) K.F. Schinkel, Monument to Frederick the Great, perspective and plan showing location on Unter den Linden in front of Humboldt University, 1929-30.
(fig. 37) Entrance to Humboldt University off the Unter den Linden.
(fig. 38-39) Under den Linden looking east toward the Palast der Republik and the Fernseeturm, 1993. Humboldt University is to the left of Rauch’s Monument to Frederick the Great, 1851.
(fig. 40) Demolition of the Schloss by DDR in 1958, to make way for construction of Marx-Engels Platz.
Preparation Two: The Desire
Recall that the wall produced two crucial effects in Berlin: The first is that it segregated the City east from west; and second, this segregation generated a desire for the ‘other,’ a desire that permeated both sides even though the presence of the wall was subject solely to the East’s ability to maintain its position vis-à-vis Capitalism. The desire, this ‘lack,’ ultimately contributed to the Wall’s collapse. Various argu- ments have been advanced, such as fashion or the inability of the East Block to sustain a viable commodity base in light of the West; a view which conflates with the argument that the Wall itself was incapable of preventing the transmission of information and/or images suggesting a superior standard of living in the West. The desire for the other; the desire on the part of the East for a Western standard of living, and the desire of the West to exploit a vast new reserve of resources and markets, serves to inform the second preparation, an internal exchange, an exchange which will occur not relative to the former Wall, but rather, the Contested Axis, the site in which the Wall manifested the negative result.
To establish which sites will participate in this exchange, I utilized the brief for the Spree Bogen Competition, (the Capitol), issued in 1992. This brief indicates a series of sites apart from the Spree Bogen, sites that are dispersed throughout the Stadtmitte (the former DDR), and programmed by the Reunified Government for additional administrative and or secondary functions. These sites will house the non-symbolic functions of the capitol complex and as such will in all probability, not be subject to international design competitions. There are two primary conditions with these sites: The first condition involves sites which contain existing buildings deemed of value by the new government and thus retained and renovated; while the second condition involves sites that either contain buildings deemed inappropriate for the reconstitution and thus scheduled for demolition or those sites already vacated, both of which will accommodate new construction for the Reunified Government. These vacated sites, theoretically the “public’s” property, are where this level of preparation will manifest itself, an exchange, given the reciprocal desire for the ‘other,’ that will involve a shift or projection of these sites through the Axis of Contestation, the ‘virtual plane’ and in so doing inscribe corresponding voids within the Tiergarten. The material within these newly inscribed voids, their trees, their spielplatze (playgrounds), their statues, in short whatever occupies them will be displaced, will give themselves up in reverse, back through the ‘virtual plane’ and be deposited within the corresponding sites within the Stadtmitte, sites programmed by the Reunified Government for new construction; fragments of the Tiergarten thus serving as the base plane for the new Governments future buildings now located in the former DDR. This leaves a series of voids in the Tiergarten however? Through an annual cultivation of potatoes, these voids will be revitalized as points of silence, within a performance sustained over three successive years, thus permitting the rotation of the crops in alignment with the Contested Axis...a return of the repressed.
This second preparation should be seen as a preformative economy, analogous to and concurrent with the ongoing intellectual and political investments in this City. It is an expansion of the activity surrounding this site in the name of reunification and seeks to render preformative, albeit useless activity in the concrete realm. The potential time frame involved in current negotiations (the struggle both internally and externally to reconstitute the City as the Reunified Capitol) are expected to be extensive. These negotiations, in the form of international design competitions, press releases, articles, books, films, academic forums, even the rise and fall of military industrial complexes constitute vast economies of exchange of particular interest to the GNP Corp. What is suggested here is an alternative form of exchange that comes into being simultaneously, an exchange in the physical realm, and it is for this reason that the process as outlined so far needs to be expanded.
III
virtual center Repositories Series One
An expansion of this exchange will recover products that spin off into the global network of exchange, products for the GNP Corp. This next level of exchange requires two additional clarifications: The first clarification concerns the delimitation of the field of events; the second clarification concerns the establishment of sites and materials for displacement within this exchange, and it is to the former that we will first turn. For this, we must return to the Unter den Linden and specifically a series of historical events which inscribe a virtual center for the City and with it a new field of events. This virtual center marks a point in which the ‘symbolic’ representation of power was first clearly marked in Berlin; a process beginning in the 1790’s and culminating in 1850 prior to the advent of the first unification under Bismarck. This process concerns the Memorial to Frederick the Great, the subject of a series of design competitions spanning three notable generations of designers.
Gilly.Schinkel.Rauch
The first notable submission was proposed by Frederich Gilly in 1796, a Greek Temple surmounting a monumental base to be set within the confines of the Leipziger Platz (fig. 34-35). His proposal came at a time prior to the industrial revolution in which the Leipziger Platz formed part of the seventeenth century tariff walls and was thus located at the City’s periphery. A proposal that although significant for later generations was never realized, (Gilly died in 1800 at the age of twenty-nine). The neo-classical aspects of Gilly’s memorial set in motion an ideal Berlin; a Berlin with potential to become an ‘Athens on the Spree;’ an ideal further advanced in the work of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, an ideal beyond the scope of this thesis. I will limit my discussion of Schinkel’s Berlin to his project for the Memorial in question, and more specifically, the site Schinkel selected. Schinkel’s proposal pictured a Trajanesque column surmounting a square colonnaded base, a model for the Siegesaule produced forty years later, (fig. 36). The site Schinkel envisioned for his monument, coupled with its height, would have established the geographic center of the City (now Stadtmitte). His proposal situated the monument at a point in the middle of the Unter den Linden, a point defining the northern edge of the Crownprinz Platz and centered on the entrance to Humboldt University (which was founded by William von Humboldt in 1810, fig. 37); a University whose past includes the site of Hegel’s lectures, as well as the education of Karl Marx, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and no doubt, many other notable scholars and luminaries in the history of Germany.
This point still marks the geographic center of the Stadmitte; the historic center, the heart of the former DDR, and it is this site that signifies or at least reinforces the Unter den Linden as the true axis of Berlin. Schinkel’s Trajanesque column (1829-30), never realized, was followed in 1851 by the equestrian statue of Christian Rauch (fig. 39). Rauch’s memorial, still standing, depicts Frederick the Great on horseback returning to his Palace (one could suggest returning from the Tiergarten, the royal hunting grounds, fig. 38). Again, as with the Quadriga residing atop the Brandenburg Gate, the horses face the Palace; the implication of which is their asses face out to World. Rauch’s monument for Frederick the Great occupies a site, also in the middle of the Unter den Linden, a mere ten meters west of the point chosen by Schinkel and serves to reinforce this point as the virtual center of the City; both the Neoclassical City and the current Stadtmitte as it has been depicted. We can now circumscribe the next field of events by projecting a radius from this virtual center to the Contested Axis and thus fully inscribe the Stadtmitte, (the majority of which resides in the former DDR). In so doing, we define the field of events for the next preparation, which involves the events surrounding the collapse of the Wall and the current efforts to reconstitute the City as the Capitol of the Reunified Government.
With the field of events now circumscribed, the virtual center can now be projected through the Contested Axis (the virtual plane) and in so center of the Stadmitte denoted by Schinkel and Rauch, and the decentering caused by Hitler’s displacement of the Siegessaule to the Groβer Stern, produces an alignment in which the two monuments; the one actualized, the other virtual, coexist and coupled with the Contested Axis this geometry serves to reinforce their mutual virtuality. What does this suggest? If we project the Siegessaule, (modeled after Schinkel’s column) through the virtual plane and subvert it; an act of castration. Given the height of its shaft, we establish an inverted subterranean datum of forty-five meters beneath the eastern plate of the City, and in so doing project a subterranean crater beneath the Stadmitte. Using the virtual center as the center for this crater, we excavate all the remaining secondary sites programmed for the new government complex, and in so doing, provide a series of subterranean walls, repositories for the Global Non-Profit Corp; the base planes of which consist of fragments from the Tiergarten. The internal dynamic described thus far gives way to sites for the global exchange. A phenomenon which brings us to stairs, not significant spaces, but spaces that none-the-less represent a potential advance -- in the formal sense. Stairs, which all buildings have in common, are the logical spaces in which this alternate economy of exchange will emerge relative to Berlin. As public space -- always accessible from within, although rarely utilized outside of emergencies -- the stairs will contain the materials of the repressed as they emerge from below the plates of the City, above the foundation walls and permeate the bodies of all future buildings housing the Reunified German Government.
In addition: Given the projection of the subterranean crater, these excavations result in a slope opposed to the slope projected for the Wall Zone in Preparation One: This superimposition of opposing slopes provides the Wall Zone with its first registration... a registration in which the site of the new Holocaust Memorial (a national competition issue in 1994 and located within the former Wall Zone between the Potsdamer Platz and the Pariser Platz, adjacent to Hitler’s bunker, yields...a hole in a hole.
(fig. 41) Aerial photo of Museum Insel looking southwest toward the Marx-Engels Platz. Clockwise from the Dom; Palast der Republic, Staatsratgebaude, Ausenministirium, and Lustgarten with the Altes Museum out of view to the right, 1992.
(fig. 42) Berliner Schloss, 1932.
(fig. 43) Marx-Engels Platz with the Palast der Republic left and the Staatsratgebaude right, 1992.
(fig. 44) Lustgarten looking south toward the Berliner Schloss, from the Altes Museum, 1890.
(fig. 45) Marx-Engels Platz looking south toward the Sta- atsratgebaude, from the Altes Museum, 1992.
(fig. 46) Portal IV (Liebknecht Portal) displaced from the Berliner Schloss to the Staatsratgebaude, (Federal Office Build- ing of the DDR) following its demolition in the hands of the former East German Government, 1958.
(fig. 47) Spree Insel Competition, winning scheme, 1994. Note the complete reconfiguration of Marx-Engels Platz and the eradictation of all three buildings housing the former DDR government offices...if you look closely you might detect in this proposal the reconstruction of Schinkel’s Bau Academie adjacent to the Spree Insel, south of the Zeug Haus at the site of the former Ausenministeriam?
fig. 48) Friedrichstrasse in a state of infrastructural renewal corresponding to recent developments in the former DDR. This image accompanied an article in the NY Times October 14, 1994, titled, Instead of Barbed Wire, Resentment Now Divides Germans. One could easily miscontrue this image with the events being proposed simultaneously for under the Unter den Linden.
(fig. 49) Luncheon on the Grass, Hudson Talbott, 1982. Painting after Madelon Vriesendorp, (OMA). This painting is to be found in the text accompanying the Centennial Celebration of the Statue of Liberty.
(fig. 50) Liberty for All, Works Progress Administration, 1932.
IV
Repository Two
under the Unter den Linden
Still at issue is the extent material on these sites prior to their excavation, material which concerns buildings and structures produced by the former DDR and are therefore not deemed relevant or appropriate for the identity being forged by the Reunified Government. In the process of reconstituting its identity, these traces of the former DDR will be eradicated. This phenomenon of eradication is manifest in the winning scheme for the redesign of the Spree Insel, better known as ‘Museum Island,’ the historical and cultural center of Berlin (fig. 41-47). A competition which called for the eradication of Marx-Engels Platz (formerly the Lustgarten) including the Palast der Republik (Palace of the People), the Staatsratgebaude (State Council Building) and the Ausenministerium (Foreign Ministry), all of which served as the political center of the DDR and all of which in turn, served to displace the original Schloss or Royal Palace following World War II (fig. 41-46).
What is it that can be done with this material programmed for eradication? Given this subterranean crater — visible only in the excavations of the dispersed sites programmed by the new government, the depths of which are now contingent on their proximity to the center, the perceptions of which are contingent on memory as one moves through the Stadtmitte it is now possible to suggest the opening up of a second repository. If these sites the dispersed sites programmed by the new government function as repositories of architectural elements from the global exchange, then another site must be allocated for the debris from their ongoing destruction, also scheduled by the Reunified Government. The appropriate site for this second repository is of course the Unter den Linden: The monumental east/west axis of Berlin historically; the axis defined by the Groβer Stern with its displaced Siegessaule; the Soviet Memorial as it marks the intersection with the North/South Contested Axis; as well as the Brandenburg Gate and Quadriga, which framed the processions of the royal hunting parties. When this site is excavated relative to the datum of the subterranean crater, the second repository is formed. A repository that will remain partially open to the pedestrian island in the middle of the Unter den Linden above,and accessible from the virtual center. A repository that will pass directly in front of all of the Foreign Embassies and Consulates strategically repositioning themselves between the Brandenburg Gate and Humboldt University following the events surrounding the collapse of the Wall in 1989. It is here, under the Unter den Linden, that the materials being repressed in this phase of Berlin’s history, the debris from the former DDR structures, should reside. What remains open is the manner in which this second repository will be formed? Since the first series of repositories, the dispersed sites, are to be grounded with fragments from the Tiergarten, their foundation walls comprised of random architectural elements from the global exchange (i.e. Savannah), then the fabrication of foundation walls for this second repository, under the Unter den Linden, should have a more specific character.
Subsequent to the collapse of the Wall, the disarmament between Russia and the United States resulted in an unprecedented form of dismantling. This dismantling, a form of auto-eradication; constitutes an immense although useless economy (of specific interest to the Global Non-profit Corp). This disarmament of the former Cold War Superpowers, following an incessant forty year build-up (an equally immense and now useless economy) parallels the ongoing auto eradication now occurring in Germany with the reconstitution, in a sensed reconstruction of Germany ideologically, and Berlin infrastructurally and symbolically.
To witness this dissolution one can visit the ‘Bone Yards’ in Arizona. It is here, in the desert of southern Arizona that a fleet of three hundred and fifty B-52 Bombers lie in mothballs, bombers not part of the Rosinen Bombers, but the destructive side of America’s arsenal (see fig. 17 in the forward). Over the next three and a half years these Bombers, with the help of a 13,000 pound guillotine, are scheduled to be chopped into four pieces each. For ninety days, following dismemberment, the two wings, the tail, and the body of the planes will be left where they fall on the floor of the desert. Following this ninety day period, the pieces will be sold as scrap metal for sixteen cents a pound, a mere fraction of the three hundred forty-five dollar per pound value of the Bombers when they were operational.
A phenomenon that is paralleled in Russia. In exchange for hard currency from the United States, warships from the former Soviet Union will be transported from Russia, ironically, to a Philadelphia shipyard where they too will be dismantled and as with the Bombers in Arizona, sold as scrap metal. An activity providing new economic life for an outmoded shipyard that would otherwise cease to exist following the collapse of the Wall.
Final
The final act in this Urban performance; the siege, involves the displacement of these Bomber wings, all three hundred and fifty pairs, to Philadelphia where they will co-mingle with the former Soviet War Ships prior to their reconstitution as flotation devices. With their engines serving as ballast...like the stones of Savannah in reverse, these wings will then set off towards the Old World. The compartments now filled with various forms of artifacts; products of the generous support of various corporate sponsors and other sorts of endowed subjects thus providing weight against the phenomenon of hydroplaning. Once these flotation devices are securely anchored in Berlin — a performance that is projected to last three and a half years and thus correspond to the recultivation of the Tiergarten the artifacts they contain will be subject to exchange with the debris from Berlin’s re-constitution. The compartments of the flotation devices -- now utilized for shoring will remain unlocked in this repository under the Unter den Linden.
under the Unter den Linden, against which Foreign Embassies now reside, serves as the appropriate site for this material subject to erasure in the reconstitution of Berlin, as well as the dissolution of the former Superpowers spent military hardware, both of which constitute use less economies subject to re-enchantment by the Global Non-profit Corporation. A performance which not only reciprocates the events surrounding the reconstruction of the Siegessaule and the Statue of Liberty -- the beginning of the siege — but also serves to acknowledge, belatedly, the frustrations experienced by those Soviet Architects -- now swimmers -- exiled in their Constructivist Pool.