Marx Engels Forum is Moving

Back in 1991, I wandered down Unten den Linden until I ran into the Marx-Engels Forum just west of Alexanderplatz and the famous Fernsehturm. In June, it was one of the first locations I sought out, and I was excited to see there was more to the monument than I originally thought--metal stelae that tell the story of socialism in a series of engraved images. I immediately asked a pair of tourists to take my photo with the great-grandfathers of communism. Only afterward did I notice that tourists love to sit on Karl's lap--the bronze of his hands is polished from so many bourgeois fannys.

Today I learned that the statues are getting moved to set up a staging area for a subway route. It seems that the move to the Karl-Liebknecht Bridge (50 meters south, facing to the west). Apparently, the plan is to return them in 2017.

Hopefully they won't be replaced with some long-gone historical reconstruction, though it would probably surprise nobody if (as in the case of the recently demolished Palast der Republik) wealthy westerners sought to do away with the DDR-relic.

My Own Private Plattenbau

There were certainly many other places I could have stayed here in Berlin, but I chose the Ostel quite deliberately. The entire conceit of the place is that guests will have a taste--however superficial and Ostalgic (East-nostalgiac)--of what it was like to live in a genuine DDR-apartment. Perhaps what I found most surprising was the feeling that the rooms weren't really all that terrible. I realize it would be absurd to pay money to stay in an uncomfortable place, like a medieval historian choosing to stay in a damp, drafty castle, but I expected I would notice some very specific weaknesses. I didn't. Wallpaper patterns (in both the rooms I stayed) are intended to provide depth, so that the rooms don't seem quite so small and flat. The bathroom had plenty of hot water. The most notable design choices had to do with furniture and appliances, which were, presumably, from the 70s or 80s.

Still, even though I was living in spaces outfitted to give me a feel for day-to-day East German "style", I knew that I would have to dig around a bit to learn more about Plattenbauten (panel-construction) apartments.

This is what the Ostel looks like from the outside. They've done a nice job of sprucing it up with a colorfully painted facade.

Plattenbauten buildings might best be described as "pre-fab". One of myvsources asserts that the Dutch created the technique, and the most common type of Platte in Berlin was the WBS 70 (Wohnbauserie 70). Following the war, there was an acute housing shortage in Berlin, and the Soviets had essentially looted all the heavy equipment in their sector. Simply put, there was no way that the GDR could rebuild without sufficient raw materials and enough heavy equipment. Even though the SED called for "National Building" in 1952, and although the next 20 years saw some impressive constructions (for propaganda and prestige purposes), the housing shortage remained an acute "political-social" problem, threatening the legitimacy of the regime.

Then, in the 70s, when the construction of public buildings such as the Fernsehturm or the Haus des Lehrers was completed, the regime initiated a large-scale housing program. There are entire areas of the city that consist almost entirely of Plattenbauten. In areas such as Berlin Mitte, near the wall, builders added appropriate mosaics or facades, in an attempt to retain the historical feel of the neighborhood, but they never really lived up to West German standards.

The bathrooms in these apartments have no proper ventilation. Mine had a series of holes in the base of the door to encourage air circulation. For that reason they were called "Wet-cells". Nonetheless, it appears that East Germans prized their apartments when they finally got them. Like their Trabis, they lavished individual attention on their new personal property. Unfortunately, because each apartment was built to identical specifications, and because all the available furniture was built to identical specifications, they usually looked almost identical. But, like so many things in the GDR, the differences were subtle.

Scholars described the GDR as a Nischengesellschaft or "niche-society". It was necessitated by the constant surviellance and pressure to conform. Individuals would express their differences in safe spaces with close friends and family. These "niches" would be their new, damp apartments, their "dachas" (garden-houses or larger vacation cottages), and their hard-to-come-by Trabant automobiles. Although the SED provided them with youth clubs and art and leisure centers, but the common people avoided them. Instead, them met in small groups at their "dachas". Individually, they would read world literature rather than watch state-controlled television.

So, it took me about 10 days and some reading to really appreciate my own private Plattenbau.
 
 

The Legacy of Stalin: Karl-Marx-Allee and Treptower Park

In 1949, the SED determined it would be appropriate to re-name the Große Frankfurter Straße “Stalinallee”. The entire borough of Friedrichshain was destroyed during the war, and after years of neglect, rebuilding was finally underway. The East German regime built a massive, 2.3 Kilometer long boulevard to honor Stalin. Each block consists of “workers-palaces” built above shop-spaces on the ground floor.

It was along this street in 1953 that the June 17 uprising occurred. After Stalin died, the street was re-named Karl-Marx-Allee. It compares favorably to similar city-planning in the Soviet Union during the 20s, when the Communists transformed cities like Kharkov and Kiev into modern expressions of party power.

Treptower Park is yet another Stalin-era monument. The memorial site covers the remains of 5000 fallen Soviet soldiers. This monument was built, in large part, with granite from Hitler's former Reichschancellory. The most impressive element of the monument is the Red Army soldier smashing a swastika with his sword while cradling a child in his free arm. Allegedly, as the Soviets were trying to cross the Landwehr Canal at Potsdamer Bridge, this young soldier risked his life to race out into the crossfire and save a terrified child. It's the kind of story that builds myths—the myth of communist humanity in the face of fascist inhumanity, and the image of a paternal Soviet Union suffering terrible losses to free the decent people of Germany from a brutal regime.