Berlin and its Culture – A Historical Portrait

Citation

Taylor, J. (2001), "Berlin and its Culture – A Historical Portrait", European Business Review, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 197-201. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2001.13.3.197.3

Berlin, soon to be the capital of a reunited Germany, is today in the forefront of attention. Currently, it hosts the biggest building site in Europe, financed, in part, by inward investment. This project seeks to restore the Potsdamerplatz to its former function as one of the busiest Berlin squares, to resurrect it from the limbo in which it languished when bisected by the infamous Berlin Wall.

In the recent past Berlin has been perceived primarily as a symbol of the Cold War – as a divided city, whose western half functioned as a showcase of capitalism, its bright lights contrasting with the greyness prevailing on the other side of the wall. West Berlin was a truncated city, whose viability was ensured by the political victory of the Allied airlift in the late 1940s and, subsequently, by the generous subsidies of the West German taxpayer. For its part the other side in the Cold War staked its claim to Berlin by declaring it the capital of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in contravention of international agreements.

But of course there must be more to Berlin than this, and its credibility as a European capital in the twenty‐first century must rest on its history as a regional and national capital. It is precisely this history, as reflected in culture and the arts, that is recounted in this excellent publication.

Ronald Taylor (who is not related to the present reviewer) is an expert in German studies, who held the chair of German at the University of Sussex and who subsequently taught at the Universities of Chicago and British Columbia. Prominent among his many publications are studies which offer an overview of German life and letters, such as The Romantic Tradition in Germany and Literature and Society in Germany, 1918‐1945. This volume, which examines the development of Berlin, its politics, art and culture from prehistoric times until 1990, is a welcome addition to these studies.

This work starts in prehistoric times, then shows the development of the twin towns of Berlin and Köln. Subsequent chapters (the Reformation, the Consolidation of Prussia, the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Revolution etc.) focus on the inter‐relationship of art and politics. But it is noticeable that, while only three chapters out of the ten which comprise this volume are devoted to the twentieth century, virtually half the space of the volume is devoted to this period, that is, the Weimar Republic, National Socialism and the two Berlins which emerged after the Second World War. This scheme confronts the author with the challenge of including a survey of the arts during the 12 years of the Third Reich. He shows himself equal to the task, soldiering bravely through the barren years after the emigration outlined at the beginning of the chapter had left the German capital bereft of its artistic e´lite, taking his reading through the Blut und Boden literature and the Thingspiele to the barren pseudo‐classicism of the sculptor, Arno Breker, and the painter, Adolf Ziegler. Relief is found in a short section on the literature of inner emigration and, in a later section, by reference to painters who remained in Germany and practised their art despite official disapproval. These include Karl Hofer, Magnus Zeller and the Communist Otto Nagel, whose sketches (one of which is reproduced on page 280) record aspects of the city later obliterated by the Second World War.

The chronological scheme means also that the whole of the GDR period lies within the author’s compass. The final chapter incorporates the development of literature, film and music in the GDR, in parallel with a similar study of West Berlin. The conception of the exercise is an intellectual tour de force, and the precision of its execution of extreme value to the student, who will find writers and artists placed in a context which considers the similarities of cultural heritage as well as the discrepancies dictated by Stalinist and Marxist cultural politics. Those whose work is considered here include the older generation – Ka¨the Kollwitz, Anna Seghers, Friedrich Wolf and Arnold Zweig, those who left for the West – Wolf Biermann and Reiner Kunze, for example, and the younger talents, such as Christa Wolf, Volker Braun and Ulrich Plenzdorf. Finally, mention must be made of the section on architecture, which not only considers (with appropriate illustration) aspects of post‐Second World War reconstruction such as the notorious Stalinallee in the east and the avant garde Philharmonie in the west, but also examines the impact of the Wall on West Berlin. The loss of the hinterland and the consequent need to encourage settlement from West Germany led to the creation of distinctive housing developments such as the Ma¨rkisches Viertel.

Earlier in the history of Berlin the reader will find references to those whose work describes life in this city – to Theodor Fontane, whose Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg described the landscape of this part of Prussia and who set the climax of Effi Briest, his greatest novel, in Berlin; to Gerhart Hauptmann, whose plays portrayed the pitiful condition of the urban poor; to Heinrich Zille, whose sketches and drawings showed similar concerns; to the painter and caricaturist George Groß, whose work cast a critical eye on the Berlin of the Weimar Republic; and to Alfred Do¨blin, whose Berlin Alexanderplatz was the quintessential Berlin novel.

As a capital city Berlin acted as a magnet, attracting conquerors as well as cultural and artistic luminaries. So the reader will find in these pages Napoleon, Georg Bu¨chner and Young Germany in addition to Goethe, Heine and Schiller. Of particular value in this part of the book – one which might be referred to as representing the mainstream of German studies – are the expertly rendered thumbnail sketches of the philosophers and their teachings – Feuerbach, Fichte, Hegel, Kant, Schleiermacher and, of course, Marx, Engels and Nietzsche. These summaries render the reader a tremendous service in clarifying material which is often veiled in obscurity and so deters English‐speaking readers from embarking on German Studies.

Not least among the book’s virtues is the magnificence of its production. For just under £30 the reader gets a hardback volume printed on high quality paper with a wealth of illustrations – of people, places and works of art. Given the manifest strengths of the work, which also include the lucidity and precision of the prose, to mention weaknesses would seem ungracious. Yet any undertaking of this nature and magnitude must invite some quibbles. One wonders, for instance, if it was really necessary to begin the narrative in the Ice Age. With reference to the choice of illustrations, to have a pacifist lithograph as the sole exemplar of Zille’s work seems somewhat misguided, since it lacks specific local colour. One of his sketches of Berliners enjoying their leisure hours or going about their business in the crowded streets would seem more apposite. Two points about the critical apparatus – the effect of the magnificent illustrations is somewhat diminished by the absence of a list of illustrations. Second, given that the book can also be enjoyed by those with little or no German, it might have been better to split the general bibliography (pp. 398‐399) into two sections – German and other foreign language texts, on the one hand, and English texts, on the other. Under the present arrangement the few English texts remain inconspicuous, swamped as they are by German references. More seriously, though, there is at least one occasion where the narrative had led to a misleading inference. Brecht’s desire to stay in Germany to fight Nazism from within (an ambition he was unable to fulfil) is interpreted as an underestimation of the dangers. “Brecht was one of the many intellectuals who did not take the threat of Nazism seriously”, the author asserts on page 250. This is to ignore the position of many Communists and their supporters who wished to remain and fight Nazism from within Germany. But such shortcomings are few and this book will remain a standard work for many years to come.