berlin - city of displacement

WEIMARPOLIS, Multi-disciplinary Journal of Urban Theory and Practice

Vol. 1, Issue 2, pp. 53-64, ISSN 1869-1692

53

Copyright © WEIMARPOLIS 2009

City of Displacement:

On the unsteadiness of Berlin sites and sights1

Marc Schalenberg

Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

This essay starts from the observation that the city of Berlin, throughout the 20 th century, has

been particularly prone to shift buildings in their entirety or in parts to other sites. These

shiftings have to be seen against their specific backgrounds, such as war destruction,

technological refurbishment, myth making, symbolic or memory politics by the respective

political regime, resuming the “spirit” or name of a place for reasons of identification or

marketing. But beyond those, the disposition to translocate can be understood as

symptomatic in a city whose narratives, images and practices have been explicitly oriented

towards the “new”, “unsteady” and “shiftable”. Attempts to remove material objects – not less

than their meanings – are to be found in completely diverse political and cultural contexts. It

seems an interesting challenge, therefore, to transcend the level of individual instances of

displacements and try to test some concepts recently suggested in Urban Studies, like

“habitus” or “intrinsic logic” for Berlin.

Zusammenfassung

Der Beitrag geht von der in Berlin vor allem im 20. Jahrhundert auffallenden Bereitschaft aus,

Bauwerke oder Teile von ihnen an andere Orte der Stadt zu versetzen. Jenseits der

konkreten Hintergründe (z.B. Kriegszerstörung, technische Modernisierung, „Mythenbildung“,

Symbol- und Erinnerungspolitik des jeweiligen politischen Regimes, Anknüpfen an den

„Geist“ eines Ortes bzw. Namens aus identifikatorischen oder kommerziellen Gründen) wird

diese Disposition als symptomatisch verstanden für eine Stadt, deren Narrative, (Selbst-)

Bilder und Praktiken stark am „Neuen“, „Unsteten“ und „Verrückbaren“ orientiert waren und

sind. Da sich Bemühungen um die Translozierung von materiellen Objekten - und damit von

Bedeutungen – in ganz verschiedenen politischen und kulturellen Kontexten finden lassen,

scheint es eine reizvolle Herausforderung, die reine Fall- und Ereignisebene zu

überschreiten und etwa die in der neueren Stadtforschung vorgeschlagenen Konzepte wie

„Habitus“ oder „Eigenlogik“ für die „Verschiebungen“ der deutschen Hauptstadt auszutesten.

Keywords: Berlin, capital cities, shifted monuments and buildings, symbolic politics,

memory politics, intrinsic logic/”habitus” of cities, materiality

M. Schalenberg: City of Displacement

54 WEIMARPOLIS, Multi-disciplinary Journal of Urban Theory and Practice

Vol. 1, Issue 2, pp. 53-64, Copyright © WEIMARPOLIS 2009

One of the recurring topoi in descriptions and interpretations of Berlin is the protean and

unfinished state of that city, irrespective of the changing political and cultural context. Being

chronically “on the move”, more oriented towards the future than the past, is certainly an

undue personification of a cityscape containing about 900 square kilometres and 3.4 million

people, but it appeared and appears plausible just the same. As a city of restless “change”,

of “becoming” (Karl Scheffler), of new scenes, Berlin has laid claim to be part of a global

metropolitan (or Weltstadt) discourse for well over a century now. In fact, the notion of

creative unsteadiness and free development has constructed an identity in its own right,

noticeably more so than in more “established” metropolises, producing a plethora of

narratives, slogans and images. It has also – so this paper will argue – found an expression

in the city’s physical space, which strikingly often saw the translocation of buildings and

monuments, and not only for reasons of engineering problems with the notoriously unstable

sandy and watery soil.

Alert to the importance of both politics and culture for such translocations, this essay aims to

build upon the by now extensive literature on memory politics (Erinnerungspolitik,

Geschichtspolitik), which has gained attention and plausibility in post-reunification Berlin (see

Ladd 1998; Huyssen 2003; Nolan 2004; Frank 2009). It deserves to be complemented by

recent attempts by urban sociologists to ascertain the “habitus” (Rolf Lindner, Lutz Musner)

or the “intrinsic logic” (Helmut Berking, Martina Löw) of cities. Besides, more culturalist

approaches assessing the implications of translocations for the city’s image/s and identity/ies

should be heeded in their essentially constructivist understanding of the interplay of various

practices, discourses and interests (see Biskup & Schalenberg 2008; Färber 2005).

Focussing on material manifestations, this paper finally wants to take up the recently

renewed interest in “things” and “evidence” throughout the social and cultural sciences (see

e.g. Böhme 2006; Miller 2006; Harrasser et al. 2009). Within its confines, however, neither

extensions nor the “mere” demolition of buildings or monuments and possible replacement

by new ones (of which there were many) can be considered in the following. As a sort of

running theme throughout urban history, and emphatically so in modern times, such

instances of conversion or Denkmalsturz are less specific than the phenomenon to be

considered here. So, what fruits can a history of conspicuous displacements in Berlin reveal?

There are a number of interesting cases for the premature dismantling of public buildings in

early modern times, like the fortifications devised by Memhardt in the mid-17th century, which

soon became an unwanted barrier for the westward expansion of the city from the later 17 th

century onwards; or the failed mintage tower (Münzturm) conceived by Schlüter as a new

landmark in the early 18th century which eventually lost him his job as royal architect.

Ephemeral buildings for official court events, such as marriages or coronation ceremonies




Fig. 1: Quadriga on top of Brandenburg Gate

were another case in point. But for reasons both of technological means and of political

culture, the deliberate translocation of entire building structures was still unheard of.

The trail was blazed more effectively with the dismantling of Schadow’s Quadriga on top of

the then recently constructed Brandenburg Gate by French troops in 1806; especially Vivant

Denon, Napoleon’s influential art councillor and “eye”, contrived this coup for the Louvre,

where the massive sculpture was sent by ship

(Cullen & Kieling 1999, p.41ff.). Maybe no other

single item encapsulated the reverse of fortunes in

the Napoleonic Wars more aptly than the return of

the Quadriga in June 1814. Hailed as an essential

symbol of victory (and hence no longer of peace,

as intended before), it was to play a pivotal role in

Prussian and later German history and mythology.

The female figure acting as central charioteer of

the sculpture was given an additional staff with an iron cross encircled by an oak wreath and

topped by the Prussian eagle with crown, all of which were designed by Schinkel [Fig. 1].

Apart from everything else, this was a major leap forward for the capital city of Berlin, as a

politically coded urban space; the experience and very possibility of removing crucial parts of

that space, in any case, was to have repercussions.

The 19th century saw a burgeoning of memorial culture, which also manifested itself in a

growing number of monuments in public urban space. The identity politics of the Prussian

monarchy proved largely defining for Berlin up to the First World War. It is revealing in social

historical terms how the number and range of individuals remembered by monuments

expanded: from members of the royal family via the higher echelons of the military and

statesmen to authors, scientists and scholars, engineers and beyond in the 20 th century; their

selection and positioning often proved highly

controversial.2 Once in place, however, a

translocation was a rarity. For much of the second

half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the

frenetically growing city of Berlin, capital of the

German Kaiserreich since 1871, resembled a

single construction site, with large-scale

interventions in its physical appearance above

and below ground, notably for traffic

improvements or extensions, including manifold

demolitions of historical structures. One of the more complex translocations in that context

was the shifting of the Royal Colonnades (Königskolonnaden), a representative structure of

Fig. 2: Royal Colonnades




colonnades designed by Karl von Gontard errrected in the late 1770s. As part of the

ambitious measures to turn Alexanderplatz into a truly modern traffic and business hub, they

were displaced in their entirety in 1910 to adorn – without any obvious bearing to the site –

the new Kleistpark in Schöneberg, itself a replacement for the Botanic Garden, which was

about to be transferred to more spacious premises. The Prussian superior Court of Justice,

whose stately neo-Baroque building adjacent to Kleistpark was completed in 1913, may have

borne a vague stylistic resemblance to the colonnades, but it has remained a curious

juxtaposition ever since [Fig. 2].

An even bolder step was the displacement of the Victory Column (Siegessäule) by the Nazi

government in 1938-39. A monument to the three successful Prussian “unification wars”

against Denmark (in 1864), Austria (1866) and France (1870/71), 61 metres high, integrating

some of the cannon captured from the enemy and topped by a golden Victoria figure

moulded by Friedrich Drake, it was placed in 1873

in the centre of the purpose-built Königsplatz, a

large-scale roundabout right between the Kroll

opera house and what was to become the

Reichstag. The place marked the beginning of a

750-metre-long Victory Alley (Siegesallee)3 that

was to receive statues of 32 Hohenzollern

princes. Later, this structure was used as a

pretext for Nazi chief architect Albert Speer to

propose a much broader and longer North-South

axis, as a pivotal part of his megalomaniac plans for Berlin revamped as Germania, with an

inhumanely cold and brutal colossal architecture. Within this concept, unlike more “civic”

works, the signs of former successes by the Prussian military were to be retained, but

relocated to another prominent place. So as an initial measure the Victory Column was

shifted to the middle of the Grosser Stern roundabout at the intersection of five major

avenues, necessitating new underground footpaths for access and the construction of an 8-

metre-high granite base [Ill. 3]. It was “joined” by “iron chancellor” Bismarck as well as Roon

and Moltke, two important generals in the wars commemorated. The three statues, unveiled

in the early 20th century, were shuffled together with the column and placed along the

northern half of the roundabout.

After the end of World War Two and Nazi rule, the shattered and divided city was open to

and indeed in need of a new definition. Formerly existing structures were largely erased and

planners like Hans Scharoun encouraged to envisage an entirely new urban landscape along

a grid of motorways and alleged geological patterns. While only parts of these proposals

were realised (most conspicuously on the Culture Forum, but even there only partially), the

Fig. 3: Victory Column, as seen from the

underground footpath




more material aspects of the redistribution of

Prussia’s and Berlin’s cultural heritage had to be

accommodated somehow; a New National

Gallery, other new museums, concert halls,

libraries and archives came into being in West

Berlin, mostly in new purpose-built structures. The

equestrian statue of the “Great Elector” Frederick

William by Andreas Schlüter (1696), rescued from

its traditional site on Lange Brücke close to the

City Castle (Stadtschloss) during the Second

World War, was reinstalled in the cour d’honneur

of Charlottenburg Castle in 1952 [Fig. 4], not least

because of the persistence of director Margarete

Kühn. This relocation (via a depot) was not

appreciated by everyone, but it somehow matched

the period around 1700, which is under-

represented in the architectural remains of the city.

The more “historical” remains of the city’s history were, in fact, situated in what became East

Berlin: a heritage about which the new socialist regime, eager to justify a completely new

start, was rather unsentimental, even vindictive. One of the most striking and curious

translocations was inflicted upon “Gate 4” of the City Castle, which was erected and

extended by Schlüter and Eosander, on the Spree island in the early 18 th century. The

political decision by Walter Ulbricht in 1950 to tear down the – not at all inconsiderable –

remains of the City Castle spared this particular

gate for reasons of intended socialist mythology

[Fig. 5]. As Karl Liebknecht had proclaimed a

“socialist republic” from the balcony of the gate on

9th November 1918 – in repudiation of the

“German republic” proclaimed from the Reichstag

by the social democrat Philipp Scheidemann – the

young GDR was eager to integrate these “spoils”

into their own State Council Building

(Staatsratsgebäude) some hundred metres to the South-West of the former castle in the

early 1960s. This post-religious, yet chiliastic story-telling found an equivalent on the rear

side of the building with the large-scale stained glass windows by Walter Womacka [Fig. 6],

traditional in form, naïve-modern in style (and in the political message conveyed, it could be

Fig. 4: Statue to the Great Elector, in front of

Schloss Charlottenburg

Fig. 5: former GDR State Council Building

with “Gate 4” of the Hohenzollern castle




Fig. 6: Womacka’s stained glass windows in

the former GDR State Council Building

argued). The displaced gate, which no longer

consisted exclusively of the original stone, figured

as a risalit in an otherwise plain, modern façade

and has served as an eye-catcher inviting

historical quizzing ever since. On the former site of

the castle, in contrast, all historical traces were

annihilated. The resulting Marx-Engels-Platz,

which in practice served more as a car park than

as a venue for political gatherings, formed an

over-sized vacuum, which even the huge Palace

of the Republic (Palast der Republik), opened in

1976, could fill only partially (Siemann 2004, p.

126). The remains of the equestrian statute and

colonnades of the Emperor William National

Memorial to the west and the Neptune Fountain to

the south of the castle building, both designed by

the sculptor Reinhold Begas and dating from

around 1890, were dismantled. While the former was melted down completely, the latter,

which with personifications of the four “German” rivers Rhine, Elbe, Oder and Vistula was no

less potent a witness of Wilhelmine self-assurance

than the Emperor’s statue, underwent a lengthy

restoration and was re-inscribed, somewhat

surprisingly, into the new topography of the GDR

capital between Alexanderplatz and the right bank

of the Spree. It was relocated there in 1969, in the

vicinity of the City Hall as well as of the brand-

new, huge television tower and the planned

Memorial for Marx and Engels (finally unveiled in

1986). The historicist fountain thus attained an

urban prominence somewhat at odds with the vast square and the modern buildings around

it [Fig. 7].

Even more surprising, but in line with the “historicist turn” that official GDR memory politics

took from the 1970s onwards (see Ladd 2002), was the re-integration of a sculpture by

August Kiss devoted to the Christian martyr St. George fighting a dragon, dating from 1853

and formerly placed in one of the City Castle’s courts. It was moved to Friedrichshain park in

1951 and restored in the 1980s before being located in 1987 in the Nikolai Quarter, the

“Prefab old town” (Urban 2006, p. 7) that was one of the urban flagship projects to mark

Fig. 7: Neptune Fountain close to

Alexanderplatz




Fig. 8: St. George fighting the dragon in the

Nikolai Quarter

Berlin’s 750-year-celebrations that year. Peter

Goralczyk, East Berlin’s chief conservationist at

the time, who sought a synthesis of reconstruction

and reinvention, emphasised the “particular

memory value” (quoted from Urban 2006) of the

monumental bronze statute, now placed on a

central square at the Spree promenade [Fig. 8].

While these examples reveal Berlin as a politically

coded and loaded space above all, due to the

particular attention it has received as a capital city

and showcase of changing political ideologies,

there were other instances of translocations, more

“unpolitical” at first sight, but no less interesting.

The most spectacular and expensive was

probably the shuffling of the remains of the

Esplanade into the new Sony Center in the mid-1990s. Built as a neo-Baroque Grand Hotel

in the early 20th century, the building was destroyed almost completely in 1944, with only the

Emperor’s Hall (Kaisersaal) (actually sometimes used before the First World War by William

II for social events) and a few other structures

surviving. Provided with a temporary roof and

used as a venue for cultural events, the

Esplanade was one of the few pre-war remains on

the wasteland area around Potsdamer Platz,

figuring notably in the Wim Wenders’ movie

“Wings of Desire”. Conservationists secured the

listing of the remains of the Esplanade on the eve

of the fundamental rebuilding of the Potsdamer

Platz area after 1990. In the context of the

euphoric mood and the great expectations for

Berlin in the early 1990s Sony, the main investor,

decided to translocate the refurbished pompous

Emperor’s Hall – together with parts of the

Esplanade’s façade – into their new “Center”. This

75-metre transfer on special rails, carried out in

1996, cost the company some 75 million Deutschmarks. This element forms today in the airy,

ultra-modern steel-and-glass construction by architect Helmut Jahn, a stark contrast and

Fig. 9: Former Emperor’s Hall, integrated into

Sony Center




unlikely pastiche [Fig. 9], even though as a café, restaurant and ballroom space it is

functionally well integrated into the Sony Center (see Kreuder 2000).

Something of a precursor for this, under non-capitalist conditions, was the translocation of

Ermelerhaus, a stately 18th-century mansion, revamped with a classicist façade in the early

19th-century and owned by a wealthy tobacco merchant whose salons also attracted Berlin

intellectuals. Owned by the city of Berlin since 1914, this town house suffered severe

damage in the Second World War, but was largely reconstructed in the 1950s. Its move

some 300 metres south-eastwards in 1967 resulted from the decision to construct a new

modernist block for government office space on its original location. Ermelerhaus kept its

name, façade, staircase and some of its internal layout but it was reduced in its overall size

and has served as an inn and hotel since. It can justifiably be questioned in how far such

shifts with modifications still merit the label of “displacement”. Taking less of a

conservationist stance, but one of cultural history and memory politics, however, it appears

more important that and how such continuities were sought. Under a market economy, to

which East – and to a degree also West – Berlin had to adjust again after 1989, this has

increasingly led to attempts at “place branding”. Ermelerhaus, for example, played host to the

Berlin Salon (1995-97), which the organising “Foundation New Culture Berlin” intended as a

cultural reference to its 19th century precursor, and to an even more ambitious and exclusive

Future Salon organised by the literature scholar and manager Bettina Pohle since 1999. The

hotel of the same name, which uses the premises today (and has added a decidedly modern

extension) also aims to capitalise on its assumed “arts” tradition by furnishing it with works by

Georg Baselitz and design by Johanne Nalbach.

Still bolder in terms of an invented tradition is Hotel de Rome, opened in 2006 in a

refurbished bank building from the late 19th century. It lies some 100 meters south-east of the

homonymous establishment on the corner of the central boulevard Unter den Linden. This

“original” was founded as Hotel Stadt Rom in 1755, remained in business until 1910, and

was Berlin’s most luxurious hotel before the Adlon. Silent about its predecessor, whose

resonant name – but not its site or building – it took over, the newcomer brags on its website:

“This is one of the few luxury hotels in Berlin located in an original building making use of its

full architectural splendour and thereby offering guests an authentic Berlin experience.” This

ease at re-interpreting, not to say manipulating historic topographies and sites of memory,

doubtlessly bolstered by the caesuras in Berlin’s history, is hard to conceive in other capitals.

Who could imagine locating London’s Savoy Hotel elsewhere than on the Strand, the Paris

Ritz away from the Place Vendôme or the Waldorf-Astoria anywhere else than on New

York’s Park Avenue? Many other examples of “displaced” Berlin cafés or restaurants whose

names have left their mark on the city’s cultural memory (e.g. Kranzler, Josty, Lutter &

Wegner) could be given. And the case of Kempinski, taken away from its Jewish owner by




Fig. 10: Statues of Schinkel, Beuth and Thaer

in front of the (projected) Building Academy,

with the former GDR State Council Building to

the left and the German Ministry of Foreign

Affairs to the right

Fig. 11: Original gate of the Building

Academy, integrated into garden pavilion of

the Crown Prince’s Palace

the Nazis in 1937, is a timely reminder that the displacement of sites could also mean

dispossessing and – at the worst – even deporting people. Berlin played a sadly “capital” role

in that, too. Still, the re-integration in the late 1950’s of the original main portal into the new

Jewish synagogue in Charlottenburg – on exactly

the same spot of Fasanenstraße as its 1912

predecessor, destroyed in the 1938 Pogroms and

the War – can be seen as an unflinching attempt

by the Jewish community to remind of its thriving

state before the Nazi terror.

This essay does not intend to enlarge on the

human tragedies resulting from forced

translocations, but rather stick with reflecting

about the readiness to “shift” as a symptom of

(political) culture. This readiness, noticeable

across political regimes, has certainly not

vanished since the fundamental changes of 1989;

rather, Berlin’s sites have continued to appear

disposable to a staggering degree. For instance

Rauch’s monument to Frederick II (“the Great”),

placed on the middle strip of Unter den Linden in

1851, dismantled, but retained in storage by the

GDR regime in 1950, positioned in the gardens of

Potsdam-Sanssouci in 1962 and returned to the

Linden in 1980, was recently shuffled back and

forth according to the needs of the street crossing.

In turn the memorial statues for Schinkel, Beuth

and Thaer from the mid-19th century returned,

after a brief spell on Lustgarten and another

restoration, to their pre-war location on

Schinkelplatz in the late 1990s. Against the

background of the – as yet only virtual – facade of

the Building Academy (Bauakademie) building to

be re-erected, even this attempt to restore the

original topography appears curiously “displaced”

[Fig. 10]. And it remains to be seen what, in the case of its complete reconstruction, would

become of the one original gate by Schinkel which had been kept and integrated into the

garden pavilion of the Crown Prince’s Palace in the 1960s, some 100 metres to the west




[Fig. 11]. Political debates in unified Berlin about its Prussian (military) heritage, as

symbolised by the area around the Arsenal and New Guard House were mirrored in the re-

positioning of the statues of early 19th-century generals, which advanced from their hiding-

place under the trees to the pavements of Unter den Linden.

Fashionable and “underground” clubs were peregrinating almost by necessity, not only by

the logic of the real estate market, but also of the image they were eager to convey of

themselves as trendsetters in an “open city”. In turn, the propagation of this slogan has

become a catchword of official municipal politics, as has the widening issue of “temporary

uses” (Zwischennutzung) of sites abandoned or about to be demolished (see Overmeyer

2007). Even an entire river was relocated for the purpose of building the new central railway

station of Berlin. More socio-economic factors could be included to underline this overall

picture of a city essentially “on the move”: Berlin has seen well over a million migrants since

1989, with squatting and other semi- or non-legal forms of residence only adding to a sense

of metropolitan confusion.

While all this evidence seems strong already, a systematic comparison with other capitals

past and present in Germany, Europe and indeed world-wide would be desirable to further

develop and possibly differentiate the thesis of Berlin as a city with a pronounced disposition

for displacements (see Rausch 2006). A conceptual typology would be generally desirable.

The four types emerging from the examples referred to above are: 1) triumphant trophy-

collecting away from the city and the ensuing “phantom pain”; 2) memory politics or historical

pedagogy by objects in public urban space; 3) art historical and conservationist concerns –

not necessarily in line with the political ideology of the day; 4) the use of the cultural

resonance / myth of a building’s structure or “place” for business and marketing. In addition it

is open to discussion how far an “unreflective”, apolitical, pragmatic and functional dealing

with translocations may be regarded as a type of its own.

Even this perusal of symptomatic instances of displacements undertaken in Berlin, however,

recalls the initial observation that the personification of a city and its “spirit” is a problematic

yet welcome means of identification, for outsiders no less than for the inhabitants

themselves. Different as the measures, actors and motivations presented above were, all

willingly – and perhaps “habitually” – took up the chance and the precedence of

displacements as symbolic acts at politically or culturally resonant spots and areas in the

capital. To this extent the readiness to translocate monuments, physical structures and the

mythology attached to them, notably in the 20th century, can be considered a “Berlin

speciality”, a reflex of the city’s particular history, discord and myth. Beyond their specific

circumstances and the political rationales behind them, relocations were attempts to suggest

continuities or re-appropriations of a genius loci allegedly inherent in the relocated objects.

Equally plausibly, this may be interpreted as rootlessness, boldness or even hubris as it can




be considered part and parcel of Berlin’s determination, dynamism, and metropolitan flavour

as a stage for novelties. Images and narratives such as these, resulting from both “politics”

and “culture”, can gain further dynamics, when persons in charge feel indebted to them and

persons in search of a new beginning feel attracted by the notion of unsteadiness.

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List of Figures

Figure 1: Quadriga / Brandenburg Gate (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sivo/289466 4671/)

Figure 2: Königskolonnaden (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jason_whittaker/ 3317405804/)

Figure 3: Siegessäule, as seen from the underground footpath (http://www.flickr.com

/photos/wolf-foto/2491727021/)

Figure 4: Statue to the Great Elector, in front of Charlottenburg Castle (http://commons.

wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schloss_Charlottenburg_2005_285.JPG)

Figure 5: Former GDR State Council Building, incl. „Gate 4“ of former City Castle

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolf-rabe/3141392860/)

Figure 6: Womacka’s stained glass windows in the former GDR State Council Building

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/11801206@N00/381024928)

Figure 7: Neptun fountain close to Alexanderplatz (http://de.wikipedia.org/w

/index.php?%20title=%20Datei:Neptun_1a_%202.jpg&filetimestamp=20060924103021)

Figure 8: St. George statue in Nikolai Quarter (http://www.flickr.com/photos/waltzing

_broonhilda/1026244499/)

Figure 9: Former Emperor’s Hall, Sony Center (http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title

=Datei:Berlin_-_Sony-Center_-_Kaisersaal.jpg&filetimestamp=20060502194645)

Figure 10: Statues of Schinkel, Beuth and Thaer in front of the (projected) Building Academy

(http://www.berlin.citysam.de/fotos-berlin/berlin/schinkelplatz/schinkelplatz-3.jpg)

Figure 11: Original gate of the Building Academy, integrated into garden pavilion of the

Crown Prince’s Palace (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wolf-rabe/3571711728/)

1 I am indebted to Kirsi Reyes, Glen Newey, Alexa Färber, Thomas Biskup and the two anonymous

referees for their helpful suggestions.

2 A telling example in that respect is the prolonged debate about whether and where to erect a

monument to either or both of the two Humboldts, who finally made it to Unter den Linden, as a sort of

ideal programme for the (Friedrich-Wilhelms-) University (see Goschler 1998).

3 For a „monumentography“ in the contemporary context see Alings 1996.

berlin - city of displacement

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