Monday, June 23, 2003
1.30 pm - 5.00 pm
Potsdamer Platz as the ‘New Center’: A Center for What? (Ute Lehrer)
The events of November 9, 1989, the fall of the Wall, meant both an end and a new beginning for the spatial, political, social and economic understanding of Berlin. No longer was Berlin a city of two entities. No longer was Berlin’s built environment spared the intensified commodification of urban space. Consequently, the built environment became a key component in the symbolic, spatial and political processes of reunification. The real estate market was booming with new investors.
This tour will take interested observers to a part of Berlin that multinational investors in the mid 1990s liked to call the ‘new heart’ of the city. As a prime area for capital investment after the fall of the wall, Potsdamer Platz was supposed to become the symbolic center of Berlin’s role within the global economy where it was hoped for that Berlin would play a major role in the East-West trade and therefore also would attract significant control and command functions.
The area around Potsdamer Platz has an interesting past that can be linked to city-expansion in the 18th century, to the built up of railroad lines and stations in the 19th century, to the Nazi period, and to the division of the city into four sectors as well as two political systems during the 20th century. In this political climate, Potsdamer Platz became a no-man’s land and after the fall of the wall, it became targeted as a prime area for capital reinvestment.
When between 1990 and 1992, three multinational corporations (Daimler-Benz, Sony and ABB) conducted negotiations about buying land at Potsdamer Platz, the companies also promised to bring high quality jobs to a city that desperately was seeking to replace the loss in manufacturing jobs with new opportunities of employment. Not surprisingly, this promise lured a majority of politicians and city officials to support this project. In this context, the case of Daimler-Benz is of particular interest: the initial controversy over selling the land to a multination corporation which also is engaged in the production of weaponry and which is known for its forced labor camps during the Nazi-period, quickly turned into a discussion about the form.
The tour will take the visitor to all the contentious points of interest: From the sites of the Nazi-period to the sites of the multinational investors, from the traces of the squatters along the wall to the luxury hotels of the new economy, from the ‘real’ history to the reconstruction of history.