BERLIN: A City in Construction · Exploring Cultural and Physical Representations of the Public Realm

"The built environment and cultural history of Berlin lends itself to a public life that follows a Habermasian approach to the public realm, and Alfred Doblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz serves as a mediation—not just a representation—of this public realm through its various stories that are seemingly hastily stitched together."

Rising literally from its war-torned ashes, Berlin today is an intense, wild, and crazy city not just coming to terms with its past—but, through a strange paradox, both embracing it fully while simultaneously attempting to overwrite it.

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James Howard Kunstler posing in Amsterdam (no doubt the best city there is).

James Howard Kunstler, a prolific author and urban theorist, writes in “The City in Mind: Notes of the Urban Condition” (an absolutely fantastic case study of various cities):

A … striking impression was the complete absence of anything relating to the former existence of Herr Hitler and his minions. I had semiconsciously expected his baleful visage to hang over the city like a permanently moored zeppelin, blotting out the sun... But there was not the slightest residue of Nazism besides the obvious war damage. The … streets were all obviously struggling back to long-banished normality.

This description of modern Berlin is an important portrayal with which to consider the city. Urban space and the public realm are different here, much more so than Moscow; this is not a city that boasts the same intimacy in its public realm. It is, rather, a city in of an absolutely horrific past, coming slowly back to life. The private realm does not spill into the public realm and coexist peacefully; rather, today the city is hard at work in rebuilding its “degraded” public realm, which Kunstler describes as a “repudiation of the aggregate twentieth-century architectural fashions, theories, fantasies, and dogmas that had insidiously degraded the public realm since the days of Gropius and Le Corbusier” (118).

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Above: A screenshot from "A Coffee In Berlin" (2013) that illustrates the state of modern Berlin. Here, we see graffiti that reads “Fuck yuppies!”, an obviously pejorative and vulgar sign that shows disdain amongst the classes. Another message says “Hate cops!” and a giant sign in the back reads “MDMA.” Together, this paints a picture into the state of modern Berlin. For more, read this blog post.

Berlin, then, is a public realm of the Habermisian kind. It’s more than just public spaces where strangers gather and interact; it’s a place of complexity and history written and rewritten, more than just the sum of its urban sprawl. It’s a city equally in the urban imaginary as in public space, allowing for public discourse through a cultural representation of its public realm.

Alfred Doblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz is one portrayal of this, serving as a mediation of this public realm. As discussed in my Berlin blog post, "Alfred Doblin’s novel Berlin Alexanderplatz is a product of Weimar Germany, just years before the Nazis took over the state; it is strangely clairvoyant of the nation’s impending doom that came with the Second World War." Just as the “mass-produced newspaper” is the public realm in the amorphious Habermiasn definition, Doblin’s writings might have played this role for Weimar Berlin. As one of the most prominent figures of German literary modernism, he wrote in Berlin in the 1920s, when the city was in deep turmoil in the interwar period.

In writing this novel, he enabled his wide readership to glean a deeper look into Berlin as a city of stories buzzing past one another, by writing criss-crossing stories through multiple perspectives. These stories happen in the private realm, but by opening them up for his reader, Doblin allows them to spill into the public life. This is different from Moscow and its portrayal in I Am Twenty, as it is through stories like this one that the private can become integrated into the public in Berlin.

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Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Doblin, a classic work of German modernism.

The public realm exists in Doblin’s Berlin, there’s no doubt about that; as Franz the protagnist begins his journey into the city, he notices that "now the street was staring again, the house fronts, the shop windows, the figures scurrying past, one per second, wearing trousers or light-coloured stockings, all in such a hurry, so brisk” (5). Everyone’s in a hurry, whizzing past each other, saving their private lives for the inside.

Similarly, later:

"A young girl is getting out of the number 99 ... she has a music folder under her arm ... A small elderly man with horn-rimmed glasses appears across the street, she goes straight to him … “I’m frightened. Won’t anybody see us?” … Upstairs they smile at one another. She's standing in the corner. He has removed his hat and coat, she lets him remove her music folder and hat..." (52-53)

Here we see a young girl quietly scurrying on the street, keeping to herself while she waits for an older man she’s likely having an affair with. Their intimate moment, however, does not occur out on the street, like Sergei and Anya’s did. The girl is instead “frightened” to be out in the public, instead waiting until she’s upstairs and inside to move forward with her private life.

The public realm exists in Doblin’s Berlin, there’s no doubt about that; as Franz the protagnist begins his journey into the city, he notices that "now the street was staring again, the house fronts, the shop windows, the figures scurrying past, one per second, wearing trousers or light-coloured stockings, all in such a hurry, so brisk” (5). Everyone’s in a hurry, whizzing past each other, saving their private lives for the inside.

Similarly, later:

"A young girl is getting out of the number 99 ... she has a music folder under her arm ... A small elderly man with horn-rimmed glasses appears across the street, she goes straight to him … “I’m frightened. Won’t anybody see us?” … Upstairs they smile at one another. She's standing in the corner. He has removed his hat and coat, she lets him remove her music folder and hat..." (52-53)

Here we see a young girl quietly scurrying on the street, keeping to herself while she waits for an older man she’s likely having an affair with. Their intimate moment, however, does not occur out on the street, like Sergei and Anya’s did. The girl is instead “frightened” to be out in the public, instead waiting until she’s upstairs and inside to move forward with her private life.

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Berlin's Alexanderplatz today. On my visit to Berlin in August 2015, I must admit that this famous square at the heart of the city felt just a bit underwhelming. Reflecting back on it, the Alexanderplatz I saw was very well similar to that of Doblin's: a bustling and busy place, but one where I felt the private realm couldn't exist. There's just something strange and gritty in the air.

Thus, as strangers in Berlin live their lives on their own, it is stories such as Doblin’s that bring them on the main stage, bringing them out to the public realm and engendering an exchange. It takes a sense of mediation to make Berlin the Habermasian example of the public realm that it is.