Reading Streets in Berlin over the course of time Flashcards
David Wagner - Triptych
- Talking about streets, beyond the tourist gaze
- Compared impressions of streets between 2000 and 2013
- Commented on changes since unification
- Traces of history that can be seen or not -
Lay open the history that is visible and invisible
- What marks history has left
- Contemporary reading
- Talking about things that are no longer there = history that is obscured
- Historical knowledge through which he sees the present
Friedrichstraße, 2000 Why does the author list shops, cafés and such? What do these businesses tell us about the character of the street?
You can tell a lot about the character of the street by how it presents itself to the people walking down that street, or the people it expects to walk down that street.
- You can see the socioeconomic status of the street change from Mercedes to Aladdin Kabab
- Affluence vs. lack thereof
- “No sign of brand-name glamour”
- The fancy car shops
- Exorbitant wealth of this side of the street
- Expensive consumer goods
- Sets up for the contrast later on in the south and western end of the street
- Describing the people
- They’ve become consumeristic
- Display culture
- Extras in a film
- Displaying themselves
- Tourists
- The new Berlin
Where are the tourists?
They’re not in the crummy part of Friedrichstr.
They’re looking at the adverts
They’re in the tourist bubble
Confined space for tourists
the new berlin
Designed in order to create a certain effect
It’s been built for the tourist gaze
Artificial design = Disneylandesque
Checkpoint Charlie charade
Designed to evoke a specific idea
Epitome of the city center at Friedrichstr.
It’s crumbling - the facade is crumbling
Not much behind that shiny facade
If you only look at the surface you see something that could be anywhere
Designed to make an impression, international city which could be anywhere
Is this a positive, a neutral, a negative or an ambivalent description of Friedrichstraße in 2000?
- Negative
- Laments lost
- Laments Americanization
- Lack of culture
- Disney in pejorative sense
- Losing historical sense
- Checkpoint Charlie is a theatrical piece
- Critical
- Mimicking
- Faux hustle and bustle
- Critical of the new Berlin
- Capitalism
Wagner refers to various aspects of Berlin history in this text: Find the respective passages and determine what he has to say about history. Is it relevant? If so, why? And is it visible?
Neue Zeit = Zeitung
Red army at Hallesches Tor
The location of the wall
Russian peddlers - now extinct socialism
The whole thing is littered with fragments of historical allusions
- The modern built out of historical ruins
Important to have a historical perspective when looking at modern spaces because it informs the structures they have now.
What does Wagner say about the “Western” and “Eastern” parts of Friedrichstraße?
They’ve just reversed rolls
The east is new and modern, affluent
The west is run down
Not glamorous
He’s not neutral
Makes extreme statements
What is he being critical of?
The structure of the new Berlin
Distribution of wealth
Capitalism
City planning
Critique of the new Berlin that has been put into practice
International global consumerism and tourism
- Confined to a specific space
People who are left behind and parts of the city that won’t be developed
- Huge social contrasts
the price of Gentrification
No tradition/culture
- Nostalgia
Wagner’s critique of capitalism
No alternative left
Globalization takes off
Americanization
Disneyfication
Shopping malls
Utterly un-European
Wagner’s critique of city planning
Division of the street
What is prioritized
Critique of the new Berlin that has been put into practice
The new Berlin has a price, which can be looked at at the southern end
No idea of the city of the whole
New Berlin carries a division within itself
Friedrichstraße, 2013
What has changed since 2000? And how does Wagner assess these changes?
It’s much more built up
- Clinical
Globalization, internationalization
- The west won, that’s why it looks the way it does
- Berlin is no longer Berlin = it’s just like any other major city
People are losing their culture
- They are looking at the construction site instead of going to the Gemäldegallerie
- Looking to the future instead of looking at the past
