Berlin Cold War Tour: Architecture and Ideology

As Europe began to rebuild following the wreckage of the Second World War, Berlin was instead cleaved in two: East Berlin, under Soviet control, and West Berlin, an “island of democracy” deep inside East German territory. On this 3-hour Berlin Cold War tour, we will join a local architectural historian for an in-depth comparison of East and West. We'll focus mainly on buildings and landscapes to build a compelling picture of a divided city and fractured years.

We begin our walking tour on the east side of the city, at Frankfurter Tor on Karl-Marx-Allee. A striking example of Berlin's boulevards, this avenue reminds us that part of the history of the two Berlins is recorded in the naming and renaming of streets and sites. Stalinallee’s immense boulevard was the primary focus of East Germany’s post-war development project, attempting to reorganize Berlin’s urban landscape and stressing the political and visual importance of the city center. In the shadows of the Frankfurter Tor’s twin towers, we will discuss the 1950 decision by communist East German leadership to do away with the “cosmopolitan fantasies” of modernist, decentralized planning and to create a monumental architecture capable of embodying the promise of a new socialist society.

After uncovering the layers of meaning in the architecture of the former East, we will hop on Berlin’s historic S-Bahn train line and cross to the West. Here, we will explore West Berlin’s response to the communist model of Stalinallee: the reconstructed Hansa Quarter.

In this neighborhood, in ruins since the Second World War, a host of internationally prominent architects designed a series of individual, overtly modernist buildings scattered across the green, park-like area. We'll discuss how the spaces and structures embody Western principles of freedom, individuality, and the non-authoritarian order of democracy and the marketplace.

By the end of our time together, we will have investigated how architecture and urban planning in Berlin were one of the main fronts in the political and ideological struggle of the Cold War. We'll also be newly equipped with an insightful perspective that will transform the way we see the city thereafter.