A small Jewish shop in Grenadierstraße (now Almstadtstraße) in the historic Scheunenviertel, 1933. Photo by P. Buch; Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1987-0413-508 / P. Buch / CC-BY-SA 3.0
“Some hundred and twenty Jewish refugees from the East lived in that lodging house. Many of the men were soldiers who’d just returned from Russian captivity. Their clothes were a grotesque melange of Rag-Internationale. In their eyes thousand years of suffering. There were women in that house, too. Carrying their children on their backs like bundles of dirty linen. And the children, crawling through the rickety world on bowed legs, sucked on pieces of dry bread-crust.”
Joseph Roth about the Lodging House “Center” in Grenadierstraße 40 corner Hirtenstraße 11 in October 1920. The lodging house stood in what used to be Berlin’s old Jewish district, Schuenenviertel (Barn District), partly demolishedin 1905-1907and further refurbished int he 1920s.
Until 1951 Almstadtstraße in Berlin-Mitte used to be called Grenadierstraße and belonged to one of Berlin’s poorest, by now vanished, districts called Scheunenviertel (the Barn District). The district – interwoven into many classics of Berlin film and literature – was traditionally inhabited by East-Europeans Jews fleeing both pogroms and the bitter poverty of the shtetls of today’s central and eastern Poland, western Ukraine, Russia, Hungary and parts of Romania which belonged to a region known as the Bukovina.
Georg Bartels’s photo of the Lodging House “Center”, the first address for many East-European Jews arriving in Berlin at the end end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.
To most of them Berlin was a promise of a temporary home before they set off to the much more promising yet distant destination, the USA. Still, many chose or were forced to grow their new roots in the heart of the German capital. This is where the streets spoke, sang and whispered in Yiddish – the language they brought with them from home and one which made them feel part of a community. The community, made up chiefly of Polish Jews, centred around Grenadierstraße with its many stibbeleks (small houses of prayer, a Yiddish word from German Stube – a room), a ritual bath-house, schools and small shops offering products the inhabitants knew so well from home. “The ghetto with open doors” is how the Scheunenviertel and Grenadierstraße were often described. It was a world of its own.
Father with children on a street in Scheunenviertel in 1925; photo by Walter Giercke (scan of the cover of Eike Geisel’s book “Im Scheunenviertel”)
The street’s name, Grenadierstraße – as well as that of the parallel road, Dragonerstraße (now Max-Beer-Straße) – referred to the old military barracks which used to stretch nearby before the area became a mostly residential one.
But did you know that was not its original name? Before 1817 today’s Almstadtstraße was known as Verlorene Straße (Lost Street) or Verlorene Gasse (Lost Lane). The reason for it was the fact that in the eighteenth century when it was built, its northern end reached outside the populated area and beyond the city wall. Such “open-ended” streets, disappearing beyond the city gates in what was felt to have been a rather undecided, unruly manner, were often described as verloren, or “lost”. Another example would be today’s streets Am Friedrichshain and Kniprodestraße – before the Park Am Friedrichshain was created in the 1840s and gave the former its name, the road marked on Berlin maps as Verlohrener Weg, the Lost Road.
Almstadtstraße as “Verlorne Straße” in 1816.
Like Grenadierstraße once, it passed one of the old city gates, the Bernauer Tor, and carried on beyond the city limits. In the 1840s it became the only access road to the then new park. In 1880, when Berlin’s Jewish Community bought land in Weißensee, on the border to Berlin, to build a large Jewish cemetery, the road – whose extension to the north to Lichtenberger Weg (now Indira-Ghandi-Straße) had been planned but not yet realised – cut right through the Jewish cemetery. It, too, had an open end.
It was still raining on October 30, 2008 as at 11.55 PM the last machines ever to take off from the Tempelhof Airport – a Douglas DC-3 “Raisin Bomber” and Junkers Ju52 “Tante Ju” – began their flight. The weather that day seemed to match the mood. But neither the leaden skies, nor the downpour seemed to bother any of the quietly mourning fans of the “Mother of All Airports”, who arrived to witness the last machines leaving Tempelhof. It was important to be there.
When the very first commercial aircraft from Berlin to London took off from Berlin-Staaken airfield on December 27, 1922, the weather was even worse. But, at the same time, the flight was just as important. Those who were present, knew it was a sink or swim situation. At stake was an official license permitting commercial flights between Berlin and London come 1923. And the machine waiting to take off could become the first civilian German aeroplane to land in England after the end of the First World War. Something that, considering Germany’s demise and the heavy sanctions that followed, would have been out of the question not such a long time before that.
The 5-seater (four passengers + pilot) Dornier Komet II monoplane, launched with the factory number 24 and granted the serial number D223, got approved and registered on October 9, 1922. It was chosen for this December mission after it had become clear that the initially selected Albatros machine would not do.
At the helm Captain Max Kahlow, German flight hero of the Imperial Air Force and a man awarded not one but two Iron Crosses (1st and 2nd Class), who – fortunately for the enterprise at hand – was used to bad weather conditions. Sat in his open cockpit, whipped by the wind and the rain, he felt, if not comfortable, then at least at home. On board were three directors of the Deutsche Luftreederei (the future Deutsche Lufthansa) whose contract with the British airline Daimler Hire Ltd, signed a few months earlier, was to become a springboard for a regular Berlin-London flight connection from 1923 onwards.
In order to be granted the necessary licence, both sides had to have their machines approved and registered by the local authorities at both destinations: the Brits had to fly to Staaken to introduce themselves and the aeroplane to the German experts (their De Havilland DH34 landed in Staaken on 19 December 1922) while the German aircraft was told to report in London as soon as possible. Which meant that DLR’s D223 had to reach the British capital before the year ended – before 1 January 1923.
Dornier Comet D223 was a rather magnificent but not very powerful machine. Following the post-war restrictions, the maximum power for German plane engines could not exceed
but in 1922 no passenger flight was in for plain sailing. Staying on course despite very poor weather conditions to reach the airfield and then to land without damaging the machine and/or hurting passengers was a small masterpiece. Unfortunately, on December 27, 1922, the weather in northern Europe was a disaster. Heavy clouds, stormy wind, relentless rain combined with thick, almost palpable fog. But Kahlow and his passengers had no choice. And so the Dornier airplane took off from Staaken. Captain Kahlow took the course towards the seacoast, heading for Bremen. This was where they had to take a break – the weather conditions went from disastrous to impossible.
Kahlow quickly realised that this would not be their last stopover. Forget the direct flight! It took them two days to get out of Bremen. It was December the 29th by now. In Amsterdam, where D223 landed next, the weather was no better. They were halted again. By the time the machine reached Rotterdam one day later, the tension became almost unbearable. Just like Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne’s “Around the World in 80 Days”, the heroes of this story – coincidentally heading for London, too – were under enormous time pressure. By that point they had only one day to reach their destination. So back on board they went and the Dornier Komet took off for the fourth time. Reaching the stormy sky, she fought its way through the elements raging along the Dutch coast.
Over the wind and rainswept beaches of Belgium and France, the fearless aeronauts reached Calais. In spite of the risks, pushed forward by the tight schedule and ambition, they dared the flight over the English Channel to Dover. Soon they could see the silhouette of the cliffs, heavily blurred like an overeager watercolour. It being the land of Charles Dickens and Jack the Ripper, what else could have awaited them there but thick, almost tangible fog? With the entire coast veiled in its ghostly garb, London suddenly felt as far away as Berlin. The Komet would not make it. It rained and drizzled, the fog did not subside, and weak winter light slowly began to dissolve within it. It was December 31, 1922.
De Havilland D.H.34, Daimler Hire Ltd., London (Maiden flight DH34: 26.3.1922)
After a short exchange between all involved, the decision was made: they had to reach and land on the nearest, now almost completely muddy, airfield in Lympne. They had to admit their defeat.
And then a small miracle happened: the next morning, on January 1, 1923, instead of giving up and finally enjoying a bit of rest, everyone involved got back on the plane and flew to Croydon. Their landing at the London airfield was greeted with much applause and admiration. Despite the delay, the thick-bellied Dornier Komet – whose low-hanging body that did not require steps or a ladder to enter the cabin was a reminder that its designer, Claude Dornier, was first and foremost famous for his incredible flying boats – was granted the badly needed licence by the British aviation authorities. The sky between Berlin and London was open again.
Eighty-six years later, on 30 October 2008 at 4.45 PM, in the pouring rain a plane took off from Tempelhof Central Airport for the last sightseeing flight over Berlin. It was a D-COSA, Cosmos Air Dornier. And we, Dear Reader, although soaking wet, hungry and cold, were there to witness that moment.
The following text was originally published in “NOTMSPARKER´S BERLIN COMPANION or EVERYTHING YOU NEVER KNEW YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT BERLIN”
The Zehlendorfer Dächerkrieg or ‘Zehlendorf Roof War’ was a bitter conflict between two schools of architecture – represented by two architect collectives known as Der Ring and Der Block – which took place in Berlin before the Second World War. What began as an artistic squabble, eventually proved to be about much more than just the shape of the roofs.
Onkel Toms Siedlung (Papagaiensiedlung) in Berlin-Zehlendorf, 1930.
In the 1920s, a large piece of land along Argentinische Allee – between Krumme Lanke and Fischtal Park – was divided and sold to two different construction companies with entirely different visions for their respective projects. One of those projects, the Waldsiedlung Zehlendorf – better known as Onkel Toms Hütte, Onkel Toms Siedlung or the Papagaiensiedlung (Parrot Estate), because of the vibrant hues of the façades – was designed by a group of Modernist architects from the progressive collective Der Ring: Hugo Härting, Otto Rudolph Salvisberg and, last but not least, Bruno Taut. The latter was an erstwhile advocate of the garden city, who had come to embrace the ideals of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) popular among German modernists.
The conflict between two schools was big enough a topic to be discussed in the press.
Together with his colleagues, Taut – who was a member of Der Ring, a group of architects promoting modern architecture created to meet both individual and collective needs – believed that form should follow function and that people deserved light and fresh air instead of damp and gloomy tenements – designed a series of houses that were sober and minimally adorned, with large windows and flat roofs. It was the roofs in particular which would become a source of ire among the well-heeled residents of the pre-war Zehlendorf: not only did the flat-roofed houses look nothing like their own highly decorative villas, but, adding insult to injury, they were to be inhabited by people of the middle- and working-class.
But ‘good’ news was on its way: the Siedlung (housing estate) planned on the other side of Argentinische Allee was clearly intended as a counterbalance to Taut’s architecture. Paul Schmitthenner – later a prominent Nazi party member who worked in collaboration with Heinrich Tassenow – designed a series of traditional, gable-roofed houses which were built between 1938 and 1940; flat roofs, according to Schmitthenner, ‘do not belong to this culture – they belong in Arabia or in Palestine.’ Schmitthenner’s approach fit well with the budding Nazi Kulturkampf: saddle roof, gables and lattice windows became synonymous with ‘true German culture’, while Taut’s more minimal, modernist designs, designed to improve the living conditions of their inhabitants, were viewed as distinctly ‘un-German’.
Kameradschaftssiedlung Zehlendorf
Indeed, the very purpose of Schmitthenner’s Siedlung appealed to a particular (and sinister) understanding of ‘true German culture’. Originally known as the SS-Kamaradschaftssiedlung Zehlendorf, the residential estate was designed to accommodate high-ranking SS (Schutzstafel) officers and their families, providing them with space and conditions necessary for, as one SS officer’s wife put it, ‘men, who belong to the racial elite of the German nation, [to] pass their invaluable genetic material onto a possibly large number of racially-sound offspring’. Although it may sound like a Nazi breeding facility, the Siedlung was in fact a well-designed housing project with a group of detached houses for higher ranking officers, followed by semi-detached and terraced houses for those of a middle rank, and three-storey blocks of flats for the lower-rank officers without children.
With a ‘village green’ in the middle of the compound, as well as generously planted trees, quiet paths and small gardens, it was not ultimately too far removed from the early twentieth-century ideal of a garden-city by which Bruno Taut, the architect of the modern Waldsiedlung Zehlendorf on the other side of the road, had also been inspired. Despite the attractive living conditions, the SS-Kameradschaftssiedlung failed to gain even half the popularity of Taut’s Waldsiedlung: the high-ranking SS officers were not interested in living so close to colleagues of lower rank, and remained in their nearby villas instead. Those who did move in complained about the houses being too small and the rents too high; their frustration was further increased by the fact that neither the promised kindergarten nor the private club, the SS-Mannschaftshaus, were ever built. Although the project had been supported by the Heinrich Himmler’s Hauptamt Rasse und Siedlung, the SS office responsible for safeguarding racial purity, Himmler himself would distance himself from the estate starting from the official opening ceremony which he failed to attend.
Papagaiensiedlung in Zehlendorf, here seen from Wilskistraße (image by gyxmz, Wikipedia).
Both Taut’s and Schmithenner’s Siedlungen survived the Second World War mostly intact. Schmithenner’s – which became known as as Hessisches Viertel after 1947 – was forced to change almost all of its street names: Victory Street, Service Road, Fidelity Lane and Führer
Plaza suddenly sounded out of place. However, a few streets retained their pre-war names: Im Kinderland and Himmelsteig (Path to Heaven), may sound reasonably innocuous now, but for anyone who knows the context, they contain obvious reminders of a past that most would prefer to forget.
The 1920s in Berlin were an incredible time, full both of misery and wonder. It was the time which brought both the worst and the best in people who lived there. And sometimes it helped pave way for genius. Or future classics.
Episode 5 of Berlin Companion Podcast tells the story of one such classic made in Berlin.
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