Potsdamer Platz

Time to go black and white again. This time we will head over to Potsdamer Platz, one of the most sad examples of the destruction of Berlin. Before the war this used to be one of the liveliest places in Berlin. It was an important public square and a major traffic intersection. It had lots of shops and houses. Potsdamer Platz is located about 1 km (1,100 yd) south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), and close to the southeast corner of the Tiergarten park. It is named after the city of Potsdam, some 25 km (16 mi) to the south west, and marks the point where the old road from Potsdam passed through the city wall of Berlin at the Potsdam Gate.

The allied bombings were heavy here. Potsdamer Platz was more or less completely ruined. After the war it was left desolate and later on the Berlin wall stretched through the area. Large no mans land areas stretched through the area.

As you can see the area is wide open and torn apart by the wall. The old style house to the upper left is the side of the state parliament of Berlin (Abgeordnetenhaus) that I have written about in an older post.

Here you can see roughly the same area today, on Google Maps:

Show larger map

Below you can see an old picture of how Potsdamer Platz could look like before the destuction:

Potsdamer Platz is now rebuilt, with several houses with interesting modern architecture. The place has again become an important traffic intersection and where the wall once tore the place apart there are now again people and shops. 

Below you can see the Sony Center house from below and night time.

And finally the back side of the card:

Meanwhile in the GDR

All posts this far has been about post cards from West Germany. Few - if any - post cards from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) showed the wall or the brutally divided city. What did the post cards from the GDR show then? Of course they showed the success, the progression, the architecture and the happiness in the young socialist state. The pictures where taken from locations not far from the western ones, sometimes from just the other side of the wall, but still they are completely different.

On the above picture you can see classical buildings mixed with new ones. 

• The first picture, at the upper left, shows a scene from the buildings around Unter den Linden. Classical architecture was not directly correct according to communist ideas, but they were built by workers and the efforts of those were celebrated. The buildings are a bit younger than they look, mainly built during the late 1700:s and the 1800:s.
• To the upper right you have the Palast der Republik, the huge parliament building of GDR. The building was erected between 1973 and 1976 and housed the parliament, a concert hall, restaurant, and much more. It was finally demolished 2008 to make room for a rebuilt Stadtschloss. I will likely spend a complete blog post about this sole building one day.
• To the lower left there is a picture of the Spreepark. It opened 1969 as Kulturpark Plänterwld. It was an amusement park where the citizens of the GDR could amuse themselves for a while. It was the only constant amusement park in the GDR. The park continued to be open after the unification but was closed around 2001 due to economical problems. It can be visited by guided groups at restricted times.
• To the lower right we see Rotes Rathaus and Fernsehturm, the TV tower. Behind Rotes Rathaus is Alexanderplatz. This place, together with the Stalinallé, was built to brag about. In my collection of post cards from the divided Berlin I have huge amounts of cards with various motives around here. The Alexanderplatz area was really dull when the wall came down, but nowadays it has bloomed to one of the more interesting ones in Berlin and the TV tower is still very cool in its futuristic pride.

The back side is unwritten.

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[Aftonbladet] [DN-norrsken]

Wall stays another 100 years

In my previous post I showed a card where Walter Ulbricht said that there would be no wall. The wall was built less than two months after he said that at a press conference. Today we will see what his successor, Erich Honecker, says about the wall.

The card from is from the same place as my previous post about Sebastianstrasse. The new thing here is the news paper clip in the upper right part.

The clip is part of the post card, not something glued on top. The quote from Honecker says: "Wall stays another 100 years". Luckily Honecker was wrong. The newspaper was printed 20 January 1989. Honecker resigned as general of the state on 18 October 1989, succeeded by Egon Krenz. The border passages was opened on that tense night of 9 November 1989 and the wall was physically removed during 1990. 

The back side is unwritten.

[Sveriges Radio 1] [Sveriges Radio 2] [DN]

No one has the intention to erect a wall!

This time we'll take a look at a grand political betrayal. Let's start with the post card. The big quote at the bottom says: No one has the intention to erect a wall!

This post card pictures Walter Ulbricht, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the German Democratic Republic between 25 July 1950 – 3 May 1971. This means that he ruled GDR during the time when the wall was erected, starting at 13 August 1961.

The post card contains a quote from Walter Ulbricht, from the magazine Neues Deutschland (new Germany). Translated the quote says:

"I understand your question as, that there are people in West Germany, who wish, that we mobilize the construction workers of the capital of the GDR, to erect a wall. To me it is not known, that such an intention exists. The construction workers of our capital occupy themselves mainly with building of apartments, and our manpower is for this fully deployed."

This was said by Walter Ulbricht at an international press conference the 15 June 1961. The wall construction was started less than two months later.

It is a bit amusing how Ulbricht, in the first sentence, turns it as it was the west germans that wanted a wall. As we now all know the wall was built to keep the GDR citizens inside GDR. It was built to stop large amounts of GDR citizens from escaping to West Germany.

There is a very interesting video clip from the mentioned press conference at YouTube:

The back side is unwritten.

In my next post I will follow this post card up with a related one, again with a quote. That time it will be from the successor, Erich Honecker.

Wallspotting

Here is another colorful and cheerful card from the Berlin wall days. As you can see they really had to distort the sky to make something colorful out of the depressing sights.

This is one of many cards with multiple small sights from the divided Berlin. Therefore it is a bit hard to show you the location of everything.

• The house on the upper right picture is the from the state parliament building on Niederkirchnerstraße, which I wrote about in another post.
• The picture at the lower left of course shows the Brandenbuger Tor. I haven't posted any pictures from there yet, but as you can imagine there are many post cards from that spot.
• The lower middle picture shows a staircase from which people from the western part could look over the wall. The eastern people was of course not allowed to something similar. If you read Thomas Brussigs book Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee you can find out what things the western people could shout to the eastern from such stands.
• The lower right picture is from the Checkpoint Charlie area, which I wrote about in my first blog post.

This post card was posted 20th february 1989. That means that it was posted just about nine months before the wall came down.

The post card was sent to Sweden, to the town Olofström. The greeting is in swedish and translates to:

Hi!

Am now in Berlin!
The trip went well, just some bumpiness on the boat. Yesterday we were at the zoo + the aquarium. We have also had time for a disco called "Society".

Hugs

Pernilla

Neukölln

Welcome to Neukölln! As you can see on this post card it hosts nice restaurants with nice beer! The wall and the barb wire will make sure you end up home, in your own eastern bed.

The big sign says "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit", which translates to "Unity, justice and freedom". It is very ironic that there had to be a wall with barb wire to protect those big values.

The bar on the picture is Heidelberger Krug. This place was subject to a massive tunnel project. In the basement a big escape tunnel was built. You can read more about this interesting story here:

• http://www.grenztruppen-der-ddr.de/podium2/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=1947&start=25
• http://www.welt.de/kultur/history/article106140295/Die-meisten-Fluchttunnel-gab-es-in-Berlin-Neukoelln.html
• http://www.berlin.de/imperia/md/content/lzpb/aktuelles/berliner_fluchten.pdf

The house still exists, but now houses a restaurant called Schweigel, Budike & Destille.


Show larger map

If you would like to visit this historical place and maybe eat and the restaurant, then you have the location on this map.


Show larger map

The back side is unfortunately unwritten for this one as well. I will try to scan some of my written ones. They are often just greetings to friends at home and often answers to radio competitions, but sometimes they can give a glimpse about the life behind the wall, the frustration and the longing for freedom. Again it is ironic that the latter word is the same as on the sign on this postcard.

Niederkirchnerstraße (not Kochstraße)

Time to head over to Kochstraße! At least that is what the card says. Here we have another massive building brutally hidden behind the wall. Some graffiti tries to cheer the misery up a bit. The back side text claims the building to be the old Gestapo head quarters, and the street to be Kochstraße.

Let's take a look at the back side already, so that you can see what it says. Unfortunately it is unwritten.

When researching this deeper I found that the text is  double wrong. The card is from Niederkirchnerstraße (formerly called Prinz-Albrecht-Straße). The house is not the old Gestapo head quarters. The head quarters was located at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8. That house was destroyed by the allied bombings 1945 and the ruins were torn down after the war. After World War II, in 1951, the authorities of East Berlin renamed Prinz-Albrecht-Straße to Niederkirchnerstraße in honour of Käthe Niederkirchner (1909–1944), a member of the communist resistance to the Nazis.

The house on the post card is instead the state parliament of Berlin (Abgeordnetenhaus). The house was built between 1892 and 1898 by the architect Friedrich Schulze, as the parliament of Preußen. Below you can see the house today. As always you can click the picture to see it in a larger version.


Visa Berlin Wall on a larger map

On the map below you can see the location of the house and the stretch of the Berlin wall.


Visa Berlin Wall på en större karta