BERLIN

Evening Star, Issue 25400, 3 February 1945, Page 10

BERLIN

MONUMENT OF THE HOHENZOLLERNS UGLIEST CAPITAL IN EUROPE . (Written by H.S.K.-K. for the ' Evening Star.') The Russians are flowing towards Berlin; the Allies on the western front look longingly in her direction—Berlin, capital of Prussia and of Germany, focal point of the Reich. She is a dowdy city, built during a period when architecture was at its worst. Founded in the thirteenth cen- i tury among the marshy fastnesses of the Havel and Spree Rivers she grew very slowly. The early Hohenzollerns who came to Central Germany in the eaily fifteenth cenvury preferred to live at the small town of BrandenburgBerlin remained the ugly duckling. Now, like the duckling of the fairy tale,, she has grown, but, unlike it. she is still very ugly indeed. With the advent of Prussia, Berlin became the capital and the administrative and, to some extent, trading centre, of the rising, young State. Frederic 11.. so-called the Great, leavened its heavy bulk with French Protestant settlers, but even they could not struggle against the Teutonic ponderousness of the Prussian spirit as it is so blatantly shown in Berlin. After the war against France in 1870-71, a King of Prussia, first German Emperor, made her the capital of his new Reich. Government buildings sprang up, an imperial ipalace was built, a cathedral arose—all of them matching in sham styles and over-ornamentation tho earlier buildings of Frederick ll.'s time, notably the State Opera. The Reichstag was burnt down by the Nazis in 1933—0ne can hardly credit them with so much artistic sense; those same Nazis who built a bonfire outside the university, and on it burnt its books and the Bible: the New Order started true to form. But even though Berlin's history if» rather humdrum, and however horrible its massive official buildings are, there are some compensations. She has fine wide streets: Unter den Linden is the best-known, still ' called " Under the Limetrees," though Hitler had tho beautiful old trees cut down so that during the Olympic Games in 1936, a long line of Nazi flags could take their place. The charm has left this boulevard even though the terraced cafes remained, on which one could sit and drinlk Berlin's speciality, " bowle," a fruit punch made with champagne and moselle, fresh fruit, and herbs and sugar—a drink that helped one to appreciate the rather grim-faced Berliners. The Kurfverstendamm was the fashionable shopping centre, another wide boulevard, with the-famous Kempinski restaurant, which used to serve another .Berlin speciality—small river crayfish. . • • ;

Then there were the spacious squares, now undoubtedly made somewhat larger by the R.A.F.—the one opposite the university, at which taught van't Hon; and Helmholtz both painfullyfamiliar to students anywhere, the philosophers and historians Mommsen and von tßanke, Hegel and Fichte, and the great healer, Virchow. There is the " Platz," opposite the one-time Reichstag, with its perfect example of German parliamemtarianism; the Reichstag members erected on it a statue of Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, after he had contemptuously ruled the country in ; defiance of that august body for several.years. .TheBismarck_ statue at least is a joke, but the atrocities of the Siegesaltee are beyond one. The last Emperor, William 11.. -presented the city with groups of statues commemorating his Hohenzoilern ancestors; the like has never,been seen on land or sea—even London's Albert Memorial is a thing of beauty compared with any one group, anil there are 32 of them. It is better to take the Kaiserdamm 'through the grune,wald out to Potsdam, the residence of Frederick " the Great," for here at least the statuary is hidden in the lovely parks surrounding the palaces ctf the Prussian kings. There is Sanssouci, Frederic's favourite " Schloss," the beauty of its gardens only spoiled by the so typical German families . sight-seeing in this Prussian shrine —father with a hat that seems- too small and a coat that is too short ; mother, who has gone to fat; and the troop of children marching behind. Everybody is very serious and admires ~.dutifully what ,a good, philistine ought to admire. The other palaces aud their parks are less frequented—the Marble Palace, the Orangerie, the Stadt-, schloss, with their gardens,'the Wildpark, Babe.sberg, and. darkly-mysteri-ous Glienicke. .Berlin is redeemed only by her surroundings, the large number of lakes and breaks and forests, the Wannsee, to which the whole town seemed to immigrate on hot summer days for swimming and boating, the Grunewald, with its. racecourse, . the tfungfernheide and spandaverwald, actually in the city itself. This, then, is a picture of Berlin as she appeared. Her history, so far, has been largely uneventful. Napoleon conquered her twice, her Friedrich-. stadt, the German Whitehall, directed the destinies of a new empire, her boulevards were crowded with a people that always seemed slightly 'disillusioned, grim, albeit polite in a ponderous way. Her slums stretched for miles; here were the great factory districts of this city of five million, and the huge inland harbours served by a wide canal .system.

Her life, has been changed by the war, and will soon be changed somewhat more. But Berlin, though the centre of the German (Reich, is to-day not much more than a symbol. Her industries rely on coal and steel from other regions, notably Silesia, which has already fallen. Without the Ruhi and Saar and Silesia Berlin is like a head without a trunk, iucapble ol existence—more an embarrassment than an asset to tlie German General Staff.