Berlin as Urban Palimpsest (1)
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
Giacomo Bottà
Berlin as Urban Palimpsest
1.
Introduction: palimpsests, memory and the
specificities of Berlin
Palimpsest is a word of ancient Greek origin, which signifies « scraped /
erased again »1 . It is used to define ancient parchments, i.e. books
written by hand on expensive materials of animal origin. In medieval
times, although expensive and difficult to produce, parchments were the
best material for storing knowledge. Monks, who copied scripts in
abbeys, were often recycling old text reputed to be unimportant or
immoral by scraping away the written ink layer and writing anew on the
pages. Older texts were never fully erased and at least portions of them
are still visible under the secondary texts. Experts are often torn between
restoring one or the other of the two texts, if not trying to preserve both.
It thus emerges that palimpsest is a product of two contrasting actions:
the first consists in erasing, deleting, scraping, making a text invisible;
while the second is to re-write, re-use, assert a new meaning; to make
something else visible. These actions result in an intricate and
multilayered artefact. This complexity becomes even more poignant if
we translate it into an urban spatial metaphor. The palimpsest has been a
crucible in cultural research about cities for a long time. Among the first
to use the concept (but not the term) in relation to the city, we find
Sigmund Freud; in Civilization and its Discontents2 he builds a parallel
between the layering of memory in the human psyche and in urban
archaeology3.
1
T. F. HOAD. « palimpsest. » The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology.
1996 : « palimpsest †material prepared for writing on and wiping out XVII; parchment,
etc., in which the original writing has been erased to make place for a second XIX. — L.
palimpsestus — Gr. palímpsestos (as sb. -on), f. pálin again + psestós, pp. formation on
psên rub smooth. »
2
Sigmund Freud, Das Umbehagen in der Kultur, Wien, Internationaler
Psychoanalitischer Verlag, 1930.
3
Quoted in: Alessandro Busà, « City of Memory », in Ray Hutchinson, Encyclopaedia of
Urban Studies, Thousand Oaks, Sage, 2010, p. 158.
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
In this chapter, I will utilize the palimpsest as spatial metaphor in a
variety of historical contexts and in connection to a range of disciplines
(for instance history, architecture, literature, urban studies and
musicology). This is an attempt to gain an interdisciplinary
understanding of it as a viable instrument for all research dealing with
issues of space. The palimpsest is able to mediate the complex relation
of time, space and memory, which so strongly influence Western
societies4. All places have layers of history, some visible, some hidden,
some partly erased, some still visible, some easy to find, some
impossible to decipher. It is something to be discovered in each city
around the world and which explain the enormous fascination that cities
have for human beings.
Nonetheless, the idea of the palimpsest has been particularly productive
in the case of Berlin. Within the « short century », the German capital
has been the centre of six very different historical experiences. First as
centre of the Prussian Reich, whose military power brought to the
unification to Germany in 1871. After the WWI defeat, it became the
capital of a fragile democracy, the Weimarer Republik, which led to
Adolf Hitler taking the power and transforming the city, in his dreams,
into Germania, a future megalopolis. The WWII defeat turned Berlin
into a divided city of ruins, as well as a cold war hotspot. From 1961 to
1989, the city was cut in two. The eastern part was the political centre of
a socialist-ruled German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische
Republik), the western part was a Land of the German Federal Republic
(Bundesrepublik Deutschland), with special status. After the German
reunification in 1990, Berlin, whole/entire again, was declared capital of
the Federal Republic. These distant political, social, cultural, economic
national projects left heritages, both real or imagined, still standing or
removed, restored or hidden and haunt the city’s experience, determining
its uncertain contemporary identity5.
Berlin in the 1990s became a symbol/compendium for the whole history
of the XX Century and its contradictions. The German capital became a
myth in its Barthesian sense of « double meaning ». Talking about Berlin
4
See: Andreas Huyssen, « Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia », in Public Culture,
12: 1, 2000 and Karl Schlögel, Leggere il tempo nello spazio. Saggi di storia e
geopolitica [Im Raume lesen wir Zeit. Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik,
2003], Milano, Bruno Mondadori, 2009, transl. by Lisa Scarpa and Roberta Gado
Wiener.
5
For a history of Berlin see: Alexandra Richie, Faust’s Metropolis. A History of Berlin,
London, Harper Collins, 1999.
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
doesn’t mean only talking about the capital of the German Federal
Republic, it means talking about a complex and multilayered cultural
palimpsest. As Andreas Huyssen noted:
What is now emerging is the more intriguing notion of Berlin as
palimpsest, a disparate city-text that is being rewritten while earlier texts
are preserved, traces restored, erasures documented – all of this
producing a complex web of historical markers that point to the
continuing heterogeneous life of a vital city ambivalent about its built
past and its urban future6.
This becomes clear if we refer to the Berlin Wall. It was built in 1961 as
a defensive structure, an antifascist barrier created to defend German
democratic socialism from German federal capitalism. However, it
became a cage, a trap, and a symbol of oppression. The act of writing on
it from its western side became a way to demonstrate against a regime, it
was also part of a new street culture / subculture / popular culture. When
it fell, it became a symbol of freedom and democracy. This is the reason
why it is possible to find a portion of it in Strasbourg, where I am living,
standing in front of the European Court of Human Rights. The portion of
the Wall that ended up in Strasbourg (fig. 1) has been painted with
graffiti; there are 3 layers of paint-art visible on it. The first layer is only
partly visible and quite abstract. The second layer, the big silhouettes of
a stylized head, is still today reproduced a bit everywhere in the city. The
artist who first produced them is unknown and the big heads could be
just a sign in Berlin’s collective visual language. The most recent graffiti
is a sentence in French, written in white paint. It reads cryptically « le
duo d’enfèr a encore frappé ». Below the layers, we see portions of the
original greyish colour of the naked concrete. Graffiti are understood
either as crime, art, or political action. In this specific case, they have a
positive connotation; otherwise they would not stand where they are.
They are supposed to communicate freedom and democracy. They make
the examined portion of the wall definitely a signifier of some shared
European values and therefore worth its location in front of the European
Court of Human Rights. Nonetheless, it is easy to forget that the Wall
was a barrier and a border and therefore an object with two sides.
Examining the other side of the wall (fig. 2) feels like looking at the
backside of a painting, it carries no meaning in itself. Its meaning is
6
Andreas Huyssen, Present pasts: urban palimpsests and the politics of memory,
Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 81.
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
hidden, forgotten, not considered, erased, although this side of the wall
mattered as well. It is the side people beheld, when trying to escape, the
side the wall was built from, the side that was supposed to be invisible,
untouchable and because of that, it was so materially visible. The other
side, the painted one, although reachable, touchable, writable, stood as if
it were not there. The wall had two sides not one. One is today invisible.
Both are to be preserved as symbols of 40 years of divided history, 40
years of a divided cultural life, which echoes continuously in the
contemporary city.
A palimpsest is never neutral: there are always hidden powers,
ideologies, opposing narratives at stake, when something is erased to
make space for something else or when something is made visible or
invisible. It is very important to always determine the mechanisms that
brought something to be hidden and something to be made visible,
something to resurface from oblivion and something to be suddenly
reputed as less important.
2.
Textscape: Palimpsest and Literature
One of the greatest expectations of the newly reunified Berlin of the
1990s was the rebirth of the German big city novel (Groβstadtroman).
The literary genre was reputed the most appropriate media to make sense
of the heroic historical happenings which should have brought Berlin
back to its real or imagined past splendour.
Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) was able to capture the
buzz of the 1920s Weimar republic capital, its contradictions and its
sudden change into a modern city. Döblin achieved this through
innovative literary techniques like montage, cut up, and
experimentations with the language of other media (advertisement, radio,
popular song, cinema). Something similar was expected in the 1990s
from someone, from anyone. Günter Grass made a step forward but
failed; Ein Weites Feld (1995) is remembered nowadays mostly because
of a bizarre cover of the magazine Der Spiegel (34/1995), where the
literary critic Reich-Ranicki is portrayed industriously tearing the book
in two.
It seems that literature, as a cultural practice, was already aware of its
dethronement; it suddenly stopped being considered the medium that
makes sense of the city. In the 1990s, private actors (private investors,
real estate speculators, multinational companies…) experimenting with
new neoliberal narratives about cities, became predominant. Eventful
culture became increasingly something to be commodified in the name
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
of a new economy and, within this process literature became less
important than before. The literary works, set and written in Berlin in the
1990s, reveal the difficulties of relating oneself with the city, with its
new mediated images and with its new postmodern myths. The
palimpsests became a means to express these doubts, fears, and
disillusionments, as evidenced lucidly in this passage from the novel Die
Schattenboxerin, published by Inka Parei in 1999:
On certain days, I walk through the city where I was born like a stranger,
for example lately, as I entered the Friedrichstrasse station. I am looking
for an S-Bahn, which will take me to Bornholmer Strasse and I am
unable, to read a sign or to find the exit, among the architectonical
eviscerations and patches, spread out of two mutually excluding social
systems. I am caught in a jungle of symbols and texts, whose meanings
are too outdated or too pristine. They refer to parts of the buildings, that
don’t exist anymore, like the Intershop sign, massive and thrown at the
same time, or that are not yet available, like the sticker for the lift, which
leads me to an open excavation, precariously delimited by the white and
red striped ribbon of the construction sites. After a long wandering, I
leave the place, tired of tiles, planking and escalators that don’t match
with each other7.
This short quote reveals the double articulation of the palimpsest. First,
as a literary document about Berlin, it portrays, reproduces, represents,
mediates the city and therefore constitutes another layer in the literary
palimpsest of the city. Walter Benjamin was the first intellectual aware
of this textual operation. His Arcade Project (Passagenwerk, written
between 1927 and 1940) shows that the city can be approached as a
palimpsest of literary quotes to be collected in the library. The library
7
Inka Parei, Die Schattenboxerin, Frankfurt/M, Fisher, 2001, p. 76 [transl. into English
by Giacomo Bottà]: An manchen Tagen laufe ich durch die Stadt, in der ich geboren bin,
wie eine Fremde, zum Beispiel neulich, da gerate ich in den Bahnhof Friedrichstraβe.
Ich bin auf der Suche nach einer S-Bahn, die mich zur Bornholmer Straβe bringt, und
unfähig, inmitten aufgerissener und wieder zusammengeflickter Architektur, die sich
gegenseitig ausschlieβenden Gesellschaftssystemen entsprungen ist, ein Schild zu lesen
oder den Ausgang zu finden. Ich bin gefangen in einem Dschungel aus Symbolen und
Beschriftungen, deren Botschaft verfrüht oder veraltet sind. Sie beziehen sich auf
Gebäudeteile, die nicht mehr existieren, wie der aufdringlich zackige und gleichzeitig
gequetscht wirkende Schriftzug Intershop. Oder auf solche, die noch nicht vorhanden
sind, wie der Aufkleber mit dem Fahrstuhl, der mich zu einem offenen Schacht führt,
notdürftig abgeriegelt mit rotweiβ gestreiftem Baustellenplastikband. Nach langem
Irrlauf verlasse ich den Ort, aufgerieben an zueinander unpassenden Kachel-, Bodenund Rolltreppenarten.
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
with its rows of shelves, full of books to be examined, can act as if it
were the city itself8.
Second, this quote is a representation of a classic architectonical Berlin
palimpsest. The city that used to be two cities had to be surgically
reunited. In the 1990s, communication, energy, waste, electricity and
traffic lines, street signs, and icons had to be made conform again
throughout the city. This urban face-lifting caused a sort of time/space
annihilation, here beautifully described with the metaphor of a « jungle
of symbols and texts, whose meanings are too outdated or too pristine ».
While an outdated urban text was being erased and a pristine one was
being written atop, both old and new meanings remained suspended,
trapped behind appearing and disappearing signifiers. The resulting
sense of estrangement in one’s own city, a feeling longed for by urban
intellectuals from flâneurs to situationists, had bitter/negative undertones
for the normal citizens. Writers in the 1990s used palimpsests as cultural
signifiers of precarious urban existences more than as engines for formal
literary experiments.
3.
Landscape: Palimpsest and Architecture
If literature presented palimpsests in a minimalistic way, architecture has
become the language to deliberately erase, preserve, rewrite,
communicate, transmit, hide, and restore memory in the name of the new
city power structures. The interests were and remain high, very high,
although reality has been grimmer than the political expectations were
dreaming of. The city bankruptcy in 2007 was estimated at sixty million
Euros. Nonetheless, as Goebel notes:
If German national identity after reunification is notoriously inseparable
from intricate connections among the post-industrial economy, political
power, and cultural memory, then the new Berlin's architecture of
citation and allusive reconstruction can be an important hermeneutic
vehicle for adding to our understanding of these issues. Perhaps, then,
returning to the synchronicity of the (seemingly) nonsynchronous is the
most appropriate mode of historical self-reflection in the new Berlin9.
8
See: Karl Schlögel, Leggere il tempo nello spazio. Saggi di storia e geopolitica (Im
Raume lesen wir Zeit. Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik), Milano, Bruno
Mondadori, 2009, p. 55-63.
9
Rolf J. Goebel, Berlin's Architectural Citations: Reconstruction, Simulation, and the
Problem of Historical Authenticity, in PMLA, 118: 5, Oct. 2003, p. 1288.
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
In this article, Goebel describes Berlin’s architectural search for
authenticity, as an elusive use of medial simulation and historical
citations. These uses are recollected both in official institutional
buildings (the Reichstag, the destruction of the Palast der Republik and
the reconstruction of the Schloβ façade) and in commercial experiments
(Postdamer Platz, Hotel Adlon and the Friedrichstadt-Passagen).
Projects glorifying contemporary globalized economy, restorations of
long forgotten but highly symbolical buildings, destruction or surgical
removal of socialist icons went hand in hand creating an indecipherable
palimpsest composed of a multitude of layers pointing at the city
complex past, present and future.
For instance, the Potsdamer Platz presents a very fascinating example of
an architectonical palimpsest. Its visit nowadays constitutes a nonexperience: tourists mostly notice a simple mall in a semi NorthAmerican fashion, where it is possible to buy anything from a lava-lamp
to an expensive high-tech music diffusion system. The big multinational
concerns, which made the construction of the square possible, name the
three high-rises, defining the skyline of the square, but are otherwise
invisible, just like new capitalism is expected to be. Only by digging
behind its postmodern surface, are we able discover the poignancy of
Potsi as an architectonical palimpsest. Potsdamer Platz was in fact the
busiest node of Weimar Republic’s Berlin; different transportation
systems (train, metro, tram, bus) crossed over on the square on in close
proximity to it. Being one of the gates to access the centre of the city, it
was loaded with hotels, bars, cabarets, cinemas and theatres. Electric
light filled the square nightly with advertisements fuelling desire and
slogans promising the extraordinary.
Under National Socialism the square lost much of its appeal. In fact, for
the Nazi ideology, it represented the nest of all evils: Americanisation,
Semitic degenerate culture, cosmopolitanism and urbanity in their most
hysterical expressions. Its function, in the short-lived Nazi experience,
was restricted to the functional purpose of central transportation junction
and therefore it was heavily bombed. Throughout a good portion of
second half of the XX century, due to its being in close proximity to the
Wall, it became a wasteland, partially taken over by nature.
Elkins and Hofmeister (1988) describe the condition of the western part
of the square in the 1980s, in these interesting terms:
The section of the Wall fringe from the Potsdamer Platz (once the
bustling ‘Piccadilly Circus’ of Berlin and now within the Berlin Wall
system of obstacles) to the southern Friedrichstrasse is an extraordinary
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
spectacle. One block near the Potsdamer Platz is reserved for the training
of guard dogs, another is the permanent headquarters of a circus, yet
another muddy area is the scene of a regular Saturday market; to some
extent this land on the approaches to the former Potsdam Station has
remained unoccupied because, until recently, it has belonged to the
Deutsche Reichsbahn, which is based in East Berlin10.
Nearly immediate is the connection with some scenes of Wings of Desire
(Der Himmel über Berlin, 1987) by Wim Wenders, who adopts the
former square for some of the film’s most estranging sequences. Its
eastern part was not different, although there were no traces of
entrepreneurial spirit. As Sarah Kirsch (1982) puts it in one of her poem,
the square could have been as well a Naturschutzgebiet (natural reserve
area):
[…]
Metropolitan rabbits
hop to their delight on Potsdamer Platz
Looking at this meadow
How can I believe what my grandfather recounted
Here was the very centre of the world
when in his youth with his Adler
he was driving a beautiful girl
[…]11
In 1990, after a few months during which it was used as a Mercedes
dealership run by Polish immigrants, the square was sold to the three big
concerns. They turned a laborious real-estate operation into a huge urban
spectacle, which run for almost 10 years. The construction site was
immediately labelled the biggest in Europe. Deep excavations and
certain elements of the future skyline were kept illuminated, for the
delight of the dancing crowd, exiting the surrounding illegal techno
clubs in the early hours. The info-box, a red square shaped construction,
inspired by the containers where the Turkish and Polish construction
workers were living, gave out 3D reconstructions, large amounts of data
and futuristic descriptions about the finished project. Again,
10
T. H. Elkins and B. Hofmeister, Berlin. The spatial structure of a divided city, London
and New York, Methuen, 1988, p. 179–180.
11
Sarah Kirsch, « Naturschutzgebiet », in: Michael Speier (ed.), Berlin, mit deinen
frechen Feuern: 100 Berlin-Gedichte, Frankfurt, Reclam, 1997, p. 36. Transl. by G.
Bottà.
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
programmatic urban palimpsests abounded: a new cafe within the Sony
Centre complex was named Josty, just like the legendary artists meeting
place, standing on the square in the roaring 1920s. Portions of the Grand
Hotel Esplanade (destroyed during WWII) are casted into the café (the
former Frühstückssaal, Breakfast room) or were moved through a
complex hydraulic system to a different location and put under glass (the
Kaisersaal, Emperor’s Hall)12.
Interestingly, in 1999 the newly reformed West-Berlin industrial band
Einstürzende Neubauten, produced song called « Die Befindlichkeit des
Landes » (on the album Silence is Sexy). In the song’s lyrics, they take a
polemic stance towards « the new temples », nothing more than «
material for the next layer » and refer to what the urban palimpsest is
hiding: the « secret net of bunkers », where Adolf Hitler committed
suicide, and which are still hidden in close proximity to the square.
4.
Soundscape: Palimpsest and Music
The applicability of the palimpsest metaphor to non-visual or non-textual
artefacts has been deeply ignored by the cultural work on Berlin.
Nonetheless, cities are also noisy, smelly13, rough and angular places.
Urban soundscapes are deeply layered and connections between specific
genres of music and certain places certainly influence our own memory
of the latter. It is nearly impossible not to connect fado to Lisbon, tango
to Buenos Aires or waltz to Vienna14. These particular genres are part of
the sounding / written palimpsest of these cities together with the noises
of trams, voices of people, church bells, muezzins, fire alarms etc.
How then to identify then the sounds, which have been erased from a
city? It is possible for instance to refer to the « voice ». The term has
been widely used, in particular when referring to contemporary
12
Rolf J. Goebel, Berlin's Architectural Citations: Reconstruction, Simulation, and the
Problem of Historical Authenticity, in: PMLA, 118: 5, Oct. 2003, p. 1276.
13
In this article I won’t refer to the chances of articulating a palimpsest of smells,
although I find the idea particularly intriguing, especially in reference to its street food
(Curry-Wurst, Döner Kebap, China-Pfanne, Vietnamese food…) or to obsolete forms of
heating (coal in some not-yet renovated buildings of Prenzlauer Berg and
Friedrichshain).
14
For a more detailed account on the relation between popular music and the city see:
Giacomo Bottà, « And They’re Sitting on Thousands of Bodies! Popular Music, City and
Media », in Frank Eckhardt and Louise Nyström, Culture and the City, Berlin, Berliner
Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2009, p. 43–58.
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
multiculturalism in cities. The voices of certain ethnic groups seem to be
stronger than others, to have a deeper impact in the representation of
certain cities. A good portion of Berlin population has spoken Turkish
for about sixty years, but rarely do we find this voice used in connection
to the German capital. The already quoted band Einstürzende Neubauten
(collapsing buildings) has been working consistently throughout their
career with the construction of urban palimpsests of noise, since their
first LP Kollaps (1980). If we consider the aural memory of Berlin, we
cannot only refer to cabaret, the work of Kurt Weil or the contemporary
emphasis on techno music. Explosions, destructions, eviscerations are
rooted into the city aural memory as well. Einstürzende Neubauten make
systematic use of these sounds by performing with construction work
gear (such as pneumatic hammers and concrete mixers) along standard
music instruments and voice. Lirically, references to urban noises are
also abundant, such as in the case of « Steh’ auf Berlin » (from the
album Kollaps, 1980):
Stand up/Lie down / Burnt earth / I stand on virii / I stand on chemistry /
Stand up / Fall apart / Collapse / Explode in the air / War between cars / I
stand on fire / I stand on smoke / I stand on noise / I stand on rocks / I
won't pull you out / I stand on decay / I stand on disease / I stand on
decline / I stand on end / I stand on closure / I stand on out / I stand on
hell / I stand up / I stand on decline / I stand on end / on end / on end / on
stop / I stand on intoxication / I stand on…15
These lyrics emphasize the connection to Berlin (starting from the title
of the song) and contribute to anchoring and justifying certain sounds
and their layering into the city. Their cultural operation consists in
recuperating the forgotten, unheard, or removed sounds, which made
Berlin what it is nowadays.
15
Einstürzende Neubauten « Steh’ Auf Berlin », Kollaps, 1980. Transl. by G. Bottà. The
sentence « Ich steh’ auf » could mean both « I stand on » and « I like ». Original lyrics
available at: www.neubauten.org/?q=kollaps (last accessed 16.12.2010:
Aufstehn/Hinlegen / Verbrannte Erde / Ich steh auf Viren / Ich steh auf Chemie /
Aufstehn / Abstürzen / Einstürzen / In die Luft sprengen / Krieg unter Autos / Ich steh auf
Feuer / Ich steh auf Rauch / Ich steh auf Krach / Ich steh auf Steine / Ich hol dich nicht
raus / Ich steh auf Zerfall / Ich steh auf Krankheit / Ich steh auf Niedergang / Ich steh auf
Ende / Ich steh auf Schluß / Ich steh auf Aus / Ich steh auf Hölle / Ich steh auf / Ich steh
auf Niedergang / Ich steh auf Ende / auf Ende / auf Ende / auf Schluss / Ich steh auf
Rausch / Ich steh auf…
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
5.
Timescape: Palimpsest and Tourism
Tourism changed enormously in the 1990s. Tourism researchers put their
emphasis on the increased diversification of it and to the rising attention
towards authenticity and sustainability. In addition, the individualized
experience of a place is considered more than a mere visit.
Within this framework, a trip to Berlin is increasingly connected to the
experience of a vibrant authentic place, where the layers of history
should be looked for, discovered, recollected, or recognized. Part of the
architectonical facelift that the city underwent, is connected to tourism
and to the chances offered by this kind of city consumption.
Operations aimed at letting the tourists/citizens play with the city
palimpsests are continuously being produced. An outstanding example
within these strategies of playfulness is the timescope, a product
developed by ART+COM in 2005. Timescope is a traditional heavy-duty
telescope, coin-operated, as found in many cities around the world (for
instance in Paris, on the Eiffel Tower), with an important twist. As stated
on the website of the company:
The basic idea of the ‘timescope’ is a virtual journey in time via
telescope. The device contains additional controls that enable viewers to
view a place in the past or future time through its eyepiece. The
‘timescope’ can be used for a wide range of purposes: it can be set up for
use with tourist sites such as the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate or the
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church for example, giving visitors the
chance to get a closer view of how these locations looked in the past. The
‘timescope’ can also be used for large-scale building projects. In such
cases it can be used not only to show how a building project has
progressed, but also to show how a building will look in the future.
Additionally, it can be used at geological interesting sites, enabling
viewers to perceive natural history visually. ‘timescope’ is a product
development of ART+COM16.
The timescope has to my knowledge not been adopted in Berlin;
nonetheless it represents a significant example of how to implement the
palimpsest in an innovative and market-oriented way. In its descriptions
there are references to its possible use in the case of Berlin landmarks,
16 16
From the « Detailed Project Description », available at:
http://www.artcom.de/index.php?lang=en&option=com_acprojects&id=38&page=6 (last
accessed: )
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
but also in reference to construction sites and building projects (along
sites of geological interests).
Similar experiments are available also in the increasing number of
museums about the city, where different simulacra, reconstructions and
simulations are used to convey to the visitor the idea of a journey
through the site-overlapping memories of the city.
6.
Conclusions
In this chapter I abused the suffix –scape, which in English always refers
to the spatial dimension of something. By describing text-, land-, sound-,
and time-scapes I intended to reveal how palimpsests can be recollected
in written texts, sounds, material expressions (buildings) and
technological artefacts, just like in many other urban expressions.
The historian Karl Schlögel observes that in space we are able to read
time17. This is what I tried to do when analysing the way different time
layers ‘deposed’ themselves on certain specific spots of Berlin.
Nonetheless, time doesn’t leave a neat stack of clearly sequenced layers;
rather, it ‘flows’ and therefore also the opposite statement is true: in time
we read and make sense of space. Looking at a city trough time and
understanding the memory flow on some of its expressions enables us to
fully comprehend the operations of erasing and re-writing, which define
urban palimpsests.
Examining a palimpsest should always be an action which accounts for
different streams moving through it in different directions, pointing
artificially or naturally to diverse historical constellations.
The German capital offers its own past in an array of ways, rarely
possible for other cities and is therefore a perfect instrument to confront
oneself with the invisible city.
17
Karl Schlögel, Leggere il tempo nello spazio. Saggi di storia e geopolitica [Im Raume
lesen wir Zeit. Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik, 2003], Milano, Bruno
Mondadori, 2009, transl. by Lisa Scarpa and Roberta Gado Wiener.
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
Giacomo Bottà
Berlin as Urban Palimpsest
1.
Introduction: palimpsests, memory and the
specificities of Berlin
Palimpsest is a word of ancient Greek origin, which signifies « scraped /
erased again »1 . It is used to define ancient parchments, i.e. books
written by hand on expensive materials of animal origin. In medieval
times, although expensive and difficult to produce, parchments were the
best material for storing knowledge. Monks, who copied scripts in
abbeys, were often recycling old text reputed to be unimportant or
immoral by scraping away the written ink layer and writing anew on the
pages. Older texts were never fully erased and at least portions of them
are still visible under the secondary texts. Experts are often torn between
restoring one or the other of the two texts, if not trying to preserve both.
It thus emerges that palimpsest is a product of two contrasting actions:
the first consists in erasing, deleting, scraping, making a text invisible;
while the second is to re-write, re-use, assert a new meaning; to make
something else visible. These actions result in an intricate and
multilayered artefact. This complexity becomes even more poignant if
we translate it into an urban spatial metaphor. The palimpsest has been a
crucible in cultural research about cities for a long time. Among the first
to use the concept (but not the term) in relation to the city, we find
Sigmund Freud; in Civilization and its Discontents2 he builds a parallel
between the layering of memory in the human psyche and in urban
archaeology3.
1
T. F. HOAD. « palimpsest. » The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology.
1996 : « palimpsest †material prepared for writing on and wiping out XVII; parchment,
etc., in which the original writing has been erased to make place for a second XIX. — L.
palimpsestus — Gr. palímpsestos (as sb. -on), f. pálin again + psestós, pp. formation on
psên rub smooth. »
2
Sigmund Freud, Das Umbehagen in der Kultur, Wien, Internationaler
Psychoanalitischer Verlag, 1930.
3
Quoted in: Alessandro Busà, « City of Memory », in Ray Hutchinson, Encyclopaedia of
Urban Studies, Thousand Oaks, Sage, 2010, p. 158.
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
In this chapter, I will utilize the palimpsest as spatial metaphor in a
variety of historical contexts and in connection to a range of disciplines
(for instance history, architecture, literature, urban studies and
musicology). This is an attempt to gain an interdisciplinary
understanding of it as a viable instrument for all research dealing with
issues of space. The palimpsest is able to mediate the complex relation
of time, space and memory, which so strongly influence Western
societies4. All places have layers of history, some visible, some hidden,
some partly erased, some still visible, some easy to find, some
impossible to decipher. It is something to be discovered in each city
around the world and which explain the enormous fascination that cities
have for human beings.
Nonetheless, the idea of the palimpsest has been particularly productive
in the case of Berlin. Within the « short century », the German capital
has been the centre of six very different historical experiences. First as
centre of the Prussian Reich, whose military power brought to the
unification to Germany in 1871. After the WWI defeat, it became the
capital of a fragile democracy, the Weimarer Republik, which led to
Adolf Hitler taking the power and transforming the city, in his dreams,
into Germania, a future megalopolis. The WWII defeat turned Berlin
into a divided city of ruins, as well as a cold war hotspot. From 1961 to
1989, the city was cut in two. The eastern part was the political centre of
a socialist-ruled German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische
Republik), the western part was a Land of the German Federal Republic
(Bundesrepublik Deutschland), with special status. After the German
reunification in 1990, Berlin, whole/entire again, was declared capital of
the Federal Republic. These distant political, social, cultural, economic
national projects left heritages, both real or imagined, still standing or
removed, restored or hidden and haunt the city’s experience, determining
its uncertain contemporary identity5.
Berlin in the 1990s became a symbol/compendium for the whole history
of the XX Century and its contradictions. The German capital became a
myth in its Barthesian sense of « double meaning ». Talking about Berlin
4
See: Andreas Huyssen, « Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia », in Public Culture,
12: 1, 2000 and Karl Schlögel, Leggere il tempo nello spazio. Saggi di storia e
geopolitica [Im Raume lesen wir Zeit. Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik,
2003], Milano, Bruno Mondadori, 2009, transl. by Lisa Scarpa and Roberta Gado
Wiener.
5
For a history of Berlin see: Alexandra Richie, Faust’s Metropolis. A History of Berlin,
London, Harper Collins, 1999.
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
doesn’t mean only talking about the capital of the German Federal
Republic, it means talking about a complex and multilayered cultural
palimpsest. As Andreas Huyssen noted:
What is now emerging is the more intriguing notion of Berlin as
palimpsest, a disparate city-text that is being rewritten while earlier texts
are preserved, traces restored, erasures documented – all of this
producing a complex web of historical markers that point to the
continuing heterogeneous life of a vital city ambivalent about its built
past and its urban future6.
This becomes clear if we refer to the Berlin Wall. It was built in 1961 as
a defensive structure, an antifascist barrier created to defend German
democratic socialism from German federal capitalism. However, it
became a cage, a trap, and a symbol of oppression. The act of writing on
it from its western side became a way to demonstrate against a regime, it
was also part of a new street culture / subculture / popular culture. When
it fell, it became a symbol of freedom and democracy. This is the reason
why it is possible to find a portion of it in Strasbourg, where I am living,
standing in front of the European Court of Human Rights. The portion of
the Wall that ended up in Strasbourg (fig. 1) has been painted with
graffiti; there are 3 layers of paint-art visible on it. The first layer is only
partly visible and quite abstract. The second layer, the big silhouettes of
a stylized head, is still today reproduced a bit everywhere in the city. The
artist who first produced them is unknown and the big heads could be
just a sign in Berlin’s collective visual language. The most recent graffiti
is a sentence in French, written in white paint. It reads cryptically « le
duo d’enfèr a encore frappé ». Below the layers, we see portions of the
original greyish colour of the naked concrete. Graffiti are understood
either as crime, art, or political action. In this specific case, they have a
positive connotation; otherwise they would not stand where they are.
They are supposed to communicate freedom and democracy. They make
the examined portion of the wall definitely a signifier of some shared
European values and therefore worth its location in front of the European
Court of Human Rights. Nonetheless, it is easy to forget that the Wall
was a barrier and a border and therefore an object with two sides.
Examining the other side of the wall (fig. 2) feels like looking at the
backside of a painting, it carries no meaning in itself. Its meaning is
6
Andreas Huyssen, Present pasts: urban palimpsests and the politics of memory,
Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 81.
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
hidden, forgotten, not considered, erased, although this side of the wall
mattered as well. It is the side people beheld, when trying to escape, the
side the wall was built from, the side that was supposed to be invisible,
untouchable and because of that, it was so materially visible. The other
side, the painted one, although reachable, touchable, writable, stood as if
it were not there. The wall had two sides not one. One is today invisible.
Both are to be preserved as symbols of 40 years of divided history, 40
years of a divided cultural life, which echoes continuously in the
contemporary city.
A palimpsest is never neutral: there are always hidden powers,
ideologies, opposing narratives at stake, when something is erased to
make space for something else or when something is made visible or
invisible. It is very important to always determine the mechanisms that
brought something to be hidden and something to be made visible,
something to resurface from oblivion and something to be suddenly
reputed as less important.
2.
Textscape: Palimpsest and Literature
One of the greatest expectations of the newly reunified Berlin of the
1990s was the rebirth of the German big city novel (Groβstadtroman).
The literary genre was reputed the most appropriate media to make sense
of the heroic historical happenings which should have brought Berlin
back to its real or imagined past splendour.
Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) was able to capture the
buzz of the 1920s Weimar republic capital, its contradictions and its
sudden change into a modern city. Döblin achieved this through
innovative literary techniques like montage, cut up, and
experimentations with the language of other media (advertisement, radio,
popular song, cinema). Something similar was expected in the 1990s
from someone, from anyone. Günter Grass made a step forward but
failed; Ein Weites Feld (1995) is remembered nowadays mostly because
of a bizarre cover of the magazine Der Spiegel (34/1995), where the
literary critic Reich-Ranicki is portrayed industriously tearing the book
in two.
It seems that literature, as a cultural practice, was already aware of its
dethronement; it suddenly stopped being considered the medium that
makes sense of the city. In the 1990s, private actors (private investors,
real estate speculators, multinational companies…) experimenting with
new neoliberal narratives about cities, became predominant. Eventful
culture became increasingly something to be commodified in the name
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
of a new economy and, within this process literature became less
important than before. The literary works, set and written in Berlin in the
1990s, reveal the difficulties of relating oneself with the city, with its
new mediated images and with its new postmodern myths. The
palimpsests became a means to express these doubts, fears, and
disillusionments, as evidenced lucidly in this passage from the novel Die
Schattenboxerin, published by Inka Parei in 1999:
On certain days, I walk through the city where I was born like a stranger,
for example lately, as I entered the Friedrichstrasse station. I am looking
for an S-Bahn, which will take me to Bornholmer Strasse and I am
unable, to read a sign or to find the exit, among the architectonical
eviscerations and patches, spread out of two mutually excluding social
systems. I am caught in a jungle of symbols and texts, whose meanings
are too outdated or too pristine. They refer to parts of the buildings, that
don’t exist anymore, like the Intershop sign, massive and thrown at the
same time, or that are not yet available, like the sticker for the lift, which
leads me to an open excavation, precariously delimited by the white and
red striped ribbon of the construction sites. After a long wandering, I
leave the place, tired of tiles, planking and escalators that don’t match
with each other7.
This short quote reveals the double articulation of the palimpsest. First,
as a literary document about Berlin, it portrays, reproduces, represents,
mediates the city and therefore constitutes another layer in the literary
palimpsest of the city. Walter Benjamin was the first intellectual aware
of this textual operation. His Arcade Project (Passagenwerk, written
between 1927 and 1940) shows that the city can be approached as a
palimpsest of literary quotes to be collected in the library. The library
7
Inka Parei, Die Schattenboxerin, Frankfurt/M, Fisher, 2001, p. 76 [transl. into English
by Giacomo Bottà]: An manchen Tagen laufe ich durch die Stadt, in der ich geboren bin,
wie eine Fremde, zum Beispiel neulich, da gerate ich in den Bahnhof Friedrichstraβe.
Ich bin auf der Suche nach einer S-Bahn, die mich zur Bornholmer Straβe bringt, und
unfähig, inmitten aufgerissener und wieder zusammengeflickter Architektur, die sich
gegenseitig ausschlieβenden Gesellschaftssystemen entsprungen ist, ein Schild zu lesen
oder den Ausgang zu finden. Ich bin gefangen in einem Dschungel aus Symbolen und
Beschriftungen, deren Botschaft verfrüht oder veraltet sind. Sie beziehen sich auf
Gebäudeteile, die nicht mehr existieren, wie der aufdringlich zackige und gleichzeitig
gequetscht wirkende Schriftzug Intershop. Oder auf solche, die noch nicht vorhanden
sind, wie der Aufkleber mit dem Fahrstuhl, der mich zu einem offenen Schacht führt,
notdürftig abgeriegelt mit rotweiβ gestreiftem Baustellenplastikband. Nach langem
Irrlauf verlasse ich den Ort, aufgerieben an zueinander unpassenden Kachel-, Bodenund Rolltreppenarten.
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
with its rows of shelves, full of books to be examined, can act as if it
were the city itself8.
Second, this quote is a representation of a classic architectonical Berlin
palimpsest. The city that used to be two cities had to be surgically
reunited. In the 1990s, communication, energy, waste, electricity and
traffic lines, street signs, and icons had to be made conform again
throughout the city. This urban face-lifting caused a sort of time/space
annihilation, here beautifully described with the metaphor of a « jungle
of symbols and texts, whose meanings are too outdated or too pristine ».
While an outdated urban text was being erased and a pristine one was
being written atop, both old and new meanings remained suspended,
trapped behind appearing and disappearing signifiers. The resulting
sense of estrangement in one’s own city, a feeling longed for by urban
intellectuals from flâneurs to situationists, had bitter/negative undertones
for the normal citizens. Writers in the 1990s used palimpsests as cultural
signifiers of precarious urban existences more than as engines for formal
literary experiments.
3.
Landscape: Palimpsest and Architecture
If literature presented palimpsests in a minimalistic way, architecture has
become the language to deliberately erase, preserve, rewrite,
communicate, transmit, hide, and restore memory in the name of the new
city power structures. The interests were and remain high, very high,
although reality has been grimmer than the political expectations were
dreaming of. The city bankruptcy in 2007 was estimated at sixty million
Euros. Nonetheless, as Goebel notes:
If German national identity after reunification is notoriously inseparable
from intricate connections among the post-industrial economy, political
power, and cultural memory, then the new Berlin's architecture of
citation and allusive reconstruction can be an important hermeneutic
vehicle for adding to our understanding of these issues. Perhaps, then,
returning to the synchronicity of the (seemingly) nonsynchronous is the
most appropriate mode of historical self-reflection in the new Berlin9.
8
See: Karl Schlögel, Leggere il tempo nello spazio. Saggi di storia e geopolitica (Im
Raume lesen wir Zeit. Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik), Milano, Bruno
Mondadori, 2009, p. 55-63.
9
Rolf J. Goebel, Berlin's Architectural Citations: Reconstruction, Simulation, and the
Problem of Historical Authenticity, in PMLA, 118: 5, Oct. 2003, p. 1288.
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
In this article, Goebel describes Berlin’s architectural search for
authenticity, as an elusive use of medial simulation and historical
citations. These uses are recollected both in official institutional
buildings (the Reichstag, the destruction of the Palast der Republik and
the reconstruction of the Schloβ façade) and in commercial experiments
(Postdamer Platz, Hotel Adlon and the Friedrichstadt-Passagen).
Projects glorifying contemporary globalized economy, restorations of
long forgotten but highly symbolical buildings, destruction or surgical
removal of socialist icons went hand in hand creating an indecipherable
palimpsest composed of a multitude of layers pointing at the city
complex past, present and future.
For instance, the Potsdamer Platz presents a very fascinating example of
an architectonical palimpsest. Its visit nowadays constitutes a nonexperience: tourists mostly notice a simple mall in a semi NorthAmerican fashion, where it is possible to buy anything from a lava-lamp
to an expensive high-tech music diffusion system. The big multinational
concerns, which made the construction of the square possible, name the
three high-rises, defining the skyline of the square, but are otherwise
invisible, just like new capitalism is expected to be. Only by digging
behind its postmodern surface, are we able discover the poignancy of
Potsi as an architectonical palimpsest. Potsdamer Platz was in fact the
busiest node of Weimar Republic’s Berlin; different transportation
systems (train, metro, tram, bus) crossed over on the square on in close
proximity to it. Being one of the gates to access the centre of the city, it
was loaded with hotels, bars, cabarets, cinemas and theatres. Electric
light filled the square nightly with advertisements fuelling desire and
slogans promising the extraordinary.
Under National Socialism the square lost much of its appeal. In fact, for
the Nazi ideology, it represented the nest of all evils: Americanisation,
Semitic degenerate culture, cosmopolitanism and urbanity in their most
hysterical expressions. Its function, in the short-lived Nazi experience,
was restricted to the functional purpose of central transportation junction
and therefore it was heavily bombed. Throughout a good portion of
second half of the XX century, due to its being in close proximity to the
Wall, it became a wasteland, partially taken over by nature.
Elkins and Hofmeister (1988) describe the condition of the western part
of the square in the 1980s, in these interesting terms:
The section of the Wall fringe from the Potsdamer Platz (once the
bustling ‘Piccadilly Circus’ of Berlin and now within the Berlin Wall
system of obstacles) to the southern Friedrichstrasse is an extraordinary
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
spectacle. One block near the Potsdamer Platz is reserved for the training
of guard dogs, another is the permanent headquarters of a circus, yet
another muddy area is the scene of a regular Saturday market; to some
extent this land on the approaches to the former Potsdam Station has
remained unoccupied because, until recently, it has belonged to the
Deutsche Reichsbahn, which is based in East Berlin10.
Nearly immediate is the connection with some scenes of Wings of Desire
(Der Himmel über Berlin, 1987) by Wim Wenders, who adopts the
former square for some of the film’s most estranging sequences. Its
eastern part was not different, although there were no traces of
entrepreneurial spirit. As Sarah Kirsch (1982) puts it in one of her poem,
the square could have been as well a Naturschutzgebiet (natural reserve
area):
[…]
Metropolitan rabbits
hop to their delight on Potsdamer Platz
Looking at this meadow
How can I believe what my grandfather recounted
Here was the very centre of the world
when in his youth with his Adler
he was driving a beautiful girl
[…]11
In 1990, after a few months during which it was used as a Mercedes
dealership run by Polish immigrants, the square was sold to the three big
concerns. They turned a laborious real-estate operation into a huge urban
spectacle, which run for almost 10 years. The construction site was
immediately labelled the biggest in Europe. Deep excavations and
certain elements of the future skyline were kept illuminated, for the
delight of the dancing crowd, exiting the surrounding illegal techno
clubs in the early hours. The info-box, a red square shaped construction,
inspired by the containers where the Turkish and Polish construction
workers were living, gave out 3D reconstructions, large amounts of data
and futuristic descriptions about the finished project. Again,
10
T. H. Elkins and B. Hofmeister, Berlin. The spatial structure of a divided city, London
and New York, Methuen, 1988, p. 179–180.
11
Sarah Kirsch, « Naturschutzgebiet », in: Michael Speier (ed.), Berlin, mit deinen
frechen Feuern: 100 Berlin-Gedichte, Frankfurt, Reclam, 1997, p. 36. Transl. by G.
Bottà.
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
programmatic urban palimpsests abounded: a new cafe within the Sony
Centre complex was named Josty, just like the legendary artists meeting
place, standing on the square in the roaring 1920s. Portions of the Grand
Hotel Esplanade (destroyed during WWII) are casted into the café (the
former Frühstückssaal, Breakfast room) or were moved through a
complex hydraulic system to a different location and put under glass (the
Kaisersaal, Emperor’s Hall)12.
Interestingly, in 1999 the newly reformed West-Berlin industrial band
Einstürzende Neubauten, produced song called « Die Befindlichkeit des
Landes » (on the album Silence is Sexy). In the song’s lyrics, they take a
polemic stance towards « the new temples », nothing more than «
material for the next layer » and refer to what the urban palimpsest is
hiding: the « secret net of bunkers », where Adolf Hitler committed
suicide, and which are still hidden in close proximity to the square.
4.
Soundscape: Palimpsest and Music
The applicability of the palimpsest metaphor to non-visual or non-textual
artefacts has been deeply ignored by the cultural work on Berlin.
Nonetheless, cities are also noisy, smelly13, rough and angular places.
Urban soundscapes are deeply layered and connections between specific
genres of music and certain places certainly influence our own memory
of the latter. It is nearly impossible not to connect fado to Lisbon, tango
to Buenos Aires or waltz to Vienna14. These particular genres are part of
the sounding / written palimpsest of these cities together with the noises
of trams, voices of people, church bells, muezzins, fire alarms etc.
How then to identify then the sounds, which have been erased from a
city? It is possible for instance to refer to the « voice ». The term has
been widely used, in particular when referring to contemporary
12
Rolf J. Goebel, Berlin's Architectural Citations: Reconstruction, Simulation, and the
Problem of Historical Authenticity, in: PMLA, 118: 5, Oct. 2003, p. 1276.
13
In this article I won’t refer to the chances of articulating a palimpsest of smells,
although I find the idea particularly intriguing, especially in reference to its street food
(Curry-Wurst, Döner Kebap, China-Pfanne, Vietnamese food…) or to obsolete forms of
heating (coal in some not-yet renovated buildings of Prenzlauer Berg and
Friedrichshain).
14
For a more detailed account on the relation between popular music and the city see:
Giacomo Bottà, « And They’re Sitting on Thousands of Bodies! Popular Music, City and
Media », in Frank Eckhardt and Louise Nyström, Culture and the City, Berlin, Berliner
Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2009, p. 43–58.
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
multiculturalism in cities. The voices of certain ethnic groups seem to be
stronger than others, to have a deeper impact in the representation of
certain cities. A good portion of Berlin population has spoken Turkish
for about sixty years, but rarely do we find this voice used in connection
to the German capital. The already quoted band Einstürzende Neubauten
(collapsing buildings) has been working consistently throughout their
career with the construction of urban palimpsests of noise, since their
first LP Kollaps (1980). If we consider the aural memory of Berlin, we
cannot only refer to cabaret, the work of Kurt Weil or the contemporary
emphasis on techno music. Explosions, destructions, eviscerations are
rooted into the city aural memory as well. Einstürzende Neubauten make
systematic use of these sounds by performing with construction work
gear (such as pneumatic hammers and concrete mixers) along standard
music instruments and voice. Lirically, references to urban noises are
also abundant, such as in the case of « Steh’ auf Berlin » (from the
album Kollaps, 1980):
Stand up/Lie down / Burnt earth / I stand on virii / I stand on chemistry /
Stand up / Fall apart / Collapse / Explode in the air / War between cars / I
stand on fire / I stand on smoke / I stand on noise / I stand on rocks / I
won't pull you out / I stand on decay / I stand on disease / I stand on
decline / I stand on end / I stand on closure / I stand on out / I stand on
hell / I stand up / I stand on decline / I stand on end / on end / on end / on
stop / I stand on intoxication / I stand on…15
These lyrics emphasize the connection to Berlin (starting from the title
of the song) and contribute to anchoring and justifying certain sounds
and their layering into the city. Their cultural operation consists in
recuperating the forgotten, unheard, or removed sounds, which made
Berlin what it is nowadays.
15
Einstürzende Neubauten « Steh’ Auf Berlin », Kollaps, 1980. Transl. by G. Bottà. The
sentence « Ich steh’ auf » could mean both « I stand on » and « I like ». Original lyrics
available at: www.neubauten.org/?q=kollaps (last accessed 16.12.2010:
Aufstehn/Hinlegen / Verbrannte Erde / Ich steh auf Viren / Ich steh auf Chemie /
Aufstehn / Abstürzen / Einstürzen / In die Luft sprengen / Krieg unter Autos / Ich steh auf
Feuer / Ich steh auf Rauch / Ich steh auf Krach / Ich steh auf Steine / Ich hol dich nicht
raus / Ich steh auf Zerfall / Ich steh auf Krankheit / Ich steh auf Niedergang / Ich steh auf
Ende / Ich steh auf Schluß / Ich steh auf Aus / Ich steh auf Hölle / Ich steh auf / Ich steh
auf Niedergang / Ich steh auf Ende / auf Ende / auf Ende / auf Schluss / Ich steh auf
Rausch / Ich steh auf…
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
5.
Timescape: Palimpsest and Tourism
Tourism changed enormously in the 1990s. Tourism researchers put their
emphasis on the increased diversification of it and to the rising attention
towards authenticity and sustainability. In addition, the individualized
experience of a place is considered more than a mere visit.
Within this framework, a trip to Berlin is increasingly connected to the
experience of a vibrant authentic place, where the layers of history
should be looked for, discovered, recollected, or recognized. Part of the
architectonical facelift that the city underwent, is connected to tourism
and to the chances offered by this kind of city consumption.
Operations aimed at letting the tourists/citizens play with the city
palimpsests are continuously being produced. An outstanding example
within these strategies of playfulness is the timescope, a product
developed by ART+COM in 2005. Timescope is a traditional heavy-duty
telescope, coin-operated, as found in many cities around the world (for
instance in Paris, on the Eiffel Tower), with an important twist. As stated
on the website of the company:
The basic idea of the ‘timescope’ is a virtual journey in time via
telescope. The device contains additional controls that enable viewers to
view a place in the past or future time through its eyepiece. The
‘timescope’ can be used for a wide range of purposes: it can be set up for
use with tourist sites such as the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate or the
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church for example, giving visitors the
chance to get a closer view of how these locations looked in the past. The
‘timescope’ can also be used for large-scale building projects. In such
cases it can be used not only to show how a building project has
progressed, but also to show how a building will look in the future.
Additionally, it can be used at geological interesting sites, enabling
viewers to perceive natural history visually. ‘timescope’ is a product
development of ART+COM16.
The timescope has to my knowledge not been adopted in Berlin;
nonetheless it represents a significant example of how to implement the
palimpsest in an innovative and market-oriented way. In its descriptions
there are references to its possible use in the case of Berlin landmarks,
16 16
From the « Detailed Project Description », available at:
http://www.artcom.de/index.php?lang=en&option=com_acprojects&id=38&page=6 (last
accessed: )
Bottà, G. (2012): “Berlin as Urban Palimpsest”. In: Villes
invisibles et écritures de la modernité, Ed. Choné, Aurelie
(Mulhouse: Ôrizons), pp. 43-54.
but also in reference to construction sites and building projects (along
sites of geological interests).
Similar experiments are available also in the increasing number of
museums about the city, where different simulacra, reconstructions and
simulations are used to convey to the visitor the idea of a journey
through the site-overlapping memories of the city.
6.
Conclusions
In this chapter I abused the suffix –scape, which in English always refers
to the spatial dimension of something. By describing text-, land-, sound-,
and time-scapes I intended to reveal how palimpsests can be recollected
in written texts, sounds, material expressions (buildings) and
technological artefacts, just like in many other urban expressions.
The historian Karl Schlögel observes that in space we are able to read
time17. This is what I tried to do when analysing the way different time
layers ‘deposed’ themselves on certain specific spots of Berlin.
Nonetheless, time doesn’t leave a neat stack of clearly sequenced layers;
rather, it ‘flows’ and therefore also the opposite statement is true: in time
we read and make sense of space. Looking at a city trough time and
understanding the memory flow on some of its expressions enables us to
fully comprehend the operations of erasing and re-writing, which define
urban palimpsests.
Examining a palimpsest should always be an action which accounts for
different streams moving through it in different directions, pointing
artificially or naturally to diverse historical constellations.
The German capital offers its own past in an array of ways, rarely
possible for other cities and is therefore a perfect instrument to confront
oneself with the invisible city.
17
Karl Schlögel, Leggere il tempo nello spazio. Saggi di storia e geopolitica [Im Raume
lesen wir Zeit. Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik, 2003], Milano, Bruno
Mondadori, 2009, transl. by Lisa Scarpa and Roberta Gado Wiener.