KARL MARX ALLEE

"The socialist response to West Berlin's development is great kitsch called The Stalin Avenue. An overwhelming kitsch due to its size and unique lack of taste. A conglomeration of all the indigestible styles to measure up to Moscow's architecture. Stalin Avenue is a powerful prospect with residences in “the poor-wealthy” provincial style, huddled side by side, haunted by countless tons of marble capitals decorated with flowers, animals, and stone masks and overpowered by portals guarded by fake statues from reinforced concrete.

The criterion of those who invented this freak, is extremely simple. Hitler's great avenue was Unter den Linden. The great avenue of Socialism in Berlin – is a much larger, much wider, more unwieldy and much uglier – Stalin Avenue. Eleven thousand laborers live in the Stalin Avenue. There are restaurants, cinemas, cabarets and theaters and are accessible to all. Each of these shrines is a vivid taste of the worst taste: furniture upholstered in lilac velvet, green carpets with a golden trimming, and above all mirrors and marble everywhere, even in the bathrooms. No worker in the world lives better and for less money than in Stalin Avenue. But I know others than those favored eleven thousand, they are still huddled in attics. They believe and proclaim that for the price of the statues, marble, plush and mirrors the entire city could have been rebuild."

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "Berlin is nonsense" - part of a feature article in 1959 for "Cromos, Bogota (after the" Scandal of the century and other essays,” ed. Muza, Warszawa 2003

 

http://golm.rz.uni-potsdam.de/.../Pumpe/stalinallee.jpg

Is it not in the same taste that Tyrmand  wrote about Muranów? Getting off the U5 of the Berlin subway today at one of the three stations running at Karl-Marx-Allee, makes it difficult not to be jealous. Firstly because of the sight of archival black-and-white photographs of the street taken 60 years ago, which hang on the walls near the exit. Enlarged, carefully described, they show how the buildings looked in the construction process of these monumental works. As erstwhile Stalinallee's 1st of May parades marched, as the 17 June 1953, demonstrators clashed with police. After all, in Warsaw, even when leaving the subway station Arsenal (unless a station Muranow will be build)  something like that could be found, making it easier for non-motorized backpackers to gain orientation in the field. Archival photos of the Jewish Quarter, Warsaw Ghetto and New Muranów from the 40s and 50 would bring awareness to them telling where to go to the surface. At KMA bulletin boards with pictures stand outside as well, every few hundred meters. The buildings on Karl-Marx-Allee were taken under protection as landmarks back in communist DDR. In 1990 they began a systematic reconstruction, divided into stages. And very expensive one – thats why partly it was financed from a special program of modernization of social housing in which municipal authorities took action. 

 

Another wave of jealousy came at the sight of the buildings themselves: refurbished, washed, freshly polished stone, decorative facade tiles (this is because of these tiles in the DDR era buildings at the KMA were maliciously called "Stalin's bathrooms”). It remains a comprehensive renovation of the 90s. The German state has decided not to punish building Karl-Marx-Allee for the fact that it once was a showpiece example of Stalinist architecture, but deemed them as worthy monuments to a bygone era of concern, which today can act as a magnet for tourists. Somewhat worse conditions can be found in the courtyards - monumental buildings with scratched and unpainted facades. A similar surprise as in Gdansk, where right after the war they painted in pastel colors the fronts of the rebuild houses. The backs haunt with a dark gray colored plaster. But it still looks much better than the Andersa Avenue in Muranowska.

And the third crucial element proving that KMA “wins the event” with Andersa Avenue is that  the ground floors, where - like in Muranów – shops. Services, cafes were locates till this day stay in function and normal life goes on, unlike here. Andersa is not a museum. Shops selling, enameld pots, soap and a bit of everything, in addition, at high prices and all that behind through barred windows. In Berlin the restaurants enjoy the company of older residents of thet area, as well as students or tourists. Gossip, discussing the newspaper or just staring through the window, watching the street. In spring and summer, the cafes are compete for customers in their outside tables.

 

KMA (aka Stalinallee) building site. Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-20145-015, fot. Gunter Weiss, 30 June 1953

First the street was called Grosse Frankfurter Strasse. On 21 December 1949, at the 70th anniversary of Stalin's birth, authorities changed her name to Stalinallee. November 13, 1961, Karl Marx gave his name - the avenue was renamed Karl-Marx-Allee. Since after World War II was in East Berlin - on the border of two neighborhoods: Mitte and Friedrichshain, the buildings were to be a flagship project within the reconstruction of East Germany. In its development, as is the case of Muranów and Nowa Huta several phases have to be noticed.

Shortly after the war, the architect Hans Scharoun came up with the reorganization of urban space in Berlin, the so-called Kollektivplan. He proposed a rigorous division and decentralization of the city in the same spirit as representatives of the Polish avant-garde architecture of the pre-war "neighborhood unit”, immersed in greenery. The best field for the implementation of these ideas seemed a badly damaged part of the Friedrichshain neighborhood - where also in 1949 Scharoun's ideas were emboddied as gallery-corridor buildings(this type of buildings can be seen here and there in Muranów from Lacherts times) Karl-Marx-Allee 102-104 and 126 -128, designed by Ludmilla Herzenstein and Richard Paulicka. And that's all. Kollektivplan was rejected as too formal, elite and hinting "the decadence of the West." The corridor-gallery buildings were to be henceforth the two lonely islands amongst Socialist Realist architecture, demarcating the southern line of the new district. Because they did not fit into the rest of the buildings, they were covered with poplar trees.

 

The corridor-gallery building at KMA hidden by poplar trees.

The real beginning of what we today associate with Karl-Marx-Allee, the "Socialist Realism" or "national tradition of building" (Bautradition Nationale) has not appointed until 1951. Its implementation began methodically: firstly a delegation of Berlin's best architects went Moscow, Kiev, Volgograd (Stalingrad at the time) and St. Petersburg, to have a closer look at construction works of the Soviet Union. Then an architectural competition was put out to to design buildings for the Avenue. Egon Hartmann won it in 1951. When creating a zoning plan other projects from other architects as Richard Paulick, Hanns Hopp, Kurt and Karl Souradny Leuchte, were used as well. Contributions to the final shape of the plan were aslo made by the Moscow designers Alexander V. Vlasov, and Sergey E. Czernyczew, Vice-President of the Academy of Architecture. They designed buildings in style which alluded the Lomonosov University in Moscow and ... Warsaw's Palace of Culture and Science. Another well-known architect, Herman Henselmann, designed the 35-meter high Hochhaus an der Weberwiese (Marchlewskistrasse 25)near the Avenue, in which were 33 apartments on eight floors, designed for Volkspolizei employees, teachers and architektw. It was built in 141 days, and this poem was written abiut him:


It is about a growing giant made of brick in Berlin on the Spree, the Stalinallee. When the sundial at Alexanderplatz show 8 – another storey has grown. Hochhaus an der Weberwiese was to pave a new standard of living of the working class: the working people also deserved palaces. Above the entrance was a quote from Bertolt Brecht: “Peace prevails in our country / peace prevails in our city / let it be lived / by those who build it.” Architecturally it resembles buildings of conservative modernists from the 1920's, but Henselmann added some elements from German Classicist era from the  Karl Friedrich Schinkel school.

 

KMA (aka Stalinallee) building site. Photo: Bundesarchiv-Bild 183-20532-0011. Fot. Gunter Weiss, 25 July 1953.

The monumental size of the avenue (89 metrw wide, almost 2 km long) did not result only from a desire to improve traffic in the capital – it had to be wide enough to easily be able to fit the masses of people in commemorative parades. On both sides of her high buildings, in some places reaching up to 13 floors, in which the workers lived with their families. Their facades were decorated with elements alluding to the German Classicism (in accordance with the theory of "national form" of architecture), including traditional motifs of Berlin's Karl Friedrich Schinkel's works, but also  antiquity - Ionic and Doric columns, frescoes. Mockers however describes it as a "wedding cake". All of this was the opposite of another major architectural project, which started in the same time in Berlin West - where the view of progress made in the construction Stalinallee prompted the authorities to accelerate efforts in rebuilding the city from the devastation of war. Contrary to the K-M-A was West Berlin's Hansaviertel, implementation in the spirit of modernism in which 53 architects from 13 countries tokk part, including Walter Gropius, Alvar Aalto and Oscar Niemeyer. Simplifying the matter, we can say that both projects – K-M-A as well as Hansaviertel - illustrated the ideas of the political system prevailing in that part of the town. K-M-A was put into service alongside a great Sporthalle (1951) and Kosmos cinema, the most up-to-date in all of Eastern Germany, boasting of 1001 seats for the viewers. On the west side the Avenue is closed by two monumental, 13-story buildings Henselmann's design, somewhat reminiscent of the American Art-Deco architecture of the '30s. From the east, with subway station Frankfurter Tor - twin towers. The domes of the towers relate to the domes and Franzosicher Deutscher Dom (cathedrals at  Gendamenmarkt in Berlin). In the construction of K-M-A  Polish workers took part as well.

 

Polish workers at KMA (Stalinallee) building site, Fot.Bundesarchiv Bild 183-56161-0001, fot. Mhartsch, 12 June 1958 r.
ust as in Muranów or in Nowa Huta, the joyous period of building the KMA did not last long. In fact, only until the end of the 50s. Soon after that complaints began about the high costs of erecting monumental buildings. The “pastry”style gave way to projects of large slabs of concrete, surrounded by greenery. Such blocks, designed for approximately 14.5 thousand inhabitants, resulted in the proximal part of the Avenue near Alexanderplatz. It is here that in the final years of the NRD stands for officers were set to celebrate numerous state ceremonies. In the 1960s the Avenue was decorated with numerous postmodern style pawilonw like Cafe Moskau, Mokka-Milch-Eisbar and Kino International, in which were held major movie premieres with the participation of party officials. At that time K-M-A eclipsed under investments which flourished  near  Alexanderplatz.

 

Photo taken from the site: http://...germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/images/40008320%

The most important date in the history of the K-M-A is undoubtedly the 17 June 1953, when it became the backdrop for a strike - construction workers taking part in the construction of monumental buildings, who protested against the decisions to increase the productivity of labor standards. The strike shook the country, spreading to other districts of Berlin and the whole of the NRD. The protest was suppressed with the help of Russian tanks, in effect claimed the lives of at least 125 people. In 1961, people removed a huge statue of Stalin standing at number 70 from the former Stalinallee divided then into Frankfurter Allee and Karl-Marx-Allee,

K-M-A architecture today has the same amount of critics as it has supporters. Enthusiasts include many post modernistic architects - the influential American architect Philip Johnson described it with recognition as the example of "genuine urban planning on a grand scale." Aldo Rossi of Italy has called it "the last great street of Europe."

And here you can find the exact plan of the district, all the shops, cafes, apartments for rent, and more history (in Polish. German).