Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin

Their task may prove difficult. None of the torturers who worked at Hohenschönhausen Prison has been brought to justice; indeed one former prisoner recently came across his erstwhile tormenter while trying to buy an insurance policy in western Berlin. In a 1994 opinion poll 57 per cent of former East Germans advocated closing the Stasi files.71 At the end of 1997 the federal police unit or Zerv, which is made up of 270 detectives charged with investigating Stasi crimes, shut down. On 1 January 1998 the statute of limitations comes into force, making it impossible to bring prosecutions for any offence except murder committed in the old East Germany. Manfred Kittlaus, Zeiv’s chief, has said that after that date ‘The majority of human rights violations will be beyond the law. The perpetrators will soon be free to walk down Unter den Linden with impunity.’72 Many decent eastern Germans who resisted the regime felt betrayed when such brilliant self – publicists as Markus Wolf, who ruined innocent lives by recruiting women as ‘honey trap spies’, or Erich Mielke, who ordered the torture of civilians for having ‘dangerous’ religious beliefs, or Margot Honecker, who had the babies of politically ‘dubious’ parents stolen and given to good military couples, or Erich Honecker, who built the Wall, were all allowed to go free. Many believed that these people should have been brought to justice; once again, they felt, the spirit of the law in Germany had been trampled by the letter of the law. (It was some consolation that on 25 August 1997 Erich Honecker’s successor, Egon Krenz, was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment.) One way to integrate those who suffered under the Communist regime is to continue to fight the siren voices of those trying to rewrite its history, while supporting people like Gauck who reveal the truth about the oppressive nature of East Germany.73

It is not surprising that the GDR was a grim place. How could it be otherwise, given that it was the product of the two most evil dictatorships in European history: the Third Reich and Stalin’s Soviet Union. It was a vassal of the Soviet Union, but it also retained many of the worst features of the previous regime. The crimes committed by the GDR were not remotely of the same magnitude as those committed by the Nazis, but the two regimes were joined by history and there were frightening continuities between them, not least that they employed similar propaganda methods and block warden systems to police entire districts of Berlin.74 Despite, or rather because of the Nazi legacy East Germans learned virtually nothing about the Third Reich; hence they feel no responsibility for it, and are for the most part still unaware of the links between Nazism and the regime under which they lived. This history should be documented in the new capital city, for understanding the Nazi period is one of the keys to understanding what happened in East Berlin under the GDR. But the need to face the Nazi past goes much deeper than that. The legacy of the years 1933 to 1945 still presents enormous problems for Berlin as a whole, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the way in which its citizens face the past will help to shape both the future of the capital and the very identity of the new Germany. And the rest of the world will be watching.

In an article written in July 1997 the British historian Andrew Roberts commented that in the preceding week he had come across a number of references both to Nazi Germany and the Second World War: the Swiss Bankers Association had published a list of accounts thought to contain gold belonging to Nazi victims; there were calls for Monaco and the Vatican to ‘come clean about the extent of their wartime financial relations with the Nazis’; there was a ‘row at Harvard over whether the new chair in Holocaust studies should be filled by Daniel Goldhagen, the controversial author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners; while in Germany Volker Rühe swore to prosecute the soldiers of the 571 Mountain Combat Battalion who ‘made a video nasty of explicit viciousness and depravity during training which disgusted many Germans and evoked memories of war-time atrocities’; the Nuremberg city council was criticized for giving an honorary citizenship to Karl Diehl, aged ninety, whose company had used slave labour to build concentration camps and produce armaments in the war; and the sacking of Amnon Barzel, the Israeli curator of Berlin’s Jewish Museum, was denounced by the board of Berlin’s Jewish community as ‘bearing a tragic comparison with the dark times between 1933 and 1938’. As Roberts put it, ‘For those who thought that the celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of VE-Day somehow might have drawn a line under the Second World War, the events of last week must have been a grave disappointment. They prove how the scars of Hitler’s war are far from healed, and that the echoes of 1939–45 will stay with us long after the last veteran has gone off to join his comrades.’ Roberts was right – the Second World War is not going to go away.75

In purely physical terms it is impossible to escape the evidence of Nazism in Berlin, the more so now that the Wall has been removed, exposing and drawing attention to artefacts long hidden or forgotten. Reminders of this history are everywhere: in the tunnels which planners must take account of when developing new buildings; in the segments of Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry which, contrary to popular belief, was not completely destroyed and is still in use; in the huge column of concrete hidden behind a few scrubby bushes, all that is left of Speer’s attempt to test the foundations of the huge dome for Germania; in the East – West Axis, now the Strasse des 17 Juni, still lit by Speer’s prominent streetlamps. The reconstruction of Berlin is throwing up long-lost reminders of the conflict: on 15 September 1994 one of 15,000 war-time bombs exploded at a construction site killing three people and blowing a huge hole in the side of a building; the remains of Goebbels’ bunker and Hitler’s Chancellery bunker have been exposed, and construction workers frequently come across the skeletons of those who died in the Battle for Berlin.76 This is one German city in which the Aufarbeitung der Geschichte, the working through of history, cannot be put aside. Questions about how to ‘come to terms with’ the Nazi past permeate virtually every aspect of the city’s new role, including its suitability as the new German capital.

The history of Nazi criminality has been a source of controversy in Germany since 1945. Attempts to address the involvement of ordinary Germans in the form of the Allied Fragebogen – the de-Nazification procedure – or in the Nuremberg Trials were quickly forgotten after the war as most Germans tried to drew a veil over their past in the Stunde Null or Zero Hour of 1945. The advent of the Cold War was a boon to all those keen to hide their involvement in the old regime; moreover, both the western Allies and the Soviets made extensive use of NSDAP members in the rebuilding of their respective Germanys. Historiography was written to reflect the new Cold War world. Russia’s captive East Germans were taught a highly fictitious version of history which included the bizarre notion that all Hitlerfascisten had moved to the west in 1945 and that all those who remained were innocent of any involvement in the Third Reich. West Germans did produce some interesting work, particularly Friedrich Meinecke’s Die deutsche Katastrophe, which hinted at the historical roots of Nazism, but most popular histories encouraged the view that the entire period had been an aberration during which the nation had been led to ruin by the demonic Hitler – a view which conveniently allowed most people to forget their own support of the regime. Most West Germans looked to the future and poured their energy into the Wirtschaftswunder – the economic miracle. The East Germans continued to peddle their ludicrous version of history right up until 1989. But this was not possible in the west.

The world of the 1950s was preoccupied with the Cold War and there was little discussion of Nazi crime in general and the mass murder of European Jews in particular; this was true even in Israel, where many survivors felt unable to talk about their experiences. The situation began to change in the 1960s, particularly after the Adolf Eichmann trial in 1961. Eichmann was the SS officer who had headed the Jewish Evacuation Department of the Gestapo; amongst many other things he had taken personal charge of transports from Moravia and had even run Auschwitz for a short time in order to learn about the ‘problems’ of the operation first hand. The trial was immaculately conducted in Israel by the Chief Prosecutor, Gideon Hausner, and it was televised. Eichmann did not deny his role in the Holocaust; indeed he could be seen talking with indifference – even pride – about the fact that he had helped to kill millions of human beings. Although the Eichmann trial aroused interest amongst people in the rest of the world most Germans ignored it and continued to try to ‘put the past behind them’.77 Few German universities offered courses on twentieth-century history and none taught about the Nazi period; parents refused to discuss the Second World War with their children, and it seemed that the past would remain firmly hidden away. West German scholars continued to carry out important research but few concentrated on Nazi crimes or on the Holocaust, preferring to debate various theories of totalitarianism or to study the leadership structure of the Third Reich or the military history of the war. The general public were first prompted to confront the most criminal aspects of their history not by schools or universities, but by the media. Above all, it was the screening of the American mini-series Holocaust in January 1979 – which coincided with yet another attempt by Germans to extend the statute of limitations for war crimes and crimes against humanity – which finally brought the horror of what had happened into people’s living rooms. History had not gone away after all.78

The film was a milestone in post-war West Germany because it took the study of the Holocaust out of the specialist academic realm and made it an issue of national debate. More research was carried out and some understanding developed as to how and why these crimes had been committed. It was ironic that it took a Hollywood film – and not a particularly good one – to provoke such a response, and there were problems with the approach.79 Rather than reflect upon its significance to all Germans, including themselves, many of the younger generation veered towards a blanket condemnation of all who had lived under National Socialism: most knew very little about the complexities of Nazi history and made little attempt to learn how and why the Nazis had come to power, or to find out what it had been like to live under a dictatorship, or to differentiate between, say, an SS camp commander and a young Wehrmacht soldier stationed in Norway. And, as few older Germans had actually been directly engaged in the act of killing Jews, they in turn dismissed these shrill accusations of ‘collective guilt’ as ill-informed and irrelevant, ignoring their own often substantial contributions to the maintenance of the criminal regime. Many who had lived through the war years still failed to see that even if they had not actually carried out the first Zyklon-B test in Auschwitz or experimented on the bodies of camp prisoners, they had helped to maintain the system which had made these crimes possible.

The study of the Holocaust and the Nazi period continued in West Germany during the late 1970s and early 1980s and a great deal of original research was carried out. West Germany became unique in its attempts to confront its history and to atone for its crimes, and it won respect in the international community.80 Nevertheless, debates over how to approach this history became increasingly politicized and were bound up with questions about German national identity. Very generally, those on the left tended to argue that the Holocaust was unique, that it could never be put into a historical context, while more conservative historians argued that the crimes of other nations were also terrible and that Germans must stop thinking that they were uniquely evil so that they could begin to build a normal nation. The debate intensified in the 1980s in response to the Tendenzwende, a shift to the right represented by Helmut Kohl’s electoral success. Kohl provoked controversy through his ill-judged 1985 visit with President Reagan to the Bitburg cemetery, where Waffen-SS men were buried. This in turn fuelled the Historikerstreit – the historians’ debate – which focused on how Germans should approach the Nazi past. This debate was sparked off by an article published in the Frankfurter allgemeine Zeitung by Ernst Nolte in June 1986 in which he argued that the mass murder of the Jews should be put into a broader historical context and that the Final Solution had perhaps been an ‘asiatic deed’ modelled on Bolshevik crimes to which the Nazis had added only the technology of gassing.81 The article was hastily rebutted by Jürgen Habermas in Die Zeit, and the exchange set off a flurry of argument and counter-argument about whether Nazi crimes were unique or whether they were comparable to other national atrocities, in particular the Stalinist Terror. The debate produced little new research and quickly degenerated into bitter personal attacks between rival groups, prompting Gordon Craig to dub it ‘the war of the historians’.82 The arguments were tempered somewhat by Richard von Weizsäcker’s moving and courageous speech as Federal President on the fortieth anniversary of the German surrender in 1945. Weizsäcker renounced the notion of ‘collective guilt’ but acknowledged the ‘historical consequences’ of the Third Reich and maintained that Germans could not ‘come to terms with the past’ because that implied ignoring the moral burdens of history. Indeed, he argued, only by facing and accepting the past could Germans look forward to any credible future.83

When I worked in both East and West Berlin in the 1980s – in particular during the 750th Anniversary celebrations in 1987 – I was always struck by the extraordinary contrast between West Berlin, with its vast range of debate and discussion, and the GDR, where nobody was permitted to deviate from the official line. The contrast alone was a powerful argument in favour of the West German system, and of the attempt to be open about the past. Nevertheless, although discussion about Nazi crimes had become widespread amongst historians and journalists and writers and film makers, there were many ordinary people who resented it. The members of the ‘Active Museum’ who created the first exhibition at the former Gestapo headquarters did so in the face of unpleasant protests from members of the general public; those who put up signs marking infamous landmarks such as the site of Freisler’s People’s Court had to repair them when they were repeatedly knocked down; members of the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst who displayed and discussed Nazi art at the Inszenierung der Macht exhibition carried on in spite of the death threats they received for ‘stirring up the past’.84

The controversies about how to come to terms with this history after reunification remain unresolved, but although interest was still strong amongst the educated elite it had become clear by the 1990s that many ordinary people were tired of seeing their nation in terms of this terrible history and wished to look to the future. Some claimed that too much attention was being paid to the Holocaust, and that it was time to draw a line under the past. Young West Germans born after the war may have felt remorse at what their forefathers had done but many now echoed Helmut Kohl’s claim that the ‘grace of late birth’ absolved them of guilt. The desire to draw a line was reflected in a Der Spiegel survey of January 1992 commemorating the Wannsee Conference. Two-thirds of Germans stated that they wanted less discussion about the persecution of the Jews. Far more worrying, however, was the result which showed that 32 per cent of those polled believed that the Jews were themselves partly to blame for being ‘hated and persecuted’.85

There is another reworking of the Faust legend which takes place in the city of Berlin. This one was written in 1936 by Thomas Mann’s son Klaus, who committed suicide in Cannes in 1949. It is entitled Mephisto – Roman einer Karriere, and was made into the extraordinary film Mephisto by István Szabó in 1981.86 A true story, it recounts the career of Mann’s brother-in-law, the actor Gustav Gründgens, who went to Berlin in 1928 and remained until 1945, becoming the head of the Deutsches Theater and then the Staatliches Schauspielhaus under the Nazis. During those years he became one of the best-known actors in Germany. He was most famous for his production of Goethe’s Faust, and for his own performances in the role of Mephistopheles.

Klaus Mann’s story is also a metaphor for Berlin, and for all the people who sold their souls for the fame and fortune, security and success afforded by the new regime. Mann mocks the poet Gottfried Benn – ‘Pelz’ – and André Germain – ‘Pierre Larue’ – who remained in Berlin to further their careers, but he reserves his venom for the main character, Gustav Gründgens – ‘Hendrik Höfgen’. Like Gründgens, Höfgen is initially a supporter of left-wing experimental productions but his attempt to found a workers’ theatre founders and he gradually finds an audience amongst the new Nazi elite. Slowly, steadily, they court him, and his blinding ego coupled with his burning hunger for success at any price make him useful to them. It is they who arrange for ever more productions and new directorships, rewarding him with even greater honours and power. But each time he is asked to do something in return. Höfgen is expected to rid the theatre of ‘undesirable elements’, or to abandon his black mistress, or to divorce his wife now living in exile, or to make propaganda speeches extolling the virtues of the ‘new German Kultur’. One evening, shortly after Höfgen has asked ‘the general’ if one of his friends might be spared, he is taken to the great Olympic stadium. The general barks an order. Höfgen is pushed on to the field and the general watches as glaring white spotlights are turned on him. Höfgen tries to hide but the intense lights follow him; he races to the centre of the vast arena but he cannot escape; he turns and tries to shield his eyes, but the piercing glare is too bright. Finally, in despair, he looks up and whispers: ‘What do they want from me? I am only an actor.’

Klaus Mann’s Mephisto is the story of the seductive power of evil. His Faust does not sign a dramatic pact with the Devil but relinquishes his soul slowly, gradually, almost imperceptibly. Like so many Berliners caught in the Nazi net Höfgen is not an inherently evil man – he is talented, hard working, even loyal up to a point. But he wants to be better off, he longs for power and security and influence. Many of those who worked for the Nazis were, like Höfgen, ordinary people who were just ‘doing their job’, just signing the paper or stamping the file, part of a long, efficient but often anonymous chain of command in which those German traits – order and discipline and efficiency – so often seen as virtues became its worst vices. Nazism was made up not only of the Himmlers and Heydrichs, the SS camp guards and the Einsatzgruppen commanders; it also functioned because of those minute acts of betrayal, those imperceptible moments of cowardice – looking the other way when someone was being beaten, refusing to enter a shop daubed with the Star of David. The warning of Mephisto is that a person makes his moral choice much earlier than he thinks – it is already too late when a single person has been hounded out of his office for being of the ‘wrong race’; it is already too late if someone is kicked to death in a cellar because he holds political views which do not conform with those of ‘the people’; it is already too late if a child is removed from the classroom for being Jewish, or if someone is turned in and perhaps executed for listening to an ‘enemy’ broadcast. Berliners continued down this road between 1933 and 1945, carrying on doggedly until the city lay in ruins around them and millions of innocent people had been murdered.

Berlin is itself a testimony to the insidious nature of evil; a warning of the power of Mephisto. And the evil was everywhere in Berlin between 1933 and 1945. How many people realize that in 1943 there were over fifty key Gestapo and SS offices in the city centre, not to mention the hundreds of other government and related offices? How many have walked past number 98/99 Wilmersdorfer Strasse and realized that it was at one time the central SS Personnel Office; or past Unter den Eichen 126–135, which was the site of the SS Economic and Administration Office; or past the Hedemannstrasse 24, which was the SS Race and Settlement Office, or the Knesebeckstrasse 43, which housed the Office of the SS-Reichdoctors? How many people have passed Meinekestrasse 10, once the SS Gruppe IVB, responsible for the political control of churches, sects and Jews, or the Kurfürstenstrasse 115/116, once the site of Referat IVB4 – better known as Adolf Eichmann’s division of Judenangelegenheiten (Jewish Affairs)? How many have walked over the former Schlossstrasse 1, now at the centre of the palace debate, knowing that they are on the site of the central SS training school? How many shoppers have strolled down the bustling Kurfürstendamm past numbers 140–143 and realized that it once housed a warren of offices dealing with everything from ‘saboteurs’ in the occupied territories to the protection of German Volkstum?87

Attempts to commemorate this aspect of Berlin history have often reflected contemporary politics. West Berlin’s first monument to the Second World War was created in 1952 at the former Plötzensee Prison. It was here that 2,500 people, mainly German nationals (including many resistance fighters involved in the 1944 plot), were hanged or guillotined, and the site was dedicated to all victims of Fascism.88 A short time later a memorial was erected at the Bendlerblock, where Stauffenberg was shot after the failed 1944 assassination attempt. It was dedicated to the German resistance.89 These monuments were important, but the choice of location and the choice of ‘victim’ echoed the post-war West German tendency to concentrate on the fate of the ‘good’ Germans – the 1944 plotters – to the exclusion of others. This choice of ‘victim’ was mirrored in East Berlin in the re-dedication of Schinkel’s Neue Wache with an eternal flame in memory of the ‘victims of Fascism’, which in East German iconography meant their largely fictitious ‘Communist resistance fighters’. It did not mention victims in Poland, Russia, the Netherlands or Greece; nor did it mention the gypsies or the Jews.

The Neue Wache has already served as the Kaiser’s guardhouse, as a war memorial for the Weimar Republic, as a memorial for the Nazis and as a shrine for East Germans guarded until 1989 by goose-stepping soldiers. In 1993 it was renamed the ‘Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny’ and the long inscription now commemorates resistance fighters, homosexuals, Jews, gypsies, soldiers who fell on the front, people killed in the bombing raids – indeed all those who were victims of war and terror. It reflects Helmut Kohl’s view that there is a ‘community of victims’, all of whom should be remembered together.

It is right for Germans to have a place to mourn all those who died tragically during the Second World War; however, the idea of a ‘community of victims’ glosses over one very important aspect of the Nazi past: it implies that a young man who was forced into the army against his will and then died on the front can be compared to a young man killed in Auschwitz, or that a Berlinerin who met her death in a bombing raid can be compared to a young Russian woman burned to death in a barn in 1942. There is a difference between those who were victims of the ‘horrors of war’ and those who were specifically targeted, hunted down and murdered by the Nazis themselves – not only victims of war, but victims of the Germans as well.