When World War II was over, many Ber­lin dis­tricts lay in ruins. One of the most dev­ast­ated neigh­bour­hoods was Tier­garten’s Hansavier­tel, where nine in ten build­ings were des­troyed. The upper class res­id­ences, the mag­ni­fi­cent homes of the pre-war Bohéme almost com­pletely van­ished from the face of earth. Many of the res­id­ents – an eclectic soci­ety with mem­bers such as Käthe Koll­witz, Kurt Tuchol­sky, Lenin, Rosa Lux­em­burg, Else Lasker-Schüler and many more fam­ous artists, writers politi­cians and so forth – had fled and sought asylum. Oth­ers had already been dead by the time the war was over. Thus a whole neigh­bour­hood was irre­triev­ably des­troyed, both socially and in terms of town planning.

At the time, Hansavier­tel provided an unique oppor­tun­ity for city plan­ners to rebuild a whole area from scratch. The ini­tial task was to loosen the devel­op­ment in the cent­ral parts of the city, to basic­ally decent­ral­ise it and make much room for green areas. But when Cold War began and Ber­lin was stuck in the middle of the con­flict, both the East and the West seized every oppor­tun­ity to show off their superi­or­ity in every aspect of pub­lic life here. After the Sowjets aban­doned the ini­tial plan set up by all occu­pa­tion forces and star­ted to build Friedrich­shain’s superb Karl-Marx-Allee along the lines of Moscow’s, Hansavier­tel prom­ised to be the ideal area for archi­tec­ton­ical countermeasures.

By the early fifties, the prop­er­ties had to be par­celled out afresh, and in 1953 an inter­na­tional com­pet­i­tion was arranged. The Inter­bau 57 (a part of a nation-wide series of archi­tec­tural exhib­i­tions) was brought into being and provided the suit­able con­text for devel­op­ment. Iconic archi­tects such as Wal­ter Gropius, Alvar Aalto, Arne Jac­ob­sen, Egon Eier­mann were invited to design and build the new Hansavier­tel by stand­ards and in the style of mod­ern archi­tec­ture. Con­ceived as a coun­cil hous­ing, dif­fer­ent types of build­ings were erec­ted: bat­ter­ies of tower blocks, rib­bon build­ings and, in addi­tion, a small vil­lage of single-family houses and two mod­ern­ist churches. Loosened with lav­ish green areas, the edi­fices were allowed to breath and stand for their own.

We took the oppor­tun­ity to take a walk in the neigh­bour­hood and open ourselves to its atmo­sphere. Sara, her vis­it­ing French friend Achraf and I spent an after­noon ambling along the vicin­ity, climb­ing the tower blocks and sneak­ing in every corner we’d pos­sibly find in order to get in touch with the stun­ning archi­tec­ture. “It doesn’t feel like Ber­lin”, Sara admit­ted when we sub­merged in the strangely calm mood. Indeed, Hansavier­tel appeared to us like a vil­lage in the city, com­pletely isol­ated from the busy life it’s sur­roun­ded by.

We were amazed. It felt like we immersed back into the fifties, wit­ness­ing a mod­ern­ist dream. Our jaws dropped, we didn’t even think about dis­turb­ing this unique atmo­sphere with petty talk and decided to silently rel­ish what our eyes could per­ceived. On that note, I’ll leave you with our impres­sions and strongly advise you to visit Hansavier­tel on your own!

Watch out for tomorrow’s post when we’ll show you the amaz­ing interior of one of the Arne Jac­ob­son designed estates!