Art Nouveau Berlin: Theatres and Subways

Berlin doesn’t have as big a reputation for Art Nouveau architecture and design as Paris, Barcelona or even Vienna, but at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries it was just as much a home for the new ideas, flowing lines and nature-based motifs as anywhere else. What you won’t see much of is the asymmetry common in other flavors of Art Nouveau/Jugendstil/Modernism. Berlin’s version is strong on columns and symmetry.

Berlin was in a rush of rapid growth in that period, as the capital of an increasingly powerful and recently unified German empire. Population and industry were increasing, the city was spreading out of its previous boundaries. As a result, large new buildings and new infrastructure of other sorts were being built, including a new subway system. Those are good places for us to see the influence of Art Nouveau.

I spent a couple of days last summer walking in Berlin to see some of its best examples, and to sort out for myself how Berlin’s version of the style that developed locally in so many places was similar or different. My first stop was an elevated subway station at Bülowstrasse, built in 1902 on Berlin’s first U-bahn line. The same pattern of a “headhouse” spanning the tracks and elaborate sculpted pillars was repeated at other open-air stations.

But just down the line at Nollendorfplatz, the station has a quite different look; it lost its original dome during World War II, and was only given a new one in 2002. The new dome lights at night with rainbow neon, a reference to the area’s long history as an area of Berlin’s gay culture. Under the original station, an underground station for other lines opened in 1926.

The underground station’s decor is closer to the Art Deco that was becoming stronger in that period, but keeps the tile color and other elements that can be seen in earlier underground stations, such as at Wittenbergplatz, just down the line; it also opened in 1902, and was the first underground station on the line.

But before we take the train to Wittenbergplatz, there’s another landmark to see at Nollendorfplatz, the Neues Schauspielhaus, or New Theater, built in 1905 as a theater and concert hall. In the late 1920s, it was the home of the avant-garde Theater am Nollendorfplatz under Erwin Piscator, whose collaborators included Bertolt Brecht, George Grosz and John Heartfield, all of whom were forced to leave Germany when the Nazis took power.

Designed by Alfred Frohlich, its original auditoriums, seating up to 1400 people were spectacular Art Nouveau, but were redone in Art Deco and reduced in size in 1930. Its history includes the first showing of a talkie film in Germany and a spell as a ‘Jesus People’ church. Since the 1970s it’s hosted a number of more or less successful nightclubs.

Back to the subway, we arrive at Wittenbergplatz, at the heart of Berlin’s shopping district and home to its famous elaborate department stores, such as KaDeWe. Like Bülowstrasse and Nollendorfplatz, it is the work of Swedish-born architect Alfred Grenander, who designed most of Berlin’s transit stations from 1902 until his death in 1931, adapting to changing styles over time.

Behind the neo-classical-with-nouveau-details station facade, we find the familiar yellow tile and nature-based details, including in ceramic tile. Grenander designed the station in 1913 to replace the 1902 station when more lines were built to share the stop. Badly damaged in World War II bombing, it was reconstructed, but not fully restored. It was renovated to historical standards in 1983.

Aside from its role as a key junction of three subway lines and as a small retail and snack center, it’s also decorated with a number of plaques highlighting transit history.

The Hebbel Theatre was built in 1907-08 for Hungarian director Eugen Robert, who wanted a modern theatre to suit his modern ideas of theater. As architect, he picked Oskar Kaufman, based on a bedroom designed by Kaufman for an exhibition. With no previous theater design experience, Kaufmann eventually built five Berlin theaters. The Hebbel is the only Berlin theater that escaped damage in World War II.

The theater is on a corner lot, and Kaufmann designed it to blend in with the row of apartment houses to its left. In the 1960s, it was ‘modernized’ with pastel colors, wide glass doors and ‘roughcast’ plaster over the stone facade. It was slated for demolition in 1972 but saved under monument law. It was restored to its original appearance in 1987 in time to be a venue for Berlin’s 750th anniversary and year as Europe’s Capital of Culture.

I can’t really call the Admiral Palace, to translate the name, a theater, although it has one, with a 1756-seat house, but when it was built in 1910 that was only part of the story. The building, across the street from the busy Friedrichstrasse station, originally also included a public bath, a skating rink, bowling alleys, a cafe and a cinema. In 1946, it was the site of the merger of the Social Democratic and Communist parties into East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party.

It housed the State Opera until 1955 and then was used for revues and operettas until it closed in 1907. Listed in 2002 as a protected cultural landmark, it was leased by its owner, the city of Berlin, to private operators who carried out extensive renovations and preserved the facade. It reopened in 2006 with a run of Brecht and Weil’s Threepenny Opera.

Within a stone’s throw of the Admiralspalast, we come to our last stop, the Weidendammer Bridge, another result of Berlin’s exponential growth in the 1890s. It replaced an 1824 bridge that was inadequate for growing traffic and heavier vehicles. It was one of the few Spree bridges not destroyed in the last days of the war, and is noted for its ornate railings and imperial eagles.

Next week: A look at some of Art Nouveau Berlin’s residential and commercial buildings and an unusual factory.