Conference at the GHI, March 30-April 2, 2000. Conveners: Andreas W. Daum and Christof Mauch (both GHI). Co-Sponsor: College of Arts and Sciences, American University. Participants: Carl Abbott (Portland State University), Peter Alter (University of Duisburg), Celia Applegate (University of Rochester), Lucy Barber (University of California at Davis), Kenneth Bowling (George Washington University), Michael S. Cullen (Tagesspiegel), Belinda Davis (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey at New Brunswick), Marion F. Deshmukh (George Mason University), Steven J. Diner (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey at Newark), Walter Erhart (University of Greifswald), Cynthia R. Field (Smithsonian Institution), Barbara Franco (The Historical Society of Washington, D.C.), Stephen S. Fuller (George Mason University), Robert Garris (School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University), Martin H. Geyer (University of Munich), Howard Gillette Jr. (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey at Camden), Susanne Hauser (Humboldt University), Peter Jelavich (University of Texas at Austin), Douglas Klahr (Brown University), Jane Kramer (The New Yorker), Alan H. Lessoff (Texas A&M University), Jane F. Levey (Washington History), Richard Longstreth (George Mason University), Christian F. Otto (Cornell University), Uta Poiger (University of Washington), Wolfgang Ribbe (Free University of Berlin), Ralf Roth (University of Frankfurt), Dietmar Schirmer (Cornell University), Pamela Scott (Cornell University), Wolfgang Sonne (Technical University of Zurich), Nathan Stoltzfus (Florida State University), Janet Ward (University of Colorado at Boulder).
Current visitors to Berlin and Washington find two capital cities undergoing change. The center of Berlin, the world's most famous construction site for the past decade, is beginning to take on a shape that displays the new self-confidence of the "Berlin Republic," as many call the unified Germany. New government and commercial buildings, spawned by the political elite's move from Bonn and the arrival of the ambitious generation of the information age, bring new life, if not glamour to the city on the Spree. For some, the new image is a reassuring step for a nation long suffering from identity crises. A second look at the "New Berlin," however, reveals unresolved ambiguities regarding the roles of both capital and nation and points to an uneasy marriage in the city of several cultures - old and new, east and west, German and international. Many of the architectural highlights and memorials in the capital's center embody its diversity, complexity, and the city's turbulent past. Undoubtedly, the move of the German federal parliament from Bonn to Berlin at the turn of the millennium is a decisive marker in German history. At the same time, the move does not put an end to the ongoing debates outside Germany on the trajectories of the Berlin Republic nor does it cool the heated discussions within Germany about the role the capital should play in a (re)united Germany. Nothing focuses the current debate and reflects the conflicting views and aspirations more clearly than the scheduled federal takeover of some of Berlin's key cultural institutions and the struggle to build a Holocaust memorial in the heart of the city.
Visitors arriving at Washington's Dulles International Airport and taking a bus or taxi to downtown also meet old and new along the way. Whereas the superhighway to America's capital is lined with high-tech companies, the city itself - in contrast to Berlin - displays a peculiar continuity in its symbolism and its monumental architecture. Under the surface of a celebratory appearance, be it commercial or governmental, however, there is much in Washington that causes controversy. In 2000 America's capital officially celebrates its bicentennial - two hundred years of history that still prompts lively discussion and debate. Soon-to-be-issued license plates bearing the slogan "No Taxation Without Representation" exemplify one major unresolved issue - the fact that the District of Columbia's one representative in Congress has no right to vote on pending legislation.
What do both capitals, Berlin and Washington, represent? In particular, what meaning do they have for their respective nations? And how do ideas about a nation shape the political, social, and cultural profile of its capital city? How do cities actually become capitals, and what makes a city a capital? What does being a capital mean for a city?
Questions such as these have been intensively debated all over the world since the establishment of nation-states and the rise of large urban centers. The development of capitals and public discussion of their functions and meaning play a crucial role in the formation of national identities and the articulation of symbolic and cultural forces within a nation - as well as their effect on the outside world. Capital cities, in other words, reflect much more than the peculiarities of urbanization and the problems inherent in any urban settings, their infrastructure, demographic and economic composition, and the mechanisms of city administration. Capital cities have always assumed specific meanings for nations; they have encapsulated visions, revealed core problems, and raised challenges that go beyond internal urban concerns. This is true for Berlin, Germany, and for Washington, D.C.
These observations formed the basis for bringing colleagues from different disciplines together to investigate the changing meaning of both capitals during the past two hundred years. Conveners and participants were well aware that Berlin and Washington are cities that differ fundamentally in their social and historical profile and scope. Both cities hold different meanings for their respective countries, which in turn embody distinct variations on the national history. A comparison, however, can serve as a hermeneutic device to help us identify important questions and raise crucial historical issues. A comparison between Berlin and Washington, therefore, yields some amazing similarities but also sharpens the sense for the unique features of each capital and its meaning for the larger nation.
For the better part of three days, the conference examined how the capital character of Berlin and Washington had developed through political discourse, aesthetic strategies, and the power of symbols. Often, the relevant outcomes did not result primarily from conscious measures and strategies, for example, through governmental action; instead, the emergence of Berlin and Washington as capitals also relied on participatory processes. These processes were co-determined by influences from outside the institutional body of urban and national governments - be it by public opinion at home and abroad, by foreigners or minority groups.
In her keynote address Jane Kramer of The New Yorker mapped out the territory on "What Makes a Capital? Washington - Berlin." In her crisp, elegant language, Jane Kramer approached both capitals from the perspective of a visitor who uncovers, step-by-step, through interviews and immersion into the city's history and the nation's past, the inner contradictions and ongoing uncertainties about the self-assumed role of the capital. Kramer's address on the campus of American University drew a large audience and stimulated lots of questions. The successful evening was cosponsored by the Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences of American University.
The following morning the first conference session concentrated on the role of "Capitals in the Nation." Ken Bowling read a comparative paper on the historical debates over the location of the American and German capitals. He detailed major arguments in the eighteenth-century decision to locate the new American capital on the Potomac River and the post-World War II controversy over situating the (West) German seat of government. In both instances, geopolitical arguments merged with legal concerns, attempts to strengthen or - depending on one's viewpoint - to limit federal authority, and intellectual concerns. The Potomac location, for example, was seen by many contemporaries as a signal for a "western" orientation of the United States and placated those Americans who harbored antiurban sentiments in the tradition of agrarian republicanism. In 1949 (Bonn) and again in 1991 (Berlin) - both decisions were preceded by months of discussion and debate - the historical associations with each city and their public standing played a key role. Unlike the revolutionary Americans, however, German decision-makers also had to heed international concerns over the historically and politically dangerous accumulation of power through the establishment of the capital in a large city. Within this context, Bowling focused on the dichotomy between settling on a Bundesdorf or a Bundeshauptstadt, a distinction that allowed him to characterize even Washington, at least in its beginnings, as an "American Bonn."
Peter Alter added a different kind of comparative perspective. He stressed that since the founding of the Bismarckian empire in 1871, Berlin had defined itself with respect to other capitals and acquired, in the process, a surprising degree of insecurity. Until the fin-de-siècle, this comparison focused on the major European capitals - Paris, London, Vienna, and St. Petersburg. Incidentally, observers from these cities tended either to dismiss the Prussian city or to regard it as an unwelcome rival. After 1900 Berlin's urban flowering transformed the city into the embodiment of what contemporaries called "modernity" and, as such, linked the city to the modern urban culture of the United States. From now on, New York and Chicago would serve as counterparts and role models - for good or for bad. Hitler and Speer sought to end Berlin's unease with itself by planning the monstrous "Germania" - a horrific vision of a world capital that was never realized only because the 1,000-year empire that had begun to set it in stone was destroyed - along with much of historical Berlin.
The session on "Planning the City" concentrated on some of the most significant individual attempts to design capital cities. Pamela Scott analyzed the urban concepts and political visions in Thomas Jefferson's and Pierre L'Enfant's plans for the federal capital. As the United States' first secretary of state, Jefferson oversaw the founding of Washington following the passage of the Residence Act of 1790. He developed a checkerboard town plan that reflected not only his republican mistrust of big cities and his skepticism of a strong central government. Jefferson's plan, as Scott argued, also relied heavily on European ideas. Jefferson appropriated details of city planning he had observed in Paris. He also was indebted to the plans of Ancient Babylon, recreated by Europeans, and interpreted them as a model of a rationally structured city that incorporated elements of nature. L'Enfant, however, dismissed Jefferson's plans. His design for the capital would be a giant symbol for the new republic, with weighty references to the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. This, according to Scott, is reflected in the street naming and axes of the major avenues. In addition, the speaker pointed out that L'Enfant incorporated several French ideas, thereby paying respect to the French role in American independence. L'Enfant exceeded Jefferson's ideas as well as the official mandate by the president, George Washington, in that he drafted a much larger city than both men had foreseen. L'Enfant's concept envisioned space for many public and infrastructural functions that a modern, expanding city would require.
Wolfgang Sonne examined the political visions of planning for the twentieth century. He compared Washington's McMillan Plan of 1902 with the competition for an architectural renewal of Berlin around 1908-10. Analyzing the respective aesthetic ideas in their institutional and political context, Sonne delineated basic parallels and differences. In both cities planners realized the need to redesign parts of the urban center in order to meet social requirements and improve representative functions; they also considered similar formal ideas. In Washington, however, this drive was based on a broad political consensus, encompassing the federal government, and shared common ground with the City Beautiful movement. Although the democratic system of the United States did not allow for an authoritarian solution to city planning, it generated a uniform and monumental image of the capital, encapsulated in the redesign of the National Mall. With the addition of the Lincoln Memorial and several monumental federal buildings to this central corridor in the years following 1902, the McMillan Plan succeeded in strengthening the symbolism of the capital. In contrast, the simultaneity of opposing political forces in the German Empire and the lack of a political consensus prevented Berlin from charting a clear course in city planning. Here, several planning strategies were laid out in the 1908 competition but all of them emphasized the achievements of civic culture and the importance of municipal functions; they did not invent a national architectonic iconography.
The theme of "Politics and Architecture" was further illuminated in the following session. Susanne Hauser compared Pennsylvania Avenue and Unter den Linden as the most representative avenues in Washington and Berlin, respectively. Her main concern was to analyze the "construction of symbolic space" through which city planners and politicians tried to create a historical continuity as part of an effort to control the public interpretation of national sites. Based on this semiotic approach, Hauser recapitulated the initiatives to redesign Pennsylvania Avenue, particularly since 1961. An early plan to construct a "national plaza" at the western end of Pennsylvania Avenue facing the White House, was reduced to the current Freedom Plaza. The powerful Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation, created in 1972, referenced L'Enfant's ideas in an attempt to transform the avenue into the "main street of the nation." Like Washington planners, Berlin city planners of the 1990s made selective use of historical models in their effort to "critically reconstruct" the west end of Unter den Linden, including the Paris Square and the Brandenburg Gate. With the exception of the Academy of Arts, all parties owning land around the square adapted to a fixed scheme of reconstruction that omitted elements of urban vitality in favor of implicit or explicit - as in the case of the Hotel Adlon - references to the past.
Michael S. Cullen followed up on the interplay of politics, historical traditions, and architectural language in his paper on parliament buildings in Berlin and Washington. "Vive la différence," as Cullen put it: Washington has always had only one parliament building, the Capitol, the most visible building in the city, positively received by most Americans (and foreigners) and never seriously contested as an institution or in its symbolic power. Berlin presents a completely different picture. Nearly a dozen parliaments - federal, Prussian, provincial, and municipal - have congregated at the center of the city on the Spree, often accommodated in different kinds of structures. The most prominent of these, the Reichstag, designed by Paul Wallot and completed in 1894, remained an object of heated architectural and political controversy. Once again, the German case illustrates a much more fractured and contested national history.
The last session of the first day examined the dimensions of "Time and Space" beyond the parameters of architectural history. Martin H. Geyer used the discussion of prime meridians and the establishment of a national time as a mirror for the search for national identity and international cooperation during the nineteenth century. Geyer demonstrated that the fixing of geographical standards to measure distance and the quest for precise and coordinated clocks served symbolic purposes in order to establish or defend national prestige; both processes were bound to political, economic, and legal needs. In the case of the United States, the discussion over the creation of a national observatory and the establishment of an American meridian running through Washington - an "attribute of sovereignty," as James Monroe observed - started in the early nineteenth century but dragged on for decades. Reservations about the power of federal structures decreased in the 1840s. But it was only after the Civil War that the then well-established Naval Observatory in Washington succeeded with its standardization policy, thanks to Western Union's cooperation. Whereas the United States never relied on bureaucratic state building, Germany pursued the opposite strategy and faced numerous obstacles in centralizing the measurement of time and space. Until the 1870s Berlin, the reference point for the Prussian meridian, was not yet recognized as a symbolic center of the German nation. Rather, economic reasoning - the needs of the railroad companies and others to set standards of precision not only as mathematical but also as social norms - helped establish precise clocks in Berlin. Geyer spoke of a "fetishism of precision" that also was adopted by the private sector. Toward the end of the century, and like in the United States, commercial interests undermined the association of time with state authority. Supported by the United States and Germany, but facing resistance from France, the movement to establish the Greenwich meridian as the universal standard finally succeeded. However, this achievement still left much room for subtle national interpretations. Furthermore, Geyer indicated that the different meanings of time synchronization for Berlin and Washington have their place in differing concepts of modernity. In Germany the idea of a "synchronization of the souls" and a mechanical understanding of nationhood gained momentum between 1900 and 1933.
In his talk Christof Mauch focused on the Berlin Tiergarten and the National Mall as the oldest landscaped gardens in these cities, both of them imbued with political meaning and perceived as places that represent certain national attributes through nature, sculpture, and architecture. Mauch pointed out that the Tiergarten has always maintained a delicate balance between political usage, that is, through royal banquets or the erection of monuments dedicated to Prussian heroes, and an unauthorized, spontaneous use by the local population. In fact, Berliners never entirely subscribed to the sacred meaning of this garden as a showcase for the nation; instead, they integrated the Tiergarten into their everyday life. In contrast, the Mall in Washington remained unattractive to the urban population until the mid-nineteenth century. The McMillan Plan marked the most important step in the process of turning the Mall into a unified vision for the nation. Public buildings and museums created a strict formal composition that underscored the Mall's meaning as a petrified celebration of American history. Mauch argued that its new grand design primarily created sanctity and aimed at preserving the illusion of permanence. The National Mall thereby detached itself from the vitality - and the problems and conflicts - of the surrounding urban reality.
Issues of "Politics of Memory and National Identities" remained on the agenda when the conference group reconvened on day two. In the first morning session Janet Ward spoke on the "Architecture of Holocaust Memory" in Berlin and Washington. The opening of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1993 established a permanent site for the memorialization of the Holocaust, didactically arranged and immensely successful in drawing visitors from all over the world. In contrast, it has taken Berlin decades for plans to remember the Holocaust within a specific architectural setting. Ward touched on the ongoing and highly controversial discussions of the Holocaust memorial in central Berlin, next to Paris Square. She criticized the "monstrous monumentality" of the latest designs and the surrounding spirit of boosterism and nostalgic reconstruction being pursued by city planners. Ward suggested substituting Daniel Liebeskind's new Jewish Museum for a yet-to-be-constructed Holocaust memorial. Liebeskind's architecture has already been accepted by the public, reflecting the fractured and heterogeneous nature of urban memory and emphasizing "voids" of imagination. The question of whether the - still empty - museum can and should be interpreted as a Holocaust memorial and, as such, might conflate Jewish history and Holocaust remembrance, stirred up a particularly lively discussion.
Dietmar Schirmer addressed the intricate questions of how buildings adopt meaning and become part of national narratives. He argued that the historical development leading toward nation building is marked by a dialectics of disembedding and re-embedding. According to Schirmer's model, the nation can assume a crucial role in the latter process by recreating social meaning and coherence. Architecture provides one symbolic re-embedding mode by creating commemorative structures and national mythologies, a role it has fulfilled increasingly since 1800. Schirmer emphasized that architectural forms per se cannot be assigned to specific political systems; instead, the self-definition of nation-states and their specific political histories influence the construction of homologies between architecture and national peculiarities. In the case of the United States, the monumental design of Washington, particularly in the wake of the McMillan Plan, reflects the existence of a dominating narrative of American history, marked by continuity and consensus. With the exception of the Vietnam War era, this narrative is unbroken and leaves few doubts about the democratic trajectories of the nation. Consequently, classicism could serve Washington as the appropriate and lasting architectural form, corresponding to the idea of democratic-republican order. In contrast, there have been several, and always contested narratives of German history during the past two hundred years. This contention has contributed to the plurality of architectural styles chosen to represent the nation. The strong elements of discontinuity and conflict about the ultimate interpretation of the nation's purpose made it nearly impossible after the Nazi era to return to the language of classicism in Germany, a formal repertoire that was greatly distorted by the Third Reich.
Douglas Klahr discussed a different sort of monumentality. He compared the architectural history of the grand hotels in Berlin and Washington between 1875 and the early twentieth century. Specific traditions of housing and hotel management as well as the distinct character of both cities contributed to different concepts of how to structure space in hotels and define their public functions. Washington compensated for its lack of commercial activity with the hegemonic presence of the federal government and the specific American tradition of residential hotels. Washington hotels, such as the Willard, often accommodated political organizations and offered considerable space for public life, thereby mixing private and public spaces on their ground level. Urban peculiarities, such as the low density of buildings and the generous scale of streets allowed for free-standing hotels, monumental buildings that served as landmarks for the capital's social life. Not so in Berlin. Klahr pointed to such famous examples as the Adlon and the Kaiserhof to show that Berlin's grand hotels were restricted in their architectural and public functions. They had to cope with the limits of a high building density and generally refrained from opening the ground level to the public. Social spaces tended to be grouped around elements of nature within the buildings, such as a wintergarden or a palm court. Nevertheless, Berlin hotels took on some American features after 1900; for example, they integrated street-side bars and expansive lobbies.
Like hotels, railway stations are transitory places through which people enter and leave cities. As portals to a capital, they also are designed to convey a message about that central city. In their joint paper on railway stations as "Capital Gateways," Christian F. Otto and Roberta M. Moudry referred back to the city planning ideas that left an imprint on both Berlin and Washington during the first decade of the nineteenth century. Washington's monumental Union Station was its only railway station. Its aesthetic design expressed the concepts of the City Beautiful movement and became part of the new classicist design for the area around the National Mall. Berlin had numerous railway stations, and these did not follow a common design. However, most were seen as reception halls that underscored the moment of arrival. With their tracks driving through densely built urban areas, the Berlin stations expressed an aesthetics of motion that differed from the static character of Union Station, which emphasized its façade and concealed the station's operations.
The next session investigated those functions of capitals that link them to their regional, national, and even international surroundings. Because he was unable to attend the conference in person, Carl Abbott's paper on "National Capitals in a Networked World" was read to the audience. Abbott began by revisiting known theories about the character of international cities. The concept of "world" or "global cities" has gained particular prominence in recent years; it concentrates on the control functions of capital elites, based on the availability of telecommunications. Abbott took the deficiencies of this model as the starting point to lay out a different kind of concept, that of "international cities." This concept takes the functions of cities within a region or nation and their historical endowments into consideration and can be based on a typological differentiation between production, gateway, and transactional cities.
Against this background Abbott took a fresh look at Washington and Berlin. Since the late nineteenth century, according to Abbott, both cities have developed into transactional cities. Although they originally lacked attributes of cosmopolitanism, Berlin and Washington succeeded in becoming centers of policymaking and information technology, especially Washington. Moreover, both cities developed into intellectual and cultural centers, even if ideas were imported rather than self-produced. Stephen S. Fuller strengthened this line of argumentation with his comments on the evolution of Washington's economy. In particular, he showed that the recent economic boom and the rise of communication networks, including the immense growth of Dulles International Airport, have turned Washington into a truly national and international hub.
Complementing this aspect about how capitals relate to their environment, Ralf Roth combined economic, social, and cultural perspectives to assess the role of railroads in Berlin between the late 1830s and World War I. Roth demonstrated that the fundamental functions of railroad traffic through Berlin - the transport of people as well as goods, such as coal from Silesia and industrial products from western Germany - responded to urgent social and economic needs. Railroads facilitated the migration from the East, turning Berlin into a huge human port of call. In addition, railroads were seen as a means to develop surrounding regions and turn them into an outlet for the crowded inner city districts. Railroads also helped stimulate commercial interests and paved the way for a rise in tourism to the Baltic Sea, to Scandinavia, and to southern Germany and beyond. At the same time, Roth argued, railroads became an embodiment of the perils of modernity - they provoked cultural criticism and reinforced a general uneasiness with the pace and disorder of big city life.
An examination of the national and international connectedness of capitals gives rise to the question of who rules and administers these cities. Wolfgang Ribbe, the current doyen of Berlin historians, and Alan H. Lessoff gave their respective answers - and revealed a surprising similarity between Berlin and Washington: Both cities have been deprived of essential rights of self-government during large segments of their history. Ribbe reminded the audience of Berlin's dual origin, going back to the settlements of medieval Berlin and Cölln becoming a princely residence of a sovereign only in the fifteenth century. From that point forward and even throughout the time of municipal reform and urban growth during the nineteenth century, Berliners were deprived of many aspects of self-government. Even when Berlin became the capital of the second German Empire, its self-administration remained more restricted than in other German cities. The drive to create a strong, independent, and unified city administration following the creation of Greater Berlin in 1920 was soon curtailed and then reversed by the Nazis. Following Allied four-power control and the division of the city into two ideological halves, it was only with German unification that democratization finally arrived.
Lessoff concentrated on the history of Washington between the Civil War and the end of World War II. These years mark an era of decisive demographic growth and urban transformation for the American capital. Federal activity increased dramatically and the city's infrastructure and public functions - in part due to the efforts of the protean figure of Alexander R. Sheperd - raised Washington to the level of a modern big city. Differing from the metropolitan setting of Berlin, however, this dynamic growth relied almost exclusively on state support instead of being fed by industrial and cultural competition in the region. The most significant feature of Washington, as Lessoff underscored, was the denial of representation in Congress and the abolition of local self-government. Only between 1871 and 1874, a mere three years, did the city govern itself. Congressional oversight blocked African Americans from participating in local politics and generated a patchwork system of commissions, relying on Congress's largesse, which benefited the white city elite for decades.
At the end of a long conference day, Walter Erhart reported on "National Images and Capital Topography in Travel Literature." Cities can be and are read like books: Erhart took this approach to analyze the perceptions of German travelers to Washington during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, and those of Americans visiting Berlin during the same time. Surprisingly, both cities left parallel impressions on their respective visitors. They generated disappointment because the gap between capital ambitions and their actual realization seemed painfully obvious. The signs - in Erhart's reference to the language of semiotics - of Berlin and Washington did not live up to their intended meanings. This perception, however, led to different aesthetic judgments. Whereas visitors to Washington sought refuge in the terminology of the sublime to indicate that the American capital represented a meaning beyond mere appearance, Berlin provoked a rather ironic and satirical language. By 1900 Berlin assumed a new character. As a contemporary observer noted, "Athens on the Spree" had turned into "Chicago on the Spree," with its manifestations of modern life and hectic urban pace associated with American cities. This Americanization of Berlin's image made the German capital increasingly unreadable, and the city's significance as a national capital was obscured. In contrast, Washington began to embody qualities that reminded visitors of European cities and made it easier for them to decode its inherent symbolism: The center of the city on the Potomac lost its "American tempo" and assumed a well-structured and aesthetically appealing design as if from the drawing board.
The last day of the conference focused on the social reality of Berlin and Washington. Accordingly, the first session dealt with "Protest and the Display of Discontent." Lucy Barber showed how physical space matters when it comes to turning the capital into a stage for demonstration. Barber analyzed the various marches on Washington from 1894 to the present and the creation of "national public spaces" as a result of these various protest movements. From the late nineteenth century onward the pledge of the Founding Fathers to keep the federal government free of outside pressure and secure the capital as a place, detached from social, and political problems, proved untenable. Coxey's Army of 1894, driven by populist demands, the parade of the women's suffrage movement in 1913, the protests of World War I veterans for benefits in 1932, and the presence of the NAACP in Downtown Washington, all claimed the area around the National Mall and the Capitol Building as backdrops for their agenda. Their efforts clashed with the federal and local authorities' claim for control and triggered a lasting process of negotiation for the creation of and access to relevant urban spaces for the public. The 1963 March on Washington, culminating in Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, undoubtedly marked a high point in the establishment of tactics for attracting public attention to protest actions and singled out the Capitol and the Mall for that purpose. From now on and reinforced by the Vietnam War protests, the Mall developed into a space that is perceived as a national forum, serving the public, where issues of relevance to the entire nation are addressed - war, race relations, and AIDS.
Berlin did not create a Mall-like political space in the twentieth century. But the city gave special meaning to "the street" as a place of public protest and political unrest, viewed by the state as a serious challenge to its authority. Belinda Davis elaborated on this topic in a broad treatment of everyday street protest from the pre-1848 period to the present. Davis pointed out that no other German city showed a comparable and continuous proclivity for unrest and spontaneous street protest with the concomitant aggressive exercise of governmental power. State and municipal authorities always tended to interpret street unrest as a political threat. During World War I broad press coverage of hunger protests helped dramatize everyday politics and communicate the government's lack of authority to a national audience. Political violence during the Weimar Republic and even protests against Nazi proclamations and laws after 1933 - as exemplified by the Rosenstraße protest of women married to Jewish husbands - materialized in the streets of Berlin.
That the urban reality of both Berlin and Washington has been marked by a presence of different ethnic groups and by conflict, based on racial thinking, became finally clear in the last session of the conference. Howard Gillette Jr. underscored the centrality of race for Washington, which has influenced changing city administrations, the capital's profile, and the nation's identity. The denial of congressional representation to the District of Columbia has affected African Americans - the majority population since the 1940s - more than any other group. In the 1980s Mayor Marion Barry sought to reverse past deferential behavior on the part of blacks by asserting legitimate claims for respect and power for the African-American population.
In the conference's final presentation Robert Garris made it clear that although Berlin has been perceived as a metropolis populated by immigrants since the late nineteenth century, it has, in fact, maintained a relatively low level of immigrants. Nevertheless, this population has suffered discrimination, in particular from the definition of German nationality, based on ancestry rather than place of birth.
The chairs of each session contributed much to the pleasant and productive atmosphere at the conference. Their enthusiasm for the topics, their probing questions, and their insightful comments ensured its success. We would like to extend our thanks to Celia Applegate, Marion F. Deshmukh, Steven J. Diner, Cynthia R. Field, Barbara Franco, Peter Jelavich, Jane F. Levey, Richard Longstreth, Uta Poiger, and Nathan Stoltzfus.
The conference with its numerous visual presentations, through the use of slides and overheads, took its participants on a fascinating journey through the history and streetscapes, architecture and maps of the German and American capitals. At the same time, its vivid and congenial discussions went beyond the tale of two cities. The conference raised questions about the construction of a democratic public sphere, the visualization of power, and the degree to which a seat of government can transform the character and identity of a city and its historical consciousness.
Andreas W. Daum
Christof Mauch