Berlin

Deprived of imperial blessing for a World’s Fair, Berlin contented itself with mounting a national Industrial Exposition in 1896. The event may not have had the cachet of an international exposition, but it sought to make up for this in size and glamour. Situated in brand new Treptow Park in the far eastern part of the city, it encompassed a larger area (900,000 square meters) than any previous exposition anywhere in the world. The exhibition halls, built in every imaginable style, showcased the tremendous technological progress made by imperial Germany in recent years. Many of the high-tech marvels on display had been made right in Berlin, which now accounted for 7 percent of the Reich’s industrial production. There were hissing steam engines from Borsig, giant cranes from Julius Pintsch, electrical gadgets from Siemens and AEG. Less spectacular in appearance, but every bit as important, were synthetic dyes and photographic materials from AGFA, which later became part of the fabled I. G. Farben chemical trust. In addition to industrial products, there were consumer and luxury goods for the newly rich: Bechstein pianos, electric ovens, bronze desk lamps, a jewel-studded necklace costing 168,000 marks, a porcelain bowl “hand-painted by His Majesty.” Then there was the “Hall of Appetite,” a shrine to gluttony displaying such wonders as an electric Wurst

machine that could convert 4,000 swine a year into salami and sausage; and an ensemble of marzipan breakfast items arrayed across a five-meter-long table made entirely of chocolate. When guests grew tried of admiring the displays, they could repair to the many eateries and drinking establishments that dotted the grounds, from luxury restaurants to simple pubs. Fortified with food and drink, they could visit a “Pyramid of Cheops” and view genuine mummies from the royal museums; or stroll through “Cairo in Berlin,” a village of “oriental street scenes” whose authenticity was enhanced by genuine dirt on the buildings. To get to the fair, visitors could ride a recently completed extension of the elevated railway to the Treptow Park station or drive on a widened access road across the new Oberbaumbrücke, built to look like a Romanesque castle complete with arches and battlements. The cost of putting all this together was enormous, and despite 5 million visitors the fair was a financial disaster. Berlin never did stage a World’s Fair, and, perhaps fittingly, a half-century later Treptow Park became the site of an enormous monument to the victorious Soviet army.

Berlin’s Industrial Exposition of 1896 may have been a typical example of Wilhelmian overstretch, but the industrial wizardry displayed at the fair was genuine enough, and there were plenty of other signs that the German capital was a world leader in advanced technology and engineering.

Berlin was a pioneer in urban transportation. As we have seen, the city had a steam railway as early as the 1870s. The world’s first electric streetcar had been introduced in Lichterfelde in 1881. By 1900 most of the trolley lines had been electrified; the last horse-drawn car, which ran to the municipal insane asylum in Dolldorf, was taken out of service in 1902. The new Stadtbahn

, inaugurated in 1882, was Europe’s first viaduct railway. It was a kind of city-within-the-city, containing under its brick archways a wealth of shops, storerooms, warehouses, and pubs. Berliners found it distinctly modern to drink a beer while a train rumbled overhead. There was action below ground as well, since construction on a subway system started in 1896, with the first line opening a decade later. Like New York’s subway, the Berlin U-Bahn

was to prove crucial in knitting together the various parts of the sprawling city.

By the turn of the century, Berlin was served by twelve railway lines and boasted ten long-distance train stations. The most impressive of these, Friedrichstrasse, was a far cry from the “pitiful hovels” that had passed for stations when Berlin became the national capital in 1871. A contemporary description of the building reveals the extent to which such structures were becoming icons of a new urban aesthetic: