Gigi Tabatadze explores the work of sculptor Hans Uhlmann in Berlin’s Hansaviertel…
Standing today at the crossing of Altonaer Straße which evnetually sweeps around the Siegessäule and the descending Bartningallee from the S-Bahn station Bellevue, you find yourself right at the heart of the Hansaviertel. This district is a postwar reincarnation of the Schöneberger Wiesen, a patch of land rebuilt after being totally flattened during the Second World War.
In the 1950s, a visitor to Berlin would have witnessed a city in the midst of a radical reimagining. Having lived here for nearly two years, I am convinced that this district possesses an absolutely unique identity. To patiently walk these streets is to feel the heavy weight of history balanced by the almost ethereal lightness of experimental, modern forms.
The reconstruction of this area began in the summer of 1957, marked by the “Interbau ’57”, an international building exhibition. Commissioned under the patronage of the former Federal President Theodor Heuss, who used the Marshall Plan funds. More than 50 architects from 14 countries were invited to transform this wasteland into a “city of tomorrow”. Their aim was to determine a new horizon of meaning—neuen Sinnhorizont zu bestimmen—for a city which was to be rebuilt from ruins; a place where architecture would have to find a new way to sit within the empty landscape of rubble. What they left behind is a curated world of modern living: a public library, two churches, a preschool, a daycare and a shopping center, all nestled within a meticulously planned parkland of open lawns and trees.
My own experience of this place begins in my apartment, in the second long block building on Klopstockstraße, designed by Günther Gottwald in the late ’50s. It is a striking building on which dense ivy now climbs the side walls, contrasting with the pale Eternit panels and the thick concrete slabs of the balconies. In the summer, I often see architecture students crouching in the garden, sketching the outlines of this historical landmark. When I witnessed their focus and fascination for an apartment where I live, it made me feel a sense of quiet gratitude to be able to call this place my home.
I once invited a group in to explore the interior together: they jumped in through the balcony and it was only then that we discovered the entire building sits atop a long underground hallway connecting the whole complex throughout: a hidden layer of reinforced history meant to provide shelter during bombings, right beneath our feet.
This relationship between the buildings built on Hansaviertel and filling the space around them with sculptures was not an accident. Art was an essential part of the reconstruction plan of the district, as the vast space opened ways for the new vision of the future. Prominent artists created focal points throughout the district to help “spiritually reorient” postwar Germany. This is evident in the peaceful bronze figures by Henry Moore and Alfredo Ceschiatti (which have now
partly oxidized and have a greenish color to them), both located near Oscar Niemeyer’s building on Altonaer straße and the Academy of Arts.
But for me, the district is really sewn together by the …