Literary and Cultural Life in West Berlin

Abstract

Look at the map of Berlin. Follow the border between East Berlin and West Berlin. Better still, walk along the border. You will find that West Berlin forms a large semicircle around the city center of Mitte, as can be seen on any map of Berlin since the mid-nineteenth century. Up until 1945 Mitte was also the cultural center of Berlin. West Berlin has been cut off from this center since 1945; its isolation was not, however, complete until the building of the Berlin wall in 1961, and for some years after the Second World War the outstanding places of cultural interest in the city center Berlin-Mitte remained places of all Berliners. The most important ones were the Friedrich-Wilhelm-University, today Humboldt University, founded in 1810, the museums, the former Prussian State Theaters, most of which were destroyed during the Second World War, e.g., the German State Opera (Deutsche Staatsoper). From 1945 to 1955 it was in the Admiralspalast on Friedrichstraße, but it was rebuilt and reopened in 1955 at its old location Unter den Linden. The German Theater (Deutsches Theater) on Schumannstraße, founded in 1883, survived the war. From 1949 to 1954, it housed the Berliner Ensemble of Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel which, since 1954, has found its place in the theater on Schiffbauerdamm. The Comic Opera (Komische Oper) on Behrenstraße, a house for opera, musicals, and ballet, reopened in 1947, the Metropol-Theater, a stage for operettas and musicals, in 1945 at the Colosseum, Schönhauser Allee. In 1955, it moved to the Admiralspalast when the German State Opera returned to its old location Unter den Linden, and it has been there since.