EETF Podcast
EETF Podcast
Episode 71 - Architecture and History in Berlin, with Professor Jan Fischer
Today we take a deep dive into architecture and history in Berlin, with Professor Jan Fischer, an American who's been calling Berlin home for more than 30 years. All in all, a very interesting conversation with an extremely knowledgeable and very friendly expat. What's not to like? Also, get your Google ready, because many buildings and big names of architecture are mentioned here! Enjoy!
Patrick:
[0:00] Alright, welcome to the EETF podcast, we are back on the road, we are mobile, we are back in Berlin I have the pleasure to welcome tonight Mr. Jan Fischer, Professor of architecture… actually, why don't you introduce yourself?
Jan:
[0:27] I guess I am a professor of architecture and urban studies and urban sustainability and I teach all of those things more or less at the same time right here in Berlin.
Patrick:
[0:42] Which institute?
Jan:
[0:44] At the moment for three different institutions One is IES Berlin, which is a global study abroad organization that has been in Berlin for, I don't know, since the early post-Wall era. And they gather up liberal arts students from many different American universities and bring them to Berlin. So it is a semester study abroad program, usually, undergraduates. And they have a Metropolitan Studies program, which I've been teaching for since it began. But I also teach, and those are all liberal arts students, those aren't design students, but I teach architecture students as well for Pratt Institute in New York and for the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, who also send their students to Berlin for a semester, and they have their own separate programs. And so I have kind of in equal numbers liberal arts students and specifically design students. And so I handle them somewhat differently, but yeah, it adds up.
Jan:
[2:07] But I'm happy to see how Berlin continues to be a magnet for, All different kinds of students, especially those who are involved in creative pursuits or interested.
Jan:
[2:23] Yeah, and I've been doing that for many years now, I guess, at least since 2008, I think.
Patrick:
[2:34] So, to put things into context a little bit, you're American. You've been living in Berlin for a while.
Jan:
[2:41] Yes, I've been living here. It amazes me to realize it's been just a little, I think, over 30 years now. So sometime, well, in Berlin for 30 years, I came first. I started in Bavaria in Regensburg.
Patrick:
[3:04] Oh, okay.
Jan:
[3:05] Because I got a job offer there a little bit after I graduated. And I went there for eight months, which was just about right. It's a very small town. It's a beautiful town.
Patrick:
[3:21] Gorgeous cathedral.
Jan:
[3:22] Beautiful cathedral. It's right on the Danube. It's medieval and Renaissance and managed to avoid getting bombed during World War II. And so it's essentially intact. And it's quite a remarkable place, but it's very small.
Jan:
[3:44] And I'm from New York City. I'm from Manhattan. And for me, that was a little too sedate, let's say. But I had a good experience there. But I already, before I even went there, I had an idea that I would want to go to Berlin. And so, after eight months, I did. And I haven't left since, basically.
Patrick:
[4:15] So, you went directly from Regensburg to Berlin?
Jan:
[4:18] Yes.
Patrick:
[4:19] Didn't go back to the U.S.?
Jan:
[4:20] No. So, I graduated from architecture school, got my master's in architecture in 1990. And there was already, after 1990, a kind of wave of people who headed over to Europe, and a lot of them headed to Berlin.
Jan:
[4:47] And that's not surprising considering how the wall had collapsed you know only a year before and but I did in fact and I already had an idea about going to Europe but I spent about a year and a half or so working in New York City where I'm from after I graduated and, It so happened in 1990, there was a recession going on in New York City, and even a freshly minted architecture graduate had all kinds of problems finding work in an environment like that. And it was frustrating. I did work for a firm downtown in Soho for a while. But it was clearly a temporary thing, and all kinds of things were happening in Europe, not just the collapse of communism, but also the Olympics in Barcelona in '92. And a lot of my classmates went to Spain. They found work there.
Jan:
[6:05] And where I went to school, most of our professors were, in fact, at that time, European. I'd say a majority of them. And the dean of the school was Spanish. And so, in a way, even in graduate school, I felt like I was already in Europe. We use the metric system. Our teachers often had a shaky grasp of English when they came to see us.
Jan:
[6:42] So it felt kind of natural for me to look towards Europe, especially in a sort of down period in New York. And I had been to Berlin for the first time in 1987, shortly before, of course, the wall came down. And I spent a good week or so in Berlin. I was totally fascinated by the city and not just its architecture, but its history. And it was all exposed and so raw. And so I had Berlin in my mind somehow already. And, of course, I wouldn't have guessed that two years later everything would change. But when it did change and I was coming out of school, I realized pretty quickly that that would be a place where I could devote some of my...
Jan:
[7:45] Attentions and skills, and I certainly wasn't the only one. But so I kind of gravitated towards Berlin reasonably quickly after 1990. And I certainly got here in time to be able to participate in so much of the excitement that was going on, which involved moving the government back to Berlin.
Patrick:
[8:17] From Bonn to Berlin.
Jan:
[8:20] From Bonn, you know, stitching the city back together, rebuilding so much of the infrastructure and so forth.
Patrick:
[8:30] Currency as well.
Jan:
[8:32] Yeah. I mean, all of the 1990s were busy times for architects, for urban designers, for pretty much everyone.
Patrick:
[8:42] So I'm guessing that you didn't really have problems finding work when you arrived in Berlin?
Jan:
[8:47] No, that was really kind of fascinating because in college I had studied my junior year in Paris. I had taken French in school And I knew enough French to be able to study in French in Paris. And I enjoyed that very much. And I had a good relationship with that city. And for various personal reasons, I spent some time in London also after I graduated from grad school.
Jan:
[9:26] But I knew that it was very hard to get a work visa. in either one of those places or almost anywhere else. As an American, it was just very restricted. And so I was struck at how, When I came to Berlin, and I really came to Berlin to visit, while I was in Regensburg, I guess, to notice what a different atmosphere it was. And that same visit I made to Berlin, so that was, I guess, my second time in the city after 1987. So I come in 1993, and I visit Berlin, and in 24 hours, I was offered work. The same day I arrived.
Patrick:
[10:24] Times change.
Jan:
[10:25] And I remember it being, I think it was a bar or a club or somewhere, and I met these architects who I certainly didn't know before. And uh you know we exchanged information they said hey yeah why don't you come and work for us how about you know Monday wow.
Patrick:
[10:45] But how did you know they were architects?
Jan:
[10:47] Well we you know they asked me what am I doing here and I told them and and what my background is and you know maybe someone, someone else introduced us but I really I only knew two other architects in Berlin at that time uh both of whom had been classmates of mine those are the only people I knew uh but these other architects they're like yeah come and come work for us we have a ton of work and I said well you know I don't speak German I can't do I can't do the computer in German I don't have a work permit and they're like yeah yeah you know uh we'll take care of that and um and essentially they did that was the amazing thing so in other European countries you know it really didn't matter which uh Spain France, Italy, Switzerland, Great Britain almost impossible there were really difficulties impediments but in Berlin it seemed the door was open the red carpet was out if you had you had some specific skills you could bring they were interested and, and the laws were such back then that um it actually they
Jan:
[12:08] made it easier to hire uh almost anyone okay and it was pretty relaxed.
Jan:
[12:14] I think that changed after about a decade or so.
Jan:
[12:19] But at that time, 90s, it was like, okay, you know, you have something we need, no problem.
Jan:
[12:26] And so I kind of got the work contract and the work permit almost at the same time. It was like an exchange.
Jan:
[12:37] And I went to the, I remember going to the agency for the work permit. And they asked me, well, you know, how long do you want to stay here? How long do you want to work here? And I said, well, I don't know, a year. And they just went, okay, here's a stamp. Here's two years. And when you're done with that, you can come back. We'll extend it. Just like that.
Patrick:
[13:00] They got all day.
Jan:
[13:01] And that's all they said. And so, in fact, I mean, I didn't even think I'd be staying here for two years. I wanted to see how it was.
Patrick:
[13:10] You kept your options open.
Jan:
[13:12] I kept them open. But I indeed was employed. I indeed had a lot to do. I slowly learned German. I don't learn languages quickly. Or at least I had to push a lot of French out of part of my brain to bring a lot of German in.
Jan:
[13:36] My father spoke five languages, but somehow I didn't inherit that gene. In any case...
Patrick:
[13:42] What did he do for a living?
Jan:
[13:43] Well, he was a political scientist, and he was from Prague. He was Czech originally, and he moved to the United States in the moment it was possible after the war, before the communists took over. So that was about 1947.
Patrick:
[14:04] Okay.
Jan:
[14:05] And he and the rest of the family emigrated to the United States, and they all became U.S. citizens. My grandparents, my father, and my aunt. And, yeah, he remained a U.S. citizen living in the U.S. from that time on.
Patrick:
[14:22] So that means five languages. that means Czech, Russian probably.
Jan:
[14:27] Yes.
Patrick:
[14:28] Probably learn German maybe as well. So what are the other two?
Jan:
[14:34] Yeah, Czech, German, I think second, then English, third.
Patrick:
[14:40] English, yes, of course.
Jan:
[14:41] Then, yeah, Russian and... And French.
Patrick:
[14:47] Oh, okay.
Jan:
[14:48] And these were languages, I mean, it was not atypical for people of that generation and earlier to, especially if you were from a small European, Central European country surrounded by bigger powers, you were kind of, it was natural that you would learn several other languages. Either in school or, in his case, occasionally from a nanny or a governess who spoke those languages and may have come from countries other than Czechoslovakia. And so, for him, that was normal as a child to learn that way. And I was always kind of envious of that experience. And unfortunately he didn't pass it along to me. Later he regretted not speaking Czech with me in addition to English.
Patrick:
[15:43] Okay.
Jan:
[15:45] But he only spoke English with me. He felt that, you know, he was not going back to Czechoslovakia and we're in America now and we speak English.
Patrick:
[15:57] Understandable.
Jan:
[15:59] And Czech is a beautiful language but it's very difficult to learn if you don't learn it as a child. And so it's, we kind of missed that one. But again, I would have enjoyed speaking Czech with him, but his English was far better than mine, which was also irritating. He had an incredible grasp of English and, tremendous ability to write and communicate, uh, in English.
Jan:
[16:31] And it was, I think at least his second or third language, probably his third language. So I always thought of him as a kind of Nabokov who, who kind of moves to a different country and completely, you know, um, uh, becomes, uh, He becomes adept at a totally different modus of communication.
Patrick:
[16:58] Rewires his brain to another language.
Jan:
[17:00] It's not like he forgets the previous one or the home language, but is able to add another one and achieve complete mastery.
Patrick:
[17:10] And then switching gears at will afterwards.
Jan:
[17:12] Yeah, and could switch. So, yeah, I've always been impressed by people who can do that. For me, it was a long, slow haul to gather up enough German to make it work.
Jan:
[17:24] But, you know, it comes eventually if you hang around long enough.
Patrick:
[17:29] Yeah. And, well, you know, you need exposure to it and you need necessity.
Jan:
[17:35] Oh, yeah.
Patrick:
[17:35] And your classes are given in English.
Jan:
[17:38] My class, I teach in English because I'm teaching, for the most part, American students. There are some international students in there, too, but I'm asked to teach them in English because they don't have much, if any, German background.
Patrick:
[17:54] Okay.
Jan:
[17:56] But, yeah, that's true. I mean, when I, the first, throughout the 90s and into the 2000s, I was not teaching. I was working in a few different architecture offices here in Berlin, and... Yeah, the idea of necessity. I mean, I had to answer the phone and I had to speak to somebody on the other end who was speaking German and I had to occasionally send faxes. Back then, there were still faxes. And I had to communicate with people at some team meeting and I had to go to a construction site and be able to talk to the people there. And yeah that was very intimidating at first and um you do a lot of smiling and you shake your head like you like you kind of know what they're saying and even you're not sure what they're saying and eventually it's sort of uh you get the hang of it.
Patrick:
[18:51] Technical terms as well that's something.
Jan:
[18:54] Yeah it's a whole another language so a lot of what I understand about architecture especially you know construction and uh contemporary development and so forth is in German you know the German terms for that and uh and so if I had to go back to the U.S., um there'd be some relearning that would be necessary yeah so.
Patrick:
[19:25] When you mentioned your first work permit was for two years at the end of those two years did you ask stop and ask yourself okay do I want to go back or stay or.
Jan:
[19:36] After two years I was still working for that same office that had initially offered me the job and I had done one or two projects for them already and I ended up staying four years at that office so yes I needed another permit and they were they seemed happy to keep me on and I seemed happy to be in Berlin and so I went back to that same office and I said oh yeah you know you said two years ago that I would just need to come back, And you would extend my visa. And in fact, they did. They put another stamp in there for another two years. And what they said was, I think, was, after you've been here five years working, then you can get a permanent visa. An unbefristete Aufenthaltserlaubnis. And they were right. That's in fact what happened. And so that's what I've had ever since. After the five years then, I didn't have to go back to the Behörde anymore. And so I have in fact been here ever since. And that is kind of a surprise to me.
Patrick:
[20:53] Still.
Jan:
[20:54] But what that means is I still find Berlin an extremely interesting place to be. If you are involved in architecture or design or any of the arts, music, it is still a place where things are happening and where like-minded people come. And especially for me in the 90s, it was an opportunity to be somewhere that was changing rapidly and radically. Absolutely. And in some very small way, I could participate in that and observe it, especially, and that was kind of...
Jan:
[21:33] Invaluable but um although I'm you know I'm a big fan of Berlin I I just feel very comfortable living in Europe generally it's not just a you know Berlin thing or a German thing particularly I, I don't think I would be happy living anywhere else in Germany because I feel like, as a new yorker again especially there's a certain you know a certain density there's certain, dynamism in Berlin is the capital city.
Patrick:
[22:07] I was going to say chaos, but that's not quite the right word. Like controlled chaos, maybe?
Jan:
[22:13] I mean, I'd say there's more chaos in New York than there is here, but not even there. I wouldn't even use that word for either of those places. I think they have their different ways of functioning. Berlin is very spread out, very much as a much lower density of course compared to Manhattan a few places are more dense than that but um Berlin is so spread out uh that you know their whole neighborhoods that I still haven't explored even 30 years later um and uh they, they each have their own character Yes.
Patrick:
[22:52] Just to give our listeners a general idea of the size of the city, it's about, if I remember, about 30 kilometers by 30. So that's 18 miles.
Jan:
[23:02] That sounds about right. If you want to think about, I learned at some point that it's about four times the size of Paris. The Paris that's within the periphery, it's about four times bigger than that.
Patrick:
[23:19] I didn't know that.
Jan:
[23:20] I may be mistaken, but it's something like that.
Patrick:
[23:24] Okay.
Jan:
[23:25] And I've also been told that... That about 40% of Berlin is actually either green space, forest, fields, lake, water, or public space of some kind. And so, you know, a great deal of Berlin, in fact, is not occupied in some sense of human occupation. Um and um so it is you know larger than some small countries in Europe and it is uh not only as a city and the capital but it's also a state it's a city state and there are three of those in Germany, uh Hamburg is one, Bremen is one uh Berlin so it has this you know special status within Germany, and it has its own unique history. And so there's really nothing like it.
Patrick:
[24:28] That's true. The wars, the European war in World War II ended here. The Cold War ended here, basically.
Jan:
[24:39] Yes. It was always ground zero anyway, somehow during the Cold War. If there were going to be some third World War, or there was a likelihood it would start in Berlin.
Patrick:
[24:52] That's true.
Jan:
[24:53] And, of course, famously in the early 60s, there was a face-off, even at Checkpoint Charlie, between Soviet and American tanks. And, you know, that was part of the era of the low point. There was also the Cuban Missile Crisis and so forth.
Patrick:
[25:13] That's true.
Jan:
[25:14] And, you know, at that time, all eyes kind of were on Berlin because that's where the major powers were occupying parts of the city and were in close contact. You know, they were kind of physically.
Patrick:
[25:30] So friction.
Jan:
[25:31] Yeah.
Patrick:
[25:32] Unavoidable.
Jan:
[25:33] And that was certainly possible. But so if you're interested in architecture, urban history, Berlin is just a fascinating place. No matter what and and um Berlin is also because it was so it was badly damaged but then it was kind of paralyzed in certain ways after the war uh by having eventually a wall around it and there's certain types of development especially in the west that couldn't really proceed very well and so.
Jan:
[26:15] You know, the scars of Berlin are still visible in large part because in other German cities, particularly in the West, they were repaired, you know, quickly starting in the, you know, even the late 40s, 50s, 60s. A lot of other cities like, you know, Stuttgart or Frankfurt or Munich that had been quite heavily damaged as well, they could, or Hamburg, you know, they got started rebuilding them and they didn't have the kind of philosophy early on that, wait a minute, there's certain things we want to preserve. There are certain aspects of this violated landscape that we may want to preserve as part of that layer of history, whether it's part of memorialization or whether it's simply acknowledging the history that it happened.
Patrick:
[27:24] So in a way, they went too fast?
Jan:
[27:26] They went fast and they said, okay, we don't want these bullet holes and these craters and these empty lots and we're going to build it back and we're going to even... We're going to renovate buildings in such a way that they look like they're old, even when they're not. And Berlin didn't have that opportunity. It might have gone that way under normal circumstances, but Berlin was, you know, by the time the wall came down in 1989, there was a different kind of idea or doctrine about building cities or rebuilding cities, which meant respect history, even history that was traumatic or tragic. And we don't paper it over. We don't pretend it doesn't happen. And that is all to Berlin's benefit because people who come to Berlin,
Jan:
[28:28] who people are interested in Berlin, that's kind of what they want to see. They want to see that history not only in the museums, they want to see it in the streets and in the buildings.
Jan:
[28:41] And Berlin is a place where that history is still visible. Berlin is still very much a work in progress. And for that reason, it is still of interest to architects and urban designers, and to students. My students, who maybe don't know so much of this history when they get here, because they weren't even alive when, you know.
Patrick:
[29:09] That's wild, when you think about it.
Jan:
[29:11] When the wall came down, I mean, they've only lived in the 21st century.
Patrick:
[29:17] Yeah.
Jan:
[29:19] But once they get to know the city, and that is what is so great about spending an entire semester abroad, is because it gives you the time and the opportunity to actually get to know a place pretty well, especially if you're taking courses about it and going on field trips and excursions and so forth. The special charms and the special atmosphere of Berlin is something they come to appreciate pretty quickly. And I'm happy to help them kind of get to that point.
Patrick:
[29:59] Do you go on field trips with them? Which ones do you go to and which one would be your favorites?
Jan:
[30:05] Well, I don't know. I have my architectural favorites. And that's another way of saying, you know, there's certain areas of Berlin, not just buildings, but old neighborhoods sometimes that are important to illustrate to students the kind of morphology and the evolution of the city. Um I usually start in 1815 if I pick a date where to start um because you know it also becomes pretty clear to the students quickly that Berlin is not Rome it's, it's not Athens it's not a city with deep history, with very early roots, with, you know, multiple early layers.
Jan:
[30:59] But what Berlin lacks in that deeper history makes up for with a very intense modern era. And so I really only focus on the last 200 years, more or less, of Berlin's history, Even though, yes, you know, there was a settlement here that we know existed at least back to the 13th century. Berlin was really twin villages, Berlin and Kuhn, with a C and two L's kind of on either side of the river. But, you know, Berlin really only becomes an important place in my sort of telling of it, in my narrative. With the Industrial Revolution.
Patrick:
[31:48] Okay.
Jan:
[31:49] But I start earlier than that. I start with Schinkel, basically, Carl Friedrich Schinkel. And I start in 1815. And why do I pick that date? It's because it's more or less the time that Schinkel was designing the Neue Wache, his first...
Jan:
[32:08] Architectural work on the Unter den Linden, which is still there, and we go there and we start there. But also because 1815 was the Congress of Vienna, and that is when Berlin, the kind of order of Europe is reorganized in the wake of the defeat of Napoleon. And when Napoleon is defeated, that gives Prussia a chance to become a real player on the European stage. And of course, the capital of Prussia is Berlin. And so that's the moment when Berlin really starts to apply itself and to address its own ambitions to be a major capital city, but it needs help. It needs design help. And the chief designer who is fortuitously on hand is Carl Friedrich Schinkel, who designed so many of the major institutions, many of which are still there today, but also has a hand in all kinds of urban planning decisions in the Berlin that was considerably smaller back then.
Jan:
[33:30] In the early 19th century. So I start with the Sir Schinkel era at the Neue Wache, and of course we look at several of his other buildings as well, including the Altus Museum. And then I, you know, one of the things that makes any kind of architectural history survey of Berlin easier is the fact that German history is, I mean,
Jan:
[34:00] modern history is kind of easily divided into chapters. There are these cesura, dramatic cesura that divide up German history. And so, you can create these chapters pretty easily.
Jan:
[34:14] So, I talk about the Schinkel era pretty much up to his death. And the next era after that is the Industrial Revolution, which comes to Germany, of course, after Britain. And that era is also referred to as the Grundezeit in Germany, the founding era. And that important date for that is 1871, when we really get something close to, a state of Germany, because before that, there are just multiple German principalities and duchies and, and it's more of a kind of a mixture of German lands. Um, and then of course we have, uh, that era comes to a close, let's say 1914, beginning of World War One. And by 1918, by the end of World War I, the Kaiser is abdicated, and a new kind of government has to be created in the wake of defeat. And so then you have the Weimar period, which is incredibly rich and complex in Berlin.
Patrick:
[35:32] And it had so so much potential but they were like they were kind of screwed by the treaty of Versailles with the reparations and.
Jan:
[35:39] All that yeah so that made things I mean the way the the victorious allies concluded that war of course the historians will tell you set the stage for the disastrous way things ended up going by the end of the Weimar period. But, of course, then the next important date is 1933 when the Nazis come to power. Then you have the beginning of the war, 1939. Then the end of the war, 1945.
Patrick:
[36:10] The Germania Project.
Jan:
[36:12] The Germania Project in Germany.
Patrick:
[36:15] Albert Speer, yeah.
Jan:
[36:16] That's right. I spent a session talking about that.
Patrick:
[36:21] Fascinating stuff, honestly.
Jan:
[36:22] Yes, of course. And there are plenty of courts there. You know, Berlin has, what's really interesting about Berlin is that despite the destruction both from war, but also from bad urban planning, there's still so much to see here. I mean, there's still so many famous, iconic buildings here. They were so influential in the 20th century. They're still here. You can still see so many of them. There's the work of so many important architects. German architects, still to be seen, especially from the Weimar period. But there's a great deal to be seen from the Nazi era as well. And all of that should be part of the experience. I mean, I take my students, for example, to the Olympic Stadium from 1936.
Jan:
[37:20] Built by the Nazis for those Olympics and still being used by one of the local professional soccer teams, maybe not for long because they want to build a new stadium. I'm not sure if that's a good idea. But anyway, so much of that is there. And again, it is to Berlin's credit. There's the old Luftwaffe headquarters. There's the Reichsbank, which was the first architectural competition. That the Nazis actually created in 1933.
Patrick:
[37:56] But if I may, you mentioned that maybe a new stadium for Erter would not be a good idea. May I ask why?
Jan:
[38:05] Well, I happen to like going to the Olympic Stadium or events like that. I know it wasn't designed for soccer.
Patrick:
[38:14] True.
Jan:
[38:14] And it's not an optimal place to see soccer.
Patrick:
[38:17] The running track.
Jan:
[38:19] Right. It's an oval, so, you know, most of the public is further away from the action than you would normally experience in specific custom-built stadiums. But it's an amazing atmosphere. It's an incredible design. You know, it was renovated for the World Cup, in fact, by 2006. And they put a new they put a roof on it you know which it didn't have before it has you know they put all new seating and so forth so it's actually quite modern in many ways and it works well as a state for all kinds of things you know giant rock concerts and visits by the Pope and you know who knows track and field events of course and, But, you know, Hertha has always been pushing to build a proper soccer stadium, which is more rectangular, sort of box-shaped, so that they can get the crowd really close to the sidelines and much steeper seating. Yes. So more people up top can….
Patrick:
[39:31] Would be in the same area probably as well.
Jan:
[39:34] They've been talking about this for a couple of years now. The latest is, they think they'll put it, to the southwest quadrant of the Olympic Park, which would mean they would eliminate the oldest sporting grounds on that site, which were equestrian events.
Patrick:
[39:56] Oh, okay.
Jan:
[39:57] Horse riding, that kind of thing. And so the idea, I suppose, is they'd tear that out and put the stadium there pretty close to the Olympic Stadium. And I'm unconvinced that that would be an elegant solution. And they'd have to, you know, I'm surprised that those equestrian grounds there are not under landmark.
Patrick:
[40:26] Yeah, yeah, good point.
Jan:
[40:27] And if they are, then it means they want to do some deal with the city. So, I don't know. But also, Hertha was relegated, what was it, two years ago or something?
Patrick:
[40:40] Yes, I think so, yes.
Jan:
[40:42] And they're not doing that well. And where are they going to get, you know, where's the money coming from to build a giant new stadium?
Patrick:
[40:52] Yeah, they need promotion, basically.
Jan:
[40:54] Yeah.
Patrick:
[40:55] And I mean, this season, there have been positive signs with the new manager, but it's still not quite there yet. So if they don't get promoted this season, it could be difficult.
Jan:
[41:12] Yeah, I mean... If they are in a new stadium, that's not the thing I want to show my students. I still want to show them the Olympic stadium, and I'd have to find some other event so that I could do that. But in any case, you're right. These are incredibly dramatic periods, and then you have the whole post-war era. You have what the communists then began doing by way of urban planning in the East. You have first this sort of Stalinistic planning. And after Stalin died, Khrushchev started building in a very modern way and a very sort of technocratic way, building prefabricated concrete housing.
Patrick:
[41:59] Plattenbau.
Jan:
[42:01] And that's all to be seen as well. And then we see how the West reacts and we see the wall going up in 1961. and the effects that that has. And then we have this other dramatic date, 1989. The wall comes down, and the city is suddenly in a position to reimagine itself and rebuild itself. And then the question is, is it up to that task? Well, now it's been, what, 35 years almost? And some would say it's a mixed bag, the results. are.
Patrick:
[42:39] You among them.
Jan:
[42:40] And um I I'm among them yeah but you know the, the architect the kind of talent that was here in the 1920s after world war one is exceptional I mean no no city it was like the renaissance and Florence the, the number of extraordinary creative people all collected here, during that pretty short period, about 15 years, you know, a city can only wish to have such a thing every century, maybe. So maybe it's too much to ask that after 1989, we would have as remarkable architecture created here as was in the 1920s. Unfortunately, it's not the case.
Patrick:
[43:30] What would be for example your top five of architectural realizations after the wall fell.
Jan:
[43:38] Well that's a that's a tough question well I mean um I have a couple you know there's some highlights there's some highlights certainly uh that you know any tourist will want to see when they come here, like the rebuilt Reichstag. Now that's a...
Patrick:
[43:58] The glass dome from 99?
Jan:
[44:00] Yeah, I mean, that's Norman Foster, and that is a remarkable work of transformation. And a way of making that building both 21st century, but also public in ways that it never was before. And dealing with history responsibly, for example, preserving a lot of its interiors and showing a lot of the scars it had and a lot of the graffiti from the Soviet troops who took it in 1945. I mean, that's all, you know, an amazing kind of job.
Patrick:
[44:35] Because, sorry, apparently, and I learned that only recently, they seriously considered knocking it down entirely.
Jan:
[44:43] Yeah, I mean, there are all kinds of proposals made because, you know, that building was essentially dormant for nearly 70 years after it burnt out in 1933. You know, the Nazis didn't use it, of course. They didn't have any need for a parliament. Uh and then and then we had uh the cold war it was very damaged of course in World War Two we had the cold war and it wasn't till really the very end of the uh 20th century that and with the fall of the wall that it could be sort of reanimated that building it was it was in many ways also a monument of failure, a failure to defend democracy.
Jan:
[45:31] And so, you know, Germans had very complicated feelings about that building. And there was also a question about whether it could function for a 21st century Bundestag. But in the end, they decided, you know, it was too important and it was too central and it was still fixable and based on this also not entirely unproblematic competition they had they ended up with foster who was probably the right person to to make it work but you know you asked me about the buildings I I like in Berlin they tend to be ones that are somehow concerned with history, either about history or they are like the Reichstag.
Jan:
[46:24] The design is layered and it engages previous histories and previous sort of manifestations. And so that's a reason why I very much like the Neues Museum on the Museum Island, which was after, again, many years of being essentially a gutted and largely forgotten building, it was renovated painstakingly by David Chipperfield, the British architect.
Jan:
[46:59] And that's a building whose history is visible everywhere you look, outside, inside, in all the details. And that's a fascinating kind of exercise in engaging history, in difficult history, engaging it responsibly. Unlike the Schloss, for example.
Patrick:
[47:20] Oh, yeah.
Jan:
[47:20] The Humboldt Forum, you know?
Patrick:
[47:24] Yeah, that's okay. So for those listeners, we can, you know, in a few seconds, there used to be the seat of the East German government was there, the Palast der Republik.
Jan:
[47:37] That's right.
Patrick:
[47:37] And they found, after the wall fell, they found, quote unquote, asbestos in it.
Patrick:
[47:43] So they knocked it down and they weren't sure what to do with it. And then they decided to rebuild what was there before, which is, can you give us a description?
Jan:
[47:55] Yeah, that's really complicated. history so uh the Schloss which was the city palace also evolved over many years um in the end it was mostly baroque that's what you see there uh in the old photos but um you know it had a history going much further back from that so it was actually a kind of a mutant building in certain ways, mostly Baroque, and then the dome, based on an idea by Schinkel again, was 150 years later, you know, around 1850 or so. And it was a building that no one ever particularly liked. The Prussian kings didn't much like it. I'm not aware that Hitler or any Nazis ever set foot in it.
Jan:
[48:49] In the post-war era, the politicians on both sides didn't particularly like it. And, but it represented Prussian imperial power, and it had a great many rooms inside, some of which had been designed by Schinkel, in fact, you know, as an interior designer. But, you know, ultimately, it was very damaged in the war. It could have been restored. That would have been a decision by the communists again, the DDR. Instead they decided to get rid of it and they detonated the whole thing in 1950 they blew it up okay and um because they decided it would be more fun to create their own kind of palace of the republic they weren't quite sure what it was going to look like in 1950 but you know they had the idea plus they thought they could make a kind of their own red square on the museum island okay for parades and marching and so forth in front of whatever this new building was going to be.
Jan:
[49:59] And the Schloss was for them a symbol of militarism and imperialism, and they didn't want anything to do with that. So they were happy to get rid of that kind of history and rebuild. And it took them a while. It took them until 1976 to actually get this Palast der Republik built. Even before that, I think it was in 69, they finished the TV tower. They built that even before they built the Palast der Republik. And when that was done, it was interesting because it was, you know, two giant auditoriums plus a significant portion of the program open to the public.
Patrick:
[50:44] The place looked nice. I mean, I saw pictures of it.
Jan:
[50:47] From the inside.
Patrick:
[50:48] Yeah, and like, yeah, yeah. And they also nicknamed it Erichs Lampenladen.
Jan:
[50:53] Yes. I mean, it was its own 70s kind of feel inside with the fixtures and the furniture and that kind of thing.
Patrick:
[51:04] Erich is Erich Honecker, the former East German leader for our listeners. And the Lampenladen is the light fixtures store.
Jan:
[51:14] Shop.
Patrick:
[51:14] Shop, yeah.
Jan:
[51:15] Yeah, Lampenladen is kind of a shop.
Patrick:
[51:17] So, Google it if you can, listeners.
Jan:
[51:20] Erichs Lampenladen, yeah. But that building, you know, was doomed as soon as really communism collapsed because it lost its reason for being really. Now, they could have found alternative uses. They could have definitely had some interesting competitions with that building. But there was already a movement very early on among conservatives to get rid of it because it in turn became a hated symbol of the communist era for certain segments of the population. And of course, most buildings in the 60s and 70s, big public buildings especially, were insulated with asbestos. So that gave them an excuse to go in and strip it down right down to the concrete and the steel. And once you got that far, it pretty much wasn't going to be maintained. But you're right, they didn't even give it a chance, really. They didn't have a competition for architects to sort of consider...
Jan:
[52:28] Uses that would in fact acknowledge that layer of history and there was a push we want our schloss back you know let's build the schloss uh and people even if people said well why what are you going to put in it I don't know well you know we'll take some of the old ethnographic collection and we'll put in some parts of the Humboldt University and let's say a few restaurants and some temporary exhibitions and some other stuff.
Patrick:
[52:56] It went over budget, something crazy. Two billion? Is that it? At the end of the day?
Jan:
[53:05] Well, you know, it didn't go as much over budget, as far as I understand, as the airport did.
Patrick:
[53:12] Oh, God. Wow.
Jan:
[53:13] And it was actually finished more or less on time, the Schloss, unlike the airport, which was, I don't know, seven years late. Something like that. Anyway, they found some program for this new schloss they decided based on a competition that already prescribed three exact copies of the original facades plus most of the one of the interior courtyards plus the dome which meant you know they were essentially cloning they wanted to clone the old schloss and then fill it with all different kinds of program. And for a lot of architects, including myself, that didn't make any sense. And most of those, let's say, more responsible architects didn't even participate in the competition because it was too restrictive. They said already, we want a copy of the old one. And so, that's what they got. They got a copy with all the, you know, statues and the gold and all the imperial Prussian scheme that had been on the old one, which means nothing to really anyone anymore.
Patrick:
[54:26] Well, yeah, it's still puzzling to me, to be honest. Like, okay, it looks fine, I guess, but, you know, I still don't see the point. And also you mentioned uh previously the airport we actually met because of another podcast from Radio Spätkauf and they have that podcast series called how to excuse my language How to Fuck Up an Airport and they have five episodes I think on the construction of BER and it's absolutely excellent, like it's good journalism, yeah I don't know if I want to revisit That whole sad saga. Oh, my God.
Jan:
[55:03] But, you know, I was here, of course, living the whole time. It's like, when will the airport be done? I don't know. This year? Next year? Nope, not yet. And, you know, kept going over budget. And it's really a huge embarrassment because Germany is supposed to be good at doing things like this, building airports. You know, for example, I always enjoyed using the Munich airport, the new one that's still relatively recent one down there. And it kept costing more money, of course, and it kept being delayed year after year after year here. And then finally they finished it. And from day one, it had problems.
Patrick:
[55:45] Problems, yeah.
Jan:
[55:46] And from day one, it was not big enough. And it doesn't actually meet a whole lot of standards that are 21st century as far as international airports are supposed to be. And I still can't fly direct to Boston, where my mother lives. I mean, it's just ridiculous.
Patrick:
[56:07] You have to go to Munich, I guess?
Jan:
[56:08] Yeah, or Frankfurt, or Amsterdam, or Paris. I mean, you know, there's a tiny handful of direct flights to the U.S. From this giant new international airport that I helped pay for. And not only that, the architecture is so dull. It is so conventional, so pedestrian. And it's not a pleasure to use.
Patrick:
[56:35] And it's quite out of the way as well? Not for me. Oh, okay.
Jan:
[56:39] Not for me. Hey, Tegel was a pleasure.
Patrick:
[56:42] Oh, yes.
Jan:
[56:42] Everyone loved Tegel in Berlin.
Patrick:
[56:44] Absolutely.
Jan:
[56:44] Because it was so simple to use. You got in, got out. It was designed for a different time, you know, really 1960s, before you had security and a shopping mall, which had to take up so much of what airports are today. And everyone was sad to see Tegel go, at least in West Berlin. But I have to say the only advantage to the new airport because I live in Schöneberg is I can get on a an S-Bahn and be there in 40 minutes and and that costs what does that cost now like four euros yeah 370.
Patrick:
[57:25] Or something yeah.
Jan:
[57:26] So I can print and the S-Bahn goes right to the building to the Terminal.
Patrick:
[57:32] Innsbrucker Pplatz?
Jan:
[57:33] From Südkreuz.
Patrick:
[57:35] Oh, yeah, okay, yeah.
Jan:
[57:36] So I can go from Südkreuz straight to the airport terminal in one go. So I am happy about that. But pretty much everything else I have to do there is...
Patrick:
[57:51] A pain.
Jan:
[57:52] I mean, it's not as bad as some much bigger airports, you know, like JFK or something like that, where it can be or Charles de Gaulle or the Amsterdam airport Schiphol which is huge.
Patrick:
[58:07] I haven’t been there in many years so I couldn't tell you.
Jan:
[58:09] I mean you can walk for miles really in some of those airports before you'll with thousands of other people before you find where you're supposed to go true so but I'm just as an aesthetic experience, the Berlin airport feels very 1980s It feels very retro. So that is not one of my favorite places in Berlin, but the buildings I keep coming back to and enjoy visiting tend to be the ones from the sort of classic modern era, which are the 1920s great works by, you know, Mies van der Rohe or Erich Mendelssohn or any number of. Hans Schroon, I mean, Probably still my favorite building in Berlin is the Philharmonic Hall by Hans Sharon. And that's a building that is so extraordinary that even if you've gone, as I've been lucky to do, to countless concerts in there over 30 years, you still discover something new about it every time you go.
Patrick:
[59:24] Have you been to the new quote you know air quotes uh the Pierre Boulez Saal.
Jan:
[59:31] Yes that is it's nice that's a big success yes Frank Gehry that was a as far as I understand a gift essentially from Frank Gehry he did the design more or less for free and at the behest of his friend, Daniel Barenboim. And that's also interesting, because that's also a building that is inserted inside an older building. I mean, that's a space that has been recreated within an older building, which I think was itself, I mean, initially broke and then altered by the communists and then carved out and a new auditorium was inserted by Frank Gehry. So it's, you know another fascinating kind of palimpsest of a different uh design hands at work there the.
Patrick:
[1:00:24] Acoustics are amazing as well.
Jan:
[1:00:26] Yeah and I have been there many times too and I don't remember ever having a bad experience in there I don't think I've ever heard a bad concert in there and And I am extremely impressed how well it works as a space for intimate music that is essentially a chamber music hall, but in the round, in an oval kind of arena. And that is a, I would say, is one of my favorite sort of design spaces in Berlin. And it's a great addition to the kind of musical landscape of Berlin.
Patrick:
[1:01:11] But what would you think about buildings that really go completely in a wild and unexpected direction? For example, the Jewish Museum. It was built in 2001.
Jan:
[1:01:27] Well, yeah, I mean, that's a building that any tourist coming to Berlin for the first time should see. And it houses a remarkable collection. It's one of the most visited museums in all of Germany, if not the most at the moment, because the Pergamon is sort of closed indefinitely at the moment.
Patrick:
[1:01:51] Renovations.
Jan:
[1:01:51] And since day one, when it opened, 2000.
Patrick:
[1:01:54] I mean, here it says 2001.
Jan:
[1:01:57] 2001. And in fact, it opened to the public on 9-11.
Patrick:
[1:02:03] Really?
Jan:
[1:02:04] That building opened to the public the day of the terrorist attacks in Berlin.
Patrick:
[1:02:10] I didn't know that.
Jan:
[1:02:10] And it was open for a couple of hours. And then the security closed it because of those events in New York.
Patrick:
[1:02:18] Wow.
Jan:
[1:02:19] It was what you might call an inauspicious opening day. For the Jewish Museum, even though those events, it was coincidence. But anyway, since that time, it has had a constant kind of surge of people moving through it. And a good thing, too, in a lot of those people are school groups, German school groups, taking often somewhat reluctant high school students through there and giving them a kind of crash course. But that building is definitely worth visiting it is a lot less complicated in its theoretical basis than it looks it is actually fairly straightforward the way it's organized the kind of routes you're intended to take.
Patrick:
[1:03:12] The the entrance is like a regular building and the kind of lightning bolt that we see most of the.
Jan:
[1:03:18] Time yeah the entrance is a much older a Baroque building, and then we descend and we enter this world of Libeskind, the architect, and there are three routes inside which intersect. And one is the route, As you learn below, that takes you to exile and this exterior garden, which represents the exile that German Jews followed if they were able to escape from Nazi Germany. And then there's another route pathway that takes you to the Holocaust Tower, which is the dead end. I mean, a literal dead end in a cold, dark, exteriorized void. And then there's a third route, which takes you up the stairs to the actual exhibition, to the light, to the air, to the life of, you know, at least 2,000 years of Jewish history in the German lands, which is displayed over two floors. And so that's actually fairly understandable. There are a lot of, you know, cute angles and funny windows and stuff.
Patrick:
[1:04:31] But it's a very sensory experience for a museum like this. I mean, I was there a few years ago, but I remember being very impressed.
Jan:
[1:04:40] They have reinstalled the entire permanent collection fairly recently. So, you know, it's not static. They do change things within. But that is, you know, I think that's from what I've seen of his work, I still think that's Libeskind's best building. And it's essentially his first building. because I think that architectural language that he employs somehow resonates for that program, for that site, for this city.
Patrick:
[1:05:15] For that topic as well.
Jan:
[1:05:17] Yes, it makes sense. But if he uses that same language for a shopping mall or a block of condominiums, then you're like, well, why is he doing that? But for that museum, it makes sense. and that was the result of a, of a competition and he brought a lot of his own personal story and a lot of his own knowledge to bear on that project and you can feel it uh when you're there so you know I consider that a success yeah.
Patrick:
[1:05:50] No yeah yeah that's.
Jan:
[1:05:51] Still you know that's.
Patrick:
[1:05:53] A good point.
Jan:
[1:05:53] More than 20 years later yeah.
Patrick:
[1:05:55] Absolutely, and may I ask you what your opinion is of one other memorial and then we can switch to the quick and quirky questions if you want.
Jan:
[1:06:07] Whatever you like okay.
Patrick:
[1:06:08] Uh so what do you think of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe next to the Brandenburger Tor.
Jan:
[1:06:15] Well that.
Patrick:
[1:06:16] Created some controversy as well.
Jan:
[1:06:17] That is also not so easy to sum up you know that had a complicated genesis that project and I was here while they you know were debating how to do that they had their first giant competition which was kind of a disaster and and they threw all of them out and they had a second competition which was only invited the first one was open the second one was only invited okay and that's the one that uh that you know resulted in the project we see there the Peter Eisenman and...
Patrick:
[1:06:53] By the way, I'm sorry. It's only a coincidence that the two examples I'm giving are related to, you know, Judaism and I'm not...
Jan:
[1:07:03] Well, even formalistically, you know, there are a lot of questions asked because the Jewish Museum came first and the Garden of Exile that he designed for the Jewish Museum, Libeskind, for many people, looks similar to the Eisenman project. It was a 2005.
Patrick:
[1:07:27] The other memorial, so yes.
Jan:
[1:07:29] You know, it's hard for me to look at that objectively. My personal opinion is that it is, you know, it was a project that was compromised by a number of things. Like initially they wanted sand and not pavers. In the initial, you know, between the stele, Sarah wanted, and Eisenman too, they initially planned many more stele than are there. They had to reduce that number.
Patrick:
[1:07:57] There are still 2,700.
Jan:
[1:07:59] There's still a lot, but they design far more and closer together. And then without a documentation center underneath, and then the politicians said, well, you need a documentation center. So they had to put it somewhere. Where was it going to go? It had to go underground.
Patrick:
[1:08:17] I would agree.
Jan:
[1:08:18] And that's an awkward fit in the corner there and so forth. And so on, and now they're starting to crack apart, and they're actually, the water is forcing its way in, even these prefabricated concrete, steely, and they're cracking, and they've even had to brace a lot of them with steel kind of corsets, and that's not a permanent solution. So there are all kinds of issues regarding that, whether it works as a memorial, I don't know. I think probably as well as you could ask for such a topic, to represent millions of people, many of whose names we don't know, in a place that is not specific to the Shoah.
Patrick:
[1:09:13] That's true.
Jan:
[1:09:14] It wasn't planned there, it wasn't carried out there on that specific parcel of land, you know, and that makes a difference than the Topography of Terror, which is the place where the SS and the Gestapo actually had their headquarters and where a lot of these crimes were conceived.
Patrick:
[1:09:33] That's true.
Jan:
[1:09:33] You know, that's a perpetrator site, but where the memorial is, it's necessarily, it has to be abstract because it isn't a, you know, a real historic site directly related to that event. It's sufficiently abstract to convey an impression and it's sufficiently large to absorb a great many visitors and kind of make them disappear which is what I like about it it's like a giant sponge it's decentralized it's not a maze because you don't get lost inside you always know where you are it's a grid I, But it allows for very quickly to achieve a degree of intimacy.
Patrick:
[1:10:24] And disorientation. Like in the middle, it's pretty deep.
Jan:
[1:10:28] Because you're going down and they're going up and so forth. But what it really is to me, it's still more Richard Serra. It's still more of an urban landscape, like a sculpture, than it is a piece of architecture. And it's just open enough to allow individual interpretation. So I think generally it's a success, even though it's faced and will continue to face a lot of challenges.
Patrick:
[1:11:05] Okay, so we can move on to a few quick and quirky questions if you want.
Jan:
[1:11:10] Sure.
Patrick:
[1:11:10] All right. So let's see. If you could get a ticket to any show or event, music, sports, or anything in history, past or present, what would you want a ticket for?
Jan:
[1:11:23] Oh my God. Anywhere at any time?
Patrick:
[1:11:25] Absolutely.
Jan:
[1:11:26] Well, gee. That's tough.
Patrick:
[1:11:30] It could be the gladiators, it could be Woodstock, it could be JFK in Berlin.
Jan:
[1:11:36] I've been pretty lucky to attend a few. Probably, I'd like to go back to Woodstock. My mother actually attended Woodstock, the concert, the original one, as a journalist. And she was there when Jimi Hendrix was playing. and I'd ask her about, what did you think? And she said, oh, I don't know. I was too busy interviewing people. And I'm like, you can't be serious. How could you have not paid attention to what was going on? She could have brought me to Woodstock. I was about six years old at the time. And she didn't, and I won't forgive her for that. But maybe that would be one kind of event. It might have been fun to see the Beatles in Shea Stadium or something, but then you wouldn't have heard them anyway.
Patrick:
[1:12:29] Yeah, apparently.
Jan:
[1:12:31] Maybe it wouldn't have mattered. Or, you know, Elvis at Ed Sullivan or something like that. I'm sure there are many great musical events. I mean, there are all kinds of fantastic musicians who've played in Berlin who are no longer with us. But some of those sort of culture-shaking events would have been fun to attend.
Patrick:
[1:12:58] Are you a big sports fan?
Jan:
[1:13:01] Not so much anymore. I mean, most American sports I don't pay attention to anymore because...
Patrick:
[1:13:09] The time difference.
Jan:
[1:13:10] I mean, I know you can stream them and so forth, but the time difference makes that very difficult.
Patrick:
[1:13:15] Only the NFL, like, you know, Sunday at 7 p.m.
Jan:
[1:13:19] Yeah.
Patrick:
[1:13:21] Otherwise, no.
Jan:
[1:13:22] So I pay close attention to the European Cup and to the World Cup soccer, you know, every two years. And I watch that pretty closely for whatever that is, 10 days, two weeks?
Patrick:
[1:13:38] Four, five, six weeks.
Jan:
[1:13:41] No, not that long.
Patrick:
[1:13:42] Is it? Yeah.
Jan:
[1:13:43] I guess you're right.
Patrick:
[1:13:44] The Euros this summer, that lasted almost a month, I think.
Jan:
[1:13:49] No, I guess you're right about that. Well, I do pay attention to those when they come around, but I don't really pay attention to any professional soccer. I find I save a lot of time that way.
Patrick:
[1:14:04] And pain in some cases.
Jan:
[1:14:06] And I do like the Olympics when they're available to be seen, but I don't attend a lot of... Sports I used to like watching tennis but um but all of that seems to be paid pay tv now cable so forth true and I actually don't even own a television oh so there you go but you can experience.
Patrick:
[1:14:27] The city in its fullest.
Jan:
[1:14:30] Well you don't really need to own a TV these days I don't think if you have a computer um I.
Patrick:
[1:14:35] Agree you can stream what you need.
Jan:
[1:14:36] Everything is out there accessible but um no I don't pay too much.
Patrick:
[1:14:44] Okay so next question would be what and I completely talking about switching gears earlier here's one what would you name your boat if you had one.
Jan:
[1:14:54] There was some amazing name for a boat given uh something what was it Boaty McBoatface yeah it was something like that.
Patrick:
[1:15:05] Wasn’t it for like some kind of official.
Jan:
[1:15:08] Boat or something? Yeah, they actually had a competition and anyone could submit a name.
Patrick:
[1:15:14] Boaty McBoatface.
Jan:
[1:15:14] Boaty McBoatface. And that's the one that won and they were stuck, right? Because they had to take it. They agreed.
Patrick:
[1:15:21] Yeah, I don't think they backed out.
Jan:
[1:15:23] That one was pretty good. I don't know. I don't boat. I have problems being below deck.
Patrick:
[1:15:33] Okay.
Jan:
[1:15:34] I'm easily seasick, I like being above deck uh that's all right but um but I don't know enterprise okay I'm at a starship I don't know right.
Patrick:
[1:15:47] That works, okay another uh gear switch where is the worst smelling place you've ever been in.
Jan:
[1:15:59] Oh, boy. Well...
Patrick:
[1:16:01] Berlin in the subway can be ripe.
Jan:
[1:16:04] That's pretty bad.
Patrick:
[1:16:05] Yes.
Jan:
[1:16:06] There are a lot of... Berlin is not a particularly hygienic place, I would say. Cities go. That isn't... That is an expression of its budget to a large degree. I mean, Berlin does not have a lot of money to spend in the way that Geneva or Zurich does. So, yeah, there are a lot of corners. There are still a lot of people who think that anything outdoors can be a toilet. But I don't have a specific sense memory of a particularly malodorous place. At least not right now. Maybe I just block that out of my mind. I think most people probably do. It's powerful when it's there, but when it's not, then we put it away.
Patrick:
[1:16:58] Yeah, that's quite possible, actually. If you were given a one-minute ad slot during the super bowl that you couldn't sell you have to use it what would you fill it with.
Jan:
[1:17:12] Well frankly at this moment I would probably make one last political appeal for people to vote the right way in this U.S. election even though I know that most of my friends and family in the United States are deluged, deluged, uh, with political advertising, like every five minutes. Um, and it's, it's exhausting. Uh, and it's also nutty so much of it, but still, if I knew I had a millions of people guaranteed audience, uh, I would make one, one final appeal for voters to think sanely and preserve their democracy yeah I agree the question is who would I hire to give that message would I do it myself or would I find some some eloquent speaker to do so maybe I'd hire some uh really fabulous English Shakespearean actor to um to deliver a rousing speech or.
Patrick:
[1:18:25] Maybe a super very popular artist to you know like uh and we have some background noise uh maybe some really popular artists to uh join the most people uh you know I don't know like gonna throw that name Taylor Swift or something.
Jan:
[1:18:42] Well you know The Harris Walz team, they've been able to bring in already, you know, Beyonce and Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift and so forth. So, you know, they've been doing that. But I think I need to create some rousing appeal. Again, Shakespearean. I'd want to try and bring, like, Daniel Day-Lewis out of his retirement... And put him to work for, you know, those 10 minutes.
Patrick:
[1:19:12] That's one minute. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Jan:
[1:19:14] Didn't you say 10 minutes?
Patrick:
[1:19:16] One minute.
Jan:
[1:19:16] One minute. Oh, that's harder to accomplish.
Patrick:
[1:19:20] You can hire, for example, David Fincher to bring Daniel Day-Lewis out of retirement and, you know, have him cook for one minute.
Jan:
[1:19:28] Yeah. And we'd have great visuals. But I think that would be, I wouldn't want to sell something. I'd want to appeal to my fellow Americans at this moment.
Patrick:
[1:19:41] Yes, yeah, because this is, we are, okay, October 28th today, and this will probably air before the election.
Jan:
[1:19:50] Everyone I know is, every American I know is in a state of some angst and anxiety at this moment.
Patrick:
[1:20:01] Not only Americans, I can assure you.
Jan:
[1:20:04] Yes. I mean, we're getting close to decision time here.
Patrick:
[1:20:08] Yeah. Yes. Give me three items on your bucket list.
Jan:
[1:20:17] To do still?
Patrick:
[1:20:18] Yes.
Jan:
[1:20:19] Oh, boy. Well, I have tremendous Wanderlust, as the Germans say. I always have. I was very lucky as a child to travel a great deal with my mother, who was a journalist, and I was an only child, so she was able to bring me along and was willing to bring me along on so many trips. And so I have a constant desire to go places. And so there are many places in the world I haven't been, so there are any number of places on my list. Like, I have never been to South America. I mean, that's a whole continent. So that's probably the main bucket list would be travel, basically, and otherwise, I don't know I have to uh I feel like I'm still far from retirement and people ask me will you go back to the United States part of an answer to that would be okay under what conditions what kind of regime might be in place back home that would entice me in such a way but.
Patrick:
[1:21:37] You consider Berlin home.
Jan:
[1:21:39] I do consider it home but you know I have a daughter who is uh 16 she'll be going off presumably to university uh soon enough and then I will have fewer commitments um here uh I still enjoy the the work I do the teaching I do but you know one of the things I don't like is that it's dark here about half the year I mean starting in about two weeks until let's say the beginning of May it will be dark here and uh and and hovering around the freezing point and that I find increasingly disagreeable um and there are other places one could perhaps uh spend those other months I don't know maybe split the time half and half yeah.
Patrick:
[1:22:33] Yeah that's uh that would be a good.
Jan:
[1:22:35] But um I still feel a close connection to New York my hometown and um I continue to want to spend time there as well you.
Patrick:
[1:22:46] Do go back there.
Jan:
[1:22:47] Pretty much every summer yeah okay yeah okay I have my mother in Boston but I still have a great many friends in New York and uh, And I always feel like going back and finding out what's going on there. So, yeah, the bucket list isn't so much, you know, I want to climb Everest. I do enjoy very much hiking through the mountains, the Alps especially. But it's mostly places I want to go. And I have a certain number of some professional goals that still exist. In terms of the kinds of teaching I want to do and for whom, but we'll see.
Patrick:
[1:23:34] You want to keep them secret?
Jan:
[1:23:36] I want to keep, they're still in development at this point. And bucket lists, yeah, they tend to be about places I still want to go and cultures I still want to experience. And yeah, I hope that the world remains peaceful enough in coming years to allow that to happen. Because an alarming number of places are hazardous to visit these days for any number of reasons. And I am, in the work I do about urban sustainability, I'm kept well informed also by my students about issues of climate change and environmental degradation. And I feel that the longer I wait, the less of the natural world I may be able to experience. And then you add a few wars on top of that, It's not as simple as it used to be. It seems to me.
Patrick:
[1:24:38] Yeah, that's true. And, well, this might be a, you know, not loaded question, but maybe complicated question to end on. But I remember that in the podcast we went at, they never really asked, because it was about the design of the city of tomorrow. And one question they never really asked was, are you optimistic about the future? So are you optimistic about the future?
Jan:
[1:25:10] Well, I find that, you know, if I study contemporary challenges as I do urban challenges, especially one can easily become depressed about so many things happening at once. We all experienced a global pandemic. uh we see how too little is being done about climate change we see conflicts horrendous conflicts uh emerging uh which seem to have very little resolution and so forth it's it is possible to become despondent about that kind of thing but I find the fact that I have a daughter means I have to think differently. That makes a huge difference in my life because I have to imagine at least a fairly civil world for her to live in, And a reasonably rational one well into the 21st century. I don't know if I would have a similar attitude if she weren't around. But she is a corrective to depressed or despondent thinking.
Patrick:
[1:26:35] Or cynical or, you know, being jaded or...
Jan:
[1:26:38] Yes, and maybe that's the whole reason. It's a good reason to have children, in fact. because it keeps you focused and it keeps you engaged in positive ways.
Jan:
[1:26:53] And I find that very helpful.
Patrick:
[1:26:56] Yeah, I don't have kids, but I actually agree with you. That makes a lot of sense what you're saying, honestly.
Jan:
[1:27:02] The trade-off is that you worry about them.
Patrick:
[1:27:05] Yes.
Jan:
[1:27:06] Because they exist.
Patrick:
[1:27:08] Oh, yeah.
Jan:
[1:27:08] And because they're young, you worry about them and you feel a degree of shame that you are handing off these problems to them to deal with, and it's not their fault. So, yes, it's a bit of a trade-off. But simply because they exist, you realize you have to keep at it and do your part to improve things in whatever way you can to contribute positively. So I find that very motivating.
Patrick:
[1:27:43] Uh yeah so we can end on this really nice piece of wisdom I gotta, I gotta thank you for taking the time to talk to us today my pleasure it was a very appreciated and uh well hopefully I'll be back in Berlin next year and if you want we could do a part two I would be I would be I would be.
Jan:
[1:28:04] I'm glad that you're a fan of Berlin, you seem to be.
Patrick:
[1:28:09] You keep coming back and.
Jan:
[1:28:11] Um And yeah, maybe I can ask you next time what you find so appealing or attractive about here. I know one of the things is the Berlin Marathon, which is a fast race and not as fast this year as I guess Chicago was, right?
Patrick:
[1:28:28] Yeah, I think they beat, was there a new world record in Chicago or something like that?
Jan:
[1:28:35] Among the women that had a world record, yeah.
Patrick:
[1:28:38] Yes, absolutely.
Jan:
[1:28:39] But I think the men were quite fast too. But, yeah, I encourage everyone to come here. What's interesting, sorry, is that... You know, there's still people in my mother's generation, and they're getting on, you know, into their 80s. It wouldn't occur to them, especially Americans, to come to Berlin, because they associate it still far too strongly with the Nazis and with the war. And they don't imagine what would you see in Berlin, what is of interest. And it's always interesting to me to encounter that attitude. But those who do come here discover just how extraordinary and rich and challenging and poignant this landscape is and how Berlin is really like no other place. So I'm happy to put in a good word for it.
Patrick:
[1:29:45] Awesome. Thank you again.
Jan:
[1:29:47] My pleasure.
Patrick:
[1:29:48] And thank you for listening. And we will catch you on the next one. Thanks!