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‘EIN ORT, WO SICH ALLES IN EINEN HAUFEN ZUSAMMENDRÄNGT’: BERLIN'S ZELTENPLATZ AS CONTESTED URBAN SPACE
Author(s) -
Darby David
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
german life and letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1468-0483
pISSN - 0016-8777
DOI - 10.1111/glal.12260
Subject(s) - contest , bourgeoisie , empire , privilege (computing) , order (exchange) , history , period (music) , art history , crowds , social order , german , sociology , art , aesthetics , humanities , politics , political science , ancient history , law , computer security , archaeology , finance , computer science , economics
The Zeltenplatz, a feature of Berlin's Tiergarten, played a unique role in the city's social life for nearly two centuries. This essay traces the changing clientele of this gathering place during three distinct phases of its history: its initial eighteenth‐century heyday, when it was famed for drawing large and extraordinarily heterogeneous crowds; the period following the Napoleonic Wars, culminating in the 1848 revolution, crucial events of which took place at the Zeltenplatz; and the 1880s, as modern Berlin assumed its place as capital of the new German Empire. At the core of this history for over a century is a contest between aristocratic privilege and the aspirations of Berlin's growing bourgeoisie. Relying on fictional texts, reports by travellers, and various descriptions of the city, this essay describes how the Zeltenplatz, still beyond the full control of civic authorities until 1861, offered unusual freedoms for challenging, playfully or otherwise, the established order and social hierarchies of urban life. Evident throughout is the marked theatricality of this space, which the crowds exploited either to perform, and thereby to confirm, an existing social order or to rehearse new roles and enact social configurations whose realisation in Berlin proper still lay in the future.