UNTER DEN LINDEN

This time of year in Berlin, you can get knocked over crossing the street.  Not by a car or a bicycle, mind you, but by the heavy fragrance of the linden trees.  The linden is Berlin’s most common tree and even has a boulevard named after it:  Unter den Linden (under the lindens).  This thoroughfare was originally laid out as a bridle path by Elector John George of Brandenburg in the 16th c. to reach his hunting grounds in the Tiergarten from his palace.  By order of the "Great Elector" Frederick William in 1647, the bridle path was replaced by a boulevard of linden trees extending from the city palace to the city gates.  Below is a view of Unter den Linden as it looked in 1691.

If you’re wondering what the heck an Elector is, here’s the quick and dirty.  The Electors were German princes who, from the 13^th c. through 1806, elected the King of the Romans.  Although he was elected in Germany, the king became the Holy Roman Emperor only when crowned by the Pope.  Napoleon put a stop to this convoluted nonsense at the same time he stole the Quadriga that sits atop the Brandenburg Gate.  It, unlike the Holy Roman Emperor, was later returned to its original perch.  (Historical note:  The story of the Electors is a very long, liturgical one.  If you’re interested in delving into the arcane details, here is a useful link:  http://www.holyromanempireassociation.com/prince-elector-of-the-holy-roman-empire.html)

The linden, also known as the lime tree or the tilia, is a highly symbolic and hallowed tree in German mythology.   In pagan times, local communities assembled under the lindens not only to celebrate and dance, but also to adjudicate truth and restore peace and justice.  Thus the tree became associated with jurisprudence, and verdicts in rural Germany were frequently returned sub tilia (under the linden) until the Enlightenment.  The oldest known tanzelinde (dance linden) in Germany is  in Schenklengsfeld, Hesse (above), planted in the 9th century.

Back to the boulevard.   By the 19th c., as Berlin grew, Unter den Linden became the grandest thoroughfare in all of Berlin.  In 1851, an equestrian statue of King Frederick II of Prussia (aka “Old Fritz”) was erected on the boulevard’s median (above).  And Fred's a whole other story, one worth a brief detour.  Frederick II (1712 –1786, below) ruled Prussia for 46 years.  

His most significant accomplishments included his military victories and reorganization of the Prussian army, although he was much more interested in agriculture, philosophy, music, and the arts than he was in the art of war.  He was a formidable patron of the Enlightenment, counting Voltaire among his friends--and possibly boyfriends.  The consensus among modern historians is that Fred was homosexual, and by his own admission.  After a defeat on the battlefield, Frederick wrote:  "Fortune has it in for me; she is a woman, and I am not that way inclined.”  He married but died without an heir.

Frederick's favorite residence was his summer palace in Potsdam, Sanssouci, the most important rococo building in Northern Germany.  Here Frederick lived apart from his wife, held salons with the leading "influencers" and "thought leaders" of the day, and played the flute.  When not carousing in the countryside, he built extensively in his capital, Berlin.  Most of these buildings are still standing and can be found along Unter den Linden. 

Among them are St. Hedwig's Kathedrale (above, right rear) and the Staatsoper, the Berlin State Opera (above, foreground), whose general music director, Daniel Barenboim, performed for Frank O. Gehry's 90th birthday this year; 

the Staatsbibliotek, the State Library Berlin (above); 

and the Kronprinzenpalais, Crown Prince Heinrich's Palace (above), now the site of Humboldt University where Karl Marx, Lenin, the Brothers Grimm, Alfred Einstein, and Max Planck studied.  

Other notable buildings along Unter den Linden include the oldest building on the boulevard, the Zeughaus (above, right), built between 1695-1730, and formerly used as an arsenal, now the site of the German Historical Museum.  This baroque building has a 2003 glass addition by I. M. Pei that recalls his pyramid entrance to the Louvre.   Between the Zeughaus and the Kronprinzenpalais is Karl Friedrich Shinkel’s neo-clasical Neue Wache (above, left), originally built as a war memorial and now housing the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Unknown Nazi Concentration Camp Victim.

Further along the boulevard toward Brandenburg Gate are the embassies of Russia, Great Britain, France, and the United States (above), the four allied powers that controlled Berlin’s geographical sectors after World War II.  

And last but not least is the Hotel Adlon (above), where President Obama had a private farewell dinner with Angela Merkel at the very end of his presidency.  According to Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security advisor and speech writer, tears were shed and hands were wrung.

The lovely linden also has a waltz named after it, Unter den Linden, written by Johann Strauss III in 1900.  But the original stately allée, beloved by Frederick and set to music by Strauss, was not to last the National Socialist years.  In 1934–35, most of the linden trees were cut down in the course of building the first S-bahn line, the underground metropolitan.  And during the last days of World War II, Unter den Linden (above) became a boulevard of broken dreams.  

Not only did the boulevards and buildings in Berlin suffer the horrors of World War II.  Large numbers of trees, like those in  front of the Reichstag (above), that were not blown to bits by bombs or burned up by incendiaries, were cut down for desperately needed fuel during the war and recovery.  Trees of all types in pre-war Berlin are thought to have numbered around 411,000, but between 1939 and 1946, the number fell to 161,000.  In the photo (below) of the Tiergarten, the park is completely denuded.   

After the end of the war, starting in the 1950s, the citizens and municipal governments of both East and West Berlin worked to replant trees.  In fact, citizens and organizations from all over Germany joined in.  There are plaques on trees in the Tiergarten indicating the organization from another region or city outside Berlin that planted that particular grove of trees.  

By the time of the German Reunification in 1990, the city counted some 370,000 street trees.  Since 1990, 70,000 additional street trees have been planted. Today, the linden comprises almost a third of them.  I’m grateful for this effort, as its blossoms perfume my early days of summer. 

But even when they aren't in bloom, the lindens that grace Unter den Linden send a little magic into the air.   

Keep it real!

Marilyn