Autobahn

Pavement in American motorways are typically made with low initial construction cost, but with ongoing and pricy maintenance. This differs severely from the European and namely German building philosophy. The plans for the Autobahn originated in the 1920'ies under the Weimar Republic. An increasing number of vehicles began to appear all around the country, as the wounds and damages after the devastating world war began to heal. The economy was beginning to flourish again, and despite a recent hyperinflation the country was entering what would later be known as the "golden years" of the republic.

Ideas for express carriageways only for motor vehicles were already present at the time, as in Italy where the first part of the "autostrada" was completed in 1924. In Weimar the vision for the first part of what would later become the Autobahn was the stretch from Hamburg over Frankfurt to Basel. On November 6, 1926 a association called HaFraBa (short name for the involved cities) was founded. A huge project at the time (with a span of over 800 kilometers), it would require intensive engineering and labour power. However, due to the loss of the 1st world war, Germany was unable to lend money anywhere, and secondly the railway industry lobbied against such a proposal. The solution was to collect road tolls, just like Italy did for their projects.

When the Third Reich swept away the slowly collapsing republic, the plans for the HaFraBa was initially rejected, but with the rise of Adolf Hitler things changed. He formed a vision; a plan for the Reichsautobahn. Just as the railways had played an important part in modernizing infrastructure, the time was ready for the motorways to do the same. Thus, in 1933 a law was passed, and the association Gesellschaft Reichsautobahnen created to surpass the construction of this immense project, and the first dig was done by Adolf Hitler himself on September 23 that same year.

This was the beginning of one of the world most well respected and sturdy road networks in the world: Autobahn.

Map of the the first Autobahn stretch, Hamburg over Frankfurt to Basel

Mauerwerk

"On August 13, 1961, at 1.14 am, passengers of the S-Bahn train at busy Friedrichstrasse station heard an announcement ordering them to deboard the train, as continuation of the trip from one sector to the other would no longer be possible."

"TOR IM LICHT", a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from m.joedicke's photostream 

August 13, 1961. A great wall arises in the center of Berlin, the former Reichstadt of Hitler's empire. From day to day, a whole city was divided. Just as the capital of the former militant Germany was recovering from the devastating world war, it was weakened even further. The wall proved GDR's reign in a very physical way, and truly visualized a certain man's old idea of a parted Europe:

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow." 

- Winston Churchill, 1946

With a brand new "anti-facist protection rampart" the GDR was ready to outlive their vision of communism. It resulted in a totalitarian state, completely isolated from its surroundings controlled by the "Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands", the state's single political party. Their reign proved to be fatal to East Germany, as the inhabitants were under heavy surveillance; people who were suspected of being political deviants were persecuted by the Stasi, the state security police. An outrageous number of people were working for Stasi, finding "enemies of the state"; opening letters, spying on private homes, tapping phones etc. East Germany is obsolete today and has been so for many years, but many signs of the past is still visible in Berlin. The city oozes of history's whirr of wings, with reminisces of many eras, changes and differences - all strongly connected to Europe's development.

50 years after the construction of the wall one could try to imagine the situation on a late summer many years ago. People, roads, buildings, cultures, friends and foes were split apart by a mere geographical border. From one day to another, a divided world. Twenty years after the same wall fell to the velvet revolution in 1989, Berlin and Germany stands strong again. Rebuilding and nourishing a war-worn country and city, creating new ideals and values for a modern country. Despite the successful recovery, Germany has just only recently finished paying off their debt from WWI - a proof of how this country's 'leben' is so deeply rooted in wars, revolutions and history.