Now without a car in Berlin, I have returned to being an avid user of public transport. Berlin's underground system was built nearly 50 years later than its Paris or London counterparts, during a period that was characterised by both Wilhelm II's narcissistic aspirations to grandeur--he had a lot of catching up to do with his cousin Victoria--and Berlin's emerging role as the hub of Modernity. Growing in size from a population of 1 million to over 3 million between 1885 and 1915, the city had to rapidly expand and construct housing and transport infrastructure to cope with the influx of masses of workers, impoverished landed aristocracy, adventure seekers, and administrators. The most heavily industrialised city in Europe of its time, its horizons were illuminated by the orange glow of factories at night and darkened by smoke during the day. Moving armies of workers every day, and connecting new residential city quarters with the centre and the vast green spaces of the countryside surrounding Berlin, the transport system was essential to the function of the city and, by extension, of the new empire.
Corresponding to the various currents of taste and fashion, some stations on the underground system are quite grand and elaborately decorated, but the majority are functional, with tiled walls, straight lines and right angles. Most stations display tile work that is unique to each station in its colour, surface texture or pattern. Such tiling creates closed, sleek, and durable surfaces. Post-WWII, large parts of Berlin had to be reconstructed and, with it, its transport system. Some underground stations survived relatively unharmed, but many had to be rebuilt. The basic concept remained, but the style of tiling, notably the colour schemes, changed.
Closed surfaces do not remain closed for long; technology had to be updated or water damage occurred, and the walls had to be reopened, resurfaced, and retiled. Not always was there money to return the tiling to its original state, or no match for the original tiles could be found. Then there was the emergence of graffiti and vandalism, especially from the 1980s onwards. The resulting cracks and scars on the walls are the cracks and scars in the vision of modernity, the utopia of a world forever marching towards prosperity, technological progress and enlightenment. That vision had already exploded with the terrors of the Nazi regime, but that was a collective terror. Many of these contemporary cracks and scars represent the terror of individuals and their modern tribes, not society at large.
