John K. Peck takes a deep dive into the forgotten modernist architecture of Berlin’s Technical University (TU)…
Walking through the sprawling campus of Berlin’s Technische Universität (TU for short) can feel like stepping through a portal into an older West Berlin, where colourful modernist buildings proliferate along tree-lined streets and meandering canals. Though it’s just a short distance from the hectic urbanity of Zoologischer Garten, the TU campus, like the neighbouring Tiergarten, offers an escape from the bustle and noise of Berlin while remaining firmly entrenched within it.
Architecturally, the greater TU campus features numerous modernist buildings which are juxtaposed, sometimes jarringly, with older buildings from the 19th century. While somewhat worse for wear after a half-century-plus of use, these modernist structures nonetheless still exude a dogged hopefulness – and while the far reaches of campus lie in Spreestadt Charlottenburg, an out-of-the-way, bulb-shaped transit void tucked between the far west end of the Landwehrkanal and the Spree, those who make the trip will be rewarded with uniquely eccentric architecture and canal-side paths as verdant and enchanting as any in the city.
From Prussia to Post-War
While many of the campus buildings date back to the 19th century, the school’s roots go back even further to Frederick the Great in the 18th century. Under his rule, various institutions including the Königliche Bergakademie and the Königliche Bauakademie zu Berlin (Berlin Royal Mining and Building Academies, respectively) were founded, making Berlin a major Central European center of technical education.
In the 19th century, the two schools merged into the Königlich Technische Hochschule (Royal Technical College), which in 1899 became the first technical university in the German Reich allowed to grant doctoral degrees, finally bringing engineers to the same level of academic recognition as classically educated scholars.
The early 20th century saw the school’s clout and reputation rise, with numerous Nobel laureates such as Fritz Haber, Gustav Ludwig Hertz, and Carl Bosch among the faculty. This celebrated academic culture ground to a sudden halt under the National Socialists, who enforced a school-wide policy of discrimination and expelled prominent Jewish academics (including Georg Schlesinger, who would go on to found the Technion Haifa with Albert Einstein).
During WWII the area was bombed repeatedly, and by the war’s end much of the campus and surrounding area between Zoologischer Garten and the Landwehrkanal had been destroyed by Allied attacks. The school’s reopening in 1946, with many of its buildings still in ruins, was a sober and subdued affair. General Nares, leader of the British occupying force, set the tone in his opening speech, which was dour even for a wartime General:
Some people have expressed their surprise to me that the British and German authorities in charge of this institution have not planned a more ambitious opening ceremony for it, with more and longer speeches and brighter and more luxurious entertainments. And I have always replied to them that to do so would be quite contrary to the spirit in which you are beginning your work. You are starting it in a shattered building with few facilities and no amenities, and a long and difficult road lies ahead.
To further divorce this new institution from its recent past, the school was renamed Technische Universität, and a new curriculum was introduced which would see all students studying the humanities alongside science and technology.
The student body grew exponentially in the decades that followed, requiring massive new structures on the scale of their destroyed Prussian-era predecessors to house classrooms, libraries, and labs. While many of these new buildings (including the brutalist Architecture and Urban Studies Building