Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin. Alexandra Richie

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      Frederickan Berlin conjures up images of a growing, vibrant city, a place feeling its self-esteem and confidence, developing its own unique identity and finally becoming something of a unifying force in Prussia. The king was responsible for many of these changes, promoting everything from the rejuvenation of industry to the creation of a sophisticated new legal code. Farmers ruined by the war were supplied with government money to rebuild their homes, purchase seed and cattle and grow strange new crops like the potato. Frederick was determined to foster trade, improving harbours on the Baltic, linking the Elbe, Oder and Vistula rivers by a system of canals and improving docking facilities in Berlin. He was also inspired by the French Philosophes who advocated the application of Newtonian ideas to industry and believed that the traditional production of anything from weapons to wheels, rope to tanned leather could be improved by a scientific approach. Frederick encouraged development in technology from new water pumps to innovations in glass making; he invested heavily in industries like the ‘Manchester’ textile mill and the Berlin clock factory, and gave the bankers Splitgerber and Daum charge of gunpowder and arms manufacture in Berlin; the city got its own cannon foundry and gunpowder works as well as textile mills. Frederick also encouraged more refined industries like furniture making and the new Berlin lacquer works, and in 1761 he purchased a small porcelain factory belonging to J. E. Gotzkowsky and renamed it the Königliche Porzellanmanufaktur, the Royal Porcelain Works.⁷³ To the annoyance of the Saxons he poached workers from Meissen and began to produce exquisite vases, dinner services, delicate figurines and tea sets smothered in gold and dotted in flowers and butterflies. To advertise the money-losing factory and to buy favours he sent gifts of his precious hard paste porcelain to the great houses throughout Europe. In 1755 Frederick founded the Berlin silk industry with the help of French Huguenots; this was more successful because of the exceptional quality and beautiful patterns of the stuff in colours ranging from peppermint greens or vivid yellows to the deep Berliner or Prussian blue. The Huguenots were involved in dozens of luxury industries: Daniel Chodowiecki’s detailed etchings reveal the world of French merchants in Berlin as they bring new bolts of silk to potential customers or show off their elaborate dresses heavy with embroidery and ribbons and feathers; Pierre Mercier founded the Berlin Tapestry Company, which employed 283 handworkers; Pierre Froméry made guns of exquisite quality; Jean Barès created intricate pieces in gold and silver, while other Frenchmen produced everything from delicate enamelled snuff boxes to imposing carriages.

      For all his attempts to promote Prussian goods Frederick had to rely on protectionism to nurture the infant industries. He was aware of the problems inherent in this but, as he explained to the French financial expert de la Haye de Launay, he could not afford to change:

      I prohibit imports as much as I can so that my subjects shall be encouraged to produce those things which I forbid them to get from elsewhere. Admittedly their early efforts are crude, but time and practice will bring perfection and we must show patience with first attempts … I have poor soil; therefore I must give the trees time to take root and grow strong before I can expect them to produce fruit.⁷⁴

      The protectionist measures were not popular; when Frederick decided that coffee was too expensive Johann Sebastian Bach was prompted to write the Coffee Cantata, which poked fun at the king’s incessant praise of the official alternative – beer.

      The attempt to control all aspects of life in Prussia led to another crucial development. Although Berlin was already a military and administrative centre Frederick built on his father’s legacy and transformed it into the centre of a modern civil service populated by bureaucrats who owed their allegiance to the state. He reformed the legal system, creating the foundation of the Allgemeines Landrecht.⁷⁵ Berlin became a city of offices, bureaucrats, secretaries and clerks. By the 1780s it contained not only the General Directory, but also the Administration Secret State Council, the Department of External Affairs, the Chief Audit Office, the General Supply Office, the Department of Justice, the Supreme Court, the Ecclesiastical Department – with separate sections for Lutherans, Calvinists and Huguenots – the Post, the Regie for Customs Administration, the Medical Board, the Mint, the Offices of the Fiscal, the Offices for the Administration of the Army, including the Secret War Chancery and the Commissariat, and the Colleges of the Estates. The administration of the city of Berlin came under central control and from the 1720s Berlin’s Magistrat was composed of civil servants led by a president appointed by the king; Berlin’s administration thereafter rested on what the great Berlin publisher Friedrich Nicolai called the ‘repression of traditional corporate municipal self-government’.

      Berlin’s own administrative bodies included the Court Post Office, the Royal Firewood Administration Office, the Commission for Royal Buildings in Berlin, offices for the Saltworks, the Fire Society and the Porcelain Industry. Berlin social welfare administration included the Invalidenhaus for disabled soldiers, the Institute for Poor Widows and the Public Alms Houses.⁷⁶ The city also contained offices to oversee the Academy libraries, the art collections, the Royal Library and the Schloss collection of paintings; Frederick built 150 Bürgerhäuser or apartment blocks for the new bureaucrats. Even the buildings reflected the importance attached to these new offices; Gerlach’s impressive Collegienhaus in Kreuzberg was the first specially commissioned administrative building in Berlin and still projects its importance through its balanced baroque facade and through the large allegorical figures of Justice and Mercy which recline high on the pediment over the grand entrance. The city was not yet the all-powerful administrative centre which it would become after 1871, and Prussian cities and districts still had a high degree of autonomy not least because poor communications between regions made efficient central government impossible. Nevertheless its influence was growing. So was its population. At the end of the war Berlin had a population of 98,000 people but by 1786 it had already reached 150,000. Thirty thousand people worked in industry and trade alone and there were already 3,500 administrative officials. Twenty per cent of the population was in the military and the Berlin garrison now numbered 25,000 men.⁷⁷ Berlin was increasing in size and importance. Now Frederick set about transforming its cultural life as well.

      In the eighteenth century all Germany looked to France as the model of civilization. German princes spent fortunes on mock palaces of Versailles; they tried to learn French, copied French manners and imported French courtiers to populate their new palaces – indeed, in 1775 Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand of Brunswick would allow only Frenchmen at his court.⁷⁸ Frederick the Great was amused at the pretensions of these petty princes: ‘there is no prince down to the younger member with an apanage who does not imagine himself to be a Louis XIV. He builds his Versailles, has his mistresses and maintains an army.’⁷⁹ Ironically, however, Frederick set about precisely the same thing and his capital СКАЧАТЬ