Planning sketch
Drawing: Jan Fiebelkorn
18 Heidelberger Platz
A History of Berlin
The Berliner Festspiele were given the job of producing the festivities in West Berlin to mark the city of Berlin’s 750th anniversary. Torsten Maß, then Programme Director of the Berliner Festspiele, devised a range of concepts for this purpose over a two-year period. One idea was to present a one-day historical theatre festival on small and large stages throughout the Tiergarten. The various venues would each tell stories from different epochs in Berlin’s history – from the Middle Ages and the Reformation through Baroque, Rococo and the Revolution and on to the rise of the modern city and a variety of visions for the future. Visitors would walk through the park, moving from one episode to the next and experience the city’s history as a physical journey. In this process the Tiergarten would serve as both the venue and a witness to historical events – monarchy, bourgeois society, dictatorship, war, destruction, reconstruction and division. The festival would end with a finale in what is now the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. owever, at the time of planning it was not possible to guarantee when the reconstruction of its external roof would be completed.
Instead of performances across the entire Tiergarten, the Governing Mayor Eberhard Diepgen ultimately approved one large stage at the Grosser Stern. Over the course of several weeks the history of the city of Berlin was presented in four large revues entitled Sternstunden for a total audience of 200,000 people.
For What If Berlin, Akira Takayama transposes unrealised projects from the archives of the Berliner Festspiele and other Berlin cultural institutions, as well as from architects and artists, into the present and asks us which vision we want to realise in the future.
The future vision for the project A History of Berlin, that will be presented in the frame of What If Berlin from 28 August 2026 onwards, will respond to the following question: What if Berlin used the Ringbahn for staging its human-and non-human history?
Which of the 27 visions for the future is the most exciting? Which project does Berlin need in future? Which idea should actually be realised?
Until 30 September 2026, you can vote for up to three of the 27 visions for the future. The results will be displayed live to give the latest impression of the public’s reactions.