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As the son of a Berlin innkeeper and the proud author of a dissertation on the local brewing industry, Stresemann loved the German capital and identified with its prowess. During his reign as foreign minister, the so-called “Era of Fulfillment,” Berlin recaptured some of the forward-looking momentum it had lost during the war, revolution, and inflation. For a time the German capital staked a claim to being the most progressive city in Europe, if not the world.

The new direction was nowhere more clearly in evidence than at Tempelhof, the parade ground where generations of Prussian soldiers had marched. In 1924 it became a new civilian airport. With the most advanced transportation facilities in Europe, Berlin now became a crossroads of European air traffic as well as a great railway hub. Starting in 1926, passengers of the newly formed Deutsche Lufthansa could fly from Berlin to fifteen European destinations. At the same time, construction of a new radio transmitter in western Berlin confirmed the capital’s domination of the infant German broadcast industry. The Funkturm, looking like a mini Eiffel Tower, became a much-used symbol in the marketing of the metropolis. Every two years the city sponsored an exhibition showcasing the latest developments in broadcast technology, which in 1929 included the experimental transmission of television signals.

Another symbol of the new Berlin was Kempinski Haus Vaterland, a vast amusement complex on Potsdamer Platz, which opened in September 1928. A kind of proto-Disney World of cinemas, stages, arcades, restaurants, and theme rooms, it employed the latest technology to satisfy age-old cravings for exoticism and sensual pleasure. Roaming through its spacious precincts, visitors could hear flamenco guitar at a Spanish bodega, sip Tokay at a Hungarian inn, sample Heuriger at a Grinzing Weinstube, watch the sun set over the Zugspitze at a Bavarian beer garden, witness an artificial storm at the Rheinterrasse café, pretend to be Tom Mix at the Wild West Bar. (The lack of British and French themes was not accidental: Kempinski, a patriot, could not forgive those nations for their treatment of Germany at Versailles.) At night the whole operation was brilliantly illuminated—a beacon of commercial kitsch on a grand scale. Even visiting Americans were impressed.

To cope with the continuing housing shortage, Berlin’s director of building, Martin Wagner, supervised the construction of four huge apartment complexes: Hufeisensiedlung, Weisser Stadt, Siemensstadt, and Onkel-Toms-Hutte. Unlike the hierarchical Mietskaserne of the imperial era, the new developments were rigorously egalitarian: no more bourgeois up front and proletarians in back. But precisely because they catered primarily to low-income people, wealthier neighbors often objected to their presence. For example, the villa owners in Zehlendorf protested vigorously against the construction of Onkel-Toms-Hutte.

The so-called Grosssiedlungen were more innovative socially than architecturally. In the mid-Weimar period, however, Berlin did produce a few pathbreaking buildings. Erich Mendelsohn, one of the stars of the new architecture, redesigned the Mosse-Verlag Press House with rounded, futuristic curves. According to one enthusiastic observer, this style reflected “the large modern city, power, confidence, affirmation, and the rapid pace of work.” Mendelsohn’s signature building in this period was the so-called Einstein Tower near Potsdam, an astrophysical laboratory that the architect said emerged “from the mystique surrounding Einstein’s universe.”

Erich Mendelsohn s “Einstein Tower,” Potsdam, 1924

Mendelsohn’s choice of a tower was deliberate, for, like many architects of his generation, he was fascinated with New York skyscrapers. In 1924 the Mosse press sent him to America on a study trip. He produced a book entitled Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Architekten (1926) that added tremendously to the ongoing America-cult in Weimar Berlin. Mendelsohn, Mies van der Rohe, and Ludwig Hilberseimer would have liked to build New York-style skyscrapers in Berlin, but the city’s height restrictions prevented such a Manhattan transfer.