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

in the short term. Once again Berlin found itself in the middle of a long-drawn-out conflict and a series of battles which it could not afford to finance. It suffered occupation twice. The first occurred on 16 and 17 October 1757, when 3,400 Austrian hussars took control of the city and demanded 200,000 thalers before they would leave. A more serious occupation took place in October 1760. In that year Russian troops had swept through East Prussia and had met up with the Austrians near Berlin; 44,000 Austrian and Russian troops engaged 16,000 Prussians at the gates of the city and after a five-day battle the armies took Berlin. They demanded a payment of 2 million thalers but this time money did not save the city. Palaces and houses were looted and many of Berlin’s newly acquired treasures disappeared. Frederick was so angry about the sacking of the palace of Charlottenburg by Saxon troops that he wrote to Augustus III, king of Saxony, to complain; when he received no reply he retaliated by occupying his rival’s hunting lodge at Hubertusburg, selling the contents and using the money for his field hospitals. When the marauding armies finally abandoned Berlin at the end of October it was left demoralized and bankrupt. Ernst von Lehnsdorf wrote in his diary in 1761 that only war profiteers had enough to eat; most of the population were hungry and the city was in a terrible state of decay. Prussia emerged victorious in 1763 but the country was exhausted, the land uncultivated and the people starving. Berlin was a shell of its former self, with the population having dropped from a pre-war high of 126,000 to a low of 98,000. Frederick returned to the city six weeks after signing the Treaty of Hubertusburg: he was welcomed with a triumphal coach, flags and flowers, but he was saddened by its decline and noted that he found nothing but ‘empty walls and the memory of those he had loved’ upon his return.

      The rest of the world did not see it that way; Berlin was now cast as the capital of a new self-confident, aggressive power, a reputation which would be further enhanced in one of the most controversial moves of Frederick’s reign. In 1772 he orchestrated the First Partition of Poland in order to – as he put it – eat the Polish provinces ‘like an artichoke, leaf by leaf’.⁷² On 5 August he, along with Catherine the Great and the Empress Maria Theresa, sliced off pieces of the defenceless country. Prussia took 36,000 square kilometres, Austria took 83,000 and Russia 92,000 square kilometres. The land was particularly valuable to Frederick as it linked East Prussia with the west and gave her control over the river Vistula. In 1793 and 1795 the three powers would administer the coup de grâce, dismembering Poland completely in the final partition. It was a disgraceful act, but Berliners cared little. Through war and the opportunistic seizure of territory Frederick had made Prussia a great power, posing a direct threat to Austria and relegating the Holy Roman Empire to political obscurity. The people were proud of their king and became more so when Frederick turned his attention to rebuilding the state after the destruction of the Seven Years War and to making a capital city worthy of a new great power.

      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