The German Genius

informal.” 71
     
     
    Culturally and intellectually, the biggest development since the Wall came down has been the collapse of East Germany. East German individuals still shine in painting, in film, and in literature, and there are opera houses and artists’ colonies in such cities as Dresden and at the Baumwollspinnerei in Leipzig, with strong choirs in Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin. But during the years of a divided Germany few outside the GDR understood how rotten the infrastructure was, that the trade currents within Comecon would simply disappear, that there was nothing to build on. In the Meissen factories the skill of the people remained, but after the Wende all the machines had to be thrown out. Even the vineyards in East Germany needed new plants. The Dresden camera maker, Pentacon, had a 10 percent share of the world market in the Communist era, with 5,000 employees in 1990; within a year just 200 were left. 72 The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Natural Sciences and Humanities, which had 24,000 members in the old East Germany (many of them “parked” there, as a form of hidden unemployment), now has 200 members and 175 research fellows. 73
    Among former East German scholarly projects, the definitive edition of the works of Marx and Engels has been taken over by the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy, as has the Goethe Lexicon, a dictionary and analysis of the language of Goethe. The scholarly strengths of the GDR were mainly in the realms of mathematics and computer science, molecular biology, pharmacology and energy, and, in the humanities, in Oriental and antique languages (where Manfred Bierwisch was well known); but most of these areas have now collapsed and almost all academic journals have been discontinued (whereas publishing in Germany overall has been growing at 1.9 percent annually).
    In science, since 1945 German-born physicists, chemists, and medical doctors have won twenty-five Nobel Prizes, in addition to the Nobel Prizes for Literature won by Böll, Grass, and Herta Müller (in 2009) and Willy Brandt’s Peace Prize in 1971. This success in science is due largely to the Max Planck Society: there are seventy-six Max Planck Institutes scattered over Germany, one in the Netherlands, two in Italy, one in Florida, and a sub-institute in Manaus, Brazil. Current research strengths lie in turbulence studies, superconductivity, quantum optics, quantum Einstein gravity, and evolutionary biology. The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, in Berlin-Dahlem, is returning to traditional German concerns about the nature of knowledge, conducting research projects on The History of Laboratory Sciences, The Rise and Decline of the Mechanical World View, and an investigation of the links between knowledge and belief.
    Between 1999 and 2004, the Max Planck Society investigated the role of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes in the National Socialist era, focusing on the continuity or discontinuity of scientific activity, the extent to which science was used as a “legitimation” for the regime’s policies, which experts knew what and when, racial hygiene, military research, Ostforschung (research on the east), and Lebensraumforschung (research on living space). No detailed results have yet been published. 74 Several universities now teach science courses in English because that is the language of science.
    Elsewhere in Berlin, the city has become Europe’s biggest concentration of contemporary architecture. The first buildings to rise from the rubble of 1945 were considered at the beginning of the previous chapter. Hans Scharoun, also mentioned in the previous chapter, continued to shine in the 1960s. 75 His twin apartment blocks at Stuttgart Zuffenhaussen, known locally as Romeo and Juliet (1954–59), lean this way and that in a configuration that would be made popular worldwide by Frank Gehry. 76 Much influenced by Scharoun was Günter Behnisch who, with Fritz Auer and Frei Otto, designed the celebrated Olympic Games Complex in Munich (1965–72). Their soaring “tent roof” over and above the Stadium, Olympic Hall, and Olympic Pool would find an echo across the world as far afield as the Barbados airport. In the 1980s, a raft of museums was erected throughout West Germany, notably in Frankfurt and notably its Museum of Modern Art, designed by the Austrian Hans Hollein (1985, 1987–91). 77
    Reunification created architectural opportunities on an unprecedented scale. Initially the main aim was to