You have no idea how wide the variety of locomotives is, all sorts of which are manufactured here: electric locomotives, locomotives that burn coal and those that burn wood (for Brazil, for example, where fuel is so expensive that they have to operate as economically as possible), fireless locomotives, which run on superheated steam, for use in fire-sensitive operations or around stockyards where black soot must be avoided. All these things are made at Borsig. Every country requires something different; every client has his special demands, which sometimes must be met with uncanny speed. When the Spree had to be tunneled under to build the stretch of subway between Spittelmarkt and Alexanderplatz, the head of the completed tunnel section started to collapse. Water began seeping into the tunnel and the entire construction was in danger. At 10 am the site managers had a meeting with Borsig. Borsig proposed installing five giant pumps that together would drain 125 cubic meters of water per minute. At 3 pm the order for the proposed pumps was received at Tegel. Although all the sketches needed to be reworked, by 11 pm all five giant pumps were ready and rolled out to the gate. The next morning they were put into operation and in two hours the subway construction was saved.
But now back to our locomotive. We’re skipping over many stations to find it at last in the assembly hall, where it’s pieced together from its individual parts and ultimately painted. The painting alone takes about eight days. When I entered the hall it was right at lunch break. It was silent. The workers were sitting on the floor unpacking their lunches. It smelled like paint. In front was a large panel, the locomotive’s breastplate, if you will. It was open and you could look inside. Between the rails on which it rested was a deep trench, so people could work on the undercarriage. These locomotive stands are built the same way as dry docks, where the objective is easy access to the underside of the ships. Borsig has thirty-nine such locomotive docks. When these locomotives are finished, they are then driven to Serbia by people from Borsig itself. This is true not only for the locomotives, but for most of the large machines that are ordered, whether it be steam turbines, pumps, oil refining equipment or the like. Sending such merchandise to customers is not as easy as sending, say, an armoire; they must be precisely tuned and fitted at the final destination, and then put into operation. This task requires several workers. These are the construction supervisors, whose job often takes them all around the world. It happens that such people stay away for quite a while, as in the case of one Borsig construction supervisor who left for Lahore, India, in 1925 and stayed for two years in order to install a pipeline, manufactured at Borsig, in a power station there. How do I know this? Well, of course no one in such a factory has the time to sit down for hours and tell people all these interesting things, so I had to make do on my own. Since I knew that at Borsig, as at many other very big factories, there’s a newspaper for those affiliated with the firm, I read up a bit on the company news. I found not only the entire Lahore story, but also, notably, all the latest technical engineering inventions. There were also articles by workers, advice columns, and sometimes even complaints. And above all, every issue has a directory of people who have suggested improvements for whatever aspect of the company that they were especially familiar with. These suggestions are reviewed by the front office and sometimes remunerated.
Had you accompanied me to Borsig, right at the start you would have seen something that, in closing, I will tell you about now. Standing quite gracefully in the green grass of the front courtyard, on a small red-brick pedestal and looking rather like memorials, are two Borsig products of special significance. One is a machine with a giant flywheel and the other a small steam boiler. They are among the factory’s oldest products. The boiler had been at one company for fifty years until Borsig bought it back for a pretty penny to mount it here as a souvenir of sorts. The firm takes great pride in such relics of times past, and if you stop to consider that in seven years Borsig will celebrate its 100th anniversary, you can understand why. For a factory to reach such a great age is as little a result of chance as for a person. Just as a man, in order to become old, must take the long view, not dwell on the little things, and not snack on everything that suits his momentary desire, so must a large company, if it wants to become old, act with great prudence, caution, and thoroughness. I could tell you just as much about the Borsig of years past as I have about the Borsig of today. Like how the little engine factory, which built Germany’s first locomotives in 1841, became the huge factory it is now. Perhaps another time, when I tell you about the different neighborhoods of Berlin. Early on, Borsig was not part of Tegel, but rather Moabit, to which the entire history of industrialization in Berlin was closely linked. But the day is over and now I only owe you Alexander von Humboldt, whom I promised you seventeen minutes ago. How can I fit him into the little time we have left? In a nutshelclass="underline" no doubt as a relief from the heavy and dull machinery he had to take care of day in and day out, the man who founded Borsig set up greenhouses, which were the most famous in Berlin at the time and showcased many foreign and exotic plants.3 The great naturalist Alexander von Humboldt studied and marveled at these plants. He was also witness, in 1847, to the great festivities celebrating the completion of the 100th locomotive at Borsig. And because the Borsig Works counts finished locomotives the same way people count years, we will also conclude with a locomotive. The 12,000th, to be exact. It was built by Borsig five years ago as a standard locomotive and as the model for all locomotives of the Deutsche Reichsbahn.
“Borsig,” GS, 7.1, 111–17. Translated by Jonathan Lutes.
Broadcast on Radio Berlin, April 5, 1930. Benjamin dated the typescript “Berlin Radio, 5 April, 1930.” For this date, the Funkstunde announced “Youth Hour (Berlin), Speaker: Dr. Walter Benjamin” from 3:20–3:40 pm.
1 In addition to the broadcasts of “Street Trade and Markets in Old and New Berlin,” “Berlin Dialect,” “Berlin Toy Tour I,” and “Berlin Toy Tour II,” Benjamin seems to allude here to two broadcasts that are now missing or lost. Based in part on this passage, Schiller-Lerg speculates that Benjamin likely gave broadcasts on the subjects of Berlin Traffic [Berliner Verkehr], Berlin Schools [Berliner Schulen], and Berlin’s Building History [Berliner Baugeschichte] (Walter Benjamin und der Rundfunk, 141–3).
2 Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), philosopher, philologist, diplomat, and educational reformer, is considered the founder of the modern university system. In 1810 he founded the University of Berlin (later renamed Humboldt University); Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was a naturalist, geographer, and explorer. Statues of the brothers flank the entrance of the university.
3 Johann Friedrich August Borsig (1804–1854) founded the Borsig Works in 1837.
CHAPTER 9. The Rental Barracks
There is no need to explain to you how the subject of today’s talk relates to Berlin. And I need not describe the rental barracks to you either, I’m afraid. You’re all familiar with them. And most of you know them from the inside as well. And by that, I don’t mean just the apartments and rooms, but also the courtyards, the three, four, five, and even six courtyards of tenements in Berlin. Berlin is the biggest tenement city on Earth.1 Today I will try to explain to you how over the centuries this gradually became our misfortune. Prick up your ears and I’ll tell you something you won’t often hear in your German lessons, or in geography, or in social studies, but someday it might be important to you. For you should all understand what is at stake in the great battle against the rental barracks, which has been waged by Greater Berlin since 1925.