Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany by Andrew Demshuk

Author:Andrew Demshuk [Demshuk, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, Europe, Political Ideologies, Social Science, Political Science, Urban, History, Sociology, Germany
ISBN: 9781501751677
Google: 4CHGDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 51121600
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2020-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Palace Doors Open

Berlin only discovered the Bowlingtreff in the last month of construction. When the sport festival officially began the evening of July 25 with a long-anticipated speech at Karl Marx Square, it now had to be preceded just hours before by the grand opening of the Bowlingtreff.173 Draber choreographed the whole event so that party bosses could see for themselves how 40,050 volunteer hours by 6,675 citizens in concert with 110 firms over the course of fourteen months had produced fourteen bowling lanes, numerous cafes and restaurants, a fitness center, billiard tables, and a videogame area, whose six Poly-Play machines had been made in the DDR.174 In the company of Bezirk and city officials, Bezirk secretary Schumann himself greeted his eminent guests on August 6 with a toast in the larger bowling hall, where potato soup, bratwursts, sandwiches, and beer had been prepared to smooth tensions. To accommodate elderly party bosses dazzled by all the bowling revelry, the structure was even handicap accessible.175

Meanwhile—in a flagrant jab at Berlin—the palatial Schwarzbau won the annual Bezirk architectural prize on June 28, which was conferred on Sziegoleit’s team amid festivities at the opening ceremony. Without betraying any scandalous details, the award protocol recounted that “given circumstances” had ensured that Sziegoleit’s team could execute its “original idea” in unaltered form—a purity of conception and realization unheard of in earlier projects that usually turned out mediocre results (fig. 27). Praising the entry hall for “welcoming visitors with friendly and merry gestures,” it lauded the aesthetic effect, observing, “Light beaming down from above accompanies the guest into the depths through the hall in the lower level, as well as above in Café Venus, reached via a ‘floating’ spiral stair.” The underground bowling halls, meanwhile, “sought to attain the most striking interior configuration possible through intense use of color with relatively meager financial demands.”176

Local officials were keen to portray the Bowlingtreff as a success for local belief in socialism—and thus steal any possible glory from Berlin. Right after work concluded on July 20, the Bezirk council paid for three receptions (July 21, 22, and 23), wherein 250 volunteers from worker collectives were invited to the main bowling hall for congratulatory speeches delivered by Draber and Ullrich. Those who were married could bring their wives. Draber praised all those gathered for making possible a “monument” that (in apparent contrast to monotone blocks everywhere else) “carries the distinctive signature of many experts and specialists and testifies to the great ability and solid quality from all the construction workers who contributed here.” Although the scale and timetable of the project had been difficult, he concluded, “it has shown what genuine socialist communal labor is capable of, what is possible when all involved are animated by the will to keep to schedule.”177

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