NOT FOR A SINGLE SECOND: THE LANGE 1, A CHALICE OF HOPE AND FAITH
He was forced to watch as his factory was decimated by one of the last bombing raids over Europe.
It was a building. But it was also a monument to his faith. To his unyielding, indefatigable belief that one day his beloved country would be united as a single nation. That he died just four years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when human beings on both sides tore down the concrete that had separated them for 10,316 days, made Axel Springer’s crusade to reunify Germany even more touching. That he did so even when it was not fashionable, that he continued even when he was made to seem a quixotic fool on a doomed mission, and that he gave his whole life to the cause is to me what makes him so admirable. When I first visited Berlin, my friend Tim Raue, the Michelinstarred chef, took me to Springer’s 20-storey headquarters and explained that Springer, who created Europe’s greatest publishing empire, could have built the shimmering edifice anywhere. But his chosen location was Kreuzberg, right next to the Berlin Wall that separated East and West Germany. Why? “Because he wanted his building to be a symbol to East Germany that he believed one day we would be reunified as one country,” Raue said. “He wanted his headquarters to be a symbol of freedom and a reminder of hope to the Soviet-ruled Berlin and to all of East Germany. He chose Kreuzberg because he knew that one day, when the Berlin Wall fell, as he knew it inevitably must, his headquarters would be in the centre of a reunified city and the country made whole again.”
On the other side of the infamous ‘death strip’, the Soviets erected a series of Brutalist apartment buildings to block out the view of Springer’s monument. But even as they partially obscured the view of the glass and steel monolith that soared above the city, they were unable to extinguish the faith it ignited in people’s hearts. By the end of our evening, drinking wine at the private bar on the top floor of this extraordinary building created by a remarkable man, I found myself in tears, so moved was I by his unshakeable faith.
Springer’s story brings to mind that of another individual whose life was profoundly affected by the Soviet occupation of East Germany. His name is Walter Lange. His early life is defined by an almost Job-like series of relentless, absurdist tragedies. It goes like this: at 16 years of age, Lange, young and idealistic and with his whole future before him, is sent to Karlstein in Austria to become a watchmaker. There he dreams of adding his own chapter to the indelible codex of high German
