Exclusive Footage of a Modern Metropolis
/ 2026 / … BERLIN This extraordinary historical footage shows Berlin between 1930 and 1936 – a largely intact metropolis that ranked among Europe’s most modern cities. Never before published in this form, the footage comes from the estate of amateur filmmaker Kuttruff and is presented to the public here for the first time. The camera takes us through a Berlin defined by traffic, technology and urban dynamism. S-Bahn and U-Bahn trains, elevated railways, electric trams, buses and dense motor traffic dominate the streetscape. Particularly striking are the scenes at Kottbusser Tor: Berliners use escalators to reach the elevated station at a time when this technology was still new in Germany. Opened in 1929, Kottbusser Tor station was designed as a modern interchange between the elevated and underground railways. Other scenes also document the technological progress of this city of four million: the S-Bahn network, elevated and underground railways, Friedrichstraße station, intensive tram and bus traffic, and Potsdamer Platz, where traffic lights, a public clock and police officers controlled the flow of traffic. The Haus des Rundfunks, opened in 1931, reflects Berlin’s importance as a center of the emerging technology of radio broadcasting. At the same time, we encounter numerous places in a Berlin whose cityscape was fundamentally transformed by war and the postwar era. We see Potsdamer Platz with Haus Vaterland and Europa-Haus, the Victory Column still at its original location in front of the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate and Pariser Platz, Unter den Linden, Friedrichstraße, the State Opera, Berlin Cathedral, the Lustgarten and the Berlin Palace. West Berlin is also documented: Tauentzienstraße with the still intact Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Café am Zoo, Wittenbergplatz, and the exhibition grounds with the Radio Tower and Haus des Rundfunks. Alongside architecture and technology, it is the people who bring these images to life. Travelers wait on platforms, passengers board trams and buses, pedestrians crowd the city center, and people sit on benches or stand at flower stalls. At Potsdamer Platz, trams, buses and automobiles cross paths while a police officer directs the traffic. The result is an extraordinary portrait of Berlin: a vibrant, technologically advanced metropolis of millions and, at the same time, a Berlin of which large parts would cease to exist only a few years later.
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