Alexanderplatz and the department stores of Berlin, 1937
Trains stand under the station hall, trams pass beneath the Hertie bridge, a policeman directs traffic at C&A, and shoppers crowd into Woolworth.
Beneath the arched glass hall of Alexanderplatz station a train waits at an empty platform, a steam locomotive pulls out with old compartment coaches, and from a passing S-Bahn train the square opens out below its modern office blocks. Trams roll under the railway bridge lettered HERTIE past the Brenninkmeyer store, where a policeman in a white coat waves on the traffic. Shoppers in coats and hats stream through the lit doors of F. W. Woolworth, and beneath a stone facade with the same lettering women in hats pass a row of windows piled with toys and household goods.
The square showed the new and the stolen side by side: Peter Behrens' office blocks of 1929 to 1932, the American chain store, which had come to Germany in 1927, and Hertie, the renamed Hermann Tietz, from which the Jewish Tietz family had been driven in 1933 and 1934.
Film Trams below the Hertie sign on the railway bridge, 1937
Film Woolworth store on a Berlin shopping street, 1937
Film A train under the hall of Alexanderplatz station, 1937
Film A steam locomotive in the tracks at Alexanderplatz, 1937
Film Alexanderplatz seen from a passing S-Bahn train, 1937
Film A traffic policeman outside C&A Brenninkmeyer, 1937
Film Shoppers at the doors of F. W. Woolworth, 1937
Film Window-shopping at Woolworth, 1937
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