{"id":2212,"date":"2013-11-30T03:40:44","date_gmt":"2013-11-30T03:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benbansal.me\/?p=2212"},"modified":"2013-12-02T00:01:06","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T00:01:06","slug":"east-germany-and-japan-1-kajima-corporation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benbansal.me\/?p=2212","title":{"rendered":"East Germany and Japan 1: Kajima Corporation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Japan\u2019s post-war rise is often mentioned in the same breath with Germany\u2019s spectacular economic miracle \u2013 the \u201cWirtschaftswunder\u201d. For someone born on the other side of the wall in East Berlin, it is interesting to read about the less-documented relationship between economic superstar Japan and socialist East Germany during the decades of the cold war. The first installment in a set of some anecdotes is about Kajima Corporation\u2019s export of Japanese construction practices to Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden.<\/p>\n

\"hotelmerkur01\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hotel Merkur Leipzig model presentation by Kajima Corporation in 1978<\/em><\/p>\n

Kajima<\/a>,\u00a0this corporate behemoth responsible for some of Japan’s biggest concrete constructions (Tokyo’s first skyscraper, the Kasumigaseki Building<\/a> (1968), Keio Plaza Hotel, Shinjuku’s first high-rise building (1971), ARK Hills, Mori’s first visionary city-within-the-city<\/a> complex) – how come that the company’s sole international project during the 1970s is a fairly nondescript office block in downtown East Berlin?<\/p>\n

In fact,\u00a0the\u00a0International Trade Center<\/a>\u00a0next to Friedrichstrasse station was the first of several projects the company would undertake in the socialist republic in the decade to follow.<\/p>\n

\"Berlin,<\/a><\/p>\n

International Trade Centre as seen from Dorotheenstrasse in 1988 (source: Wikipedia\/Bundesarchiv)<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Kajima’s engagement here was in line with the trend that the GDR under General Secretary Honecker was increasingly looking to non-socialist countries for trading relationships, earning the socialist state hard currency (increasingly, the GDR also asked for loans, more on that in a separate post).<\/p>\n

The oil crisis had hit the coffers of East Germany hard – and the new mantra of the leadership – i.e. to provide East Germans with tangible improvements in living standards (also to avoid a Polish scenario<\/a>) – needed above all money to buy things abroad.<\/p>\n

While firmly embedded in the Western trading bloc, Japan signed the first official trading treaty with East Germany in 1971. West Germany’s “Ostpolitik”<\/a> had made it more politically correct to deal with its socialist neighbour. In 1973, this became official: Japan recognised the “other” Germany and embassies were opened in both East Berlin and Tokyo.<\/p>\n

And although trade with East Germany never reached the levels recorded with West Germany, some significant deals were struck. The Kajima cooperation was certainly one of them. The agreement played into the hands of\u00a0the East German leadership who saw a trade centre and several hotels of international standard as part of a strategy to create an infrastructure amenable to global trade.<\/p>\n

With its 25 stories and 94 meters in height, the\u00a0Handelszentrum<\/em>\u00a0stands out to this day. East Berlin had a limited amount of\u00a0high-rise buildings<\/a>:\u00a0one is the nearby Forum Hotel on Alexanderplatz, almost two kilometers away as the crow flies; the other noteworthy ones are the\u00a0residential tower blocks<\/a>\u00a0on Leipziger Strasse.<\/p>\n

\"Berlin,<\/a><\/p>\n

The International Trade Centre as seen from Friedrichstrasse\u00a0(source: Wikipedia\/Bundesarchiv)<\/a>. The big white building is the now-demolished Hotel Unter den Linden<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The building was designed to house foreign companies involved in trading with East Germany. In the beginning, a respectable number of 18 Japanese companies had their offices here. Today, only\u00a0Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi<\/a>\u00a0is left.<\/p>\n

Kajima shipped some of the steel and other material by freighter (the “Karl Marx” sailing under GDR flag) from Yokohama to Rostock and sent engineers to oversee the\u00a0construction process<\/a>. It took about two years before the building was opened on 1 September 1978.<\/p>\n

This video, while a little painful, has some amazing Kajima footage from the construction period sprinkled in throughout. The narrator speaks with a heavy Japanese accent (as does the Japanese lady picked to interview today’s tenants of the building):<\/p>\n