I went to Babelsberg, a hamlet just outside Berlin, with a starstruck friend who wanted to inhale some of the glamor (or, as she would spell it, “glamour”) of that place where, before WWII, the great German movie stars and directors lived.  On a drizzly afternoon we walked down Virchowstrasse, a curving street along the Griebnitzsee, and took in the sterile, handsome mansions on either side.  And we remained unmoved.  My friend explained that many of the houses had been seized by the Nazis during the war, and their owners forcibly expelled.  Now successful business people lived inside, kept the curtains drawn, and parked their massively expensive sports cars out front.  One could feel the rot of it all, right through the pristine facades and the pretty landscaping.

Later, when talking with a clerk at the S-Bahn station, we learned that we had, on our walk, unknowingly, passed the Villa Urbig (also known as the Villa Churchill), Mies van der Rohe’s first house from 1917, a two-story confection of pink brick that might be even more tragically conventional than Le Corbusier’s first house, the Villa Schwob.  The Villa Churchill is famous for another rather important reason: Winston Churchill stayed here during the Potsdam Conference.  Now a German real estate tycoon lives inside in amnesic splendor.  Although I care about Mies I did not want to go back and see the house, and did not feel sorry at all that I had missed it.  I was quite happy to leave town.