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POTSDAM

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By JOHN HERBERT

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 12, 2008

to spice up his holiday mood.

Many European royal courts were thoroughly under French influence at the time. French philosopher Voltaire frequented Sans Souci in Frederick's day.

In all, Frederick the Great built a half-dozen palaces and guest houses in the manicured French and random English gardens of Sans Souci. About 2,000 guided visitors a day pour through the main Sans Souci palace, thoroughly restored after four decades of communist neglect and earlier royal doggie messes.

Frederick the Great was a dog lover; his greyhounds had the run of Sans Souci. His hounds' graves are alongside his own, just beside the palace. The tombstones are decorated with fresh flowers and new potatoes. As a pioneering, large-scale potato farmer, the king advised his subjects to make spuds a dietary staple to stave off the18th-century's rampant European starvation.

Local tourist officials have capped the daily visitor total at 2,000 so as not to wear down the original wooden floors. The best advice is to get there early or be content to wander around the palatial gardens. Not a bad alternative; although they may be small by royal European standards, the gardens require a two full-day hike to cover them all, my guide warned.

Across town, Cecilienhof Palace is a late bloomer as European stately homes go. Built between 1914 and 1917, while Germany was waging the First World War, it is a Tudor masterpiece surrounded by sumptuous flower gardens tended pretty much as they were 90 years ago.

English Tudor? Germany was in the midst of a hot war with England, among others. But, the totally English style was wildly popular among German upper classes in the early 20th century. Cecilienhof was the home of Germany's deposed Crown Prince Wilhelm (aka "Little Willie"), his wife and their six kids from the early 1920s to the 1940s.

Although Cecilienhof is largely a conference hotel today, several rooms are a museum to one of the world's most important conferences of all, the Potsdam Conferencein July of1945. A preliminary European peace treaty, signed at Cecilienhof, wasn't finalized until 1990!

Since Cecilienhof was in the Soviet Sector of Germany, Joe Stalin was the host. The others were new U.S. President Harry Truman and British Prime Minister Clement Atlee. (Britain's wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill actually started at the conference but stepped down when he lost the 1945 British general election to Atlee.)

Why Potsdam, and why Cecilienhof? Berlin didn't have any buildings left standing to accommodate so many delegates. Some 80 percent of the capital city was flattened during the war. Potsdam was nearby, and relatively unscathed. Cecilienhof could provide the 12 rooms each delegation had demanded as office space.

Playing host has advantages, Stalin quickly grasped. He arranged seating at the round meeting table (still on display) so that his back was to the sun pouring in room but shining in the eyes of the American and British delegates.

Each delegation slept in its own villa in nearby Babelsberg, a leafy suburb of Potsdam. Babelsberg is otherwise known, both today and in the 20th century, as Germany's movie-making center.

While the careers of Marlene Dietrich and Peter Lorre (a co-star of Humphrey Bogart) were launched in Babelsberg studios, the sets today are frequented by the likes of Hollywood favorites Tom Cruise, Pierce Brosnan and Matt Damon.

A little-known Potsdam feature is the bridge linking the town with the Berlin superhighway. A prominent location of many espionage novels, the Glienecke Bridge was the scene of dramatic spy exchanges during the Cold War.

Most of the swaps were put together by Wolfgang Vogel, a former East German lawyer who died this past summer. Vogel was usually on hand, his gold-colored Mercedes emerging cloak-and-dagger style from the mist on the bridge, to supervise the exchanges he had negotiated.

The half of the bridge, once demarcating West Germany, is painted in a dark, almost military green. What used to be the East German half is in a lighter, more faded shade of green. The old East-West demarcation line still runs through the center of the bridge.

Among the more notorious spy exchanges on Glienecke Bridge, captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was freed in a swap for convicted Soviet agent Rudolf Abel. That was in 1962, after Abel's wife had engaged lawyer Vogel to engineer the deal.

Some 25 years later, 25 Americans imprisoned on espionage charges in East Germany were exchanged for four Warsaw Pact agents.

A day-pass to San Souci, including a guided tour inside the palace, is about $25. A walk around the gardens, though, is a suggested $1 "donation." Cecilienhof entry is free, both to the manor house and the spectacular gardens. There's a pleasant outdoor cafe on the grounds.

Toll-free Glienecke Bridge is busier than ever, with a daily flow of commuter traffic linking the residents of Potsdam with their jobs in a reunited Berlin.

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