100 Favourite Places

09

Kolle 37
PRENZLAUER BERG

It’s difficult not to do a double take at the wooden towers that teeter precariously above a rudimentary perimeter fence along Kollwitzstrasse. The casually constructed shacks, nailed haphazardly together by hammer-wielding children, testify to a markedly different spirit than the fashion boutiques, organic delis and expansive 19th-century apartments that otherwise line this handsome Prenzlauer Berg street.

Founded directly after the Wall fell by a group of open-minded parents, this Abenteuerspielplatz (adventure playground) allows kids aged 6–16 to experience some of life’s more ‘dangerous’ elements, harking back to the city’s post-Wende milieu, which generally favoured free-spirited exploration and cavalier experi-mentation over killjoy health and safety measures. Apart from using saws and hammers to build imaginary huts and fortresses, kids can also build their own fires and cook their own food; they can tend to their own gardens, make pottery (and fire it in a kiln) and practice blacksmithery in a forge.

Funded partly by the district of Pankow (of which Prenzlauer Berg is a part), the project employs four teachers and several craftsmen whose role is merely to supervise from a distance. And – what do you know? – instead of their time here ending in broken limbs, veils of tears and ambulance rides, children are introduced to the timeless values of teamwork, trust and responsibility.

The fun continues into the evenings too, as the main house hosts everything from workshops and cultural events to lectures and music rehearsals. And for smaller kids, there’s a special area next door that has rabbits and guinea pigs to pet and poke, a water fountain to splosh around in, and a great café offering drinks, snacks and a ‘waffle buffet’ on Sundays. In contrast to the main activity area next door and events such as the annual hut-building festival held after each Easter weekend, parents are even graciously tolerated here…as long as they behave themselves. PS

Kollwitzstr. 35, 10405; U Senefelderplatz; www.kolle37.de

Map: North F2

10

Kino Babylon
MITTE

Kino Babylon opened its doors in 1929, when Berlin was hardly in need of another movie house. At the time, the city boasted 378 cinemas, 105 of them offering theatre shows alongside movie screenings. Nearby Münzstrasse was a cinematic epicenter and just around the corner, on Rosenthaler Platz, was Berlin’s largest cinema UT (later UFA).

But with the construction of the Volksbühne 15 years earlier, Bülowplatz (today’s Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz) had become a cultural center, and the Babylon was built to round out the artistic feel of the area. Berlin-born architect Hans Poelzig designed the cinema to be cutting-edge: in addition to the coin-operated automated dining of its Automatenrestaurant, it offered events that flirted with the avant-garde. It was crowned with Germany’s largest cinema pipe organ, the Philips-Kino-Orgel, which provided accompaniment throughout the silent film era (as well as lending sound effects), and is played alongside silent film screenings even today.

Indeed, the venue represents a classic era of cinema that’s otherwise only found nowadays in, well, the movies. Films here are advertised in large black letters on an illuminated block on the building’s curved facade (built in the New Objectivity style), and the lavish main screening room is decorated with a thick golden curtain and brass-rimmed lamps more reminiscent of an opera house.

Two studio screening rooms in the back may not be quite as grand, but they have allowed the Babylon to expand its programme to include readings, concerts and an impressive run of alternative festivals such as the Berlin Independent Film Festival and North Korea Film Week.

Having survived a fire caused by WWII Allied bombs, a carbon monoxide leak from a faulty heating system and near-collapse due to a weak ceiling beam, the Babylon has managed to retain something of its former glamour, thanks to the legions of fans who have kept it open and helped pay for its restoration – a kind of devotion that, again, is hard to find outside of the movies. GG

Rosa-Luxemburg-Str. 30, 10178; U Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz; www.babylonberlin.de

Map: North F4

11

NS Forced Labour
Documentation Center
SCHÖNEWEIDE

These low-rise, cinderblock buildings could be mistaken for storage units – or perhaps poultry barns. They line up one behind the other on a stark lot, some with boarded-up windows, their walls flecked with mould. Indeed, they merge noiselessly with the semi-industrial landscape of Schöneweide; but these are the remains of General Building Inspector (GBI) Camp 75/76 – so anonymous as to be left undiscovered until 1993.

The ‘Building Inspector’ was Hitler’s chief architect, Albert Speer, who had such camps built to house forced labourers tasked with the construction of Welthaupstadt Germania, the Nazis’ planned capital of the world. From 1943 on, those incarcerated at this and other GBI camps also built air raid shelters, toiled in arms factories and cleared rubble from the streets after bombings. During WWII, Berlin had approximately 3,000 camps like this one.

Camp 75/76, in use from 1943 to 1945, imprisoned some 2,000 men from Italy, Belgium, France and Poland. In 1945, a group of female prisoners was resettled here as well, and made to work at the Pertrix battery factory. After the war, some barracks were converted to civilian uses, such as scientific laboratories and a sauna.

Most of the buildings are now shut; through grimy windows you can make out derelict kitchens and electrical equipment. But Building No. 5 contains an extensive exhibit commemorating tthe twelve million people forced into labour camps under the Nazis. A map details all the prison camps in Berlin, and display cases bear discarded reminders of this camp’s occupants – a stack of documents bound with string, a heap of rusted bottle openers.

Somewhat surprisingly, a number of the camp’s buildings remain in commercial use. Just next to the memorial are several that function, variously, as a doctor’s office, a bowling club, even a kindergarten. A little further away, though, stands Building No. 13. Preserved to demonstrate the everyday life of the inmates, the barrack’s walls bear inscriptions made by the Italian prisoners who lived here, their long-forgotten names a testament to the brutality of the Nazi regime. TE

Britzer Str. 5, 12439: S Schöneweide; www.topographie.de

Map: Overview G3

12

Museumswohnung
HELLERSDORF

Step through the entrance of a recently refurbished block of flats in the East Berlin neighborhood of Hellersdorf and you’ll find yourself in a place that feels like it was abandoned in 1989. In fact, Museumswohnung WBS 70 is a careful combination of preservation and reconstruction, created by the block’s owners, Stadt und Land housing association, to give an insight into everyday life in mid-’80s East Berlin, when the flats were built.

Assembled almost like flat-pack furniture from precast concrete panels, the WBS 70 Plattenbau building system allowed flats like these to be put up in as little as 18 hours, aiding East Berlin’s residential housing boom in the ’70s and ’80s. Ring the doorbell and you’ll be let into the right-hand, ground-floor flat. Crossing the threshold, you step onto soft grey flooring – felt covered by thin plastic that threatens to turn to Swiss cheese at the mere sight of a pair of stiletto heels. Much of the wallpaper is patterned with busy designs of leaves and flowers, heavy with browns and avocado greens, while many items of furniture feature dark mahogany-brown plastic-wood laminates from SprelaCart, a company that became known for manufacturing such artificial, easy-to-clean materials for GDR homes.

Each of the five rooms is like a still life of the days before the Wall fell. The kitchen has a collection of food packaging, while one wall consists of screwed-down plywood for easy access in the event of a burst pipe. The living room has a TV and hi-fi system, both luxuries which would have cost many months’ wages. Of the two bedrooms, one is configured as a master bedroom, the other as more of a study, with a desk, typewriter and a collection of books, records and medals. In the bathroom, a roll of rough toilet paper hangs menacingly, waiting to scratch the behind of any who might dare to engage with it; perhaps thankfully, the bathroom is non-operational.

The neighbouring flat is a modernised show home, complete with brightly coloured furniture and laminate flooring: a few steps away in distance, but worlds away in feel. RC

Hellersdorfer Str. 179, 12627; U Cottbusser Platz; www.stadtundland.de

Map: Overview H2

13

Ernst-Thälmann-Park
PRENZLAUER BERG

On the west side of Greifswalder Strasse stands a monumental bronze bust of Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the German comunist party (KPD) between 1925 and 1933. Staring proudly and defiantly into the distance, the statue – created by Lev Kerbel in the ’80s – seems a serious statement: the pursed lips, drawn brow and clenched fist. But then you notice how that clenched fist seems to burst directly out of his shoulder, and the way the monument is covered in a disrespectful array of bird droppings, broken beer bottles and frayed cigarette butts, and the illusion is shattered.

Behind the statue, stretching all the way across to Prenzlauer Allee, is the associated park, inaugurated in 1986 by the GDR on the occasion of Thälmann’s 100th birthday. Spanning 25 hectares in one of Berlin’s most gentrified neighbourhoods, it’s a prime memento of Prenzlauer Berg before the Wende, and was among the last prestigious urban building projects of the GDR.

Built on the site of a defunct, heavily polluting gas plant (the park‘s soil was ‘remediated’ following reunification, and even today a bio-treatment plant works continuously to decontaminate the groundwater), it was imagined as a kind of ‘state in miniature.’ Built by famed architect Erhardt Gißke to open right in time for the German capital’s 750th anniversary (the manhole covers are stamped with ‘Made in the GDR’), it provides housing, leisure and cultural facilities, including a cutting-edge planetarium.

In general, though, the park’s loose clusters of high-rise Plattenbauten contrast starkly with the area’s high-rent Altbau homes. Its paths and sidewalks wind through rocky outcroppings, beside stagnant ponds paddled by turtles and ducks, and past unkempt foliage and untidy flowerbeds. Old women bend over their walkers, families push their children in strollers and dogs bound from the bushes to rejoin their owners. The park’s slightly worn, East Berlin character offers a surprising few hours of distraction, as well as a glimpse into how Prenzlauer Berg was before it gentrified. TE

North of Danziger Str., between Greifswalder Str. and Prenzlauer Allee, 10405; M4 Danziger Str.

Map: North H2

14

Café Im Literaturhaus
CHARLOTTENBURG

Located just off the swarming Ku’damm, Fasanenstrasse is a street purpose-built for strolling. Galleries are hosted inside statuary-laden houses, pristine Altbauten repose behind skeins of ivy, and charming little boutiques draw the eye. Along the way you’ll happen across the Café im Literaturhaus. With its yellow-painted walls, ornate ceiling mouldings and froufrou chandeliers, the café occupies a demure little villa and makes up part of the more extensive Literaturhaus, which also includes a small, subterranean bookshop and hosts a comprehensive calendar of literary events.

Tucked behind a strip of garden, a tiny fountain garnishing the entrance, the café is a place of endearing contrasts (it even has an alternate name, the Café Wintergarten), managing to be both unpretentious and elegant. Atop the steps, you’ll find yourself in a brick-walled winter garden filled with lunching guests being treated to a cinemascope view of the garden’s vegetation – coppery, down-spiralling leaves in the autumn or luscious, blossoming life in the spring.

The winter garden is strangely hushed, no matter how busy it gets. Pass through the next doorway and it’s an entirely different situation: to the left, a wall of black-and-white photographs provides an artistic backdrop for the bustling baristas pulling cafés-au-lait and emitting all the flair of a Viennese street café. To the right, two adjoining rooms feature Art Deco embellishments, mixed with a series of broody portraits lining the walls.

It’s a perfect place for many occasions, as you’ll witness: entire families enjoying cosy, extended brunches, couples indulging in classic Kaffee und Kuchen meet-ups, writers discussing their manuscripts over alcohol-filled tumblers. Somehow the highs and lows of it all chime perfectly with the café’s mash-up of bookish types who are about to head next door for a reading and the well-off West Berlin retirees resting their legs between a shop and a stroll. If anywhere does intellectual meets Oma, it’s this place. GG

Fasanenstr. 23, 10719; U Uhlandstr.; www.literaturhaus-berlin.de

Map: West D3

15

Hansaviertel
TIERGARTEN

It would take a very untrained eye not to notice something unusual going on just south of the Bellevue S-Bahn station. There are certainly some signs of normalcy – the broad streets lined with chestnut trees, the traffic, the shops around Hansaplatz. But the way the buildings are all completely different in terms of shape, colour, form and ‘personality’ suggest something is afoot.

Collectively, the buildings that dot the northwest corner of the Tiergarten are known as the Hansaviertel, a residential quarter built between 1957 and 1961 on the older neighbourhood of the same name. As part of the International Building Exhibition (Interbau), no fewer than 53 architects from around the world – including big hitters like Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Alvar Aalto, Oscar Niemeyer and Arne Jacobsen – were invited to design the buildings. Theirs was an ostentatious attempt not only to rebuild a bombed-out part of the city, but also to provide an ideological antidote to East Berlin; specifically, the repetitive concrete blocks of Stalinallee (now Karl-Marx-Allee - see p. 200).

A proud homage to the cult of the individual, the Hansaviertel buildings are spread out across a vast swathe of green, interspersed with cultural and practical necessities like a library and two churches, a barber and grocery store. Some buildings have large windows that face the morning sun; others are constructed with brightly coloured blocks. Some are 16 stories high, while others are bungalows. Some blend into the background while others leap out at you, like the one designed by Niemeyer, which teeters on V-shaped pillars and hides a separate monolithic edifice for the rear elevator.

Most apartments are bright and open, glass dissolving the boundary between indoors and out. While their presence once smacked of political ideology, today they serve as a serene and scenic alternative, and, to a city now in its next stages of urban planning, a suggestion of what could be. TE

Bordered by the Spree, west edge of Tiergarten, and Str. des 17. Juni, 10557;

S Bellevue, U Hansaplatz

Map: West E1

16

Harry Lehmann Perfumes
CHARLOTTENBURG

Harry Lehmann is surprisingly odourless for a perfume shop. Founded in 1926, it’s one of the oldest perfume manufacturers in Berlin – and it’s clear from the moment you walk in that they still do things a bit differently here: no clouds of sneeze-provoking scents, no thickly made-up ladies thrusting forth bits of perfume-doused paper, just Parfum nach Gewicht (perfume according to weight), as they call their system of charging per gram.

Forced by historical circumstance to move shop no less than six times in its 87 years, the shop finally settled on the grimier western end of Kantstrasse in 1958, where it makes a strange but welcome counterpoint to the brothels and brightly-lit shops selling cheap platform shoes and illuminated by fluorescent lights.

Step through the door and you’re immediately confronted by gleaming shelves displaying handsome, plump bottles. Lift the glass stoppers to sniff classic scents like musky after-shave and unusual concoctions like the fresh, intense Eau de Berlin, the spicy and sophisticated Roter Mohn (Red Poppy) or the sweet Fantasie. Flower scents like warm Linden or the piquant Maiglöckchen (Lily of the Valley) smell astonishingly real, as if extracted directly from the blossoms themselves.

The perfumes are made mainly by the founder’s grandson Lutz Lehmann, who is committed to re-recreating his grandfather’s recipes while crafting new concoctions to keep up with modern trends. If you’re feeling inspired, you can also get creative: just select a couple of bottles and mix up your own signature fragrance.

A smaller room bursts with artificial flowers, an initial side offering intended as a hedge against hard times when the shop first opened. The gawping sunflowers and kitschy rose arrangements are a tad crass next to the state-of-the-art perfumes. Soon, however, most of the fake flowers will be removed in order to make way for more refreshingly real fragrances – a sign that even a local institution, one with a long and restless history to match the city’s own, knows how to keep up with the changing times. GG

Kantstr. 106, 10627; S Charlottenburg, U Wilmersdorfer Strasse; www.parfum-individual.de

Map: West B2

17

Majakowskiring
PANKOW

A tree-lined street of detached villas amidst well-to-do suburban normality, Majakowskiring was once the security-sealed home to the most powerful figures in East Germany, before their move to an even more isolated complex near Wandlitz in 1960.

Built for wealthy Berliners in the first three decades of the 20th century, the large houses on Majakowskiring were first requisitioned for official use by the Soviets following WWII. The imposing neoclassical villa at number 2 accommodated important guests of state visiting Berlin, then later served as a polling station, where functionaries were often photographed having made their votes.

A further wander round the ellipse-shaped street takes you past the homes of a who’s who of early East German politics. Number 29, with its fairy-tale tower, was home to Wilhelm Pieck, the GDR’s first president (a position later abolished). He also lent his name to the Wilhelm Pieck Kindergarten, at 13-15, where residents’ children were looked after.

Conspicuous by its absence is the house of First Secretary Walter Ulbricht and his wife Lotte at number 28. It was replaced by a ’70s accommodation block after his death, erasing any trace of him from the street, though Lotte later lived at number 12. Number 34 bears a metal plaque testifying that it was home to poet Johannes R. Becher, later Minister for Culture, who wrote the words to the GDR’s national anthem.

An expanse of grey stone forms the entrance to number 46-48, home of the first Soviet town major of Berlin, and later to Prime Minister Otto Grotowohl. Ulbricht’s replacement as First Secretary, Erich Honecker, made his home with his wife Margot at number 58. The prominent circular bay and gabled windows of the ’20s house evoke something from an Expressionist film.

These days, suburban ordinariness has thoroughly reclaimed the street. Honecker’s house is now a children’s play center; the Wilhelm Pieck Kindergarten has become a day nursery. Many other houses are back in private hands, rubbing shoulders with a scattering of embassies and consulates. RC

Majakowskiring, 13156; S, U Pankow

Map: Overview E1