Peggy Hughes profiles some of her favourite reinvented buildings in Berlin…
History in Berlin is thinly veiled and easily touched. The past lives of the city sit close to the surface, and little more than a moment of reflection is needed to imagine the German capital in many of its earlier eras. Nowhere is that more true than in the city’s repurposed buildings, which symbolise its tendency towards reinvention and metamorphosis. Below are some examples of how the city and its residents have breathed new life into old structures, preserving traces of its former incarnations while broadening the spread of contemporary concert, gastro and club offerings…
Burgermeister, Kreuzberg
Approach Burgermeister’s flagship restaurant on Schlesisches Tor from the south side and you’ll be greeted with two cream-coloured signs. They indicate, in ornate black lettering, that “Männer” should turn right and “Damen” left. The signs are a remnant from this squat green building’s previous use as a public toilet—a public toilet that sat empty for twenty years before being gentrified by the Burgermeister team, who stripped its mould and dirt away and transformed it into one of Berlin’s most popular fast food restaurants, subsequently spawning 10 more outlets across the city.
Sandwiched left and right by heavily-trafficked roads and with an elevated S-Bahn line right above the restaurant roof, you’d be forgiven for assuming that this might be somewhat of a chaotic place to eat. Far from it: the speed and noise of the world going by lends the roadside eatery the feeling of a bubble, one where hungry burger fans huddle together to watch, and enjoy, the burgers and fries being churned out from the tiny white-tiled kitchen.
Café Pförtner, Wedding
If you’ve ever wondered, while munching on fresh pasta dishes, whether the restaurant in which you sit would be better if it had wheels on it—this is the spot for you. Formerly the gatehouse to a complex of public transport workshops (BVG were stationed here up until 2006), Cafe Pförtner—whose name translates as ‘Gatekeeper’—serves up simple, high-quality pasta dishes to a mix of locals and the few tourists who manage to find out about it and make it out here.
Although the main restaurant is attached to solid ground, it’s filled with quirky and creative upcycled furniture and interesting artworks, and a converted bus outside provides extra seats for customers and a bespoke dining experience for die-hard BVG fans amongst them. The strong Franconian beer list is a clue as to the home region of owner Peter Ullrich; afterwards, you can explore the other converted BVG buildings across the road, which contain the collective dance spaces known as Ufertudios, and/or enjoy a walk along the Panke river.
RAW Gelände, Friedrichshain
Located just below the Warschauer Straße bridge on Revaler Straße, the former site of the succinctly-named Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk—a workshop complex that serviced the railways of Berlin from 1867 until the 1990s and at one point employed as many as 1200 people—is now known as the easier-to-pronounce community hub and leisure area R.A.W. Gelände.
The complex went into decline following World War Two and was pretty much left for dead—until 1999, when local artists and activists began to set up camp and campaign for its transformation into a public space. Under the umbrella of the RAW-Tempel association, cultural centres began to crop up, then culinary ones, and before long the disused tracks were teeming with life again.
These days, the site hosts several clubs and bars, a swimming pool, a climbing wall adapted from a war-era bunker), a skate hall and some restaurants, each nestled in an old repair shed or associated buildings. There’s a weekend flea market too, that runs the impressive length of the maintenance yard, its canvassed stalls propped over the disused rail tracks.
Silent Green, Wedding
Silent Green was, not too many years ago, a crematorium. Not just any crematorium but Berlin’s very first, built in around 1910 as a marker in the process of secularisation and defiance against the church. Sitting unused for several decades, it was finally put up for sale in 2012 and was bought by Bettina Ellerkamp and Jörg Heitmann, who began renovating it into a concert and exhibition space.
Throughout the renovation process, the pair were careful to preserve historical features and details, including the ornaments and trellises on the outside of the building. The spectre of death lurking in the nearby graveyard doesn’t seem to deter anyone; the place is popular with everyone from casual picnickers to culture-lovers, many of whom congregate in the venue’s atmospheric cafe—a former gatehouse for the cemetery—before attending an event.
Biomarkt im Eldorado, Schöneberg
Where Motzstrasse and Kalckreuthstrasse meet in Schöneberg, a flat-fronted facade juts out into the pavement; unassuming, grey and easy to miss, today it houses a Biomarkt—Germany’s answer to Whole Foods and well-known vendor of high-quality but expensive vegetables.
Ninety years ago, this corner would have greeted you with a very different scene. That flat facade would have been festooned with lights and a shimmering, metres-high slogan claiming “Hier ist’s richtig” (“here, everything is alright”). This was the Eldorado: Berlin’s most famous cabaret and an icon of queer culture during the 1920 and 1930s. A place for safe self-expression, in particular transfeminine people, it was a portal where queerness was celebrated and an escape from the city’s more conservative forces. It even had its own currency, in the form of Eldorado tokens for the purchasing of dances from performers.
In a somewhat surprising move, Eldorado allowed the entrance of Thomas Cook operated tours, small groups of travellers picked up in coaches from their fancy hotels, driven to the bar for a cocktail and returned to their lodgings full of wonder and stories. Closed down by the Nazis in 1933, it was quickly adorned with swastikas and turned into a local headquarters for the regime.
Naturpark Südgelände, Schöneberg
Back in the 1800s, two new railway lines opened in Berlin—one to the city of Anhalt and one to Dresden. To keep things running smoothly, a depot was constructed and operated from 1889 until 1952, at which time the long-distance rail tracks and associated servicing and marshalling yards were dismantled. The depot was reduced to a cluster of abandoned buildings and sunken rail tracks, around which roots and plants slowly wrapped themselves as the site gradually became subsumed by nature.
In 1999, this curious, almost otherworldly mix of the industrial and the natural, place became a park, adopted by the state-owned Grün Berlin Park and Garden GmbH (patrons of the popular Britzer Garten and Gärten der Welt) and given nature and landscape protection status. Today, visitors can find elements of the old depot, such as the 50-metre water tower and a Class 50 steam locomotive, as well as old tracks, alongside a mix of wild meadows, cultivated trees and plant life, and art installations from the local Odious group.
Prince Charles, Kreuzberg
Prince Charles, named (for reasons that remain unclear) after the current English monarch, can be found tucked away in a courtyard on Prinzenstrasse. At first glance, it has a typical industrial-chic club aesthetic, complete with concrete pillars and ceilings featuring exposed cabling, plus an outside area for warm weather parties.
But there’s one feature that’s a little less ordinary: the slightly sunken dancefloor is actually a former swimming pool, built for the employees of the former piano factory the club is set into. Original white-washed alcoves still frame the space and a small stainless steel ladder still hugs one side, leading down to the cool, aqua-coloured tiles of the pool. This aquatic feel is complemented by blue-tinted lighting. Running since 2013, it has lasted much longer than the other famous pool club, Stadtbad Wedding, which was torn down and turned into apartments in 2016.
Zur Klappe, Kreuzberg
Walk down Yorckstrasse on a cold night and you might feel a rumble beneath your feet: a whisper of music beneath the ground. If the voices of revellers float past you in the darkness, they’ll be coming from Zur Klappe, a former public toilet-turned-club—an underground lair that’s only visible at street level by a hip-height sign, the name scrawled in black paint on a white background. Inside, steps take visitors down into a tiny space, no more than 100-square-metres, whose white-tiled walls are smothered with stickers and graffiti.
Zur Klappe’s name pays homage to its past as part of the “Klappen”, public toilets used as cruising spots by gay men from the 1970s to the 1990s, a time of strict conservative laws that criminalised homosexuality. The club has not forgotten its prominent place in queer history, and is driven today by an ethos of inclusivity and a desire to spotlight the BIPOC and queer artists of Berlin.
Kleine Grosz Museum, Schöneberg
The Kleine Grosz Museum has a name that nods playfully both to the art inside, by Weimar artist George Grosz, and the petite size of the structure in which it is housed. Once a Shell petrol station, the tiny building is now home to an exhibition dedicated to the painter, graphic artist, and caricaturist, who helped to found Berlin’s Dada scene and criticised the powerful and corrupt warmongers of his era. Indeed, he even changed his surname from Gross to the more Americanised Grosz as a protest against nationalism and World War One.
Grosz, along with his dadaist collaborators, was labelled by the Nazis as a “degenerate artist”, a move that prompted him to flee Berlin for the U.S. in 1933, where he remained until the late 1950s. Despite his prominence and influence, this is the first space to be entirely dedicated to his oeuvre; it doesn’t feature his most famous works, which are in bigger museums and galleries around the world, but does delve into his life and lesser-known output. The venue is a mini-modernist masterpiece that’s worth visiting in itself.
Gerichtshöfe, Gesundbrunnen
Berlin’s Gerichtshöfe has lived many lives. Built at the intersection of Gerichtstrasse and Wiesenstrasse in 1860 as a complex of factory buildings, stables and carriage sheds, it morphed into a producer of gas lantern parts before becoming a liqueur factory in 1912. It was in this form that the complex, complete with high windows and multiple elevators, was taken over by a collective of artists in 1983, transforming it once again into a hub for art, crafts and trade.
The arrangement became official in 2004, with many of the artists coming together as the “Kunst in den Gerichtshöfen e.V.,” association, forming one of the largest artists’ quarters in Germany, with more than 70 studios. Once a year, thousands of visitors flock to an autumnal open studio held there, seeking the rare opportunity to interact with the rare mix of studios, craft workshops and trade outlets.
It’s a sprawling area, spilling across eight staircases and six courtyards. The largest and most central of these courtyards was formed, so the story goes, when a section of the liqueur factory was destroyed in an accident that involved a large gun and a member of the Hitler youth, mere days before the end of the war.