‘Old Berlin’ Archives
Volkspark Friedrichshain
Everyone loves a good park. Volkspark Friedrichshain is one of Berlin’s finest… Even by Berlin’s high standards, the Volkspark Friedrichshain stands out as one of the city’s special green spaces. Established a century and a half ago to commemorate the centennial of Frederick the Great's accession to the throne, it gives good history, swathes of Liegewiese (sunbathing areas), an abundance of leisure opportunities and more than its fair share of interesting landmarks. Casually [...]
City Lit: Kurfürstendamm
Suzi from Packabook.com throws away her guidebook to explore one of Berlin's most famous streets via two novels... One of the great joys of reading books set in the city you're visiting is the way they can help you understand your surroundings. I like to read novels as if they're maps - keys to places I've not yet unlocked. Some people like guide books...I'd rather read a novel. I think I'm right in saying that for most non-German speakers, the street names in Berlin can be a bit [...]
The Berlin Stories
Little less than a century old, Christopher Isherwood’s classic book still sheds light on the city that’s its star… Aficionados of Slow Travel know that to get to the soul of a place you don’t necessarily have to explore its heart. Tourists gathering around London’s Trafalgar Square or Rome’s Trevi Fountain may feel that they have come face to face with a city’s history, but these are landmarks, nothing more, ignored by locals to whom they represent little. The soul of a [...]
Canoeing in Gosen
William Thirteen paddles in the watery footsteps of Frederick the Great... In 1752 Prussian ruler Frederick the Great took time out between war with Silesia and witty banter with his friend Voltaire to found the small village of Gosen. Gosen and neighboring village Neu Zittau were intended to be home to the workers of the new weaving and spinning mills being established in the area as part of Frederick's efforts to develop the local Brandenburg economy. In the intervening two and a half [...]
Teufelsberg: Berlin’s North Face
A personal walking excursion to one of Berlin's most mysterious landmarks... Considering it’s a city with lots of neighbourhoods named after hills (Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg, Schöneberg and so on), Berlin is a challengingly flat place. You can walk for miles and miles without rising so much as an inch above the median above-sea-level altitude. Nor would the more notable inclines in the city’s topography – the gradual north-easterly rise along Prenzlauer Allee, for instance - trouble an [...]
Strandbad Wannsee
Berlin's oldest and most famous lido still packs in the punters... You're in Berlin. The sun has got his hat (and rave shades) on and you suddenly find yourself longing to escape the city - to flee the concrete, traffic and shadows for some sand, sea and fresh air. The East (Baltic) sea is at least three hours away: too far for a day trip, especially since you're not an early riser. But wait. What's that large mass of water south-west of the city, en route to Potsdam? Of course -- it's [...]
In Praise of Edgar Reitz’s Heimat
Wyndham Wallace profiles a 1980s German TV epic... “History is written by the victors”, Winston Churchill once said, and as someone living in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s I grew up with an interpretation that deemed the Germans humourless warmongers whose crimes should never be forgotten. In the playground, the word ‘Nazi’ was virtually interchangeable with ‘German’. The ‘propaganda’ of the war-associated films and comic books I consumed as a child was so deeply [...]
The Pfaueninsel
William Thirteen explores art and artifice in "Prussia's Arcadia"... "On Rabbit Island neither the merest tree nor bush may ever be felled again!" With this bold edict in 1793 Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm II took possession of a small island in the Havel river, erected a fairy tale castle for his favorite mistress and rechristened it Pfaueninsel. While he disported himself here among the peacocks for only two short summers before dying in 1797, Friedrich's royal proclamation [...]
The Mysterious Woman Of Andrews Barracks
A personal memory from 70s Berlin, courtesy of US expat Rose Waterrose... In the late 70s I lived in Berlin for two years. My husband was in the military and was stationed at Field Station Berlin. We lived in an apartment off base on the corner of Ringstrasse and Finckensteinalle Alle about a mile from the Andrews installation. We walked in and out of those front gates a thousand times. After a while I began to notice an older woman standing across the street on the corner. At [...]
To Rococo Rot
Paul Sullivan chats to Berlin-based electronica mavericks Robert and Ronald Lippok, aka To Rococo Rot... “This was where the main bohemian scene used to be,” states Ronald Lippok, gesturing out of a large café window in the general direction of Kastanienallee. “When we were younger, playing in punk-rock bands, all the rehearsal spaces were around Schoenhauser Allee and here in Zionskirchplatz. This was the centre of the art scene in the 80s. Places like the Wiener café and the [...]
