Photo by Natalie Holmes

Imagine this: in 1925, 70,000 Berliners lived in basements and about 600,000 people inhabited rooms shared with three others.

Many apartments had little or no heating and the lack of running water made for appalling sanitary conditions. In winter the apartments were damp and icy. In summer they were unbearably hot.

Times were tough, so in order to survive, women and children frequently had to work at home, turning some of their valuable living space into working areas, only adding to the horrendous noise and smells of a sickeningly claustrophobic effervescence.

With the industrial revolution, Berlin’s population had exploded to 4.5 million by 1920. Exacerbated by the style of housing, the city quickly became one of the most populous and densest in the world, where life for the majority of its inhabitants was one of misery and abject poverty.

The most common type of building at this time was a square block – 22 meters high and 150 wide, according to the limits of planning regulations of the time. This block consisted of a Vorderhaus facing the street, two perpendicular Quergebäuden, a side area (Seitenflügel) and the backyard (Hinterhof).

With demand for housing so high, it was not unusual for up to 600 people to cram into one of these tightly knit constructions; over 1000 people lived at the building on Ackerstraße 132 in Wedding, probably breaking some grim record at the time.

The (recently formed) Weimar Republic had to take drastic action to alleviate the growing housing crisis, and architect Martin Wagner was a key figure in the housing reform that followed.

A dedicated socialist, Wagner recognised the failings of purely capitalist projects and set about pursuing a more sustainable form of financing. He was instrumental in the creation of the GEHAG (Gemeinnützige Heimstätten-, Spar- und Bau-Aktiengesellschaft – Housing Cooperative for Savings and Construction) in 1924.

Working with his contemporary and fellow architect Bruno Taut, Wagner was also a rationalist, advocating the replacement of manual labour by machines, which he believed would liberate the workers. Inspired by the towering steel structures being constructed Stateside, the pair saw mass production and prefabrication as the solution to driving down construction costs by cutting out the middle man.

Photo by Natalie Holmes

The first product of this new wave of building technique was Britz in Neukölln, the site of the famous Hufeisensiedlung (Horseshoe Estate) that went on to become an emblem of the movement and part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with five other subsidised projects (built between 1910 and 1933) that together make up the Berlin Modernism Housing Estates.

In 1926, Taut worked with architect Hugo Häring to design and build Onkel Toms Hütte. Financed by the GEHAG and heavily influenced by Taut’s previous partnership with Wagner, Onkel Toms Hütte is relatively underrated as a building project that was arguably revolutionary in both its theory and execution. Taut visualised a Utopian society – classless and at one with nature, and criticised the capitalist system, describing it as a headless body, selfish and utilitarian.

Onkel Toms Hütte, the penultimate stop on Berlin’s U3, is testament to Taut’s success. Named after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1853 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the district acquired its label in around 1885, after a local landlord called Thomas installed cabins in his beer garden, which came to be known as ‘Tom’s Cabins’.

The housing estate that Taut created on the 12-hectare site is a triumph of colour and light. Rationalist in influence but human in style, the accommodations are somehow conformist but not monotonous. Back in the twenties, Taut anticipated his buildings’ degradation over time and allowed for this in his design so that, unlike most other ageing housing estates, they look as modern, warm and comfortable now as they must have when first erected. More so, perhaps.

Photo by Natalie Holmes

The buildings are modernist and practical, but Taut avoids monotony by including diversity within their homogeneity. Various sections of the sprawling estate look different to each other in terms of colour, shape and size.

Space is as important as what fills it, with housing blocks broken up at intervals with unpredictably pleasing paths, roads, woods and parks. The mechanical lines of the buildings are also softened by homely details such as asymmetric windows and invitingly individual doors.

Use of colour can often look gaudy and catalyse the ageing process, at least aesthetically. One of Taut’s many achievements with Onkel Toms Hütte is the enduring polychromatic success, apparently inspired by the likes of Mondrian, Kandinski and De Stijl.

Somewhere between pastel and primary, and clearly well-maintained, the buildings manage to be both vividly and subtly allochroous; the blues, greens and oranges a comfortable compromise between urbanity and nature.

Nature features heavily in this space too. Towering trees are ubiquitous, and wildlife is all around. Bird-life is pleasantly apparent, actively encouraged by the numerous feeders and nesting boxes. In keeping with the architects’ intention to bring inhabitants closer to nature, the vegetation itself is important in the estate’s overall effect. The low-rise constructions are dwarfed by arboreal monoliths that cast dramatic shadows, providing an external wallpaper of dynamic, interrupted light.

Wandering around Onkel Toms Hütte, one gets the strong impression that this is a wonderful place to live. Almost a century since its construction, the area evokes an excitingly futuristic feel and would not seem out of place in a Utopian sci-fi story. That this estate has survived and flourished is all the more moving given the horrors of the decades that were to follow.

About The Author

Natalie Holmes lives and works in Berlin. She loves learning German, birdwatching and travelling by train, in between working as a freelance travel consultant and aspiring writer. A keen environmentalist, Natalie writes about sustainability and responsible travel on her blog, The Horseshoe Nail.

Amit Elan (photo by Eli Saban)

Amit Elan is a 22 years old Berlin based Israeli artist. He studied at Hamidrasha Art Academy and has since developed mixed media installations. He exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Asia and Israel.

He writes for the artists’ blog Art in Transit published by the international artists’ organization I.G.B.K. Spring 2011 he completed an artist residency in the Philippines with a solo exhibition.

In Berlin he has taken part in several exhibitions (co)organized by Kunstraum Richard Sorge, notably the “La Creche” project…

When and why did you move to Berlin and what attracted you to the city?

My first encounter with Berlin was rather random. It was about five years ago when I was hitchhiking across Europe, from Athens through the Balkans. I actually wasn’t on my way to Berlin; I was on my way to Amsterdam, but the Turkish truck driver I caught a ride with in Serbia was heading to Berlin so I decided to go with him and check it out.

I immediately fell in love with the city and ended up hanging here for three months that summer. A year later I moved into town to live. The city has all the things I love in one place: a booming art scene, alternative-everything, amazing party scene, huge queer scene. I saw no reason not to move here. Also Tel Aviv was getting very expensive and Berlin is so cheap to live in comparison. As an artist it’s much easier to survive here, I can afford an apartment and a studio for the same price I would be paying for just a flat in Israel…

You work in different mediums – painting, photography, installation. Why do you use these different mediums and how do you inter-relate them to each other?

I started out originally with photography a few years ago, and at some point began playing around with paints and colours. I was always painting things inspired by photography. I used my photos as a jump start for paintings, looking at different images and creating a mash-up from bits and pieces and interpreting it into a painted dimension. In my work I like to be naughty and mix contradicting materials like oil paint with aquarelle, crayons with markers, pen, pencil, fake tattoos, charcoal, spray, stencils, glue, fire, tapes, stickers and about any type of tool that leaves a mark. As I get bored quickly, the whole rectangular painting-on-canvas thing got a little bit old, so gradually my work moved more towards installations. I started thinking more in 3D and how I can work in space rather then on each piece individually in two dimensions.

Totem Painting by Amit Elan

Some of your paintings seem to abosrb some of the darker or more “taboo” aspects of human nature…

I like the idea of creating a world where distorted creatures, characters and splashing body fluids are not taboo and are even gladly welcomed. Lots of sexuality, perfectionism, fetish and violence, combined with a colourful, childish and humorous contrast of dinosaurs, rainbows, intergalactic laser wars and sparkly road kill.

A painted/sculpted dimension where laws of physics and social prohibitions no longer prevent us from connecting with our real element. All is allowed in this utopian dimension; fluffy, talking marshmallows, upside-down grannies or supernatural porn stars are all welcome and respected. No one needs an excuse for doing what they are doing or permission to be who they are. No one needs to be interpreted, their existence itself is enough.

Faces stand out in your paintings – who do these faces belong to and what do they mean to you? 

The faces I paint vary from people I know and meet on my journeys to random faces I find on the internet and feel some kind of connection with. On my last “totem” project I was going in both directions with a different topic that I fancied at that moment, i.e. every time something else. So one totem pole was all inspired by the faces of transvestites, another was albino Africans. There was one with orgasm faces where I took the facial expressions from porn. Sometimes I’m more random and intuitive with my choices and sometimes more thought through and conceptual. In the end it’s not really about who I choose to portray – I’m much more interested in expressing the emotions in the faces, and being expressive with the paint and colours.

Your photos are somewhat different in aesthetic and execution…there’s more humour, less concern with straight portraits. Can you tell us more about your photographic approach?

I’m not interested in portraying reality in my photos. I like distorting and creating a new reality, re-inventing and staging a whole new scenario especially for the frame I’m trying to catch. I like to take what I see in front of me and try to compose it in a less usual way. The staging process is never in a studio or something of that sort, it happens in unplanned situations like in the streets or when I see someone that has something interesting about them; then I ask them to pose for me in certain poses or with different backgrounds. These are usually random strangers I meet. My photos usually contain people or abstract things like rotting body parts, or sick people. I like to combine dirty stuff and very trashy vibrant colorful things in one shot.

You took on a South China Sea residency a while ago: how did that come about and what were your experiences like?

Well as I love traveling, last Berlin winter I decided I must escape the cold to a tropical exotic climate for an unlimited time. After dreaming of it for a long time I finally made it to Tao Philippines, this breathtaking island where I was invited by Eddie Barrok and Jack Footit to stay and work in my own studio for as long as I want. Eddie and Jack are two amazing guys I originally met in Berlin and became very close friends with. This super remote island was the ultimate paradise.

I ended up staying for five months in the jungle with very few people, a monkey, dogs, pigs, monitor lizards, huge python snakes and many other bizarre creatures I don’t know by name – and hardly any communication with civilization. My studio was placed between the beach and the jungle, and I used sea water to paint and to wash my brushes and coconut shells to mix my paint. At the end I had a solo show called “Mosquitos, Monkey & Pigdogs”.

Painting by Amit Elan

Who (or what) would you say are your main inspirations as an artist?

I have to say that most inspiring for me are wild new experiences and fishing and exploring through the conscious realm. Music is also one of my biggest inspirations. I can’t work without music. I really love Sufjan Stevens, he’s amazing.

What can you tell us about your current new exhibition?

The exhibition I’m showing now is the beginning of a much bigger project I’m working on. It’s the first exhibition in a series of upcoming shows that will exhibit the same project as it will be growing in complexity with each show. I started doing these totem poles mainly to satisfy my obsession of painting faces. I wanted to find a way to make as many heads as possible without having to make banal single portraits. To collage as many faces as possible in one piece, to get this facial addiction out of my system (or not). I was also lead to the totem shape by my growing interest in shamanism and spiritual consciousness of self growth. The totem pole is often linked to the shamanic practice of the indigenous people of South America, which is definitely my next location to explore.

What are your future plans in the art world?

No one can tell the future, not even me. But I definitely know that before I leave Berlin – not that I’m planning to – I will Make a huge street painting on the whole of a big building like those massive paintings in Kreuzberg as a little remembrance of this era of my life.

Finally, where are your favorite places to hang out and take it easy in the city (parks, bars, cafes, museums etc.) and which local artists would you big up?

One of my favorite places, where I can hang out for hours in is Cafe Kotti, on the Kottbusser Tor. It’s an old, queer, friendly, Turkish left-wing coffee salon with lots of old cozy sofas, nice to hang out in the afternoon, good ethnic Turkish music and tea – and a very interesting mixture of people. Another great place is Agora in Neukoelln – a great art space with a beautiful coffee shop and lots of things going on, workshops, performances, exhibitions parties. I also enjoy clubs like Homopatik, Cocktail D’amore, Berghain. A local artist I lately discovered would be Aerea Negrot. I was at one of her performances last week and she completely blew my mind!

Amit Elan’s current works are now showing at Berlin’s AKA Gallery (Pflügerstr. 6, Neukölln) until Feb 9th. You can also check his personal website here.

Christopher Isherwood

“For Christopher, Berlin meant boys,” goes a memorable line in Christopher Isherwood’s memoir. It is the starting point for Brendan Nash’s walking tour of the area around Nollendorfplatz in Schöneberg, one of Berlin’s oldest gay neighborhoods.

Isherwood, whose portrayal of Berlin between the late 1920s and early 1930s gave us the images many of us still associate with this period, lived here during his third visit to the city.

While still a student in Cambridge, Isherwood and his friend Edward Upward created an imaginary world while taking a walk through the town. Turning into an alley, they came across a strange-looking old door in a high blank wall. They called it “the doorway into the Other Town” and imagined themselves passing through it into a secret realm, where they became tourists in another world.

This is the feeling you get as you walk with Nash from U-Nollendorfplatz down Maaßenstraße. following a roughly quadrangular route across Nollendorfstraße, Motzstraße, and Kleiststraße. You turn a corner and discover a secret realm.

Every so often, Nash pulls aside the curtain on a familiar street and reveals to you the city of Isherwood’s Berlin Stories or the 1970s movie version of the hit musical Cabaret. Remember Liza Minelli in the role of Sally Bowles?

That character was based on Jean Ross, the young British actress/singer whom Isherwood met in 1930, when he moved into a boarding house at Nollendorfstraße 17, owned by Fräulein Thurau. The apricot-colored house is one of the tour’s first stops. Nash’s well-researched narrative is peppered with anecdotes, quotes, historical and architectural sidebars, often shot through with dry humor. Here, for example, he tells us of the depressing, rainy late afternoon when Ross said to Isherwood, “… a pity we can’t make love, there’s nothing else to do …” to which Isherwood replied that it was and there wasn’t.

Other highlights of the tour include the building that was once the famous Eldorado nightclub and the Kleist Casino. The Eldorado, on the corner of Motzstraße and Kalckreuthstraße, was one of the most popular clubs for night-time cabarets, and performers included celebrities like Marlene Dietrich.

In a bizarre twist of fate, Nazi forces raided and shut down the premises in the 1930s, then converted it into their own local headquarters. The building is now a Bio supermarket, but Nash’s narrative continues on inside the building, where black and white photographs of the nightclub in its heyday help recreate its flamboyant Art Deco-style interior.

The Kleist Casino, between Nollendorfplatz and Wittenbergplatz, just a stone’s throw away from Isherwood’s lodgings, was perhaps the oldest gay bar in Europe, and was in operation till 2002. The Eldorado and Kleist Casino were only two of many gay establishments featured in a slew of guidebooks with seductive titles such as Berlin: Was Nicht im Baedeker Steht (“Berlin: What’s Not Included in Baedeker”).

The Eldorado today

Already the gay capital of Europe by the late 1920s, Berlin had at least 160 flourishing gay bars and clubs. Although they were illegal, sheer economic necessity encouraged people to flout the law.

And the uncertainty of the future, at a historical moment suspended between the hedonism of the waning Weimar era and the ominous long shadow of Nazism, created a kind of carpe diem atmosphere. It was, Nash says, quoting Isherwood, “an extraordinary place in an extraordinary time.”

Nash clearly loves his subject and, unlike the usual “Highlights of Berlin” tours, this walk has many personal touches. “I’ve lived in this neighborhood,” he says, “so I know it well. Like Isherwood, I came for just a brief visit, fell in love with Berlin, and decided I was here to stay.”

He spent years researching the gay scene in Berlin during the 20s and 30s, Isherwood’s life, and the urban history of the neighborhood. “Isherwood’s letters, diaries and memoirs aren’t always accurate,” he says, “so my research also included Berlin Noir fiction, such as the detective novels of Philip Kerr.”

Nash’s neighborhood walking tour costs 10 euros and lasts 60 minutes. It begins and ends at the U-Bahn Nollendorfplatz. You can join one of the regular tours or arrange your own by calling Brendan or following him on Twitter. All details can be found at his blog Cabaret Berlin. To read more about Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, click here.

About the Author

Lily Philipose has contributed to the Guardian Weekly, the Chronicle of Higher Education and University World News. Her blog Berlin Culture Crawl was featured on the website of NPR Berlin and the Scene in Berlin column of Deutsche Welle. She lives in Friedenau.

Image courtesy of Five Elephant

I walk through the door of Five Elephant exactly one year after it opened – but there appears to be no time for birthday celebrations.

Out front, customers mill about or sit absorbed in laptop land. Just beyond them, a roasting machine is working its magic, surrounded by a crew of human assistants overseen by co-owner Kris. In the background, Kris’ partner Sophie prepares a generous batch of cakes for the weekend rush.

Despite these bustling scenes of activity in what is essentially quite a small space, the first impression is overwhelmingly olfactory, a hit of coffee delivered directly to the nose like a gentle punch. The roaster, Kris explains, was imported from Idaho in his native US, where by a stroke of luck he was trained one-on-one by the CEO of the famous supplier, Dietrich.

This incredibly complicated process required painstaking attention to detail: each bean has its own idiosyncrasies and there is no set formula to follow. Perfection lies somewhere between art and science, graft and graphs. But the end result is coffee that’s by far the best in the neighbourhood and has quickly become the talk of the town.

And while the machine plays no small part in Five Elephant’s success (Berlin has scandalously few in-house roasters) the true stars of the story, as always, are the people and their passions.

Sophie, the co-founder, is almost single handedly responsible for the baked goods on offer in this simple but dedicated cafe.

Having tasted the Philadelphia cheesecake, I can relate to the depth of emotion it sparks; Sophie has received requests for hugs from strangers and even marriage proposals on the basis of her prodigious patisserie talents.

Speaking of nuptials, perhaps the most unique aspect of the Five Elephant enterprise is its sincere commitment to remarrying product and consumer. As a cartophile I was captivated by the giant wall maps depicting Africa, South and Central America, and Indonesia, thinking them a wonderfully fitting design decision.

But the maps are more than that: they’re a nod to ethics as well as aesthetics, part of a conscious effort to put the journey of this precious commodity into perspective. The owners strive to know exactly where each and every batch of coffee comes from even though this is a frustrating impossibility for a business of their size.

As connoisseurs may know, prices of coffee spiked in December 2010, a cause of both stock market speculation and a warming climate forcing growers further uphill, exacerbating the situation for farmers and all those committed to transparency and fair trade across the supply chain.

The good news is that Kris and Sophie have recently contracted their first micro-lot of direct trade coffee from a sustainable farming project in Brazil. They plan to release details about the farmers and openly account for every penny.

Image courtesy of Five Elephant

There is even talk, thanks to technological advances in grower countries, of introducing customers and farmers via Skype during after-hours events.

While you can’t taste abstract concepts like humanity or humility, these ingredients are as essential as all the others in the popularity and importance of this place.

True, some complain about its location in a lesser-known pocket of east Kreuzberg; but this was actually a canny move, and not just because I happen to live next door, since the area – increasingly desirable but still affordable – is on the cusp of a new phase and Five Elephant represents a new kind of gentrification that promotes sustainability and provides an opportunity for the community to consume quality products ethically.

Like the roasting of the beans, the formula of Five Elephant’s popularity is a fine balance of people and product, passion and action, where the key to continued success is trial and error with a healthy dose of perseverance.  Fortunately for us quality caffeine addicts, Kris and Sophie are modest masters of this abstract algebra.

Five Elephant
Reichenberger Strasse 101
10999 Berlin
T 030 960 815 27
Open: Mon-Fri 8:30 – 19, Sat-Sun 10 – 19

Between 30th January and 5th February 2012, the thirteenth edition of Berlin’s CTM (Club Transmediale) festival will be taking over a range of venues in the city. Paired with the Transmediale festival for media art, the two will run concurrently, with a number of crossover events as well as their own individual line-ups.

Both already have significant reputations for fantastic, thought-provoking programmes that avoid treading along established genre lines in favour of a broader, more thematic approach.

The theme for CTM this year is Spectral, a handy jump-off point for a number of performances scattered across venues like the HAU Theatre, Passionskirche and the city’s famed Berghain club (usually more associated with all night techno/house marathons and the ever on-point Ostgut Ton label). To see the full CTM line-up and running order, click here.

Many of the artists CTM has booked this year work within the space where murky analogue imagery meets the caffeine buzz of internet-era information overload. With that in mind, Spectral is a very timely theme, at a time where the hazy pop of labels like Hippos In Tanks and Not Not Fun attracts a great deal of critical attention (and an equal amount of suspicion) and older genres of electronic music are strip-mined for influence via YouTube.

The line-up in Berghain on 2nd February captures much of what’s going on at the more listener-friendly end of this interface: the main room features Tri Angle Records’ Balam Acab, oOoOO and Holy Other alongside Puzzle and former Vex’d man Kuedo. The real heat is in the Berghain Kantine, though, where a number of Not Not Fun-associated acts take to the stage.

Ital’s upcoming Hive Mind album is one of the most complete explorations so far of the crossover region where web-age lo-fi pop meets the dancefloor. He plays live alongside Stellar OM Source, whose recent acid-flecked proto-techno is similarly beautiful in both form and function (more on those two acts here).

[Click to hear Oneohtrix Point Never on Soundcloud]

Similarly, both James Ferraro and Oneohtrix Point Never perform and take part in a shared discussion panel (Post Traumatic Euphoria, HAU, 2nd February) in the latter part of the week. Their respective Far Side Virtual and Replica albums were among the more interesting of last year, and both ask bold (if sometimes challenging and not entirely aesthetically pleasing) questions of internet’s role in shaping modern art.

Elsewhere, there’s no shortage of bracing dance music and noise-wracked electronics. Mark Fell, Kangding Ray, Byetone and Sendai (a new and viscerally powerful project of Peter Van Hosen and Yves de Mey) play at the Berghain on Tuesday 31st January; on the same night, between 5pm-11pm at the House of World Cultures, you can attend a free opening night and gain insights into this years programme.

In the same venue the following evening, William Bennett’s Cut Hands project graces the stage alongside the excellent Haxan Cloak. And on Friday night (3rd December), the Berghain hosts a formidable line-up: Ben Frost, Mika Vainio, Morphosis, Roly Porter, G.H., Ancient Methods and more, with the Perlon label taking over Panoramabar upstairs.

Other highlights are too many to list, but particularly worthy of a mention are Tim Hecker performing his Ravedeath 1972 album live on a church organ; a performance from elusive drone artist Eleh; Pole, Hieroglyphic Being and Kassem Mosse flying the flag for abstract but deadly dancefloor music on Saturday 4th February; Grouper performing a show entitled Circular Veil; and a rare appearance from composer Catherine Christer Hennix.

About The Author

This post was written by Rory Gibbs for The Quietus, one of the UK’s leading music websites. To read Gibbs’ interview with CTM co-founder Jan Rohlf about the importance of this year’s theme and the festival’s history, click here.

Giveaway

We have 2 x 2 tickets to give away for the performance of the Joshua Light Show with Supersilent (1st Feb) and Oneohtrix Point Never (3rd Feb). To win, just leave a comment on this post naming your favourite Berlin-based experimental music artist. 

Photo courtesy of Haus Schwarzenberg website

Most visitors to Berlin find themselves ambling along Mitte’s Rosenthaler Strasse at some point, often to browse well-known commercial landmarks like the Rosen and Hackeschen Höfe.

While these places possess their own kind of charm, located between these highly buffed retail magnets, at No. 39, is a more subdued, scruffy building whose brown, pockmarked façade — conspicuously un-refurbished – is decorated only by old blocky German lettering that suggests a bygone era.

This blast from the past, criminally bypassed by many, is Haus Schwarzenberg, owned and run by the Verein Schwarzenberg (Schwarzenberg Association), who are independent from government funding.

It shares exactly the same format as the surrounding buildings, i.e. a rear courtyard full of apartments, shops and storage areas, but with the crucial difference that the entire space has retained, as much as possible, its original post-war condition. Also, the utilisation of the spaces within – an independent cinema, cafe/bar (with live music/art performances), an art/book shop, various artist studios and a trio of small but interesting museums – contrast distinctively with its luxe neighbours.

The property has a long history. Its various units have been used as a factory, a shared living commune, a GDR movie and television office and a brush-making factory that employed and hid Jews during the Second World War (the associated “Museum Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt“ tells this story).

Artwork by Nil Reb

After the wall fell, the building remained empty until 1995 when an artistic group called the Dead Chickens moved in, finding it a cheap and inspiring place to work.

It was Jutta Weitz, an energetic, affable and now 62-year-old lady who made this possible. Jutta works for Wohnungsbau Gesellschaft (a housing development company) and instead of offering this massive building to some sort of business corporation she figured it would be perfect for this group of artists.

“I showed them this place and at first they weren’t interested – it was too big. But then they turned it into a collaboration with other artists and started to fix the place up,” she says, adding “The house is like a small universe…after the war, neither the Americans nor the Russians took over the space and to this day it’s a free structure.”

This freedom is expressed through Verein Schwarzenberg’s mission to support artistic activities of all sorts while providing a place for international artists to work together. The Neurotitan gallery and shop has pretty much perfected this job by hosting up to 12 major international exhibitions yearly. An underground space called the Monster Kabinett also hosts rotating exhibitions of the the last 20 years of work by the Dead Chickens.

Of particular interest for history and wartime buffs are the museums located within, which explore Jewish life in the area during WWII. The Gedenkstatte Stille Helden honours and commemorates local Jewish inhabitants who risked their lives to rescue persecuted Jews, documenting both heroic successes and tragic failures via written reports, photographs, documents and oral testimonies.

Among the heroes is Otto Weidt, a Jewish entrepreneur who helped save a number of his employees – all of whom were blind – from his workshop next door. Now called the Museum Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt, it has been kept in its original post-war state and features photographs and personal mementos of Weidt’s life, stories and documents of his workers. The original hidden room, where Weidt hid Jewish families when the Gestapo came knocking, has also been retained located. Hidden behind a backless wardrobe, it’s a hauntingly claustrophobic reminder of the horrors of the era.

Photo courtesy of Haus Schwarzenberg website

Finally, the Anne-Frank-Zentrum (www.annefrank.de) is a modern, surprisingly engaging exhibition that expands on the life and themes of the well-known Jewish girl who hid in a house in Amsterdam.

In contrast to the surrounding gentrified melee, Verein Schwarzenberg is committed to values of tolerance, intercultural creativity, freedom and diversity.

“I think the mixture and diversity is what makes it exciting,” remarks Weitz. “People of different national and professional backgrounds get the chance to collaborate and help each other out. If you start talking to the people that work here, you can peel back layers and layers which reveal stories of people and places you wouldn’t have expected.”

Haus Schwarzenberg
Rosenthaler Straße 39
10178 Berlin
T 030 30 87 25 73

Do You Read Me!? Reading Room photo by Achim Hatzius

For literature geeks in Berlin looking to sample the local scene, there’s no shortage of salons, readings, talks and slams. In English or German, whether at big institutions like the embassies and the American Academy, the traditional, clubby Literaturhäuser or intimate Lesebühnen, options are ample.

That’s not even counting the hordes of festivals with a literary bent, from the Internationales Literatur Fest to the newly launched Lange Nacht der Bibliotheken. And of course, Berlin has a vital and diverse poetry scene, from slams to quiet café evenings.

The slam and Lesebühnen (reading-stages) scene, mostly in German, welcomes English performers. The Slammin’ Poetry website and MySlam.net list slams from well-known events like ManoSlam! to niche obscurities and one-offs. English-language poetry mixed with music, comedy or performance art is offered up at regular gigs like BeatStreet and Poetic Groove.

Shut Up and Speak! mixes German, English and German sign language and features lesbian and trans performers, deaf and hearing. The annual Anti-Slam, long run by gadabout poet and Glastonbury performer Paula Varjack, invites poets to write and recite their very worst. And several venues host regular open mic nights featuring poetry mixed with comedy and music in a mix of languages, like Lagari in Kreuzkölln and Max Fish in Mitte.

When it comes to literary happenings a clear East-West split persists, with events in western districts often centered around libraries, such as the stellar Ingeborg-Drewitz-Bibliothek in Steglitz. In the east, events for the bookish can be found at cafés, bars, small stages and bookshops just about any night of the week. Word lovers who don’t want to miss a trick can subscribe to the Literary List, a monthly roundup of events, by writing to fiona_mclellan@yahoo.com.

Bookshops with Events 

Another Country

Come here on a Friday evening and you may feel you’ve entered a Tennessee Williams play set in The Old Curiosity Shop, with the requisite bickering and drama, layers of dust and ash and taxidermied birds. But appearances can deceive: this is probably Berlin’s longest-running literary/intellectual salon for the English-speaking crowd. A family-style dinner is on offer among the cellar stacks and on the ground floor regulars settle in the back room as if it’s their local boîte (it is). Browse the shelves and debate whether Murakami is overhyped, discourse on the War Poets, or eavesdrop on discussions on Pynchon and Ulysses. Responding to demand, the shop will again host writing groups in 2012. For a full profile of this bookshop, click here.

Another Country, Riemannstraße 7, 10961 Berlin, T: 030 69401160, Open: 11am-8pm Mon-Fri; 11am-4pm Sat.

Dialogue Books

Dialogue offers a range of events for literary lovers, both in the snug Gräfekiez shop and at the decorous Library lounge at Soho House on Torstraße. Transplanted London bookseller and charmer Sharmaine Lovegrove curates an exceptional mix of intimate readings, interviews and salons where authors and readers meet and share ideas. The intelligent programming combines Berlin-centric fiction and cultural history with broader explorations of world fiction and contemporary issues such as the unfolding of the Arab Spring and the impact of the Internet on the culture industries. Dialogue also offers a monthly reading group. To read an interview with Dialogue/Sharmaine Lovegrove, click here.

Dialogue Books, Schönleinstraße 31, 10967 Berlin, T: 030 6273 5111, Open: 11am-7pm Mon-Sat.

Gestalten Space

Gestalten Space

This publisher-operated gallery and bookshop tucked away in Sophie-Gips-Höfe holds regular publication parties and presentations. The aesthetic focus attracts a young international, mostly black-clad crowd of students and greybeards with funky glasses who mingle throughout the two rooms over beer and wine. Jazz provides the soundtrack. The smaller room is used for changing exhibitions while beautifully produced books in the fields of art, architecture, typography and graphic design are on displayed in the main room. Recent soirées have celebrated the best self-published photography books and explored the intersections of curating and design. Gestalten Space also offers graphic design and typography workshops.

Gestalten Space, Sophie-Gips-Höfe,
Sophienstraße 2, 10178 Berlin, T: 030 20215821, Open: 12pm–7pm Sun–Mon and Wed-Fri; 10am–7pm Sat.

Saint George’s

This much-loved English bookshop in the near-Parisian Kollwitzkiez is home to literary get-togethers about twice a month, when the space is converted to a book-lined lounge with the counter doubling as a bar. The Speak Easy is a regular monthly happening, with anyone welcome to bring along a favourite text to share out loud—or just kick back and listen to a selection of poetry and prose chosen and read by fellow language lovers. Saint George’s also hosts book launches and readings with local writers and collaborates on events with local publishers.

St George’s, Wörther Straße 27, 10405 Berlin, T: 030 81798333, Open: 11am-8pm Mon-Fri; 11am-7pm Sat.

Reading Room

In summer 2011, the proprietors of the overstuffed Scheunenviertal magazine shop Do You Read Me?! opened this alluring outpost in the emerging Potsdamer Straße gallery district in Tiergarten. The luminous, uncluttered space offers passersby a quiet spot to pause and reflect. A side room displays select art, design and cultural journals as well as books, but the most unusual treat is the stock of Reading Lists, favorite books and journals recommended by a mix of twenty-six creative personalities in the fields of art, design and culture. The Reading Room hosts lectures, exhibitions and book launches as well as issue launches for diverse but uniformly gorgeous publications such as the UK-based art and literature journal The White Review and the dual-text urban-focus periodical Ein Magazine über Orte.

Reading Room, Potsdamerstraße 98, 10785 Berlin, T: 030 69549695, Open: 12pm–6pm Thurs-Sat.

Otherland and Hammett

Genre fans can draw up a seat and enjoy a glass of wine under the gaze of the inflatable dragons gracing the shelves in the backroom of Otherland, named for Tad Williams’s cyberpunk fantasy series. These two shops, just around the corner from each other, collaborate on events: crime and mystery authors, a mainstay of Hammett’s, sometimes read at the larger space at the sci-fi/fantasy-focused Otherland. Both keep a good stock of English books and regularly host readings in English. Recent readers include Stephen King spawn Joe Hill and Tad Williams himself.

Otherland, Bergmannstraße 25, 10961 Berlin, T: 030 69505117, Open: 11am-7pm Mon-Fri, 11am-5pm Sat.

Hammett Krimibuchhandlung, Friesenstraaße 27, 10965 Berlin, T: 030 6915834 Open: 10am-8pm Mon-Fri, 9am-6pm Sat.

Cafés, Salons & Literary Dive Bars

Café Hilde

Shabby elegance rules the day at this Irish-owned spot in Prenzlauer Berg: mismatched furniture, comfy couches, wall sconces, blazing candelabra and framed photos of sundry famous Hildes set the scene. Café Hilde offers a book trade system: leave one and take one of many pre-owned English and German books lining the shelves and windowsills. The café hosts events about twice a week, serving as a venue for locally produced ex-pat evenings of poetry and prose, as well as the Orson Welles Appreciation Society’s season of Welles’s radio plays. When the Literature Fest rolls into town in September, Hilde often serves as an outpost for readings by Irish authors and playwrights. In addition to hosting the Dialogue Books reading club each month, the café provides a welcoming meeting spot for a number of local creative groups. To read a full profile of Cafe Hilde, click here.

Café Hilde, Metzer Straße 22, 10405 Berlin, T: 030 40504172, Open: 9am-10pm Mon-Fri, 9.30am-10pm Sat-Sun.

Joe’s Bar

This proud dive kitted out with disco ball and red lampshades is home to open mic night every Tuesday, mixing comedy with music and poetry. In fact, anyone who fancies a go is welcome: singers, dancers, strummers, strippers, slammers or storytellers. Those brave enough to stand up get a free beer on the house. Joe’s also hosts slams as well as editions of the established BeatStreet series combining music and intense spoken-word poetry.

Joe’s Bar, Schönhauser Allee 157, 10435 Berlin, T: 030 93028597, Open: 8pm-4am Sun-Wed, 8pm-6am Thurs-Sat.

Kaffee Burger

With its cracked leather banquettes, rickety wooden bar, and yellowed walls, this intimate spot has a primal, cave-like feel. Owned by the Burger family from Weimar days through 1979, when it was closed by GDR authorities, the bar has a long tradition as a meeting place for journalists, artists, and intellectuals. Under new ownership but little altered, Kaffee Burger reopened in 1999 and has served as a venue for poetry readings, slams and Lesenbühnen ever since. Reformbühne Heim & Welt, which calls itself the world’s oldest Lesebühne, takes place here about twice a month. Other regular events include the Prosa v. Lyrik Slam, pitting stories against poems, and Peace Love and Poetry, a satirical send-up of the modern poetry slam. Kaffee Burger also hosts book premieres and has been home to the annual English-language poetry festival Poetry Hearings. When the spoken-word events wind up for the evening, you can stop in at Kaffee Burger’s compact adjacent dance floor, complete with mirror ball—and twice a month it’s disco Russian-style.

Kaffee Burger, Torstraße 58-60, 10119 Berlin, T: 030 28046495, Open: Daily from 9 pm; earlier for spoken-word events

King Kong Klub

With its leopard-mosaic bar and skyscraper frescoes, the urban-jungle wasteland that is the King Kong Klub puts on poetry slams and poetry-themed events a few times a month. Sink into the sofas and judge the slammers going head to head in Couch Poetos or the King Kong Slam, or toss back a few while taking in the musical and lyrical stylings of Poetic Groove. When the poets are undone, get ready to dance.

King Kong Klub, Brunnenstraaße 173, 10119 Berlin, T: 030 28598538, Open: daily 10pm-late; 9pm for some shows

St. Gaudy Café

This bright and friendly spot puts on lots of events in its B’hind Room, including the monthly Rage into the Night evening, which spotlights verse and storytelling in English or German by talented Berliners, be they new in town or established habitués such as award-winning slam champion MC Jabber and former Poetry Hearings organiser and Bordercrossing co-editor Alistair Noon. The café also hosts regular language-exchange evenings (German-French and German-English) and a dual-language book club. To read a full profile of St. Gaudy Cafe, click here.

St. Gaudy Café, Gaudy Straße 1, 10437 Berlin, T: 030 92107446, Open: 8am-8pm or later Mon-Fri, 9am-7pm Sat-Sun.

Hot Off The Press

Broken Dimanche Press

The avant-garde international publishing house Broken Dimanche Press produces art and literary books and journals in bespoke editions and creative formats such as foldaway posters and poetry installations. They host book launches and special events at spaces such as Motto Berlin. BDP co-runs the Here! Here! There! reading series at Saint George’s bookshop in Prenzlauer Berg, incorporating Skype readings with writers based abroad. The editors also curate a series combining graphics, art, installation and poetry at Büro BDP in Neukölln, Exhibiting Literature, and participate in Berlin festivals like the international art book festival Miss Read at the Kunst Werke Institute of Contemporary Art.

Broken Dimanche Press, Büro BDP, Emserstrasse 43, 12051 Berlin, Open: During exhibitions

No Man’s Land 

No Man’s Land, an online journal featuring first-ever translations of new German poetry and fiction, runs events throughout the year for language nerds and literary magpies. On the first Tuesday of the month, the collective holds its Translation Lab at Max & Moritz on Oranienstraße, mulling over tricky problems in translating from the German. On the third Tuesday, it’s Übersetzerstudio, where the direction of translation is reversed. Once a year the tempo is ratcheted up and the pressure is on for Translation Idol, as translators compete to provide the best English version of a thorny piece of prose from the German. Creatively programmed readings round out the calendar, along with the yearly launch of the new issue, usually held toward year’s end among the sofas and stacks at Saint George’s bookshop in the Kollwitzkiez.

www.no-mans-land.org

SAND Journal

Picking up the baton after the folding of Bordercrossing, SAND has reinvigorated the literary journal for English readers in Berlin, publishing about 100 pages of literature, art and photography twice a year. SAND engages the literary landscape by collaborating with other creative groups and collectives, co-hosting events at the Internationales Literatur Fest and the Sofa Sessions at the Wohnzimmer Festival, as well as neighborhood gigs at spots like St. Gaudy Café, the King Kong Klub and Joe’s Bar. SAND staff ran their own debut Art & Literary Fair in 2011 at the Etsy Labs studio space, where they also offer six-week-long writing workshops about twice a year. To read an interview with Sand Journal, click here.

SAND Journal

About The Author

Marian Ryan has worked as a book editor and is former fiction editor of At Length Mag. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Columbia, The Writer’s Chronicle, Quick Fiction and elsewhere. She lives in Prenzlauer Berg.

Photo by Tam Eastley

It’s no secret that finding a job in Berlin isn’t easy. With the highest unemployment rate in all Germany (12.7% compared to a 6.5% national average), Germans and ex-pats alike need to be increasingly creative when it comes to finding a job, or find themselves forced to leave and look elsewhere. While this can be a struggle and a stress, it also accounts for the abundance of small, creative businesses here in the city.

Two years ago, Diana Durdic (a former engineer for BMW) and Tasha Arana (an accessories designer from New York) discovered themselves in such a conundrum. They moved to the city and decided that if they couldn’t find anything in six months, they’d start their own business, perhaps one that merged their two shared passions, fashion and, erm, baked goods.

They didn’t find a job and thus Sing Blackbird was born: a vintage clothing store/vegan café on Sanderstrasse in trendy Kreuzkölln. Two years on, the venture has not only exceeded their own expectations, it’s even caught the eye of the international world from Italian Vogue to Dutch Elle.

The modern-day concept store, nestled between a huddle of Imbiss, Spätkauf and the Maybachufer Turkish Market, fits perfectly with this increasingly trendy Berlin kiez. But settling in Kreuzkölln was purely accidental, says Durdic. “We just wanted something with two doors on the street in order to highlight the store, and also the cafe.”

When they first came upon the location, they were not at all impressed. “I thought [the space] was really trashy,” Durdic says. “But when we started pulling away the drop down ceilings we found these amazing crown mouldings.” Uh huh – they had stumbled upon yet another diamond in the rough in Berlin.

Some well-chosen wallpaper, a splash of silver paint on the ceiling and a few antique birdcages later, Sing Blackbird was opened in September 2010 – and has been booming ever since. The store merges the best of two very different worlds – fashion and food – in a healthy, cost-efficient way. The clothing, mostly from the 70s, 80s and 90s is hand picked by Durdic and Arana and priced reasonably.

“A lot of vintage stores are overpriced,” Durdic tells me, “and a lot of the second hand stores have questionable values.” The two entrepreneurs wanted to fill a niche that they didn’t see represented in Berlin, that of mid-range, well priced, good quality vintage clothes.

Their commitment to quality is obvious: the pieces are hung on the racks delicately and colour co-ordinated. There’s no overcrowding or need to squeeze through a claustrophobic space, overflowing with dusty, smelly, torn fabric corpses. Instead, the selection is well thought-out, well treated, and well-informed.

Photo by Tam Eastley

In the winter they carry sweaters, coats and boots, and in the summer, Berlin favourites like floral dresses. They know their market, and they love it. “Berlin style isn’t as crazy as it used to be when people would just wear anything,” says Durdic. “Now it’s more about a casual street style and basic colours.”

When you’re done browsing, cross over to the other side of the store and pull up a seat – maybe by the window, where you can sip a cappuccino and watch the Kreuzkölln foot traffic. The large array of tasty vegan treats on offer include a justly famed breakfast burrito, vegan pancakes, a tempeh lunch bowl and homemade vegan cake.

Durdic and Arana also tend to involve their friends and the wider community to contribute, interact, and (natürlich) party. The various magazines displayed around the store are mostly creative projects by friends, as are the beautiful and delicate vintage necklaces – and customers are encouraged to bring in their unwanted clothes to swap.

On cold, rainy, and miserable winter Thursdays, Sing Blackbird also hosts movie nights [check the Facebook page for listings]. Previous films have included quirky vintage classics like The Warriors, Badlands, Repo Man and Blue Velvet. In the summer, the team sets up a classic Berlin Flohmarkt on the sidewalk outside and, because no hip, beer selling, vegan cafe is complete without a little bit of music, they’ve also starting bringing in bands, mostly of the soft acoustic variety so as not to annoy the neighbours.

When you consider the quirkiness and success of a venture like Sing Blackbird, you have to concede that perhaps Berlin’s high unemployment crisis isn’t so bad, since it seems, at some level, to nourish Berlin with alternative treasures like this one.

Sing Blackbird
Sanderstraße 11
12047 Berlin
T 030 54845051
Open: 13-19 Daily

About The Author

Tam Eastley is from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. After finishing a Bachelor’s Degree in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Calgary, she decided to see the world, and embarked upon a nine month trip around Europe and South-East Asia. She moved to Berlin over three years ago and completed a Master’s Degree at the Freie Universität Berlin in English Literature and Cultural Studies. She recently cured a bout of wanderlust with a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway. She is currently a freelance travel blogger for NPR Berlin and a contributor to Slow Travel Berlin. In addition to her journalistic endeavors, she is working on a book of short stories about traveling the world by train. Her interests include culture, literature, travel and roller derby.

The area was closed and abandoned following the division of the city and nature slowly began to work its magic, reclaiming the old crumbling administrative buildings and rotting railway tracks from the ground up. In 1995, the legal owners Deutsche Bahn AG donated 18 hectares of the area to the Berlin Senate as compensation for the “negative impact on nature of transportation facility expansion in the city center”. Thanks to the work of campaigning Berliners and ecological experts, the park was officially opened to the public in 2000 and declared a Global Project of EXPO 2000.

Today the park is a beguiling mix of industrial ruins (including a well-maintained old steam train), modern art (a series of modern sculptures and a spray park) and the fauna and flora – birch, lime, fruit and oak trees, 30 species of breeding birds, 350 plant species and lots of bees, crickets and grasshoppers – that now call the park home and keep the joggers and strollers company.

Natur-Park Schöneberger Südgelände
Priesterweg
10829 Berlin
T +49 (0)30 70 09 060

The main entrance to the park is via Priesterweg S-Bahn station (S2, S25). The park is open all year round from 09:00 until sunset. Admission: 1 euro.

About The Author

Paul Sullivan is a Berlin-based writer & travel photographer and the founder of Slow Travel Berlin. You can check out his personal website here and some of his photography galleries here.

Photo by Toolmantim

In Ireland, where I’ve been living for the last five years, finding a new apartment and an agreement with a landlord was never hard. It mostly boiled down to viewing a place, shaking hands and paying a deposit in cash, up front.

In Berlin, I’ve recently discovered, it’s a different story. For example, prospective landlords and property agents require you to submit the following: a copy of your passport; a letter from your HR department confirming your income and your full-time open-ended contract details; copies of your last three pay slips; a copy of your most recent bank statement; a letter from German background-screening company SCHUFA; a letter from your current landlord confirming that you have no rent arrears; an income tax statement in case you work as a freelancer; the right to your first born child.

OK, I made up the last one, but the process made me wonder where all this comes from. Is it the German sense for safety and security, deeply encoded into the people’s minds after 70 years of Nazi and GDR regimes? Is it simply a national love of bureaucracy, a general mistrust of one’s fellow human?

Intrigued, I talked to a friend of my in-laws who runs a property management (and who shall remain anonymous). “I personally assume that people who are not providing these documents are hiding something and I do not consider them as potential tenants,“ he states, somewhat forthrightly. “There is, however, no Germany-wide standard of what documents to ask of your prospective tenants. I mostly use ‘Mieterselbstauskunft’, forms for people to state their financial information – you can get these online – combined with a SCHUFA-statement.”

SCHUFA is a German company that offers background screening of people’s financial information. It’s pretty much the standard process for anyone applying for mortgages, loans, or renting an apartment, and since SCHUFA also offer their services for non-nationals, it’s a must for all landlords or property managers in an international city like Berlin.

“I want to make sure I rent the place to the right people,” says my contact. “German law is very protective of tenants, which is a good thing initially. Tenants can only be evicted if they are two or three rents in arrears. And that does not mean they’re moving out. If the tenant stays, the landlord has to get an ejection notice from local courts to remove the tenant forcibly. The landlord also has to cover all costs up front, and especially if the tenant has no funds available, the legal fight can take years and years before any reimbursement reaches the landlord. This is obviously a worst-case scenario.”

“Mietnomaden” – rent nomads, or people who move into a place, live there for three months without paying rent then move on to the next – are one of the main reasons cited for the high agency deposits one finds in Berlin. Germany as a whole is one of the few countries in Europe where the majority of houses and apartments is rented out in this way. There is no government regulation of how much agencies can charge for commission, hence the standard in Berlin is between two and three “cold” rents plus VAT, which immediately puts this option beyond reach of many people.

Sub-Letting

So what about sub-letting? “Sub-letting will be covered in most German leases and it’s completely legal to rent out your place in Germany,” states my contact. “You should however inform your landlord of any prolonged absence and the sub-letting out of courtesy. Bear in mind that the main tenant stays fully responsible for the place even in his absence. So if the lodger throws a party and renovations are required, the main tenant will have to front this up. The rent also needs to come from the main tenants account. The only time a landlord can refuse sub-letting is if this against the lease, i.e. a prostitute receiving punters at the premises etc.”

I do, partially at least, understand German landlords. However, Berlin seems to be a bad place to try and find rental properties at the moment. Even if you bring all the documentation required, it’s no guarantee you will find a place since the market is so crowded. There may be up to 20 or 30 other applicants, and the landlord/property management will decide based on your documentation if you’re the right tenant. It’s very much a game of chance, especially as you do not know on what criteria the specific decision of that landlord is based.

Rental contract in German (photo by Marcel Krueger)

I considered myself a dream candidate: over 30, regular income, references from my former landlord at hand and I was only looking for a one-bedroom flat (or even a bigger bedsit). Nevertheless, I contacted 60 estate agents and property managements, mostly via online portals like Immobilienscout24, Immonet, Immowelt and eBay classifieds. This led to 10 appointments and 3 applications, and I was pretty flexible concerning the location of my new place. I imagine it to be much harder if you look for just one Kiez to live in, especially in places like Prenzlauer Berg or Kreuzberg.

Prices

The era of cheap renting in Berlin is, let’s face it, pretty much over. Friends of mine who moved to Berlin three or four years ago were often singing the praise of cheap renting in Berlin but as the Berliner Zeitung states, the average rent in Berlin has risen 7.9% in the last two years alone, doubtless even more in hip / sought-after locations like Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg and Neukölln. As this timely post on the wonderful Needle In Berlin blog points out, “living in the scenester / arty areas of Berlin is now comparable in price to similar neighbourhoods of other European capitals apart from a few like Rome, Paris and London.”

I managed to find one-bedroom flats that were still cheap (especially compared to property-crazy Ireland), but only in further afield areas like Moabit, Friedrichsfelde and Wedding, which is where I ended up. If you do not rent from the landlord or property management directly, chances are you’ll end up paying out the afore-mentioned commission to an estate agency.

On top of that, there’s the Kafka-esque amount of paperwork and subsequent formalities. Not only is it necessary to lay open all your financial data beforehand, Germans also like to have all business interactions with new tenants documented on slips of paper. For example, when I went to a property management firm to get a set of keys to view a flat, I had to hand over my passport (which was copied), filled out a document with my address details confirming that the viewing of the flat meant no liabilities for the management in terms of giving the place to me, and received a receipt.

After viewing the place and to get my passport back, I needed to hand in the receipt and sign another piece of paper confirming I received my passport back. True, every landlord and estate agent I talked to was nice and courteous but do they really have to hand you a bloody receipt for everything?

Many argue that Germany has the strictest data protection laws in Europe, resulting from the aforementioned 70 years of surveillance under autocratic regimes. On the other hand, I met many people here in Berlin who had applied for 10 or more apartments at the same time, happily handing all their important financial data to people and companies they did not know at all. There’s obviously a strong possibility for data mining here, though my contact believes this is not the case.

“I only keep the information of a new tenant when he signs the lease and file both together. All other documents provided by applicants get shredded.” he says. I personally resorted to a small self-written form that I handed in with my documents, which landlords had to sign to say they would not provide my data to any third party. I wasn’t too sure about its legal validity, but none of the German landlords refused to sign it.

Next week I’m flying to Berlin again because my new landlord wants me to sign the lease at his office so he can see my original passport, SCHUFA-statement and letter from HR. He’s not happy with only the copies and refused to send the lease via post for me to sign. Needless to say, the first month’s rent and deposit have all been paid. It makes me yearn for a world where we could shake hands over a simple contract instead of being subject to such intense personal and financial screenings.

Who’d have thought Berlin of all places — laid back, freedom-loving, anything-goes Berlin — would be the place to remind me of the German tendency towards bureaucracy I remembered from my past.

About The Author

Marcel Krueger is a German writer and blogger who owns a sword cane and a laptop. He loves doing stuff with words, and did not go to school to learn this. He lived in Dublin, Ireland for the last five years and is currently trying to divide his time between Berlin, Cologne and Dublin. He doesn’t like spiders. If you want to, you can read more uninteresting facts on his blog.