City Lit: The Beauty of Transgression
The Beauty of Transgression is a vivid remembrance of Berlin’s gritty, loud last decades of the 20th century, and a meditation on where the city’s unique sensibility is headed. Danielle de Picciotto’s Berlin memoir begins with her arrival in the divided city in 1987, though its story follows threads back into her and her family’s past as well as the dark, glittering history of the German metropolis itself. Artist, musician, filmmaker, curator, co-founder of the Love Parade and more, [...]
In Heaven, Underground: Weissensee’s Jewish Cemetery
Giulia Pines reviews Britta Wauer’s “Im Himmel, unter der Erde”, a new film about Weissensee's Jüdischer Friedhof... Nobody is neutral on cemeteries. Maybe you’re the kind of person who can’t resist visiting them all, browsing through the names and dates like titles on a bookshelf. Or perhaps you can’t pass one without holding your breath, remnants of childhood superstitions still fresh in your mind. Either way, those slabs of stone always seem to elicit a reaction, and [...]
14 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Köpenick
1. Old Town Köpenick, untouched by both Allied bombs and GDR development, retains a good deal of its eighteenth-century charm. It makes a pleasant spot for a wander, with plenty of spots for coffee and cake, ice cream, or a treat from the small market on the Schlossplatz. Mira’s Langos stand sells Hungarian sausage as well as the eponymous fried-dough treats. 2. The Rathaus Köpenick, an extensive, turreted redbrick Wilhelmine building in the Old Town, was the site of a famous heist in [...]
English Theatre Berlin
Brid Arnstein chats to Günther Grosser, founder and Creative Director of the English Theatre Berlin In 1990 the English Theatre Berlin was founded under the name Friends of Italian Opera. Initially performing plays in many languages, from 1993 the theatre differentiated itself as Berlin’s only English-language theatre. Emerging from a new cultural atmosphere in the light of expatriation, the theatre’s aim is to explore the creative tendencies of international theatre. Housed in an [...]
Hüttenpalast: Cabin Fever
Leisha Jones checks out one of the city's most innovative accommodation projects - the Hüttenpalast. Passing through the leafy courtyard out the back of an unassuming Neükolln café, the exterior of this1910 vacuum cleaner factory belies the whimsy that awaits behind its doors. Inside, the hushed air and low glow of fairy lights evoke the feeling of entering a clandestine clubhouse. You feel as though you have stumbled upon a place where you should talk in a whisper, or where you [...]
Peeps At Great Cities: Berlin in 1911
As the gentrification debate continues to rage around Berlin, Paul Sullivan hand-picks some extracts from Edith Siepen's 1911 Berlin guidebook to see what's changed - and what hasn't - in the last 100 years... "No city in the world has so rapidly developed as Berlin. Twenty years ago it was of comparative unimportance, and not particularly interesting in any way." "One of the first things that strikes the visitor in Berlin - if it does not happen to be winter - is the wealth of green [...]
Marco Clausen: Berlin’s Urban Gardener
Madeline Maher chats to Marco Clausen, co-founder of Nomadisch Grün and the Prinzessinnengarten... Nomadisch Grün (Nomadic Green) launched Prinzessinnengärten (Princess gardens) as a pilot project in the summer of 2009 at Moritzplatz in Berlin Kreuzberg, a site which had been a wasteland for over half a century. Along with friends, fans, activists and neighbours, the group cleared away rubbish, built transportable organic vegetable plots and reaped the first fruits of their [...]
Hohenschönhausen: In Pictures
Stefanie Rothenhöfer chats to Berlin photographer Philipp Lohöfener about his work at Hohenschönhausen, Berlin's Stasi prison memorial. Philipp Lohöfener was born in 1974 in Bielefeld, Germany. He studied photography at the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld, Germany from 1998 till 2006. In 2010 Lohöfener won first place in the Sony World Photography Awards (Category Fine Art/Architecture 2011), and recently bagged 4th place at the Art of Photography Show, 4th Place, [...]
Dustin O’Halloran, Pianist & Composer
Wyndham Wallace shoots the breeze with Berlin-based pianist and composer Dustin O'Halloran... If you’ve seen Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, you may already be familiar with Berlin-based Dustin O’Halloran’s exquisite solo piano music: the American contributed a number of pieces to the film’s soundtrack, including the haunting ‘Opus 23’. A member of the band Devics, who were signed to Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde’s Bella Union Records label, he has released two albums of [...]
On the Osloer Strasse
Paul Scraton reports on life in his Gesundbrunnen kiez... I It is just past midnight on the Osloer Strasse. I emerge from the U-Bahn station onto the wide, dark boulevard. There are not so many people about. At the corner of Drontheimer Strasse a couple of drunks stagger out from their smoke-filled corner kneipe, bellies full of gassy pilsner and cheap shots of korn. The lights in the kebab stand across the street burn brightly but there are no customers. A few steps up the street [...]
