Posts Tagged ‘DDR’
On The Stasi Trail
Tam Eastley traces the ghosts of Erich Mielke, head of East Germany's notorious secret police, and visits the newly renovated Stasi Museum... In the middle of January 2012, Berlin history buffs and GDR junkies were suddenly abuzz with curious excitement about the re-opening of Erich Mielke's office. Smack dab in the middle of a complex of grey and scary buildings so large they make your neck ache and your head spin, lies the desk, shredder, tape recorder and office chair of a man whom Anna [...]
In Prenzlauer Berg
Philosopher Justin E. H. Smith takes a stroll around Prenzlauer Berg and ruminates on its (mostly hidden) past... Among the grimmer thoughts one has to contend with on any visit to Berlin is this: that one could very well be staying not only in the logistical nerve center of the Final Solution, but in the very building, and perhaps in the very same room, in which a Holocaust victim once lived. This possibility rose to 50%, in fact, when I was in Berlin a few days ago, and stayed in a [...]
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 [...]
Stephen Barber: Walls Of Berlin
Stephen Barber is a Professor at Kingston University's and a writer on urban culture, experiment in film and Japanese culture. He has been writing since 1990 and has published twenty books (sixteen non-fiction books and four novels), many of them translated into other languages. He has received many awards and prizes for his books, from bodies such as the Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio Program), Ford Foundation, DAAD, Japan Foundation and Henkel Foundation, He is currently engaged in a [...]
Berghain & Panorama Bar
Luis-Manuel Garcia profiles one of Berlin's most prominent techno institutions... Berghain: a nightclub that has become an institution of the Berlin techno scene, also taking on mythical proportions in the global techno and house scenes. The club is in fact a reincarnation of an earlier Berlin nightclub, Ostgut (1998-2003), which was located in the empty Ostgüterbahnhof railway shipping warehouse near the Ostbahnhof S-Bahn/railway station in the Friedrichshain district (in former [...]
39 things you might learn if you visit the Stasi Museum with a 10½ week old baby…
Adam Butler pays a visit to the Stasi Museum with his new baby, and learns a few things along the way... 1. That the word barrierefrei when used in reference to e.g. U-Bahn stations, rather than meaning that there are no barriers and you therefore don’t have to buy a ticket, actually means that this is theoretically a place that you can traverse with a pram, wheelchair, broken-hipped aunt, etc. without having to worry about stairs; and that although the nearest station to the Stasi Museum [...]
When Grandparents Fall in Love
Susan Bernofsky spends some time on Cloud 9... The East Berlin setting of German director Andreas Dresen’s 2008 film Cloud 9 doesn't particularly jump out at you. What we mostly see of it is the view from the window of the apartment that the film’s protagonist, 60-something-year-old Inge, shares with her partner of 30 years, showing the S-bahn tracks that come to stand for the ever-sameness of a marriage that has been stuck on the same track for years. Inge’s partner Werner [...]
The Badeschiff
Looking to beat the summer heat? Try Berlin's Badeschiff - a swimming pool in the Spree... Badeschiff - literally "bathing ship" - opened in 2004 as an art project organized by Berlin's Stadtkunstprojekte (City Art ProjectSociety), the AMP Architectos (Teneriffa), architect Gil Wilk and local artist Susanne Lorenz.The initial aim was to enliven city life along what was then a long-neglected stretch of the Spree, between the former Osthafen (East harbour) and Flutgraben, a small [...]
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 [...]
