Berlin Wonderland

“Did it really look like that? So empty, so broken, so beautiful? Once upon a time, Berlin-Mitte was a wish-fulfilment zone. Many things were lacking, but that just made it richer. There were no telephones in the ruined buildings, no central heating, virtually no bars or clubs. So improvised alternatives sprang up everywhere: in disused stores, cellars, public toilets, fruit and veg shops, former power stations, bank vaults.

Mitte was a frenzy of repurposing. The magic phrase was “temporary use”. Jet fighters abandoned by a retreating superpower managed to become monuments in the very heart of the city. And the names of the new occupying forces? Art and amusement. Empty streets, crumbling façades—was the war still on? Or had it perhaps not even taken place here? Didn’t everything look like the 1920s, didn’t it all look like a film set? The West German world of bare concrete and interlocking paving stones looked different.

It was so easy to be amazed. Mitte had dropped out of time—and was stuck in several different pasts at once. Pre-war and pre-pre-war, partly GDR and partly some strange inbetween-era where once again Germany had ceased to exist but its new version hadn’t actually come about yet. Mitte was in a gap. It became the magic city of the inbetween. It became a wish-fulfilment zone, everything was possible.

There was dancing. There was dancing and drinking. And the eyes of the ruin-dwellers sparkled with the happiness of those who are in the right place at the right time. Today the images are astonishing. Look, they say, it’s history now. And doesn’t it look as though you grew up in the rubble? It was tremendous in the rubble, it was a gigantic playground.

Then comes a minor shock: is it really so long ago? Has Berlin really changed that much, or is it just a dream? These pictures chance to have a kind of »before and after« effect. They show the “before”. The “after” is visible in Mitte now, every day. How long did it last? Nobody can say now. It gradually drew to a close and then it was over. So it’s great to have these photographs. They are proof: the wish-fulfilment zone really did exist.”—foreward by David Wagner.

The photo book Berlin Wonderland tells the story of the years following the fall of the Wall, when Berlin became a magnet for creative people from all over the world. Amidst the crumbling façades of old buildings, a vast space of possibility emerged: clubs and bars, exhibition spaces and galleries sprang up, whilst techno parties and performances invited people to discover the many vacant spaces in the heart of the
city. Much of it was temporary—and that made for its appeal. It was a time for experimentation; temporary use was the order of the day.

Berlin Wonderland captures the dynamics of change in a unique era of new beginnings, resistance and reorganisation. How do we view these images, this era, today? What hidden treasures and memories does this cabinet of curiosities hold for us? What inspiration do we take from it into the future?