David Wagner writes a personal ode to Berlin’s Mauerpark…
Oh, Mauerpark, I do love you. Even though you’re often ugly. Even though today, on a Sunday, you’re probably still strewn with yesterday’s rubbish. And even though there’ll surely be even more rubbish this evening and you’ll be overcrowded as usual, I do like you, Mauerpark. And I’m not alone—thousands love you and flock to you, to the flea market, to the karaoke sessions, or just to lie on the grass.
Mauerpark, I enjoy the state of emergency every Sunday, the crowds of people, I like the way it’s Woodstock every week, I enjoy all the people getting high on themselves, dancing on the grass, filming and photographing themselves and posting it all instantly. And yes, I like the fact that they all come, from all over the world; doesn’t that tell me I live in an attractive city?
Mauerpark, I like the steps made of rough-hewn granite blocks leading up from Bernauer Straße to the site of the former freight station, upwards as if to the pedestal of a Greek temple, behind it a loosely spaced grove of trees. Oh, Mauerpark, I like the fact that the Wall’s not here any more, not a single metre, which confuses some visitors.
They ask after it or they think the stretch of hinterland wall on top of the stadium hill is the real thing. In fact, the topography of Berlin’s division is still clearly visible: the Mauerpark is only a park in the former East, where it was laid out on the former death strip after the Wall fell.
The landscape architect, a man called Gustav Lange, created a wonderful garden with poplars and pedunculate oaks, with the old cobbled Schwedter Straße leading across it, alongside it the slope piled up out of bombsite rubble in the days of East Berlin to build the Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Sport Park—an opportunity for daredevil sledging in winter.
Mauerpark, I like your big swings up on the hill, perfect for swinging above the melancho…