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The Needle: Berlin

The Needle: Berlin

Sharp Views on the German capital

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Berlin History

Berlin History 

Café Einstein, Kurfürstenstraße 58

05/01/201123/06/2018 Joseph Pearson

You love this Viennese-styled café, but at times it fills you with grief. You were here in late autumn and

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Berlin History 

Hammers, Sickles and Bones

27/09/201023/06/2018 Joseph Pearson

The images on the sarcophagi of the Treptower Park Soviet Memorial (Sowjetische Ehrenmal,1949) are idealised and classical, and very very

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Berlin History 

Nazi Victims and Stumbling Blocks to Memory

23/08/201023/06/2018 Joseph Pearson

“A man is first forgotten when his name is forgotten“. So explains Gunter Demnig, the Berliner artist behind the Stolpersteine,

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Berlin History 

Swimming in the Past: Stadtbad Neukölln

20/08/201023/06/2018 Joseph Pearson

Berliners are not nostalgic. There is public outcry when architects propose to build in a nostalgic style (the re-construction of

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Berlin History 

Rape and the Red Army: Sportpalast-Bunker

07/08/201023/06/2018 Joseph Pearson

    ‘One of them grabs my wrists and jerks me along the corridor. Then the other is pulling as

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Berlin History 

Ackerkeller No More, Bergstraße 68, Mitte

29/06/201023/06/2018 Joseph Pearson

Last weekend, Ackerkeller staged the last of its demolition parties and closed for good. Ackerkeller called itself Mitte’s living room.

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Berlin History 

American Baseball Diamonds

25/05/201023/06/2018 Joseph Pearson

There are few places left in Berlin where the experience of American occupation after the Second World War is still

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Berlin History 

Karl-Marx Allee

19/05/201023/06/2018 Joseph Pearson

It was a place to walk through, and stare. Built in the early fifties, Karl-Marx Allee, leading into Alexanderplatz, with

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Berlin History 

Colonnades Unveiled

11/04/201023/06/2018 Joseph Pearson

I was used to the Museum Island as building site. The edifices were interiors, not exteriors. You negotiated your way

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Berlin History 

Schlachtensee 1940

05/04/201023/06/2018 Joseph Pearson

These photographs taken last autumn I found unbearable to contemplate only a few weeks ago. But now, with warmer days,

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Berlin History 

Nazi Ruins: Albert Speer’s Only Surviving Works in Berlin

27/03/201023/06/2018 Joseph Pearson

    Most of my German friends are pacifists. They do not like seeing Germans involved in foreign wars. The

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About the Author

Joseph Pearson is a writer based between Berlin and New York City. Born in Canada, he was educated at Cambridge University, UK, where he received his doctorate in history in 2001. His non-fiction portrait of Berlin was published in 2017. He is also the essayist and blogger of the Schaubühne Theatre, one of Berlin’s best known state-funded institutions. Since 2008, he has written The Needle, which has become one of Berlin’s most popular blogs. His writing has appeared widely in the press, literary and academic journals, and has been translated into German, Italian, French, Arabic, and other languages. For professional inquiries please contact:  joseph [AT] cantab.net.

What is The Needle?

The changing meanings of The Needle are the inspiration for these pages. Above Alexanderplatz is Berlin's television tower. The Needle surveilled the city during East German times like a threatening eye; then its meaning changed after the Berlin Wall fell. Berliners now think of the tower as a giant disco ball flirting with the city lights––a symbol of sex, electronic music and youth culture. This weekly documents the Berlin Renaissance today, mindful of a dramatic and terrifying history. Berlin is Europe's most exciting city, and The Needle is here to share.

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