Hammers, Sickles and Bones
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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Luminous and Transparent: the Henry Ford Bau
It’s a late summer day and we are riding our bikes around Dahlem, in the South of former West Berlin.
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Nazi Victims and Stumbling Blocks to Memory
“A man is first forgotten when his name is forgotten“. So explains Gunter Demnig, the Berliner artist behind the Stolpersteine,
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Swimming in the Past: Stadtbad Neukölln
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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Rape and the Red Army: Sportpalast-Bunker
‘One of them grabs my wrists and jerks me along the corridor. Then the other is pulling as
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G-Force Mitte
I feel it, don’t you? It’s like struggling against a fierce wind when you cross the Tiergarten west towards Zoo
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State Security in No Man’s Land
Berliners are used to there being a great space off-limits between Mitte and Wedding, hidden behind a wall. The
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Ackerkeller No More, Bergstraße 68, Mitte
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’s Underground Chess Scene: Night of the Pawn
It’s an abandoned brewery. You enter a gate, a waif-like woman lit by candlelight admits you, but gives no directions.
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Pump Action
Doppelkolbenpumpe. I was surprised I could find an online translation: double piston pump. Then what is one doing in a
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American Baseball Diamonds
There are few places left in Berlin where the experience of American occupation after the Second World War is still
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