The Needle: Berlin

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

It’s a late summer day and we are riding our bikes around Dahlem, in the South of former West Berlin.

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

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

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

I feel it, don’t you? It’s like struggling against a fierce wind when you cross the Tiergarten west towards Zoo

Berliners are used to there being a great space off-limits between Mitte and Wedding, hidden behind a wall. The

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

It’s an abandoned brewery. You enter a gate, a waif-like woman lit by candlelight admits you, but gives no directions.

Doppelkolbenpumpe. I was surprised I could find an online translation: double piston pump. Then what is one doing in a

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