I got hoes (in different occupation zones)


Tiergarten, central Berlin.

Perhaps more than anyone else, we have one man and his trowel to thank for making Berlin the spacious garden city it is today: the landscape architect and gardener Peter Joseph Lenné. As official gardener to the Prussian royal family in the early 1820s he took over the design of the palace grounds at Sansoucci and the royal Peacock Island gardens. But he then turned his attention to improving the physical and intuitive space of Berlin. By breaking up the city’s cramped grids with curves, green spaces, and open areas he hoped to bring some space and light into the lives of normal citizens. His parkworks, often featuring elaborate water features, exotic plants and impressive Sichtachsen (sight-axes) were heavily influenced by English Garden design of the 18th century. As well as his extensive work installing parks throughout Potsdam, in Berlin he developed the Tiergarten and Böttcherburg park complexes, the Tierpark and Berlin Zoological Gardens, planned the urban developments of Friedrich-Wilhem-Stadt and Luisenstadt, built the Landwehrkanal, opened the first school for gardening and landscape architecture, ironed out the roads of the southern city, redesigned the Hausvogteiplatz, Lustgarten, Bebelplatz… ok, he basically did everything.

Peter Lenné (1789-1866). Seen here mildly amused by giant anteaters in Berlin Zoo.

His wide boulevards and spreading gardens influenced the urban planning of Berlin even under starkly opposing regimes in the 20th Century. The combination of central symmetry, well-defined, open areas of activity, and more secluded paths for privacy (or vice) has created fertile environments in Berlin’s parks for such lewd activities as nudism, drug dealing and rollerblading.

Sichtachse: The jump to hyperspace, Berlin Tiergarten.

Almost a century after his death, his designs also played a part in Berlin’s most defining piece of urban planning – East Germany’s development along their border with West Berlin. Whilst most neighbours might just hoe a clean line and plant a shrubbery as demarcation, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) went for something more substantial. A wall. The Wall. An Anti-Fascist Protective Rampart, if you want to get confrontational. A concrete patch on the Iron Curtain, meant to curtail the western exodus of East German citizens through Berlin.

West: blue. East: red. Wall: white. All other space is also DDR territory.

After the initially uninspiring barbed-wire construction of August 1961, the DDR spent ever more time and effort landscaping the edge of their plot. Much like Lenné, the Communists were not merely interested in aesthetics. The Zen-garden-like stretches of raked sand, through calm contemplation, could lead a border guard on his journey to enlightenment – or, if he followed the clear footprints outlined in the sand, they could lead him to a would-be escapee. Signal lines, barbed-wire and electric fences were erected to stop such messy trampling. A patrol strip allowed the border guards space to stroll, or take in their surroundings from military vehicles. Vicious guard dogs were tidily placed along a wire, at intervals which were pleasing to the eye. An oriental influence can be seen in the ‘fakir beds’ – strips of spikes designed to impale fence-jumpers. An anti-vehicle trench gave a nice two-level effect. Watch- and relay towers provided unparalleled Sichtachsen over the landscape, and floodlights provided a warm, bright atmosphere at any time of night, making for a more pleasurable shooting experience.

By 1976 the Wall and its no-man’s land presented a comprehensive and unequaled statement in landscape architecture, winning admiration from paranoid dictators and correctional facilities the world over. (oh, and Israel.) The statement to itchy-footed East Berliners was similarly comprehensive: NEIN. The impossibility of escape and the full extent of the ‘death strip’ system is evident in this depiction of an escape attempt by an East German plumber, who, in his desperation to visit his girlfriend in the West, lost not one, but 16 lives:


[click to enlarge] Eventually the level could only be passed by resorting to cheat codes.

West Berlin was entirely surrounded, a garish gnome of capitalism in the middle of the communism patch. The border between the post-WWII occupation zones (which became East and West Berlin) ran along Berlin’s often arbitrary district boundaries. The wall followed the border, usually a metre or so on the Eastern side. A wall around a city can get expensive and ungainly when you’re following every bump, wiggle and spike of your border line – it was only natural that some of the more awkward and unusual corners would be cut.

The border between Kreuzberg (West) and Mitte (East) ran partly along what was once Lenné’s sweeping Luisenstadt Canal. His elegantly laid-out Engelbecken (Angel Pool) became a curving dirt-filled field of no-man’s land, a playground for the death-strip’s ever-growing population of rabbits. The border line poked out 15 metres from the run of the canal at the north end of Mariannenplatz, but an extra few spadefuls of no-man’s land was hardly worth building a costly kink in the wall.

In this spot, West Berlin is actually East of East Berlin. It’s that curvy bit on the main map between the ‘E’ in Mitte and the 2nd ‘E’ in Kreuzberg.

The land was worth something to somebody though – in 1983, Osman Kalin, a 60-year-old former construction worker from Turkey, asked the neighbours whom the untended, trash-covered piece of land belonged to. “Nobody” came the answer, and he set about turning it into his own little vege garden.

As he soon found out, being on foreign turf solved any potential problems with the West Berlin council. But what looked an awful lot like tunnel-digging was initially met with suspicion from the East German border guards. Any sunflowers who dared peek over the wall were stealthily decapitated, and guards popped through a hidden door in the wall for a stern chat. Eventually Kalin received the Alles klar and continued expanding his garden with cucumbers, beans, spinach, herbs and fruit trees. As his garden expanded, his hut began to accumulate ever more scrap timber, discarded fridge parts, concrete and mismatching windows, growing extra rooms and a balcony. The building even wrapped itself around one of the trees on the section, leading to the 2-storey building’s current name, the Baumhaus an der Mauer (Treehouse at the Wall).

Osman Kalin’s garden, looking north. Lenné would be pleased to know that his canal, the former death strip, (left) is now a landscaped public garden. The outer wall ran along the footpath in the centre of the photo.

By 1990 the wall was gone, but the district border was not. Kalin found himself no longer on the edge of a city, but in the centre of a reunified Berlin. The Baumhaus belonged in spirit to radical Kreuzberg, the left-wing activist centre and home of the squatting movement in Berlin. But just inside the less accepting territory of Mitte, he was in danger of being cleaned out. Thanks to the protests of the community and the appeals of his neighbour, Pastor Müller of the St. Thomas Church, the district border was amended to follow the former wall, allowing Kalin to stay on, undisturbed, as a resident of Kreuzberg.

Not quite as sturdy, but it keeps the dogs out – Kalin’s upcycled fence roughly follows the route of the outer wall.

Some of the more unwieldy exclaves/enclaves on either sde of the wall were swapped between the two halves of the city in territory exchanges in 1971, 1974, and finally in 1988. This last exchange brought attention to a large, loosely-fenced section of weeds and wildflowers next to the Tiergarten, known as the Lenné Dreieck (Lenné triangle) – bordered by Lennéstraße and Bellevuestraße on the west, and the wall on the east. It had previously been a military exercise area, botanic gardens, and from 1931 the site of Erich Mendelssohn’s modernist Columbushaus (destroyed in WWII).

The giant green thing is Lenné’s 210-hectare Tiergarten park. Lenné Dreieck is centre-right.

By 1988, after 17 years in the shade of the wall, there were few signs of human intervention – a shortcut track or two, worn through the plants with the fence partly kicked in. Here thousands of insects and birds swarmed and frolicked amongst the dandylions and debris. Researchers counted 161 different plant types in the section, some long unseen in Berlin. The handover to West Berlin was to happen on July 1st, 1988, in preparation for a new motorway to be built through the area. The prospect of a classic motorway-vs-nature showdown, out of reach of the West Berlin police, led to much excited yapping in Berlin’s squatting, green, student and activist communities.

Lenné Dreieck today: an official fun-free zone. Researchers claim there could be up to 1 type of plant growing in the area.

On May 26th the activists moved in. Huts and tents were erected, slogans painted, and the Lenné Dreieck became the Kubat Freieck, after Norbert Kubat, a young Berliner who commited suicide in custody after being arrested in the Kreuzberg Mayday riots of 1987. The protest was answered by the West Berlin police with barricades, fencing in and laying siege to the tent village with fire hoses, tear gas, and loudhailers. The idyllic space of untouched nature that was ostensibly being protected became a warzone of sorts as the protesters built further barricades to respond with missiles and abuse. Word spread, and more protesters came to join in – eventually over 300 people were camping out in a territory without rules or governance, where everyone was young, idealistic, and the only showers were those of tear gas canisters.

But the date of July 1st was fast approaching. The police had the protesters literally up against the wall. At 3am that morning, the Berlin police barracks were emptied and 900 officers in riot gear moved into place around the Dreieck, now legally West Berlin territory and within police jurisdiction. At 5 am the signal was sounded and they moved in. The Kubat Dreieck’s barricades had overnight been taken down and rebuilt into makeshift ladders – whilst perhaps a 3rd of the protesters were taken by the police, 200 managed to clamber on top of the Berlin Wall. Two trucks driven by the East German Volkspolizei approached over the no-man’s land. Setting up ladders on the Eastern side of the wall, the border guards helped the protesters down into the trucks, even helping to bring dogs and bicycles over the wall. The refugees were taken to the East Berlin police canteen, asked a few questions and given breakfast, before being given train tickets and sent back over the border to the West, thwarting any attempts to arrest them at street checkpoints. The anarchist wonderland itself, however, had no wall to hide behind – and it’s safe to say that neither Lenné nor Kubat would have approved of what has become of their Dreieck today.

Well, at least it’s not a motorway. It’s the Ritz-Carlton, a Starbucks, a Häagen-Dasz, 5-star serviced apartments, souvenir shops, a Marriott, a Subway, and a shopping centre.

Have a look at the fantastic photos of the Kubat Dreieck occupation and escape at the Umbruch Archiv!

2011
03/31
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There’s kebab juice on my Armani

A crowd of germans in polar fleece vests are gathered around a middle-aged tour guide as she waves across the grubby square.
“There’s a weekday market here 3 times a week. But watch your wallets! Since the eastern expansion of the EU, this place has been thick with pickpockets…”
The group nod and tut-tut. One glances warily at a likely culprit.
The tour was free but casual racism is never a great opener. It was supposed to be a tour of the whole U7 underground line, but I abandoned it where I started. Hermannplatz. Delightful.  A bench covered with post-it notes. A bronze statue of dancers, which used to rotate every hour. Food stalls 3 days a week. Not today. Drugs or stolen bikes, should I be in the market. Sports betting shops. A cold wind and some chain stores.

Hermannplatz is not so much a formal town square as an abrasion, worn into the surrounding city by 200 years of movement, where thousands of people have crossed paths, bumped shoulders, or changed buses. Originally it was just a dusty crossing point southeast of Berlin for travelers heading to or from the outlying villages of Rixdorf and Britz, or further afield.

In the 1800s the only factor to distinguish this from any other country crossroads was the not-particularly-distinguished Rollkrug (Roll-jug). This pub, doss house, and horse-change station lay slumped at the base of its namesake, the Rollberg (Roll-hill). Though partially quarried away, the Rollberg is still a cause of frustration and perspiration to many Berlin cyclists and pedestrians, their calves withered and frail from living in a city where even a wheelchair ramp could be awarded a -berg suffix. The Rollkrug though, is long gone – pulled down in 1907 as the swarming city and its transport system engulfed it.

SE Berlin and surrounding area, important transport routes ca. 1880

First came horse-drawn buses, then the intersection was scored with electric tramlines. The U-Bahn underground railway was operational in Kreuzberg in 1900, but long-awaited in Neukölln. Hermannplatz marked the border between the two districts. Early plans for a North-South line were blown off the table by WWI, and it was not until 1926, with the help of private investors, that the U-Bahn would come to Neukölln.

One such private investor was the upmarket department store Karstadt, who planned to build their huge flagship store on the square with a direct connection to the new station. The site was already densely populated with apartment blocks, restaurants and offices, but it took less than two years to muffle residents’ protests, demolish the block and begin building.

The original Karstadt department store was a weighty palace of limestone, with two stepped, rectangular towers elegantly rising out of its facade. At night it easily outclassed all its neighbours, draped in long, vertical shafts of light. Imagine a 7-storey tall, ornate, art deco billiard table carved in glass and limestone. Flip it over. Knock the legs off one side: Karstadt.

It featured all mod-cons – escalators, gymnasium, cinema, sprinkler system, and some kind of new-fangled voucher machine in the staff cafeteria. There were even truck elevators, which could carry a fully-laden truck up to the necessary department for unloading.
The ‘in-house’ U-Bahn station was truly the talk of the town. The U7 platform was the cathedral of the Berlin U-Bahn – octagonal tiled columns, curved bannisters, automated ticket machines and enough space to park a Zeppelin. (I haven’t yet had the opportunity to test this claim, though would gladly step up to the challenge).

During WWII a bomb shelter was built in the spacious service area between the U8 platform and the Karstadt basement, and other than the occasional flooding and a bit of a fatal stampede, it kept people safe from danger.
Karstadt also lasted throughout WWII’s ferocious Allied bombing – the Nazi SS, though, did not treat her so kindly. In the face of the final charge on Berlin, only two weeks before war’s end, the store was destroyed so as not to fall into Russian hands. The thought of a menswear section without Hugo Boss must have been too shocking an idea.

Only the southwestern corner of the building survived. Pushing the rubble to one side, a new, more modest Karstadt was stuck on to this remnant in 1950, and slowly expanded over the following decades. In today’s Hermannplatz the department store seems more out of place than ever. But it’s not alone. The Neue Welt, across the road on Hasenheide, was a fantastical and idyllic garden complex and exhibition grounds at the start of the 20th Century. Now its flamboyant archway is gone, and the building’s elaborate turrets are hardly visible over a mass of development. The building hides behind a slots parlour and bowling alley on a big-box hardware store’s parking lot.

Hermannplatz and surrounding area today – important transport routes.

It’s less of an event these days but Karstadt’s customers still swan their way into town for Kaffee und Kuchen. There’s plenty of parking for the Benz if they’re picking up a €200 cup warmer, or if they’re only after a cut crystal Swarovski pacifier, (an absolute Snäppchen at only €25) then they can slip directly out of the U-Bahn station via Karstadt’s privileged basement entrance without exposing themselves to the smell of frying Kartoffelpuffers.

But whether you’re after a pawn shop, porn shop, or something a little fancier, Hermannplatz remains a vital but lifeless spot, caught between districts and communities, with nobody really claiming it for their own. Everybody seems to be just looking for the next bus out.

2011
02/23
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Hold Me Near, Albert Speer

This week marks the important discovery, during the U5 undergroud excavation, of what are believed to be Adolf Hitler’s original plans for Welthauptstadt Germania (Germania, World Capital City).



The rough plans, the first in a series of correspondence with Reich Architect Albert Speer, give a fascinating insight into the Führer’s megalomania, whilst clearly illustrating his utter failure as an artist. Hitler’s original sketches would be further transformed by Speer, creating plans and models for the total transformation of Berlin into the absurdly monumental city of Germania.

An ‘Avenue of Victory’ would run from the Army Faculty (now buried underneath Teufelsberg) through the centre of the city to Frankfurter Tor. It would intersect an equally vast North-South Axis – featuring a gigantic triumphal arch, and a 320-metre high Monsterbau, the Volkshalle. The project was postponed until after the expected victory in WWII, leaving very few traces today – these plans, however give a chilling image of what might have been…Historians remain flummoxed as to why Hitler wrote to Speer in English, and his choice of Photoshop over ArchiCAD or more suitable architectural software. However, the distinctive moustache shown in the illustration does lead most to believe that this is indeed the work of the Führer. Whilst the authenticity of this document remains difficult to certify, the fact is that Welthauptstadt Germania was very much a real project.

Before WWII, Speer had already acquired the land, turfed out apartment dwellers and begun demolitions. He moved the Victory Column (and made it bigger). The North-South Axis was to be as wide as a city block and stretching from a planned northern station in Moabit down to a southern station near today’s Südkreuz. 10 minute’s walk north of Südkreuz you can find one of the few tangible reminders of the Welthauptstadt, a suitably collosal lump of reinforced concrete, the Schwerbelastungskörper.

In 1941, this hefty concrete mushroom was used to determine whether Berlin’s notoriously sandly soil could actually support structures of such magnitude. It simulated the weight of Speer’s granite monstrosities, crushing the earth beneath it. It was decided that if the structure sank less than 6cm during the test period, the building could go ahead. Delivering 12 650 Tonnes over an area of 100m2, the Heavy Load-Bearing Body produced more pressure per inch than Hermann Göring in stilettos – it sank 19.3 cm.

After the war, due to its density, depth (the structure continues underground for 18 metres) and proximity to apartment buildings, Allied forces decided that explosive demolition was not possible. Ground testing continued to be carried out here until 1985, and since 2003 it has been a protected memorial site. Although the structure was only meant to be in place for 20 weeks, it has outlasted almost all other traces of most ambitious building project of the ’1000-year Reich’.

2011
02/14
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Krankenhaus Bethanien

An austere mass of yellow brick, dressed up with two thin octagonal spires and round-arch windows, sits sternly on Kreuzberg’s tree-lined Mariannenplatz. It seems to disapprove of its graffiti-covered surroundings and the scruffy inhabitants whose chatter echoes through its cavernous, long corridors. Before the property’s takeover by squatters in the 1970s, this building spent 123 years as a stuffy, conservative and fervently pious establishment – The Bethanien Deaconess Hospital.

Friedrich Wilhelm IV, king of Prussia and a devout Lutheran, was introduced to the developing Deaconess movement by his aunt. An evangelical order of female nurses and carers, it was founded in 1836 by pastor Theodor Fliedner, based on his idea that “sickness is a sign from God – healthcare should be combined with work for the kingdom of God, and earnest discipline, which is both refreshing and invigorating.”
Sharing Fliedner’s hard-on for discipline, the king commissioned a Deaconess hospital to be built on Cöpenick Field, the last remaining open space within the city walls.


Berlin 1850 with Customs WallBerlin, 1850 – Showing Cöpernick Field and city Customs Wall

The Bethanien hospital was designed in a spartan Rundbogenstil by Theodor Stein. Work started in 1845 and its official opening came two years later – however, it was hardly a blessed beginning. For a long time after opening the beds remained largely empty. The combination of questionable healing techniques, poor hygiene, and the risk of infection or disease had put the public off hospitals. Many people believed (not without foundation) that they were just better off staying home.

The eccentric convent-like establishment was detached from the local community and subject to rumour and gossip. Her sanctimonious sisters were seen not only as out of touch with the modern world, but also, it was whispered, Catholic… The prominent writer and politician Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, who visited in the early years, remarked that the Deaconesses were “hideously plagued by prayer” and the patients were sometimes denied care “in order to teach them patience”. Not only were the solemn black-shawled nurses dressed like penguins, but they shared a similar level of medical expertise. Of the 20 hours dedicated to education per week, only 1 hour was medical training, and the rest purely spiritual.

The Bethanien’s regal mandate combined with the noble ‘von’s, ‘Graf’s and ‘zu’s who were in charge didn’t help their public image leading up to the 1848 March Revolution. Things worsened after 11 workers, brought from the fighting nearby, died in the hospital from wound infections. In 1862, after 18 patients were lost to sepsis and infection tore through the building, it was decided to move the operation room to a tent outside.
At this time, the pathogen theory of disease was still in its incubation period, and the staff were clueless as to the cause of such strife. Surely God had plenty of smiting to do elsewhere?

Matron Anna von Stolberg even petitioned the city to have the neighbouring canal relocated due to ‘miasmas from the canal’s evaporation’ affecting the health of patients. This foul-smelling waterway lay down-gutter from every digestive system in the Luisenstadt district. But rather than ‘miasma’ (bad air) it was in fact well-intentioned sisters who were killing off patients by the dozen, diligently collecting buckets of the canal’s festering bacterial soup to ‘wash’ the floors.

Despite high running costs and low income, the hospital managed to carry on saving souls and losing lives in its own unique way. It was soon slaughtering its occupants at a rate that would make Genghis Khan blush – in 1869 the majority of operations turned gangrenous and the death toll rose to 900. An official 4-day investigation of the hospital was ordered, followed by a thorough and vitriolic report by Robert Wilms, Bethanien’s head surgeon.

Amongst a 50-page outline of malpractice and neglect, he highlighted as problems: the infected canvas of the operation tent, a lack of ventilation in the wards, the uncleanliness of the deaconesses’ clothing, the poor handling of kitchen waste and canal water, the lack of an isolation ward, soil infestation from the leaching cesspit, and the ‘awful’ well water. Despite subsequent renovations and improvements, the Bethanien’s nasty reputation turned decidedly septic. During the bloody 1870-71 Franco-Prussian war, the hospital suffered the ultimate ignominy of being refused wounded soldiers from the front.

Over the next few decades medical procedures and treatments were improved, allowing the death rate to drop and Bethanien’s standing to recover somewhat. By the turn of the century the bed numbers had risen to 400. Expansion continued during the early 20th century – but as the hospital became more accepted into society, politics, and the medical world, the missionary aspect of the Bethanien was pushed back.

During the Nazi period the Bethanien was initially a place of resistance – only 2 of the 400 sisters joined the party, and calls for promotions for Nazi members were ignored by hospital administration. The Gestapo denounced the deaconesses as ‘enemies of the state’, but at the outbreak of WWII, they were called up for field service and replaced by a National Socialist sisterhood.
By Berlin’s apocalyptic standards, the building suffered little damage during the war – the huge bombing attack of Feb 3rd 1945 affected only the hospital’s southern wing. During the Feb 26th attack, a bomb crashed through into the cellar of the northern wing, its malfunctioning fuse miraculously sparing the building. Even the Red Army charging through the front yard failed to bring down more than a few bricks, though flesh and blood didn’t fare so well. 130 corpses were later interred, a bomb crater on the property serving as a makeshift grave.

Within a year the hospital was back up and running with 441 beds, nurse education and childcare functions re-established. However, the supply of eager young deaconesses was starting to dry up, with more prospective nurses choosing to work in secular, professional careers. Young blood had previously come from the Deaconess missions in the east, and the Berlin wall severed this connection in 1961, stranding the hospital just inside West Berlin. In 1956 the Bethanian was forced to instate the first ‘worldly’ nurse, and over the following 10 years the tide completely turned – a mere 80 deaconesses compared to 390 secular workers. Tensions between secular and religious nurses, as well as between the administration and the city, began to affect the running of the hospital.
The Bethanien had been hobbling behind the march of modernity for more than a century, and in 1967 the Berlin Senate finally laid it to rest. The Krankenhaus am Urban would be built to replace it as Kreuzberg’s hospital. The Bethanien was sold to the city of Berlin for 10.5 million DM, with the Deaconesses settling in new quarters in Spandau.
On 24. March 1970, the last patient was discharged from the Bethanien Hospital, leaving the building empty for a new and radically different history to develop on the property.


Bethanien Hospital

2011
02/06
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Enable Berlin VIII

We Creative People is a group I’m involved with which is focused on collaborative working and creativity. We hold a fortnightly Enable Berlin session, which is a brainstorming evening with a changing group of international people from different creative backgrounds.
Here’s a video I made of one of our sessions:


Just while I’m doing all this linking, Enable Berlin is held at betahaus in Open Design City, a workshop and open design centre here in Kreuzberg. Their aim is the democratisation of the design process by giving people a space to work in, and the tools and knowledge to create and prototype their ideas.

2011
02/06
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