At the Edge of the Wall: Public and Private Spheres in Divided Berlin 9781789208757

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At the Edge of the Wall

Studies in Contemporary European History Editors: Konrad Jarausch, Lurcy Professor of European Civilization, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Henry Rousso, Senior Research Fellow at the Institut d’histoire du temps présent (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris) Volume 26 At the Edge of the Wall: Public and Private Spheres in Divided Berlin Hanno Hochmuth

Volume 21 Migration, Memory, and Diversity: Germany from 1945 to the Present Edited by Cornelia Wilhelm

Volume 25 Reconciliation Road: Willy Brandt, Ostpolitik and the Quest for European Peace Benedikt Schoenborn

Volume 20 Ambassadors of Realpolitik: Sweden, the CSCE and the Cold War Aryo Makko

Volume 24 Petitions Resisting Persecution: Negotiating Self-Determination and Survival of European Jews during the Holocaust Edited by Thomas Pegelow Kaplan and Wolf Gruner Volume 23 Peace at All Costs: Catholic Intellectuals, Journalists, and Media in Postwar PolishGerman Reconciliation Annika Elisabet Frieberg Volume 22 From Eastern Bloc to European Union: Comparative Processes of Transformation since 1990 Edited by Günther Heydemann and Karel Vodička

Volume 19 Wartime Captivity in the Twentieth Century: Archives, Stories, Memories Edited by Anne-Marie Pathé and Fabien Théofilakis Volume 18 Whose Memory? Which Future? Remembering Ethnic Cleansing and Lost Cultural Diversity in East, Central and Southeastern Europe Edited by Barbara Törnquist-Plewa Volume 17 The Long A ermath: Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936–2016 Edited by Manuel Bragança and Peter Tame

For a full volume listing, please see the series page on our website: h p://berghahnbooks.com/series/contemporary-european-history.

AT THE EDGE OF THE WALL Public and Private Spheres in Divided Berlin

( Hanno Hochmuth Translated by David Burne

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2021 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com English-language edition © 2021 Berghahn Books German-language edition © 2017 Wallstein Verlag, Gö ingen Originally published in German as Kiezgeschichte: Friedrichshain und Kreuzberg im geteilten Berlin The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenscha en International – Translation Funding for Work in the Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society VG WORT and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers & Booksellers Association). All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without wri en permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hochmuth, Hanno, author. | Burne , David L. (David Laurence), 1973– translator. Title: At the edge of the wall : public and private spheres in divided Berlin / Hanno Hochmuth ; translated by David Burne . Other titles: Kiezgeschichte. English Description: New York ; Oxford : Berghahn Books, 2021. | Series: Studies in Contemporary European History ; volume 26 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020033726 (print) | LCCN 2020033727 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789208740 (hardback) | ISBN 9781789208757 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Friedrichshain (Berlin, Germany)—History—20th century. | Kreuzberg (Berlin, Germany)—History—20th century. | Berlin (Germany)— Social conditions—20th century. | City and town life—Germany—Berlin— History—20th century. | City planning—Germany—Berlin—History—20th century. Classification: LCC DD883.F75 H6413 2021 (print) | LCC DD883.F75 (ebook) | DDC 943/.155—dc23 LC record available at h ps://lccn.loc.gov/2020033726 LC ebook record available at h ps://lccn.loc.gov/2020033727 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-78920-874-0 hardback ISBN 978-1-78920-875-7 ebook

CONTENTS

( List of Illustrations

vii

Acknowledgments

ix

List of Abbreviations

xi

Map of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg Introduction

xiii 1

Part I. Before the Wall Chapter 1 Historical Foundations

35

Part II. Housing Chapter 2 Housing as a Constitutive Field of the Public and Private Spheres

71

Chapter 3 The Long “Gestation Period” of Tenement Buildings: Sorauer Strasse

83

Chapter 4 The Public and Private Sphere in Urban Transformation: Strasse der Pariser Kommune

101

Chapter 5 Kreuzberg Counter-Public Spheres

125

vi | Contents

Chapter 6 Neighborhood Appropriation in Friedrichshain

145

Part III. The Church Chapter 7 The Church as a Constitutive Field of the Public and Private Spheres

163

Chapter 8 Church and the Neighborhood Public Sphere in Kreuzberg

174

Chapter 9 The Church as a Surrogate Public Sphere in Friedrichshain

193

Part IV. Entertainment Chapter 10 Entertainment as a Constitutive Field of the Public and Private Spheres

215

Chapter 11 Neighborhood Entertainment: Fruchtstrasse Taverns

226

Chapter 12 The Diversification of Kreuzberg Bar Culture

239

Chapter 13 Festival Culture Between East and West

255

Part V. After the Wall Chapter 14 Perspectives: Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg in Transformation since 1989–90

279

Conclusion

304

Bibliography

312

Index of Streets

344

Index of Persons

347

ILLUSTRATIONS

( Figures Figure 3.1. Basement apartment on Sorauer Strasse 27 (1908), photo. Heinrich Lichte, in Kohn, Albert (ed.), Unsere Wohnungs-Enquete im Jahre 1908. Im Au rag des Vorstandes der Ortskrankenkasse für den Gewerbebetrieb der Kaufleute, Handelsleute und Apotheker, Berlin 1909.

89

Figure 3.2–3.4. Residents of Sorauer Strasse 13 (1971), photo. Horst Luedeking, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum Archive.

92

Figure 4.1. Open apartment at Küstriner Platz (1947), photo. O o Donath, German Federal Archives, BArch 183-M1129-322.

109

Figure 4.2. Fruchtstrasse 65/66 (1952), photo. Fritz Tiedemann, edited and reconstructed by Arwed Messmer (2008), courtesy of Uwe Tiedemann, Arwed Messmer and the Berlinische Galerie. 111 Figure 4.3. Fruchtstrasse 52, detail (1952), photo. Fritz Tiedemann, edited and reconstructed by Arwed Messmer (2008), courtesy of Uwe Tiedemann, Arwed Messmer and the Berlinische Galerie.

112

Figure 4.4. Projected redevelopment of Strasse der Pariser Kommune (1971), Neues Deutschland, April 22, 1971, p. 12, GDR Press Portal of the Berlin State Library. h p://zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin .de/ddr-presse.

115

Figure 5.1. Acrobat on Fidicinstrasse (1988), photo. Wolfgang Krolow.

130

Figure 6.1. Word frequency of the term “Kiez” in the Berliner Zeitung (1945–90), database. GDR Press Portal, h p.//zefys.staatsbib liothek-berlin.de/ddr-presse, graph. Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. h p://www.dwds.de. 153

viii | Illustrations

Figure 6.2. Word frequency of the term “Kiez” in the weekly paper Die Zeit (1945-90), database and graph. Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. h p://www.dwds.de.

155

Figure. 8.1. A squa er in dialogue with a church representative at St. Thomas Church (1983), photo. Hans-Peter Siffert.

186

Figure 9.1. Poster advertising the festival week marking the ninetyyear anniversary of Samaritan Church (1984). Evangelische Galiläa-Samariter-Kirchengemeinde.

204

Figure 14.1. Logo of the “Sink the Mediaspree!” initiative, Wikimedia Commons, h ps://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei .Mediaspree_versenken_logo_msv.jpg.

295

Figure 14.2. Performance by David Hasselhoff at the East Side Gallery (2013), photo. Sco Krause.

297

Maps Map 0.1. Map of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, 2004. Cartography. Gerd Schilling and Marc Winkelbrandt, based on Bezirksamt Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg von Berlin (ed.), Department for Urban Development, Office for Urban Planning and Measurement, including a detail from Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons.

xiii

Map 3.1. Straube’s overview map of 1910 Berlin (detail), Berlin State Archive. h p://www.histomapberlin.de.

85

Map 4.1. Straube’s overview map of 1910 Berlin (detail), Berlin State Archive. h p://www.histomapberlin.de.

103

Map 5.1. Map of occupied buildings at Chamissoplatz, 1981. h p://berlin-besetzt.de.

129

Map 11.1. Taverns on Fruchtstrasse, hand-drawn map of the SAG Entertainment Commission (1924/25), Evangelical Central Archives in Berlin, EZA 626/II 29/7.

230

Map 14.1. Map of occupied buildings on Mainzer Strasse in 1990, h p://berlin-besetzt.de.

282

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

( My thanks go out first of all to my two mentors: Paul Nolte for kindling my enthusiasm for urban history, the idea to investigate the public and private spheres, and for his competent and patient support; Konrad H. Jarausch for his valuable insights on integrated German postwar history, for his commi ed and pragmatic guidance, as well as for his generous support in Berlin and Chapel Hill. I am also indebted to Frank Bösch and Martin Sabrow as well as to all my colleagues at the Leibniz Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam for their support and understanding. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Jens Brinkmann and Tilmann Siebeneichner for their expert advice and precise editing during the course of writing this book. My thanks also go out to the following individuals for their many helpful suggestions and ideas: Stefanie Eisenhuth, Alexander Geppert, Henning Holsten, Markus Klüppel, Sco Krause, Wolfgang Krolow, Cornelia Kühn, Dirk Moldt, Daniel Morat, Johanna Niedbalski, Werner Tammen, Krijn Thijs, Lothar Uebel and Thomas Werneke. I thank Martin Düspohl, Erika Hauso er, Liudmila Budich and many others at the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum for their years of fabulous support. I would also like to express my gratitude to all of my interview partners for kindly agreeing to talk to me. Johanna Heinecke, Julia Neumann and Stefan Zeppenfeld were helpful with many specific questions. Bodo Mrozek and Hajo Gevers, in charge of the publication of the German edition which came out in 2017 at Wallstein Verlag, were wonderful to work with. The present English translation of the book was made possible by the “Geisteswissenscha en International” prize of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, the German Publishers and Booksellers Association in Frankfurt. I am deeply grateful to David Burne for his marvelous English translation. And I thank Chris Chappell and Mykelin Higham for overseeing the publication of the English edition at Berghahn Books.

x | Acknowledgments

Finally I would like to thank Arno, Marianne, Katharina, Jonathan and Florian Hochmuth for their years of support and patience. I dedicate this book to you. Berlin, March 2020

ABBREVIATIONS

( AL

Alternative Liste für Demokratie und Umweltschutz (Alternative List for Democracy and Environmental Protection)

CDU

Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (Christian Democratic Union of Germany)

DEFA Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellscha (German Film Corporation), East German state-owned film studio EZA

Evangelisches Zentralarchiv (Evangelical Central Archives) in Berlin

FDJ

Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth)

FDP

Freie Demokratische Partei (Free Democratic Party)

GDR

German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik), i.e. East Germany

IBA

Internationale Bauausstellung (International Building Exhibition) Berlin

KPD

Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany)

LArch Landesarchiv Berlin (Berlin State Archive) ND

Neues Deutschland (“New Germany”), official newspaper of the SED

SAG

Soziale Arbeitsgemeinscha Berlin-Ost (Social Working Group of Eastern Berlin)

SED

Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany), a.k.a. the Party

SEW

Sozialistische Einheitspartei Westberlins (Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin)

xii | Abbreviations

SO 36

former postal code Südost 36 (Southeast 36)

SPD

Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany)

SW 61 former postal code Südwest 61 (Southwest 61) VEB

Volkseigener Betrieb (People’s Own Enterprise), i.e., state-owned company in the GDR

ZDF

Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (Second German Television), West German TV station

ZIP

Zukun s-Investitionsprogramm der Bundesregierung (Future Investment Program of the Federal Government)

MAP 0.1. Map of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, 2004. Cartography: Gerd Schilling and Marc Winkelbrandt, based on Bezirksamt Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg von Berlin (ed.), Department for Urban Development, Office for Urban Planning and Measurement, including a detail from Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons.

 

INTRODUCTION

( May 1, 1987 began with gorgeous spring weather. It was “sunny and warm, resplendent with fresh green. On festively decorated Karl-MarxAllee a sea of radiant red carnations, banners in working-class red and the colors of our Republic. The mood was just as magnificent in the mighty procession of more than 650,000.”1 This was how Neues Deutschland, the Party newspaper, described the traditional May Day demonstration in East Berlin. Like every year, hundreds of thousands of people from Berlin gathered in the streets of the district of Friedrichshain and threaded their way in three marching columns onto Karl-Marx-Allee. They carried countless flags and banners as they headed towards Alexanderplatz, where they marched past the grand VIP stand decked out in red, from which Erich Honecker (1912–94) reviewed and saluted them. Next to the head of state and the Party stood members and candidates of the SED Politbüro, ranking Soviet officers, guests of state from Ethiopia and Chile, as well as distinguished workers and veterans of the labor movement. This “combat demonstration,” as the May Day parade on Karl-Marx-Allee was called, took no less than four and a half hours and ended with a mighty thunderstorm. As a finale, factory militias from East Berlin marched past the platform of dignitaries in the pouring rain while “The Internationale” blared from the loudspeakers.2 The May Day demonstration in the capital underlined, as it had for decades, the SED’s claim to power as well as serving as a form of popular acclamation. But May 1, 1987 was also the prelude to festivities marking the 750th anniversary of Berlin. The SED looked with pride at the Nikolai Quarter and other buildings in the center of the “Capital of the GDR” specially reconstructed for these events, a three-day public festival held throughout the whole of East Berlin. Sixty-four event stages had been set up between Strausberger Platz and Alexanderplatz, with cycling races Notes for this chapter begin on page 22.

2 | At the Edge of the Wall

and fireman shows taking place on Karl-Marx-Allee. In a nearby public park, Friedrichshain Volkspark, each region of the GDR presented itself to the public. Finally, at 10 p.m., there was a spectacular fireworks display in Friedrichshain to mark the end of this Labor Day holiday in East Berlin.3 A very different kind of fireworks was going on at the same time less than four kilometers (2.5 miles) away in the western part of the city, on the other side of the Berlin Wall. Here there was a state of emergency. At Görlitzer Bahnhof in Kreuzberg, an entire Bolle supermarket went up in flames. Numerous stores were destroyed, firemen were seriously thwarted in their efforts to put out the fires, and traditional May Day festivities on Lausitzer Platz escalated into street fighting.4 The district of Kreuzberg was experiencing its worst conflict since the West Berlin squatters’ movement of the early 1980s. The mood had been tense all day a er West Berlin police stormed the MehringHof alternative center without a search warrant and confiscated numerous boyco leaflets from the offices of census opponents.5 Added to this was widespread protest against the declared intention to abolish rent control in West Berlin, not to mention a sense of annoyance at all the pomp and circumstance accompanying the opening event of the 750th anniversary of Berlin held the night before at the International Congress Center (ICC).6 To make ma ers worse, U.S. president Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) was scheduled to visit Berlin on June 12,7 heating the atmosphere even more on an already rather sultry May a ernoon.8 West Berlin police were unprepared and wholly outnumbered at first by demonstrators who were willing to resort to violence. A er being pelted by rocks, they withdrew from Kreuzberg for a couple of hours, leaving the field to the autonomists. As the evening wore on, more and more locals joined the stone-throwers.9 But not everyone was sympathetic to their cause. Massive plundering by ordinary citizens irritated countless observers of the Kreuzberg riots.10 All in all, the evening’s events took a disastrous toll.11 May 1, 1987 in Kreuzberg witnessed the hitherto greatest street riots in the history of West Berlin. The events in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg taking place simultaneously on this particular May Day could not have been more different. The one side exhibited a well-orchestrated self-performance staged by a dictatorial state power; the other an eruptive challenge to a democratically legitimized state’s monopoly on power. The May Day celebrations in Friedri shain were part of a state-sponsored mega event that spanned the entire GDR. The May Day riots in Kreuzberg, by contrast, were a local event that nonetheless sent shock waves across the nation. What both demonstrations had in common was their reference to May Day traditions. But how did it come to pass that Labor Day in these two neighboring dis-

Introduction | 3

tricts transpired in such distinctly different ways, that claims on the public sphere were asserted so differently? Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, at one time very similar, had apparently grown apart. Prior to 1945, both had belonged to the old proletarian eastern half of Berlin, forming the poorhouse of a starkly socially segregated Reich capital.12 Before the war more than three hundred thousand people were crowded into each of these two districts, living in ten square kilometers each.13 The two neighborhoods were paradigmatic of a “Berlin made of stone” during the high phase of urbanization.14 Yet ever since the city’s political division very different social conditions prevailed in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. The districts henceforth belonged to different sides of a system conflict playing out at the municipal, national and global levels. Friedrichshain was located in the Soviet sector close to downtown East Berlin, the capital of the GDR. Kreuzberg belonged to the American sector and found itself in a peculiarly peripheral position, bordering as it did as of 1961 two sides of the Berlin Wall. This effectively cut Kreuzberg off from its old economic environment and led to a social situation that was vastly different than in Friedrichshain. May 1, 1987 marked the dramatic culmination of this developmental divide. Even more surprising, and in need of explanation, is how quickly Friedri shain and Kreuzberg grew back together again following the events of 1989–90. Nowadays the two traditionally working-class districts are both characterized by an alternative scene that constitutes the be er part of their image. The challenges they currently face are also rather similar. These include the extensive modernization of existing structures and the a endant gentrification of these neighborhoods. Both banks of the Spree have witnessed widespread resistance to privatization and to the structural development of public spaces by private large-scale investors. This can be seen most prominently in the “Sink the Mediaspree!” initiative boyco ing the plans of huge media concerns to develop both banks of the Spree River, or in the pushback against the removal of original segments of the Berlin Wall next to the East Side Gallery to allow the construction of a private luxury high-rise. In political and administrative terms as well, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg have converged in recent years. In the wake of a 2001 reform they were merged into a common administrative district (see map on page xiii). The two neighborhoods now form the 84th election district, whose representative, Hans-Christian Ströbele (b. 1939) of the Green Party, has won a direct mandate to the German Bundestag four times in a row since 2002, the electoral behavior of these once-divided boroughs now showing remarkably li le disagreement.15 The fusion of East and West in the form of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district is thus a kind of microcosm for the overall process of healing the city’s Cold War divisions.

4 | At the Edge of the Wall

As in all of Berlin, the process of reunification is far from complete. There are still plenty of cultural differences and mental animosities between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, especially between long-established locals. The original occupants of Karl-Marx-Allee have li le in common with the le -wing alternative scene or the Turkish community of Kreuzberg. But young residents too, most of whom hail from other parts of Germany and elsewhere, likewise do their part to preserve—in a wholly different way—the contrast between these two neighborhoods. Perhaps the most striking example are the water and vegetable fights between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, in which residents of each half-district duke it out with squirt guns, paint bombs and ro en tomatoes. Oberbaum Bridge—the only road link between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, and hence a symbol of unity serving as the fused district’s coat of arms—has been the theater of these occasional skirmishes. The mostly youthful participants, who try to drive back their opponents from the bridge, view the fusion of these two municipal districts as a “forced merger.” Outwardly the event seems rather warlike, and it is always accompanied by a considerable police and media presence. But it’s no comparison to the violence and riots on May Day witnessed since 1990 in both parts of the city. The water and vegetable fights are neither an expression of any real conflict between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg nor an indication of the o eninvoked “wall in people’s heads.” It is simply a playful way of dealing with local urban identities that are no longer all that different from each other. The two working-class neighborhoods have since become a common, alternative-oriented district. The present volume is devoted to the question of how Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg grew apart during the period of Cold War division, developing in opposite directions. But it will also ask what continued to link these two parts of the city, and why the period of division meanwhile almost seems like a brief interlude. Examining the separate yet intertwined paths of these two boroughs requires a comparative method that inquires into commonalities, differences and entanglements. This integrated approach will be briefly outlined in the following before the guiding questions are developed and concrete areas of investigation defined. This will be followed by an introduction to the sources used, to the current state of scholarship, and by an outline of this study.

A Divided History Like temporarily separated twins, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg form a kind of historical experiment, being almost ideally suited for a histori-

Introduction | 5

cal comparison inquiring into similarities and differences. The differences seem plain enough. Whereas dictatorship was the order of the day in Friedrichshain, fundamental democratic freedoms existed in Kreuzberg. This contrast of political systems forms the historical basis of the following investigation. As opposed to a conventional contrastive history of the two German states, however, the present study endeavors to go beyond a simple juxtaposition of two politically contrary districts so as not to merely perpetuate long-established facts and normative historical interpretations.16 The postwar history of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg is much more than the contrast between democracy and dictatorship. The repressive system of rule in the East met with partial acceptance, whereas the democratically elected state authorities in West Berlin sometimes proved incapable of entering a fruitful, peaceful dialogue with the citizens of Kreuzberg. May 1, 1987 is one example. A comparative investigation of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg also has to inquire into the commonalities between these two districts. As old working-class neighborhoods in eastern Berlin they shared a similar historical starting point. Their social structure, their dilapidated housing stock, and a comparable degree of wartime destruction led to similar problems a er 1945. The present study therefore follows a problem-history approach spanning the Cold War divide.17 It is as much about commonalities as it is about division, the postwar history of two politically divided districts, both of which nonetheless faced many of the same social challenges.18 The answers each society found to existing problems were not entirely independent of each other and did not go unnoticed by the other side. Even a er Berlin was divided, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg remained interconnected—for example, by low-level cross-border traffic prior to 1961, or by the transborder consumption of media a er the Wall was built. In the following I will thus inquire into selected entanglements between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, taking care though not to force autonomous developments into the corset of connected history. Comparative analysis and transfer history will not be understood as antagonistic and mutually exclusive approaches.19 Instead, I will seek to add an entangled-history perspective to the historical comparison of these two municipal districts.20 The specific situation in Berlin as a window on Cold War confrontation21 offers the possibility of examining entanglements in the divided metropolis with a specifically urbanistic perspective. This is why I have chosen to compare and contrast the directly adjacent neighborhoods of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, though not necessarily focusing on the “inherent urban logic”22 of self-perception and the perception of others. In this respect the district of Prenzlauer Berg would have perhaps been a be er match for comparative purposes.23 The similarities between

6 | At the Edge of the Wall

Prenzlauer Berg and Kreuzberg, however, are largely the result of a myth ascribed retrospectively, one which overestimates the actually rather limited opposition scene in Prenzlauer Berg.24 The fact that such ascriptions can nonetheless be powerful is demonstrated by the massive gentrification of Prenzlauer Berg that followed in 1990, due not least of all to the neighborhood’s enhanced symbolic status as the home of dissident bohemian artists.25 But this book does not concern itself with the myth of these two well-known neighborhoods; its focus is on social developments, parallel challenges and the tangible entanglement of these two neighboring districts. The local perspective of this investigation using the concrete examples of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg offers the advantage that certain issues of German postwar history can be examined here in more detail than from the grand perspective of two competing German states. This applies in particular to specific protagonists, local a empts to dissociate oneself from those on the other side of the Wall, and isolated transfers. And yet Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg are hardly small units of investigation. Each resembles a mid-sized German town in terms of their number of inhabitants.26 For the sake of a detailed investigation, the districts will not be described here in their entirety. I will sometimes focus on individual buildings, streets and neighborhoods (Kieze), adopting a microhistorical perspective. This neighborhood history or Kiezgeschichte—the original title of this book in German—follows a narrative approach which, instead of offering a strictly systematic comparative overview, tells the story of individual case studies and representative examples from both districts, ultimately linking them to each other. But it is more than a purely local history of these two districts, however justified that approach would be given the lack of any such comparative study to date. Rather, the book works on several levels. It not only describes the history of two Berlin Kieze—two essentially self-contained neighborhoods with a unique identity and sense of belonging—but also shows how the term Kiez was reinvented in the 1970s and 1980s in East and West alike, becoming the historicizing expression of a new urbanity and making its own history, as it were: as a new, powerful and appealing label for the rediscovery of historic buildings which in turn helped lead to their preservation. The neighborhood history also directs a ention to the inner diversity of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, neither of which formed a homogeneous, self-contained district. The large swaths of intact older buildings in the eastern parts of each borough exhibit a different development pa ern and social structure than the western parts, which were largely destroyed in the war and subsequently rebuilt. Moreover, Friedrichshain and Kreuz-

Introduction | 7

berg each have to be recontextualized in terms of urban space. Modern urbanism inquires into the locality of a concrete urban space in the topographic framework of an overall city.27 This means that Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg not only have to be put in relation to each other, but also to the other districts in their respective urban halves. Friedrichshain, for instance, cannot be properly understood without its fluid boundaries with the district of Mi e in the center of East Berlin. Kreuzberg, on the other hand, has to be seen in connection with the adjacent district of Neukölln, whose Gropiusstadt, a large-scale housing project erected in the 1960s and 1970s, absorbed large parts of Kreuzberg’s population. Only city-wide relationships reveal pa erns of socio-spatial segregation and offer an explanation for certain local characteristics in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. A look at the particular in turn gives rise to overarching questions of German contemporary history a er 1945. The present Kiezgeschichte of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg would like to make a contribution to an integrated German postwar history in the form of an “asymmetrically entangled parallel history” as conceived by Christoph Kleßmann.28 Using the example of these two Berlin boroughs divided by the Wall, I will inquire into how these two German subcommunities developed, which answers they found to parallel problems, and to what extent East and West remained entwined with each other. I will hence pose larger questions by way of small-scale investigations. The primary period of investigation—the era of divided Berlin, from 1961 to 1989–90—is also geared towards these questions. Since it is the shared prehistory of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg that forms the historical basis of comparison here and that likewise results in many shared challenges, the timeframe of this study will occasionally go back as far as the late nineteenth century. In this manner I aim to show, furthermore, that Berlin was divided even before the Cold War, especially with regard to the longstanding socio-spatial division between the bourgeois (middle-class) West and the predominantly pe y-bourgeois (lower-middle-class) and proletarian (working-class) eastern part of the city, which Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg both belonged to. But also the two-class society within the Wilhelmine-era “rental barracks,” the tenement houses in these two working-class neighborhoods, is in many ways part of the “divided Berlin” in the title of this book. Remarkably, in the years since 1989–90, it is not only the political division of the Cold War that has ceased to exist but also the aforementioned socio-spatial division that marked the city for long periods of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The final chapter of this book is therefore entitled “Perspectives” and deals with more recent contemporary history, describing how Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg have grown back together

8 | At the Edge of the Wall

as well as how the old socio-spatial pa erns have tended to be reversed in the wake of increasing gentrification in areas with older, prewar buildings. This long-term historical transformation can only be grasped if the period of investigation goes beyond the traditional historico-political watersheds. Thus, the present study sometimes focuses on the entire twentieth century without, however, laying claim to being a comprehensive account of it. The Nazi period, for example, only plays a role here when it is relevant to the historical development of these neighborhoods.

The Public and Private Spheres A comparative investigation of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg has to be based on the right questions. A particularly fruitful perspective can be gained by focusing on historical transformation and the interrelationship between the public and private spheres. For one thing, the question of the public and private spheres offers a new and largely untapped perspective on postwar German-German history.29 For another, it allows a genuine urban-history approach to the history of Berlin. Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg are then viewed as urban spaces and examined with regard to their urban character. The historiographical approach of this study will thus be expanded through the addition of an urban-sociology perspective, to be introduced in the following. The fundamental terminology on the dichotomy of the public and private spheres in the modern city was established by Gö ingen sociologist Hans Paul Bahrdt (1918–94), who refers to the public and private spheres as the basic principles of urban association.30 Bahrdt in this case follows Max Weber’s (1864–1920) economic definition of the city as a market settlement.31 The contacts at markets, fleeting and yet always following strict rules, between individuals who are almost complete strangers to each other while at the same time potentially excluding the respective social fabric are for Bahrdt the earliest form of a public sphere.32 Bahrdt builds on this to develop a basic formula for urban life. He defines the city as such: a se lement in which the whole of life, everyday life included, shows a tendency towards polarization, i.e., to take place either in the social aggregate of the public sphere or in the private sphere. A public and a private sphere are formed that are closely interrelated without losing their polarity. The areas of life that can neither be characterized as “public” nor “private” ultimately lose their significance. The stronger the polarity and interrelationship between the public and private sphere, the more “urban,” sociologically speaking, the life of a se lement becomes.33

Introduction | 9

By focusing on the duality and interrelationship of the public and private spheres, Bahrdt defines the city independently of its legal status and size. He views the imperfect social integration of city dwellers as the decisive prerequisite for the development of a public sphere. In contrast to the perfect and prestructured social constitution of the village, the city, in his opinion, offered the necessary freedom for the development of a public sphere. Imperfect urban integration, however, is for Bahrdt merely a negative precondition for the development of a public sphere. The la er only develops when specific stylized behaviors emerge that help bridge the gap between inhabitants, thus allowing communication and contact to occur. These stylized behaviors, for Bahrdt, include representation as a form of self-presentation in which the subject makes himself visible, enabling communication and integration, for example through certain social behaviors, clothing styles and architecture. The public game of representations has led, accordingly, to a consciousness of various social behaviors and hence to an awareness of the possibility of social change. Thus, all progress, in Bahrdt’s opinion, stems from the city.34 This public sphere is complemented by the private one. For Bahrdt, the private sphere forms the necessary refuge in an imperfectly integrated society. The city, in other words, awakens the need for privacy but is also the prerequisite for a certain form of the private sphere that does not exist in village society with its strict social controls. Only a developed private sphere can create opportunities for individual development, cultivate personalities and lead to a complex emotional life, though this interpersonal remove is always a ma er of contention in need of constant reassertion. Much like Georg Simmel (1858–1918), Bahrdt describes the inhabitants of cities as being both individualistic and impersonal or aloof.35 Analogous to a developed public sphere, society draws its dynamism from a developed private sphere as well. The public and private spheres are predicated on each other. But for Bahrdt this also means that when the one deteriorates the other follows suit.36 He thus expounds on the problem of modern cities becoming “unsightly” and life becoming ever more technology-dependent. Streets and squares could no longer serve the public, he claimed, because they had degenerated into mere traffic pipelines.37 Bahrdt’s book, published in 1961, aimed to sensitize his audience to the difficulties of a functionally organized modern city in the context of a postwar Germany undergoing reconstruction,38 and was warmly received by urban planners and architects.39 He was one of the first to articulate the discomfort people felt about the growing “inhospitality” of cities, an idea that would take off in the 1960s.40 A wide range of scholarly debates on the idea of the public and private sphere appeared at around the same

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time,41 responding not only to urban transformations but especially to the widespread mediatization of society.42 The most important and influential treatment of the subject was undoubtedly Jürgen Habermas’s (b. 1929) postdoctoral thesis The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.43 The book remains the standard work and baseline for any discussion of the public and private spheres.44 Habermas describes the formation of a bourgeois public sphere in the eighteenth century confronting the transformed public authority of the state. The modern public sphere, for Habermas, is part of bourgeois society, which is divided into the private sphere of the nuclear family and the public sphere of private, bourgeois individuals. The la er form the public that, by way of reason, questions the public authority of the state. Habermas develops his concept historically, describing the conceptual history of the public and private spheres—Öffentlichkeit and Privatheit, respectively.45 In contrast to Hans Paul Bahrdt, the city figures only marginally in Habermas’s deliberations. For him it is mainly the place where the literary public of early-modern salons and coffeehouses gathered, which later developed into the bourgeois political public sphere.46 The two studies differ in their reference to space and their avowed aims.47 And yet there are some striking parallels between Bahrdt and Habermas. Both sociologists argue historically and start from the assumption that the public and private spheres existed in an ideal state in the past. Bahrdt locates the ideal type in the medieval “burgher town,”48 whereas Habermas’s model is the public sphere of bourgeois society in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.49 Both identified clear symptoms of a declining public sphere in the present. Bahrdt counts among these the emergence of large corporations that are neither private nor public as well as the mediatization of the public sphere as a result of the modern nation-state becoming more bureaucratic.50 Habermas, for his part, warns about the mediatization of the public sphere caused by the increasing dissolution of boundaries: “Tendencies pointing to the collapse of the public sphere are unmistakable, for while its scope is expanding impressively, its function has become progressively insignificant.”51 Habermas mostly blames the modern “culture industry” for this. There are similarities here between Habermas’s le ist cultural critique influenced by the Frankfurt School and conservative cultural pessimism,52 although Habermas clearly rejects the antiliberal school of Carl Schmi (1888–1985)53 just as Bahrdt vehemently argues against traditional critiques of the city.54 Both books are fundamental and still very thought-provoking investigations of the public sphere. But they also reflect a specific discourse prevalent during the 1960s and therefore have to be historicized as critical interventions based on a period-specific diagnosis of decline.

Introduction | 11

The twentieth century was marked by an unparalleled expansion of the private sphere. This was accompanied on the one hand by the novel idea of a right to privacy, the protection of which was understood as a public responsibility. On the other hand, the state’s encroachment on the private sphere was one of the century’s most salient characteristics—sometimes even culminating in the total destruction of personal privacy.55 In the second half of the twentieth century a number of prominent sociologists identified a tendency among people in Germany to retreat into the private sphere, not least as a reaction to these radical encroachments upon private life experienced under the Nazis. In the 1950s Helmut Schelsky (1912–84) described a “skeptical generation” that consciously withdrew from the public sphere.56 Hans Paul Bahrdt viewed this “bliss in a quiet corner” as a denaturation of the private sphere and a danger to the public sphere.57 But perhaps the most prominent warning came from American sociologist Richard Senne (b. 1943), who talked about a “tyranny of intimacy,” diagnosing a radicalization of the private and a complementary decline of the public sphere.58 Here, too, a cultural critique was clearly evident. The shortcomings and omissions in the work of many social scientists analyzing the public and private spheres have been widely discussed in the literature, leading to numerous advances. Habermas, for instance, notably ignored the urban lower classes, prompting Oskar Negt (b. 1934) and Alexander Kluge (b. 1932) to develop the concept of a proletarian (counter-) public sphere.59 Feminist theory of the 1960s and 1970s questioned the traditional understanding of separate public and private spheres altogether, asserting instead that the private and the personal were eminently political.60 Nancy Fraser (b. 1947) discussed the problem of women being le out of classic interpretations of the bourgeois public sphere, advocating an alternative concept of “multiple, competing publics.”61 Despite the explosion of literature on the topic ever since the translation of Habermas’s seminal work into English,62 there has yet to be an investigation into how the public and private spheres continued to develop in the twentieth century.63 A more fundamental question is whether there was a public and private sphere at all in the dictatorships of the twentieth century. Were they merely staged pseudo-public spheres?64 Did the public sphere not forfeit its independent creativity in the face of overpowering political constructions of society?65 And did the totalitarian creative will of a dictatorial regime not largely destroy the private sphere?66 With regard to the GDR, more specifically the East Berlin district of Friedrichshain under investigation here, the question is to what extent this concept of public and private spheres is applicable at all. In their deliberations on public spheres in societies of the Soviet type, Gábor T. Ri ersporn, Jan C. Behrends and

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Malte Rolf make the case for “productively harnessing the concept [of the public sphere] developed for research on Western societies by detaching it from its normative context and cautiously opening it to a broader semantics. This perspective would enable new investigative approaches to the historical analysis of state socialism.”67 The authors conclude that even in state-socialist dictatorships a variety of different public spaces and spheres existed. They are interested not only in an investigation of the residual (counter-)public spheres of a small oppositional minority,68 but especially in the question of a fragmented public sphere within the boundaries set by the regime. “In principle, every organization, structure or association created by the state was a kind of public sphere . . . Every place the regime allowed its citizens to congregate can ultimately be understood as a public one: streets and squares, cinemas and stadiums, swimming pools and stores.”69 In centralized dictatorships it is precisely the regional and local public spheres that gain importance as spaces for social experimentation.70 The present study has chosen this local level to investigate the relationship between public and private spheres in East-West comparison. This means abandoning any normative concept of the public sphere.71 Instead, I propose understanding the public sphere as a spatial category and pluralizing it, as suggested by Jörg Requate,72 thus allowing for various layers of meaning. The public sphere is variously understood in the following to mean a) an inclusive space that is open to all, b) a communal or public (state) sphere subject to public law, and c) a communicative space, ranging from small sub-public spheres to public mass media. Similarly, private spheres are understood as a) spaces with exclusive access, b) spaces that are private property in the legal sense, and c) spaces that allow personal development, intimacy and a withdrawal from the public sphere.73 These are all instances of contested spaces whose limits were a ma er of contention between historical protagonists. The pluralization and spatialization of the public and private spheres necessarily leads to a more pragmatic understanding of the term, because “only a sufficiently flexible concept of the public sphere can remain operational over time and in comparative perspective between different states.”74 The present study neither endeavors to be a conceptual history75 nor does it a empt to historicize theories taken from the social sciences76 or to form its own theory of the public and private spheres.77 The two categories of public and private serve rather as a hermeneutic key to the postwar history of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. For analytical purposes, this investigation opts for the broadest possible understanding of the public and private sphere. At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish between related concepts that are sometimes used synonymously with the public and private

Introduction | 13

sphere. The Roman term “republic,” for example, originally meant “public thing” or “public affair.” And yet public sphere in the modern sense is neither equivalent to the “state” nor “democracy,” since the origins of the modern public sphere are more to be found in its fraught relationship to politics.78 In everyday language the public sphere is o en confused with “society.” The la er is a comprehensive communal system, an umbrella under which the entire spectrum of community relations is organized,79 and not so much an actual space in the way public sphere is understood here.80 Competing concepts exist with respect to the private sphere as well. Historians have shown a heightened interest recently in the history of “subjectivity.” But the focus here is on historical protagonists and how they construct meaning. Richard Senne tends to use the term “intimacy” as a synonym for “privacy,” but mostly only with reference to the modern obsession with the self and the desire to retreat into the private sphere.81 The term “individuality” is closely linked to this.82 It overlaps in many respects with “privacy” but lacks the spatial dimension so decisive here for the urban-history approach of this book. The binary construction of the public and private sphere has o en been criticized.83 It does, however, offer the advantage that both spheres need to be taken into consideration when applying these categories to historical analysis. That said, the limits of the approach should be kept in mind. First, the dichotomy of public and private spheres suggests a totality that makes it tempting for historians to assign all of lived reality to one or the other. Areas of overlap tend to be overlooked, along with those areas that are neither public nor private in character. This is the case, for instance, with the border facilities at the Berlin Wall, which divided Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg from 1961 to 1989. Second, the sociological twin terms of the public and private sphere are relatively static. It is therefore all the more important to inquire in the present study into the historical transformation and entanglements of the public and private spheres. Third, despite a decidedly pluralist and spatial understanding of the public and private spheres, it is hard to avoid the inherent normativity of the two terms, tending as they do to describe an ideal social state which is pointless to compare with historical reality and is not the aim of this study. Normative pitfalls are likewise lurking in notions of an “expanding” or “declining” public and private sphere, though process concepts like these are indispensable for analyses of historical change. This points, fourth, to the dual character of the public and private spheres as source and analytical terms that cannot always be clearly distinguished from each other. It is important, for example, to always bear in mind that the term “counter-public sphere” was a ba le cry used by contemporaries even though it is just as indispensable for historical analysis. Fi h, the analytical twin terms of

14 | At the Edge of the Wall

public and private sphere exhibit an inherent and fundamental asymmetry. Whereas the public sphere literally found public expression and is traceable in countless sources, the private sphere is almost by definition an invisible category that o en eludes historical analysis. This is why the term public sphere is much easier to operationalize than its counterpart, the private sphere. And yet only the two terms taken together account for the analytical potential of the approach chosen here. The public and private spheres are key terms, essential to an understanding of urban history.84 They offer a multiperspective approach to the contemporary history of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. In this respect, the following questions are crucial to this investigation. What forms of the public and private sphere existed in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, and what did they mean to the residents of these two boroughs? What role did the public and private spheres play in the transformation from a working-class to an alternative culture, and how did the relationship between the public and private spheres change in a concrete urban context? Have the public and private spheres in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg tended to decline or expand over time? Where did the dynamics of the public and private spheres have a causal effect on urban development and where did they tend to result from such developments? What reciprocal relationships between the public and private spheres existed in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, and to what extent did these tend to result from the overall social framework or from specific urbanistic conditions and developments? Were the public and private spheres in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg more a historical exception or were they representative of more general tendencies? This book investigates these questions through case studies of three different aspects of postwar life in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. The first of these, tenement housing, will examine the core urban sphere of private lifestyles and public intervention. A second aspect is the Protestant Church as the driving force and protective umbrella of new counter-public spheres. Third, the example of entertainment in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg will open up a new area of research in contemporary history, incorporating mass consumption as a key concept of the twentieth century. All three aspects concern constitutive areas of the public and private spheres, in which the interrelationship between the two spheres was negotiated in a particular way. The housing question formed a crucial area of conflict between private lifestyles and individual demands on the one hand and between public offerings and intervention on the other. Using the example of two streets and their histories—Sorauer Strasse in Kreuzberg and Strasse der Pariser Kommune (formerly Fruchtstrasse) in Friedrichshain—I will examine the

Introduction | 15

historical interrelationship between the public and private spheres on a concrete urbanistic level. I will subsequently look at alternative forms of living and alternative public spheres in both districts. Given that these developed in old Wilhelmine rental barracks, my focus will be on these older, historic tenement buildings of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. In the second section I will investigate the relationship between the public and private spheres with regard to church intervention in social affairs. The two case studies in this instance are St. Martha’s parish in Kreuzberg and the Samaritan parish in Friedrichshain, their pastors having become formative figures in new public spheres originating in the church in the 1970s and 1980s. St. Martha’s Church (Marthakirche) became a center of debate on urban-planning policy in Kreuzberg, whereas the Samaritan Church (Samariterkirche) in Friedrichshain served as the venue for the famed “blues masses,” a gathering point for opposition members. The present investigation focuses on the transformation of religious spaces originally intended for collective worship and private religious practice into a local, secular and politicized public sphere. My third focus, urban entertainment culture, became an important interface for public supply and private demand. Public and private spheres were constituted and addressed at places of urban entertainment. This is where urbanites picked up the mannerisms of both spheres, entertainment culture thus making a key contribution to “inner” urbanization. Using the example of taverns, I will first examine traditional places of urban entertainment and the historical transformation of their character and function before inquiring into the transformation of public entertainment in the second half of the twentieth century using the example of street and other public festivals in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. My focus is necessarily limited. Other aspects of the public and private spheres apart from the three case studies mentioned above could have been addressed as well. Labor, for example, would have lent itself to an investigation of the socio-cultural transformation of these two working-class neighborhoods into alternative hot spots, but less so to the interaction between public and private spheres which forms the chief concern of this study. The welfare state as an institution would have been another worthy point of inquiry, given the incomparably strong influence it exerted on the relationship between the public and the private spheres during the twentieth century.85 But such an investigation would have required a larger framework than the urban-history perspective of this study could offer, since the relevant social legislation was the work of state authorities despite the communal organization of poor-relief and social-welfare institutions. Given the significant history of migration in Kreuzberg, a view to migrant-related public and private spheres would have been of inter-

16 | At the Edge of the Wall

est too, though admi edly the asymmetry here between Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain would have been too big to lend itself to a comparative investigation. The same applies to journalistic and parliamentary public spheres at the communal level, which are likewise barely discussed in this study, the state-socialist Eastern district and the liberal-democratic Western one being constituted too differently in political terms, whereas a historical comparison focused solely on self-evident differences in political opinion- and decision-making seemed pointless.

Sources The historical sources this book is based on are extremely heterogeneous. The present work is not based on any specific body of sources as is the case with other studies devoted to the public sphere. Instead, I consult a large variety of different sources for the purpose of a broad investigation of the postwar history of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, inquiring into various aspects of the public and private spheres. Access to these sources was admi edly uneven. Whereas most of the files from the municipal authorities of East Berlin and the district council of Friedrichshain are accessible in the Berlin State Archive up to the years 1989–90 thanks to the extensive opening of state files from the GDR, the corresponding files from Kreuzberg are generally frozen for a period of thirty years due to the Federal Archives Act, effectively limiting access to more recent files on Senate planning, squa ing and so on. The opposite is true of the Kreuzberg Museum, which acquired a range of archival materials from the Friedrichshain Regional Museum and Archive in 2004 in the wake of their fusion. Unlike the Kreuzberg files, the Friedrichshain documents are only partly accessible. Added to this is Kreuzberg’s more liberal political constitution, which results in more sources being preserved and archived, particularly those of non-state actors.86 An important source alongside contemporary address books and social surveys are Berlin dailies and local papers. The fact that Neues Deutschland, the Berliner Zeitung and Neue Zeit have meanwhile all been fully digitalized and are available online at the GDR Press Portal of the Berlin State Library turned out to be a real boon.87 This enables quantifiable inquiries into historical semantics, meaning I not only investigated the changes in meaning of certain terms in classic hermeneutic fashion but was able to use new computational-linguistics tools for the analysis of word frequency and tenses. Apart from descriptions of the city, the way it is visualized is just as important, since it forms a significant aspect of urban-development processes and practices of appropriation. The photos in this book—of

Introduction | 17

building facades, furnished apartments, and scenes from daily life in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg—are not just for illustrative purposes but serve as historical sources and are critically analyzed here with the methods of visual history.88 I will also look at feature films, examining issues of artistic construction and historical reconstruction. The Legend of Paul and Paula (1973) and Berlin Chamissoplatz (1980) are not merely taken as fictional portrayals of Berlin but as public interventions in urban-planning discourses and artistic manifestations of individual lifestyle choices. The built city itself is also used as a source in this study. Architectural ensembles are a key component of material culture comprising numerous levels of meaning and serving as an important historical resource.89 This includes representations in the form of maps, which served as a visual aid and helped contemporaries form an image of their city.90 The sources used in this study likewise include citizens’ petitions to the Communal Housing Administration (KMV) of the Friedrichshain district, which are now kept at the Berlin State Archive in the form of petition analyses. A final key source are interviews with contemporary witnesses, conducted specifically for this book with historical protagonists from Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. While most of these interviews served the purpose of collecting background information, some were incorporated into the narrative. Before moving on to a brief outline of the current state of scholarship, it is worth noting that the boundary between sources and research literature is o en a fluid one.91 Older social surveys, local histories and so on sometimes proved to be fundamental works on the history of these two districts. On the other hand, many recent accounts of the history of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg were wri en by the historical protagonists themselves, thus lending them the character of firsthand sources. In many cases these self-portrayals form an indispensable basis for this study given the lack of other sources or recent research on the history of these districts.

The State of Scholarship The aim of this monograph is to present a small-scale integrated German postwar history. From an all-German perspective this is still a desideratum. While there may be survey works on postwar German-German history,92 none of these fulfills the demand programmatically formulated by Christoph Kleßmann and Konrad H. Jarausch for a social and entangled history.93 Numerous edited volumes have appeared, however, in recent years that develop social-historical perspectives on the “divided history”94 of East and West Germany in a systematically comparative way or that employ case studies to inquire into asymmetric entanglements95 between

18 | At the Edge of the Wall

the GDR and the Federal Republic. Even erstwhile skeptics have meanwhile underlined the relevance of comparative and entangled perspectives on German-German postwar history.96 A comprehensive overview of the postwar history of Berlin giving equal consideration to East and West Berlin and their relationship to each other has likewise yet to materialize. The two-volume standard work on the history of Berlin, published in 1987 by the Berlin Historical Commission under the stewardship of Wolfgang Ribbe, contains comprehensive accounts of individual historical periods from political- and social-history perspectives but lacks sufficient coverage of the postwar period, not to mention the fact that the work was published before the watershed events of 1989.97 Ribbe, Bernd Stöver and Arnt Cobbers have all wri en concise historical surveys of Berlin, but each of these suffers from the same problem of having to cover the national and world-historical significance of the German capital in the twentieth century on a limited number of pages, thus tending towards a political-history approach that sometimes entirely loses track of the urban history of Berlin.98 There are, however, a number of comparative studies addressing individual intervals and aspects of the postwar period. Michael Lemke describes divided Berlin in the period “before the Wall” as an “entangled society determined by culture and day-to-day politics” that developed a remarkable resilience, stability and flexibility in the face of various political influences and moments of heightened conflict during the heyday of the Cold War.99 The 750-year anniversary of Berlin near the end of the Cold War is described by Krijn Thijs, who compares the celebrations of 1937 and 1987 in East and West Berlin, making numerous cross-references.100 A number of publications on “dual” and intertwined urban development in divided Berlin have also appeared of late.101 Hartmut Häußermann and Andreas Kapphan have compared the two halves of the city from an urban-sociology perspective, foregrounding questions of continuity vs. transformation of socio-spatial orders, with in-depth descriptions of historical foundations mostly serving as a backdrop to the analysis of segregation processes a er 1990.102 An increasing number of more recent accounts focus on just one half of the city.103 Wilfried Ro offers a very well-informed history of the “island” of West Berlin, profiting enormously from his own personal experience as a resident there.104 Ro focuses in particular on the governing mayors and their character traits, West Berlin corruption (“Filz”) and its structural causes, the city’s (high-)cultural landscape and its creative individuals, as well as on problems and status issues with respect to the Allied powers, the Federal Republic and the GDR. A special issue of Zeithistorische Forschungen / Studies in Contemporary History developed social-history perspectives

Introduction | 19

on West Berlin, inquiring into the particular locus of this half-city as a historical exception, a magnifying glass and laboratory, but also into the impressive “boom” of recent exhibits and photo volumes on West Berlin.105 The history of everyday life in West Berlin has also become the subject of a sometimes rather nostalgic literature of remembrance appearing in the decades since the city’s reunification and o en wri en by those who lived it.106 There is no comparable overview to date for the eastern half of the city, but there are numerous studies examining individual aspects of East German history using East Berlin as an example.107 These works tend to address much more general questions about the history of the GDR than the local history of Berlin, however. In contrast to other border areas along the German-German frontier108 and/or the Berlin Wall109 there are no in-depth comparative studies of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. The newly fused district does, however, boast a joint Bezirkslexikon, an alphabetical reference work on the district’s streets and squares, its buildings and institutions, presenting the basics of its urban development in a detailed historical introduction.110 Also worth noting is Jens Dobler’s thoroughly researched history of homosexuality in Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, which developed out of an exhibition at the Kreuzberg Museum.111 The museum’s director, Martin Düspohl, has published a popular historical survey of Kreuzberg with a special focus on the neighborhood’s long history of migration.112 Barbara Lang investigates the myth of Kreuzberg from an ethnological perspective, describing in particular the symbolic underpinnings of present-day gentrification.113 There are numerous publications dealing with the redevelopment history of individual streets and squares.114 These were o en wri en by people directly involved in the process and who hoped to use their historical depictions to lend authority to their own arguments in the debates on urban development.115 In contrast to Kreuzberg, there are considerably fewer accounts of the history of Friedrichshain.116 Prior to 1989 these were mostly working-class stories and autobiographies, describing the simple day-to-day lives of proletarian East Berlin.117 A er German reunification a number of detailed local histories were published, some of them addressing the entire district,118 others individual parts of it.119 Other studies focus on individual streets, such as Anne Gröschner’s remarkably thick description of Friedrichshain’s Fruchtstrasse.120 Other locales are depicted in the context of certain historical events that took place in Friedrichshain. Also worth mentioning here are works by Dirk Moldt on the blues masses at Samaritan Church as well as the literature on the clearance of occupied buildings on Mainzer Strasse in 1990, both of which were fundamental for the present study.121

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There are hardly any comparative histories on the subject of the public and private spheres in postwar German-German history. This is most likely due to the fact that a public sphere in the normative sense did not exist in the GDR, thus rendering comparison pointless. Jörg Requate, on the other hand, has proven the contrary, that it is indeed possible to inquire into the notion of a public sphere in the GDR.122 Using the example of the East German television show Prisma, Requate showed how viewers aired a variety of problems through their le ers to the editor, thus giving rise to an unintended surrogate public sphere in the GDR.123 Michael Meyen has investigated media public spheres in the GDR and published an empirical study on German-German media history with its asymmetric entanglements.124 The literature on the public sphere in the Federal Republic is extensive, albeit with a focus on the media.125 The private sphere, on the other hand, has seldom been the focus of historical studies on postwar Germany.126 A noteworthy exception here is Paul Be s’ groundbreaking history of private life in the GDR, ranging from Stasi surveillance in everyday life to private photographs.127 Adelheid von Saldern published several seminal works on the history of housing in the twentieth century.128 Johann Friedrich Geist and Klaus Kürvers edited three richly documented volumes on the history of Berlin tenement houses which are still standard works in the field, spanning the period from the eighteenth century into the 1980s.129 Sven Reichardt, in his highly regarded study of the le -wing alternative scene, looked at alternative forms of living and squa ing in West Berlin,130 which Bart van der Steen, for his part, examined from a transnational comparative perspective.131 Reinhild Kreis recently published a study on the so-called Instandbesetzung or “rehab squa ing” of houses in West Berlin.132 An even more recent volume edited by Barbara and Kai Sichtermann, both of whom took part in the West Berlin squa ers’ movement, contains testimonies by contemporary witnesses from the squa ing scene in West Germany but also addresses the phenomenon of Schwarzwohnen, or squa ing in the GDR.133 Udo Grashoff, in particular, has dealt extensively with the la er topic, conducting fundamental research on the history of semi-legal forms of housing in East Germany which the present study has been able to build on.134 The literature on the history of churches in the German postwar era has long been focused on the process of secularization a er 1945. More recent interpretations, however, point to the persistence of religious beliefs and communities as well as to the reorientation of churches in the spirit of civil society.135 Frank Bösch and Lucian Hölscher have addressed the transformation of the church in the postwar era and the expanding spheres of activity adopted by Christian churches.136 They follow a topological ap-

Introduction | 21

proach, inquiring into new spaces occupied or offered by churches. The history of churches in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg has been wri en for the most part by the priests and pastors of individual parishes, who were o en important protagonists themselves in the historical events they depict.137 There are also survey works on the congregations and church buildings of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg.138 Unlike urban entertainment culture in Germany at the turn of the twentieth century, which has been the subject of much scholarly research,139 the history of entertainment in more recent German history has only been explored in a rudimentary fashion. The works of Kaspar Maase, which take an in-depth look at the history of popular culture in Europe, deserve particular mention.140 Uta G. Poiger has explored the pop-culture entanglements of the postwar era in German-German comparison, showing that both sides initially exhibited forms of resentment towards American pop culture rooted in their respective cultural critiques, which soon diminished in the West, however, as youthful consumers became an ever more important market segment.141 Ulrike Häußer and Marcus Merkel published an explorative edited volume on entertainment in the GDR, opening a new field of investigation on the history of everyday life in East Germany.142 For Kreuzberg, the works of Lothar Uebel deserve particular mention, though focusing mainly on entertainment culture in the first half of the twentieth century.143 Some corresponding studies for the district of Friedrichshain have recently been published as well.144

On the Structure of this Book Writing an integrated German urban history is an ambitious task to say the least. A comparative and entangled history of two city districts would necessitate constantly jumping back and forth. Hence, for narrative reasons it makes more sense to tell parallel histories of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg using exemplary case studies rather than organizing the study in a strictly comparative way. To begin with, however, I will depict the general historical foundations of urban development in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, which are crucial for an understanding of recent history. The first part of this book will offer an in-depth discussion of the urbanization of eastern Berlin beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, a process which lent these two historic neighborhoods their present-day urban structure. This will be followed by an account of the founding of these districts in 1920, the Weimar and Nazi periods, and their subsequent destruction in World War II. The main focus of this introductory chapter is the immediate postwar period and the reconstruction of these two neigh-

22 | At the Edge of the Wall

borhoods henceforth under opposing political systems. Finally, I will discuss the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and its specific ramifications for Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, with a special focus on the social transformations occurring in East and West. The bulk of this book is divided into three major parts, each with a different focus: housing, churches, and entertainment in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg a er 1961. All three of these aspects are constitutive areas of the public and private spheres, in which the interrelationship between the two spheres is negotiated in a special way. Each of these three sections is structured identically, beginning with a general overview of the respective interrelationship between public and private spheres in the overarching historical context of German history before and a er World War II. This is followed by a number of local case studies focused either on Friedrichshain or Kreuzberg. The final part, on transformation, ventures a look at the period a er the fall of the Wall. The main focus here is on the shi from transfer to transformation processes between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. Using the example of squa ing on Mainzer Strasse, I will look at radical catch-up processes in the eastern district before briefly sketching demographic development and structural transformation since 1990. Finally, I will describe a number of current challenges facing the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district a er the fusion in 2001, with a particular emphasis on gentrification and the privatization of public space. The book thus hopes to make a contribution to understanding the historical roots of conflict situations that largely revolve around the fraught relationship between the public and private spheres in urban spaces.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Neues Deutschland, May 2, 1987, 3. Ibid., 1–3. Berliner Zeitung, April 25, 1987, 14 f.; Berliner Zeitung, May 2, 1987, 7 f. Die Zeit, May 8, 1987, 12. taz, May 4, 1987, 1 f. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 2, 1987, 1 f. Der Spiegel, May 11, 1987, 57–64, here 57. The newspaper taz even partially blamed the weather for the riots in Kreuzberg: “May 1st was the first muggy day of the year, slightly overcast and cloudy, but already warm at 8 in the morning, with thunderstorms at noon. The first li le downpour of the season came at 2 p.m. Haze. There was something in the air.” taz, May 4, 1987, 3.

Introduction | 23

9. Spiegel magazine described “an alliance on a scale never seen before between black bloc and bourgeois discontent. Germans and Turks fraternized in divvying up looted goods.” Der Spiegel, May 11, 1987, 57–64, here 64. 10. Many newspapers described widespread unemployment and a lack of perspective as reasons for the destruction and looting. On the social causes and context, see ibid.; taz, May 5, 1987, 1 f.; as well as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 5, 1987, 6, and the Berliner Zeitung, June 25, 1987, 3. The Berliner Morgenpost of May 5, 1987 argued the opposite, claiming it was ge ing things backwards to try and explain “criminal acts of violence, arson and looting with recourse to supposedly ‘unresolved social issues.’” 11. A total of 36 businesses were looted and destroyed, 35 fires were started, 193 policemen and 60 other individuals were injured, 77 police vehicles, 16 fire trucks and an ambulance were damaged, and about 20 cars went up in flames. See Die Zeit, May 8, 1987, 12. 12. W. Gensch, H. Liesigk, and H. Michaelis, Der Berliner Osten, Berlin 1930. 13. Hans-Jürgen Mende and Kurt Wernicke (eds), Berliner Bezirkslexikon FriedrichshainKreuzberg, Berlin 2003, 53. 14. The term goes back to German-American urban planner and architectural critic Werner Hegemann (1881–1936) and his 1930 book by the same name, Das steinerne Berlin. Ges i te der größten Mietskasernenstadt der Welt, Braunschweig 19924 [1930]. 15. Election district 84 also includes the eastern part of Prenzlauer Berg. On the election results of district 84, see h ps://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/bundestagswahlen/2017/erge bnisse.html (accessed April 29, 2020). On Hans-Christian Ströbele, see most recently Stefan Reinecke, Ströbele. Die Biographie, Berlin 2016. 16. On the concept of German-German contrastive history, see Horst Möller, “Demokratie und Diktatur,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 57 (2007) no. 3, 3–7. 17. See the various contributions in Christoph Kleßmann and Peter Lautzas (eds), Teilung und Integration. Die doppelte deuts e Na kriegsges i te als wissens a li es und didaktis es Problem, Schwalbach 2006. 18. The divided-history approach traces back to the global-historical deliberations of Sebastian Conrad and Shalini Randeria, “Einleitung. Geteilte Geschichte. Europa in einer postkolonialen Welt,” in idem (eds), Jenseits des Eurozentrismus. Postkoloniale Perspektiven in den Geschichts- und Kulturwissenscha en, Frankfurt am Main 2002, 7–49, here 17. Frank Bösch applied the divided-history approach to East and West Germany: Frank Bösch (ed.), Geteilte Geschichte. Ost- und Westdeutschland 1970–2000, Gö ingen 2015. 19. The strident debates of the 1990s between comparativists and transfer researchers are hopefully a thing of the past. See Ma hias Middell, “Kulturtransfer und Historische Komparatistik. Thesen zu ihrem Verhältnis,” Comparativ 10 (2000) no. 1, 7–41; Hartmut Kaelble, “Die Deba e über Vergleich und Transfer und was jetzt?” H-Soz-u-Kult, February 8, 2005, h p://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/forum/2005-02-002. 20. Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, “Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtung. Der Ansatz der Histoire croisée und die Herausforderung des Transnationalen,” Geschichte und Gesellscha 28 (2002), 607–636. 21. Michael Lemke (ed.), Schaufenster der Systemkonkurrenz. Die Region Berlin-Brandenburg im Kalten Krieg, Cologne 2006. 22. Helmuth Berking and Martina Löw (eds), Die Eigenlogik der Städte, Frankfurt am Main 2008. 23. See, e.g., Thomas Mergel, “Zweifach am Rande. Die Dissidenten vom Prenzlauer Berg,” in Martin Sabrow (ed.), ZeitRäume. Potsdamer Almanach des Zentrums für Zeithistorische Forschung 2009, Potsdam 2010, 107–117. On Prenzlauer Berg, see also the more recent study by Dirk Moldt, Kleine Prenzlauer Berg-Geschichte, Berlin 2015.

24 | At the Edge of the Wall

24. See, e.g., Krista Tebbe, Kreuzberg—Prenzlauer Berg. Annähernd alles über Kultur, Berlin 1990. 25. On the gentrification of Prenzlauer Berg, see Hartmut Häußermann, André Holm, and Daniela Zunzer, Stadterneuerung in der Berliner Republik. Modernisierung in BerlinPrenzlauer Berg, Opladen 2002. 26. In 1987, Friedrichshain had 116,955 and Kreuzberg 140,938 inhabitants. 27. Rolf Lindner, “Urban Anthropology,” in Helmut Berking and Martina Löw (eds), Die Wirklichkeit der Städte, Baden-Baden 2005, 55–66, here 58 f. 28. The conceptual history of an “asymmetrically entangled parallel history” is hard to reconstruct. Bernd Faulenbach notes that he first heard the term coined by Christoph Kleßmann at a conference in the early 1990s. See Bernd Faulenbach (ed.), Asymmetrisch verflochtene Parallelgeschichte? Die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik und der DDR in Ausstellungen, Museen und Gedenkstä en, Essen 2005. The first documented use of the term appeared in the introduction of a multiauthor volume co-edited by Christoph Kleßmann et al., Deutsche Vergangenheiten—eine gemeinsame Herausforderung. Der schwierige Umgang mit der doppelten Nachkriegsgeschichte, Berlin 1999. Kleßmann develops the term programmatically in Christoph Kleßmann, “Konturen einer integrierten Na kriegsges i te,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 55 (2005) nos. 18–19, 3–11. Konrad H. Jarausch follows a similar approach with his concept of a plural sequence analysis: Konrad H. Jarausch, “‘Die Teile als Ganzes erkennen’. Zur Integration der beiden deutschen Nachkriegsgeschichten,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 1 (2004) no. 1, 10–30, h p://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/1-2004/id=4538. 29. Paul Nolte, “Öffentlichkeit und Privatheit. Deutschland im 20. Jahrhundert,” Merkur 60 (2006), 499–512. 30. Hans Paul Bahrdt, Die moderne Großstadt. Soziologische Überlegungen zum Städtebau [The Modern City: Sociological Deliberations on Urban Planning], Opladen 1998 [1961], 106. An English essay on this concept was published as “Public Activity and Private Activity as Basic Forms of City Association,” in Roland Warren (ed.), Perspectives on the American Community: A Book of Readings, Chicago 1966, 78–85. 31. Weber writes: “Accordingly, we shall speak of a ‘city’ in the economic sense of the word only if the local population satisfies an economically significant part of its everyday requirements in the local market, and if a significant part of the products bought there were acquired or produced specifically for sale on the market by the local population or that of the immediate hinterland. A city, then, is always a market center.” Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wi ich, trans. by various hands, Berkeley 1978 [1921–22], 1213. German original: Max Weber, Wirtscha und Gesellscha , 2nd half-volume, Tübingen 19564 [1921–22], 732. 32. Bahrdt, Die moderne Großstadt, 83. 33. Ibid., 83 f. 34. Ibid., 86–95. 35. Georg Simmel, “Die Gross-Städte und das Geistesleben,” in idem, Das Individuum und die Freiheit, Frankfurt am Main 1993 [1903], 192–204. See also Louis Wirth, “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” American Journal of Sociology 44 (1938), 1–24. 36. Bahrdt, Die moderne Großstadt, 99–105. 37. Ibid., 160. 38. Hans Paul Bahrdt was by no means trying to idealize premodern ways of life. He argued quite the opposite, in fact: “One of the main objectives in writing this book was to counter the u erly thought-restraining predominance of traditional critiques of city life. . . .” The grand planning concepts of functional separation and the fantasy of own-

Introduction | 25

39.

40.

41.

42.

43.

44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50.

ing one’s own home were for Bahrdt a result of these critiques, which he sought to debunk in his book. See Bahrdt, Die moderne Großstadt, 28. Though Hans Paul Bahrdt openly claimed to not be prescribing any particular urbanplanning agenda, his subsequent book Humaner Städtebau. Überlegungen zur Wohnungspolitik und Stadtplanung für eine nahe Zukun [Humane Urban Planning: Deliberations on Housing Policy for the Near Future], Hamburg 1968, did make some concrete policy suggestions. See Ulfert Herlyn, “Vorwort zur Neuauflage von Hans Paul Bahrdt,” Die moderne Großstadt. Soziologische Überlegungen zum Städtebau, Opladen 1998, 7–26, here 13 f. A pioneering critique of the functionally differentiated modern city was a book published at the same time as Bahrdt’s and which stridently a acked this division of urban functions: Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York 1961. Just as important in the German context was Alexander Mitscherlich’s provocative pamphlet on the “Inhospitality of Our Cities,” which argued from a psychoanalytical standpoint for a rethinking of the compartmentalized, disjointed and sca ered nature of modern cities in favor of a new urbanity characterized by a more dense se lement pa ern: Alexander Mitscherlich, Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer Städte. Ansti ung zum Unfrieden, Frankfurt am Main 1965. Berlin publisher Wolf Jobst Siedler was a prominent advocate for the rehabilitation of inner-city areas: Wolf Jobst Siedler and Elisabeth Niggemeyer, Die gemordete Stadt. Abgesang auf Pu e und Straße, Platz und Baum, Berlin 1964. Suffice it to mention Theodor Geiger’s analysis of the postwar period, in which he characterizes mass society by the modern division of public and private spheres of existence: Theodor Geiger, Demokratie ohne Dogma. Die Gesellscha zwischen Pathos und Nüchternheit, Munich 1963. Christina von Hodenberg links the growing discussion of the public and private spheres with the triumph of television and the huge popularity of the tabloid newspaper Bild in West Germany. See Christina von Hodenberg, Konsens und Krise. Eine Geschichte der westdeutschen Medienöffentlichkeit 1945–1973, Gö ingen 2006, 31. Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellscha , Frankfurt am Main 1992 [1962]; English translation: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Laurence, Cambridge 1989 [1962]. Manuel Wendelin, Medialisierung der Öffentlichkeit. Kontinuität einer normativen Kategorie der Moderne, Cologne 2011, 204. Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, 54–90. Ibid., 88 f. Thus, Hans Paul Bahrdt writes in the introduction to the new edition of his book from 1969 that his concept of the public sphere is “more unhistorical” and “more unphilosophical” than the concept of the public sphere put forth by Jürgen Habermas. Bahrdt was mainly concerned with a phenomenological description and analysis of the possibilities of individual human behavior under certain conditions: “‘The Modern City’ never had a great epistemological interest in the relationship between the public and private spheres. My only concern was in seeing a correspondence between typical architectural designs from various historical periods and typical human behaviors.” Bahrdt, Die moderne Großstadt, 31–33. Ibid., 106. Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, 269 ff. Bahrdt, Die moderne Großstadt, 132–164. In his introduction to the new edition of Bahrdt’s work, Ulfert Herlyn discusses the symptoms of a declining public sphere. In his view, “new developments have arisen that raise doubts as to whether the urban society of

26 | At the Edge of the Wall

51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61.

62.

63. 64.

65. 66.

67.

our day and age can be adequately understood with these categories. One need only think of the diffusion of cities resulting from the many obvious signs of urban disintegration, the eroding of the classic function of the inner city as a traditional field of urban communication, socio-structural shi s and atrophied skills in interpersonal discourse, tendencies towards delocalization of the public sphere through processes of economic globalization, and the increasing spatial independence of modern communications and information technologies whose full spatial and structural ramifications are yet to be determined.” Herlyn, Introduction to Bahrdt, 25 f. Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, 57; idem, Structural Transformation, 4. Axel Schildt, Moderne Zeiten. Freizeit, Massenmedien und “Zeitgeist” in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland der 50er Jahre, Hamburg 1995, 330; Nolte, “Öffentlichkeit und Privatheit,” 505. Wendelin, Medialisierung der Öffentlichkeit, 205. Bahrdt, Die moderne Großstadt, 55–80. Nolte, “Öffentlichkeit und Privatheit,” 510–512. Helmut Schelsky, Die skeptische Generation. Eine Soziologie der deutschen Jugend, Düsseldorf 1957. Bahrdt, Die moderne Großstadt, 105, 140. Richard Senne , The Fall of Public Man, New York 1977. Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Öffentli keit und Erfahrung. Zur Organisationsanalyse von bürgerli er und proletaris er Öffentli keit, Frankfurt am Main 1972; Habermas’s only reference to the historical lower classes was when he explained the decline in the bourgeois public sphere as a consequence of its being co-opted by the have-nots. The occupation of the political public sphere by the masses of the unpropertied supposedly led to the entanglement of state and society, depriving the public sphere of its old base without giving it a new one. See Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, 269 f., in English: Structural Transformation, 181 f., as well as Wendelin, Medialisierung der Öffentli keit, 217 f. Ilse Lenz, Die Geschichte der Frauenbewegung in Deutschland, Wiesbaden 20102. Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere. A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, Cambridge 1992, 109–142. John Michael Roberts and Nick Crossley, “Introduction,” in idem (eds), A er Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere, Oxford 2004, 1–27, here 2; Ma hew G. Specter, Habermas: An Intellectual Biography, Cambridge 2010, 1–26. Nolte, “Öffentlichkeit und Privatheit,” 500. This is Bahrdt’s argument: “in a social system in which no private sphere is tolerated, e.g., in a totalitarian regime, there is a denaturation of the public sphere if the ruling group succeeds in asserting its will. The public sphere is transformed into a pseudo-public sphere.” Bahrdt, Die moderne Großstadt, 102. Arnd Bauerkämper, Die Sozialgeschichte der DDR, Munich 2005, 3. This question is currently being investigated by a research project on the history of the private sphere in Nazi Germany carried out by the Institute of Contemporary History, Munich-Berlin. Gábor T. Ri ersporn, Jan C. Behrends, and Malte Rolf, “Von Sphären, Räumen und Schichten. Gab es eine sowjetische Ordnung von Öffentlichkeit? Einige Überlegungen aus komparativer Perspektive,” in Gábor T. Ri ersporn et al. (eds), Sphären von Öffentli keit in Gesells a en sowjetis en Typs. Zwis en partei-staatli er Selbstinszenierung und kir li en Gegenwelten/The Public Sphere in Societies of the Soviet Type. Between the Great Show of the Party-State and Religious Countercultures, Frankfurt am Main 2003, 389–421, here 390.

Introduction | 27

68. In this regard, Ri ersporn, Behrends and Rolf have discovered that the range of counterpublic spheres under state socialism has o en been overestimated, whereas their extreme fixation on the state has frequently been underestimated: “They were filled with the symbols, themes and dreams of the official canon.” Ibid., 409–411. 69. Gábor T. Ri ersporn, Jan C. Behrends, and Malte Rolf, “Öffentli e Räume und Öffentli keit in Gesells a en sowjetis en Typs. Ein erster Bli aus komparativer Perspektive,” in Ri ersporn et al., Sphären von Öffentli keit in Gesells a en sowjetis en Typs, 7–21, here 9. 70. Adelheid von Saldern, “Öffentli keiten in Diktaturen. Zu den Herrs a spraktiken im Deuts land des 20. Jahrhunderts,” in Günther Heydemann and Heinri Oberreuter (eds), Diktaturen in Deuts land. Verglei saspekte, Strukturen, Institutionen und Verhaltensweisen, Bonn 2003, 442–475, here 444. 71. Habermas himself writes that the (Hellenic) model of the public sphere still retains a curiously normative hold on our thinking. Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, 57. Nolte, on the other hand, suggests that the semantics of the adjective “public” have shi ed away in recent years from the notion of an emphatic public sphere towards a mere synonym for “state.” Nolte, “Öffentlichkeit und Privatheit,” 504. 72. Pathbreaking in this respect: Jörg Requate, “Öffentlichkeit und Medien als Gegenstand historischer Analyse,” Geschichte und Gesellscha 25 (1999), 5–32. Incidentally, there has been some confusion in the German debate due to the multiple meanings of the term Öffentlichkeit, which alternately translates as “public,” “public sphere” and “publicity.” 73. Habermas points out the diversity of competing meanings contained in the German words öffentlich and Öffentlichkeit. Instead of trying to clearly define them, however, he advocates pu ing them in their historical context. He makes this clear, for example, with the contrast in Roman law between publicus and privatus, which did not exist in the Middle Ages. Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, 54–57; English translation: Structural Transformation, 1–5. Bahrdt, too, interprets the distinction between public and private law as resulting from the formation of a public and private sphere. Bahrdt, Die moderne Großstadt, 105. 74. Ri ersporn, Behrends, and Rolf, “Von Sphären, Räumen und Schichten,” 392. 75. Still authoritative for the concept of the public sphere, albeit only until the nineteenth century: Lucian Hölscher, “Öffentlichkeit,” in O o Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (eds), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, vol. 4, Stu gart 1978, 413–467. 76. See, e.g., Wendelin, Medialisierung der Öffentlichkeit. 77. Friedhelm Neidhardt, “Öffentli keit, öffentli e Bewegungen, soziale Bewegungen,” in idem (ed.), Öffentli keit, öffentli e Bewegungen, soziale Bewegungen, Opladen 1994, 7–41; Volker Gerhardt, Öffentli keit. Die politis e Form des Bewusstseins, Muni 2012. 78. Paul Nolte, Was ist Demokratie? Geschichte und Gegenwart, Munich 2012, 163. 79. Paul Nolte, Die Ordnung der deutschen Gesellscha . Selbstentwurf und Selbstbeschreibung im 20. Jahrhundert, Munich 2000, 14. 80. As ideal types, however, the two terms were both understood as antipodes of the “state.” This distinction has largely vanished nowadays. 81. Senne , The Fall of Public Man. 82. Moritz Föllmer, Individuality and Modernity in Berlin: Self and Society from Weimar to the Wall, Cambridge 2013. 83. E.g., by Ingrid Oswald and Viktor Voronkov, “Licht an, Licht aus! ‘Öffentlichkeit’ in der (post-)sowjetischen Gesellscha ,” in Ri ersporn et al., Sphären von Öffentlichkeit in Gesellscha en sowjetischen Typs, 37–61, here 55.

28 | At the Edge of the Wall

84. Hartmut Häußermann and Walter Siebel, Stadtsoziologie. Eine Einführung, Frankfurt am Main 2004, 55–66. 85. Nolte, “Öffentlichkeit und Privatheit,” 502. 86. These include a large number of posters, redevelopment documents, house albums, etc. from the archive of the Kreuzberg Museum, which was renamed the FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum in April 2013. See the homepage of the Regional Museum and Archive of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg: h p://www. xb-museum.de (accessed April 14, 2016). 87. See the homepage of the GDR Press Portal of the Berlin State Library: h p://zefys.staats bibliothek-berlin.de/ddr-presse/ (accessed April 13, 2016) as well as the website of the associated research project at the Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam: h ps:// pressegeschichte.docupedia.de/wiki (accessed April 29, 2020). 88. Gerhard Paul, “Visual History,” Version: 3.0, Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, March 13, 2014, h p://docupedia.de/zg/Visual_History_Version_3.0_Gerhard_Paul?old id=108511; e.g.: Sonja Häder, Schülerkindheit in Ost-Berlin. Sozialisation unter den Bedingungen der Diktatur (1945-1958), Cologne 1998. 89. Andreas Ludwig, “Materielle Kultur,” Version: 1.0, Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, May 30, 2011, h p://docupedia.de/zg/Materielle_Kultur?oldid=84634. 90. Andreas Matschenz (ed.), Stadtpläne von Berlin. Geschichte vermessen, Berlin 2006; JanHenrik Friedrichs, “Mapping Kreuzberg. Karten als Quelle der Bewegungsges i te,” Werksta Ges i te 24 (2015) no. 70, 89–102. 91. The distinction in the bibliography between published sources and secondary literature is therefore somewhat artificial but is meant to serve as a handy guide. 92. E.g., Peter Bender, Episode oder Epoche? Zur Geschichte des geteilten Deutschland, Munich 1996; Peter Graf Kielmansegg, Nach der Katastrophe. Eine Geschichte des geteilten Deutschland, Berlin 2000. 93. Kleßmann, “Konturen einer integrierten Nachkriegsgeschichte”; Jarausch, “‘Die Teile als Ganzes erkennen.’” 94. Bösch, Geteilte Geschichte. 95. Detlev Brunner, Udo Grashoff, and Andreas Koetzing (eds), Asymmetrisch verflochten? Neue Forschungen zur gesamtdeutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte, Berlin 2013. 96. Dierk Hoffmann, Michael Schwartz, and Hermann Wentker, “Die DDR als Chance. Desiderate und Perspektiven kün iger Forschung,” in Ulrich Mählert (ed.), Die DDR als Chance. Neue Perspektiven auf ein altes Thema, Berlin 2016, 23–70. 97. Wolfgang Ribbe (ed.), Geschichte Berlins, 2 vols, Berlin 1987–1988; and its East Berlin counterpart: Laurenz Demps and Ingo Materna, Geschichte Berlins von den Anfängen bis 1945, Berlin (East) 1987. 98. Wolfgang Ribbe and Jürgen Schmädeke, Kleine Berlin-Geschichte, Berlin 1994; Arnt Cobbers, Kleine Berlin-Geschichte. Vom Mi elalter bis zur Gegenwart, Berlin 2005; Bernd Stöver, Geschichte Berlins, Munich 2010. 99. Michael Lemke, Vor der Mauer. Berlin in der Ost-West-Konkurrenz 1948 bis 1961, Cologne 2011, 20. On the role of Berlin in the Cold War, see also a number of contributions in Katharina Hochmuth (ed.), Krieg der Welten. Zur Geschichte des Kalten Krieges, Berlin 2017. 100. Krijn Thijs, Drei Geschichten, eine Stadt. Die Berliner Stadtjubiläen von 1937 und 1987, Cologne 2008. Also worth mentioning are the following comparative works: Melanie Arndt, Gesundheitspolitik im geteilten Berlin 1948–1961, Cologne 2009; Frank Roggenbuch, Das Berliner Grenzgängerproblem. Verflechtung und Systemkonkurrenz vor dem Mauerbau, Berlin 2008; Burghard Ciesla, Als der Osten durch den Westen fuhr. Die Geschichte

Introduction | 29

101.

102. 103. 104.

105.

106.

107.

108.

109.

110. 111. 112. 113.

114.

der Deutschen Reichsbahn in Westberlin, Cologne 2006; Heiner Stahl, Jugendradio im Kalten Ätherkrieg. Berlin als eine Klanglandscha des Pop (1962–1973), Berlin 2010. See esp. Stephanie Warnke, Stein gegen Stein. Architektur und Medien im geteilten Berlin 1950–1970, Frankfurt am Main 2009; Günter Schlusche et al. (eds), Stadtentwicklung im doppelten Berlin. Zeitgenossenscha en und Erinnerungsorte, Berlin 2014. Hartmut Häußermann and Andreas Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt? Sozialräumlicher Wandel seit 1990, Opladen 2000. An overview of these is provided by David E. Barclay, “Kein neuer Mythos. Das letzte Jahrzehnt West-Berlins,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 65 (2015) no. 46, 37–42. Wilfried Ro , Die Insel. Eine Geschichte West-Berlins 1948–1990, Munich 2009. The same goes for Hermann Rudolph’s history of Berlin since 1900: Hermann Rudolph, Berlin— Wiedergeburt einer Stadt. Mauerfall, Ringen um die Hauptstadt, Aufstieg zur Metropole, Berlin 2014. Stefanie Eisenhuth, Hanno Hochmuth, and Martin Sabrow (eds), Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 11 (2014) no. 2: West-Berlin, h p://www.zeithis torische-forschungen.de/2-2014. E.g., Jenny Schon (ed.), Wo sich Go und die Welt traf. West-Berlin. Zeitzeugen erinnern sich an die ersten Jahre nach dem Mauerbau, Vechta 2011; Ulrike Sterblich, Die halbe Stadt, die es nicht mehr gibt. Eine Kindheit in Berlin (West), Reinbek bei Hamburg 2012; Wolfgang Müller, Subkultur Westberlin 1979–1989. Freizeit, Hamburg 2013; Barbara Sichtermann and Kai Sichtermann, Das ist unser Haus. Eine Geschichte der Hausbesetzung, Berlin 2017. See, e.g., Häder, Schülerkindheit in Ost-Berlin; Thomas Klein, “Frieden und Gerechtigkeit!” Die Politisierung der Unabhängigen Friedensbewegung in Ost-Berlin während der 80er Jahre, Cologne 2007; Danuta Kneip, Berufliche Diskriminierung und politische Dissidenz in der Honecker-DDR, Cologne 2009. Edith Scheffer’s local study of the two neighboring small towns of Sonneberg (East) and Neustadt bei Coburg (West) is noteworthy as an example of a microhistory of a German-German border area. Edith Scheffer, Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain, Oxford 2011. From an ethnological perspective: Falk Blask (ed.), Geteilte Nachbarscha . Erkundungen im ehemaligen Grenzgebiet Treptow und Neukölln, Berlin 1999. Anne Gröschner investigated Gleimstrasse, which was divided between Prenzlauer Berg and Wedding from 1961 to 1989. See Anne Gröschner (ed.), Grenzgänger, Wunderheiler, Pflastersteine. Die Geschichte der Gleimstraße in Berlin, Berlin 1998. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg. Jens Dobler, Von anderen Ufern. Geschichte der Berliner Lesben und Schwulen in Kreuzberg und Friedrichshain, Berlin 2003. Martin Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, Berlin 2009, esp. 108–148. Barbara Lang, Mythos Kreuzberg. Ethnographie eines Stad eils (1961-1995), Frankfurt am Main 1998. Urban transformation and the protest culture of Kreuzberg are also investigated by Carla MacDougall, “In the Shadow of the Wall. Urban Space and Everyday Life in Berlin Kreuzberg,” in Timothy Brown and Lorena Anton (eds), Between the Avant-Garde and the Everyday. Subversive Politics in Europe from 1957 to the Present, New York 2011, 154–173; Belinda Davis, “The City as Theater of Protest: West Berlin and West Germany, 1962–1983,” in Gyan Prakash and Kevin M. Kruse (eds), The Spaces of the Modern City: Imaginaries, Politics and Everyday Life, Princeton 2008, 247–274. E.g., Alf Bremer et al., Kreuzberg Chamissoplatz. Ges i te eines Berliner Sanierungsgebietes, Berlin 2007; Andrea Geris er and Kerstin Jablonka, Ges i te von Orten im Wrangelkiez. Eine Ausstellung in S aufenstern, Berlin 2008.

30 | At the Edge of the Wall

115. Paradigmatically: Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm, Straßenschlachtung. Geschichte, Abriß und gebrochenes Weiterleben der Admiralstraße, Berlin 1984. Other publications on the history of Kreuzberg emerged in the context of the Berliner Geschichtswerksta (Berlin History Workshop) in West Berlin, concentrating for the most part on the history of Nazism in the district. See, e.g., Berliner Geschichtswerksta (ed.), Juden in Kreuzberg. Fundstücke, Fragmente, Erinnerungen, Berlin 1991. 116. There is, however, a recent counterpart to the abovementioned Kleine Kreuzbergges i te: Martin Düspohl and Dirk Moldt (eds), Kleine Friedri shainges i te, Berlin 2013. The district mayor, Monika Herrmann, refers explicitly to the Friedri shain Heimatbu (local history) of 1930 in the preface. See Gens , Liesigk, and Mi aelis, Der Berliner Osten. 117. See, e.g., John Stave, Stube und Küche. Erlebtes und Erlesenes, Berlin (East) 1987; Waldemar Brust, Koppenstraße 60. Eine Berliner Kindheit in der Weimarer Zeit. Episoden aus dem Berlin der 20er und 30er Jahre, Berlin (East) 1987. 118. Jan Feustel, Verschwundenes Friedrichshain. Bauten und Denkmale im Berliner Osten, Berlin 2001; Wanja Abramowski, Siedlungsgeschichte des Bezirks Friedrichshain von Berlin bis 1920, Berlin 2000; Kerima Bouali and Maren Schulze, Bewegte Zeiten. Friedrichshain zwischen 1920 und heute, Berlin 2000. 119. E.g., Wanja Abramowski, Boxhagen—zwis en Aufruhr und Langeweile. Eine Stad eilges i te, Berlin 2003; Martin Wiebel, East Side Story. Biographie eines Berliner Stad eils, Berlin 2004. 120. Anne Gröschner and Arwed Messmer, Berlin, Fru tstraße am 27. März 1952, Ostfildern 2012. Lothar Uebel also looks at one particular street: Lothar Uebel, Spreewasser, Fabrikschlote und Dampfloks. Die Mühlenstraße am Friedrichshainer Spreeufer, Berlin 2009. Also worth mentioning here is the extensive literature on the history of Stalinallee (as of 1961 Karl-Marx-Allee), e.g., Herbert Nicolaus and Alexander Obeth, Die Stalinallee. Geschichte einer deutschen Straße, Berlin 1997. 121. Dirk Moldt, Zwis en Haß und Hoffnung. Die Blues-Messen 1979–1986. Eine Jugendveranstaltung der Evangelis en Kir e Berlin-Brandenburg in ihrer Zeit, Berlin 2008; Susan Arndt et al. (eds), Berlin Mainzer Straße. Wohnen ist wi tiger als das Gesetz, Berlin 1992. 122. Requate, “Öffentlichkeit und Medien als Gegenstand historischer Analyse.” 123. Similar conclusions were reached by Ina Merkel, Wir sind doch nicht die Meckerecke der Nation. Briefe an das DDR-Fernsehen, Cologne 1998. 124. Michael Meyen, Denver Clan und Neues Deutschland. Mediennutzung in der DDR, Berlin 2003; idem, “Kollektive Ausreise? Zur Reichweite ost- und westdeutscher Fernsehprogramme in der DDR,” Publizistik 47 (2002) no. 2, 200–230. Cf. more recently Franziska Kuschel, Schwarzhörer, Schwarzseher und heimliche Leser. Die DDR und die Westmedien, Gö ingen 2016. 125. See, e.g., von Hodenberg, Konsens und Krise. 126. An exception here is the explorative volume by Daniel Fulda et al. (eds), Demokratie im Scha en der Gewalt. Geschichten des Privaten im deutschen Nachkrieg, Gö ingen 2010. 127. Paul Be s, Within Walls: Private Life in the German Democratic Republic, Oxford 2010. 128. Still the most comprehensive study, extending well beyond the housing conditions of the working class: Adelheid von Saldern, Häuserleben. Zur Ges i te städtis en Arbeiterwohnens vom Kaiserrei bis heute, Bonn 1995. 129. Johann Friedrich Geist and Klaus Kürvers, Das Berliner Mietshaus, 3 vols., Munich 1980/1984/1989. 130. Sven Reichardt, Authentizität und Gemeinscha . Linksalternatives Leben in den siebziger und frühen achtziger Jahren, Berlin 2014, here esp. 498–572.

Introduction | 31

131. Bart van der Steen, “Die internationalen Verbindungen der Hausbesetzerbewegung in den 70er und 80er Jahren,” in Alexander Gallus, Axel Schildt, and Detlef Siegfried (eds), Deutsche Zeitgeschichte—transnational, Gö ingen 2015, 203–220. 132. Reinhild Kreis, “Heimwerken als Protest. Instandbesetzer und Wohnungsbaupolitik in West-Berlin während der 1980er-Jahre,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 14 (2017) no. 1, 41–67, h p://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/1-2017/ id=5449. 133. Sichtermann and Sichtermann, Das ist unser Haus. 134. Udo Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen. Die Unterwanderung der staatlichen Wohnraumlenkung in der DDR, Gö ingen 2011. Life in East German prefab panelized housing—the other extreme of housing in the GDR—was investigated by Christine Hannemann, but only plays a minor role in the present study. See Christine Hannemann, Die Pla e. Industrialisierter Wohnungsbau in der DDR, Wiesbaden 1995. 135. On the general history of churches in Germany a er 1945, see esp. Thomas Großbölting, Der verlorene Himmel. Glaube in Deutschland seit 1945, Gö ingen 2013. On the GDR, see also Detlef Pollack, Kir e in der Organisationsgesells a . Zum Wandel der gesells a lien Lage der evangelis en Kir en in der DDR, Stu gart 1994. 136. Frank Bösch and Lucian Hölscher (eds), Jenseits der Kirche. Die Öffnung religiöser Räume seit den 1950er Jahren, Gö ingen 2013. 137. Of importance to the present study, esp. Klaus Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen. Eine Untersuchung zum Verhältnis von kirchlicher Arbeit und Stadtentwicklung in Berlin (West) von 1968 bis 1985 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Bezirks Kreuzberg, Frankfurt am Main 1992. 138. Jan Feustel, Turmkreuze über Hinterhäusern. Kirchen im Bezirk Friedrichshain, Berlin 1999; Marina Wesner, Kreuzberg und seine Go eshäuser. Kirchen, Moscheen, Synagogen, Tempel, Berlin 2007. 139. See more recently Tobias Becker, Anna Li mann, and Johanna Niedbalski (eds), Die tausend Freuden der Metropole. Vergnügungskultur um 1900, Bielefeld 2011; Paul Nolte (ed.), Die Vergnügungskultur der Großstadt. Orte, Inszenierungen, Netzwerke (1880–1930), Cologne 2016; Daniel Morat et al., Weltstadtvergnügen. Berlin 1880–1930, Gö ingen 2016. 140. Kaspar Maase, Grenzenloses Vergnügen. Der Aufstieg der Massenkultur 1850–1970, Frankfurt am Main 1997. 141. Uta G. Poiger, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in a Divided Germany, Berkeley 2000. 142. Ulrike Häußer and Marcus Merkel (eds), Vergnügen in der DDR, Berlin 2009. 143. Lothar Uebel, Viel Vergnügen. Die Geschichte der Vergnügungsstä en rund um den Kreuzberg und die Hasenheide, Berlin 1985. 144. Hanno Hochmuth and Johanna Niedbalski, “Kiezvergnügen in der Metropole. Zur sozialen Topographie des Vergnügens im Berliner Osten,” in Becker, Li mann, and Niedbalski, Die tausend Freuden der Metropole, 105–136.

 

PART I

Before the Wall

(

Chapter 1

HISTORICAL FOUNDATIONS

( Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg shared a very similar history until 1945 and even beyond. In the course of urbanization, the two districts expanded outside the old city proper, developing into what would become the structurally compact, lower-middle-class and working-class eastern part of Berlin. The process was largely complete by the start of World War I. It was only a er the war that the two districts acquired their present names as well as their territorial boundaries, which for the most part remained unchanged throughout the rest of the century. Even architectonically and socially the continuities and commonalities outweighed the differences until about mid-century. World War II was a turning point, both districts sustaining considerable damage. Though facing similar challenges in the immediate postwar years, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg ultimately followed different paths a er 1945, not only in terms of reconstruction but also in their social and political development. These divergent paths were only reinforced by the construction of the Wall and the ensuing sociospatial transformation, effectively ending the shared history of Friedri shain and Kreuzberg. This chapter focuses on the process of urbanization,1 more specifically on urban development, infrastructure and socio-spatial pa erns, with less of a focus on political history and key events in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. Urbanization was particularly dynamic in these two districts. Like elsewhere in Germany, they entered a post-Fordist phase in the second half of the twentieth century, coinciding with the political divide that emerged a er World War II. It is therefore especially interesting to see how two different systems responded to a new set of challenges. The respective social framework formed an important foundation for specific manifestations of the public and the private. The chapter thus outlines the historical basis for the chapters to follow, in which the relationship

Notes for this chapter begin on page 58.

36 | At the Edge of the Wall

between the public and private spheres is investigated with reference to select areas of life.

The Urbanization of Eastern Berlin Topographically speaking, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg are mainly located in the Berlin-Warsaw glacial valley. The valley is only about 4 to 5 kilometers (2.5 to 3 miles) wide at this particular spot and 33 to 38 meters above sea level.2 The Spree River runs northwest through the middle of this glacial valley. Beyond the Spree plain lie the Barnim and Teltow plateaus, two gently rolling and fertile ground moraines rising to a moderate height of 55 to 60 meters above sea level.3 It was in the valley between these two slopes that the two districts developed.4 In fact, there were no Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg to speak of before 1920, the two administrative districts having only been created by the Greater Berlin Act. The historical precursors of Friedrichshain were Stralauer Viertel (Stralau Quarter) and parts of Königsstadt, along with the colonies of Boxhagen and Friedrichsberg and the village of Stralau in the eastern part of the district. Northern Kreuzberg was created from the southern part of Friedrichstadt, southern Kreuzberg from Tempelhofer Vorstadt, and eastern Kreuzberg from Luisenstadt. None of these preexisting structures, with the sole exception of the old fishing village on Stralau peninsula, had previously been independent se lements.5 Unlike most other boroughs of Berlin, which arose from pre-existing, independent towns or communities, the neighborhoods that later became Friedri shain and Kreuzberg had not been medieval se lements but were outgrowths of the city of Berlin. With the exception of the southern part of Friedrichstadt, these were unplanned suburban se lements that sprouted up for the most part in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.6 A few of the eastern suburban se lements were incorporated into Berlin even before they were built up. This was the case in particular with Köpenicker Feld (which later became Luisenstadt) and Stralauer Vorstadt (later known as Stralauer Viertel). Both areas were enclosed within the Baroque-era Berlin Customs Wall completed in 1736, at a time when they were still only used for agricultural purposes.7 The relatively fertile soil and regularly flooded plains of the glacial valley on both banks of the Spree served the citizens of Berlin as a Feldmark, or “land-mark”—community land for agricultural purposes.8 In the eighteenth century, Huguenot families set up extensive flower nurseries for hyacinths and other ornamentals.9 The most famous of these nurseries belonged to the Bouché family in Stralauer Vorstadt. The slopes facing Barnim and Teltow were

Historical Foundations | 37

planted with expansive vineyards until they were wiped out by the severe winter of 1739–40. Moreover, the elevation of both plateaus was used for the construction of windmills.10 The region formed the agricultural hinterland of Berlin. In the eighteenth century, a number of well-to-do Berlin families used the area to the south and east of the royal seat as a summer retreat. The estates they set up were usually only occupied temporarily, however. Numerous inns lured ordinary Berliners into the countryside as well. Tivoli amusement park, with a rollercoaster and a panoramic view of Berlin, operated on Tempelhofer Berg (later renamed Kreuzberg) as of 1829.11 The well-known garden-restaurant Dustrer Keller (“Dark Cellar”), named a er a ravine which for centuries had been used to store wine, was located not too far away.12 The Stralauer Fischzug (“Stralau Fishermen’s Haul”) was celebrated on Stralau peninsula since 1574, possibly longer, developing into an important Berlin folk festival in the early nineteenth century and a racting tens of thousands of Berliners every year.13 Even young Karl Marx (1818–83), in his student days, spent a few months in Stralau in 1837 in order to escape the city and recover from a lung ailment.14 The area still served as a refuge for the growing Prussian capital. By the late eighteenth century, however, the Industrial Revolution was making its appearance on the banks of the Spree.15 Calico factories, bleacheries and dyeworks were set up on both banks of the river.16 These were replaced by machine-building factories and iron foundries when the textile industry temporarily collapsed due to the Continental Blockade.17 The first German steam engine was built in 1815 in the engineering works of Georg Christian Freund on Krautstrasse.18 Many manual laborers moved to Stralauer Vorstadt and Luisenstadt, the worlds they worked and lived in usually existing side by side.19 A number of poorhouses, infirmaries and cemeteries were set up at about the same time. Thus, the socio-spatial character that would define the eastern part of Berlin for the next century and a half had emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century.20 Prevailing westerly winds only favored this tendency. Whereas the more affluent social strata mainly se led in the western part of Berlin where the air was still clean, the eastern part of the city was marked by working-class neighborhoods close to the factories and their foul-smelling smokestacks.21 Added to this was the fact that the royal residence of Berlin had primarily been oriented westwards ever since the seventeenth century, the nobility and later successful industrialists building their homes on the road to Potsdam and Charlo enburg.22 Friedri swerder, Dorotheenstadt and Friedri stadt were all systematically planned suburbs built in this vein. The eastern part of the city, by contrast, was characterized by urban sprawl. The seamy sides of industrialization were more in evidence here.

38 | At the Edge of the Wall

The March Revolution of 1848 resulted in fierce clashes in the eastern part of the city.23 A number of barricades were erected and street ba les fought on Grosse Frankfurter Strasse. The 311 revolutionaries who died fighting the Prussian army were buried at the Cemetery of the March Fallen in the Volkspark of Friedrichshain.24 The park had only recently been opened as the “Tiergarten of the East” and was named a er Frederick II of Prussia.25 The first municipal hospital in Berlin was built between 1868 and 1874 on park grounds.26 Its newfangled pavilion architecture was meant to prevent the spread of infectious diseases and served as a model for a range of subsequent municipal hospitals set up in eastern Berlin during the second half of the nineteenth century.27 The Bethany Central Deaconess Hospital (Central-Diakonissen-Anstalt Bethanien), built between 1845 and 1847, had opened earlier on the southern bank of the Spree, a racting the likes of Theodor Fontane (1819–98), who worked there as a pharmacist before he became a successful novelist.28 Its imposing neo-Gothic structure, initially freestanding in an open field, was long the main landmark of Luisenstadt. The hospitals served as upstream infrastructure for a range of subsequent facilities, public and private. These included the English gasworks, erected in 1826 on Hellweg and 1838 on Holzmarktstrasse,29 as well as Berlin’s first waterworks, set up at Stralauer Tor in 1856.30 Private and public infrastructure was not only an important precondition for the urbanization of Berlin; it also promoted the development of what were then the city’s suburbs. A decisive factor in urbanization was the development of a transportation network. From 1845 to 1850 the old timber-floating canal was upgraded into the Landwehr Canal, enabling the circumnavigation of the Spree and Mühlendamm (Mill Dam).31 This was followed by the Luisenstadt Canal, the construction of which from 1848 to 1852 was intended, not least, to provide work for disaffected revolutionary workers.32 Both canals primarily served to drain and develop Luisenstadt. Only later were they upgraded into an efficient waterway system with port facilities.33 But the major driving force of urbanization was the railroad. The BerlinAnhalt Railway opened on the western edge of Friedrichstadt in 1841, four decades later its terminal station receiving a concourse 34 meters high and 60 meters wide.34 In 1842, the Berlin-Frankfurt Railway Station, later renamed Schlesischer Bahnhof (Silesian Station) and eventually renamed another four times, was built in Stralauer Viertel.35 Later came the Royal Eastern Railway (Königliche Ostbahn) in 1867 and the Berlin-Görlitz Railway in 1868. The various train stations were linked at first with a ground-level junction line. This proved over time to be an obstruction to traffic, so that in 1872 a new Ringbahn, or circle line, was built, which nowadays only crosses the outer margins of the district. Finally, in 1882

Historical Foundations | 39

the Stadtbahn, or city railway, was opened with a 12-kilometer (7.5-mile) route running clear across town, turning the Schlesischer Bahnhof into a main through station.36 These trains conveyed countless passengers and freight into the aspiring metropolis, fostering the further economic development of the eastern part of Berlin. The massive track system could also be a hindrance to urban development, however. The eastern part of Stralauer Viertel, for example, was cut in two by railroad lines, public street planning being subordinated to private railroads. This is evident in the case of Yorckstrasse, which had to be rerouted to the south on account of the Anhalt and Potsdam railroads, and which even today is crossed by dozens of railroad bridges. According to the street plan of 1862, named a er its author James Hobrecht (1825–1902), the Generalszug, or “Generals’ Procession,” a representative boulevard, was supposed to continue here in a straight line but ultimately had to be modified in light of the fact that private railroad companies had already begun construction work.37 For the most part, however, the Hobrecht Plan served as the blueprint for the overall road network built in the ensuing decades around the urban core of Berlin.38 Hobrecht, for his part, was guided by cost reasons in making use of existing trade routes and country lanes and in planning the construction of large housing blocks between city streets. The Hobrecht Plan was thus an important foundation for the development of most of Berlin’s periphery.39 But the decisive prerequisite for the densely built districts of eastern Berlin was the market-friendly Berlin Building Code (Berliner Bauordnung) of 1853, which hardly imposed any restrictions on the development of real estate.40 The only requirement was that inner courtyards be at least 5.34 x 5.34 meters (17 x 17 feet), providing sufficient space for a fire engine to turn around. The new building code formed the legal basis for the extremely dense construction of city blocks, following rampant real-estate speculation precipitated by the subdivision of property into separate lots.41 Other barriers were li ed when municipal boundaries were twice redefined, in 1841 and 1861, incorporating large swathes of the future districts of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg into the city of Berlin.42 The old city wall running through Luisenstadt and Stralauer Viertel, having lost its original function as a customs wall and a check on deserters, was demolished between 1866 and 1869 to free up development of the city’s former hinterland.43 New buildings sprang up out of nowhere, residential and commercial property now occupying land once used for agricultural and horticultural purposes on the eastern outskirts of Berlin. The soon-to-be capital of the German Empire was gripped by an unprecedented construction boom starting in 1863. A second boom followed in the 1880s on the heels of the intervening Panic of 1873, the so-called Founders’ Crash, as historians refer to it, just

40 | At the Edge of the Wall

two years a er German unification.44 By the start of World War I the future districts of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg had been completely built up.45 A “tenement belt” (Mietskasernengürtel) consisting of densely built quadrangles (Blockrandbebauung) had sprung up around three-quarters of the old city center.46 Berlin had become a “city of stone.”47 Tenement houses offered a solution to the influx of millions of people who’d been coming to the city since the mid-nineteenth century. Private contractors—at first o en simple manual laborers, over time an increasing number of housing associations—speculated on the huge demand caused by an unprecedented surge in population.48 Luisenstadt alone had an annual growth rate of ten thousand inhabitants during the 1860s. By 1871 there were 178,743 people living there, a figure that by the turn of the century would increase to 306,512.49 In 1880, fewer than half the residents of Stralauer Viertel had been born in the city of Berlin.50 The majority came from rural provinces in Prussia, especially from Brandenburg and East Prussia but also from Silesia.51 Added to this were many ethnic Poles, who se led in particular around Schlesischer Bahnhof.52 Eastern Berlin became the focal point for hundreds of thousands of men and women53 in search of work, freedom and modest prosperity in the young imperial capital.54 Those who could afford it usually moved westward into middle-class neighborhoods. But most stayed behind in the modest residential neighborhoods of eastern Berlin, which in socio-spatial terms extended well beyond the geographical east in the narrow sense and included the areas of Luisenstadt, Stralauer Viertel and even Königsstadt (today’s Prenzlauer Berg). These neighborhoods displayed a high degree of internal mobility.55 Twice a year, when rental contracts expired on April 1 and October 1, up to 40 percent of the local population would move in search of more affordable housing, being unable to pay the inevitable rent increases.56 Constant change was the only constant in the eastern part of Berlin.57 The social structure of eastern Berlin was lower middle class and working class. Only Tempelhofer Vorstadt was predominantly middle class, in large part due to the many officers who lived near the five army barracks around Tempelhofer Feld.58 Luisenstadt and Stralauer Viertel, by contrast, were mostly populated by skilled and unskilled workers, smallshop owners and innkeepers, subaltern civil servants and office workers, servants and charwomen, invalids and widows, prostitutes and pimps, as well as countless minors.59 Heinrich Zille (1858–1929), who grew up on Andreasstrasse close to Schlesischer Bahnhof, captured this milieu in his drawings, commenting critically: “You can kill a man with an apartment just as well as with an ax.”60 But given their low incomes, the shortage of housing and steady population growth, most people had no other choice. Many tenants had to take in night lodgers—those who could not

Historical Foundations | 41

afford their own apartment—just to pay the rent. Life in eastern Berlin was marked by hunger, sickness, abundant children, criminality and back rent.61 To use today’s terminology, these eastern districts were “problem neighborhoods.” Catastrophic living conditions in Stralauer Vorstadt led to the so-called Blumenstrasse Riot of July 25, 1872, triggered by the eviction of tenants from an apartment on that street.62 Unrest of this sort tended to be rare, however.63 This may have had to do with the fact that the neighborhoods that would later become Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg were not purely working-class neighborhoods in the days of the German Empire.64 Indeed, most tenement buildings exhibited a certain social stratification.65 The result was not so much “cordial relations between congenial tenants however different their financial situation” as envisioned by James Hobrecht, but clear-cut socio-spatial distinctions.66 Whereas ordinary working-class families lived in the side and rear buildings in small one-room-and-kitchen apartments, solidly middle-class families lived in the larger apartments in the buildings facing the street.67 Businessmen, doctors and lawyers set up their offices near their clients and lived on the “bel étage” one floor up from street level. The poorest of the poor lived in the basement and the a ic. Thus, the hierarchy of floors reflected a socio-spatial division just like the front and rear buildings did.68 In short, these tenement buildings mirrored the German Empire’s class society.69 There were some tentative a empts to improve living conditions in Berlin. The new Building Code of 1887 provided for larger courtyards, and the first reform-style cooperative housing developments came into existence around the turn of the century. Alfred Messel (1853–1909) designed a residential complex north of Frankfurter Allee in 1898 that was awarded the gold medal at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair.70 On the whole, however, the authorities were powerless to improve living conditions in the eastern part of Berlin. Real estate on either side of the Spree was the product of private contractors. The communal self-government of Berlin was dominated by landlords and had relatively li le authority compared with the Prussian state. Moreover, the neighborhoods of “wild” suburban eastern Berlin had no local city council despite having just as many inhabitants as independent municipalities like Charlo enburg to the west of Berlin.71 Urban planning in the active sense was not really possible under these conditions, being largely limited to adaptive planning and performance management.72 Subsequent infrastructure included the schools built by two successive chief city architects, Hermann Blankenstein (1829–1910) and Ludwig Hoffmann (1852–1932).73 New, sturdier bridges were built over the Spree to be er connect Luisenstadt and Stralauer Viertel.74 The Oberbaum Bridge,

42 | At the Edge of the Wall

completed in 1896, was crossed by Berlin’s first elevated train in 1902 on its trunk route between Warschauer (Warsaw) Bridge and Potsdamer Platz.75 Three facilities in particular helped improve a problematic hygiene situation. The construction of a modern sewer system allowed wastewater to be diverted underground.76 The Central Stockyard and Slaughterhouse was set up in the 1880s at the initiative of Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), concentrating Berlin’s meatpacking industry in one location.77 Finally, between 1886 and 1892 fourteen municipal market halls were opened, replacing the old weekly markets and assuming an important supply function.78 Three market halls were built in what later became Kreuzberg,79 and in 1888 the second-largest covered market in Berlin opened in Stralauer Viertel, completely tucked away inside a block of buildings.80 The fusion of residential and commercial space was a typical structural characteristic of eastern Berlin. This “Kreuzberg mix,” as it was later called, could be found in much of Luisenstadt and even in Stralauer Viertel.81 Small and medium-sized businesses manufactured their wares on factory floors located in the second or third courtyard of tenement houses.82 Paradigmatic of this structure was the so-called export quarter on Ri erstrasse in Luisenstadt, where high-quality goods were produced for the global market.83 A number of these smaller businesses developed into major corporations. Telegraphen-Bau-Anstalt Siemens & Halske, for example, was founded in 1847 from a modest backyard business on Schöneberger Strasse 33 before se ing up its own manufacturing district, Siemensstadt (“Siemenstown”) in northwest Berlin, at the turn of the century.84 Luisenstadt, in particular, was an important business location in Berlin despite having few large factories due to a general tendency of industry to migrate to the outskirts of town.85 The area that later became Friedrichshain, by contrast, had a number of large production sites. These included the gas-appliance, illumination and arms company of Julius Pintsch (1815–84) at Stralauer Platz, the bo le factory in Stralau, and Knorr-Bremse at Bahnhof Rummelsburg (Ostkreuz).86 Another important industry was beer. About a dozen large breweries were located on both sides of the Spree, on the slopes of Barnim and Teltow in particular. Beginning in the 1880s they were gradually converted into joint-stock companies.87 The largest of these were Böhmisches Brauhaus on Landsberger Allee and SchultheissBrauerei on Kreuzberg hill.88 Most of the beer in the imperial capital was brewed and consumed in the eastern part of Berlin.89 Mass consumption grew in importance over time, unfolding its emancipatory potential from the turn of the twentieth century through inclusion of the urban lower classes.90 Big department-store chains now opened branches in Luisenstadt and Stralauer Viertel. In 1894 Wertheim opened its first store on Moritzplatz.91 In 1901 Jandorf followed suit at the cor-

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ner of Grosse Frankfurter Strasse and Andreasstrasse.92 Not far away was the Rose Theater, whose popular performances a racted a large and devoted crowd from the lower-middle-class and proletarian milieu.93 The press and popular literature were also part of the urban entertainment industry, both produced and distributed in southern Friedrichstadt.94 The so-called newspaper quarter emerged on Kochstrasse around 1880. Rudolf Mosse (1843–1920), August Scherl (1849–1921) and Leopold Ullstein (1826–99) ran major publishing houses here.95 The Social Democratic daily Vorwärts was printed on nearby Lindenstrasse, which was home to SPD headquarters, eastern Berlin being the bedrock of support for the Social Democratic Party of Germany.96 Thousands of loyal followers heard the likes of Friedrich Engels (1820–95), Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900), August Bebel (1840–1913), Paul Singer (1844–1911) and other political leaders of the labor movement give speeches at large festival halls in Stralauer Viertel.97 Reichstag electoral district No. IV, stretching from eastern Luisenstadt, across Stralauer Viertel all the way to eastern Königsviertel, had been firmly in the hands of the Social Democrats since 1877. Prussian three-class franchise, however, prevented corresponding representation at the communal level until 1918.98 World War I hit eastern Berlin hard. Food supplies to the densely populated neighborhoods of Stralauer Viertel and Luisenstadt could no longer be maintained. Osthafen (East Port), the central trans-shipment point for foodstuffs in the imperial capital, had to be guarded day and night to reduce the risk of the . The poor supply situation led to the spread of diseases such as tuberculosis, dysentery and cholera. In the “turnip winter” of 1917 schools could no longer be heated.99 Politically the situation escalated too. Following strikes in January 1918, a number of factories in Stralauer Viertel and Luisenstadt were put under military command. The newspaper quarter was hotly contested during the November Revolution and the Spartacist Uprising. On January 11, 1919, Freikorps units under the leadership of Gustav Noske (1868–1946) laid siege to the Vorwärts building and ultimately captured it with the help of artillery and flamethrowers.100 World War I and the revolution ended in Berlin with fierce street ba les,101 laying the groundwork for a fundamentally new order in the eastern part of Berlin.

From the Creation of the Districts to Their Destruction in World War II The revolution enabled the first free and equal democratic elections and local self-government in eastern Berlin. The advocates of a unified mu-

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nicipality seized the moment and prevailed against the representatives of middle-class Berlin suburbs who wanted to limit the growing influence of the lower classes on city politics. On April 27, 1920, the Prussian Constitutional Convention passed by a narrow majority the law on the establishment of the new municipality of Berlin. The so-called Greater Berlin Act took effect on October 1, 1920. The unified municipality of Greater Berlin emerged overnight through the merging of eight towns, fi y-nine rural communities and twenty-seven estate districts. It doubled the city’s number of inhabitants and increased its surface area by an astonishing thirteenfold.102 Greater Berlin was divided into twenty administrative districts, each of which had its own local self-government and district mayor.103 Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg belonged to the six core districts that had formerly constituted Old Berlin. The new districts were given the numbers V and VI but, unlike Paris with its arrondissements, were never really referred to as such. The new names also took a while to catch on. In contrast to most of the other districts of Berlin, the newly formed districts of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg were not named a er older se lements but a er well-known, distinctive landmarks intended to lend them a positive image.104 In both cases these were existing park grounds, at a considerable remove from the mass of buildings otherwise characteristic of these neighborhoods: the Friedrichshain Volkspark (“Frederick’s Grove Public Park”) and Kreuzberg (“Cross Mountain”) in Viktoriapark, which got its name from the Iron Cross on the national monument erected there in 1821.105 The boundaries of the new districts were drawn up bureaucratically.106 Both were more or less arbitrary amalgamations of heterogeneous se lement areas.107 In terms of their size and population, however, the two new artificial creations were relatively similar. In 1920 Friedrichshain had 326,062 inhabitants with a surface area of 910 hectares (2,249 acres); Kreuzberg had an area of 1,068 hectares (2,639 acres) and 366,299 inhabitants. This made the two districts the most densely populated in Greater Berlin.108 Their social and employment structures were also comparable, though Kreuzberg did have more civil servants and self-employed individuals. Wage-laborer families were predominant in both districts. Blue-collar and co age-industry workers accounted for 55.4 percent of the working population in Friedrichshain and 46.0 percent in Kreuzberg.109 Contrary to the general trend towards tertiarization110 in Berlin, 60.5 percent of Kreuzberg’s working population, and even 63.4 percent of Friedrichshain’s, were employed in industry and skilled trades.111 The two districts were hit correspondingly hard by the economic crises of the Weimar Republic. In 1932 one in four inhabitants of Friedrichshain was dependent on social welfare.112 In 1933 a third of the population of Kreuzberg was unemployed.113 Higher-income groups fell into poverty or moved to the western part of

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town.114 Moreover, Kreuzberg lost its traditional function as a military base.115 The social structure of both districts became more homogeneous compared with the prewar era, so that now they were truly working-class districts.116 Stately apartments from the “founders’ era” (Gründerzeit) were split up and turned into smaller units. New apartments were rarely built.117 New social housing during the Weimar years was built almost exclusively in other districts, since Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg were already built to capacity. The only place le to build was literally underground. Hence the Berlin U-Bahn, the city’s subway system, was massively expanded in the 1920s with all new lines passing through Friedrichshain or Kreuzberg, be er connecting these working-class districts to the inner city. In 1926 the NorthSouth Railway (Nord-Süd-Bahn) was opened between Grenzallee/Kreuzberg and Seestrasse.118 In 1930 the second north-south line was completed between Boddinstrasse and Gesundbrunnen119 as well as the line between Alexanderplatz and Friedrichsfelde.120 The expansion of the subway was meant in part to serve as a make-work program. Transportation infrastructure was now understood as a public responsibility and gradually municipalized. Thus, the Berliner Verkehrsgesellscha (BVG), the city’s public transport authority, was founded in 1929, absorbing the many formerly private omnibus and streetcar lines passing through Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. Another new feature were direct subway connections to the big department stores. Karstadt at Hermannplatz, built in 1929, with its two towers and seven floors was considered the most modern of its kind in Europe.121 The expansion of consumer society to include the working masses also included venues like the Plaza at Küstriner Platz, a variety theater with seating for three thousand opened in 1929 in the former Ostbahnhof. Stars such as Claire Waldoff (1884–1957) and Oscar Sabo (1881– 1969) brought revues from the western part of town, and hence a taste of the “Golden Twenties,” to the eastern reaches of Berlin.122 Light and shadow existed cheek by jowl. Friedrichshain had a particular “image problem.” Down-at-the-heel Stralauer Viertel had the reputation of being the center of Berlin’s underworld, whose criminal gangs or “Ringvereine” supposedly had more say than the police.123 The postal code “O 17,” the area around Schlesischer Bahnhof, was code for the seamy underside of Berlin.124 The mayor of Friedrichshain, Paul Mielitz (1881– 1959), decided to take a stand against his district’s ill-repute.125 He blamed its reputation as a second Chicago on a sensationalist media that portrayed the eastern part of town as a foreign city. Mielitz pointed out that this supposedly “alien” Berlin was actually a slice of Old Berlin, and that only fi y years ago the area had been a solidly middle-class residential neighborhood. But the misery of war and the postwar period had torn

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the neighborhood apart, he argued. “The tenement house is no longer a homogeneous whole, but is torn asunder by every imaginable political sentiment in the turbulent times we live in.”126 Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg were the scene of numerous political street fights and brawls during the 1920s.127 The social-democratic BlackRed-Gold Banner of the Reich (Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold) and the communist Red Front Fighters’ League (Rotfrontkämpferbund) had violent encounters with Nazi storm troopers, who operated a garrison on Hedemannstrasse in Kreuzberg.128 Overall the le ist spectrum was more heavily represented in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. Nostitzstrasse and Naunynstrasse in Kreuzberg, colloquially known as “Nostitzritze” and “Naunynritze,” were well-known strongholds of the German Communist Party (KPD).129 Friedrichshain was traditionally known as the “Red East,” as reflected in elections to the Reichstag, in which the Nazi Party fared comparatively poorly.130 In 1930, Nazi storm trooper Horst Wessel (1907–1930) was killed on Grosse Frankfurter Strasse 62. Though his death was occasioned by a private quarrel in the pimp milieu, Wessel was nonetheless conveniently fashioned into a martyr of the Nazi cause.131 On September 27, 1933, the new authorities renamed the district of Friedrichshain “Horst-Wessel-Stadt” (Horst Wessel City).132 The Friedrichshain hospital where he died of his gunshot wounds was also named a er Wessel and subsequently served as a Nazi cult site to which every schoolchild from the neighborhood was expected to make a pilgrimage. The Nazis thus took every opportunity to flaunt their triumph in the Red East. Indeed, their tyranny was extended to Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg immediately a er seizing power. Stormtrooper taverns like the Keglerheim133 or Yorckschlösschen doubled as “wildcat concentration camps.”134 The terror center of the Third Reich was set up on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in northern Kreuzberg. Gestapo, SS, and Security Service headquarters were all housed in the same complex, eventually being consolidated into the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt) in 1939.135 The infamous “house prison” where countless regime opponents were interrogated and tortured to death was located in the cellars of the former Prinz-Albrecht Hotel and the adjoining school of arts and cra s. Political resistance in eastern Berlin was crushed with violent means136 at the same time as local Jews, about 2 percent of the population in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, were being disenfranchised and persecuted.137 The synagogues on Lindenstrasse and Ko busser Ufer were destroyed on Pogrom Night in 1938.138 All in all, more than 2,800 Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg Jews were deported in the years that followed.139 Certain parts of the population profited from the eviction of tenants from so-called “Jew apartments,”140 which the Nazis hoped would ease

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the burden of a considerable and persistent housing shortage in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. Hardly any new apartments were built there under the Nazis. Friedrichshain acquired new housing only through the incorporation of Friedrichsberg and Boxhagen in 1938, which had previously belonged to the city of Lichtenberg from 1912 to 1920 and the newly formed district of Lichtenberg since 1920.141 The fusion came as a directive from the central government, the local self-government of municipal districts having meanwhile been subordinated to the “Führer principle.” The new regime used various measures to co-opt eastern Berlin. The Strength Through Joy (Kra durch Freude) organization took over the Plaza theater.142 By 1936 there was near full employment in both districts. Apart from a general economic upswing, employment measures such as the construction of the North-South city railway from 1936 to 1939 were another contributing factor.143 The Kreuzberg armaments industry in particular was booming.144 Numerous forced-labor camps operated in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg during the war.145 At Knorr-Bremse alone, 3,000 out of a total of 7,500 employees were foreign slave laborers.146 It was slave labor that also built the two giant flak bunkers in Friedrichshain Volkspark in 1941, meant to offer the local population protection from bombing raids.147 British and American bombers intensified their air raids on Berlin in November 1943. The heaviest bombings took place on February 3, 1945, leaving 119,057 people bombed out of their homes.148 On April 21, 1945, the assault lines of the 5th Soviet Shock Army broke through the barricades at Frankfurter Tor and fought their way towards the center of Berlin, incurring heavy losses.149 SS units in Kreuzberg blew up Karstadt department store at Hermannplatz as well as Ko busser Bridge.150 Only on May 2 did German troops surrender in Berlin. Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg were le a field of ruins.

The Postwar Period and Reconstruction Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg were among the most heavily destroyed districts of Berlin. A good 45.5 percent of the buildings in Friedrichshain were totally destroyed or badly damaged, in Kreuzberg about 40 percent.151 The extent of the damage was very unevenly distributed. In both districts it was the westernmost areas closest to downtown Berlin that were hit the hardest rather than the eastern parts.152 Stralauer Viertel in Friedrichshain was literally reduced to rubble; about eight hundred factory buildings were destroyed there. As for Kreuzberg, the southern Friedrichstadt and western Luisenstadt areas were almost entirely devastated; two-thirds of

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its factories were destroyed, its elevated trains, gas, electricity and water lines badly damaged.153 Its entire urban infrastructure lay in ruins. Both districts lost nearly half their populations compared with prewar levels. In 1946 Friedrichshain had only 193,115 inhabitants, Kreuzberg 204,867.154 Their populations recovered over time, however, thanks to a huge influx of refugees. Many expellees from the East came to Friedri shain and Kreuzberg, where they found accommodation in private apartments or refugee camps.155 Former forced-laborer barracks and bunker complexes were used for this purpose, the so-called Fichte Bunker alone housing more than five hundred refugees.156 The remaining older inhabitants o en viewed these newcomers as competitors for scarce food, living space and work.157 The situation escalated dramatically in the bi er winter of 1946–47. Infant mortality rates were high.158 Countless individuals contracted tuberculosis and suffered from malnutrition.159 Potato fields were plundered on foraging trips to the countryside, Berliners bartered their belongings for food on the black market,160 and youth criminality skyrocketed.161 Despite the many efforts of the occupying powers to get everyday life and cultural life back to normal, hunger, housing shortages and unemployment remained pressing concerns for most of the city’s inhabitants. The situation was the same to begin with in all four zones of occupation. Friedrichshain belonged to the Soviet sector according to provisions of the Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam conferences. Kreuzberg was ceded to the Americans on July 4, 1945. This more or less arbitrary partitioning of the city had far-reaching consequences. The political division of Berlin beginning in 1948 resulted in the two districts following different paths. Whereas property relations in Kreuzberg were more or less le intact, in Friedrichshain the larger industrial enterprises like Knorr-Bremse and the Osram works were expropriated and turned into Soviet joint-stock companies or later into state-owned (“People’s Own”) enterprises (VEBs).162 Apartment buildings were placed under communal housing administration,163 whereas buildings “Aryanized” in 1941 and the property of those who had fled to the West henceforth became state property.164 Expropriations and the radical restructuring that accompanied the transition to a socialist society in the Soviet zone of occupation prompted many East Germans to go West. During the height of Stalinization in mid-1952 about fi een thousand people a month were leaving the GDR for West Berlin. Many refugees from the East were temporarily received in Kreuzberg, a logical first stop because of its location directly on the sector border.165 The German Red Cross set up refugee shelters on Cuvrystrasse and Askanis er Platz.166 Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg were a window onto system conflict due to their location on the East-West border.167 Ten “border cinemas” in

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Kreuzberg propagated the values of a free society and the achievements of Western consumer society. Though primarily appealing to crowds from nearby Friedrichshain, they a racted moviegoers from all of East Berlin and the whole of the GDR.168 The real draw of these border cinemas was the wide array of popular entertainment films they offered at reduced prices. East Berlin movie theaters were simply outmatched in this regard. Most were in poor condition with superannuated projection equipment dating largely from the prewar period.169 Despite their political division, however, the two halves of the city remained intertwined in myriad ways. Michael Lemke even talks about an “entangled society” (Verflechtungsgesellscha ) in characterizing divided Berlin before the construction of the Wall.170 In terms of reconstruction, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg faced the same set of challenges. Thousands of “rubble women” (Trümmerfrauen) were busy collecting bricks from buildings destroyed in the war, chipping off the plaster and remains of mortar so they could be reused.171 Those who volunteered to help clear away rubble were eligible for raffles in which new apartments were given away.172 In the Friedrichshain Volkspark one million cubic meters of debris were heaped up into two rubble mountains, burying the two flak bunkers that had to be demolished.173 A reconstruction motif was included in the coat of arms of both districts, the Berlin Bear in Friedrichshain’s new coat of arms being depicted holding a spade.174 But the parallels in reconstruction were even more fundamental. Housing was viewed as a public responsibility and largely state-financed in East and West alike.175 “In both parts of the city, the forces and markets in effect until then were rendered invalid. State influence on spatial and architectural development was sizable in both parts, and their urban-planning concepts of the immediate postwar period were very similar.”176 Stalinallee in Friedrichshain served as an example of new urban planning and housing in East Berlin.177 The former Grosse Frankfurter Strasse had historically been the main thoroughfare in eastern Berlin and was now the centerpiece of reconstruction efforts. The advancing Red Army had destroyed almost every building there, allowing city planners to work from a clean slate. They drew on the urban-planning ideals of the interwar period, which called for a more open and functionally organized city. Hans Scharoun (1893–1972) created the so-called Wohnzelle Friedrichshain (“Friedrichshain Residential Cell”), designed to give its occupants plenty of “light, air and sun.”178 But only two of his buildings—in classical-modern style with access galleries—were completed by 1949 before Walter Ulbricht (1893–1973) declared war on this “formalist Bauhaus style.”179 Stalinallee would henceforth be built up with residential buildings according to the “Sixteen Principles of Urban Planning”—democratic

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in substance, national in form.180 It was in this vein that in 1950 Hermann Henselmann (1905–95) designed the high-rise at Weberwiese, borrowing classicist architectural elements of Schinkel and combining them with the Soviet “wedding-cake style” (Zuckerbäckerstil) of Moscow’s representative boulevards.181 The first apartments on Stalinallee were handed over to their tenants in 1952 and construction of the Friedrichshain section of Stalinallee was largely complete by 1958.182 The street was representative in two respects. For one thing, well-built and spacious apartments were intended to demonstrate the superiority of socialism. The apartments had bathrooms, central heating, elevators and garbage chutes.183 For another, this socialist boulevard was the main thoroughfare through East Berlin. It was where the SED held its annual rallies: the Liebknecht-Luxemburg demonstration in January, May Day celebrations, and the East German national holiday commemorating the founding of the GDR on October 7, 1949.184 Another kind of demonstration, however, began in mid-June 1953 at the construction site on Stalinallee. This one was aimed against de facto oneparty rule by the Socialist Unity Party and very nearly brought it down.185 Disgruntled construction workers gathered at Strausberger Platz to protest the recent government decision to raise their work quotas. Countless East Berliners joined them, demanding political freedom and an end to German division until Soviet tanks intervened and bloodily suppressed the revolt. Only grudgingly did SED leaders de-Stalinize in the ensuing years. Not until November 13, 1961 did they rename Stalinallee, which was therea er known as Karl-Marx-Allee.186 The proverbial iconoclastic toppling of monuments, that is, the clandestine removal at nigh ime of the enormous Stalin statue there, did not take place until a er Stalin’s remains were removed from the mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow.187 The West Berlin counterpart to Stalinallee was the Hansaviertel in the district of Tiergarten.188 Reconstruction in Kreuzberg involved no comparable prestige projects, housing shortages and unemployment being especially high there.189 The first emergency program in West Berlin was initiated in 1950 with funds from the Marshall Plan.190 But the reconstruction of Kreuzberg did not begin until 1954, and haltingly at that.191 As in the case of the Wohnzelle Friedrichshain, planning in the West Berlin district likewise followed the guiding principle of the functionally organized city.192 In the spirit of the Athens Charter and the social-housing projects of the Weimar Republic, West Berlin city planners viewed the ravages of World War II as an opportunity to change from the bo om up this city “made of stone”. New construction plans called for breaking up the streetscape and the old quadrangle style of building.193 New buildings were to be arranged in an open, “line-construction” (Zeilenbau) fashion,

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far from commercial and traffic areas. The O o Suhr development with 2,300 apartments around Oranienstrasse and Alexandrinenstrasse (the so-called Neue Wohnstadt am Waldeckpark) was built in this manner in 1956. The Spring project with 2,000 new residential units was built not far away in 1959 on Lobeckstrasse, Ri erstrasse, Prinzenstrasse and Wassertorstrasse.194 Public buildings were to propagate Western ideals. Thus, a generous multi-million-dollar donation from the United States enabled the construction of the American Memorial Library at Hallesches Tor, a modern open-access library intended to serve the aims of re-education as well as commemorating the Berlin Airli .195 The guiding principle of reconstruction was the car-friendly city. Since 1955–56, the West Berlin Senate envisioned an inner-city highway network, with plans to connect both halves of the city despite ongoing political conflicts.196 All other infrastructure was considered obsolete. Anhalter Bahnhof, severely damaged during the war, was decommissioned in 1952 and largely torn down in 1960 to make way for private developers. The driving force in this instance was property developer Siegried Kressmann-Zschach (1929–90), supported by her husband Willy Kressmann (1907–86), the charismatic mayor of Kreuzberg from 1949 to 1962,197 thus providing an example of the fusion of private and public interests common to West Berlin. Like no other local politician of his time, Kressmann recognized the importance of media publicity, using the press and television to effectively advocate his cause,198 even practicing an early form of détente with the GDR. The situation between East and West Berlin worsened nonetheless, until finally the Wall was built on August 13, 1961.

After the Erection of the Wall The construction of the Berlin Wall le Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg completely cut off from each other. The Spree River formed a 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) high-security border between the two districts.199 This particular section of the Berlin Wall ran along Mühlenstrasse and Stralauer Allee, but the entire river, up to the water’s edge in Kreuzberg, was East German territory. Kreuzberg was encased, as it were, by an 8.7-kilometer (5.4-mile) section of the Wall, the eastern part of the district ju ing out like a peninsula into East Berlin.200 The park landscape and Engelbecken (“Angel’s Pool”) canal basin of the former Luisenstadt Canal were filled in, leveled, and transformed at this spot into a particularly wide death strip.201 The outer part of the Wall towards West Berlin extended all the way to the sidewalk of Bethaniendamm, the entire street here belonging to the East Berlin district of Mi e. Though the buildings on this side of the street

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belonged to Kreuzberg, West Berlin civil servants (policemen, mailmen, social workers, even teachers) legally had no access to them, since the sidewalk leading to their front doors was technically East German territory.202 This was one of the many curiosities of a state boundary drawn down the middle of an existing urban ensemble. The Wall disrupted all traditional transportation links between Friedri shain and Kreuzberg. The only border crossing from Kreuzberg to East Berlin was Checkpoint Charlie at Friedrichstrasse. This checkpoint, however, made famous by the tank standoff in October 1961, turning it into a symbol of the Cold War, was exclusively an entry and exit point for Allied officers, diplomats and foreign travelers.203 With the frontiercrossing agreements of 1963 to 1966, two other checkpoints were set up in Kreuzberg, at Heinrich-Heine-Strasse and Oberbaum Bridge, serving the population of West Berlin. Only in 1972, however, were regulations put in place for citizens of West Berlin to receive a permanent visitor’s visa.204 As of the mid-1970s, select individuals from the GDR, mostly retirees, were permi ed to enter West Berlin via these Kreuzberg checkpoints. But Oberbaum Bridge, which could only be crossed on foot, would remain a bo leneck between East and West. Numerous individuals a empted to swim across the river to freedom from Friedrichshain to Kreuzberg. The Spree proved lethal in at least thirteen cases.205 On October 9, 1961 Udo Düllick (1936–61) drowned while a empting to reach the shore in Kreuzberg, and a number of fugitives were shot in the Spree by East German border troops. Particularly tragic were the accidental deaths of five children who were playing at the Gröbenufer (now May-Ayim-Ufer) and fell into the water. While East German border troops stood by and watched, West Berlin police first had to seek permission from the GDR to launch their rescue boats in East German territory. When another Turkish boy died in the same way in 1975, a spontaneous demonstration erupted in which approximately two thousand mostly Turkish residents protested the SED regime. Only a erwards were agreements reached between East and West on future rescue efforts in the waters of the Spree and the Gröbenufer was made more secure.206 The decades a er the Wall was built saw many changes for people living on both sides of the Spree. Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg both lost a fair share of inhabitants. Whereas 152,655 people still lived in Friedri shain in 1961, by 1990 there were only 107,844. The number of inhabitants in Kreuzberg plummeted from 191,898 to 153,916 during the same period.207 Many of these people moved into new housing developments in neighboring districts. In East Berlin it was Lichtenberg that grew at the expense of Friedrichshain,208 while West Berliners fed up with Kreuzberg’s rundown housing moved to the newly built Gropiusstadt quarter in Neu-

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kölln.209 It was the old and the poor who stayed behind in both districts, though admi edly this process of socio-spatial segregation was considerably more harsh in Kreuzberg.210 Kreuzberg experienced a significant influx of migrant workers (Gastarbeiter) who offset the loss of commuters from East Berlin a er the Wall was built and who mainly worked in the electronics and textile industries. In 1960 only 225 people with foreign passports lived in Kreuzberg; by 1970 the number had risen to 39,000.211 Two-thirds of these individuals came from Turkey.212 There was no comparable labor immigration in Friedri shain, with just a couple of hundred contract laborers from Vietnam, Angola and Mozambique working in a few large factories.213 Unlike in Kreuzberg, however, they did not leave a visible mark on the city, but lived in workers’ dormitories well-isolated from the East German populace.214 Economic structures in the eastern district remained very traditional. Friedrichshain had more than twenty large industrial enterprises, all of which had been state-owned since the 1960s, and was thus an important location for industry in East Berlin. The largest manufacturing facilities were the NARVA lightbulb factory (“N” for nitrogen, “AR” for argon, “VA” for vacuum), the Berlin Brake Works, Stralau Glassworks, the printing presses of Neues Deutschland, VEB Measuring Electronics, VEB Berlin Carburetor and Filter Construction, as well as the Reichsbahn repair shop on Revaler Strasse.215 Friedrichshain profited from its location between downtown East Berlin and the outlying districts as well as from existing transport connections; Osthafen, Ostbahnhof and the container depot at Frankfurter Allee were of transregional importance.216 The bulk of Friedrichshain’s inhabitants were employed in the district itself. About six thousand people worked at NARVA alone. Friedrichshain was in fact paradigmatic for the GDR’s labor-extensive industrial production. Kreuzberg, on the other hand, was clearly on the decline as an industrial location. Its previous locational advantages had transformed into disadvantages,217 as the region was no longer located directly on the main transportation routes in central Berlin but suddenly found itself on the periphery of West Berlin. The parts of Kreuzberg near the border atrophied in particular. Local fulfilment of demand ultimately succumbed to large-scale industrial production outside of Kreuzberg; the remaining specialists were lured away by industry in other parts of West Berlin while classic skilled positions became redundant through mechanization.218 The Kreuzberg garment, printing and chemical industries were kept alive by subsidies and pay raises as well as by the “shiver bonus” (Zi erprämie), or hazard pay.219 Like all of West Berlin, Kreuzberg served as an “extended production line,” a contract manufacturer of West German companies with li le investment to speak of.220 The public employment sector, on

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the other hand, was significantly expanded.221 All the same, the number of jobs in the district was cut in half between 1952 and 1970.222 In 1986 the unemployment rate in Kreuzberg was a whopping 24.4 percent.223 The construction of the Wall had literally marginalized the former “economic powerhouse” of Berlin.224 In this context, housing construction became all the more important. The preservation and capacity utilization of the private building sector in West Berlin was given top priority in the island city225—unlike in Friedri shain, where the remaining private construction companies were nationalized in 1972.226 Housing policies in East and West were, however, in agreement that renovation generally meant demolition and rebuilding. City planners on both sides of the Wall came up with lavish urbanplanning solutions that aimed to tear down and replace surviving historic buildings from the Wilhelmine era. The traditional block structure was abandoned and architects began experimenting with new building materials and methods. In East Berlin, for instance, the building ensemble around Leninplatz, built between 1968 and 1970 next to Friedrichshain Volkspark, followed Western European models but placed a 19-meterhigh Lenin monument in the middle.227 This was followed by three 21story point blocks and two 11-story P2 housing slabs built on Strasse der Pariser Kommune between 1971 and 1973. The 2,500 new apartments in these buildings replaced the old tenements on Fruchtstrasse in an effort to help “solve the housing question,” which was formulated as a top priority at the Eighth Party Congress of the SED in 1973.228 Construction on the new building of Neues Deutschland newspaper was also completed here in 1974, in this case intended as a counterpart to the Springer high-rise on the other side of the Wall, completed in 1966 and housing the controversial publisher of the West German tabloid Bild.229 In Kreuzberg, Werner Dü mann (1921–83) redesigned Mehringplatz using plans from Hans Scharoun. The baroque traffic circle was considerably modified between 1969 and 1975, with Lindenstrasse, Wilhelmstrasse and Mehringdamm being rerouted to make them more car-friendly.230 The New Kreuzberg Center (NKZ) was built at Kotbusser Tor between 1969 and 1974. This monumental structure with 295 new apartments, a strip mall and parking garage was pushed through by the West Berlin Senate and built by a private investment group against the wishes of the Kreuzberg District Assembly.231 Part of Admiralstrasse was torn down in the process and historical Dresdener Strasse sealed off.232 Even before its completion, the NKZ was widely considered a symbol of urban planning gone wrong.233 The entire northern side of the building was constructed without windows, facing as it did the future southern bypass of the planned highway network, a project the Senate did not abandon despite the erec-

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tion of the Wall. Entire streets in historical Luisenstadt were supposed to make way for the highway. The days of Wilhelmine-era tenements seemed numbered anyway. The Senate’s first urban-renewal program of 1963 envisioned tearing down sixteen thousand residential units in Kreuzberg alone.234 But the process of evicting tenants and selling the buildings to housing societies that acted as redevelopment agencies on behalf of the Senate took thirteen years on average, during which time the buildings were le to deteriorate as no investments were made for upkeep.235 The prospect of redevelopment put these tenements in a state of limbo. Only short-term rental contracts were offered, preferably to students and Turks, who shared an interest in affordable rents. Entire streets fell into disrepair and were used by American troops for practicing hand-to-hand combat.236 While radical urban modernization was taking place in the district of Wedding almost unnoticed, in Kreuzberg there was pushback against the “clean-sweep” or raze-and-rebuild approach to redevelopment. Starting in the early 1970s, a critical public sphere made up of local residents, urban planners and church representatives expressed its opposition to the Senate’s redevelopment plans. But the greatest impulse came from squatters, who occupied empty buildings in Kreuzberg, as others had done before them in Frankfurt and Amsterdam.237 The history of the Kreuzberg squa ing movement began in 1971 with the occupation of the former nurses’ dormitory of Bethany Central Deaconess Hospital. The Kreuzberg band Ton Steine Scherben, with its “Rauch House Song,” wrote the “soundtrack” for this occupied building, that was eventually transformed into a youth center.238 The second wave of Kreuzberg squats followed in 1979, this time in empty apartment buildings slated for demolition. In an effort to preserve these cheap living spaces, the squa ers restored the rundown apartments themselves, giving rise to the term “rehab squatting” (Instandbesetzung), an a empt to legitimize these squats in the face of unresponsive owners and authorities.239 But the situation escalated in 1981 when the new, CDU-run Senate had the tenants of numerous occupied buildings forcibly removed by police, thus resulting in the Kreuzberg Häuserkampf—the struggle between a Senate beholden to developers and a grassroots resistance that ultimately divided the squa ers’ movement. Whereas the rehab squa ers were generally willing to negotiate with the authorities, the “autonomists” refused to make any compromises.240 About eighty buildings were illegally occupied at the height of the movement in Kreuzberg.241 Only in 1984 did the situation de-escalate through the legalization of a number of squa ing projects, in the course of which some squa ers (Hausbesetzer) now became homeowners (Hausbesitzer). The squa ing movement was accompanied by a departure from modern postwar urban planning. The 1980s roof collapse of the West Berlin

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Congress Hall was taken by critical observers as a sign that modern architecture was potentially deficient in quality.242 Scharoun’s ideals of the functionally organized city gave way to a reassessment of the city’s traditional structure.243 The term “Kreuzberg mix” was coined to rehabilitate Wilhelmine notions of se lement density and functional integration and to prevent the demolition of these late-nineteenth-century buildings. The meticulous reconstruction of the Museum of Decorative Arts (Kunstgewerbemuseum), destroyed during the war and reopened in 1981 as the Martin Gropius Building with a spectacular Prussia exhibit, was symbolic of this positive reappraisal of the past.244 The “Twelve Principles of Cautious Urban Development” (Zwölf Grundsätze der behutsamen Stadtentwicklung) adopted by the Senate in 1982 demanded the preservation of the unique architectural character of Kreuzberg, open decision-making processes, and the consistent participation in the form of tenant consultation of those directly affected by redevelopment.245 The most tangible outcome of this shi in urban-planning principles was the International Building Exposition (IBA) held from 1984 to 1987.246 Three areas of Kreuzberg were selected by the Senate to take part in this initiative. In the southern, war-damaged part of Friedrichstadt a new postmodern development was built, taking into consideration the traditional frontage line and “Berlin eaves height.”247 In historical Luisenstadt and “SO 36,”248 on the other hand, over four hundred projects were carried out to preserve older buildings. The IBA closed in 1987 with a huge exhibit in the former Merkur department store on Lindenstrasse.249 Of the eighty-five thousand apartments that existed in Kreuzberg at that time, well over a third of them had been built a er World War II.250 And yet the face of Old Berlin continued to predominate there. In Friedrichshain, too, the practice of urban development underwent a transformation. If the 1970s had seen the demolition of countless prewar buildings in the vicinity of Ostbahnhof, the 1980s witnessed the increasing renovation of older neighborhoods with the aim of quickly improving the housing situation. About fi een thousand apartments in older buildings were renovated in Friedrichshain, most occupants being forced to live there while renovation took place for lack of other options.251 When constructing new buildings in the district, historical urban structures and street layouts were o en taken into consideration. Thus, between 1985 and 1987 five new residential buildings adapted to historical ground plans were erected on Bersarinplatz.252 Construction work was done by building combines from Magdeburg and Rostock, which grudgingly had to sacrifice their manpower to the capital of the GDR.253 Still there were shortages of labor and materials.254 By the end of 1989 there were only 66,950 apartments in Friedrichshain—scarcely more than in 1946255—as new

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construction was mostly concentrated in the outlying districts of Marzahn, Hohenschönhausen and Hellersdorf. Hence 63.8 percent of Friedri shain apartments dated back to the turn of the century; 27 percent had no bathroom or shower256 and construction capacities were too limited to fully modernize them. Older buildings in the neighborhood were le to decay due to this lack of money and manpower, but ironically, for this very reason, managed to avoid the wrecking ball. A very particular milieu existed in the old tenement houses, essentially comprising three main groups: those living there against their will, including older people, chance newcomers and those applying for exit visas; those who moved their by choice, who found living in prewar buildings a ractive; and finally the “transitional population,” mostly college students or families on the waiting list to move into newly built apartments. These three groups made for a very heterogeneous mix, vastly different in terms of their income, skills and ultimately lifestyle.257 This niche society in Friedrichshain corresponded to a specific sociotope in Kreuzberg that in many ways was very similar. Countless young men from the Federal Republic moved to Kreuzberg to dodge military service in the Bundeswehr. Senior citizens, migrant workers and students lived next door to each other. “Hobrecht’s concept of the mixed tenement house had been resurrected in a different form.”258 College students, in particular, had a formative influence on the district as of the mid-1970s and experimented with new forms of living. A variety of autonomous enterprises and cultural centers emerged, such as MehringHof and Kerngehäuse. This le ist-alternative milieu eventually entered the realm of local politics in 1979 in the form of the Alternative List for Democracy and Environmental Protection (AL). In 1985 the AL won twelve seats in the Kreuzberg District Assembly.259 Unemployment was still high in the district during the 1980s. One in seven residents was on welfare.260 On May 1, 1987, while the forward march of socialism was being staged in Friedrichshain, an already tense situation escalated in Kreuzberg. These contrasting May Day celebrations in 1987 were an indication of how far these two twin districts had grown apart just prior to the fall of the Wall. Viewed in historical perspective, however, the period seems like a brief interlude. Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg in fact shared a similar history throughout most of their existence. They were the product of a dynamic process of urbanization, forming the bulk of lower-middle-class and working-class eastern Berlin. The lack of communal self-government and catastrophic living conditions meant that the public and private spheres could only develop here to a limited degree. This urbanization process had reached its zenith during the 1920s, and it was then that Friedri shain and Kreuzberg resembled each other the most. The end of

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urbanization in the classic sense coincided with their wartime destruction and subsequent political division. And yet these two districts still faced similar challenges and underwent similar social developments. The crisis of the modern city ultimately led to a new urbanity that characterizes both districts today. New forms of the public and private sphere and the interrelationships between them, the focus of the three main sections of this investigation, played a major role in this context.

Notes 1. On urbanization in Germany in general, see the still very useful account of Jürgen Reulecke, Geschichte der Urbanisierung in Deutschland, Frankfurt am Main 1985; Horst Matzerath, Urbanisierung in Preußen 1815–1914, Stu gart 1985; Clemens Zimmermann, Die Zeit der Metropolen. Urbanisierung und Großstadtentwicklung, Frankfurt am Main 1996. Following critiques of classic modernization theory, the concept of urbanization has also become the subject of debate. See the special edition Informationen zur modernen Stadtgeschichte 42 (2012) no. 2: Urbanisierung im 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Christoph Bernhardt. For an inspiring account on the urbanization of Chicago, see William J. Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, New York 1991. 2. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 15. 3. Abramowski, Siedlungsgeschichte des Bezirks Friedrichshain, 7. The slope at Mehringdamm in Kreuzberg is used for soapbox derbies. 4. The rural Randowbruch marsh and eastern Uckermarck region offer an approximate idea of what the terrain of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg would have looked like in its unspoiled state. 5. On the Stralau fishing village, see Abramowski, Siedlungsges i te des Bezirks Friedri shain, 13–16. 6. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 16. Remains of human se lements go as far back as the ninth century B.C. 7. Hasso Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” in Helmut Engel, Stefi Jersch-Wenzel, and Wilhelm Treue (eds), Geschichtslandscha Berlin. Orte und Ereignisse, vol. 5: Kreuzberg, Berlin 1994, xi–xxix, here xiii f. 8. Abramowski, Siedlungsgeschichte des Bezirks Friedrichshain, 7–12. 9. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 29. 10. Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (ed.), Denkmale in Berlin: Bezirk Friedrichshain, Berlin 1996, 16 f. 11. Heinrich Kaak, Kreuzberg (Geschichte der Berliner Verwaltungsbezirke, vol. 2), Berlin 1988, 54. 12. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, founder of the German gymnastics movement, held secret meetings here during the French occupation. The ravine was eventually filled in and Chamissoplatz built on top of it. 13. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 18. 14. Norbert Podewin, Marx und Engels grüßen aus . . . Friedrichshain. Berliner Geschichte und Geschichten einer Traditionsgegend, Berlin 2010, 7–20.

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15. On the history of early industrialization in Berlin, see Wolfram Fischer, “Berlin. Die preußische Hauptstadt auf dem Weg zur Industriestadt,” in Industrie- und Handelskammer von Berlin (ed.), Berlin und seine Wirtscha , Berlin 1987, 59–78. 16. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 25. 17. Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (ed.), Denkmale in Berlin, 18; Kaak, Kreuzberg, 52. 18. Dirk Moldt, “Friedrichshain—mehr als ein Bezirk?” in Düspohl and Moldt, Kleine Friedri shainges i te, 9–31, here 14. 19. Abramowski, Siedlungsgeschichte des Bezirks Friedrichshain, 31. 20. Ibid. 21. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 43. 22. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 25–28. 23. On the March Revolution in Berlin, see Rüdiger Hachtmann, Berlin 1848. Eine Politikund Gesellscha sgeschichte der Revolution, Bonn 1997, esp. 157–182 on the barricade fights and for social profiles of the revolutionaries. 24. Kurt Laser, Der Friedhof der Märzgefallenen, Berlin 2011. 25. Ralph-Jürgen Lischke, “Der Volkspark Friedrichshain,” in Düspohl and Moldt, Kleine Friedrichshaingeschichte, 46–61. 26. Landesdenkmalamt Berlin, Denkmale in Berlin, 28. 27. St. Gertraude Hospital, for example, was built on Wartenburgstrasse in Tempelhofer Vorstadt in 1873 and Urban Hospital on the Landwehr Canal in 1890. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 42. 28. Hasso Spode, “Das Krankenhaus der Diakonissen-Anstalt Bethanien zu Berlin. Mariannenplatz 1-3,” in Engel, Jersch-Wenzel, and Treue, Geschichtslandscha Berlin, 301–325. 29. The first municipal gasworks were built in 1847, each right next to the existing ones. Hilmar Bärthel, “Anlagen und Bauten der Gasversorgung sowie der Stadtentwässerung,” in Berlin und seine Bauten, part X, vol. A (2): Stad echnik, Petersberg 2006, 21–37, 111–121; Landesdenkmalamt Berlin, Denkmale in Berlin, 21. 30. Hilmar Bärthel, Wasser für Berlin. Die Geschichte der Wasserversorgung, Berlin 1997. 31. The Spree was not entirely navigable until 1894 on account of the Mühlendamm. 32. Klaus Duntze, Der Luisenstädtische Kanal, Berlin 2011, esp. 61–85. 33. The Landwehr Canal was widened in 1896, the Urban Port (Urbanhafen) being added. The East Port (Osthafen) was added to the Spree in 1913. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 41. 34. Christine Roik-Bogner, “Der Anhalter Bahnhof. Askanischer Platz 6-7,” in Engel, Jersch-Wenzel, and Treue, Geschichtslandscha Berlin, 52–69. 35. The name changes mark various stages of German history. In 1881 it was called S lesis er Bahnhof, as of 1950 Ostbahnhof (East Station), as of 1987 Hauptbahnhof (Main Station), and as of 1998 Ostbahnhof again. Laurenz Demps, Der Schlesische Bahnhof in Berlin. Ein Kapitel preußischer Eisenbahngeschichte, Berlin 1991. 36. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 39 f. 37. The Generalszug is the representative avenue from Gneisenaustrasse through Yorckstrasse and Bülowstrasse to Tauentzienstrasse. Hegemann, Das steinerne Berlin, 226–228. 38. Wolfgang Ribbe, “James Hobrecht,” in Wolfgang Ribbe and Wolfgang Schäche (eds), Baumeister, Architekten, Stadtplaner. Biographien zur baulichen Entwicklung Berlins, Berlin 1987, 219–234. 39. Hegemann, Das steinerne Berlin, 207–233. 40. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xvii. 41. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 28. 42. Ibid., 32.

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43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

52.

53. 54.

55.

56.

57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xiv. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 34. Landesdenkmalamt Berlin, Denkmale in Berlin, 15. Johann Friedri Geist and Klaus Kürvers, Das Berliner Mietshaus, vol. 2: 1862–1945. Eine dokumentaris e Ges i te von “Meyer’s Hof” in der A erstraße 132–133, der Entstehung der Berliner Mietshausquartiere und der Rei shauptstadt zwis en Gründung und Untergang, Munich 1984. The downtown area itself had developed since the 1880s into a central business district. In the course of this modernization process, representative buildings were erected by public authorities and private companies while the poorer inhabitants were pushed out of the historical city center. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 20. Hegemann, Das steinerne Berlin. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 45. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 35. Abramowski, Siedlungsgeschichte des Bezirks Friedrichshain, 34. H. Schwabe, Die königli e Haupt- und Residenzstadt Berlin in ihren Bevölkerungs-, Berufsund Wohnungsverhältnissen. Resultate der Volkszählung und Volksbes reibung vom 1.12.1871, Berlin 1874. Schlesischer Bahnhof was an important stop for many people on their way to America, especially for Jews from Eastern Europe. It was the “immigrants’ station” par excellence in the 1880s. Demps, Der Schlesische Bahnhof in Berlin, 211; Karl Schlögel, Das Russische Berlin. Ostbahnhof Europas, Berlin 2007, 21–50. On female migration to Berlin, see Be ina Hitzer, Im Netz der Liebe. Die protestantische Kirche und ihre Zuwanderer in der Metropole Berlin (1849–1914), Cologne 2006. Not everyone found a place to stay in the newly erected tenement buildings. Shanty towns set up by the homeless outside Ko busser Tor and Landsberger Tor were torn down by order of the Berlin chief of police, Guido von Madai, in 1872. The individuals living there were sent to police headquarters, workhouses or the homeless shelter at Alexanderplatz. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 58 f. On the various migratory movements, see Dieter Langewiesche, “Wanderungsbewegungen in der Ho industrialisierungsperiode. Regionale, interstädtis e und innenstädtis e Mobilität in Deuts land 1880–1914,” Vierteljahrs ri für Sozial- und Wirts a sges i te 64 (1977), 1–40. Thomas Mergel, “Das Kaiserreich als Migrationsgesellscha ,” in Sven Oliver Müller (ed.), Das Deutsche Kaiserreich in der Kontroverse, Gö ingen 2009, 374–391. Most stayed in the neighborhood, however. Residential mobility had its limits, in other words, as people rese led nearby. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 78 f. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xi. Five regiments were stationed in Tempelhofer Vorstadt until the turn of the century: the 1st Dragoon Guard at Hallesches Tor, the 2nd Dragoon Guard and the 2nd Grenadier Guard on Blücherstrasse, and the 4th Grenadier Guard and Cuirassier Guard on Friesenstrasse. The two former garrison churches at Südstern bear witness to the area’s one-time military use. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 74. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xviii. Quoted in Heiner Pachmann, Stadtbezirk Friedrichshain, Berlin (East) 1988, 28. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 38. Abramowski, Siedlungsgeschichte des Bezirks Friedrichshain, 33; von Saldern, Häuserleben, 100 f. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xviii. Rosmarie Beier, “Leben in der Mietskaserne. Zum Alltag Berliner Unters i tenfamilien in den Jahren 1900 bis 1920,” in Gesine Asmus (ed.), Hinterhof, Keller und Mansarde.

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65. 66.

67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73.

74.

75.

76. 77.

78. 79.

Einbli e in das Berliner Wohnungselend 1901–1920. Die Wohnungs-Enquete der Ortskrankenkasse für den Gewerbebetrieb der Kaufleute, Handelsleute und Apotheker, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1982, 244–270, here 265. Adelheid von Saldern talks about “relative segregation.” Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 70. James Hobrecht presented an idealized picture of the liberating effect of a social mix. In 1868 he wrote: “In a tenement building, children from the basement apartments going to tuition-free schools use the same entranceways as those of the councilman or merchant on their way to the Gymnasium. Schuster’s Wilhelm from the a ic and old, bedridden Frau Schulz from the rear building, whose daughter earns their meager livelihood with sewing or cleaning work, are well-known faces on the [more affluent] first upper floor. Here a bowl of soup to nourish the sick, there a piece of clothing or effective aid in a aining tuition-free classes and suchlike, and all of this the result of cordial relations between congenial tenants however different their financial situation. . . .” Quoted in Hegemann, Das steinerne Berlin, 232. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 35. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 50. Beier, “Leben in der Mietskaserne,” 265. The reform-housing developments in the future districts of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg loosely included Helenenhof at Wühlischplatz (1904) and Riehmers Hofgarten (1880–1899) on Yor strasse. Mende and Werni e, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedri shainKreuzberg, 34 f.; Moldt, “Friedri shain,” 11 f. Abramowski, Siedlungsgeschichte des Bezirks Friedrichshain, 4 f. Ingrid Thienel, “Verstädterung, städtis e Infrastruktur und Stadtplanung. Berlin zwis en 1850 und 1914,” Zeits ri für Stadtges i te 4 (1977), 55–84. Hermann Blankenstein was chief city architect (Stadtbaurat) of Berlin from 1872 to 1896 and was responsible for numerous public buildings, including the market halls. He was succeeded by Ludwig Hoffmann, who occupied the same position from 1896 to 1924 and built the public baths and pool on Baerwaldstrasse in Kreuzberg. See the various contributions in Wolfgang Ribbe and Wolfgang Schäche (eds), Baumeister, Architekten, Stadtplaner. Biographien zur baulichen Entwicklung Berlins, Berlin 1987. In addition to the Oberbaum Bridge, the new Brommy Bridge from 1909 connected what would later become the districts of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. Remains of the la er bridge, demolished in 1945, can still be seen today. Feustel, Verschwundenes Friedrichshain, 54–56. The Berlin Elevated and Underground Company was an entirely private enterprise at first, belonging to Siemens. Jürgen Meyer-Kronthaler and Klaus Kurpjuweit, Berliner U-Bahn—In Fahrt seit hundert Jahren, Berlin 2001. The first wastewater pumping station was opened at Hallesches Ufer in 1876. Hilmar Bärthel, Geklärt! 125 Jahre Berliner Stadtentwässerung, Berlin 2003. The Central Stockyard and Slaughterhouse (Zentralvieh- und Schlachthof) was built on city property belonging to Friedrichshain as of 1920 before being allo ed to Prenzlauer Berg in 1938. Susanne Schindler-Reinisch (ed.), Berlin-Central-Viehhof. Eine Stadt in der Stadt, Berlin 1996. Thorsten Knoll, Berliner Markthallen, Berlin 1994. All three Kreuzberg market halls survived World War II despite considerable damage to some of them: Market Hall VII between Dresdener Strasse and Legiendamm, the so-called Eisenbahn (Railroad) Hall (IX) between Eisenbahnstrasse and Pücklerstrasse, as well as Market Hall XI at Marheinekeplatz. See Agnes Lanwer, “Die MarheinekeMarkthalle. Marheinekeplatz,” in Engel, Jersch-Wenzel, and Treue, Geschichtslandscha Berlin, 474–487.

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80. Market Hall VIII was destroyed in World War II. Feustel, Verschwundenes Friedrichshain, 39–41. 81. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 14. On how the term “Kreuzberg mix” was coined, see 138. 82. Karl-Heinz Fiebig, Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm, and Eberhard Knödler-Bunte (eds), Kreuzberger Mis ung. Die innerstädtis e Verfle tung von Ar itektur, Kultur und Gewerbe, Katalog zur Ausstellung zum Beri tsjahr 1984 zur Internationalen Bauausstellung Berlin 1987, 16.9.–28.10.1984, Berlin 1984. 83. Agnes Lanwer, “Exportviertel Ri erstraße. Der ‘Ri erhof’—ein Gewerbehof. Ri erstraße 11,” in Engel, Jersch-Wenzel, and Treue, Geschichtslandscha Berlin, 251–264. 84. Jochen Boberg et al. (eds), Exerzierfeld der Moderne. Industriekultur in Berlin im 19. Jahrhundert, Muni 1984, 148–155. 85. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 31; Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xviii. 86. Landesdenkmalamt Berlin, Denkmale in Berlin, 19. 87. The loamy soil and underground water reservoirs favored the production and storage of industrially brewed, chiefly pilsner-style beers. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 16, 28. 88. Hasso Spode, “Die Schultheiss-Brauerei auf dem Kreuzberg. Methfesselstraße 28-48,” in Engel, Jersch-Wenzel, and Treue, Geschichtslandscha Berlin, 399–417. 89. Jan Feustel, “Gebraut und gesoffen. Ausstellung im Heimatmuseum Friedrichshain,” Berlinische Monatsschri 8 (1999) no. 3, 96–98. 90. Maase, Grenzenloses Vergnügen. 91. Gabriele Silbereisen, “Die ersten Warenhausgründungen der Firma Wertheim in der Luisenstadt. Oranienstraße 53/54, Moritzplatz,” in Engel, Jers -Wenzel, and Treue, Ges i tslands a Berlin, 265–276. 92. Feustel, Vers wundenes Friedri shain, 42–44. 93. Mi ael Baumgarten and Ruth Freydank (eds), Das Rose-Theater. Ein Volkstheater im Berliner Osten 1906–1944, Berlin 1991. 94. On the press landscape of Berlin around 1900, see among others Peter Fritzsche, Reading Berlin 1900, Cambridge 1996, 51–86. 95. Agnes Lanwer, “Das Berliner Zeitungsviertel—Mosse, Scherl, Ullstein,” in Engel, Jersch-Wenzel, and Treue, Geschichtslandscha Berlin, 183–206. 96. SPD headquarters had previously been located on Katzbachstrasse 9, and would later move to Kreuzbergstrasse 30. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 12. 97. Podewin, Marx und Engels grüßen aus Friedrichshain. 98. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 76. Prussian local election law only allowed for a unilateral representation of interests. In Berlin, for example, 50 percent of City Council members had to own real estate. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 67. 99. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 78 f. 100. Demps and Materna, Geschichte Berlins von den Anfängen bis 1945, 542–561. 101. Thirty-three victims of the events of November and December 1918 are buried at the Cemetery of the March Fallen in the Volkspark of Friedrichshain. Moldt, “Friedrichshain,” 15. 102. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 44. 103. Abramowski, Siedlungsgeschichte des Bezirks Friedrichshain, 6. 104. Ibid., 4. 105. The district was actually named Hallesches Tor (Halle Gate) until 1921. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 11. 106. Friedrichshain bordered the districts of Kreuzberg, Mi e, Prenzlauer Berg, Lichtenberg and Treptow. Kreuzberg bordered Friedrichshain, Mi e, Tiergarten, Schöneberg, Tempelhof, Neukölln and Treptow.

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107. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xi. 108. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 44. 109. The occupational census of 1925 came to the following breakdown of the labor force according to their work-related social status. Friedrichshain: blue-collar (incl. co age industry) 55.4 percent, white-collar and civil-servant 22.0 percent, self-employed 11.6 percent, self-employed without a profession 7.8 percent, domestic servants 1.9 percent, and unpaid family members 1.3 percent. Kreuzberg: blue-collar (incl. co age industry) 46.0 percent, white-collar and civil-servant 27.4 percent, self-employed 13.6 percent, self-employed without a profession 9.0 percent, domestic servants 2.9 percent, and unpaid family members 1.1 percent. Berthold Grzywatz, Arbeit und Bevölkerung im Berlin der Weimarer Zeit. Eine historisch-statistische Untersuchung, Berlin 1988, 356. 110. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 51 f. 111. Grzywatz, Arbeit und Bevölkerung im Berlin der Weimarer Zeit, 110, 140. In Kreuzberg twenty thousand individuals alone were employed in the newspaper, publishing and printing industries. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xxii. 112. Abramowski, Siedlungsgeschichte des Bezirks Friedrichshain, 4. 113. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xxii. 114. Ibid. as well as Kaak, Kreuzberg, 84. 115. Military facilities and areas were repurposed according to provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. The barracks of the 1st Dragoon Guard at Hallesches Tor, for example, were converted into the Kreuzberg tax office. Eva Brückner, “Kaserne des 1. Garde-DragonerRegiments. Mehringdamm 20-30,” in Engel, Jersch-Wenzel, and Treue, Ges i tslands a Berlin, 431–448. 116. Berthold Grzywatz defines a working-class district as having more than 50 percent wage earners. If the share of workers is just under half, as in the case of Kreuzberg, he calls this a “proximate” working-class district. Grzywatz, Arbeit und Bevölkerung im Berlin der Weimarer Zeit, 354 f. On the processes of proletarization in general during the Weimar Republic, see von Saldern, Häuserleben, 141. 117. Only nine hundred new apartments were built in Friedrichshain during the entire Weimar period. Bouali and Schulze, Bewegte Zeiten, 11. 118. The former C line, now U6 and parts of U7. 119. The former D line, now U8. The now obsolete Luisenstadt Canal was filled in during excavation work for the subway and turned into a public park. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 47. 120. The former E line, now U5. 121. Uebel, Viel Vergnügen, 148 f. 122. Hochmuth and Niedbalski, “Kiezvergnügen in der Metropole,” 131–134. 123. Jan Feustel, Raub und Mord im Kiez. Historis e Friedri shainer Kriminalfälle, Begleitmaterial zur Ausstellung im Heimatmuseum Friedri shain, Berlin 1996. 124. Bouali and S ulze, Bewegte Zeiten, 9. 125. On the life of Paul Mielitz, see Moldt, “Friedri shain,” 16. 126. Paul Mielitz, “Eine soziale Studie über den Osten Berlins. Ein Rundfunkvortrag von Bürgermeister P. Mielitz,” in Heimatkalender für den Bezirk Friedri shain 1932, Berlin 1932, 18–28, here 20. 127. On the street fights as a form of “defending one’s turf,” see Eve Rosenha , Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and Political Violence, 1929–1933, Cambridge 1983. 128. The Nazi headquarters (Gauleitung) of Berlin were also located on Hedemannstrasse. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xxiii. 129. On Nostitzstrasse see Lothar Uebel, Nostitzritze. Eine Straße in Kreuzberg. Sozialges i te(n), Berlin 1992.

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130. Even in the Reichstag elections of March 1933, the SPD and KPD got a combined 57.4 percent of the vote in Friedrichshain compared with 28.9 percent for the Nazis. Bouali and Schulze, Bewegte Zeiten, 25. For the roughly identical numbers in Kreuzberg, see Kaak, Kreuzberg, 102. 131. Daniel Siemens, Horst Wessel—Tod und Verklärung eines Nationalsozialisten, Munich 2009. English translation: The Making of a Nazi Hero: The Murder and Myth of Horst Wessel, trans. David Burne , London 2013 [2009]. 132. Norbert Podewin, “Als Friedrichshain vor 80 Jahren umbenannt wurde,” in Düspohl and Moldt, Kleine Friedrichshaingeschichte, 85–88, here 88. 133. A bar on Petersburger Strasse. See Pachmann, Stadtbezirk Friedrichshain, 12. 134. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 50. 135. Armin Triebel, “Orte der Verfolgung und Unterdrückung. Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Wilhelmstraße, Hedemannstraße,” in Engel, Jersch-Wenzel, and Treue, Geschichtslandscha Berlin, 117–152. 136. Among the most prominent victims of the Friedrichshain resistance was wrestler and Olympic athlete Werner Seelenbinder (1904–44), who lived on Glatzer Strasse 6. Podewin, Marx und Engels grüßen aus Friedrichshain, 172–186. 137. About 160,000 people were registered as members of the Jewish communities in all of Berlin in 1933. They made up about 3.7 percent of the city’s overall population of 4.3 million. Bill Rebiger, Das jüdische Berlin. Kultur, Religion und Alltag gestern und heute, Berlin 2007, 26–30. 138. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xxiv. 139. In 1945, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg had Jewish populations of 313 and 290 respectively. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 51. 140. Bouali and Schulze, Bewegte Zeiten, 19. 141. Moreover, the district boundaries with Mi e were straightened and the Central Stockyard and Slaughterhouse was ceded to Prenzlauer Berg. Abramowski, Siedlungsges i te des Bezirks Friedri shain, 5. 142. Jens Schnauber, Die Arisierung der Scala und Plaza. Varieté und Dresdner Bank in der NSZeit, Berlin 2002, 54. 143. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 106 f. 144. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xxiv. 145. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 52. 146. Bouali and Schulze, Bewegte Zeiten, 33. 147. Lischke, Der Volkspark Friedrichshain, 48. 148. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xxv. 149. For a chronology of 1945 in Friedrichshain, see Walter Mohr, Ausgangspunkt Chaos. Neubeginn in Friedri shain, Begleitmaterial zur Ausstellung im Heimatmuseum Friedri shain, Berlin 1995. 150. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 117. 151. In Friedrichshain 27.0 percent of the buildings were totally destroyed, 18.5 percent badly damaged, 12.9 percent recoverable, and 41.0 percent lightly damaged or unscathed. In Kreuzberg 26.0 percent were totally destroyed, 13.9 percent badly damaged, 15.1 percent recoverable, and 43.8 percent lightly damaged or unscathed. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 52. 152. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 108. 153. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xxvi; Kaak, Kreuzberg, 118. 154. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 53. 155. See the various contributions in Henrik Bispinck and Katharina Hochmuth (eds), Flüchtlingslager im Nachkriegsdeutschland. Migration, Politik, Erinnerung, Berlin 2014.

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156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161.

162. 163. 164. 165.

166. 167. 168.

169. 170.

171.

172.

173. 174. 175.

176.

Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 109. Ibid. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 120. Bouali and Schulze, Bewegte Zeiten, 42. Malte Zierenberg, Stadt der Schieber. Der Berliner Schwarzmarkt 1939–1950, Gö ingen 2008. The Gladow gang was notorious, organizing robberies in the entire city during the Berlin Blockade from their hideout on Schreinerstrasse in Friedrichshain. Anne Gröschner and Grischa Meyer, Das Fallbeil. Gladows Gang. Eine Berliner Blockadezeitung (special issue of Theater der Zeit), Berlin 1999. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 54. Private property in the form of apartments was not entirely eradicated but the plots of land they were built on became state property. Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 90. As of 1959 the Communal Housing Administration (KWV) became a state-owned enterprise (VEB). Bouali and Schulze, Bewegte Zeiten, 47. This was also true of the period a er the Wall was built when in 1963 Rainer Hildebrandt (1914–2004) set up his Wall Museum on Friedrichstrasse in Kreuzberg, very close to Checkpoint Charlie. The museum likewise functioned as a contact point for West Berlin escape helpers. Hanno Hochmuth, “Contested Legacies: Cold War Memory Sites in Berlin,” in Konrad H. Jarausch, Andreas Etges, and Christian Ostermann (eds), The Cold War: History, Memory, Representation, Berlin 2017, 283–299, here 293. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 109 f. See esp. Lemke, Schaufenster der Systemkonkurrenz as well as Lemke, Vor der Mauer. For a detailed look at Kreuzberg border cinemas, see Hanno Hochmuth, “Eine Brücke zwischen Ost und West. Friedrichshain und Kreuzberg als Verflechtungsraum,” in Brunner, Grashoff, and Koetzing, Asymmetrisch verflochten?, 195–208; Gerischer and Jablonka, Geschichte von Orten im Wrangelkiez, 33–35. Lemke, Vor der Mauer, 483–509. Lemke points out that “until 1961, characteristics of a cross-system ‘mixed’ society had developed on account of historically rooted entanglements in Berlin and unique present-day relationships in culture and daily life. These characteristics came into existence thanks to a multidimensional exchange in the context of (and despite) the Cold War, against a backdrop of relative openness and the porousness of these systems.” Lemke views the erection of the Wall in part as a reaction to the increasing daily entanglement of a politically divided Berlin. Lemke, Vor der Mauer, 20. A monument to the rubble women can be found in Kreuzberg at the border with Neukölln in Hasenheide park. Nicole Kramer, “Ikone des Wiederau aus. Die ‘Trümmerfrau’ in der bundesdeutschen Erinnerungskultur,” in Jörg Arnold, Dietmar Süß, and Malte Thießen (eds), Lu krieg. Erinnerungen in Deutschland und Europa, Gö ingen 2009, 259–276. On rubble women in Friedrichshain, see Angela Arnold, Bruchstücke. Trümmerbahn und Trümmerfrauen, Berlin 1999. A hundred half-shi s were rewarded with one raffle ticket. Jana Braun and Artur Schneider, “Die Karl-Marx-Allee,” in Düspohl and Moldt, Kleine Friedrichshaingeschichte, 89–100, here 95; Bouali and Schulze, Bewegte Zeiten, 48; Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 98. Pachmann, Stadtbezirk Friedrichshain, 14 f. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 13. Of the 547,000 new apartments built in West Berlin between 1949 and 1987, 80 percent were subsidized. Of these, 40 percent had subsidized rents. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 76. Ibid., 57.

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177. On Stalinallee and its presentation in the media, see esp. Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 94–119. 178. Landesdenkmalamt Berlin, Denkmale in Berlin, 37–40. 179. The two buildings were erected on (today’s) Karl-Marx-Allee, nos. 102–104 and 126– 128. Braun and Schneider, “Die Karl-Marx-Allee,” 93; Podewin, Marx und Engels grüßen aus Friedrichshain, 212. 180. Wolfgang Engler, Die Ostdeutschen. Kunde von einem verlorenen Land, Berlin 1999, 37 f. 181. This synthesis of Prussian classicism and Soviet neoclassicism is also reflected in the twin tower buildings at Frankfurter Tor evoking the French and German churches at Gendarmenmarkt, as well as in the German Sports Hall built in 1951 for the 3rd World Festival of Youth and Students but torn down in 1971 due to structural weaknesses. Feustel, Verschwundenes Friedrichshain, 81–83. 182. From 1959 to 1960 Stalinallee was extended towards Alexanderplatz. This phase of construction was done in the standardized industrial style of modern housing complexes. Engler, Die Ostdeutschen, 53–74. 183. Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 98. 184. Pachmann, Stadtbezirk Friedrichshain, 17. 185. On the events of June 17, 1953 in Berlin, see Jens Schöne, Volksaufstand. Der 17. Juni 1953 in Berlin und der DDR, Berlin 2013. 186. Feustel, Verschwundenes Friedrichshain, 78–80. 187. Podewin, Marx und Engels grüßen aus Friedrichshain, 243. 188. Ibid., 232–238; Greg Castillo, “The Nylon Curtain: Architectural Unification in Divided Berlin,” in Philip Broadbent and Sabine Hake (eds), Berlin Divided City, 1945–1989, New York 2010, 46–55; Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 119–141. 189. At the end of 1949 Kreuzberg had 21,000 unemployed. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzbergges i te, 112. 190. Ibid., 112. 191. In general the reconstruction of West Berlin only really got underway in the 1950s. Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 14. A policy of apartment allocation predominated in both halves of the city until the late 1940s. Clara Oberle, “From Warfare to Welfare: Postwar Homelessness, Dislocation, and the Birth of the Welfare State in Europe: The Case of Berlin 1945-1949,” Hygiea Internationalis: Journal for the History of Public Health 9 (2010), 279–310. 192. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 125. 193. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 114. 194. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 58. 195. Hasso Spode, “Die Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek. Blücherplatz 1,” in Engel, JerschWenzel, and Treue, Geschichtslandscha Berlin, 488–498; Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 79–84. 196. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 114. 197. Ro , Die Insel, 314 f. 198. Ibid., 116. 199. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 13. 200. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 10. 201. Duntze, Der Luisenstädtische Kanal, 291–297. 202. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 120. 203. Konrad H. Jarausch, “Checkpoint Charlie,” in Klaus-Dietmar Henke (ed.), Die Mauer. Errichtung, Überwindung, Erinnerung, Munich 2011, 181–195. The Wall Museum run by Rainer Hildebrandt opened in 1963 directly at Checkpoint Charlie, presenting at this prominent location stories of political repression and escape from the GDR. 204. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xxvi.

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205. Hans-Hermann Hertle, Maria Nooke et al., Die Todesopfer an der Berliner Mauer 1961– 1989. Ein biographisches Handbuch, Berlin 2009. 206. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 120 f. 207. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 15. 208. Ibid., 54. 209. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 123. 210. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 71–88. 211. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 60. 212. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 22. Contrary to the standard cliché, the first Turkish migrant workers were mostly female, well educated and urban. The so-called Heiratsmigrantinnen, or bride migrants, came only a er the recruitment ban of 1973. In 1975 the West Berlin Senate ordered a freeze on immigration (Zuzugssperre) for Kreuzberg. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 147 f. 213. An exhibition was held on this topic at the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Regional Museum: “‘. . . ein jeder nach seiner Façon’? 300 Jahre Zuwanderung nach FriedrichshainKreuzberg,” April 30, 2005 to October 17, 2010. 214. Dennis Kuck, “‘Für den sozialistis en Au au ihrer Heimat’? Ausländis e Vertragsarbeitskrä e in der DDR,” in Jan C. Behrends, Thomas Lindenberger, and Patrice G. Poutrus (eds), Fremde und Fremd-Sein in der DDR. Zu historis en Ursa en der Fremdenfeindli keit in Ostdeuts land, Berlin 2003, 271–281. 215. Bouali and Schulze, Bewegte Zeiten, 69. 216. Pachmann, Stadtbezirk Friedrichshain, 22–27. 217. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 31. 218. Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm, “Geschichte und Eigenart der Kreuzberger Mischung,” in Fiebig, Hoffmann-Axthelm, and Knödler-Bunte, Kreuzberger Mischung, 9–20, here 19 f. 219. Ro , Die Insel, 188. 220. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 75. 221. In 1986 about 7,800 people worked for the district of Kreuzberg. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 32. 222. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xxvi. 223. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 21. 224. Ibid., 31, 120. 225. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 122. 226. Bouali and Schulze, Bewegte Zeiten, 69. 227. Podewin, Marx und Engels grüßen aus Friedrichshain, 254–256. 228. Bouali and Schulze, Bewegte Zeiten, 66. 229. On construction of the Springer building, commencing in 1959, and the accompanying debates in East and West, see Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 161–180. 230. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xxvii. 231. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 124 f.; Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 259–263. The parking garage was converted into a nursery school for the International Building Exposition of 1984–87. 232. Hoffmann-Axthelm, Straßenschlachtung. 233. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 125. 234. MacDougall, “In the Shadow of the Wall,” 161 f. 235. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 78. 236. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 125, 137. 237. Van der Steen, “Die internationalen Verbindungen der Hausbesetzerbewegung in den 70er und 80er Jahren.” 238. Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 262. 239. MacDougall, “In the Shadow of the Wall,” 169.

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240. 241. 242. 243. 244. 245. 246.

247. 248.

249. 250. 251. 252. 253. 254. 255. 256. 257. 258. 259. 260.

Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 141. A total of 169 buildings were controlled by squa ers in all of West Berlin. Ibid. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 28. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xxviii. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 37. For more detail, see Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 143 f. Senator für Bau- und Wohnungswesen (ed.), Idee, Prozess, Ergebnis. Die Reparatur und Rekonstruktion der Stadt, Katalog zur glei namigen Ausstellung im Martin-Gropius-Bau zum Beri tsjahr 1984 der Internationalen Bauausstellung Berlin 1987, 15.9.–16.12.1984, Berlin 1984. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xxviii. “SO 36” was the old postal code for Südost 36 (Southeast 36), which became a kind of codeword for eastern Kreuzberg during the 1970s. The western areas of the district belonged to postal code 61. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 12, 129 f. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 145. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 24 f. Bouali and Schulze, Bewegte Zeiten, 76. Landesdenkmalamt Berlin, Denkmale in Berlin, 44 f. Pachmann, Stadtbezirk Friedrichshain, 29. Bouali and Schulze, Bewegte Zeiten, 76. The official count for 1946 was 65,334 apartments. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 57. Ibid. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 71 f. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xxvii. The other seats were distributed among the Christian-conservative CDU (18) and socialdemocratic SPD (15), the la er having lost seats to the AL. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 22 f. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xxviii.

 

PART II

Housing

(

Chapter 2

HOUSING AS A CONSTITUTIVE FIELD OF THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPHERES

( “The history of private life is first and foremost the history of the space it takes place in.”1 In Berlin this is generally an enclosed space: the apartment a person lives in.2 But the apartment is more than just a physical space; it is also a social one. Pierre Bourdieu differentiates between physical and social space, the la er being reflected in the former. Physical space is appropriated in this manner and social space is reified.3 It is not the actual space itself but its social character that is capable of influencing the interpretive frames and behavior of human beings.4 The apartment as a social space is usually understood as a private one, whereas streets, neighborhoods and the city outside it form the public sphere. The apartment is thus the nucleus of the private sphere. The purely social character of the apartment wholly corresponds with the nineteenth-century bourgeois ideal of a separation of the public and private spheres. Private life is not, however, an anthropological constant but a variable historical condition, construed by each society in its own particular way.5 “Historically speaking . . . the need for intimacy and privacy develops irregularly across different classes and social strata. At a time when the bourgeoisie and the be er-situated families of skilled laborers had grown accustomed to these needs, the lower working classes lived a completely different day-to-day life.”6 For the inhabitants of Friedri shain and Kreuzberg as well, privacy was a relatively new phenomenon. The “right to privacy” was not formulated until the twentieth century.7 Hence privacy as a source term is a limited historical category. It is therefore more meaningful to use privacy as an analytical category, inquiring in historical-analytical fashion into the conditions under which it was formed, the meanings a ributed to it, as well as practices of privacy and privatization processes in the domain of housing.8 Rather than makNotes for this chapter begin on page 79.

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ing a futile comparison of norm and reality, the point here is to acquire a hermeneutical key for the analysis of historical living conditions. To be sure, any analysis of the private sphere needs to take the public sphere into account,9 as private life invariably acquires its meaning in contrast to public life.10 The area of housing, in particular, has proved constitutive for the emergence of the public and private spheres and the relationship between them. The housing question created a public sphere and led to countless public interventions for the improvement of living conditions in the twentieth century. In this manner the public sphere had a considerable impact on the private sphere. The following will begin by taking a look at several dimensions of the public and private spheres in the area of housing across the entire twentieth century. The interdependence of these spheres will be viewed in the context of historical transformation. Finally, I will discuss some hybrid spaces that are both public and private in nature.

The Apartment as a Private Sphere The division between a public and a private sphere is a hallmark of the “bourgeois” century. It was the middle classes that built a “wall” around the household in the nineteenth century.11 The bourgeois apartment became a private space that few had access to—with the exception of servants, who permanently lived and worked in these households. Visitors were received in specially designated rooms. Coffeehouses and clubs, on the other hand, formed the bourgeois public sphere. This public space made up of private individuals was strictly separate from the private apartment.12 Historians have tried to present a more nuanced picture, two aspects of which are worth noting here. First, they have pointed out the genderhistory dimension of these separate spheres.13 “The terminological dichotomization of the private and public sphere was closely linked to the polarization of gender characters in the formation of bourgeois society. Women stood for the private, men the public sphere.”14 Many women were much more dependent and focused on the home than men were. The division of the public and private spheres was in this regard a domesticating norm, though one with a limited historical validity. For many women the apartment was their workplace, the la er hence being indivisible from the private sphere.15 While there were some women who played a prominent public role, the opportunities for women to engage in public life were clearly limited in the nineteenth century. This would change in the twentieth century.16 The feminist slogan “the personal is the political” was

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ultimately aimed in a fundamental way at the bourgeois understanding of the public and the private spheres. Second, privacy had long been a class privilege.17 The division between a public and private sphere did not apply to the lower classes during the nineteenth century.18 Working-class families generally did not have the space to develop their own private sphere and were disproportionately reliant on neighborhood structures and mutual assistance. Their apartments were usually overcrowded and turnover was high. Hence there were clear limits on the private appropriation of space.19 From the perspective of the labor movement, living conditions for many years were not the top priority, the primary concern being relations of production.20 Local politics and neighborhood politics were marginal issues, being understood as side effects of capitalist society that could only be remedied through a revolution.21 It was not until the turn of the century that the SPD addressed housing more intensively.22 Skilled workers, at the same time, began to develop their own “culture of living,” which included being able to lock the front door and keep out unwanted intruders. “Housing became more private and personal, though for a long time not in a way comparable with the bourgeoisie.”23 In the course of the twentieth century the separation of the private from the public gradually developed into a structuring element of everyday life for all strata of society. In this respect, the expansion of the private sphere can be understood as part of a historical process of democratization.24

The Apartment as a Place of Retreat The development of the public and private spheres in the twentieth century was not an unbroken process. It occurred much later in rural areas, the adoption of urban lifestyles and processes of suburbanization playing an important role here. The two world wars had a disruptive effect as well. In a postwar society marked by adversity, many people lost their domestic privacy. A good deal of housing had been destroyed or badly damaged. Those bombed out of their homes and other displaced persons sometimes had to be accommodated for years. The retreat into the private sphere evident in the 1950s was in large part a reaction to these experiences.25 Traumatic wartime experiences o en played a big role here as well. Michael Geyer diagnoses an “aggrieved citizenry” that displayed a pronounced detachment from the state.26 Contemporary observers such as Helmut Schelsky came to the conclusion that the private sphere was a place of refuge against an overpowering society.27 At the same time, the focus on domestic life in postwar West Germany was o en criticized as

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the sign of an apolitical and consumer-oriented zeitgeist.28 An increase in family time meant less social commitment and more distant neighborly relations, some feared.29 The retreat into the private sphere was therefore o en treated as a decline of the public sphere in this postwar society.30 In the GDR, too, the private sphere played an important role. It acquired its special significance here not despite but because of dictatorship, as Paul Be s points out: “In a world in which every social relationship was strictly controlled, the private sphere served for many people as their last vestige of individuality, dissenting opinion and alternative identity formation.”31 Apart from the summer co age or “dacha,” the apartment played a crucial role here. It was here that East Germans could express their religious beliefs or be proud of their social heritage.32 Günter Gaus (1929–2004) described the GDR as a “niche society” in the early 1980s.33 His a empt to describe East Germany in the spirit of détente emphasized the social leeway that existed under SED dictatorship, painting a more nuanced picture of the GDR. This escapist interpretation has its weaknesses, though. For one thing the East German state and its party rule extended deep and inextricably into the private sphere.34 For another, East Germans themselves politicized their private lives by publicly asserting their private demands. Be s, for this reason, understands the private sphere in the GDR not as a silent retreat but as a social practice.35 It was the East German version of the slogan “the personal is the political” that prompted women in particular to take the state’s promises of equality and prosperity at face value. These claims and demands on the state were ultimately what exacerbated the SED’s crisis of legitimacy and what made the party hopeful that its social-policy achievements in the housing sector would help it gain more widespread support during the Honecker era.36

The Housing Question in the Public Sphere The construction boom in the private sector during the nineteenth century was the gold standard of every German housing policy during the twentieth century. The German Empire had no publicly financed housing to speak of. From 1866 to 1914, German municipalities built a mere six thousand apartments distributed across thirty-eight cities.37 Apartment construction was almost exclusively in private hands and mainly served as a form of capital investment.38 Tenement houses were built in the expectation of making a profit. Builders therefore tried, as a rule, to cram as many apartments as possible into a single building. This led to densely built housing tracts with scarcely any legal restrictions, since the limited communal self-governments that existed were dominated by private land-

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lords.39 In short, it was mainly private economic interests that controlled the political public sphere of cities in the German Empire. The catastrophic living conditions resulting from a profit-oriented housing market around the turn of the century led to a broader public debate and public protests in the streets.40 The emerging reform-housing movement tried to work within the status quo to establish new, alternative forms of living. It had two principle aims. First, its notion of the garden city propagated the reconciliation of town and countryside by means of suburban developments with plenty of greenery.41 Second, prompted by the initiative of social-reform-minded middle-class philanthropists, building cooperatives experimented with new forms of public sponsorship by the regional insurance offices (Landesversicherungsanstalten) of Bismarck’s pension scheme.42 Critiques of the contemporary housing market, especially the tenement buildings of Berlin, remained limited for the most part, however, to certain sub-public spheres, the domain of social reformers, housing inspectors and administrative experts.43

Public Housing The Weimar Republic marked the first time in German history that housing was declared a public responsibility and incorporated into the Reich Constitution.44 Not only were municipal politics being publicly negotiated much more than before,45 they also found expression in social, that is, publicly subsidized housing, a signature feature of the new German state. “The most important built testimonies of the Weimar Republic are neither representative spaces nor spaces of civil society, but social ones.”46 The ruling SPD was now less focused on a revolution in the relations of production than on specific social-reform projects. It explicitly promoted social housing, though it was mainly salaried employees and higher-paid skilled laborers who could actually afford these new apartments, simple workers usually staying in their old Wilhelmine-era working-class neighborhoods.47 In this respect social housing was selective, reinforcing rather than overcoming tendencies towards segregation. The share of public subsidies for housing varied considerably in the different political systems of the twentieth century. In the Weimar Republic, 80 to 90 percent of the 2.5 million new apartments were built with public funds. Local authorities and housing cooperatives played a crucial role here,48 before being rendered powerless and/or brought into line under Nazism. Only about one-third of the 1.6 million new apartments built between 1933 and 1939 received public assistance in the form of building loans, securities and tax exemptions.49 The share of publicly subsidized

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housing once again rose conspicuously in the early Federal Republic, with the main focus here being on single-family dwellings for middle-class homeowners.50 About half of the five million new apartments built by 1960 were subsidized with public money.51 The government share in housing construction decreased systematically with the introduction of the socalled Lücke Plan in 1960.52 By 1970 it only accounted for 7.4 percent in all of West Germany.53 In West Berlin, on the other hand, the situation was wholly different. Despite a private construction industry, West Berlin was unique in its low level of private investment and vast public subsidies for private building contractors.54 Up to 80 percent of new housing projects received such subsidies.55 In this respect West Berlin was quite similar to the GDR,56 where, save for cooperative housing developments, the state became the principal sponsor of housing construction. Though part of the housing supply remained in private hands, it was held in trust by the state.57 By 1990, 2.1 million new apartments had been built in the GDR with public funding. Moreover, rents were heavily state-subsidized.58 With the SED regime increasingly a empting to draw its legitimacy from Erich Honecker’s pledge to “solve the housing question,” the construction of public housing underwent an enormous expansion beginning in the 1970s, albeit at the expense of a disastrous economic and social policy.

Public Intervention in the Housing Sector The public subsidization of housing came at a price. Not only was it costly for the public purse, it was also a form of public intervention in people’s private lives. This intervention could take different forms. Social housing in the Weimar Republic went hand in hand with an educational mission to convey the essentials of modern living. Numerous guidebooks and how-to manuals propagated notions of modern housekeeping, called for plain and functional furnishings, and urged their readers to dispense with kitsch. Newly built apartments had standardized floor plans and tiny kitchens that could no longer be used as bedrooms or recreational spaces.59 “Guided by the principles of a unifying ‘progressive society’ and new synergies of knowledge and power, reform pioneers, many of them architects, called on people to adopt Fordist, i.e., socially rationalized behaviors in their day-to-day lives, not just in the public but also in the private sphere, which now, ideally, would correspond to their working lives in factories and offices.”60 In other words, housing in the Weimar Republic was to be brought in line with the latest educational theories, a trend that would perpetuate itself in subsequent systems.

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Nazism turned redevelopment policies into a new kind of steering mechanism, helping the authorities keep traditionally “Red” workingclass neighborhoods under their control. Thus, the redevelopment of innercity neighborhoods as of 1933 followed principles of “hygienization” and demographic objectives.61 Historic city centers were to undergo population restructuring. This entailed street cu ing and block clearance as well as forced population exchange through the deportation of Jewish inhabitants.62 The “block warden” (Blockwart) system enabled direct surveillance of people’s private lives.63 In the GDR this form of public penetration of the private sphere was continued in the institution of the “building steward” (Hausvertrauensmann). The la er registered guests in the housebook, distributed food stamps, held political training sessions and passed on information to the authorities.64 Private life in the GDR was penetrated on a massive scale through the systematic surveillance of countless apartments by the Ministry for State Security, the information it gathered generally not being made public but used to secure the state’s hold on power.65 Another form of public intervention in the private sphere that spanned the entire twentieth century in Germany was the controlled economy in housing (Wohnungszwangswirtscha ). The purpose of this institution was to keep landlords from exploiting housing shortages and to protect consumers from unregulated market mechanisms.66 Against the backdrop of a sustained housing shortage in the Weimar Republic various policy tools were developed, including tenant-protection laws and state-administered housing (Wohnraumbewirtscha ung). A second important phase of the controlled economy in housing began a er World War II when many German cities lay in ruins. Rents were controlled, apartments were allocated, and refugees as well as those bombed out of their homes were forcefully quartered in private apartments by the authorities.67 Whereas the Lücke Plan largely abolished these practices in the Federal Republic, in the GDR the basic features of state-controlled housing remained in place till the very end. The allocation of scarce housing by the departments of housing policy in the municipal-district and district councils formed a key instrument of political domination, supporting those individuals and young families who were loyal to the system.68

Semi-Public Spaces The interdependencies outlined above make clear that the public and private spheres could by no means always be clearly distinguished. The quality of private life was publicly negotiated. The public sphere, on the other

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hand, intervened in private life in manifold ways. Moreover, there were also spaces that could not be clearly defined as one or the other. These hybrid spaces were located at the intersection between the city as a public space and the apartment as a private one. They can best be described as semi-public or semi-private spheres. The semi-public spaces included the bourgeois Salon, or drawing room. This place for receiving guests was a transitional zone between the actual private sphere and a person’s public existence.69 It was here that the male head of household, and possibly his family, appeared in a representative function before select visitors.70 The room was therefore located in the most representative part of the apartment, but was seldom actually used. Real family life took place in the back rooms of the apartment, which outsiders rarely had access to.71 At the turn of the century even lower-middle-class households and the homes of skilled laborers adopted this standard. As cramped as they lived, whenever possible they still afforded themselves the luxury of a parlor, the gute Stube or “good room,” that was rarely used except for special occasions. This gute Stube or lower-middle-class parlor was modeled a er the richly adorned bourgeois Salon or drawing room. It conformed to their desire for representation, but also served to dissociate them from the “culture of poverty” of the lower, working classes.72 Courtyards and stairwells were also forms of external living space with a lively public culture.73 A kind of neighborhood public sphere emerged there, at least in older working-class neighborhoods, that offered many residents a stronger point of reference than their own apartments did.74 “Restricted circumstances gave rise to intense forms of communication—a willingness to help, good neighborly relations and solidarity, but also hatred, envy, gossip and control.”75 One should be careful, in other words, not to romanticize or idealize this neighborhood public sphere. What’s more, it was only accessible to certain people belonging to this semi-public space. The flâneur Franz Hessel (1880–1941), for example, who explored the inner courtyards of Weimar Berlin, could only do so with a concierge at his side.76 At the interface between the public and private spheres were, finally, the numerous bars and cafés, which for many (mostly male) patrons represented a kind of extended living room, allowing them to escape the confines of their homes.77 Modern housing and urban redevelopment altered these semi-public spaces during the twentieth century. Functionality became more clear-cut, neighborhood structures shi ed and the number of bars shrank. At the same time, audiovisual media were conquering private households. This led to a greater penetration of the private sphere by the public one, but also privatized the family even more.78 The following case studies will investigate individual aspects of the public and private spheres in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, their devel-

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opment and the relationship between them. Descending to the microlevel, I will examine individual streets, squares, buildings and apartments. The advantage of this approach is the focus on specific places and protagonists, allowing the investigation of long-term historical transformations. There is a conscious lack of symmetry between the streets in East and West Berlin selected for this study. They are not intended to be representative of their respective district. Instead, my selection criteria were guided by individual questions, topics and sources. I will ask how residents of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg appropriated their apartments as private spaces, and to what extent these apartments were able to be used as personal retreats. Inversely, I will investigate how housing issues were publicly negotiated and how residents reacted to public interventions in the private sphere. The fundamental question is how the housing sector affected the relationship between the public and private spheres in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg and which new public and private spheres emerged there in the period under investigation.

Notes 1. Or so reasons Antoine Prost with regard to his investigation of historical forms of living in his contribution to Georges Duby’s and Philippe Ariès’s five-volume work on the history of private life: Antoine Prost, “Grenzen und Zonen des Privaten,” in Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby (eds), Geschichte des privaten Lebens, vol. 5: Vom Ersten Weltkrieg bis zur Gegenwart, Frankfurt am Main 1993, 15–151, here 63. 2. Other spaces and locations of private life include the family, weekend properties, vacation spots, and even the automobile. Be s, Within Walls, 3. 3. Pierre Bourdieu, “Physischer, sozialer und angeigneter physischer Raum,” in Martin Wentz (ed.), Stadt-Räume, Frankfurt am Main 1991, 25–34, here 26. 4. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 17. 5. Prost, “Grenzen und Zonen des Privaten,” 17. 6. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 83. 7. The term “right to privacy” dates back to 1890, from an article by Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, “Right to Privacy,” Harvard Law Review 4 (1890–1891) no. 5, 193– 220. Only in 1965, however, was the “right to privacy” confirmed by U.S. courts. Be s, Within Walls, 7. 8. Here I follow Kurt Imhof’s deliberations on the concept of the public sphere, where he distinguishes between historical and hermeneutical categories. Kurt Imhof, “‘Öffentli keit’ als historis e Kategorie und als Kategorie der Historie,” S weizeris e Zeits ri für Ges i te 46 (1996), 3–25, here 4 f. 9. On the indissoluble link between the public and private sphere, see Norberto Bobbio, “The Great Dichotomy: Public/Private,” in Norberto Bobbio, Democracy and Dictatorship: The Nature and Limits of State Power, Minneapolis 1989, 1–21; Jeff Weintraub, “The Theory and Politics of the Public/Private Distinction,” in Jeff Weintraub and Krishan

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10. 11.

12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26.

27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

Kumar (eds), Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy, Chicago 1997, 1–42. Prost, “Grenzen und Zonen des Privaten,” 17. Ibid., 17. This was in marked contrast to the representation of the intimate among the nobility, although the aristocratic townhouse did suggest a retreat from the court into the private sphere. Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Belinda Davis, “Reconsidering Habermas, Gender and the Public Sphere: The Case of Wilhelmine Germany,” in Geoff Eley (ed.), Society, Culture, and the State in Germany, 1870–1930, Ann Arbor 1994, 397–426. Adelheid von Saldern, “Stadt und Öffentlichkeit in urbanisierten Gesellscha en. Neue Zugänge zu einem alten Thema,” Informationen zur modernen Stadtgeschichte 30 (2000) no. 2, 3–15, here 8. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 26 f. Von Saldern, “Stadt und Öffentlichkeit,” 8. Prost, “Grenzen und Zonen des Privaten,” 21. Hans J. Teuteberg and Clemens Wischermann, Wohnalltag in Deutschland 1850–1914. Bilder, Daten, Dokumente, Münster 1985, 245. Adelheid von Saldern defines this appropriation as follows: “The cognitive and affective struggle [Auseinandersetzung] of people over space results in this space being interpreted and reinterpreted in a way that enables social identification and communicative action.” Von Saldern, “Stadt und Öffentlichkeit,” 8. Ibid., 4. Teuteberg and Wischermann, Wohnalltag in Deutschland, 369. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 109. Ibid., 85. The boundaries here with the lower middle classes were fluid. Skilled workers, too, a ached ever greater importance to representative furnishings. These included sofas, armchairs, tables, commodes and mirrors. Prost, “Grenzen und Zonen des Privaten,” 21. The same is true of the expansion of the private sphere within the family itself by means of increased living space. Adelheid von Saldern also explains this retreat into the private sphere as a response to ongoing processes of individualization, to the lack of shared public spaces and the greater freedom of movement resulting from the economic boom. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 292–296. Michael Geyer, “Der Kalte Krieg, die Deutschen und die Angst. Die westdeutsche Opposition gegen Wiederbewaffnung und Kernwaffen,” in Klaus Naumann (ed.), Nachkrieg in Deutschland, Hamburg 2001, 267–318, here 289. Schelsky, Die skeptische Generation, 383. Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 88 f. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 296. E.g., by Bahrdt, Die moderne Großstadt, 105, 140. Paul Be s, “Die Politik des Privaten. Eingaben in der DDR,” in Fulda et al., Demokratie im Scha en der Gewalt, 291. Ibid. Günter Gaus, Wo Deutschland liegt. Eine Ortsbestimmung, Hamburg 1983, 156–233. Mary Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR, 1949–1989, Oxford 1995, 69. Be s, Within Walls, 15 f. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 327. Ibid., 66.

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38. Teuteberg and Wischermann, Wohnalltag in Deutschland, 248. 39. Von Saldern, “Stadt und Öffentlichkeit,” 4. 40. Thomas Lindenberger, Straßenpolitik. Zur Sozialgeschichte der öffentlichen Ordnung in Berlin 1900 bis 1914, Bonn 1995. 41. Marynel Ryan Van Zee, “Form and Reform: The Garden City of Hellerau-bei-Dresden Between Company Town and Model Town,” in Marcelo J. Borges and Susana B. Torres (eds), Company Towns: Labor, Space, and Power Relations Across Time and Continents, New York 2012, 41–68. 42. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 54–57. 43. Ralph Jessen, “Polizei, Wohlfahrt und die Anfänge des modernen Sozialstaats in Preußen während des Kaiserreichs,” Geschichte und Gesellscha 20 (1994), 157–180, here 170 f.; von Saldern, “Stadt und Öffentlichkeit,” 5. 44. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 120. 45. Von Saldern, “Stadt und Öffentlichkeit,” 5. 46. Hartmut Häußermann, “Topographien der Macht. Der öffentliche Raum im Wandel der Gesellscha ssysteme im Zentrum Berlins,” in Andreas R. Hoffmann and Anna Veronika Wendland (eds), Stadt und Öffentlichkeit in Ostmi eleuropa 1900–1939. Beiträge zur Entstehung moderner Urbanität zwischen Berlin, Charkiv, Tallinn und Triest, Stu gart 2002, 81–93, here 86. 47. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 130. 48. Ibid., 120–122. 49. Ibid., 196. 50. Dagmar Hilpert, Wohlfahrtsstaat der Mi els i ten? Sozialpolitik und gesells a li er Wandel in der Bundesrepublik Deuts land (1949–1975), Gö ingen 2012, 271–298. 51. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 265. 52. The Lücke Plan entailed the li ing of rent controls, the abolishment of state-administered housing, an amendment to tenant-protection laws, as well as regular rent increases even for subsidized housing. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 351. 53. Ibid., 352. 54. Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 37. 55. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 76. 56. Wilfried Ro comes to the following conclusion: “A creeping ‘socialization’ of economy and society was taking place in West Berlin with strains of a state-controlled planned economy, though civic engagement there was largely born of necessity.” Ro , Die Insel, 318. 57. Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen, 14. 58. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 314. 59. The “Frankfurt kitchen” was paradigmatic, having a surface area of only 6 m2 (65 2). Ibid., 179. 60. Von Saldern, “Stadt und Öffentlichkeit,” 7. 61. For the example of inner-city Berlin, see Benedikt Goebel, Der Umbau Alt-Berlins zum modernen Stadtzentrum. Planungs-, Bau- und Besitzges i te des historis en Berliner Stadtkerns im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Berlin 2003. 62. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 199–202. 63. Ibid., 229 f. 64. Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 90. 65. On the surveillance of private homes by the Stasi, see Be s, Within Walls, 21–50. 66. Karl Christian Führer, Mieter, Hausbesitzer, Staat und Wohnungsmarkt. Wohnungsmangel und Wohnungszwangswirtscha in Deutschland 1914–1960, Stu gart 1995, 393.

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67. Ibid. 68. Wilhelm Hinrichs, Wohnungsversorgung in der ehemaligen DDR. Verteilungskriterien und Zugangswege, Berlin 1992, 21; Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen, 13. 69. Prost, “Grenzen und Zonen des Privaten,” 18. 70. Particularly lavish bourgeois apartments even had ladies’ salons. 71. Friedrich Engels provided a classic description in 1893: “Here in Berlin they have invented the ‘Berliner Zimmer,’ a room with hardly a trace of a window, and that is where the Berliners spend almost all their time.” Cited in Geist and Kürvers, Das Berliner Mietshaus, vol. 2, 350. English version in Friedri Engels, Correspondence, 1891-1895, Moscow 1959, 292. 72. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 85. 73. Von Saldern, “Stadt und Öffentlichkeit,” 9. 74. A special form of this neighborhood public sphere were the street games played by children, which were o en an important factor in their political socialization. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 15, 91. 75. Ibid., 75. 76. Franz Hessel, Ein Flaneur in Berlin, Berlin 1984 [1929], 8 f. 77. Prost, “Grenzen und Zonen des Privaten,” 117. For a detailed look at bars, see chapter 11 of this book. 78. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 178 f.

Chapter 3

THE LONG “GESTATION PERIOD” OF TENEMENT BUILDINGS: SORAUER STRASSE

( How did the architectural ensemble of Berlin tenement buildings from the nineteenth century become the laboratory of new public spheres and private lifestyles beginning in the 1970s, undergoing an “urban renaissance” that has culminated in the gentrification of numerous old neighborhoods in Berlin? I a empt to answer this question below using the example of Sorauer Strasse in Kreuzberg.1 Using a variety of source materials I will offer a fragmentary but detailed biography of this street across several historical periods, describing how it came into existence, its initial poverty and deplorable living conditions, and finally the dramatic transformation of its culture of living that has taken place there since the 1970s.

Private Interests: The Development of Sorauer Strasse Sorauer Strasse lies in eastern Kreuzberg, the former outskirts of Luisenstadt on the far side of the Luisenstadt Canal. At first glance it is a rather ordinary Wilhelmine-era street. But the street is uniquely well-documented, beginning with its construction. In 1871–72, Emil Paul Haberkern (1837– 1916?), a glovemaker by profession, purchased several contiguous plots of land totaling more than five hectares (thirteen acres) in the area between Görlitzer Bahnhof, opened in 1868, and the site of the Customs Wall that was torn down between 1867 and 1869.2 As a building contractor, his plan was to ride the construction boom following the founding of the German Empire. He intended to build small apartments, profiting from the massive number of simple laborers streaming into the newly founded capital of the German Empire in search of work. There was one problem, however: the city blocks were enormous. According to the zoning map laid down by the Hobrecht Plan of 1862, the Notes for this chapter begin on page 96.

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plots were almost two hundred meters deep and were therefore impractical for erecting apartment buildings unless numerous inner courtyards were added.3 Haberkern tried to solve this problem by way of private access roads through the middle of the block. Though losing a section of street-front property, he would gain twenty-seven new plots, all big enough for constructing front and back buildings. But Royal Police Headquarters and its building inspection department rejected out of principle the construction of a private road, suggesting instead that an additional public street be built. Haberkern couldn’t afford this, however, since he would have been responsible for raising it to the proper level, for paving as well as for drainage, not to mention street maintenance for the first five years. This clearly exceeded his financial means. Meanwhile Haberkern had begun construction work on a ninety-meterlong rear building facing the access road yet to be built. But construction work was stopped by the authorities, since the rear building was located in the middle of the block and had no direct access to a public street. Haberkern was in a pickle. Despairing, he turned to the Prussian Ministry of Trade as well as to the Ministry of the Interior, but they too referred him to the respective building regulation of 1853 that required direct street access for fire-safety reasons.4 In other words, it was less about the living conditions of residents than it was about fire prevention. Eventually Haberkern resorted to a trick to continue construction of his building. He declared the rear building (Quergebäude) an extended “side wing” (Seitenflügel) of adjoining Görlitzer Strasse, which ran perpendicular to it and hence provided street access. The authorities gave in and approved the construction of several “side wings” or lateral buildings in May 1873, each of which was over one hundred meters long, demonstrating a uniformity unique to Berlin’s tenement architecture. The result was 230 nearly identical one-room apartments consisting of a living room and a kitchen and measuring 37 m2 (ca. 400 2).5 The first tenants moved in that November. Yet Haberkern, like many building contractors, got swept up in the Founders’ Crash of 1873 at practically the very same time, and was forced to sell the vast majority of his real estate to the Rhenish Building Society (Rheinische Baugesellscha ).6 The new owner was solvent enough to apply for the public access road and accept the usual conditions. The new street was christened Sorauer Strasse in September 1874,7 referring, like the other streets around it, to the Silesian hometown (Sorau/Żary) of many of the area’s residents. Construction had not yet been completed, however. Due to a construction bust, the front buildings on Sorauer Strasse were not built till the first half of the 1880s.8 Moreover, none of the apartments had the elevated standard typical of streetside tenement buildings. Their very modest design with up to four one-room efficiencies per floor was actually

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hardly any different from the Haberkern rear buildings erected ten years earlier, which had now become genuine rear buildings thanks to the construction of the “lateral wings.”9 The two blocks on either side of Sorauer Strasse had thus been developed with a maximum density to guarantee maximum profits. Sorauer Strasse became a typical example of the new “Berlin made of stone” (Map 3.1).

Limited Privacy: A Study by the Berlin Workers’ Board of Health Its high construction density prompted the Berlin Workers’ Board of Health (Berliner Arbeiter-Sanitätskommission) to make Sorauer Strasse the subject of a pioneering 1893 study on living conditions in Berlin.10 The organizers of the study even deemed the street “a be er working-class street, built in accordance with new building codes,” thereby hoping to “pre-empt the accusation of conducting a biased survey.”11 The investigation was modeled on Karl Bücher’s (1847–1930) housing survey of the city of Basel from 1889,12 but was ultimately occasioned by the 1892 cholera epidemic that broke out in Hamburg due in large part to the city’s

MAP 3.1. Straube’s overview map of 1910 Berlin (detail), Berlin State Archive. h p://www.histomapberlin.de.

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catastrophic living conditions.13 Given widespread fears that the disease might eventually reach Berlin, the social-democratically-minded Workers’ Board of Health wanted to raise awareness of the fact that living conditions in Berlin were no less problematic. To this end they conducted a detailed survey on February 26, 1893, collecting information on the living conditions in 783 of the 805 apartments located on Sorauer Strasse. The results were recorded and elucidated in a position paper by Berlin Social Democrat Adolf Braun (1862–1929).14 Accordingly, no fewer than 3,382 people lived in thirty-one buildings on 225-meter-long Sorauer Strasse. Most of these individuals lived in one of the 665 one-room efficiencies (Stube-Küche-Wohnungen) with an average annual rent of 225–250 marks. These one-room apartments had a considerably higher number of occupants than the fewer, more spacious apartments on the street. Kitchens, as a rule, had to double as bedrooms. Moreover, 30 percent of the apartments—usually the ones that were more cramped to begin with—took in regular night lodgers, who in several cases had to share beds with children.15 About a quarter of the apartments had only one toilet for more than ten people. The survey also concluded that residents in 70 percent of the apartments on Sorauer Strasse had fewer cubic meters at their disposal than the inmates of Plötzensee prison, whose cells had to be at least 28 m3 (about 989 cubic feet).16 The study ends with an appeal for a comprehensive investigation of housing in Berlin and a plea for improved living conditions, which admittedly would have required a different economic system.17 Its main complaint given the risk of epidemics was the lack of hygiene in proletarian housing. But it also touched on the limited privacy available under such deplorable living conditions. The comparison to prison cells at Plötzensee could thus be read as a critical commentary on this lack of a private sphere for the residents of Sorauer Strasse. But an interpretation of this sort should necessarily be met with caution. First, because the right to privacy is a normative category that was only framed in the twentieth century.18 Second, because German Social Democracy and the affiliated Workers’ Board of Health were more focused on creating a critical proletarian counterpublic sphere than expanding the private sphere. The housing question was basically considered a side effect of capitalist society to be remedied by overcoming the la er.19 The authors of the study, in other words, were not particularly interested in the private sphere of those living on Sorauer Strasse. They merely mentioned in passing that bed lodgers, “no ma er how considerate,” understandably had “a disruptive and constricting effect on the household.”20 In this respect the Workers’ Board of Health survey reveals li le about contemporary notions of privacy, but it does offer an in-depth look at private living conditions on Sorauer Strasse—and, by extension, elsewhere—in 1893.

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The survey also gave an indication of who lived on Sorauer Strasse in 1893. A total of 771 professions were entered on the questionnaires. The dominant one cited was laborer (259), followed by cabinetmaker (70), bricklayer (37), metalworker (24), shoemaker (16), and carpenter (15)— in other words, a mixture of unskilled workers and traditional skilled trades.21 This corresponded to the pe y-bourgeois and proletarian social structure of Luisenstadt around the turn of the century.22 These figures compiled by the Workers’ Board of Health can be supplemented by those in Berlin’s address books.23 A longitudinal analysis of a random sampling of address-book entries for the years 1893, 1908, 1923 and 1938 reveals a clear tendency: the number of households on Sorauer Strasse steadily rose until the mid-twentieth century.24 The 1938 address book has by far the greatest number of entries. This cannot be entirely explained by the increase in the number of households and the concomitant decrease in household size among more urbanized residents.25 The main reason for the increase in tenants has more to do with the fact that landlords subdivided these already small apartments into even smaller residential units, either because there were not enough potential tenants in the neighborhood who could afford to pay for larger apartments or because a greater number of even smaller apartments translated into a higher rental income. As with the rest of eastern Berlin, Sorauer Strasse reached its maximum housing and residential density in the 1920s and 1930s.26 The fact that Sorauer Strasse became a magnet for apartment hunters in the first third of the twentieth century suggests another observation supported by the address books. While the number of tenants rose, the number of registered businesses on the street declined. If there was a store in almost every building in 1893, subsequent address books only listed the occasional business operation. Landlords had evidently taken this commercial space and divided it into apartments. Sorauer Strasse, in other words, was not exactly a textbook example of the later Kreuzberg mix, of residential and commercial space combined in one building. In the early twentieth century, it was a very densely populated residential street in which almost every ground floor, a ic and basement was inhabited.

The Private Sphere Goes Public: The Housing Survey of the Local Sick Fund There is a well-known photo of a basement apartment on Sorauer Strasse taken in 1908. It was first published in the annual Wohnungs-Enquete, a photo-documented housing survey commissioned and published by the Local Business Enterprise Sick Fund for Merchants, Traders and Pharmacists (Ortskrankenkasse für den Gewerbebetrieb der Kaufleute, Han-

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delsleute und Apotheker, the historical predecessor of the present-day Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse, or AOK insurance company), in order to demonstrate from the perspective of the sick fund the link between living conditions and disease.27 As with the investigation of the Workers’ Board of Health fi een years before, this new housing survey was a public assessment of the problem of deplorable private housing. The sick-fund survey aimed to “remove the barracks system with its adverse effects on health, society and morals, because we consider these rental barracks [i.e. tenement houses] to be unhygienic and unsanitary, opening the door to the spread of infectious diseases through the inevitable congregation of so many people.”28 The insurance company, too, was mainly concerned about hygiene, though the boundary between exposing social evils and advising and monitoring inhabitants was always a fluid one.29 And yet the persistent demand of the housing-survey commission that each individual should have his own bed was at the same time a plea for more privacy. This ma ered to the insurance company not least because private sleeping arrangements meant a more controlled sexuality and fewer instances of undesirable sexual contacts.30 To reinforce this argument, between 1902 and 1920 the local sick fund published extensive annual statistics about the link between poor housing and disease. This was complemented by depictions of some particularly drastic cases, several of them from Sorauer Strasse.31 As of 1904 the publication included large-scale photographs illustrating these miserable living conditions. The sick fund commissioned the Heinrich Lichte & Co. photo studio to visit ailing policyholders and photograph their apartments.32 These well-staged photos always posed a certain violation of the private sphere. But they also offer a unique look at the private homes of the urban lower classes, and constitute the only visual evidence of its kind. The abovementioned photo (Figure 3.1), taken in 1908 in a basement apartment on Sorauer Strasse 27,33 was a typical one-room apartment with kitchen. The photo shows a tiny room (another shows the tiny kitchen). Dark splotches are visible on the walls and the ceiling, and the walls of the apartment are blackened from smoke as the brief picture caption explains. The furnishings are simple mass-produced goods that reduce the room to a narrow passageway. The le side of the picture shows a single bed (there’s another one in the kitchen). A chest and the dark window are decorated with lace. The two deer heads sticking out of the wall give the apartment a personal note and indicate the pe y-bourgeois tastes of its occupants.34 This is in keeping with the fact that most persons insured with this local sick fund set up for merchants, traders and pharmacists belonged to the lower-middle classes, as did presumably the invalid depicted in the photo with his wife.

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FIGURE 3.1. Basement apartment on Sorauer Strasse 27 (1908), photo. Heinrich Lichte, in Kohn, Albert (ed.), Unsere Wohnungs-Enquete im Jahre 1908. Im Au rag des Vorstandes der Ortskrankenkasse für den Gewerbebetrieb der Kaufleute, Handelsleute und Apotheker, Berlin 1909.

The couple is in the background of the picture. The man is lying in bed, with his hand held in front of his mouth. This may seem unusual for a photo from that era but is actually exactly what the sick fund wanted, and what the photographer was hired to capture: an image of the ailing policyholder against the backdrop of his precarious living conditions. This is probably the reason the man stayed in bed at all. The woman shows physical ailments as well. Her right hand is crudely bandaged as she holds it up for the camera. Her work dress and headscarf may bespeak her rural origins but are also a clear indication that the woman’s private apartment doubled as her workplace.35 Her apron is clearly work-worn and less than presentable, whereas the man’s conspicuously placed flat cap and his leather jacket hanging from the cabinet identify him as the public representative within this marital union. The picture, in other words, is not only a photographic production of the poor state of contemporary housing; it is a visual testimony of how the public and private spheres were understood back then, evident in the gen-

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der roles assigned to man and woman. Even if the man is ill, he still wears his best vest for the camera, whereas the woman, apart from tending to the sick man, is responsible for the household chores carried out in the private sphere.36 This traditional gender coding of the public and private sphere was consciously enacted in the picture, presumably at the initiative of the married couple themselves, who despite their wretched situation were still concerned about maintaining appearances. The photographer’s visit, briefly brightening up their otherwise dingy home for a moment with the help of magnesium flash powder and presenting this home to the public, was certainly not an everyday occurrence in the lives of these two individuals, yet still did not catch them completely off-guard. Even their private living quarters showed semi-public elements intended to represent them to the outside world. The apartment’s décor made concessions to the tastes of neighbors, friends and relatives. A bourgeois understanding of public representation in the private sphere was carefully imitated here despite their otherwise dire situation.37 Apart from the public interventions of the Workers’ Board of Health and the housing-survey commission and the evidence they le behind, it is no easy ma er to identify forms of the public sphere on Sorauer Strasse in the early twentieth century—which obviously doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. Like in other neighborhoods of eastern Berlin, the residents of Sorauer Strasse might have held the traditional courtyard festival (Hoffest).38 But these were semi-public spaces where outsiders were not necessarily welcome. People of different social milieus generally remained among their own kind. Only in specific public spaces, especially certain forms of neighborhood entertainment, was there any real interaction between them.39

Public Privacy: A Photo Series by Horst Luedeking Unlike large parts of Kreuzberg, Sorauer Strasse survived World War II nearly unscathed. Like many streets in the postwar era it was allowed to deteriorate, however, to be replaced in the long run with large-scale social housing projects. Even the most essential upkeep was o en neglected. The situation only got worse when the Berlin Wall went up in 1961 and the eastern part of Kreuzberg in particular was marginalized once and for all. Commercial interest was limited here, at least for the time being. Its buildings were slated for interim use until redevelopment finally kicked in and they could be demolished. These interim occupants of Sorauer Strasse are visible in a series of 25 pictures (Figures 3.2–3.4) taken by photographer Horst Luedeking (b. 1949) in 1971. Luedeking was a student at the Folkwang Academy in

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Essen at the time and came to Kreuzberg to do a photo reportage as part of a study project. He happened to have a friend who lived at Sorauer Strasse 13,40 and so he used the opportunity to photograph the building’s residents against the backdrop of their home furnishings.41 Rather than emulating the housing-survey photos—which do share a certain resemblance, but were only rediscovered in the 1980s—he consciously harked back to the visual tradition of bourgeois family portraits from the Biedermeier era.42 A further influence was the photographic portrait in the vein of August Sander (1876–1964), whose “People in the Twentieth Century” series, made in the 1920s, typecast unnamed individuals according to their social status, occupations and living environment.43 Numerous photo artists in East and West Germany experimented with this genre during the 1970s and 1980s, searching for the ways in which individuals are reflected in their private apartments.44 The predominant perspective was usually a sociological one.45 This was the case with Horst Luedeking. Luedeking’s pictures—to put it bluntly—depict the old, the alternative, and the foreign-born, the three characteristic groups in Kreuzberg’s precarious social structure ever since the 1960s, when more and more factories and skilled laborers began leaving the district.46 This is corroborated in a contemporary study conducted by the Institute of Housing and Neighborhood Planning (Institut für Wohnungsbau und Stad eilplanung) at the Technical University of Berlin, which wrote: “It is mostly the elderly, families with many children and low-income families that live in this area, including a large number of foreigners, singles, students, particular problem groups such as ex-convicts, and families from homeless shelters.”47 Many older residents (e.g. in Figure 3.2), whose limited financial means and mobility did not allow them or incline them to move away, ultimately stayed behind. Added to this were mostly young people from West Germany, who were mainly interested in finding cheap digs, and finally the many migrant workers who came to West Berlin on the basis of recruitment agreements to offset the sudden labor shortages caused by the construction of the Wall, that is, the loss of those East Germans who had previously commuted to work in the West. These new, mostly Turkish residents likewise came to Kreuzberg because of vacant and affordable housing, and were seen at the time (through the lens of contemporary immigration policy) as temporary tenants. Figure 3.3 shows how migrant families in their private lives adopted the mannerisms of bourgeois nuclear families, whereas the young people in Figure 3.4 demonstratively reject this lifestyle, negating the dichotomy of public-male and privatefemale representation. Traditional and alternative notions of the public and private sphere coexisted side by side, revealing the heterogeneity of Kreuzberg during the 1970s.

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FIGURES 3.2–3.4. Residents of Sorauer Strasse 13 (1971), photo. Horst Luedeking, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum Archive.

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The photos not only show a significant demographic shi , but also an increase in living space. The number of inhabitants in Kreuzberg was only half of what it had been in the prewar era.48 While there was still a shortage of housing and living conditions were sometimes cramped in certain parts of the neighborhood, the photos clearly illustrate that, on the whole, the residents of Sorauer Strasse now had much more living space than in the days of the Workers’ Board of Health and the housing-survey commission. There was no trace le of the kind of overcrowding that existed in the first half of the twentieth century. A lower population density in turn made room for new public and private spheres. In particular the photos of young, alternative individuals suggest that their ample living space was a place to exercise their personal freedoms. The photos bespeak highly individualized lifestyles, sparely furnished rooms and an esoteric religiosity. But they also express a certain public nonconformism in the form of long hair, obvious drug consumption and freely flaunted nakedness. These young residents apparently had no problem with potentially making their decidedly antibourgeois private lives public in front of the camera; they understood it as a political statement. The pictures, in other words, reveal an ostentatious privacy. The old medieval saying that “city air makes free” also applied to the many young men and women who fled the social controls of the West German provinces to seize the opportunity for self-development offered in West Berlin. “A large supply of housing, low rents, no compulsory military service, a diverse subculture of student groups with art, squa ing, autonomist and punk scenes made West Berlin a ractive in comparison with ‘satiated’ West Germany.”49 The urban interplay of public and private spheres made possible through life in a big city can be seen here in a paradigmatic way. Incomplete social integration in the city of West Berlin formed the negative precondition for cultivating private lifestyles and new, participatory public spheres that aimed not least to maintain these newly acquired personal freedoms by living in affordable housing.

The Public Sphere as a Guarantee of Privacy: Südost-Express Magazine An example of the public protection of the private sphere emerged not long a erwards on Sorauer Strasse. It was here that the “SO 36” citizens’ initiative had its offices. SO 36 originated in a 1977 protest against the demolition of the firehouse on Reichenberger Strasse. Unlike the identically named SO 36 association (Verein), the SO 36 citizens’ initiative (Bürgerinitiative) took a stronger stand against the Senate and even took part in squats.50 The initiative began publishing Südost-Express in 1977,51 which

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soon developed into one of the most important magazines of the Kreuzberg squa ers’ and renovation movement, serving until the early 1990s as a platform for presenting tenant initiatives and denouncing particularly ruthless landlords. The publishers strove to create a surrogate public sphere in which problems could be openly discussed in a neighborhood se ing. The first issue of Südost-Express from December 1977 stated programmatically in its editorial: We’re people from the southeast [of Kreuzberg] and meet every Tuesday evening in the storefront on Sorauer Strasse 28. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to pay us a visit—everyone who has the feeling that the things we care about deeply, the things that interest us, that we enjoy or that exasperate us— that none of that is being wri en about anywhere. There’s a lot going on right now here in the southeast—the Senate and the district want to intervene. We are all affected by this—but have sadly come to the conclusion that no one knows what’s really going on. And those who do know tell us nothing. That’s why we want to start a dialogue with them. Let them write articles. Let them have their say! They should tell us how our part of town can be turned into a neighborhood again, one that we can be proud of. That’s why we founded this magazine, that’s why we founded the SO 36 citizens’ initiative!52

The magazine was meant to serve as a forum for the interests of tenants and lend expression to everything the rest of the press was supposedly hushing up.53 The editors of Südost-Express were emphatically nonpartisan and argued that they were only representing the interests of local tenants. One of their core concerns was a critical assessment of contemporary practices of modernization. By the late 1970s this no longer necessarily meant demolishing late-nineteenth-century buildings. Yet even partial block clearance in the form of tearing down side and rear buildings was highly controversial. The editors of Südost-Express staunchly defended the more affordable apartments in rear buildings. Their magazine was intended as a counter-public sphere for the protection of the private sphere and the freedoms that had evolved in these old tenement buildings. The editors saw these freedoms threatened by the profit interests of landlords and public redevelopment agencies. In their polemic against these interest groups, the publishers of Südost-Express made explicit reference to the history of the block and hence traced a curve to the early days of Sorauer Strasse. In the title story of the magazine’s first issue, the editors concluded: “Haberkern, the shrewd speculator from the founders’ era of our southeast, would surely feel right at home today.”54 Not only did Sorauer Strasse look almost exactly the way it did a hundred years ago; the speculators’ market hadn’t changed much either. Haberkern’s spiritual heirs, in their view, were the anonymous redevelopment agencies that were mainly out to make a buck from publicly tendered modernization

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projects. They described in simple terms how this works: “Haberkern’s heirs are obviously making a killing. They buy up the buildings relatively cheap, the Senate pays a handsome compensation for demolition . . . and with only 15 percent company capital they’re in the game. The rest is paid for by the Senate from its famed ZIP (future investment program) fund. A mere seven years later and the buildings are paid-off, i.e., back on the market and subject to the usual conditions.”55 The editors feared that the new rents would be prohibitively expensive and that lower-income residents would be priced out of the market. The remarkable thing about the magazine’s line of argument is not so much its accurate forecast as its strong sense of local history expressed through the Haberkern story. As with the name of the magazine, which referred to the old postal code SO 36, the editors also referenced the history of the Haberkern blocks.56 But this was no romantic idealization of local history. Haberkern is described as a ruthless real-estate shark. What the citizens’ initiative was more concerned about was forming a historical consciousness in order to reclaim the neighborhood, a process it saw endangered by redevelopment plans and which it wanted to safeguard by building up a democratic public sphere.57 Representative for the burgeoning interest in local history is the feature film The Children from No. 67, or Heil Hitler, I’d Like a Couple of Road Apples by Usch Barthelmess-Weller (b. 1940), which was filmed on Sorauer Strasse in 1979–80, dramatizing in a starkly idealized manner the resistance of two working-class boys against the Nazi takeover in 1933.58 Sorauer Strasse was a suitable film location for two reasons. First, its dilapidated buildings formed the ideal backdrop. Second, its uncertain future was cause for rediscovering its past. Socio-structural and historico-cultural transformation in Kreuzberg went hand in hand from the 1970s. Recourse to the history of local resistance offered orientation in times of crisis59 and was strongly linked to present-day interests and a commitment to local issues. These found a public platform in magazines such as Südost-Express and citizens’ initiatives like SO 36 and ultimately resulted in the International Building Exposition of 1984–87, establishing the precedent of cautious redevelopment. And yet, as Carla MacDougall has noted, it was about much more than merely keeping low-rent housing: “Resistance to urban renewal . . . was also about culturally and socially reviving an informal network of communication that relied on family-owned corner stores and corner pubs, back courtyards, and storefront meeting places. For the opponents of urban renewal, the Kreuzberger Mix’s blend of spheres (private and public), and of the new and the old (industrial trades and alternative collectives), provided one important solution for a revitalization of Kreuzberg.”60 It was in this

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context that large-scale redevelopment projects were ultimately failing. The planned urban expressway leading from the former site of Görlitzer Bahnhof directly to Sorauer Strasse was never built. The rundown latenineteenth-century buildings that would have come under the wrecking ball were instead preserved a er prolonged and intense debates. Hence, Sorauer Strasse was largely renovated and traffic-calmed in the 1980s and 1990s. Its residents, too, became calmer. A 2002 photo project by Lucas Nagel referencing the aforementioned photos from 1971 shows how the inhabitants of No. 13 had meanwhile made themselves at home in converted a ics and amidst planted roof terraces.61 And yet they still appear to value their distinctive home furnishings and exhibit a casual demeanor. On average, however, they are considerably older and richer. The new pictures are lacking the alternative residents of 1971, whose tenant community eventually fell apart not least due to its excessive drug consumption.62 The elderly are also missing, having long since passed away, as well as the migrant families, who were pushed out of the neighborhood or preferred to live elsewhere. The area between Sorauer Strasse and Schlesisches Tor has undergone an accelerated transformation since about the turn of the millennium. A second wave of young urban pioneers have discovered the area, opening clubs, cafés and bars. It is only a ma er of time, however, before more solvent urban elites and tourists replace them, drawn there by the area’s newly cultivated flair. But the origins of this process, whose sociological description has meanwhile turned into a ba le cry, go back much further. The forerunner and precondition of present-day gentrification in Berlin with all of its a endant challenges is the public and private appropriation of Wilhelmine buildings combined with their enhanced symbolic and material status that began in the 1970s. What tends to be forgo en nowadays is that these older buildings, Sorauer Strasse included, had been urban slums for most of their existence. The street is therefore paradigmatic for the long and o en fractured “gestation process” of Berlin tenement buildings, whose modern-day appeal has to be critically analyzed and put into historical context.

Notes 1. This chapter is partly based on Hanno Hochmuth, “Vom langen Wandel der Mietskaserne. Öffentlichkeit und Privatheit in Berlin-Kreuzberg,” Schweizerisches Jahrbuch für Wirtscha s- und Sozialgeschichte/Annuaire suisse d’histoire économique et sociale 28 (2014), 239–258.

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2. Hartwig Schmidt, “Haberkerns Hof. Berliner Mietskasernenbau 1872–1875,” in Gerd Peschken, Dieter Radicke, and Tilman J. Heinisch (eds), Festschri für Ernst Heinrich, dem Bauforscher, Baugeschichtler und Hochschullehrer zum 75. Geburtstag dargebracht, Berlin 1974, 75–111, here 81–86; Raimund Thörnig, “Mietskasernenbau in SO 36. Beispiel: ‘Haberkerns Hof’,” in Verein SO 36 (ed.), “. . . außer man tut es!” Kreuzberg—abges rieben—auferstanden, vol. 1, Berlin 1989, 10 f. 3. A classic example was Meyer’s Hof on Ackerstrasse 132, where a total of six rear buildings parallel to the street were built one a er the other, linked to each other through a series of courtyards and gateways. Geist and Kürvers, Das Berliner Mietshaus, vol. 2. 4. Schmidt, “Haberkerns Hof, ” 91–95. 5. Ibid., 95. 6. And yet Haberkern still kept building in the neighborhood. Between 1872 and 1875 he constructed a total of 75 buildings in the area east of Görlitzer Bahnhof: 43 front buildings, 14 of these with side buildings, and 32 rear buildings. Thörnig, “Mietskasernenbau in SO 36,” 11. 7. Schmidt, “Haberkerns Hof,” 100–102. 8. A local history from 1927 noted this curiosity, i.e. that the rear buildings on Sorauer Strasse had been built before the front buildings and were mockingly referred to as “midges” (Mücken). Fritz Kirchhoff, “Rund um das Schlesische Tor. Ein Spaziergang vor sechzig Jahren,” in Katharina Altmann et al. (eds), Die Luisenstadt. Ein Heimatbuch, Berlin 1927, 68–72, here 72. 9. Schmidt, “Haberkerns Hof,” 109. 10. Adolf Braun, Berliner Wohnungsverhältnisse. Denkschri der Berliner-Arbeiter-Sanitätskommission, Berlin 1893. 11. Ibid., 45. 12. Karl Bücher, Die Wohnungsenquete in der Stadt Basel vom 1. bis zum 19. Februar 1889, Basel 1891. See also Barbara Koller, “Gesundes Wohnen”. Ein Konstrukt zur Vermi lung bürgerli er Werte und Verhaltensnormen und seine praktis e Umsetzung in der Deuts s weiz 1880–1940, Zuri 1995; idem, “Die Bedeutung der Wohnungsenqueten bei der Institutionalisierung der städtis en Wohnungsaufsi t in der S weiz,” in Hansjörg Siegenthaler (ed.), Wissens a und Wohlfahrt. Moderne Wissens a und ihre Träger in der Formation des s weizeris en Wohlfahrtsstaates während der zweiten Häl e des 19. Jahrhunderts, Zuri 1997, 175–202. 13. On the cholera epidemic in Hamburg, see Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830–1910, London 1987, 285–402. 14. Here and in the following, Braun, Berliner Wohnungsverhältnisse, 48–61. 15. On the phenomenon of night lodgers, see Teuteberg and Wischermann, Wohnalltag in Deutschland, 246 f. 16. The Workers’ Board of Health study also contains data on ceiling height, previous duration of tenancy, commuting distances, as well as the glaring deficiencies of these apartments as pointed out by the respondents. 17. Braun, Berliner Wohnungsverhältnisse, 69. 18. Be s, Within Walls, 7. 19. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 109. 20. Braun, Berliner Wohnungsverhältnisse, 54. 21. Ibid., 49. 22. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xviii. 23. h ps://digital.zlb.de/viewer/berliner-adress-telefon-branchenbuecher/ (accessed March 9, 2020). Berlin address books are an outstanding and much-used resource not only for genealogists, who rely on the alphabetical directory of inhabitants to reconstruct family

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24.

25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31.

32.

33.

34. 35.

histories, but also for social historians, who can gauge the population density and social structure of a given street by using the occupational data listed a er each name in the directory. There are a variety of limitations, however, to these seemingly complete and objective entries. First of all, address books were not compiled using scholarly criteria, but were simply intended to fulfill a certain function, i.e. as an aid to locating individuals and institutions in a city of almost two million inhabitants. Moreover, not all residents of a street had an entry in the book. Family members, domestic servants, subtenants and night lodgers were all unlisted. It was usually just the male head of household and/or main tenant who appeared in the address book. Adding up the address-book entries from 1893 for all thirty-one buildings on Sorauer Strasse, a mere 212 tenants are listed—on average fewer than seven tenants per building. This figure stands in stark contrast to the one established by the Workers’ Board of Health, which counted no fewer than 805 tenants on Sorauer Strasse the very same year. By 1908 there were already 602 address-book entries for Sorauer Strasse. Fi een years later it was 692, and by 1938 it was 766. These numbers, of course, refer to the number of households and not the considerably higher number of total occupants. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 127. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xxii. Geist and Kürvers, Das Berliner Mietshaus, vol. 2, 452–466. Albert Kohn (ed.), Unsere Wohnungs-Enquete im Jahre 1909. Im Au rag des Vorstandes der Ortskrankenkasse für den Gewerbebetrieb der Kaufleute, Handelsleute und Apotheker, Berlin 1910, 4. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 425. Teuteberg and Wischermann, Wohnalltag in Deutschland, 247. Thus, in 1909 the housing-survey commission described a basement apartment in Sorauer Strasse 29 as follows: “The family of six occupies one room and a kitchen. The ceilings have a height of 2.5 meters [8’ 2”], 1.5 [4’ 11”] of which is underground. The window has a view of a dreary wall, and only a few square meters of light are visible. The only furniture in the room was a stroller and a table; the beds were sca ered on the floor. There were no bed frames and no kitchen furniture.” Kohn, Unsere WohnungsEnquete im Jahre 1909, 45. All of these photos are reproduced in Gesine Asmus (ed.), Hinterhof, Keller und Mansarde. Einbli e in das Berliner Wohnungselend 1901–1920. Die Wohnungs-Enquete der Ortskrankenkasse für den Gewerbebetrieb der Kaufleute, Handelsleute und Apotheker, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1982. The photo is in the appendix to Albert Kohn (ed.), Unsere Wohnungs-Enquete im Jahre 1908. Im Au rag des Vorstandes der Ortskrankenkasse für den Gewerbebetrieb der Kaufleute, Handelsleute und Apotheker, Berlin 1909. The ceiling was 2.6 meters (8’ 6”) high, but 1.95 meters (6’ 5”) of the room was below street level due to the unique circumstances of Sorauer Strasse’s construction. Ground level at the street was two meters higher than where the rear buildings had been built. The site eventually had to be filled in with dirt to make the lot level, transforming the ground-floor apartments of the Haberkern rear buildings (built first) into basement apartments with li le light. Gerischer and Jablonka, Geschichte von Orten im Wrangelkiez, 14 f. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 25. For working women in particular, their home and out-of-home work formed the basis of the family’s “economy of need,” holding the family together despite the fact that the la er was organized in a hierarchical-patriarchal way. Karen Hagemann, Frauenalltag und Männerpolitik. Alltagsleben und gesellscha liches Handeln von Arbeiterfrauen in der Weimarer Republik, Bonn 1990, 43.

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36. Beier, “Leben in der Mietskaserne,” 251. 37. This was typical of pe y-bourgeois lifestyles, which endeavored to distinguish themselves from proletarian ones. The la er generally did without the domestic display of status symbols, though the boundaries here were certainly fluid. Ibid., 244, 249. 38. Mielitz, “Eine soziale Studie über den Osten Berlins,” 20; Brust, Koppenstraße 60, 52. 39. On these forms of entertainment, or “Kiezvergnügen,” see chapter 11. 40. In 1984, Horst Luedeking won a photo competition sponsored by the Kreuzberg Art Office, but he never actually lived in Kreuzberg. Ellen Röhner and Erik Steffen (eds), Stillstand und Bewegung. Menschen in Kreuzberg. Fotografien aus den 70ern und 80ern, Berlin 2012. 41. These large-scale photographs are now property of the archive of the Friedri shainKreuzberg Museum: FHXB Fotoserie Horst Luedeking. Some of them were reprinted in Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 130 f. 42. Be s, Within Walls, 210. 43. Agneta Jilek, “Dokumentarische Fotografie und visuelle Soziologie. Christian Borcherts ‘Familienporträts’ aus der DDR der 1980er-Jahre,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 10 (2013) no. 2, 321–330, h p://www.zeithistorische-forschungen .de/16126041-Jilek-2-2013. On August Sander in particular, see Gabriele Conrath-Scholl and Susanne Lange, “‘Einen Spiegel der Zeit schaffen’. August Sanders ‘Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts’,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 1 (2004) no. 1, 271–278, h p://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/2-2004/id=4436. 44. In the Federal Republic, esp. Herlinde Koelbl, Das deutsche Wohnzimmer, Lucerne 1980. In the GDR, esp. Christian Borchert. See Jilek, “Dokumentarische Fotografie und visuelle Soziologie.” The family portraits of Christian Borchert are available online at h ps://www.slub-dresden.de/sammlungen/deutsche-fotothek/fotografen/borchert (accessed April 29, 2020). 45. Be s, Within Walls, 209–218; Heino R. Möller, Innenräume/Außenwelten. Studien zur Darstellung der bürgerlichen Privatheit in Kunst und Warenwerbung, Gießen 1981. 46. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 80. 47. FHXB Lfd. Nr. 41, Östliche Wrangelstraße, Blöcke 130/131 (Haberkernblöcke) Planung, Sanierung, Bewohnerbeteiligung (1978–1982). 48. Mende and Wernicke, Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 52 f. 49. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 73. 50. MacDougall, “In the Shadow of the Wall,” 169. 51. The idea of a neighborhood periodical originally came from Dieter Kramer, who tried in vain to win support from the SPD. The suggestion to start a magazine specifically for SO 36 came in 1977 from project group 67 of the Strategies for Kreuzberg competition and was picked up by the SO 36 citizens’ initiative. The periodical had a print run of about two thousand copies a month and was financed by its sales and advertising revenues, editing and distribution being done on a voluntary basis. In 1979, Südost-Express decided a er lengthy internal disputes to support the Alternative List and the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin during upcoming elections, which led to the breakup of its first editorial team. The magazine was subsequently operated more professionally and as of 1984 represented all of Kreuzberg. On Südost-Express, see Verein SO 36, “. . . außer man tut es!”, 106 f. 52. Südost-Express, December 1977, 1. 53. Südost-Express described Kreuzberger Echo as the “central organ of the district authority” and KIZ as the “cheerleading paper of the SPD.” 54. Südost-Express, December 1977, 1 f. 55. Ibid.

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56. On the history of the term “SO 36,” see chapter 5 of this book. 57. On the appropriation of older neighborhoods by history workshops, see von Saldern, Häuserleben, 397. 58. Die Kinder aus No. 67 oder: Heil Hitler, ich hä gern n’paar Pferdeäpfel, West Germany 1980, 103 min., wri en and directed by Usch Barthelmeß-Weller/Werner Meyer. 59. An example of the historicization of Kreuzberg from the perspective of oppositional behavior across the centuries is the travel guide of Joachim Berger, Kreuzberger Wanderbuch. Wege ins widerborstige Berlin, Berlin 1984. 60. MacDougall, “In the Shadow of the Wall,” 167. 61. The photos belong to the collection of the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum and are kept in the archive there. 62. This was the conclusion of a 2002 reunion, sponsored by the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum, of the old tenants from Sorauer Strasse 13 who’d been photographed by Horst Luedeking back in 1971. Interview with Martin Düspohl (June 4, 2014).

Chapter 4

THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPHERE IN URBAN TRANSFORMATION: STRASSE DER PARISER KOMMUNE

( As a counterpart to Sorauer Strasse in Kreuzberg, the present investigation should ideally examine a small residential street in Friedrichshain whose older building stock has likewise largely remained intact. The following, however, will tell the story of Strasse der Pariser Kommune (Fruchtstrasse prior to 1971) in Friedrichshain—not only because it is exceptionally well documented, but especially because it took a very divergent development path. The public and the private spheres a er World War II evolved differently on Strasse der Pariser Kommune than they did on Sorauer Strasse, even though in many respects the two streets had a similar history. Whereas nonconformist lifestyles proliferated in the surviving older buildings on Sorauer Strasse as of the 1970s, Strasse der Pariser Kommune was subject to a fundamental urban transformation in which the niches for alternative private spheres gradually disappeared and the street became a centerpiece of the official Party-state public sphere.

The “Chicago of Berlin”: Old Fruchtstrasse in Stralauer Viertel Strasse der Pariser Kommune lies in western Friedrichshain, in what used to be Stralauer Viertel. It runs north–south for a length of almost one kilometer (0.6 miles) from the junction of Palisadenstrasse and Weidenweg, across Karl-Marx-Allee, and down to Mühlenstrasse on the Spree. Today’s Strasse der Pariser Kommune is dominated by twenty-one-story prefab apartment blocks built in the GDR. Only at the northwest end of it did a few old buildings survive World War II and the large-scale redeNotes for this chapter begin on page 119.

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velopment projects of the 1970s, now being vaguely reminiscent of an era when almost the entire street was lined with five-story tenements. Most of these seventy-three tenement buildings had been built in the 1870s. They were very basic in their amenities and had deep inner courtyards with small one-room efficiencies and numerous commercial establishments (Map 4.1). Only its name, Fruchtstrasse, recalled that at one time, until the mid-nineteenth century, the area was characterized by flowerbeds and café gardens.1 In the course of the dynamic industrialization and urbanization of Berlin the gardens had to go, however, giving way to the many people who needed a place to live in the young imperial capital. In 1871 a sprawling shantytown (euphemistically referred to as “Barackia”) sprang up on Fruchtstrasse. But the shacks were cleared and demolished in August 1872 by order of the Berlin chief of police.2 In their place came typical tenement buildings, mostly inhabited by newcomers. The history of Fruchtstrasse is closely linked with the big train station at the southern end of the street. Initially built by the Lower Silesian-Mark Railway as Frankfurter Bahnhof (Frankfurt Station) in 1842 and renamed Schlesischer Bahnhof (Silesian Station) in 1882,3 it soon became the most important point of arrival for millions of people looking for work and a modicum of happiness in Berlin.4 The station was “the syringe that injected eastern Berlin with all the hopes, ideas, fears, beliefs and habits, with acts of kindness, acts of malice and even with the indifference of those who came here.”5 Many newcomers found a place to live right by the station. They had a determining influence on the social profile of Fruchtstrasse during the 1920s, which we are able to reconstruct today using the occupational data contained in Berlin address books.6 Working-class households constituted the majority in 1925 with 55.4 percent. Civil servants (mostly low-ranking postal and railroad officials) and salaried employees made up 27 percent of the residents, whereas 15.2 percent were self-employed. The most common occupations on Fruchtstrasse included (unskilled) laborers male and female (153), merchants and commercial clerks (66), cabinetmakers (41), seamstresses (39), post office clerks (30) and innkeepers (22). But the largest group in the address book, seven years a er the end of World War I, were the 176 widows with no specified occupation. Fruchtstrasse was thus in keeping with the pe y-bourgeois and proletarian social profile of the rest of Friedrichshain,7 quite the opposite of the western districts of Berlin, thus confirming the notion of a segregated capital in which class differences took on manifest spatial form.8 From close up, however, the figures contradict the image of Friedrichshain as a purely working-class district. Eastern Berlin was in fact socially mixed, though mainly comprising the lower and middle classes.

The Public and Private Sphere in Urban Transformation: Strasse der Pariser Kommune

MAP 4.1. Straube’s overview map of 1910 Berlin (detail), Berlin State Archive. h p://www.histomapberlin.de.

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Fruchtstrasse and its environs enjoyed the dubious reputation of being the “Chicago of Berlin.”9 Wilhelm Voigt (1849–1922), the fraudulent “Captain of Köpenick” who achieved world fame in 1906, and serial killer Carl Grossmann (1863–1922), who murdered several young women before being caught in 1921, both lived on adjoining Lange Strasse.10 The whole of Stralauer Viertel was considered a den of prostitution. Schlesischer Bahnhof was sometimes referred to as “Threepenny Station,” since the station and the surrounding bars doubled as cheap pick-up joints.11 Countless pe y criminals peopled the streets and local bars. But the area owed its bad reputation primarily to the so-called Ringvereine, or “ring clubs”— syndicate-like associations of thieves, burglars, con men, muggers, pimps, drug dealers, hustlers and racketeers that disguised themselves as savings associations, sports clubs and choral societies.12 On December 29, 1928, a sensational and brutal clash occurred between 20 Hamburg bricklayers and carpenters and 150 heavily armed members of the Immertreu (“Always Faithful”) Ringverein at Nabur tavern on Breslauer Strasse 1, resulting in the deaths of several individuals.13 Newspaper reports from that same year claimed that 30 percent of the 46,000 neighborhood residents had a criminal record, whereas a good 12,000 people, 80 percent of whom had priors, were thought to be living there illegally.14 In short, Stralauer Viertel had a reputation as a haven of crime.

No News in the East: The SAG Housing Commission The neighborhood’s bad reputation induced Lutheran pastor Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze (1885–1969) to set up the Social Working Group of Eastern Berlin (Soziale Arbeitsgemeinscha Berlin-Ost, or SAG) in the heart of Stralauer Viertel.15 Unlike the Workers’ Board of Health and the housing-survey commission of the local sick fund, both of which were active on Sorauer Strasse, the SAG was not about publicly condemning the miserable living conditions in eastern Berlin. Rather, the SAG aimed in the spirit of the Inner Mission to spread Christian evangelical standards of coexistence and to bring culture to uneducated workers, especially by offering young proletarian residents opportunities for a “moral community life.” This required an in-depth study of life in Stralauer Viertel. Like the Workers’ Board of Health and the housing-survey commission before it, the SAG conducted wide-ranging empirical investigations, addressing the most important aspects in the lives of the local population. The work of the SAG’s housing commission, which conducted an extensive survey of the residents of Stralauer Viertel between 1927 and 1930, provides a detailed look at their living conditions. Members of this

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housing commission went door to door, interviewing residents and entering their answers in a comprehensive questionnaire about family and living situations. About 600 questionnaires were filled in, 123 of them on Fruchtstrasse.16 And yet Fruchtstrasse alone must have had at least four thousand residents in the mid-1920s.17 Members of the housing commission itself had already addressed the problem of the survey not being sufficiently representative.18 Added to this was the problem that most of the interviewers were university students, with a very different social background than the primarily lower-middle-class and working-class inhabitants of Stralauer Viertel. Making contact must have been difficult in many cases. This is where trusted individuals came into play acting as go-betweens, people who hailed from the neighborhood themselves and were held in respect by the locals. Thus, it was thanks to P. Welte, head of the Welfare Commission of the SAG and a worker himself, that at least half the residents of Fruchtstrasse 60 were included in the survey.19 Of the fi y-eight households on Fruchtstrasse 60 listed in the 1930 Berlin address book,20 questionnaires were filled out for twenty-nine of them. The results of the survey were evaluated internally and conveyed in writing to Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze on February 27, 1930.21 The questionnaires themselves have been preserved, with one exception, allowing direct access to the empirical data compiled in them.22 A historical reanalysis of the data from a scholarly perspective provides us with a detailed look at the family circumstances and living conditions in an ordinary Friedrichshain tenement building near the end of the Weimar Republic. The twenty-nine households interviewed on Fruchtstrasse 60 comprised four single persons and twenty-five families. Simple, unskilled workers and manual laborers were in the majority. Eleven men were unskilled laborers, the others worked as cabinetmakers, wood-carvers, lathe operators, metalworkers, grinders, doormen, chauffeurs, exterminators, commercial clerks, police officers and dairy owners. Eleven women likewise worked outside the home as unskilled laborers, cleaning women, leather-menders, bookkeepers, municipal clerks, hairdressers and shopkeepers. The remaining women worked from home or as housewives. This is not to mention child labor. Six families had one child who worked, three families had two working children, and two families even had three under employ, the number of children per family ranging from one to four. Child mortality was still very high. Ten families had at least one child who had died, whereas two families had seven and eight children, respectively, who did not survive infancy.23 Moreover, in ten families at least one member had contracted tuberculosis. Of the households interviewed, thirteen lived in the front building, three in the first inner courtyard (presumably in some kind of coach house

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or shed), eight in the rear building, and five in the second inner courtyard. Ten families had two rooms and a kitchen at their disposal and fourteen had a single room and a kitchen, though the kitchen in almost every case doubled as a living room and sometimes as a bedroom. Five of those interviewed had only one room with a kitchene e. In other words, most lived in the small or mini apartments typical of eastern Berlin. Yet nine of the families still rented out a room, and one family even took in two night lodgers. Nineteen families had as many beds as occupants, nine families one bed too few. None of the apartments had its own lavatory. These were located either on the landing or in the courtyard, and were used by nine other households on average. Every room had heating and one or two windows. Five apartments in the rear got no direct sunlight, and one apartment only in the middle of summer. Six apartments were very damp. Living conditions on Fruchtstrasse were thus far removed from the ideal of “light, air and sun” being experimented with in social housing in other parts of Berlin at that time.24 The questionnaires also give information on the migration background of the residents of Fruchtstrasse 60. Though all of the interviewees had German citizenship,25 only in five families had husband and wife been born in Berlin. Most of the couples met in Berlin a er moving there. In ten cases the men had been single when they came to Berlin, either with their parents, as apprentices or soldiers. In eight cases the mother came to Berlin as a girl, either with her parents or to work as a maid. The reason for their coming to Berlin was almost always the hope of a be er job. Most of them came from Silesia or East Prussia. Sixteen families came from the countryside, and there were no families who didn’t have at least one pair of grandparents living in the countryside. Nine families had lived somewhere else in Stralauer Viertel before they moved to Fruchtstrasse. But there was a remarkably low turnover rate for the residents of Fruchtstrasse 60. The tenants interviewed had lived there for fi een years on average. Only five tenants had lived there for less than ten years. Eight tenants had moved in before World War I, and two of them as early as 1883 and 1893. One family was an exception, having switched apartments ten times before moving to Fruchtstrasse 60. Compared to a tendency in Imperial Germany to constantly change one’s place of residence, people were now staying longer in one apartment. On the whole, however, living conditions in eastern Berlin were still relatively precarious. The SAG investigation paints a similar picture to that of the Workers’ Board of Health study conducted thirty-seven years earlier on Sorauer Strasse. Subdivided apartments, the practice of taking in night lodgers, and shared toilets all restricted the privacy of residents. The kitchen-cum-living room and work from home resulted in a

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constant overlapping of the public and private spheres. Though local authorities had meanwhile addressed the housing question elsewhere and begun building new apartments where the kitchen could no longer be used as a place to sleep, none of these reforms had an impact on eastern Berlin. Of course, the question arises as to how urgent the desire was in Stralauer Viertel for new ways of living that allowed for more privacy. Satisfaction with the state of housing seemed relatively high on Fruchtstrasse 60. Eighteen households indicated that their building was in good shape overall. They repeatedly emphasized that the building, at the time more than fi y years old already, had only just recently been worked on and received a fresh coat of paint. The occupants apparently found it important how the building looked from the outside—and hence how they themselves appeared to the outside world. The building’s public facade was thus in stark contrast to the many deficiencies reported in individual apartments. The occupants put up with humidity problems, making no demands for improvements in their survey responses. It was basically the state of affairs they were used to. Live-in kitchens, shared toilets and night lodgers were all things they had known for decades. In other words, the desire for more privacy was not yet firmly established in the expectations of these mostly proletarian inhabitants of eastern Berlin.

Snapshots: The Postwar Years on Fruchtstrasse Living conditions on Fruchtstrasse did not change much under Nazism before World War II marked a big transition. In 1945 large parts of Fruchtstrasse lay in ruins. Though only two buildings facing the street were completely destroyed and five badly damaged, behind these stretched great expanses of wasteland. Wartime devastation was particularly bad in the middle section of Fruchtstrasse, at Küstriner Platz,26 the Wehrmacht having transformed the square into a fortress in April 1945 in order to defend the German capital against the advancing Red Army. Antiaircra guns were set up there, aimed at the railroad yards to the east. The old Ostbahnhof at Küstriner Platz, which had served as the Plaza variety theater as of 1929, was refunctioned into army barracks, a command post and hospital. The building saw heavy fighting between German and Red Army units during the last days of the war. Byelorussian soldiers of the 5th Soviet Shock Army managed to take the building and an SS storm ba alion tried to recapture it, prompting the Red Army to bring in its heavy artillery. Ostbahnhof was completely gu ed and Küstriner Platz badly damaged in the process.27

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A photo from the immediate postwar period documents this destruction rather strikingly. The picture was taken by O o Donath (1898–1971), a Berlin photojournalist who captured numerous similar scenes.28 Donath was a photographer in the 689th Propaganda Company during World War II. From 1945 until the mid-1950s he worked as a freelance photographer for the East German state news agency, ADN, as well as for various East Berlin papers and magazines, including Tägliche Rundschau and Neue Berliner Illustrierte. The photo shown in Figure 4.1 was probably taken on assignment for one of these news outlets. Gauging the angle and with the help of historical maps it is fairly certain that the picture was taken at Fruchtstrasse 65. The middle of the photo shows Fruchtstrasse crossing Küstriner Platz, which had already been cleared of rubble. Behind the square are the burned-out ruins of Ostbahnhof with its collapsed roof. A lone tree is visible on Küstriner Platz, the plane tree that still stands there today.29 The tree casts a short shadow in the photo. The sun is due south, hence it’s midday. But the tree is still bare. Presumably the picture was taken on one of the first sunny days of spring in March or April 1947.30 The foreground shows a woman with a child of perhaps four years. They are likely mother and daughter, intended here as an allegory of Germany’s new beginning. The carefully composed picture puts the girl in the center, her curly blond hair gleaming in the springtime sun. The harsh winters of 1945–46 and 1946–47 appear to be over. The mother is gazing at her child at play, symbolizing the hope of new life. Simple joy is the picture’s clear message. But the photo has documentary value as well, telling of postwar life on Fruchtstrasse. Most notably the wall to the street is missing, allowing the viewer an unhindered view of the outside world. The facade of the building across the street has likewise collapsed. Only the foundation walls have been le standing, framing a mountain of debris. Yet people still live in these ruins. Though the apartment depicted in the photo drops off into an abyss, this woman and child apparently have no other choice but to live here and make the most of it. She’s dolled herself up as well as she could, and hidden her hair beneath a headscarf. Two laundry lines are stretched across the room, a water bucket serves as a makeshi sink, and three planting boxes for vegetables have been fashioned out of boards. Like in Tiergarten, the people living on Fruchtstrasse engaged in subsistence farming to ensure their survival. Cautiously the first shoots reach for the bright sunlight which is pouring into the open apartment, its outer wall having been demolished. The apartment is used to cultivate crops and is visible to outsiders. Privacy is out of the question here. There is no barrier to the outside world. In the ruins of Berlin it was hard to determine where public space

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FIGURE 4.1. Open apartment at Küstriner Platz (1947), photo. O o Donath, German Federal Archives, BArch 183-M1129-322.

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ended and private space began; the boundaries between public and private had to be renegotiated and re-established. On the streets and in public places the rubble was quickly cleared, as seen in the view here of Küstriner Platz. The public media were purged of Nazism and became the arena of competing political visions of the future. All four sectors published newspapers licensed by the Allied powers. Photojournalists like O o Donath roamed the city’s ruins on assignment, capturing for their papers the atmosphere of a new beginning. But while the public sphere was flourishing, the private sphere of most people was severely restricted. The housing shortage resulted in a controlled economy. Those bombed out of their homes were allocated living space in unscathed apartments and o en had to be taken in by other families for years on end.31 Total strangers lived side by side. Others, like the woman in the photo, had to stay behind in the ruins. Exposed apartments were protected against the elements using blankets, wooden boards and other makeshi methods. The photo in question may seem like the image of a happy mother and daughter despite the odds, but a ests most of all to the lack of privacy in postwar Berlin. Photographer Fritz Tiedemann (1915–2001) captured the reverse perspective five years later. Commissioned by the municipal authorities of Greater Berlin, on March 27, 1952 he documented the condition of all the buildings on the west side of Fruchtstrasse, including No. 65, where the woman and child had been photographed. Arwed Messmer, a present-day photographer, rediscovered the thirty-two surviving photos in the architectural collection of the Berlinische Galerie, digitally assembling them into a large-format street panorama that shows what a 650-meter stretch of Fruchtstrasse looked like back in the early 1950s.32 Fritz Tiedemann, with these photos, unwi ingly created a “visual memory of daily life and the living conditions of those years,” as Anne Gröschner puts it in her accompanying essay.33 Fruchtstrasse 65 (Figure 4.2) still shows noticeable signs of damage from the war. The facade is pockmarked with bullet holes from the street fighting at Küstriner Platz and the plaster has completely fallen off in some spots, revealing the brickwork underneath. Only a few of the original stucco elements still adorn the front of the building. Many of the windows have been patched up with multiple smaller panes of glass or taped shut with cardboard. The entire fourth upper floor is gone; only the remaining chimneys are visible, ju ing out from the improvised flat roof. On the le side, part of the third upper floor is missing. This must be where the woman and child were photographed just a few years before. The second upper story of the building below the third-floor apartment in question has likewise been given a provisional roof instead of the gaping

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FIGURE 4.2. Fruchtstrasse 65/66 (1952), photo. Fritz Tiedemann, edited and reconstructed by Arwed Messmer (2008), courtesy of Uwe Tiedemann, Arwed Messmer and the Berlinische Galerie.

hole it was in 1947, and a makeshi side wall seems to have been built on the third upper story. In neighboring No. 66, however, the photos still reveal exposed apartments, their furnishings clearly visible from the street. The large display windows on the ground floor, belonging to what used to be a store, have been bricked up and replaced with two smaller windows secured by a sliding la ice. It is unclear what is behind them. A subterranean business still exists next door, a grocery store to judge by the faded le ering visible on the facade. The daily offers are wri en on a chalkboard: “vinegar, mustard, sauerkraut, dry flour, first-class beets and peas.” A handcart outside the store is loaded with empty fruit and vegetable crates. Two other signs can also be seen. One advertises the dentist Fritz Schläden, still practicing on Fruchtstrasse 65, the other the Plaza variety theater at Küstriner Platz, which at this point has already been torn down. This snapshot from the year 1952 shows Fruchtstrasse in a transitional state. The decay of buildings from the German Empire, already in a state of disrepair, was dramatically accelerated by the war. Many apartments had become uninhabitable, countless stores had closed. Yet daily life with its temporary arrangements went on nonetheless. Fruchtstrasse was characterized by a hodgepodge of interim solutions in structures that were destined for demolition sooner or later. Li le of it seems typical for the eastern part of the city. Only the three Konsum grocery stores, emblazoned with political slogans in support of the Stalin Note of March 10, 1952, were clear indications that Fruchtstrasse was located in the GDR.34 It is a fact unseen that by this point most of the buildings were no longer privately owned but administered by the Greater Berlin Association of

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People’s Own Property Management (Vereinigung volkseigener Grundstü sverwaltungen Gross-Berlin).35 Hardly anything had been restored on Fruchtstrasse, since the buildings were slated to be torn down sometime in the foreseeable future. This was presumably the reason for taking stock of the street photographically.36 Only No. 52 had been restored, receiving a new, roughcast facade, bordering as it did directly on Stalinallee, whose cornerstone had just been laid two months before; the ground-floor foundation of block C-South was just being built when Fritz Tiedemann documented Fruchtstrasse (Figure 4.3).37 Whereas the construction of Stalinallee was generally used for propaganda purposes, Tiedemann’s photos were merely meant to document the status quo of Fruchtstrasse with its temporary usage in mind. They were not intended for the public. From the SED’s perspective, the future was not to be found in the old tenement buildings on Fruchtstrasse but in the workers’ palaces of Stalinallee.38 Stalinallee—built in a modified Soviet wedding-cake style and reminiscent of the housing program being implemented in the Soviet Union—has o en been described as a public demonstration of the SED’s claim to represent the superior social system.39 For historians of everyday life, how-

FIGURE 4.3. Fruchtstrasse 52, detail (1952), photo. Fritz Tiedemann, edited and reconstructed by Arwed Messmer (2008), courtesy of Uwe Tiedemann, Arwed Messmer and the Berlinische Galerie.

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ever, they stood for an increase in privacy. It is true that the new buildings on Stalinallee contained many common rooms and that residents were expected to take part in myriad political activities. But the street’s functionally designed apartments offered a level of comfort previously unfamiliar to the bulk of its residents, not all of whom were SED functionaries. For many simple workers, it was the first apartment they had ever had that was neither shared nor deficient in some fundamental way.40 Unlike the eighty-year-old, run-down tenements on Fruchtstrasse, these new apartments on Stalinallee offered enough physical space to enable the existence of a private sphere, albeit subject to an array of controls. “For the first time the socio-spatial conditions had been created to shield residents from the gaze of neighbors, random visitors and other non-family members.”41 Hence this public boulevard serving as a showcase of socialism contributed to the development of a private sphere as well.

The Official Public Sphere: The Neues Deutschland Building A second big construction site could be found on Fruchtstrasse in 1952. Küstriner Platz would henceforth house the printing presses of Neues Deuts land (ND), the official newspaper of the ruling party.42 Production of the SED daily, founded in 1946, had previously been spread among several locations throughout the city.43 A larger site was urgently needed that could house a modern rotary press.44 In 1952 a long-term leasing agreement was reached with the Deutsche Reichsbahn, the East German railways, which still owned the site of the old Ostbahnhof.45 The station ruins, temporarily used for performances by the Plaza theater even a er the war, were finally demolished in 1952. On January 1, 1953, the new rotary printing press of ND went into operation at this location. Its close proximity to Stalinallee had a symbolic dimension and was meant to express the close connection between ND and East Germany’s national reconstruction program.46 The old station grounds were also practical, since a remaining track could be used to directly supply the printing press with paper. The rotary press itself came from the Soviet Union. Hence Neues Deutschland was printed in Pravda format, proclaiming the “Truth” of the vanguard Party.47 But the SED aimed higher. There were plans in the early 1950s to build a representative editorial high-rise in front of the printing press in the same style used on Stalinallee, but these plans were put on hold for cost reasons in 1952.48 It was not until 1959 that Hermann Axen (1916–92), editor-in-chief of ND at the time, took up the idea again. His aim was to finally bring all of the paper’s production processes under one roof a er

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years of makeshi solutions. But he was also responding to an ideological challenge. On May 25, 1959 Axel Cäsar Springer (1912–85) had laid the cornerstone for a new publishing high-rise on Kochstrasse in Kreuzberg. The building was erected directly on the sector border and was meant to represent the “Golden West,” its golden facade being clearly visible for miles around.49 The SED was not going to let this architectonic provocation by Springer, a declared enemy of the GDR, go unanswered. Hence it decreed that a new editorial and administrative building with fi een stories was to be built for Neues Deutschland at Küstriner Platz.50 This highrise, for its part, would have been visible for miles in West Berlin. But construction of the Berlin Wall delayed these plans, which were only resumed in mid-1963. The idea of a high-rise was then scrapped for economic reasons. Instead, a standard modern building was to be erected in which all the various branches of ND would be housed in a modern press combine.51 The old printing press at Küstriner Platz was torn down in June 1968 and on January 6, 1969 the cornerstone was laid for the new building complex of ND, complete with publishing house, editorial offices, composing room and printing press. The first group of about eight hundred employees moved into the new building in March 1972. The complex comprised a seven-story editorial and administrative building on Küstriner Platz, two intermediate wings with open-plan offices, image and text archives, a cafeteria and adjoining production halls I and II. The reinforced-concrete skeleton-frame construction that comprised the second hall was the size of a soccer field and had support spans of twenty-four meters. This is where the three big printing machines were located, capable of producing 150,000 copies an hour using the offset process. Communication within the ND building used a pneumatic-tube system, which also linked it to Berliner Verlag publishing house at Alexanderplatz. Communication with decentralized ND printing locations in Rostock, Halle, Erfurt and Dresden used a facsimile transmission system installed on the roof of the building. By the late 1980s ND had a circulation of 1.1 million copies. Other periodicals, such as Wochenpost, Junge Welt, Neue Deutsche Bauernzeitung and Einheit were also produced in the ND building.52 In short, Fruchtstrasse housed one of the most important centers of the Party-state public sphere in the GDR. As early as 1950, editor-in-chief Rudolf Herrnstadt (1903–66) elucidated in programmatic fashion what the tasks of ND were: “The Party organ is not published to entertain people or make money. It is published to do politics, to wage a political struggle.”53 The ND editor-in-chief had been a member of the SED Politbüro since 1950, responsible for “transmi ing Party resolutions to the masses.”54 While there were some reform experiments a er the Wall was built—as of January 3, 1965 ND had a modern blue masthead and tried harder to be a “platform for the whole of society”—the infamous Eleventh Plenary of

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the Central Commi ee, the so-called “clean-sweep plenary” of December 1965, put an end to this brief period of thaw. The only wiggle room le was in the science, culture and sports sections. Under the leadership of Joachim Herrmann (1928–92) during the Honecker era of the 1970s and 1980s, ND ultimately ossified into a propagandistic organ of proclamation increasingly out of touch with reality.55 As a center of the official public sphere, ND had an impact on Stralauer Viertel. Old Fruchtstrasse no longer seemed suitable for the new ND building. Thus, on April 5, 1971 Fruchtstrasse was renamed Strasse der Pariser Kommune, in honor of the Paris Commune uprising in France on its centennial.56 One year later, on March 24, 1972, in the wake of the ceremonial opening of the new ND building, Küstriner Platz was renamed Franz-Mehring-Platz.57 It was be er, so the authorities concluded, that the square where the paper’s editorial offices were located be named a er a historian and publicist of the German workers’ movement rather than a er a former German city (Küstrin) that now belonged to Poland (Kostrzyn).58 These renamings emphasized that the area around what had once been Fruchtstrasse played a significant role in the history of the labor movement and the antifascist resistance.59 In this manner the SED consciously drew on the proletarian traditions of old Stralauer Viertel. At the same time the past was being invoked, the urban space around the new ND building was undergoing some dramatic changes. From 1971 to 1973, three 21-story point blocks and two 11-story P2 housing slabs were built on Strasse der Pariser Kommune (Figure 4.4). The 2,500 new apartments they contained were meant to help “solve the housing ques-

FIGURE 4.4. Projected redevelopment of Strasse der Pariser Kommune (1971), Neues Deutschland, April 22, 1971, p. 12, GDR Press Portal of the Berlin State Library. h p://zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/ddr-presse.

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tion,” formulated as a top priority at the Eighth Party Congress of the SED in 1971 and meant to serve as a measure of the Party’s success. ND played a pivotal role in publicly proclaiming achievements in the state-run housing sector. The immediate surroundings of the paper’s headquarters therefore had symbolic importance. The construction of these new apartment blocks was followed by a range of new infrastructure such as preschools, polytechnic high schools, gymnasiums and a supermarket.60 The redevelopment of Strasse der Pariser Kommune fulfilled another purpose, however. Located close to the Berlin Wall, the openness and visibility of this new architectural ensemble was also intended to enhance surveillance close to the state frontier.61 To this end the old tenement buildings had to go. A month a er the ND building was officially opened, Fruchtstrasse 60 (henceforth Strasse der Pariser Kommune 26), where the SAG had conducted its housing survey, was demolished by the state-owned civilengineering combine VEB Kombinat Tie au. Seven buildings were all that remained of old Fruchtstrasse.62

Demolition, Reconstruction and Personal Happiness: The Legend of Paul and Paula The demolition of tenement buildings is one of the memorable scenes in the DEFA production The Legend of Paul and Paula.63 Old buildings in Stralauer Viertel are seen collapsing at the beginning and at the end of the film. Directed by Heiner Carow (1929–97), the movie was shot on location at Singerstrasse, a side street joining Strasse der Pariser Kommune at FranzMehring-Platz, in June and July of 1972. The new ND building is visible on multiple occasions in the background. Premiering on March 14, 1974 at Kosmos cinema in nearby Karl-Marx-Allee, it drew more than three million viewers in the GDR alone.64 Apart from its female lead Angelica Domröse (b. 1941) and music by the rock band the Puhdys, the movie’s popular success was due in no small part to the sexual permissiveness depicted in the film as well as its openness in addressing social problems. The film was both a result and expression of a new cultural policy and the brief mood of liberal awakening in the early Honecker era.65 The film tells the tragicomic love story of an unlikely couple. Paula (Angelica Domröse) lives in a ramshackle old building on Singerstrasse with a fleapit cinema in the back courtyard.66 But she doesn’t have time for the movies; there’s a pile of coal outside her building that needs to be lugged inside to heat her unrenovated apartment. A single mother and supermarket cashier, she shares the double burden of many East German women.67 Paul (played by Winfried Glatzeder), on the other hand, is a young and

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aspiring functionary in the Ministry of Foreign Trade who lives in a modern apartment in a newly built, eleven-story high-rise on the other side of the street. But his marriage to the uneducated daughter of a long line of carnival workers is not a happy one. Paul and Paula meet at a disco and begin a passionate affair. Paul soon pulls back, however, not willing to risk his career on account of a divorce. A desperate Paula enters a relationship with an older tire dealer (Fred Delmare) who has long been her admirer and is able to offer her security and prosperity. Paul eventually confesses his love for her and manages to win her back. The couple have a child together, but Paula doesn’t survive the birth. Paul adopts her children and continues living in his new apartment while Paula perishes like the old tenement neighborhood around her.68 The film documents the urban transformation of eastern Berlin, while Paul and Paula embody the social change that accompanied it. Paula is a single mother and, like the many older people living in her building, belongs to the precariat that is le behind in Berlin’s old tenements. The functionary Paul and his family, by contrast, have the privilege of living in a prefab apartment block thought to be a symbol of the future. The film thus addresses, and this in a surprisingly straightforward manner, the phenomena of socio-spatial inequality in the GDR.69 It can also be seen as a critique of the urban transformation taking place since the 1970s in many older neighborhoods throughout East Germany, as Stephanie Warnke argues: “Heiner Carow’s film was the first clear expression . . . in East German media of the discontent over the demolition of entire urban neighborhoods.”70 And yet it was more than just a description of problems of transition. East and West Berlin alike showed signs in the early 1970s of a (cautious) repudiation of the radical modernization euphoria characterizing the postwar era. There are notable parallels here in the developments taking place in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. The clearance of old tenement buildings, which had long been a ma er of consensus in society, was now perceived as a loss by some individuals. Not only were the new buildings not all they were cracked up to be, but a lower residential density in older buildings had meanwhile allowed the emergence of new lifestyles that promised more individuality. This is the movie’s main theme. The two architectural manifestations are linked to the contrary lifestyles of Paul and Paula.71 Whereas Paul (at first) entirely subordinates his personal happiness to his responsibilities toward the collective, Paula demands more from life than just “sleeping, working, and sleeping again.” She pursues her individual happiness and finds it in her apartment. The climax of the movie is the “flower power” scene in Paula’s flower-strewn bed. She seduces Paul with her culinary skills and invites him on a dream trip where they visit her ancestors working as bargemen

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on the Elbe and the Spree. The pursuit of personal happiness is legitimate, or so says the film’s message.72 Paradoxically, this happiness is more likely to be found in the older buildings that are rapidly disappearing than in the expansive new high-rises being built, the la er being presented as a symbol of the pressure towards social conformity in 1970s East Germany.73 This pursuit of personal happiness ultimately has harsh consequences for Paula. She dies because she chooses to have Paul’s child, though well aware of the medical risk she faces by giving birth again.74 Yet East German moviegoers were inspired by her lifestyle choices. The fictional character of Paula offered many points of identification. Literature, art and cinema that publicly addressed the right to develop one’s personality in the private sphere played a very special role in the GDR. “A society in which many subjects were taboo and countless things could not be articulated publicly produced its own heroes and cults. This manifest itself in the cult status of certain novels and poems, in the veneration of writers, singers, theater and music groups that appealed to specific crowds.”75 The Legend of Paul and Paula was hugely popular in the GDR and remains to this day one of the most well-loved DEFA feature films of all time. It publicly addressed the social inequality that existed under state socialism, gave voice early on to the discontent with a radical policy of redevelopment, and formulated the claim to personal happiness in the private sphere. It is also a historic document of the radical urban transformation that gave Stralauer Viertel its current face. Indeed, Strasse der Pariser Kommune has li le in common with old Fruchtstrasse. Its characteristic feature is still the panelized apartment blocks built there in the 1970s. And yet a number of things have changed on Strasse der Pariser Kommune in the three decades since the fall of the Wall. In 2005, following a protracted legal ba le, Neues Deutschland moved back to its traditional location on Franz-Mehring-Platz—albeit along with a host of other leaseholders, including the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the workshops of Berlin’s three opera houses.76 In 2007 the so-called Ostel youth hostel opened next to the ND building in a six-story prefab building featuring mostly original GDR interiors and promising its guests “a journey back in time to the East Berlin of the seventies and eighties.”77 The Ostel is one of the most succinct manifestations of the retrospective appropriation and marketing of the GDR, generally referred to as Ostalgie,78 or nostalgia for the East, and increasingly targeting international tourists who find the retro chic of East German designs appealing. Likewise very popular among a growing number of visitors to Berlin is Berghain, one of the city’s most famous techno clubs, housed in a former thermoelectric power plant behind the ND building.79 The old postal station at Ostbahn-

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hof, located at the southern end of Strasse der Pariser Kommune, is currently being used as an event and party location. There is a certain irony to the fact that the private sphere of East German citizens had been massively violated at precisely this location prior to the events of 1989. The bulk of so-called Westpakete, care packages from friends or family in the West, were processed at post office “O 17,” their inspection being entrusted to Department M/4 of the Ministry for State Security. Le ers and packages being sent to the West were also opened and read at post office O 17,80 yet another indication of how egregiously the SED dictatorship interfered in the private lives of its citizens. Strasse der Pariser Kommune was thus paradigmatic for state socialism’s understanding of the public and the private spheres. The state-controlled public media in the ND building on the one hand and the package controls at post office O 17 on the other were the two poles, as it were, of this dictatorial practice. But forms and notions of the public and private sphere were not merely subject to a general political framework, they were just as dependent on local urban structures. Deplorable housing conditions, wartime destruction and urban renewal le their mark on this street and ultimately had a determining influence on the relationship between the public and private spheres in Friedrichshain.

Notes 1. Lothar Uebel, Eisenbahner, Artisten und Zeitungsmacher. Zur Geschichte des ehemaligen Küstriner Bahnhofs, Berlin 2011, 12. Until 1820 the street was called Bullenwinkel (Bull Corner) or Bullengasse (Bull Lane). Dirk Moldt, “Das Viertel um den heutigen Ostbahnhof,” in Düspohl and Moldt, Kleine Friedrichshaingeschichte, 137–145, here 139. 2. Moldt, “Das Viertel um den heutigen Ostbahnhof,” 140. 3. Laurenz Demps, “Der Ostbahnhof,” in Düspohl and Moldt, Kleine Friedri shainges i te, 127–134, here 127. 4. Demps, Der Schlesische Bahnhof in Berlin, 211; Schlögel, Das Russische Berlin, 21–50. 5. Moldt, “Friedrichshain,” 11. 6. h ps://digital.zlb.de/viewer/cms/141/ (accessed October 16, 2020). For the year 1925 only 1,092 out of 1,327 tenants listed an occupation, having done so voluntarily. 7. The census of 1925 came to the following breakdown of the working population according to their occupational status for all of Friedrichshain: blue-collar (incl. co age industry) 55.4 percent, white-collar and civil-servant 22.0 percent, self-employed 11.6 percent, self-employed without a profession 7.8 percent, domestic servants 1.9 percent, and unpaid family members 1.3 percent. Grzywatz, Arbeit und Bevölkerung im Berlin der Weimarer Zeit, 356. 8. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 35.

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9. The mayor of Friedrichshain, Paul Mielitz, vehemently protested this frequent comparison in 1932. This reputation was largely thanks to sensationalist media. Mielitz, “Eine soziale Studie über den Osten Berlins,” 22. 10. Grossmann admi ed to three murders. Some estimate that he commi ed as many as a hundred murders, however, not least considering that twenty-three dismembered female corpses were found around Schlesischer Bahnhof between 1918 and 1921. Feustel, Raub und Mord im Kiez, 12–16. 11. Willy Proeger (alias “Weka”), Stä en der Berliner Prostitution. Von den Elends-Absteigequartieren am S lesis en Bahnhof und Alexanderplatz zur Luxus-Prostitution der Friedri straße und des Kurfürstendamms. Eine Reportage, Berlin 1930. 12. On the Ringvereine, see Uebel, Spreewasser, Fabrikschlote und Dampfloks, 84, as well as Feustel, Raub und Mord im Kiez, 17-21. 13. Ibid. See also Stave, Stube und Küche, 5–13. 14. Reprinted in Moldt, “Das Viertel um den heutigen Ostbahnhof,” 137. 15. On the SAG, see Rolf Lindner (ed.), “Wer in den Osten geht, geht in ein anderes Land”. Die Se lementbewegung in Berlin zwischen Kaiserreich und Weimarer Republik, Berlin 1997; idem, Walks on the Wild Side. Eine Geschichte der Stadtforschung, Frankfurt am Main 2004, 97–111; Christa Stache (ed.), Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze (1885–1969). Begleitbuch zu einer Ausstellung des Evangelischen Zentralarchivs in Berlin anläßlich seines 100. Geburtstags, Berlin 1985. See also chapter 11 in the present volume. 16. The questionnaires are now in the estate of Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze at the Evangelical Central Archives in Berlin. EZA 626 II 30/1-6. 17. Going by the address-book entries, there were 1,327 households in these buildings in 1925. Taking the average household size of three individuals in Friedrichshain, about 4,000 people must have lived on the street. The 1925 census counted 108,900 households in the Friedrichshain district with a total of about 330,000 individuals, hence three persons per household. Mielitz, “Eine soziale Studie über den Osten Berlins.” This number is surprisingly low for proletarian eastern Berlin, known for its abundance of children. The large number of widows from World War I needs to be kept in mind, however. 18. A le er from one Fr[äu]l[ein] W. Flor (the name is not very legible) to Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze suggested that additional material was needed lest the individual social groups were too small to deduce any typical features. The author of the le er bemoaned that the questionnaires were generally incomplete and carelessly filled in (though the interviewers o en added basic information), which she a ributed to frequent SAG staff turnover and their insufficient training. Many mistakes were accidental, e.g. that one family filled out two questionnaires—with rather different responses. Finally, the le er writer expressed her fundamental doubts about the point of the whole survey, though suggesting that it might be useful in a different way than intended: “I have to emphasize once again that the questionnaires, and all the material collected, imply a huge investment of time and labor that might not be warranted once they are evaluated. And yet various staff members have told me time and again that, while they can’t really see the point of this work as a research project, it is still particularly valuable to them, allowing them an unparalleled glimpse of living conditions in the east. In this regard it may very well be invaluable.” EZA 626 II 20/13. 19. It was no coincidence that the building was in the immediate vicinity of the SAG’s administrative offices, which had its headquarters on Fruchtstrasse 62–63 as of 1916. Half of the families interviewed had already been in contact with the SAG, which undoubtedly facilitated the survey. EZA 626 II 20/4. Another employee of the SAG Housing Commission had a empted a comparably comprehensive survey of Koppenstrasse 31.

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25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

33.

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These two buildings, on Fruchtstrasse and Koppenstrasse, were essentially on the same plot of land, on opposite ends of the block. EZA 626 II 20/13. Berliner Adressbuch 1930, 303, online at: h p://digital.zlb.de/viewer/image/10089470_ 1930/5487 (accessed April 14, 2016). The handwri en evaluation of Fruchtstrasse 60 was probably done by Luise Lehmann and is held in the estate of Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze. EZA 626 II 20/4. EZA 626 II 30/1-6. The mothers in this case were the two oldest, widowed residents. Two of their children had fallen in World War I. On social housing in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, see Jörg Haspel and Annemarie Jaeggi, Siedlungen der Berliner Moderne, Munich 2007. A good example is the Hufeisensiedlung (Horseshoe Development) in Berlin-Britz. See Thilo Hilpert, Hufeisensiedlung Britz 1926–1980. Ein alternativer Siedlungsbau der 20er Jahre als Studienobjekt, Berlin 1980; Annemarie Jaeggi, “Die Berliner Hufeisensiedlung von Bruno Taut. Architektur im Spannungsfeld von Politik und Wirtscha ,” in Annemarie Jaeggi and Klaus Gereon Beuckes (eds), Festschri für Johannes Langner, Münster 1997, 273–296; Udo Gößwald and Barbara Hoffmann (eds), Das Ende der Idylle? Hufeisen- und Krugpfuhlsiedlung in Britz vor und nach 1933, Berlin 2013. This is rather remarkable, considering that countless Poles lived in the area around Schlesischer Bahnhof. Anne Gröschner, “‘Heute prima rote Rüben’. Auf der Fruchtstraße am 27. März 1952,” in Florian Ebner and Ursula Müller (eds), So weit kein Auge reicht. Berliner Panoramafotografien aus den Jahren 1949–1952. Aufgenommen vom Fotografen Tiedemann. Rekonstruiert und interpretiert von Arwed Messmer, Ausstellungskatalog zur glei namigen Ausstellung in der Berlinis en Galerie vom 2. November 2008 bis 22. Februar 2009, Berlin 2008, 128–136, here 130. There was also a Chinese colony. In the 1920s and 1930s about two hundred Chinese lived in the area in rather primitive conditions. They were former stokers, sailors, artists or merchants now trying to make a living as launderers, door-to-door salesmen or shopkeepers selling imported specialties like porcelain vases, soap-stone figurines or jewelry. Dagmar Yu-Dembski, Chinesen in Berlin, Berlin 2007, 20–26. Gröschner, “‘Heute prima rote Rüben,’” 129, 133. On the end of the war at Küstriner Platz, see Uebel, Eisenbahner, Artisten und Zeitungsma er, 63 f. Some of Donath’s photos are reprinted in Peter Kroh and Frank Schumann, Berlin nach dem Krieg. Unbekannte Bilddokumente, Berlin 2010. The approximately 150-year-old tree is the only surviving relic of what was once Küstriner Platz. Uebel, Eisenbahner, Artisten und Zeitungsmacher, 11. The Berlin State Archive has a picture filed under LArch F Rep. 290 64-87 from the same photo series by O o Donath depicting the same motif. This print is dated 1945 on the back. There is good reason to believe, however, that the picture was taken in 1947, like the other one from the Federal Archives, since it obviously doesn’t depict the last days of combat in May 1945 but shows people making themselves at home in the ruins. Führer, Mieter, Hausbesitzer, Staat und Wohnungsmarkt, 393. The pictures were first exhibited at the Berlinische Galerie in 2008. See the exhibition catalog: Ebner and Müller, So weit kein Auge reicht. The photos of Fruchtstrasse were shown in a separate exhibit at the former Neues Deutschland headquarters on Franz-MehringPlatz 1. See the accompanying photo volume by Anne Gröschner and Arwed Messmer, Berlin, Fruchtstraße am 27. März 1952, Ostfildern 2012. Ibid., 8.

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34. The slogans said, “The German people do not want a war between brothers. We demand the conclusion of a peace treaty!” Gröschner, “‘Heute prima rote Rüben,’” 133. 35. Ibid., 134. 36. Ibid., 135. 37. In the background, to the right of the white ladder, the Stalin monument is vaguely visible about four hundred meters away. 38. By sheer coincidence, press photographer Horst Sche le photographed the construction site at block C-South of Stalinallee on exactly the same day, March 27, 1952, that Fritz Tiedemann took his photos of Fruchtstrasse. The photos have been preserved in a photo album at the FHXB Museum, and some are accessible online: h ps://nat.mu seum-digital.de/index.php?t=objekt&oges=462222&cachesLoaded=true (accessed April 29, 2020). 39. See, e.g., Thilo Köhler, Unser die Straße—unser der Sieg. Die Stalinallee, Berlin 1993; Wolfgang Ribbe, “Die Stalinallee als historisch-politischer Ort (1950–1955),” in Helmut Engel and Wolfgang Ribbe (eds), Karl-Marx-Allee. Magistrale in Berlin, Berlin 1996, 105– 139, here 117–122; Nicolaus and Obeth, Die Stalinallee, 49 f. 40. Among them was my father, who by doing volunteer shi s as a Steineabklopfer (knocking off the plaster and remains of mortar from salvaged bricks so they could be reused) and reconstruction helper was entered into a lo ery for one of these new apartments— which is how, in 1953, he got his first place of his own, on Stalinallee 110. The prerequisite for participating in the lo ery was a hundred volunteer half-shi s of three hours each, these shi s being recorded on a so-called reconstruction card. In January 1952 alone, 45,000 reconstruction helpers had volunteered at the building site on Stalinallee. By the end of the year these individuals had (more or less) volunteered over four million hours of work. Nicolaus and Obeth, Die Stalinallee, 171–178; Braun and Schneider, “Die Karl-Marx-Allee,” 95. 41. Thus concluded Ingrid Oswald and Viktor Voronkov about the Soviet housing program of the 1950s, that allowed at least part of the population to escape life in a communal apartment (kommunalka) that had to be shared with complete strangers. Oswald and Voronkov, “Licht an, Licht aus! ‘Öffentlichkeit’ in der (post-)sowjetischen Gesellscha ,” 49. 42. On the history of Neues Deutschland, see esp. Burghard Ciesla and Dirk Külow, Zwischen den Zeilen. Geschichte der Zeitung “Neues Deutschland”, Berlin 2009; Burghard Ciesla, “Zur Geschichte des ‘Neuen Deutschland’,” in Berlin State Library and the Center for Contemporary History (eds), Presse in der DDR. Beiträge und Materialien, March 29, 2012, available online at: h p://pressegeschichte.docupedia.de/wiki/Neues_Deutschland_ Version_1.0_Burghard_Ciesla (accessed April 14, 2016). 43. Most of the editorial staff had worked since June 1946 at the former brewery building on Pfefferberg in Prenzlauer Berg, whereas the actual printing press was located on Zimmerstrasse until 1948. In 1949–50 the paper’s editorial offices moved to Mauerstrasse, whereas the publishing house and printing press moved to Senefelderplatz. There were also printing presses on Saarbrücker Strasse and in Treptow. Ciesla and Külow, Zwischen den Zeilen, 34–40, 78. 44. There were plans in 1950 to create a media complex at Dönhoffplatz on the margins of the old Berlin newspaper quarter. These were abandoned for cost reasons. Ibid., 70–77. 45. The old Ostbahnhof was completed in 1867 at Küstriner Platz, linking Berlin and Königsberg (Kaliningrad). With the opening of the S-Bahn and the expansion of S lesis er Bahnhof (the site of today’s Ostbahnhof) in 1882, passenger service was discontinued at the old Ostbahnhof. Only the restaurant and party hall remained in operation. From 1884 to 1886 the station was used by the Prussian army as a testing ground for captive balloons. A er that it served as a Red Cross warehouse and as housing for the

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50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56.

57.

58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67.

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widows of railway officials. A er years of vacancy, the station building was converted into the Plaza variety theater in 1929. For a detailed history of the building, see Uebel, Eisenbahner, Artisten und Zeitungsmacher. Ciesla and Külow, Zwischen den Zeilen, 76. Uebel, Eisenbahner, Artisten und Zeitungsmacher, 66. Moldt, “Das Viertel um den heutigen Ostbahnhof,” 142. On the construction of the Springer building and its significance in the context of competing economic systems, see Stephanie Warnke-De Nobili, “Jerusalemer Straße/Ecke Ko straße. Anmerkungen zur Lage von Axel Springers West-Berliner Verlagsho haus,” in Schlusche et al., Stadtentwicklung im doppelten Berlin, 16–23. Ciesla and Külow, Zwischen den Zeilen, 131–133. Ibid., 168. Uebel, Eisenbahner, Artisten und Zeitungsmacher, 70 f. Quoted in Ciesla, “Zur Geschichte des ‘Neuen Deutschland’.” Ibid. Ciesla and Külow, Zwischen den Zeilen. For a perspective firmly rooted in the theory of totalitarianism, see also Gunther Holzweissig, Die s ärfste Waffe der Partei. Eine Medienges i te der DDR, Cologne 2002. About three thousand people a ended the renaming ceremony. Mayor Herbert Fechner recalled that the street was the scene of important struggles of the working class. Members of factory militias unveiled the new street sign to the strains of the “Internationale.” Neues Deutschland, April 6, 1971, 8. ND wrote the following: “On Friday a ernoon hundreds of Berlin workers and residents of the district of Friedrichshain witnessed the renaming of Küstriner Platz into Franz-Mehring-Platz. District Mayor Hans Höding paid tribute to the work of politician and journalist Franz Mehring, co-founder of the KPD [German Communist Party] who was closely allied to the workers’ revolutionary struggle. Nowadays modern new apartment high-rises line this square traditionally used by the KPD as a place of assembly and protest.” Neues Deutschland, March 25, 1972, 8. The renaming was part of a range of changes made to street names in the early 1970s, in which those named a er cities in Germany’s former eastern territories were now named a er pioneers of the labor movement or antifascist resistance fighters. Daniela Guhr, Berlin Prenzlauer Berg—Straßen und Plätze. Mit der Geschichte leben, Berlin 1991, 22. See, e.g., Neues Deutschland, April 22, 1971, 12. Bouali and Schulze, Bewegte Zeiten, 66. Moldt, “Friedrichshain,” 23. Gröschner, “‘Heute prima rote Rüben,’” 135 f. Die Legende von Paul und Paula, GDR 1973, 105 min, directed by Heiner Carow, wri en by Ulrich Plenzdorf. Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 271. The film was first shown in the Federal Republic in 1975. Angelica Domröse’s public protest against the expatriation of Wolf Biermann, which put an end to the thaw in cultural policy of the early Honecker era, resulted in the movie being banned for some time. Stefan Zahlmann, “Die Legende von Paul und Paula,” in Heinz B. Heller and Ma hias Steinle (eds), Filmgenres—Komödie, Stu gart 2005, 360–364, here 361. The Elektra-Lichtspiele movie theater portrayed in the film was in fact located on Warschauer Strasse from 1907 to 1960. There was never a cinema on Singerstrasse. See Leonore Ansorg and Renate Hürtgen, “The Myth of Female Emancipation. Contradictions in Women’s Lives,” in Konrad H. Jarausch (ed.), Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR, New York 1999, 163–176, here 169.

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68. Gröschner, “‘Heute prima rote Rüben,’” 135. 69. On social inequality in the GDR, see Jens Gieseke, “Soziale Ungleichheit im Staatssozialismus—eine Skizze,” Zeithistorische Forschungen 10 (2013) no. 2, 171–198, h p:// www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/2-2013/id=4493. 70. Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 272. 71. Ibid., 269. 72. Zahlmann, “Die Legende von Paul und Paula,” 363. 73. Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 267. 74. Paula’s cinematic death corresponds in near ideal-typical fashion with the feminist film theory of Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures, Bloomington 1989, 14–26. 75. Ri ersporn, Behrends, and Rolf, “Öffentli e Räume und Öffentli keit in Gesells aften sowjetis en Typs,” 18. 76. ND had temporarily relocated to the former powerhouse at Osthafen from 1995 to 2005. Ciesla and Külow, Zwischen den Zeilen, 221; Uebel, Eisenbahner, Artisten und Zeitungsmaer, 77. 77. As the hostel itself advertises on its homepage: h ps://www.ostel.eu/en/the-ostel (accessed April 14, 2016). 78. On the phenomenon of Ostalgie, see Thomas Ahbe, “‘Ostalgie’ als eine Laien-Praxis in Ostdeutschland. Ursachen, psychische und politische Dimensionen,” in Heiner Timmermann (ed.), Die DDR in Deutschland. Ein Rückblick auf 50 Jahre, Berlin 2001, 781–802. 79. Its name is derived from the district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg. See its homepage: h p://www.berghain.de (accessed April 14, 2016). 80. Between 1984 and 1989 alone, 32 million deutschmarks were taken out of packages and transferred to the state coffers of the GDR. Detlef Krenz, “Postamt O 17. Von der ‘Brief-Annahme-Expedition’ zum Postzentrum am Ostbahnhof,” in Düspohl and Moldt, Kleine Friedrichshaingeschichte, 135 f.

Chapter 5

KREUZBERG COUNTER-PUBLIC SPHERES

( Art and the Public Sphere at Chamissoplatz The movie Berlin Chamissoplatz might be viewed as a counterpart to The Legend of Paul and Paula.1 It too tells the love story of an unlikely couple against the backdrop of contemporary urban-redevelopment practices. Directed by Rudolf Thome (b. 1939), the film was shot in the summer of 1980 at Chamissoplatz in Kreuzberg shortly a er this area was slated for redevelopment.2 It begins with a 360-degree pan shot over Chamissoplatz, the camera moving with the help of a crane from the roo ops of Berlin down to street level. The viewer sees the Wilhelmine-era buildings on Chamissoplatz that, having survived the war, now cut a rather shabby figure. Banners hang from numerous windows, commenting on redevelopment measures in West Berlin and the protest strongholds of the Federal Republic (“Let Gorleben live!”). A street festival is taking place which the local tenant initiative at Chamissoplatz uses to inform the public about redevelopment plans in the area.3 This is the backdrop for a muted love story. Anna (played by Sabine Bach) is studying sociology and is active in the tenant initiative. She lives in a modest apartment in the back courtyard with a toilet on the landing.4 Martin (Hanns Zischler) is almost twenty years older and works at an architect’s bureau in charge of the redevelopment at Chamissoplatz. He is separated from his wife and child and lives in a spacious bourgeois apartment in Charlo enburg. The two get to know each other during an interview Anna conducts with the architect on behalf of the tenant initiative. They exchange their points of view superficially: whereas he wants to create livable housing and hence clear the inner courtyards, she agitates for restoring the side and rear buildings. Later on she gets in touch with him to find out if the building she lives in is earmarked for demolition. Martin,

Notes for this chapter begin on page 139.

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who feels a racted to her, offers his assistance at the tenant initiative. But Anna’s boyfriend Jörg secretly records him when he discloses confidential information about the redevelopment plans, prompting Anna to break up with Jörg and hook up with Martin instead. Martin completely breaks free of his routine, travels with her to Italy and declares his love on the wall opposite her apartment building. When Martin’s sensitive information is published in the tenant initiative’s newspaper, he throws a glass of red wine in Jörg’s face, gets in his car and drives off. Anna borrows a car and chases a er him. The love story is unresolved.5 Rudolf Thome’s film is first and foremost the story of a modern relationship inspired by the works of French filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rive e. The response of critics was mixed.6 The director himself explained that his main intention was to depict a “love story in a very precise se ing.”7 The redevelopment around Chamissoplatz is only a backdrop for Thome. And yet, in a number of ways, the movie is a valuable document. Thome, who lived on Chamissoplatz himself, captured the state of housing in a redevelopment area and the debates around it at a particular historical moment. Chamissoplatz had been declared a redevelopment area the previous year, on October 25, 1979, following the fourth administrative decree on the formalization of redevelopment areas.8 The West Berlin Senate chose as its redevelopment agency the GEWOBAG non-profit housing association, 81 percent of which was owned by the State of Berlin and which had been active in buying up apartment buildings at Chamissoplatz since 1975.9 The restructuring concept planned to completely raze the side and rear buildings (about 30 percent of existing structures). This led to heated public debates, as portrayed in the film.10 The tenants’ association (Mieterverein), founded in 1978 as the official representative of local residents, was particularly vocal in protesting the demolition of the side and rear buildings. It demanded that the buildings be restored instead and that affordable housing be maintained in the area in cooperation with tenants.11 In order to achieve these goals, the tenants’ association wanted to create a counter-public sphere. The film depicts the actual measures taken by the association. A tenant initiative (Mieterladen) was set up at a storefront location on Willibald-Alexis-Strasse, which served as a contact point for all activities.12 A neighborhood periodical, Unter Mietern (Among Tenants), was to act as a counterweight to the information policy of the Senate and the redevelopment agency. And a tenant festival (Mieterfest) was organized to report on the tenants’ association’s activities and mobilize local residents. The activists shied away from established media outlets—in the movie they shun contact with the evening news program of Radio Free Berlin (SFB)—preferring instead to name and shame the Senate, the

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redevelopment agency and the building contractors. In a key scene of the movie, Anna expresses her indignation at Martin’s statements being secretly recorded and later made public. Her boyfriend Jörg dismisses her outrage: “The idiotic rules of the bourgeois public sphere were never our yardstick . . . We can’t pass up on creating a counter-public sphere just because you fell for some architect!”13 Berlin Chamissoplatz addresses the relationship between the public and counter-public spheres, a guiding theme of the le -wing alternative scene in the 1970s following Oskar Negt’s and Alexander Kluge’s critique of the concept of the bourgeois public sphere.14 “The counter-public sphere was understood as an expansion of democracy and a plurality of opinions initially for the most part at the local level, as an actionist and emancipative strategy of self-mobilization, and as a negation of the sender-receiver model of communication through the founding of collective, self-organized alternative media,” as Sven Reichardt defines it.15 The movie uses artistic means to address the debate about a counter-public sphere without really taking sides. The film was not alone in doing so. Chamissoplatz was known for its intense artistic experimentation in the late 1970s intended as a public commentary on the issue of redevelopment and o en viewed by the protagonists themselves as a counter-public sphere. This tied in to the local tradition of Chamissoplatz being known as the “Montmartre of Berlin,” a good dozen artists having set up their studios there during the previous decade.16 Berlin painter-poet Kurt Mühlenhaupt (1921–2006), whose naïve-expressionist art took urban life in Kreuzberg as its subject, was at the heart of this (self-ascribed) myth.17 Mühlenhaupt had set up his studio on Chamissoplatz in 1970 and embodied more than any other individual the “Kreuzberg bohemians” of the 1960s and 1970s.18 Around 1980, however, a new generation brought their art to Chamissoplatz. Many of them came from West Germany, o en to avoid their compulsory military service, and found the abandoned shop space the ideal place to establish a local arts and cra s scene.19 One of these artists was Werner Tammen (b. 1953), who came to West Berlin from Wilhelmshaven in 1973 in order to study German and history at the teacher training college (Pädagogische Hochschule).20 Together with illustrator and cartoonist Ernst Volland (b. 1946), who also came from Wilhelmshaven, he began selling political posters at West German universities when he was still a student. Yet another friend from Wilhelmshaven, who likewise lived at Chamissoplatz, had heard that an old bakery was vacant in No. 6. Thus, the idea was born of opening a record store for pläne-Verlag, a publishing house with ties to the (West) German Communist Party (DKP), in the shop space out front while using the old bakehouse in back for events. In the summer of 1979, Werner Tammen announced his first exhibit, show-

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ing works by political cartoonist Pelle Igel (1905–82), an old antifascist.21 These were the origins of Galerie am Chamissoplatz, which achieved cult status in the 1980s. The gallery had a completely different agenda than the handful of other galleries that existed in Kreuzberg before it.22 Unlike Zinke on Oranienstrasse, famous for its Günter Grass readings, Galerie am Chamissoplatz did not provide another platform for the poetic realism of the Kreuzberg bohemians23 but mainly did satirical shows featuring comics, caricatures and cartoons. “We were the first in Germany to exhibit satirical works,” noted Werner Tammen.24 Among the artists exhibited were later stern cartoonist Gerhard Haderer (b. 1951), Austrian caricaturist Manfred Deix (1949–2016), Berlin painter Michael Sowa (b. 1945) and comic artist Gerhard Seyfried (b. 1948), whose Kreuzberg panoramas adorned the election posters of the Berlin Green Party for years. The “Werner” comics of Wilhelm Feldmann (b. 1950) alias Brösel drew more than twenty thousand people to the gallery in just seven weeks, many of them bikers. The satire went so far that Tammen and Volland invented a French artist by the name of Blaise Vincent to lampoon the West Berlin art scene. Large parts of the Berlin press fell for it. Indeed, the fictional artist proved so successful that they had a hard time convincing people otherwise when it came time to come clean.25 The anarchic art of Tammen and his friends borrowed from the unconventional actionist art of the “spontaneists” or Spontis. But in the ramified political spectrum of West Berlin le ists26 Tammen was closer to the so-called Action Group of Democrats and Socialists (ADS) before later joining the Social Democratic Party (SPD).27 For Tammen it was a political decision to open his gallery in Kreuzberg and not, say, in bourgeois Charlo enburg.28 The gallery was collectively run until 1987, and there were long conceptual discussions about its aims and agenda. Fundamental debates took place, for example, about whether the exhibition catalogs should be financed in advance by local businesses. Galerie am Chamissoplatz saw itself as a new movement responding to current political events, in particular the Kreuzberg squa ers.29 In the spring of 1981, about a dozen buildings were occupied by squa ers on Chamissoplatz and adjacent streets.30 The conflict between GEWOBAG and local residents had escalated. Like in other parts of Kreuzberg and Schöneberg, the large number of vacant apartments slated here for redevelopment led to entire buildings being occupied to prevent them from being torn down or modernized into luxury apartments. The squatters flouted private property rights in their search for cheap or free living space and had to be forcibly removed by the police. Chamissoplatz, too, in other words, was a ba leground of the West Berlin Häuserkampf (Map 5.1).

MAP 5.1. Map of occupied buildings at Chamissoplatz, 1981. h p://berlin-besetzt.de.

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Galerie am Chamissoplatz was at the center of these events and addressed the topic through artistic means. Two photo exhibits by Wolfgang Krolow (1950–2019) provided the squa ers’ movement with several of its visual icons. Raised near Kaiserslautern, Krolow studied sculpture in Mannheim before going to Berlin in 1972 where he studied graphic design at the University of the Arts (Hochschule der Künste). While still a student he worked as a photojournalist for le -wing print publications. In 1977 he moved to Chamissoplatz, where he captured life in the neighborhood with his camera. His successful photo volumes Kinder in Kreuzberg (Children in Kreuzberg, 1979), Instandbesetzer Bilderbuch (The Rehab-Squa er’s Picture Book, 1981) and Seiltänze (Walking the Tightrope, 1982) made Krolow famous outside of Kreuzberg.31 His photos from the 1980s expressed a specifically West Berlin way of life and were frequently published in magazines, catalogs and as postcards.32 Krolow’s work politicized and aestheticized this old working-class district in an innovative way (Figure 5.1). Political art helped the squa ers’ movement in its self-understanding, creating a counter-public sphere in back courtyards. In the case of Galerie am Chamissoplatz this happened quite literally: the exhibits of Wolfgang Krolow were accompanied by political discussions in the old bakehouse, weighing the pros and cons of the Senate’s redevelopment policies. For a

FIGURE 5.1. Acrobat on Fidicinstrasse (1988), photo. Wolfgang Krolow.

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while the bakehouse out back hosted events every weekend. Authors of the satirical magazine Titanic read from their work, actor Uwe Müller performed radio plays by Heiner Müller (1929–95), while cabaret artist and verbal acrobat Martin Buchholz (b. 1942) made his first appearances in front of a larger audience.33 With its exhibitions and accompanying events Galerie am Chamissoplatz became an important laboratory of experimentation for an artistic counter-public sphere that explicitly understood itself as such. A show of prison art combined this with a political message aimed against the “prevailing structures” of power. But the gallery’s clientele included some who were clearly from the “bourgeois camp.” The gallery had to sell art if it wanted to survive, thus selling out in the eyes of some activists. The increasing professionalization of the gallery marked a break with the more radical representatives of the tenants’ association, which accused it of becoming part of the “mainstream.”34

History and the Public Sphere: The History Workshop and the Kreuzberg Museum In 1983 Werner Tammen organized a rather unusual exhibition. On the fi ieth anniversary of the Nazi takeover, he and Krista Tebbe (b. 1948), director of the Kreuzberg Art Office (Kunstamt), presented the exhibit “So politisch war ick nich . . .” (I Wasn’t That Political) about the daily lives of young people in Kreuzberg in the year 1933.35 Together with local historian Lothar Uebel (b. 1951), Tammen researched the history of proletarian youth gangs in Kreuzberg known as the “wild cliques.”36 They investigated these mostly antifascist groups, tracing their development from the Weimar Republic to the Nazi era, when most of them were crushed by the authorities. Tammen and Uebel not only consulted rare photo material but, aided by various collaborators, conducted numerous interviews with contemporary witnesses, many of which were reproduced in the accompanying catalog financed from lo ery proceeds. This oral-history project aimed to preserve the memories of living witnesses. But the exhibit also served to bring people in the neighborhood together and get them involved. Older people made their first appearance at Galerie am Chamissoplatz, opening up this “purely le ist niche.”37 By addressing the historical theme of resistance, the exhibitors hoped to sensitize the public and politically mobilize them in the present. Thus, the foreword to the catalog notes that the interviewers found themselves repeatedly asking, “Didn’t you realize where that was headed? We didn’t mean historically; we were wondering if we ourselves would have been or will be capable of resistance.”38

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The aim of using the memories of contemporary witnesses to investigate the history of everyday life and resistance and link them to political activism in the present stemmed largely from the Berlin History Workshop (Berliner Geschichtswerksta ),39 founded in 1981 at MehringHof in Kreuzberg.40 Among its eighty founding members were many university students who were disappointed with their studies, but also teachers, sociologists, social workers, artists and a few professional historians. Many of them were active in the so-called new social movements and had ties to the squa ers’ scene.41 The Berlin History Workshop, soon followed by many other workshops around West Germany, emerged in the context of a newly awakened interest in history that proved groundbreaking on the le and the right in equal measure.42 As opposed to Helmut Kohl’s (1930– 2017) conservative politics of history (Geschichtspolitik), which increasingly a empted to derive an affirmative national identity from the historical past, raising fears that historical policy would be “normalized,” the new le ist “history movement” focused on fragmentization and critiquing tradition.43 It distanced itself from the nation-state concept of history as well as from the associational culture of heritage societies,44 a empting to offer a “history from below” as an alternative to the established academic historiography prevalent at universities.45 Its role models were the history workshops in Britain, Zurich bookseller Theo Pinkus (1909–91) as well as Swedish author Sven Lindquist (1932–2019), who coined the popular mo o “dig where you stand.”46 Important methodological and conceptual impulses came from Alf Lüdtke (1943–2019) and Lutz Niethammer’s (b. 1939) investigations into the history of everyday life, as well as from the American oral-history approach.47 The members of the Berlin History Workshop conducted countless interviews in an effort to reconstruct local history, the history of everyday life, and the history of women. Their topics ranged from the history of industrialization and the living conditions of ordinary people in the Weimar Republic to the history of the postwar era. The principle subject of the Berlin History Workshop, however, was the history of National Socialism.48 The fi ieth anniversary of the Nazi takeover in 1983 was a tremendous boon for the Berlin History Workshop. Despite changing a itudes toward history, the Berlin Senate disregarded the pending historical anniversary and was all too eager to divest itself of the responsibility of commemorating it. Alongside other initiatives—such as Werner Tammen’s exhibition at Galerie am Chamissoplatz—the Berlin History Workshop received considerable state funding for a project called “Spurensicherung” (Preserving Traces), investigating the history of resistance and daily life under Nazi rule in several city districts and resulting in three much-acclaimed exhibitions.49 The le -wing alternative Berlin Cultural Council (Berliner

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Kulturrat e. V.),50 which coordinated the free initiatives with regard to the fi y-year anniversary of 1933, came to the following assessment in retrospect: “We collected documents and old newspapers, conducted tours, si ed through photo albums, files and private estates, interviewed contemporary witnesses. In this manner the political culture and counterpublic sphere in this city were enriched by a crucial component.”51 Indeed, the Berlin History Workshop was very much about creating an alternative public sphere.52 “They felt a need to create a Gegenöffentlichkeit (counter public) and then wrestle definitional power over the past (and thus the future) away from the establishment,” as Jenny Wüstenberg concluded.53 It was not just about the past, in other words, but also about the future. History, even local history, was considered a threat to the establishment if only one asked the right questions. It was not an end in itself, but was meant to mobilize local activism, shed light on current debates, and motivate local residents to think politically. History was supposed to show that society could be changed democratically, from the bo om up.54 By “tracking down hidden potential for resistance” historical struggles were shi ed to the present.55 At the same time, the Berlin History Workshop wanted to bear witness to current conflicts for future historical investigation. Thus, the independent archive of the History Workshop preserved documents from the squa ing scene.56 The new history movement began documenting itself early on. Its self-understanding as “public scholarship” led to new forms of communicating history. These included theater performances, videos, guided tours and traveling exhibitions.57 A decommissioned double-decker bus, for example, served as a “mobile museum” for presenting exhibitions directly at historical locations.58 In June 1984, the Berlin Workshop hosted a big history festival at MehringHof in Kreuzberg, a ended by more than seven hundred people. The festival not only served to network numerous West German initiatives which as of the year before had been united into the History Workshop Federation (Dachverband Geschichtswerksta e. V.).59 The many workshops, guided tours, theater performances, concerts and exhibitions were also meant to present the work of the history workshops to the public and recruit new collaborators. The Berlin history festival marked the height of the history-workshop movement in Germany.60 The Berlin History Workshop’s first historical steamboat ride also took place as part of the history festival.61 This resulted in the so-called steamboat group being founded in 1984. The group, led by Jürgen Karwelat (b. 1951), chartered a tour boat from the Riedel shipping company and conducted the first historical city tours on the water. Starting at Ko busser Bridge in Kreuzberg, the tour was mostly up and down the Landwehr

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Canal, since most of the Spree belonged to East Berlin. But the Landwehr Canal fit well with the concept of the History Workshop, its banks reflecting the city’s history of industrialization and urbanization as well as the living conditions of ordinary Berliners.62 The members of the steamboat group did extensive research during the winter months in preparation for the tours, compiling thick folders of historical information.63 In the summer they offered steamboat tours every other weekend. Word soon spread. The tours were featured on the local evening news and rides were o en sold out in advance. Ads in Zi y and Berliner Morgenpost drew more and more passengers, who eagerly bought up the brochures describing the route along the Landwehr Canal.64 The steamboat rides not only developed into the History Workshop’s most important source of income,65 they also became its public face. Thus, in this unconventional manner, the History Workshop succeeded in communicating “its” history to the city while providing itself with good publicity. The Berlin History Workshop’s historical steamboat rides were part of a le -leaning historical tourism that firmly established itself in West Berlin in the early 1980s. It included the historical walking-tour guidebooks by Joachim Berger,66 which traced local traditions of resistance back into the Middle Ages,67 and the alternative guided tours of the city by the Sta Reisen68 club that gradually emerged from the old Wedding History Workshop between 1981 and 1983.69 Among the founding members of Sta Reisen was Martin Düspohl (b. 1957).70 Düspohl studied education and sociology at the Free University of Berlin and concluded with a thesis on the Kreuzberg local history exhibition.71 His thesis described the checkered history of the old, traditional Kreuzberger Heimatkabine (Kreuzberg Museum of Local Life), which a er years as a traveling exhibit at many different locations in the district was finally put into a storeroom of the Kreuzberg Art Office.72 But it also developed a concept for a future exhibit, focusing in particular on the long history of migration in the district, from the Huguenots in the seventeenth century to the Turkish “guest workers” of the 1960s and 1970s.73 The district lacked the money, however, to set up a new, permanent museum. That changed in 1989 when the SPD formed a government with the Alternative List in West Berlin. In their coalition negotiations, the junior partner succeeded in pushing through its demand for museum directors in each Berlin district. The Kreuzberg Art Office named Martin Düspohl director of the Kreuzberg Museum for Urban Development and Social History, which was given its own building in a former factory on Adalbertstrasse.74 Düspohl had no equipment to work with, no lights, electricity and no budget to speak of, but he did have a concept and close ties to the Berlin History Workshop.75 The Kreuzberg Museum opened in 1991

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with an exhibit on Jewish life in Berlin curated by the History Workshop.76 The museum’s first exhibition of its own opened the following year, presenting the 150-year history of Adalbertstrasse in collaboration with its residents, thus bringing together under one roof people of varied social backgrounds living in the neighborhood.77 The museum slowly developed into a kind of neighborhood center. Apart from creating public awareness of the history of daily life and migration in the district, it constituted a local public sphere in its own right. From the very start it aimed to take a critical stance in current debates on immigration and urban development, combining this with a sense of pride in the neighborhood’s achievements. The museum paid tribute to the squa ing movement of the 1980s, which served as living proof that people can have an active influence on the course of historical events. It is therefore no accident that the museum’s permanent exhibition on the history of redevelopment at Ko busser Tor was given the title “History is Made.”78

The Reinvention of Kreuzberg: On the Historical Semantics of Urbanity The occupation of buildings in Kreuzberg went hand in hand with the redefinition of certain concepts. This took on different forms. Concepts were given new meanings, counter-concepts were coined, neologisms were formed. Concepts, then, were “made” as well. Classic conceptual history views the novelty of coinage as a decisive moment; when a term becomes historically conspicuous, it serves as an index of historical transformation.79 In this sense conceptual history is a key approach to investigating political and social change. But concepts are more than mere indicators of shi ing historical contexts, they are factors in these transformations as well.80 They can influence historical development themselves by giving a name to social pursuits and thus functioning as guideposts. This is particularly true of periods of historical transformation, which are times of heightened self-understanding, as Reinhart Koselleck emphasizes: “The semantic struggle for the definition of political or social position, defending or occupying these positions by deploying a given definition, is a struggle that belongs to all . . . times of crisis.”81 Newer research on historical semantics, instead of focusing on isolated words, looks at entire conceptual fields and semantic networks, using them to develop transnational perspectives.82 At the same time, the twentieth century has increasingly become the subject of historical semantics.83 But the focus remains on guiding concepts of political and social language

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with currency and relevance across society. The historical-semantic approaches to date have focused less on the local level. But what do changing concepts reveal about the social and urban transformations taking place in Kreuzberg? And how were these concepts meaningful for processes of urban development? I will explore these questions in the following using select terms from the 1970s and 1980s coined by the counter-public sphere in Kreuzberg. I will focus on the relationship between the public and the private sphere, given that the concepts being coined were part of a public process of self-understanding with regard to questions of housing in Kreuzberg. Sanierung (redevelopment) was a key concept of urban planning in the 1960s. The West Berlin Senate’s first urban-renewal program of 1963 envisioned the redevelopment of sixteen thousand residential units in Kreuzberg alone.84 At the time, the German term Sanierung meant demolition and rebuilding, whereas nowadays the same term has come to mean renovation and refurbishment. The term is a good example of the historical transformation of concepts. The fact that it has come to mean preserving and renewing existing buildings rather than replacing them is due in large part to the successful positing of counter-concepts. Thus, in the second half of the 1960s the concept of Kahlschlagsanierung, or “clean-sweep redevelopment,” emerged to avoid any ambiguity. It emphasized the demolition aspect of redevelopment and less so the new buildings slated to take the place of the old ones. The term clean-sweep redevelopment became a catchphrase in the context of growing criticism of modern urban planning. Associated terms included the “inhospitality of our cities” (Unwirtlichkeit unserer Städte), coined by Alexander Mitscherlich, and the “murdered city” (gemordete Stadt) of Wolf Jobst Siedler.85 The concept of clean-sweep development thus served to delegitimize the ongoing practice of wholesale redevelopment. Only in the 1970s did this practice of redevelopment and the a endant terminology begin to change. From then on it was considered imperative to preserve parts of the older building stock. This shi in policy was linked with new concepts. Instead of Sanierung (redevelopment) it was now called Modernisierung (modernization). But this term too was controversial in Kreuzberg, since it normally meant keeping and renovating the front buildings but tearing down the more affordable rear ones.86 Resistance formed against this practice of block clearance, referred to as “gu ing” or “coring” (Entkernung) in German. Nature metaphors like this underscored the quasi “organic” quality and “vital” function of these rear buildings and inner courtyards. One of the most prominent critics of gu ing was Kreuzberg city planner Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm (b. 1940): “The redevelopment [Sanierung] that is destroying my neighborhood day

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by day is a war against the block core [Blockkern], it is the war of planning against that which eludes its grasp. Redevelopment consequently leaves behind a neighborhood without a heart, a residential district in which no one feels at home anymore.”87 Clean-sweep redevelopment and gu ing were counter-concepts that served to justify the resistance against the redevelopment and modernization practices of the West Berlin Senate. As described above, this resistance resulted as of 1979 in the squa ing of vacant buildings, which the squa ers themselves then planned to renovate rather than le ing them be torn down. The SO 36 citizens’ initiative coined the term Instandbesetzung, or “rehab squa ing,” to describe this process.88 Unlike clean-sweep redevelopment, the term did not serve to delegitimize outside interests but to legitimize their own, illegal actions. The “rehab squa ers” wished to lend expression to the fact that they had occupied these buildings and hence consciously violated private property rights in order to productively work towards their preservation. With that they distinguished themselves from statesponsored renovation programs as well as from “autonomist” squa ers whose actions were primarily intended as a political statement in the struggle against property interests. The term rehab squa ing emphasized the ability to shape one’s circumstances. In contrast to the utopian sociopolitical ideas of the ’68 generation, the expectations of the rehab squa ers were focused on very specific projects with a street name and house number.89 The SO 36 citizens’ initiative was an important factor in the linguistic appropriation of Kreuzberg.90 Even its choice of name was a form of identity politics. SO 36 originally stood for the postal district “Südost 36” (Southeast 36), comprising the eastern part of Kreuzberg (formerly outer Luisenstadt on the other side of the canal). The western two-thirds were consolidated into postal district 61 in the early 1960s.91 The distinction between “proletarian Kreuzberg 36” and “bourgeois Kreuzberg 61” has survived to some extent to this very day. As of the late 1960s, however, SO 36 was no longer a stigma. In the summer of 1969 the Emmaus parish organized a street festival under the mo o “Many people talk about Kreuzberg—We live here.” Homemade pins were sold depicting the outlines of the district and the words “I like 36” as a positive form of identification.92 Ten years later, the SO 36 citizens’ initiative and the association by the same name established the postal code as a popular label. SO 36, a collectively organized club on Oranienstrasse, was opened in 1978 as well, primarily serving as a concert venue for punk and New Wave music.93 Rather than representing the old proletarian east, SO 36 now stood for a new counter-public sphere and alternative culture. As a spatial concept, it symbolized belonging to a politically, socially and economically marginalized population which defined itself as a cultural avant-garde.

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The revaluation of this old working-class district is even more apparent in the reinterpretation of the word Kiez. The word gained currency in the 1970s as a designation for older residential areas usually named a er the main street running through them—the “Graefe-Kiez” or “ChamissoKiez,” for example.94 Remarkably, these are not historical designations but historicizing a ributions.95 The modern-day Kiez, moreover, is not to be confused with the historical one, usually wri en Kietz and referring to a Slavic vassal se lement (o en a fishermen’s village) near a German castle or city in the originally Slavic se lement areas east of the Elbe.96 Presumably the term was reintroduced to the city on the Spree by way of the St. Pauli Kiez in Hamburg, its entertainment and red-light district, subsequently referring to a relatively self-contained older neighborhood in Berlin. In contrast to the similar but neutral designations Viertel and Quartier, since the mid-1970s Kiez embodied the urban qualities of turn-ofthe-century Berlin: a relatively densely populated area replete with small businesses and a local entertainment culture, all of this combined with a sense of solidarity, neighborliness and community. In other words, the notion of a Kiez promised a harmonious form of urbanity that had never existed before. It was a nostalgic counter-concept aimed against the “modernization” of older Berlin neighborhoods. A complete semantic innovation was the Kreuzberger Mischung, or Kreuzberg mix. The term was introduced by pastor Klaus Duntze in a talk he gave on “The Livability of Old City Neighborhoods” at a 1975 Werkbund congress at Bethany Hospital and was meant to describe the close integration of living and working, of residential and commercial space in one city block.97 Such structures are admi edly much older than the district of Kreuzberg and are characteristic of other parts of Berlin as well.98 But in the contemporary debate about the “appropriate” form of urban development in West Berlin, a debate which increasingly focused on Kreuzberg, the notion of the Kreuzberg mix assumed the function of a historical role model. The term “became a positive leitmotif and catchphrase of urban renewal in Kreuzberg,” as Duntze later concluded.99 It meant more than defending the block core, the old side and rear buildings with their commercial spaces and referred to as “the heart of the Kreuzberg mix.”100 The neologism stood more broadly for urbanity through heterogeneity, through population as well as structural density. Kreuzberg mix became the counter-concept to the “dedensification” (Entdichtung) and “functional separation” of modern urban planning in the postwar period. The “Berlin made of stone” of the founders’ era was thus rehabilitated and divorced from its former associations of squalid living conditions. Kreuzberg mix was even expanded to eventually include the social mix in Berlin tenement buildings once idealized by Hobrecht.101

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As novel spatial concepts, Kiez and Kreuzberger Mischung stood for a new perception of time. The rejection of modern urban planning went hand in hand with a concerted re-examination of the past. The two concepts melded into a local pathos formula, one that proved quite powerful. The Kreuzberg mix was more than just a concept, however; it was implemented in the form of the International Building Exposition of 1984–87. Hundreds of projects created new commercial spaces in surviving inner courtyards. Language served as a guide to action. The Kreuzberg mix was a self-materializing idea. This claim could even be taken one step further: that the linguistic reinvention of Kreuzberg created the first specifically Kreuzberg identity in the last third of the twentieth century. Old neighborhood identities persisted long a er the founding of the district. Local histories (Heimatbücher) in 1927 focused mainly on Luisenstadt.102 Only a er World War II did the term “Kreuzberg” slowly gain acceptance among the population. Its ultimate breakthrough, according to Hasso Spode, came in the 1970s and 1980s: “Thus, for the first time in its brief history the district had its own identity, transcending the narrow limits of the old neighborhoods [Quartiere und Kieze]. Its emergence was thanks to established structures, but more so to the abrupt political and social upheavals a er World War II.”103 Urban-planning debates and the language they were clothed in played a central role in this process of communitarization.

Notes 1. Berlin Chamissoplatz, Federal Republic of Germany 1980, 112 min., directed by Rudolf Thome, wri en by Rudolf Thome and Jochen Brunow. 2. For an in-depth look at the history of redevelopment at Chamissoplatz, see Bremer et al., Kreuzberg Chamissoplatz. For a general history, Lothar Uebel, Am Berg gebaut. Über hundert Jahre Chamissokiez, Berlin 1994; Karin Di mar, “Eine ‘Insel’ im Großstadtmeer Berlin: Der Chamissoplatz,” in Ellen Röhner (ed.), Mit den Augen des Fremden. Adelbert von Chamisso—Dichter, Naturwissenscha ler, Weltreisender, Berlin 2004, 209–223. 3. On the actual tenant initiative at Chamissoplatz, see chapter 13. 4. The actual building is Arndtstrasse 15. 5. For an account of the movie from a film-studies perspective, see Rüdiger Tomczak, “Zu Berlin Chamissoplatz (1980),” in Ulrich Kriest (ed.), Formen der Liebe. Die Filme von Rudolf Thome, Marburg 2010, 119–122. 6. Hans C. Blumenberg, “Eine Liebe in Deutschland. Die Radikalität der Gefühle,” Die Zeit, December 19, 1980, 29 f. There were boos from the audience during its premiere at the Hof International Film Festival on November 1, 1980. In 1982, however, it received the Guild Film Prize in Silver from the Guild of German Cinematic Art Theaters. 7. The interview in the press kit made no mention whatsoever of the film being set in a redevelopment area. See the website of Rudolf Thome: h p://www.moana.de/Filme Deutsch/DCh/DChIv.html (accessed April 14, 2016).

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8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31.

32. 33.

Bremer et al., Kreuzberg Chamissoplatz, 42. Ibid., 24; Uebel, Am Berg gebaut, 27. Bremer et al., Kreuzberg Chamissoplatz, 38, 104. Ibid., 48. Uebel, Am Berg gebaut, 27. Berlin Chamissoplatz, 0:36:30. Negt and Kluge, Öffentlichkeit und Erfahrung. Reichardt, Authentizität und Gemeinscha , 221. Interview with Hugo Hoffmann (May 9, 2015). In 1972 Hoffmann (b. 1947) founded his Atelier-Handpresse on Neuenburger Strasse 17, a studio that also hosted readings as well as serving as a museum, a creative think tank, a gallery and a meeting point for artists. Hugo Hoffmann and Kunstamt Kreuzberg (eds), Die unmögliche Art Bücher zu machen. 25 Jahre Atelier-Handpresse, Katalog zur Ausstellung im Kreuzbergmuseum vom 15. Februar bis zum 13. April 1998, Berlin 1998, 8. Ulrike Schwartzkopff-Lorenz, “Kurt Mühlenhaupt—eine Künstlermonographie,” Ph.D. diss., Free University of Berlin 2008, esp. 39. Lang, Mythos Kreuzberg, 114–119, and Sti ung Stadtmuseum Berlin (ed.), Maler der Liebe. Kurt Mühlenhaupt zum 80. Geburtstag, Katalog zur Ausstellung vom 26. August bis 4. November 2001, Berlin 2001. On the “Kreuzberg bohemians,” see chapter 12 of this book. Bremer et al., Kreuzberg Chamissoplatz, 72. Interview with Werner Tammen (May 12, 2015). Hans W. Korfmann, “Geld hat mich nie interessiert. Portrait des Galeristen Werner Tammen,” Kreuzberger Chronik, no. 144, February 2013, h p://www.kreuzberger-chronik.de/ chroniken/2013/februar/mensch.html (accessed June 23, 2015). Interview with Werner Tammen (May 12, 2015). In contrast to the abstract paintings exhibited in galleries in more affluent Charlottenburg, the dominant form in Kreuzberg of the 1960s and 1970s was painting and printmaking in a more realistic mode that underscored the contradictions of daily life. Schwartzkopff-Lorenz, “Kurt Mühlenhaupt,” 39. Quoted in Korfmann, “Geld hat mich nie interessiert.” Hans W. Korfmann, “Ich mach’s auch umsonst. Portrait des Künstlers Ernst Volland,” Kreuzberger Chronik, no. 145, March 2013, h p://www.kreuzberger-chronik.de/chroni ken/2013/maerz/mensch.html (accessed June 23, 2015). On the range of le ist groups in the Federal Republic, see Reichardt, Authentizität und Gemeinscha , 10–14. The ADS (Aktionsgemeinscha von Demokraten und Sozialisten) was a student organization of the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin (SEW). Interview with Werner Tammen (May 12, 2015). Ibid. Uebel, Am Berg gebaut, 28. A total of seventeen buildings were occupied around Chamissoplatz from 1980 to 1983. Eight of these were subsequently legalized, the rest were forcibly evicted or vacated voluntarily. Bremer et al., Kreuzberg Chamissoplatz, 62 (with map). Wolfgang Krolow, Kinder in Kreuzberg, Text: Erika Runge, Berlin 19792; idem, Instandbesetzer Bilderbu , foreword by Peter-Paul Zahl, Berlin 19812; idem, Werner Orlowsky, Rolf Hosfeld, and Peter-Paul Zahl, Seiltänze. Ein Fotobuch aus Kreuzberg, Berlin 1982. For an introduction to the life of Wolfgang Krolow, see Röhner and Steffen, Stillstand und Bewegung, 108. Hans W. Korfmann, “Wir haben nichts verdient, wie haben alle nur überlebt. Portrait des Schauspielers Uwe Müller,” Kreuzberger Chronik, no. 146, April 2013, h p://www

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34. 35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

40.

41. 42.

43. 44. 45.

46.

.kreuzberger-chronik.de/chroniken/2013/april/mensch.html (accessed June 23, 2015). Werner Tammen was particularly interested in visual artists from the GDR and did an exhibition of them at Chamissoplatz in 1988. Interview with Werner Tammen (May 12, 2015). Korfmann, “Geld hat mich nie interessiert.” In 1990–91 Werner Tammen’s gallery moved out of Chamissoplatz and into nearby Fidicinstrasse. A parallel exhibit called “Kreuzberg 1933. Ein Bezirk erinnert sich” (Kreuzberg 1933: A District Recollects) ran at the Kreuzberg Art Office. The following catalog accompanied the two exhibits: Kunstamt Kreuzberg, Verein zur Erforschung und Darstellung der Geschichte Kreuzbergs e. V., and Kulturverein in der Galerie am Chamissoplatz (eds), Kreuzberg 1933. Ein Bezirk erinnert sich, Katalog zur Ausstellung vom 29. Mai bis zum 29. September 1983 im Kunstamt Kreuzberg und zur Ausstellung vom 29. Mai bis zum 10. September 1983 in der Galerie am Chamissoplatz, Berlin 1983. Werner Tammen and Lothar Uebel, “Edelhirsch, Edelweiß und Ostpiraten. Wilde Cliquen in Kreuzberg,” in Kunstamt Kreuzberg, Verein zur Erforschung und Darstellung der Geschichte Kreuzbergs e. V., and Kulturverein in der Galerie am Chamissoplatz, Kreuzberg 1933, 78–85. Interview with Werner Tammen (May 12, 2015). Krista Tebbe and Werner Tammen, “Vorwort,” in Kunstamt Kreuzberg, Verein zur Erforschung und Darstellung der Geschichte Kreuzbergs e. V., and Kulturverein in der Galerie am Chamissoplatz, Kreuzberg 1933, 7. On the history of the Berlin History Workshop, see esp. Gisela Wenzel, “‘Grabe, wo Du stehst’. Zwei Jahrzehnte Berliner Ges i tswerksta ,” in Fors ungsstelle für Zeitges i te Hamburg (ed.), Ges i tswerkstä en gestern—heute—morgen. Bewegung! Stillstand. Au ru ? Hamburg 2004, 45–58; Jenny Wüstenberg, “Vom alternativen Laden zum Dienstleistungsbetrieb: The Berliner Ges i tswerksta : A Case Study in Activist Memory Politics,” German Studies Review 32 (2009), 590–618. The founding meeting took place on January 23, 1981. Officially, according to its statutes, the Berlin History Workshop (Berliner Geschichtswerksta e. V.) was founded on May 25, 1981. In 1981, it moved to Goltzstrasse in Schöneberg in order to be more visible and accessible than it was at MehringHof (on MehringHof, see chapter 12), remaining there to this day. Wüstenberg, “Vom alternativen Laden zum Dienstleistungsbetrieb,” 594 f., 600 f. Ibid., 593. The literature on the history workshops in Germany is dominated by the reminiscences of former participants. For an introduction, see Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte Hamburg, Geschichtswerkstä en. For the best scholarly perspective to date, see esp. E a Grotrian, “Geschichtswerkstä en und alternative Geschichtspraxis in den achtziger Jahren,” in Wolfgang Hardtwig and Alexander Schug (eds), History Sells! Angewandte Geschichte als Wissenscha und Markt, Stu gart 2009, 243–253. Thijs, Drei Geschichten, eine Stadt, 113. Wenzel, “‘Grabe, wo Du stehst’,” 45. The social-history approach of the Bielefeld School was the subject of particular criticism; its own representatives, in turn, stridently polemicized against the so-called “barefoot historians” of the history workshops. Thomas Lindenberger and Michael Wildt, “Radikale Pluralität. Geschichtswerkstä en als praktische Wissenscha skritik,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 39 (1989), 393–411. Additional impulses came from East Berlin, in particular Dietrich Mühlberg and his associates with their focus on cultural studies and the history of everyday life. Wenzel, “‘Grabe, wo Du stehst’,” 48, 52.

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47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59.

60. 61.

62.

63.

64.

65.

66.

Wüstenberg, “Vom alternativen Laden zum Dienstleistungsbetrieb,” 595. Wenzel, “‘Grabe, wo Du stehst’,” 46. Lindenberger and Wildt, “Radikale Pluralität,” 396. On the Berlin Cultural Council, see Thijs, Drei Geschichten, eine Stadt, 166. Berliner Kulturrat e. V. (ed.), 750 Jahre Berlin. Guter (Kultur)Rat ist gar nicht so teuer, Berlin 1984, 16. Maren Bü ner, “‘Wer das Gestern versteht—kann das Morgen verändern!’ Deutsche Geschichtswerkstä en gestern und heute,” in Sabine Horn and Michael Sauer (eds), Ges i te und Öffentlichkeit. Orte—Medien—Institutionen, Gö ingen 2009, 112–120, here 115. Wüstenberg, “Vom alternativen Laden zum Dienstleistungsbetrieb,” 594. Ibid., 596. Thijs, Drei Geschichten, eine Stadt, 114. Wüstenberg, “Vom alternativen Laden zum Dienstleistungsbetrieb,” 595. Bü ner, “‘Wer das Gestern versteht—kann das Morgen verändern!’,” 115. The Berlin History Workshop exhibitions were even shown in East Berlin in 1988 as part of an EastWest German cultural exchange agreed on by Erich Honecker and Eberhard Diepgen. Wüstenberg, “Vom alternativen Laden zum Dienstleistungsbetrieb,” 608. In 1987 the History Workshop showed Götz Aly’s exhibit about the T4 euthanasia campaign at its historical location on Tiergartenstrasse 4. Wenzel, “‘Grabe, wo Du stehst’,” 51. Peter Schö ler, “Die Geschichtswerksta e. V. Zu einem Versuch, basisdemokratische Geschichtsinitiativen und -forschungen zu vernetzen,” Geschichte und Gesellscha 10 (1984), 420–424. Wüstenberg, “Vom alternativen Laden zum Dienstleistungsbetrieb,” 593. On the historical steamboat rides of the History Workshop, see Hanno Hochmuth, “Vom alternativen Stadtrundgang zur kommerziellen Videobustour. Historische Authentizität im Berliner Geschichtstourismus,” in Christoph Bernhardt, Martin Sabrow, and Achim Saupe (eds), Gebaute Geschichte. Historische Authentizität im Stadtraum, Göttingen 2017, 285–300, here 291–294. A radio feature of RIAS Berlin (Radio in the American Sector) from October 13, 1984 offers a vivid picture of the historical steamboat rides conducted by the History Workshop. The show is transcribed and reprinted in its entirety in Hanno Hochmuth, “Theorie und Alltag. Detlev Peukert und die Geschichtswerkstä en,” Beiträge zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus 31 (2015), 159–174. Conversations with Christa Jancik (May 23, 2014) and Susanne Köstering (June 5, 2014). Both women were members of the Berlin History Workshop’s steamboat group as of 1984. Jürgen Karwelat, Passagen. Ges i te am Landwehrkanal, Berlin 1984; Berliner Ges i tswerksta (ed.), Landgang in Berlin. Stadtges i te an Landwehrkanal und Spree, Berlin 1987; Berliner Ges i tswerksta (ed.), Neue Passagen. Stadtges i te am Landwehrkanal, Berlin 1996. Revenues from the boat rides essentially financed its office and storefront on Goltzstrasse and were an important fallback option for the workshop. This circumstance proved controversial, since it wasn’t the point of the History Workshop for its members to be financially dependent on the boat rides. The important thing was still to have fun while educating the public about the city’s history. The two members of the steamboat group responsible for selling tickets and conducting the tours received a minimal expense allowance of 10 deutschmarks an hour. Conversation with Thomas Lindenberger (June 3, 2014). Joachim Berger was a teacher who was barred from his profession and took up writing historical guidebooks.

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67. In the preface to his Kreuzberg guidebook Berger wrote: “The lower classes and marginalized groups always had their own culture. A particular way of life to cope with adverse conditions. And this culture always possessed a rebellious streak, countering pressures from above with resistance from below.” Berger, Kreuzberger Wanderbuch, 13. 68. The name Sta Reisen (wri en Sta as in “instead of tours” and not the usual Stadt or “city tours”) made triple reference to the alternative character of these tours. Instead of traveling abroad, Berliners could discover their own city. Instead of taking a bus, these tourists would explore the city on foot. Instead of the standard top-down narrative of state history, these tours took a critical approach, shedding light on the context of social relations and conveying a “history from below.” The “Hello, Red Wedding” tour conceived by Winfried Ripp was a reaction to the policy of demolition in that district, exploring the history of these buildings and communist traditions in Wedding. Its stops included the former Wiesenburg homeless shelter, the old AEG factory, former sites of Nazi torture, occupied buildings and the remains of an erstwhile spa industry as well as the subsequent entertainment and cinema mile on Badstrasse (Spa Street). The aim was a critical engagement with the historical past and the present. The history of resistance served as a model for current conflicts with state authorities. Interview with Jörg Zintgraf (June 4, 2014). See also Hochmuth, “Vom alternativen Stadtrundgang zur kommerziellen Videobustour,” 287–291. 69. The Wedding History Workshop was founded in 1979, two years before the Berlin History Workshop. Wüstenberg, “Vom alternativen Laden zum Dienstleistungsbetrieb,” 597. 70. Martin Düspohl was first a member of the Wedding History Workshop, then from 1987 to 1990 the managing director of Sta Reisen e. V. 71. Martin Düspohl, “Die ‘Kreuzberger Heimatausstellung’. Bildungsarbeit im stadtgeschichtlichen Museum,” thesis project, Free University of Berlin 1983. 72. The Kreuzberg local history exhibition was set up in 1951 and “primarily conveyed a picture of an ‘intact,’ ‘nicer’ Kreuzberg with its ‘significant’ cultural traditions (architecture, art), but li le of the ‘dark’ sides of its history (social misery, Nazi politics, etc.).” Ibid., 83. 73. In this, Martin Düspohl was adopting the concept of a Kreuzberg Museum for Urban Development and Social History put forth by Krista Tebbe, director of the Kreuzberg Art Office, in 1978. An association of the same name was founded that year. Martin Düspohl, “Archiv ‘Kreuzberg-Museum für Stadtentwicklung und Sozialgeschichte’,” in Arbeitskreis Berliner Regionalmuseen (ed.), Berliner Heimatmuseen. Zwölf Wege in die Stadtgeschichte, Berlin 1989, 14–21. Düspohl himself worked for the Art Office as managing director of Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, a local arts and culture center. 74. On the history of the Kreuzberg museum, see Sophie Perl, “Berlin’s Bezirksmuseen: Traces of Alternative History Work in Two Neighborhood Institutions,” master’s thesis, Free University of Berlin 2012, 28–43; Christiane Theiselmann, Stadtgeschichte neu erlebt. Die Berliner Heimatmuseen, Berlin 1997, 35–39; Katrin Hiller von Gaertringen and Hans Georg Hiller von Gaertringen, Eine Geschichte der Berliner Museen in 227 Häusern, Berlin 2014, 347 f. 75. Interview with Martin Düspohl (June 4, 2014). 76. See the exhibition catalog: Berliner Geschichtswerksta (ed.), Juden in Kreuzberg. Fundstücke, Fragmente, Erinnerungen, Berlin 1991. 77. Andrea Bergler and Monica Geyler, “‘150 Jahre Adalbertstraße’ (in Berlin Kreuzberg). Eine topographische Geschichtsausstellung,” Informationen zur modernen Stadtgeschichte 2 (1992), 26–29. 78. The slogan comes from a 1982 hit song called “Es geht voran” (Making Headway) by the band Fehlfarben (False Colors) that went, “Keine Atempause. Ges i te wird ge-

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79.

80.

81.

82. 83.

84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

92. 93.

94.

95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

ma t” (No reprieve. History is made). The song became a favorite of the squa ers’ scene. For an introduction to conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte), see Kathrin Kollmeier, “Begriffsgeschichte und Historische Semantik,” Version: 2.0, Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, October 29, 2012, h p://docupedia.de/zg/Begriffsgeschichte_und_Historische_Seman tik_Version_2.0_Kathrin_Kollmeier. For a seminal work, see Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukun . Zur Semantik ges i tli er Zeiten, Frankfurt am Main 1979, 120. English translation: Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe, New York 2004. Ibid., 113, English version 80. In his Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Basic Historical Concepts), Reinhart Koselleck investigated this with particular reference to the so-called saddle period (1750–1850), observing the changes in key concepts of political and social language. Kollmeier, “Begriffsgeschichte und Historische Semantik.” Christian Geulen suggested investigating the semantic shi s in the twentieth century with respect to the scientification, popularization, spatialization and liquefaction of concepts and meanings. Christian Geulen, “Plädoyer für eine Geschichte der Grundbegriffe des 20. Jahrhunderts,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 7 (2010) no. 1, 79–97, h p://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/16126041-Geulen-1-2010. MacDougall, “In the Shadow of the Wall,” 161 f. Mitscherlich, Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer Städte; Siedler and Niggemeyer, Die gemordete Stadt. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 365. Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm, “Kreuzberger Ausschabung,” Bauwelt 71 (1980), 29–33. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 138. Kreis, “Heimwerken als Protest.” On the SO 36 citizens’ initiative see also chapters 3 and 8. The West Berlin Senate’s new postal classification under postal code 1000 Berlin 61 comprised the former delivery areas of SW 11, SW 29, SW 61 and SW 68. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 129 f. Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 122. The building was an old cinema that was leased by music fans and rebuilt into a concert venue. The club opened on August 13, 1978 with a Berlin Wall Festival, an ironic reference to Joseph Beuys’s suggestion in 1964 to make the Wall 5 cm higher. On the history of the SO 36 club, see Müller, Subkultur Westberlin, 107; see also, more recently, Sub Opus 36 e. V. (ed.), SO 36—1978 bis heute, Berlin 2016. Uebel, Am Berg gebaut, 28. Lothar Uebel defines the “new” Kiez as a “closed, urban residential area with a distinctive atmosphere that is regarded as a kind of home by its inhabitants.” The preferred term prior to this in Berlin’s old neighborhoods was Dreh. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 14 f. Verein SO 36, “. . . außer man tut es!” 31; Fiebig, Hoffmann-Axthelm, and Knödler-Bunte, Kreuzberger Mischung. For a detailed portrait of Klaus Duntze, see chapter 8. Kaak, Kreuzberg, 14. Duntze, Der Luisenstädtische Kanal, 330. Hoffmann-Axthelm, “Kreuzberger Ausschabung.” Hoffmann-Axthelm, “Geschichte und Eigenart der Kreuzberger Mischung.” Katharina Altmann et al. (eds), Die Luisenstadt. Ein Heimatbuch, Berlin 1927. Spode, “Zur Sozial- und Siedlungsgeschichte Kreuzbergs,” xi.

Chapter 6

NEIGHBORHOOD APPROPRIATION IN FRIEDRICHSHAIN

( Kommune 1 Ost Even a er the Wall was built, Western fashions, trends and lifestyles were still closely followed in the East and appropriated in a specific way.1 This was also true of new forms of communal living that West Berliners had experimented with since the 1960s. The founding of “Kommune 1” in 1967 by Dieter Kunzelmann, Ulrich and Dagrun Enzensberger, Dorothea Ridder and Dagmar Seehuber in the Schöneberg studio apartment of Uwe Johnson a racted considerable a ention.2 In 1969, two East Berlin couples followed their lead and subsequently founded “Kommune 1 Ost” on Samariterstrasse 36 in Friedrichshain. They, too, a empted to practice alternative lifestyles in a self-determined living environment. Erika Berthold (b. 1950), one of the Friedrichshain communards, recalled: It wasn’t easy finding a big apartment in East Berlin. Franziska and Gert lived in Friedrichshagen at the time, in an old bourgeois townhouse, and traded it for a fairly spacious three-room apartment, albeit in a less fancy location on Samariterstrasse in Friedrichshain. Inspired by the communes in West Berlin, we decided to move in together. This happened in the early summer of 1969. Each couple occupied a room. Then there was a nursery, a pantry and a bathroom with a constantly clogged toilet, like in every commune, and a big kitchen. To us it felt luxurious.3

The large rooms of these old apartments served a variety of functions in communes of this sort.4 The communards on Samariterstrasse had been looking for such an apartment in Friedrichshain comparable to the ones in Kreuzberg or Schöneberg. These four young East Berliners also adopted the aims and objectives of their role models in West Berlin: escaping the “prison of marriage” and testing the waters of the sexual revolution. No Notes for this chapter begin on page 157.

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distinction was made here between the private and the political. Their goal was to overcome the isolated lifestyle practiced in the nuclear family.5 But this spirit of permissiveness and promiscuity soon foundered on wounded feelings. Egalitarian housekeeping proved just as difficult to establish, as Erika Berthold reminisces: We had the same problems in day-to-day life as communes in the West did. The men made too li le effort in the household and with the children. Reports were wri en and meetings were held where the men were ordered to adopt a different behavior, but it never worked for long.6

The depictions of conflict in Kommune 1 Ost resembled those of Western communes. But the people there were different. The Friedrichshain communards were dissidents, o en the children of East German nomenklatura. One of them was the son of Robert Havemann (1910–82). Some had been in prison the year before for publicly protesting the suppression of the Prague Spring. For them the founding of the commune was mainly a retreat into the private sphere, a social safe haven in East Germany’s “niche society.” But Kommune 1 Ost was nevertheless open to a wide range of visitors. Wolf Biermann (b. 1936) was a frequent guest, as well as Western journalists. If they came to report on the commune they were told up-front: “You’re welcome to come and eat our spaghe i, but don’t write about us over there,” recalled Erika Berthold, adding “and we didn’t let them take pictures either. We didn’t want to jeopardize our beautiful life in the commune so someone could write it up in Konkret.”7 Contact with visitors from the West offered the Friedrichshain communards personal points of reference for the adoption of Western forms of living. The name Kommune 1 Ost alone is already an indication of processes of entanglement between alternative milieus in East and West.8 Yet this phenomenon was still a rather isolated one during the 1960s.9 The commune moved to the Mi e district of East Berlin not long a erwards and dissolved a er just one year. In the course of the 1970s and 1980s, however, alternative forms of living were practiced more and more frequently in other parts of Friedrichshain.10 The neglect of prewar buildings there offered some local residents the chance to experience a modicum of privacy in a specific milieu of dropouts and outcasts, the precariat of the East: applicants for exit visits, old people and single parents.11 Similar to their West German counterparts, East German authorities and urban planners saw living in Wilhelmine-era buildings as a stopgap solution. Plans for the wholesale redevelopment of older neighborhoods were to change the social structure there. Unlike in the West, however, raze-and-rebuild urban renewal and its a endant social consequences prompted li le resistance in East Berlin. Whereas a critical counter-public sphere and a highly

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visible squa ing scene emerged in Kreuzberg with the aim of protecting old buildings and the newfound personal freedoms they offered against redevelopment plans and the interests of landlords, conditions in East Berlin were more prohibitive to the development of a new public sphere. Petitioning (Eingaben) became the key means of appealing to the communal housing administration. Paul Be s made the case that the system of petitioning in the GDR evolved into a kind of surrogate public sphere.12 East German citizens used their right to petition to interpret a politicized private sphere to their advantage. Petitioners construed privacy and material well-being as human rights that socialism was responsible for protecting. The formalized system of filing grievances became one of the most salient points of contact between the state and its citizens, being used by both sides to gauge and negotiate the limits of the private sphere.13 “It bespeaks a substantial intertwining of the public and private spheres when, via the communication channels of petitions, le ers and complaints, issues in the pe y sphere of daily life are carried over into the media of the larger public sphere.”14 Petition analyses from the district of Friedrichshain reveal how seriously the state took these grievances.15 The relevant communal authorities seemed mainly concerned about handling these petitions as thoroughly as possible. Alexander Mallickh, deputy mayor, city councilman and director of the housing department, cited as a reason for the high number of petitions the diminishing number of apartments built since 1960, the demolition of older buildings to make way for new ones, and the “increasing structural and moral decay of older buildings.”16 Another petition analysis from 1968 compiled by the housing-administration division of Friedrichshain grouped the petitions into themes. Accordingly, petitions were used as a platform to criticize shoddy construction and slackening plan discipline, to point out structural damages, to request repairs, address repair backlogs, draw a ention to potential resources, to promote communal life in house regulations, but also to criticize leadership deficits.17 In this manner petitioners critiqued state-controlled housing and were in fact taken quite seriously by housing administrators, even though their grievances were generally not made public. Citizens appealing to state authorities did so as individuals and did not openly share their experiences with others. Their protest remained largely silent.

Silent Squatters The illegal occupation of apartments in Friedrichshain also occurred in relative silence. This practice of squa ing, or Schwarzwohnen, as the East

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German authorities called it—hence lending it the same negative connotations as Schwarzfahren (fare dodging) or Schwarzmarkt (black market)—as opposed to the standard term Hausbesetzung normally used in the West, was an instance of East German citizens taking ma ers into their own hands in response to their dissatisfaction with the state’s allocation of housing.18 Moving to a different apartment in the GDR actually required a housing referral (Wohnungszuweisung) from the respective department for housing policy in the municipal-district or district council. This is how the authorities tried to solve a permanent housing shortage that persisted, in essence, until 1990. At the same time, however, there were many vacant apartments, not least because the communal housing administration had trouble keeping track of these things. Numerous East Germans took advantage of this “gray area” and moved into these empty apartments without the proper paperwork. Most of them were young people who wanted to be independent from their parents. Squa ing was a fairly widespread phenomenon in the GDR of the Honecker era. Udo Grashoff estimates that in East Berlin alone there were several thousand illegally occupied apartments during the 1980s.19 The East German capital was a squa ing stronghold. This was indirectly related to the large-scale housing projects of the 1970s and 1980s. While entire city districts were being newly built in Marzahn, Hellersdorf and Hohenschönhausen, late-nineteenth-century Wilhelmine-era buildings were earmarked for demolition. But tearing them down was costly and building capacities were scarce, so that ultimately many old tenement buildings remained standing longer than planned. It was precisely these rundown and vacant apartments that squa ers moved into—usually by breaking in. Word got around how to successfully occupy an empty apartment.20 Many squa ers even subsequently paid rent in the hope of legalizing their move ex post facto.21 O en the authorities didn’t even notice when apartments were illegally occupied, especially considering that there were no systematic inspections. If they did, they normally threatened with a fine, the act itself being treated as a misdemeanor. Forced eviction was not inevitable, the Civil Code of the GDR stipulating in paragraph 123 that evictions, upon their enforcement, required the allocation of alternative living quarters as the East German constitution guaranteed the right to housing. This considerably restricted the authorities’ options, with the result that squa ers were o en tolerated or their actions subsequently legalized.22 Most instances of squa ing occurred in Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg, which had by far the greatest number of vacant apartments.23 In 1979, a random inspection by the East Berlin municipal authorities determined that 534 apartments, one quarter of all empty apartments in Fried-

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ri shain, had unauthorized occupants.24 The occupants in 86 percent of these apartments were allowed to remain living there.25 As seen in this instance, the authorities’ response to squa ing was increasingly one of pragmatic indifference. This is expressed in the following Stasi report on one such building in Friedrichshain: The common practice in the building is such that these citizens first move into an apartment and renovate it, then only in retrospect obtain the allocation documents and register with the police. The citizens living there for a longer period of time see nothing illicit in this practice, since it effectively reclaims living space, which the KWV [Communal Housing Administration] doesn’t manage to do.26

The practice of reclaiming living space is reminiscent of squa ing in West Berlin during the 1970s and 1980s. Squa ing in East Berlin was taking place simultaneously and affected similar buildings, ones falling into disrepair through the prevailing practice of redevelopment. As in the West, the squa ers restored the apartments on their own. Their behavior, however, was not guided by the same ethical principles and spirit of social criticism, as Udo Grashoff emphasizes: “Whereas the ‘rehab squa ers’ in Western Europe aimed to socialize private property, many squa ers in the GDR sought a partial privatization of ‘people’s property.’”27 East German squa ers were much more concerned about claiming private spaces. That’s why it was mostly individual apartments being occupied in the GDR as opposed to entire buildings like in West Berlin. The squa ers in East Berlin did not fight their ba les with landlords or politicians but with communal housing authorities. While it’s true that they also developed alternative lifestyles in the buildings they occupied, there was no pronounced culture of squa ing there.28 Radio shows like S-F-Beat on Radio Free Berlin painted a vivid picture of squa ing in Kreuzberg for people living in Friedrichshain.29 Yet the spectacular forms it took in West Berlin o en met with li le sympathy from those in the eastern part of the city. A former squa er in Prenzlauer Berg put it like this: “We lived in occupied buildings and didn’t understand why they made such a fuss in Kreuzberg with all their banners and demonstrations.”30 Compared with the much publicized squa ing scene in Kreuzberg, the practice of squa ing in Friedrichshain was mostly a silent affair. Just as Kommune 1 Ost was not interested in any publicity, squa ers kept a low public profile too lest they endanger their newfound freedoms. Hanging banners from the front of buildings or protesting in the streets, that is, leaving the privacy of your apartment, legal or not, and entering the public sphere, would have prompted the authorities to intervene and put an end to squa ing in the GDR.31 In the narrow confines of your own four

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walls, by contrast, adopting alternative lifestyles was at least a possibility. In this case, too, the GDR turned out to be a “dictatorship of limits” in which there was a fair amount of social leeway, albeit narrowly defined and with li le interplay between individual areas of freedom.32 There were a plethora of special-interest groups in Friedrichshain—for actors, artists, musicians, families, Nicaragua supporters, environmentalists, anarchists, women and samizdat publishers—but they largely went their separate ways. There were groups involved in the same activity who had never heard of each other because of the lack of an overarching counter-public sphere.33 This atomization of social potential had decisive consequences for the interrelationship between the public and private sphere in housing. Whereas housing was a broad public issue in Kreuzberg, in Friedrichshain these ma ers were negotiated individually and in private.

The Discovery of the Kiez Parallel to the unofficial appropriation of Wilhelmine-era apartments taking place around 1980, the official housing policy of the GDR was undergoing changes as well.34 As in the West, older buildings were being revaluated.35 This was preceded by a radical shi in perception. As late as 1976, the East Berlin head of the SED, Konrad Naumann (1928–92), announced the planned demolition by the year 1990 of eighty thousand apartments in decaying older buildings.36 By 1979, however, the East German Ministry of Construction had declared a general moratorium on demolition.37 The older buildings would no longer be replaced in a wholesale fashion with modern prefab concrete-slab apartment buildings. In 1982 the Politbüro of the Central Commi ee of the SED passed its new “Principles for the Socialist Development of Urban Design and Architecture,” which replaced the sixteen principles of 1950. The seventh principle now went as follows: “The preservation and modernization of the existing building stock is of prime importance for the wellbeing of our citizens, for the upkeep of urban landscapes, and not least for economic reasons; it is a task to be treated with equal importance as the construction of new apartment buildings.”38 Frequent mention is made in the policy statement that the GDR could no longer afford to completely tear down older buildings for the sake of new construction. The second oil crisis of 1979 and the a endant reduction in Soviet crude oil exports at concessionary rates posed new economic challenges to the GDR.39 The revaluation of historic buildings was a result of this crisis, but it was also based on a cultural shi in urban-planning paradigms that arrived in the GDR in the early 1980s.

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Numerous building projects envisioning the “complex reconstruction” of East Berlin soon followed. This meant the modernization of entire Wilhelmine-era streets using industrial prefab methods. Complex reconstruction was complemented by infill, building standardized prototypes adapted to the pre-existing architectural se ing on lots le vacant from wartime destruction while maintaining the traditional quadrangle model as well as the Berlin eaves height.40 Following a pilot project at Arnimplatz in Prenzlauer Berg (begun in 1973), a number of reconstruction areas were added in Friedrichshain in the 1980s, including Bersarinplatz, Palisadendreieck, and both sides of the eastern end of Frankfurter Allee.41 The district mayor of Friedrichshain, Manfred Pagel (b. 1929), concluded proudly in 1987: “Between 1981 and 1986 . . . more than fourteen thousand apartments were newly built, modernized or reconstructed; nearly 70 percent of apartments in Friedrichshain now have their own bath or shower.”42 Building activities in East Berlin did not go unnoticed in the western half of the city. Complex reconstruction was closely followed in the context of the Altbau-IBA, the International Building Exposition for older buildings, in Kreuzberg. Experts from West Berlin, among them later Senate building director Hans Stimmann (b. 1941), made repeated visits to construction sites in the East. On behalf of the Berlin International Building Exposition, he dra ed a brochure in 1985 depicting urban renewal in East Berlin from “socialist reconstruction” to “complex reconstruction.”43 His observations of developments in the East obviously fulfilled a strategic function. Presenting the progress made in the GDR was to help advance the cause of “cautious urban renewal” in West Berlin. Examples from East Berlin would hopefully encourage the West Berlin Senate to follow suit. Hardt-Waltherr Hämer (1922–2012),44 director of the Altbau-IBA, wrote the following in his foreword to Stimmann’s brochure: “whereas here [in West Berlin] no sufficiently explicit policy line has been developed, over there [in the East] a gigantic renewal program under the guidance of professionals has been vigorously implemented, with the result that large sections of older East Berlin neighborhoods have meanwhile been transformed into construction sites.”45 Stimmann identified more than economic reasons for the urban transformation in East Berlin.46 For him, the reasons for this concentration of construction work were to be found in the conjunction of three overarching political objectives:47 first, the consolidation of East Berlin as the capital of the GDR; second, the envisioned solution of the housing question by the year 1990; and third, the approaching 750th anniversary celebrations in 1987. All of these were issues that affected West Berlin as well.48 In particular he described a new appreciation of historical architecture in the East, citing voices rejecting the hitherto prevailing ideological denigration

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of the built legacy of capitalism49 and instead demanding “change while preserving historical continuity.”50 Stimmann considered the complex reconstruction taking place in East Berlin a counterpart to the cautious urban development being pursued in the West. Stimmann expressed some criticism of several aspects of complex reconstruction. His critiques included the lack of tenant participation as well as ownership issues. “With no regard for private property relations, in many cases legally unaffected yet de facto no longer valid, they nullified the semi-public character of individual courtyards and hence the Hausbezug [the quasi proprietary relationship between building and courtyard] by creating numerous Blockdurchquerungen [pathways cu ing across the block] and redesigning the block interiors as public spaces.”51 Block clearance, in the form of gu ing courtyards and tearing down the rear buildings, was likewise practiced in the East with consequences for the relationship between the public and private sphere, a development which a traditionalist like Stimmann tended to disapprove of, just as he did in Kreuzberg.52 Finally, he pointed out a considerable caveat: the complex reconstruction of nineteenth-century buildings in East Berlin took place at the expense of other regions in the GDR. In 1985, about twenty-six thousand construction workers from other regions were working in East Berlin.53 By the same token, the International Building Exposition in West Berlin would not have been possible without considerable federal funding. In this respect, too, urban renewal in East Berlin was comparable to developments in West Berlin. The revaluation of older Wilhelmine-era buildings in East Berlin is also reflected in the concept of Kiez, which gained surprising currency beginning in the mid-1980s. A full-text search of the Berliner Zeitung allows a fairly exact reconstruction of how the term was used in the official public sphere of the East German press.54 Its use was sporadic until the mid1980s. In 1985 it became more common, then, in 1987, its frequency spiked (Figure 6.1). The increasing occurrence of the word Kiez can be traced back in large part to the 750-year anniversary of 1987. An entire street in Prenzlauer Berg, Husemannstrasse, was reconstructed in Wilhelmine style in the context of these celebrations. But the anniversary celebrations alone cannot explain how the term became so fashionable. A closer analysis of the context in which the word was used reveals a wide range of usages. It was linked to childhood memories in certain older Berlin neighborhoods or to the milieu of Heinrich Zille. In these cases the term was being retroactively applied to old proletarian Berlin. But it was also used in conjunction with campaigns to beautify the neighborhood and the much-used slogan Unser Kiez soll schöner werden—roughly, “Help make our neighborhood

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FIGURE 6.1. Word frequency of the term “Kiez” in the Berliner Zeitung (1945–90), database. GDR Press Portal, h p://zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/ddr-presse, graph. Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. h p://www.dwds.de.

[i.e., Kiez] more beautiful.” It was thus used to mobilize residents to show more civic engagement, for example through the “golden house number” initiative.55 Occasionally Kiez was even applied to new housing developments on the outskirts of town in order to foster good neighborly relations. The term had not yet been clearly defined but, as in Kreuzberg, had largely positive connotations. A speech delivered by Erich Honecker in 1987 marked the first time he used the word in an official context. In his address at the Palace of the Republic on October 23, 1987, during the official state ceremony to mark the 750-year anniversary of Berlin, he proclaimed: “With the [creation of the new] municipal districts of Marzahn, Hohenschönhausen and Hellersdorf, the traditional circle of Berlin municipal districts has been expanded within a single decade by a magnitude equivalent to a large city. Hundreds of thousands of people have moved into beautiful apartments as a result of new construction or reconstruction work in their familiar neighborhood surroundings [in ihrem vertrauten Kiez].”56 The renovation of older Berlin neighborhoods and the special a achment many locals felt for their neighborhood, their Kiez, was thus acknowledged at a linguistic level, despite the construction of new residential developments still being the top priority in Honecker’s housing policy. The rediscovery of the Kiez was embedded in a new politics of history pursued by the SED from the mid-1970s under the watchwords “heritage and tradition” in an a empt to gain legitimacy through a broader historical consciousness, one that

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was not exclusively socialist.57 The imperial-era Kiez was suitable terminology here, harking back as it did to proletarian traditions.58 East German television also helped popularize the term Kiez. From October to December 1987 it broadcast a seven-part miniseries called Kiezgeschichten (Neighborhood Stories), in which a construction crew from Eberswalde restores an Old Berlin tenement building.59 All manner of humoristic stories unfold in the process between two older residents of the building (played by Marga Legal and Gerry Wolf), who have lived there for decades, and representatives of a younger generation who have gotten used to their new Kiez and want to stay there, even though in the end they’re allocated new apartments. Screenwriter Rolf Gumlich (b. 1932), who lived in a ground-floor apartment in Prenzlauer Berg himself, explained his concept of Kiez in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung: “The stories play out everywhere in our capital. Kiez is synonymous with Berlin and is linked to the notion of a familiar corner. But we also wanted to include new areas like the Nikolaiviertel [Nicholas Quarter] and new housing developments. We started with an old street in the Mi e district and called it Griseldastrasse, a street that is under reconstruction. Typical for our times, in other words.”60 Director Jens-Peter Proll expressed similar sentiments: a Kiez “can be in any city, any village. Kiez simply means at home.”61 Both men tried to define the term in the most positive, inclusive way possible. The broadening of the concept of Kiez to include new housing developments and villages was meant as a reference to the totality of viewers in the GDR and was apparently needed to help popularize it. The individual episodes of Kiezgeschichten, however, made clear enough that it referred to an old Berlin neighborhood in this case. While the neighborhood itself was being preserved through reconstruction work, a positively connoted concept of Kiez upped its symbolic value. The concept of Kiez could be used in an entirely different manner, however, as shown by a five-part series of newspaper reports published in the Berliner Zeitung between November 15 and 27, 1988 under the title “Kreuzberg Days.” West Berlin correspondent Axel Knack painted a gloomy picture of life in Kreuzberg SO 36, which he described as a neighborhood (Kiez) teetering “between rage and hope.”62 The individual parts of this picture of misery deal with topics such as youth unemployment, the drug scene, realestate sharks, compulsive gambling and alcoholism, but also with the onset of gentrification—without that word being used, of course.63 AL District Councilman Volker Härtig is quoted in the reports as saying that Kreuzberg served the West Berlin Senate as a “permanent repository for Berlin’s social rejects.” Punks and Turks are equally exoticized. The readers of the Berliner Zeitung are given to understand that Kreuzberg represents the underbelly of West Berlin: “This is not Kurfürstendamm; this is Kiez.”64

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FIGURE 6.2. Word frequency of the term “Kiez” in the weekly paper Die Zeit (1945–90), database and graph. Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. h p://www.dwds.de.

Here the concept of Kiez is turned against the context it was created in, assuming with good reason that it was imported to the GDR from the West. The time lag evident in comparative word-frequency analyses supports this theory.65 The term became fashionable in West Berlin and the Federal Republic about ten years earlier than it did in the East (figure 6.2). This corresponds with the rediscovery of older neighborhoods in 1970s West Berlin, a process that began in East Berlin in the mid-1980s leading to the widespread use of the term there. Whereas the term referred to good neighborly relations and a sense of rootedness when applied to the GDR, when referring to the West it was used to denounce extreme forms of poverty and deplorable housing conditions under capitalism. Both variants were possible in this phase of urban transformation in East and West, depending on one’s political interests in the context of competing economic systems. But it was the positive connotation that ultimately prevailed. Following the city’s reunification, it was indisputably the concept of Kiez that served as a point of identification and an a ractive label for renovated historic buildings in East and West alike.

Housing: Conclusions Overall, living conditions in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg were roughly the same throughout most of their existence. There was li le in the way of privacy—in the sense of a space at home for an individual to be alone—in either of these two eastern districts of Berlin from the time of their devel-

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opment during the German Empire well into the years a er World War II, the war only exacerbating this situation. Until the mid-twentieth century, however, privacy of this sort was not an established norm in either of these two neighborhoods. Public intervention in the form of sociological studies emphasized questions of hygiene and morality, though nonetheless documenting the precarious privacy of local residents. Following the devastations of World War II, the reconstruction programs in both halves of this now divided city aspired to wholesale clearance, the total removal of mostly dilapidated tenement buildings that were considered a legacy of founders’ era capitalism. The first new apartment buildings of the postwar era were more than a mere public demonstration of reconstruction and the will to restructure society in East and West; they offered their tenants increased—sometimes the first ever—opportunities for real privacy, which was part and parcel of a general retreat into the private sphere given the experiences of dictatorship during the twentieth century. This relaxed the situation in older tenement buildings. The moment they were slated for demolition, these doomed and neglected structures became a refuge and private space for less conformist lifestyles and alternative forms of living, reflecting a tendency towards greater individualization in both societies. Whereas in Kreuzberg these spaces of personal development were publicly claimed, occupied and defended against their planned demolition, in Friedrichshain the process of appropriation took place on the quiet, since the Party state controlling the official public sphere did not allow an alternative or counter-public sphere like the kind that emerged in Kreuzberg. A pronounced counter-public sphere developed in the la er, establishing itself, for example, in the area of political art and in research on the history of everyday life in the neighborhood, as well as coining its own concepts that would have a lasting effect on the district. In Friedrichshain, by contrast, where the Party newspaper Neues Deutschland, an important instrument of the official East German public sphere, had its main office, no comparable critical counter-public sphere was able to develop, even though the visual arts, in particular, did pick up the slack somewhat by publicly articulating critical perspectives on housing and living conditions. Moreover, a special (albeit socially restricted) surrogate public sphere developed here, being used above all as a platform for negotiating living conditions and taking the ruling SED at its word when it promised to solve the housing problem. Individual demands and expectations not only grew apace with the Party’s promises on housing—the centerpiece of its economic and social policy ever since the 1970s, serving to legitimize its hold on power—but also due to constant comparisons with the West. Alternative forms of living and personal lifestyle choices were borrowed from the West. Another striking development is the parallel rediscovery and renovation of old

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tenement buildings in East Berlin. It remains an open question to what extent this was due to economic demands and political interests (including politics of memory), or if the cautious urban renewal in Kreuzberg was adopted by the East as a guiding principle in its own urban planning. The GDR, at any rate, did adopt the new concept of the Kiez from Kreuzberg as the public expression of a positive revaluation of older neighborhoods. The entanglements between East and West were not a one-way street, however. Organizers of the International Building Exposition in Kreuzberg, for example, were interested in the complex reconstruction underway in the eastern part of the city, hoping to strengthen their own position in West Berlin by referencing developments in the GDR. The area of housing thus exhibits a typical pa ern of asymmetrical entanglement. The East and West were engaged in a kind of race to rediscover their architectural heritage during the 1980s, a process resulting in the convergence of urban-planning concepts unlike the architectural ba le of the 1950s. This mutually entangled parallel development formed an important precondition for the symbolic and physical restoration of Wilhelmine buildings in both parts of the city a er 1990. In other words, the process of gentrification in today’s Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg dates back to the period of system conflict.

Notes 1. This chapter is partly based on Hanno Hochmuth, “Eine Brücke zwischen Ost und West. Friedrichshain und Kreuzberg als Verflechtungsraum,” in Detlev Brunner, Udo Grashoff, and Andreas Koetzing (eds), Asymmetrisch verflochten? Neue Forschungen zur gesamtdeutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte, Berlin 2013, 195–208. 2. Warnke, Stein gegen Stein, 250. 3. Erika Berthold, “Die Kommune 1 Ost,” in Ute Kätzel (ed.), Die 68erinnen. Portrait einer rebellischen Frauengeneration, Berlin 2002, 221–237, here 228. 4. Von Saldern, Häuserleben, 403. 5. On the avowed objective of open relationships in communes and shared apartments, see ibid., 404. 6. Berthold, “Die Kommune 1 Ost,” 229. 7. Ibid., 230. 8. There was no “East-West community of discourse” to speak of, however, as Ute Kätzel writes. Ute Kätzel, “Kommune 1 Ost,” Der Freitag, December 20, 2002, 8. 9. There were other a empts to set up communes later on in Friedrichshain. For example, Udo Grashoff describes the “children’s commune” on Mühsamstrasse 63 established by Uwe Kulisch in the early 1980s. Kulisch occupied a three-room apartment, modernized it and added on two rooms. A second couple, a friend and his girlfriend, moved in with Kulisch and his wife. They all brought children with them, forming a “children’s commune.” The children slept together in one room and were taken care of at home in-

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10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

stead of going to preschool. The aim was an antiauthoritarian education using methods developed by American psychologist Thomas Gordon. The communards rejected every form of state and parental authority. The children’s commune on Mühsamstrasse fell apart a er three years due to personal issues. Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen, 111–114. Moldt, “Friedrichshain,” 25. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 69–72. Paul Be s, “Die Politik des Privaten. Eingaben in der DDR,” in Daniel Fulda, Dagmar Herzog, Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, and Till van Rahden (eds), Demokratie im Scha en der Gewalt. Geschichten des Privaten im deutschen Nachkrieg, Gö ingen 2010, 286–309, here 304–306; see also von Saldern, “Öffentlichkeiten in Diktaturen,” 455. Be s, “Die Politik des Privaten,” 306. Ri ersporn, Behrends, and Rolf, “Von Sphären, Räumen und Schichten,” 414. LArch C Rep. 135-10 11: Eingabenanalysen 1968–1969. Ibid. Ibid. The following depiction of squa ing in the GDR draws substantially on Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen. Ibid., 76. Moldt, “Friedrichshain,” 25. Other legalization strategies of squa ers included doing the repair work themselves, lodging complaints about the arbitrary nature of public authorities, pointing out their otherwise conformist behavior, offering small bribes or even threatening to apply for an exit visa. Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen, 55–66. Ibid., 13–45. Simon-Dach-Strasse in Friedrichshain had a particularly large number of occupied apartments. The occupants of No. 11 even founded their own household management (Hausgemeinscha sleitung) in the late 1980s. By making use of this official instrument they could even solicit funding for renovation work and annual courtyard festivals. Hence a state-subsidized punk concert took place in the fall of 1988. In early 1989, however, the People’s Police conducted a house search of the same building, in the course of which its occupants were insulted, beaten and detained for several hours. Moldt, “Friedrichshain,” 26. Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen, 18. Ibid., 36. Quoted in ibid., 72. Ibid., 83. Ibid., 186. Interview with Dirk Moldt (August 13, 2014). Quoted in Barbara Felsmann and Anne Gröschner, Durchgangszimmer Prenzlauer Berg. Eine Berliner Künstlersozialgeschichte in Selbstauskün en, Berlin 1999, 12. Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen, 187. Thomas Lindenberger, “Die Diktatur der Grenzen. Zur Einleitung,” in idem (ed.), Herrscha und Eigen-Sinn in der Diktatur. Studien zur Gesellscha sgeschichte der DDR, Cologne 1999, 13–44. Moldt, “Friedrichshain,” 25. On housing policy in the GDR, see Hannsjörg F. Buck, Mit hohem Anspruch gescheitert. Die Wohnungspolitik der DDR, Münster 2004. On the changing perception of architecture in the late GDR from an architecturalhistory perspective, see Florian Urban, Berlin, DDR—neo-historisch. Geschichte aus Fertigteilen, Berlin 2007.

Neighborhood Appropriation in Friedrichshain | 159

36. Konrad Naumann, “Weitrei ende Perspektiven und große Aufgaben für Berlin. Beri t von der XII. SED-Bezirksdelegiertenkonferenz der Hauptstadt,” Berliner Zeitung, March 27, 1976, 3–9, here 4. 37. Gesetzbla der DDR, part I, no. 34, October 19, 1979. 38. Neues Deutschland, May 29–30, 1982, 10. 39. Frank Bösch, “Energy Diplomacy: Germany, the Soviet Union and the Oil Crisis,” Historical Social Research 39 (2014) no. 4, 165–185. 40. The Capital Construction Office in East Berlin (Baudirektion Hauptstadt Berlin), set up in the GDR in 1983, played a crucial role here. Its director general, Erhardt Gißke (1924–93), had been responsible for Stalinallee, the Palace of the Republic, the Sports and Recreation Center as well as the new Friedrichstadt-Palast. 41. Bouali and Schulze, Bewegte Zeiten, 76; Landesdenkmalamt Berlin, Denkmale in Berlin, 44 f. 42. Berliner Zeitung, October 27, 1987, 5. 43. Hans Stimmann, Stadterneuerung in Ost-Berlin. Vom “sozialistischen Neuau au” zur “komplexen Rekonstruktion”, Berlin 1985. 44. Architect and university instructor Hardt-Waltherr Hämer is considered the father of cautious urban renewal (behutsame Stadterneuerung) in West Berlin. In a 1968 pilot project on Putbusser Strasse in the redevelopment area of Wedding, he was the first to show that the restoration of older buildings was cheaper than the demolition and subsequent reconstruction of new apartment buildings. He first implemented this approach between 1973 and 1978 in the Block 118 pilot project on Klausenerplatz in Charlo enburg. With this track record, Hämer was appointed planning director of the Berlin International Building Exposition in 1979 and was responsible for the so-called IBA-Alt section from 1984 to 1987, with a focus on older buildings and “cautious urban renewal in Kreuzberg.” Rudolf Schilling, “Behutsame Stadterneuerung,” in Manfred Sack (ed.), Stadt im Kopf: Hardt-Waltherr Hämer, Berlin 2002, 179–215; Krijn Thijs, “West-Berliner Visionen für eine neue Mi e. Die Internationale Bauausstellung, der ‘Zentrale Bereich’ und die ‘Geschichtslandscha ’ an der Mauer (1981-1985),” Zeithistorische Forschungen/ Studies in Contemporary History 11 (2014) no. 2, 235–261, here 237 f., h p://www.zeithis torische-forschungen.de/2-2014/id=5097. 45. Hardt-Waltherr Hämer, “Vorwort,” in Stimmann, Stadterneuerung in Ost-Berlin, 2. 46. Stimmann, Stadterneuerung in Ost-Berlin, 10. 47. Ibid., 5. 48. On the competition between East and West Berlin and their mutual perception of each other throughout the 750th anniversary celebrations of the city, see Thijs, Drei Ges i ten, eine Stadt. 49. For example, the GDR’s star architect Hermann Henselmann, who as early as the 1960s demanded that the “square-one” mentality in urban planning be abandoned. Stimmann, Stadterneuerung in Ost-Berlin, 10. 50. Klaus Rasche, “Gedanken zur Gründerzeitarchitektur,” Architektur der DDR 11/1979, 701, quoted in Stimmann, Stadterneuerung in Ost-Berlin, 33. Rasche pleaded for a new understanding of Wilhelmine architecture, arguing that the old spirit of subservience could not be reproduced under the conditions of the GDR, especially considering that the militant working classes were formed in that very se ing. 51. Stimmann, Stadterneuerung in Ost-Berlin, 13, emphasis in original. 52. To be sure, he noticed a tendency towards less drastic intervention in “more recent” reconstruction projects since the mid-1980s. Ibid. 53. Ibid., 5. 54. Word-frequency analysis at the GDR Press Portal, h p://zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin .de/ddr-presse/ (accessed June 30, 2015).

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55. The so-called golden house number was bestowed on buildings whose tenants had shown a special commitment to the preservation and maintenance of their living environment. 56. Neues Deutschland, October 24, 1987, 3. 57. On the concept of “heritage and tradition” in the GDR, see Helmut Meier and Walter Schmidt (eds), Erbe und Tradition in der DDR. Die Diskussion der Historiker, Berlin (East) 1988. 58. On changing conceptions of history in the GDR, see Martin Sabrow (ed.), Verwaltete Vergangenheit. Ges i tskultur und Herrs a slegitimation in der DDR, Leipzig 1997; Raina Zimmering, Mythen in der Politik der DDR, Opladen 2000. 59. Kiezgeschichten, seven-part miniseries produced by East German television, first aired on October 23, 1987, directed by Jens-Peter Proll, wri en by Rolf Gumlich. 60. Berliner Zeitung, February 28, 1987, 10. 61. Berliner Zeitung, December 8, 1987, 7. 62. Axel Knack, “Eine Adresse für Wut und Hoffnung. SO 36 zwis en Traum und Wirkli keit,” Berliner Zeitung, November 15, 1988, 4. 63. In the final installment of the series he writes: “If the well-to-do young college graduate used to tour Kreuzberg in a fully air-conditioned sightseeing bus—view through the windshield of the supposedly exotic—he has meanwhile discovered the area as an exotic place to live. A er a hard day of managerial work, he can go a li le crazy and do it in grand style. The housing renewal taking place behind the old facades has o en been accompanied by new tenants. In these circles Kreuzberg has meanwhile almost a ained a certain ‘chic.’ The new in-crowd now sits at this or that regulars’ table in old local bars. By candlelight and with Greek wine.” Axel Knack, “Die Schickeria sitzt am Stammtisch, Freizeitangebote im ‘Armenhaus der Stadt’,” Berliner Zeitung, November 22, 1988, 4. 64. Berliner Zeitung, November 15, 1988, 4. 65. Unfortunately there is no comparable press portal for the major West Berlin newspapers that would allow a quantifiable analysis of word frequency. A limited comparative analysis is possible using the reference corpus of Die Zeit, a leading West German weekly, in the Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, h p://www.dwds.de (accessed April 16, 2016).

 

PART III

The Church

(

Chapter 7

THE CHURCH AS A CONSTITUTIVE FIELD OF THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPHERES

( Today’s Berlin is one of the most secularized cities on earth. This has a long tradition, dating back to the German Empire. Like the rest of the GDR, the eastern half of the city experienced a massive unchurching a er 1945.1 But also in the western part of the city, church membership was on the decline.2 It might therefore come as a surprise, and require some explanation, why churches in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg are the subject of an entire section of this book. Compared with the explosiveness of the housing question, religious institutions might seem at first glance to be a rather marginal topic. But churches and religion reveal a lot about the relationship between the public and the private spheres. Churches as representatives of the public sphere and religion as a sphere of personal autonomy concern both poles, as it were.3 They form an “ecclesiasticalreligious field” that is constitutive for the relationship between the public and the private spheres and should always be thought of as a duality, especially considering that the practice of religious faith in Germany consistently overlaps with the institution of the Christian church.4 Ecclesiastical and religious history are bound up in a complex reciprocal relationship with general contemporary history. They not only react to developments affecting society as a whole, they also have an active influence on them, as will be shown in the two case studies selected here. This link between church and general history has led to a wealth of scholarly literature in the sociology of religion and historiography. A key focus here is the process of “secularization.” Building on Max Weber’s sociology of religion, classic secularization theory works on the assumption that the significance of churches and religion has waned in the ongoing process of social modernization and that only in the private sphere does religiosity play a residual role.5 Growing skepticism towards classic modernization Notes for this chapter begin on page 170.

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theory combined with criticisms of Western Eurocentrism has led, however, to a fundamental revision of secularization theory in the sociology of religion during the past two decades.6 Given the persistence of religiosity and the success of evangelical Protestantism in the United States and many other countries, the reciprocal relationship between secularization and modernity has been fundamentally called into question.7 With the exception of Western Europe, religion has clearly not suffered a loss of influence.8 The significance of “public religion” has in fact even grown significantly across the world, according to José Casanova.9 Others, by contrast, point to a distinct rise in nonecclesiastical and privatized religiosity.10 Thus, at its core, the debate on secularization touches the question of the public and private sphere in this ecclesiastical-religious field, whose historical foundations in Germany will be discussed in the following introductory section before addressing the shi in meaning of the churchrelated public sphere in the 1970s and 1980s using two case studies from Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. The focus here will not be on theological questions, but on the relationship between the public sphere of the church and that of the city or society as a whole. The public sphere of the church develops primarily at the level of church congregations, some of which in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg stood out in their public appeal and historical significance. This is particularly true of Protestant parishes. The focus will therefore be on the Protestant Church, the more significant church in Berlin, in terms of numbers and influence, down to the present day.11

Church and State Sociologically speaking, the public character of the church follows from the nature of the public assembly formed by its congregation. The la er was not an independent public sphere for most of its history, as church and state powers were closely intertwined for centuries ever since the Middle Ages. The emperor struggled with the Pope for the right of investiture. Church dignitaries in turn were invested with worldly power. These practices were fiercely criticized during the Reformation, and yet Protestant sovereigns were quick to assume jurisdiction in ecclesiastical ma ers. The ensuing religious wars ended with the policy of cuius regio, eius religio, thus defining the denomination of subject peoples by the religion of their rulers. The end of the old empire and the reforms of the early nineteenth century finally led to the formal separation of church and state and extensive secularization of church property in Catholic southern Germany as well.12 In Protestant states, however, an “alliance of throne and altar” remained in place, which was instrumental for the German Empire of 1871 with its

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strong Protestant influence.13 The state essentially ensured the existence of churches. The church for its part helped hold together the state and took on numerous public tasks in the political community, from the registration of births, marriages and deaths to the integration of newcomers and poor relief.14 The formal separation of church and state codified in the Weimar Reich Constitution was later abolished by the Nazis. Hence, despite the resistance of the Confessing Church and several regional churches, the Protestant Church was largely Nazified and a Reich Church created.15 With the demise of Nazi Germany the church’s relationship to politics had to be redefined. The regional churches regained their autonomy and influence, banding together into a Protestant federation, the so-called Evangelical Church in Germany (EKiD, later EKD), comprising Lutheran, Reformed and United Protestant regional churches.16 The Basic Law (Grundgesetz) drew on the Weimar constitution, stipulating that there was no state church.17 It also guaranteed religious freedom. Religious observance was understood as a public ma er that the state needed to step in and ensure. Churches themselves were recognized in the Federal Republic as corporations under public law and were vested with countless privileges. The la er included schools and charitable organizations, denominational religious instruction, statutory religious holidays as well as military chaplaincy. Furthermore, church representatives were delegated to broadcasting councils and political commissions. The most important privilege, however, was the continued existence of the church tax system, a specifically German setup for collecting this tax automatically by way of the revenue office, providing the two big churches with a secure financial basis and enabling the construction of numerous new church buildings in the context of the country’s postwar “economic miracle.” This unique situation of the church being anchored in the law resulted in a “hobbling separation” of church and state.18 Moreover, the institutional (anstaltlich) organization of churches in the Federal Republic involved a hierarchy that in some ways mirrored state structures.19 In the GDR the situation was fundamentally different.20 Though the first constitution of the GDR formally guaranteed the freedom of conscience, of religion and worship, a massive struggle between church and state ensued in 1952. The SED a empted to limit the public influence of the church on young people by establishing the Jugendweihe, a state-sponsored alternative to the rite of confirmation.21 The 1950s were marked by a repressive religious policy and an antireligious climate. Christians were systematically discriminated against in schools, universities, vocational training as well as at the workplace, and religion was stigmatized as a harmful and superfluous relic of class society.22 This led to a massive and long-term weakening of the church, continuing and enormously accelerating the

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previous tendencies towards secularization in eastern Germany.23 Political sanctions obstructed its youth work and in the long term the church’s reproductive capacity, its downward slide persisting even in the 1970s and 1980s when the SED eventually toned down its anticlerical policies.24 In a period of just four decades, the share of officially registered Protestants in the heartland of the Reformation, the states of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia later incorporated into the GDR, sank from 80.5 percent in 1949 to 25 percent in 1990. At the same time, the share of the East German population with no religious affiliation rose from 7 to 70 percent.25 The erstwhile national church had become a minority one.26

The Church as Part of Civil Society in the Federal Republic Churches in West Germany, too, lost more and more of their members, even if the average loss of 0.4 percent a year was not nearly as dramatic as the 2.5 percent a year in the GDR.27 Though the immediate postwar period was initially accompanied by a “religious spring,” which the churches drew on for years to come,28 by the 1960s a progressive unchurching of West German society was underway. Church a endance on Sundays declined, as well as the number of church marriages and baptisms and children a ending religious-run schools or preschools.29 There were a number of reasons for this. The end of high modernity brought the dissolution of familiar social environments, affecting the Christian church in particular. Religious and denominational moorings eroded and were not necessarily passed on to the next generation.30 Added to this was increasing material prosperity, which partly rendered obsolete the church’s traditional functions of providing welfare and solace. This was accompanied by a visible detraditionalization of society, not least in the relations between urban and rural areas.31 Finally, the church’s loss of significance was linked to the expansion of the media in the 1950s and 1960s. Despite the church’s new media presence,32 the unchurching of West German society continued apace.33 It was precisely this, however, that led to a “reinvention” of churches, which henceforth became a “roof and breeding ground for local cultures reflecting the values of civil society,” though not without numerous internal conflicts.34 A national church with nominal membership had transformed into an engaged minority. This transformation was accompanied by the church’s “disestablishment.” The Protestant Church in particular abandoned its traditional establishmentarian-authoritarian position and switched to a stance that tended towards critical thinking and embraced

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the notion of protest.35 Older social-Protestant movements prevailed over a weakened, traditional state Protestantism. Instead of social integration, dissent and conflict now became the church’s focal point. By examining its own past under Nazism,36 the church became an important protagonist in civil society, a place of protest and participation as well as social commitment and self-empowerment outside the bounds of the market and the state. More than a mere participant, its structures and activities made the church a driving force of civil society in the Federal Republic of Germany.37 If civil society is understood as a space of negotiation in which citizens represent their interests (and those of third parties) vis-à-vis the state, then the concept of civil society approaches the ideal of a bourgeois public sphere. In this respect, the Protestant churches’ newfound independence from the state was a new form of public sphere in the Federal Republic. Indeed, in the 1960s, they discovered their “public mandate” justified on biblical grounds. “The public sphere . . . became a semantically ambiguous but politically potent and essential category of church work and the church’s own self-understanding.”38 Despite declining membership and participation, the churches lost none of their public image and influence.39 On the contrary, the church increasingly opened itself up to society. The term secularization was thus reinterpreted to mean an opening up to the world rather than the apostasy of its members and their loss of faith. It meant realizing the Kingdom of God on earth by means of social engagement.40 At the same time, the church endeavored to become more present in the public sphere. New formats and spaces were utilized. The church used a variety of open spaces, fairs and even soccer stadiums to “break down the ghe o of its self-isolation in modern secular society.”41 New forms of a church public sphere developed. These included church congresses (Kirchentage), which following a brief drop in a endance during the 1970s went on to become professionally organized large-scale events with several hundred thousand participants,42 as well as the so-called Evangelical Academies and televised religious services.43 Conversely, churches opened their doors to a broader public.44 The principle itself was nothing new. As far back as the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, church interiors were characterized by their “multifunctionality,” being used for secular practices such as commerce and warehousing, asylum and feeding the poor.45 What was new was the explicit opening of church events and spaces to non-members. Political discussions, travel lectures and rock concerts were now taking place in churches, which were rented out as commercial spaces. “In this manner, as ‘public’ churches, the old national churches acquired a new political and ideational justification.”46

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The Church as a Surrogate Public Sphere in the GDR The opening of church space for non-church activities was an important function of churches in the GDR as well. Whereas they generally had no access to the official public sphere, churches in the GDR formed a uniquely free social space. About ten thousand church buildings of all denominations existed in East Germany, only about sixty of which had been torn down by 1978.47 Far more important, however, was that churches in the GDR largely retained their institutional autonomy and hence a modicum of civil society. The only non-state organization in the GDR, they maintained their own training colleges, their own financial resources, and independent decision-making bodies.48 Churches offered a highly symbolic freedom of assembly, a residual freedom to publish, and an important forum for discussion in the form of their synods.49 “A ‘disused society’ found a substitute for independent civil society . . . in the church, activities which the SED state would not have tolerated outside the church.”50 In this manner churches in the GDR formed a kind of “surrogate public sphere” (Ersatzöffentlichkeit) a ractive not only to church members.51 Opposition groups gravitated to the church, even if their activities were not religiously motivated.52 Thus, beginning in the late 1970s numerous peace, environmental and human rights groups organized their opposition work under the roof of the church.53 The churches were more than a mere asylum, however. Many opposition groups came under the influence of religious thought by virtue of their dealings with the church. The striking significance of religious motifs and church venues in the East German opposition movement resembles the phase of “moral protest” in 1970s and 1980s West Germany.54 In the GDR, however, this was the result of a difficult and conflict-ridden process in which the Protestant Church had to navigate a path between preserving its independence and conforming to “life under socialism.”55 The continual drop in church membership was only one side of the coin, for the church gave off an air of dissent that made it increasingly a ractive. The parish house stood not only for the church’s religious services but also for an alternative lifestyle. Divinity school was no longer the reserve of those with a religious bent, but also conscientious objectors, “construction soldiers” (Bausoldaten, the East German alternative to compulsory military service) and others.56 Young people, in particular, showed a growing, politically motivated interest in religion and the church during the 1980s. Church membership stabilized and the number of individuals leaving the church went down.57 For the first time the number of baptisms and participation in religious instruction increased.58 There was also a greater demand for interactive and community-based church activities such as fellowship

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groups, marriage encounters, self-awareness groups, family and parish days, church congresses and retreats.59 The church’s social prestige was on the rise again. At the same time, however, church life in the GDR was under systematic surveillance. While it is true that open repression against the church went down in the 1970s and 1980s, the SED regime amped up its hidden surveillance and “corrosion” (Zersetzung) techniques in return. Unofficial collaborators of the State Security Service, or Stasi, had infiltrated every church opposition group, a fact which only came to light in 1989–90. This was partly motivated by power politics, and was not unwarranted in retrospect given the leading role played by churches in the peaceful revolution. On the other hand, the persecution and repression of the church and religion was part and parcel of the SED’s ideological self-conception, as underlined by Thomas Grossbölting: “Christian faith was considered unmodern, conventional and irrational.”60 It was tolerated at best in the private sphere as a holdover from the past.

Religion as a Private Affair The SED was not alone in its conviction that the church was by rights losing influence. It was a common basic assumption of secularization theory that, as modernity progressed, religion would be relegated to the private sphere. There was a longstanding consensus on this point in East and West Germany alike, even though their respective diagnoses were linked to different hopes and fears. Yet no one denied in the postwar years that religion was increasingly a private affair. “If ‘secularization’ is understood as the privatization and intimization of the religious, the withdrawal of piety into the realm of the individual and intimate, and the increasing inability to communicate religious beliefs in daily life, then there is no denying a trend towards secularization in the past half century.”61 The privatization of faith apparent since the 1970s has been accompanied by the pluralization and individualization of religion, the la er having changed considerably but by no means disappearing entirely. More open and pluralist forms of religious life have developed, sometimes only loosely connected to mainstream churches. This process of transformation can be described as a shi from churches to religion.62 Friedrich Wilhelm Graf referred to the privatization of faith as the “return of the gods.”63 The plural, “gods,” implies syncretism. Instead of the Christian God, a variety of religions have meanwhile a racted new followers.64 Far Eastern forms of spirituality in particular have provided many individuals with answers to their quest for meaning and transcen-

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dence.65 There are three important qualifications here, though, with regard to the GDR. First, there were hardly any forms of religiosity outside the church.66 In this respect, too, East German society remained more traditional than the Federal Republic.67 Second, despite the individualization of faith, Christian churches were usually still the main point of reference. Church-free religiosity outside the traditions and structures of the main monotheistic religions was limited68 and alternative religiosity tended to take place within the church.69 Third, privatized religiosity became more and more public. Faith increasingly drew on modern forms of popularization clearly derived from pop culture.70 Both the print and visual media reported more and more frequently on private religious practices, essentially making them public and thus rendering a blanket theory of the “privatization of religion” untenable.71 The general tendency towards the dissolving of boundaries between the private and public spheres is thus evident in the ecclesiastical-religious field too.72 The search for meaning through religion expressed itself externally, especially in conjunction with the notion of a religious mission.73 Televised religious services, in turn, brought religion into people’s homes, thus entering the private sphere. This interplay between the public and private spheres is not inherent to the structure of church and religion but the result of historical transformation processes, the individualization and mediatization of society, which caused profound changes in churches and religion in the second half of the twentieth century. Conversely, churches themselves had a considerable effect on society, dynamizing the relationship between the public and the private spheres, as the two following case studies of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain will a empt to show.

Notes 1. See the seminal work of Detlef Pollack, “Von der Volkskirche zur Minderheitskirche. Zur Entwicklung von Religiosität und Kirchlichkeit in der DDR,” in Hartmut Kaelble, Jürgen Kocka, and Hartmut Zwahr (eds), Sozialgeschichte der DDR, Stu gart 1994, 271–294. 2. Großbölting, Der verlorene Himmel, 176–179. 3. Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, 62–67. 4. Paul Nolte, “Vorreiter oder Verlierer? Das religiös-kirchliche Feld in den Umbrüchen der westdeutschen Zivilgesellscha seit den 1960er Jahren,” in Traugo Jähnichen and Wilhelm Damberg (eds), Neue Soziale Bewegungen als Herausforderung sozialkritischen Handelns, Stu gart 2015, 49–72, here 51. 5. For an introduction, see Karl Gabriel, “Jenseits von Säkularisierung und Wiederkehr der Gö er,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 58 (2008) no. 52, 9–15.

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6. Ibid., 11. Critiques of secularization theory concern not only the twentieth century but the nineteenth as well. See Olaf Blaschke, “Das 19. Jahrhundert. Ein zweites Konfessionelles Zeitalter?” Ges i te und Gesells a 26 (2000) no. 1, 38–75. 7. Paul Nolte, “Religion als zivilgesellscha liche Ressource. Integration und Konflikt seit den 1950er-Jahren—das Beispiel Bundesrepublik,” in Edmund Arens et al. (eds), Integration durch Religion? Geschichtliche Befunde, gesellscha liche Analysen, rechtliche Perspektiven, Zurich 2014, 133–153, here 133. 8. Großbölting, Der verlorene Himmel, 9. 9. José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, Chicago 1994. 10. Thomas Luckmann, Die unsichtbare Religion, Frankfurt am Main 2005. 11. The Protestant Church in Berlin had 633,258 parishioners in 2012–13 and 187 parishes, about twice as many parishioners and three times as many parishes as the Catholic Church with its 330,574 members and 62 parishes. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg (ed.), Statistisches Jahrbuch Berlin 2014, Potsdam 2014, 162. 12. Olaf Müller, Detlef Pollack, and Gert Pickel, “The Religious Landscape in Germany: Secularizing West—Secularized East,” in Detlef Pollack and Gert Pickel (eds), Social Significance of Religion in the Enlarged Europe: Secularization, Individualization and Pluralization, Abingdon 2012, 95–120, here 96. 13. Großbölting, Der verlorene Himmel, 46–50. 14. Frank Bös and Lucian Höls er, “Jenseits der Kir e. Raum und Religion in der Moderne,” in idem (eds), Jenseits der Kir e. Die Öffnung religiöser Räume seit den 1950er Jahren, Gö ingen 2013, 7–29, here 16. 15. The Catholic Church retained much of its independence by virtue of the Concordat of 1933. Großbölting, Der verlorene Himmel, 45. 16. On the development of churches and religion in the Federal Republic, see esp. Großbölting, Der verlorene Himmel. 17. Article 137 (1) of the German constitution of August 11, 1919 was adopted for this purpose as Article 140 of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany of May 23, 1949. 18. Großbölting, Der verlorene Himmel, 51 f. 19. Nolte, “Vorreiter oder Verlierer,” 63. 20. For an authoritative account of the history of the Protestant Church in the GDR, see Pollack, Kirche in der Organisationsgesellscha . 21. Within the ranks of the SED the militant atheists had triumphed over the pragmatists. Ibid., 232. 22. Ibid., 373. 23. As early as the nineteenth century the distance between workers and the church had brought about an inner secularization, the extent of which first became apparent under the pressures of the SED regime. Pollack, “Von der Volkskirche zur Minderheitskirche,” 281. 24. Ibid., 271, 279. On church policy in the GDR, see also Joachim Heise, “Kirchenpolitik von SED und Staat. Versuch einer Annäherung,” in Günther Heydemann and Lothar Ke enacker (eds), Kirchen in der Diktatur. Dri es Reich und SED-Staat, Gö ingen 1993, 126–154. 25. For detailed figures, see Pollack, Kirche in der Organisationsgesellscha , 373–424. 26. Pollack, “Von der Volkskirche zur Minderheitskirche,” 271. On the exceptional unchurching of eastern Germany in European comparison, see also José Casanova, “The Religious Situation in Europe,” in Hans Joas and Klaus Wiegandt (eds), Secularization and the World Religions, Liverpool 2009, 206–228, here 207. 27. Pollack, “Von der Volkskirche zur Minderheitskirche,” 275.

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28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43.

44.

45. 46. 47.

48. 49.

50. 51.

52. 53.

Großbölting, Der verlorene Himmel, 13. Ibid., 176–179. Nolte, “Vorreiter oder Verlierer,” 54, 65. Ibid., 59. Frank Bösch and Lucian Hölscher, “Die Kirchen im öffentlichen Diskurs,” in idem (eds), Kirche—Medien—Öffentlichkeit. Transformationen kirchlicher Selbst- und Fremddeutungen seit 1945, Gö ingen 2009, 7–32, here 7. Großbölting, Der verlorene Himmel, 14 f. Nolte, “Vorreiter oder Verlierer,” 60. The church in fact transformed itself more successfully than other organizational forms of high modernity such as political parties and trade unions. Nolte, “Religion als zivilgesellscha liche Ressource,” 136. Ibid. J. Franklin Williamson, “Memory with ‘No Clear Answers’. Volkstrauertag, Opfer des Faschismus, and the Politics of Publicly Mourning the War Dead in Germany, 1945– 1972,” Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 2013. Nolte, “Vorreiter oder Verlierer,” 52. Bösch and Hölscher, “Die Kirchen im öffentlichen Diskurs,” 24. Nolte, “Religion als zivilgesellscha liche Ressource,” 135. Bösch and Hölscher, “Die Kirchen im öffentlichen Diskurs,” 22 f. Bösch and Hölscher, “Jenseits der Kirche,” 7. Thomas Mi mann, “Kirche im performativen Wandel. Die Entwicklung der Katholikentage und der Evangelischen Kirchentage in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” in Bösch and Hölscher, Jenseits der Kirche, 107–148, here esp. 138–140. Großbölting, Der verlorene Himmel, 160–168; Ronald Funke, “Mediale Kirchenräume. Katholische und evangelische Fernsehgo esdienste seit den 1950er Jahren,” in Bösch and Hölscher, Jenseits der Kirche, 201–238. This was facilitated by the redesign of church interiors, especially the seating arrangement, which now reflected a more democratic approach by placing the chairs in a circle. Bösch and Hölscher, “Die Kirchen im öffentlichen Diskurs,” 25. Bösch and Hölscher, “Jenseits der Kirche,” 14. Bösch and Hölscher, “Die Kirchen im öffentlichen Diskurs,” 25. These included a number of prominent structures, such as the Garrison Church in Potsdam and the University Church in Leipzig. In the Honecker era, fi y churches were even newly built or rebuilt as part of the urban renewal of historic districts, o en with considerable financial assistance from the West. Bösch and Hölscher, “Jenseits der Kirche,” 22 f. Großbölting, Der verlorene Himmel, 237. Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, “Die evangelischen Kirchen als kritische Institution und Brücke zwischen Ost und West,” in Kleßmann, Misselwitz, and Wichert, Deutsche Vergangenheiten—eine gemeinsame Herausforderung, 221–237. Ehrhart Neubert, “Die ‘Reproduktion von Kirche in der DDR’. Ein bilanzierender Rückblick,” Gerbergasse 18, 18 (2013) no. 4, 3–8, here 6. On the role of churches as an alternative public sphere in the GDR, see Michael Haspel, “Die evangelis en Kir en in der DDR. Zur Institutionalisierung einer öffentli en Sphäre zwis en System und Lebenswelt,” in Ri ersporn et al., Sphären von Öffentli keit in Gesells a en sowjetis en Typs, 239–253; von Saldern, “Öffentli keiten in Diktaturen.” Pollack, “Von der Volkskirche zur Minderheitskirche,” 288 f. See esp. Ehrhart Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR 1949–1989, Berlin 1997, esp. 248–324, 539–550.

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54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73.

Nolte, “Vorreiter oder Verlierer,” 72. Großbölting, Der verlorene Himmel, 235 f. Ibid., 237. Neubert, “Die ‘Reproduktion von Kirche in der DDR’,” 8. For detailed figures, see Pollack, “Von der Volkskirche zur Minderheitskirche,” 283–285. Ibid. Großbölting, Der verlorene Himmel, 231. Nolte, “Vorreiter oder Verlierer,” 60. Großbölting, Der verlorene Himmel, 179–181. Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, Die Wiederkehr der Gö er. Religion in der modernen Kultur, Munich 2004. For a critical perspective, see Gabriel, “Jenseits von Säkularisierung,” 13. Pascal Eitler, “‘Orte der Kra ’. Körper, Gefühle und die religiöse Topologie des ‘New Age’,” in Bösch and Hölscher, Jenseits der Kirche, 176–198. Großbölting, Der verlorene Himmel, 181. Pollack, “Von der Volkskirche zur Minderheitskirche,” 288 f. This went for the Protestant milieu as well. Graf, “Die evangelischen Kirchen,” 226–228. Nolte, “Religion als zivilgesellscha liche Ressource,” 149. Gabriel, “Jenseits von Säkularisierung,” 14. Hubert Knoblauch, “Die populäre Religion und die Transformation der Gesellscha ,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 58 (2008) no. 52, 3–8, here 3. Bösch and Hölscher, “Die Kirchen im öffentlichen Diskurs,” 25 f. Knoblauch, “Die populäre Religion,” 6. This is true not only of evangelical revival movements but also of the le ist protest movement which, especially in the United States, o en drew on personal experiences of faith. Nolte, “Religion als zivilgesellscha liche Ressource,” 134.

Chapter 8

CHURCH AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD PUBLIC SPHERE IN KREUZBERG

( Kreuzberg is a prime example of the Protestant Church’s “reinvention” in the spirit of civil society. In the Kreuzberg church district,1 Protestant parishes developed in the 1970s into key protagonists and catalysts of participative and cautious urban renewal, which ultimately prevailed over the state’s redevelopment objectives. This was preceded by a diametrical shi in the church’s self-understanding. Kreuzberg churches originally emerged as strongholds in the midst of proletarian eastern Berlin.2 Empress Auguste Viktoria (1858–1921), in particular, championed the cause of building new churches with the aim of keeping working-class neighborhoods conservative through a ubiquitous church infrastructure.3 Even in their architecture, churches represented the alliance between throne and altar. This was especially clear in the Holy Cross Church (Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche) on Blücherstrasse, completed in 1888 and popularly known as the “spiked helmet” (Pickelhaube) because of its spire-crowned dome.4 The churches of Kreuzberg faced considerable challenges in the decades a er World War II. The buildings themselves were o en much too large. Parishes such as St. Thomas, which had boasted more than a hundred thousand parishioners at the turn of the century, had diminished to a few thousand members.5 Ever fewer people actively participated in the parish community. Urban redevelopment, or the expectations of urban redevelopment, permanently changed the social structure of Kreuzberg and church congregations were forced to react. Personally affected, they accompanied the process of urban renewal from a critical standpoint, creating new forms of the public sphere. A number of church communities, St. Martha’s parish among them, stood out in this regard. The commitment of individual pastors was always the decisive factor. A key protagonist who influenced the development of Kreuzberg working from within the church Notes for this chapter begin on page 189.

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was pastor Klaus Duntze (1935–2016), whose work will be depicted in the following section. Duntze was instrumental in initiating “Strategies for Kreuzberg” in 1977, of which more below. Finally, the squa ing movement of the 1980s posed new challenges for the church, the example of the St. Thomas parish serving here as an example.

Pastor Klaus Duntze and the “Church as a Constructive Troublemaker” Pastor Klaus Duntze was both a key protagonist and an important chronicler of church activism in Kreuzberg. He not only promoted these new developments, but analyzed and recorded them retrospectively.6 Born in Säckingen in Baden-Wür emberg, Duntze studied Protestant theology in Berlin, Gö ingen and Heidelberg. In 1966 he assumed his first pastorate at St. Martha’s parish on Glogauer Strasse in southeast Kreuzberg. He was part of a younger generation of pastors who began their work in Kreuzberg during the 1960s. Moreover, from 1975 to 1977 he was commissioner of the Kreuzberg church district for urban development and community planning, before becoming director of studies at the (West) Berlin Evangelical Academy in 1977, where he was responsible for “city-related church work.”7 Duntze had been confronted with the issue of urban communities and the church while a ending the regional seminary in Nikolassee in southwest Berlin.8 The la er’s director, Gerhard Koch (1912–68), who viewed social structures from the perspective of Christian faith and led countless seminars on this topic at the Berlin Evangelical Academy, le a lasting theological imprint on Duntze. Added to this were the critical writings of American theologian Harvey Cox (b. 1929)9 and the communitydevelopment approach from the United States, which called for church community work in inner-city areas and was popularized in Kreuzberg especially by members of the Urban Renewal Mission from Chicago. The Test Law (Erprobungsgesetz) of the Protestant Regional Church created the necessary framework for the adaptation of this approach by allowing for temporary experiments within church structures. Close personal contacts with architects and urban planners as well as a lively exchange with West German congregations on ma ers of urban development, especially at church congresses and church-architecture congresses (Kir enbautagen), also had a formative influence on Duntze.10 In this way the city became a focal point of Duntze’s interest. Another crucial factor, however, was his being affected personally by questions of urban transformation. As the pastor of St. Martha’s parish on Glogauer Strasse, Duntze was a first-hand witness of the redevelop-

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ment projects taking place in eastern Kreuzberg since the late 1960s. The accompanying dissolution of established social relations was not only a society-wide problem; it posed existential challenges to the congregation itself. Between 1968 and 1983 St. Martha’s parish lost no less than 53 percent of its members.11 The reasons for this were a death rate much higher than the birth rate, considerable out-migration into new housing developments, and disaffected youth exiting the church. Duntze officiated fewer and fewer religious ceremonies and noted ever lower church a endance. In essence only the elderly were le , those most reliant on church support. The dissolution of family ties meant that diaconal work, that is, charity services, took on an ever greater significance in Kreuzberg congregations.12 In this respect, the slated closing of the Bethany Deaconess Hospital in the late 1960s posed an even more serious threat.13 The church district vigorously lobbied for the continued use of the old hospital complex on Mariannenplatz, which up to that point had played a key role in caring for the aged and infirm in Kreuzberg. The district synod in October 1969 took place under the mo o “Kirche in der Stadt—Diakonie für Kreuzberg” (Church in the City—Social Work for Kreuzberg), emphasizing the importance of the church’s welfare work with the elderly in a city in the midst of transformation. In the context of the synod, Duntze published an article in Bauwelt journal with the programmatic title “Redevelopment Must Develop Its Criteria from the Neighborhood Itself,” presenting wide-ranging ideas for an alternative practice of redevelopment.14 Despite varied utilization concepts calling first for church then for communal sponsorship, the fight to keep the hospital failed.15 With the closure of Bethany Hospital, Kreuzberg churches lost their core health-care infrastructure.16 But this failure brought opportunity in its wake. The fruitless struggle for Bethany initiated an important learning process. First, it heightened the church’s awareness of ongoing urban renewal and its social consequences. The church proposed an alternative, participative form of urban renewal instead. Second, church representatives acquired valuable experience that would pay off later in dealing with authorities at the Senate and regional level.17 As public corporations, for example, they demanded access to the planning files of administrative authorities. Third, in so doing, the churches gained new self-confidence as a critical public sphere. In the context of the student movement and the demand for the democratization of all social structures during the Brandt era, the Provincial Protestant Church of West Berlin transformed itself into a “city church,” and this not only for political and administrative reasons but also because of the specific urban challenges it faced.18 This transformation in the church’s self-understanding is documented in Klaus Duntze’s book Der Geist, der Städte baut (The Spirit That Builds

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Cities).19 Published in 1972, it compiles the church’s experience with the ongoing practice of redevelopment in Kreuzberg and derives from this the church’s mission to create a critical public sphere. In Duntze’s theological understanding, “the question of the spirit that builds cities converges with the question of the spirit of God who works in the world.”20 The theologian, from this perspective, becomes a critical urbanist. Duntze offers a fundamental critique of postwar urban renewal. In his view, the functional thinking of the Enlightenment had degenerated into pure instrumental rationality in the architectural functionalism of modernity. “The new devours the old for rehabilitation [Sanierung], for healing purposes.”21 But an established “subculture” was being destroyed in the process, which he describes in detail in his book. As a pastor and hence an eyewitness, Duntze developed a differentiated sociogram of Kreuzberg SO 36. His approach was qualitative and descriptive, without lapsing into social romanticism. He argued that the district’s residents were for the most part forced to live in inadequate housing. “Conditions in the neighborhood are neither ideal nor romantic nor picturesque. They are and remain dire.”22 But this state of dependence and insecurity was accompanied by a pronounced sense of identification with the district.23 Duntze describes the close family ties, o en spanning several generations, that form the backbone of the neighborhood. The neighborhood was also marked by good neighborly relations that played out in stairwells, courtyards, on the street, and in the many li le local bars. These spaces were the smallest unit of a neighborhood public sphere, but also its prerequisite. “This neighborhood public sphere [Quartiersöffentlichkeit] depends on the much-used, busy street. It is this very sphere, on the other hand, that lends the street its liveliness.”24 The organic nature of this reciprocal relationship was what made it so difficult to plan and create such a neighborhood public sphere by way of construction measures.25 Duntze emphasized the value of an urban public sphere, making explicit reference to Jane Jacobs and Hans Paul Bahrdt.26 But he was also well aware that the neighborhood public sphere is something born of necessity and that inadvertently props up the existing social system rather than being a critical public sphere. It therefore cannot serve as a model for a society-wide public sphere, for “it creates nothing, it only stabilizes an oppressive and accommodated life.”27 The subculture he described is a form of security for the underprivileged. This is why rese lement would have had disastrous consequences.28 Previous residents were all too easily persuaded to leave without understanding that housing means more than just a roof and four walls. “Other advantages—affordability, user-friendly infrastructure, relatives and good neighbors, proximity to work, a familiar

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environment, etc.—are heedlessly abandoned. Their loss becomes acutely problematic only a er moving away.”29 This forms the basis of Duntze’s core hypothesis: that every act of redevelopment in the manner being practiced was tearing apart the urban fabric, disrupting the web of social relations and destroying the subculture he described. Redevelopment was thus creating the very problem it purported to be removing: “slums and deracinated populations.”30 Instead of from above, the criteria for redevelopment had to come from the neighborhood itself—based on an analysis of the existing subculture. Urban renewal was the renewal of society together with its urban living environment.31 Duntze demanded respect for established urban structures and social relations and was hence one of the first to develop a key aspect of cautious urban renewal, an approach marked by an understanding of local structures of community and solidarity. The church had the role of a “constructive troublemaker.” It could not be an agent of the state or the “paramedic of redevelopment” (Sanitäter der Sanierung).32 Rather, the aim was to “once more lend a critical tension to the coexistence of church and society.”33 The public sphere had be reestablished despite the resistance that was likely to come from administrators and the populace. Duntze, following Habermas, formulates a le ist cultural critique.34 He links the structural transformation of the public sphere in society with that in the church. The fate of the Christian Sabbath, he argues, shows the decline of the bourgeois public sphere as one defined on Christian terms. He therefore pleads for refocusing on religious services, since it is here that the community comes together as a public.35 The church has to be public, he contends, for “in the question of the public sphere the crucial social question converges with that of Christian belief: an internalized faith, a privatized religion that is nothing but the satisfaction of religious needs and relief for the sake of perfecting instrumental rationality has betrayed to subjectivism the essence of religious belief instead of being its adversary.”36 In this way Duntze formulates a wide-reaching claim on behalf of the church as a critical public sphere in opposition to the state, the city and the individual.37 He a ributes an exemplary function to the church’s public sphere valid for the whole of society. The agenda Duntze developed in his book was first implemented in his own parish. Contrary to redevelopment plans, St. Martha’s church, originally built in 1904 in a back courtyard on Glogauer Strasse, was not torn down but reconstructed.38 The church interior, much too large for the dwindling parish, was divided by an intermediate ceiling in 1970–71, turning the lower floor into a new multipurpose hall for concerts, exhibits and meetings.39 St. Martha’s church became a kind of community center, offering a public space for non-church uses.40 Thus, in 1974 the church

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hosted the annual conference of the Association of German Architects (BDA) which tellingly addressed the topic of “milieu.” While talks were being given in the new fellowship hall, an exhibit about the ongoing process of urban renewal in Kreuzberg was on display in the church itself. The event brought national a ention to St. Martha’s church. The renovated rear-courtyard church became the symbol of a new, alternative approach to urban renewal. Yet Duntze set his sights higher. In collaboration with architects and urban planners, open-minded representatives of the city administration, as well as instructors and students at Berlin universities, he elaborated concepts for an alternative redevelopment of Kreuzberg SO 36. In early 1975 he was appointed commissioner of the Kreuzberg church district for urban development and community planning, and began working full-time on ma ers of urban renewal.41 Building on the experience he gained in the fight to save Bethany Hospital, he pursued the idea of an urban-planning competition to mobilize local residents. The result was the Strategies for Kreuzberg competition, which would have a lasting impact on the district and would have been unthinkable without the efforts of the local Protestant Church.42

Strategies for Kreuzberg The year 1975 was declared a European Architectural Heritage Year—a clear indication that postwar architectural modernism was in a spiritual crisis and that greater importance was now being a ached to older buildings and structures. This offered Duntze the opportunity to push his idea of an urban-planning competition in Kreuzberg. In 1975, at a Werkbund congress at the former Bethany Deaconess Hospital, he held a talk on “The Livability of Old City Quarters” in which he introduced the term “Kreuzberg mix” to describe the traditional mixed-use character of Kreuzberg city blocks.43 But the idea of an urban-planning competition as part of the Architectural Heritage Year came to nothing for the time being. A new opportunity soon arose, however, to launch the competition. In 1977 the German Protestant Church Congress (Evangelischer Kirchentag) was to take place in West Berlin, promising a considerable public and national response to the competition.44 Duntze was appointed church-congress commissioner of the Kreuzberg church district and tried to direct a ention at the congress to the issue of urban renewal.45 He began by trying to solicit the support of the regional church. Linking the idea of a competition with the upcoming church congress made it easier for church leaders and the consistory to identify with the project. In-

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tense preliminary talks took place in 1975–76 with the steering commi ee of the church congress and the Senate Department for Building and Housing (Senatsverwaltung für Bau- und Wohnungswesen). Duntze’s success was unexpected and controversial. The Berlin Senate, represented by Harry Ristock (1928–92) in his capacity as senator for building and housing, welcomed the idea and took on the whole of competition financing as well as the evaluation process.46 The competition sponsor was now no longer the church but the Senate. This meant that Duntze had to twist the Senate’s arm to ensure the broad participation of Kreuzberg residents he envisioned. The original schedule, which called for presenting the competition results at the church congress on June 8–12, 1977, had to be revised as well.47 But the competition picked up momentum. The Strategies for Kreuzberg competition was publicly announced on March 3, 1977. The major daily papers printed the call for submissions. About six thousand copies of the forty-page competition brochure were distributed and quickly snapped up.48 All residents were invited to come up with a concept for the social, architectural, cultural and political renewal of the neighborhood around Görlitzer Bahnhof and submit their proposals by May 13, 1977. This form of citizen participation had a dual dimension. On the one hand the call for submissions was addressed to all citizens, “from the cleaning lady to the federal president.”49 On the other hand, a contest jury was set up representing tenants, small-business owners, employees, foreigners, young people, senior citizens as well as a “children’s lobby.” To this end the Kreuzberg district mayor, Rudi Pietschker (1917–99), wrote to 130 individuals some of whose names he took from the enrollment records of the local adult-education center (Volkshochschule).50 Seventy of them accepted the invitation, selecting from among themselves the representatives for the planning commission, as the contest jury was called. Together with representatives of the so-called initiative groups, which included church congregations, they formed a bloc of twenty-two resident representatives in the planning commission. Added to this were eight administrative representatives from Senate- and district-level authorities. Three spokespersons presided over the planning commission: barkeeper Günter Nausedat acting on behalf of citizens, Peter Augner for the district office of Kreuzberg, and pastor Klaus Duntze for the initiative groups.51 The planning commission represented an experimental form of citizen participation. It was not free of conflict. Administrators insisted on treating submissions confidentially and having them ve ed beforehand by professionals. Citizens, for their part, were adamant about maximum transparency and wanted to be allowed to take the submissions home with them. A more serious problem was posed by two pieces of news that disrupted the work of the project commission. Word got out, first of all,

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that the federal government was intending to disburse 70 million deutschmarks in the redevelopment area from its so-called Future Investment Program (ZIP) irrespective of the current competition being sponsored by the State of Berlin. This led to a growing sense of mistrust, since many citizens saw this as thwarting the process of codetermination and feared that the federal funds might be used to demolish rear buildings.52 Second, in the midst of the competition process the district tore down the old pump station and the old firehouse on Reichenberger Strasse despite the fact that utilization concepts had been submi ed for them in the context of the competition and that litigation was pending before the Higher Administrative Court (Oberverwaltungsgericht).53 This greatly undermined confidence in the competition. Enraged residents began to suspect that Strategies for Kreuzberg was nothing but smoke and mirrors, a tactical maneuver by the authorities to keep people preoccupied. Several citizens’ representatives had temporarily le the planning commission and founded a Stammtisch, or informal discussion group, together with the initiative groups in order to meet and confer without government representatives in a endance. Strategies for Kreuzberg, it seemed, was on the verge of collapse. But the Senate feared for its reputation, given the major publicity and its own promotional efforts surrounding this prestige project, and caved in to the demands of citizens’ representatives for more transparency and codetermination. The project commission resumed its work. Whereas the church congress managed li le more than a mid-term evaluation (St. Martha’s held an exhibition and organized four theme-oriented workshops54), the project commission presented to the public the results of the first competition phase on August 17, 1977. A total of 129 entries were submi ed, 70 percent of these from Berlin, a third of those from Kreuzberg, another 20 percent from West Germany and 10 percent from abroad.55 The project commission chose eleven entries in their entirety and partial aspects of four others, recommending these to the Senate as worthy of implementation.56 The winning entries included a program for unemployed youth without a high-school diploma to train them as skilled laborers in renovation work, measures promoting self-initiatives to renovate older buildings, the creation of a social center, as well as the conversion of Görlitzer Bahnhof into a neighborhood park with a swimming pool. There were also suggestions to found a civic association (Bürgerverein), to publish a neighborhood newspaper (Stad eilzeitung), and to convert an intersection into a market square and neighborhood hangout.57 The la er proposals show that many of the competition entries aimed to create a critical neighborhood public sphere. Indeed, the proposals promoting the formation of such a public sphere had the greatest long-term impact. The citizens’ representatives’ Stamm-

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tis gave rise to the SO 36 citizens’ initiative, which as of December 1977 published Südost-Express, thus acting on the proposal to found a neighborhood newspaper.58 The SO 36 association was founded one year later to continue the work of the planning commission. Moreover, in 1978 the so-called ZIP commi ee was set up, in which citizens and administrators discussed the allocation and use of funds from the abovementioned investment program.59 This resulted in the SO 36 neighborhood commi ee (Stad eilausschuss) being established in 1982.60 Strategies for Kreuzberg thus created new forms of a neighborhood public sphere and made citizen participation the norm. But it also had a longer-term impact. The SO 36 citizens’ initiative carried out the first “rehab squats” of private tenement buildings in Kreuzberg, unleashing a wave of squa ing throughout West Berlin.61 The International Building Exposition of 1984–87 explicitly drew on Strategies for Kreuzberg, continuing several competition projects and defining the codetermination of those affected by redevelopment as an integral part of cautious urban renewal.62 The work of the planning commission and the ZIP commi ee laid an important foundation stone for the Alternative List in West Berlin, which was founded in 1979 at Haus der Kirche and put its independent candidate, pharmacist Werner Orlowsky (1928–2016), in office as city building commissioner of Kreuzberg a mere two years later.63 A local identity developed in Kreuzberg in opposition to centralized planning and development objectives: “SO 36 was notorious for being the ‘little Gaulish village.’”64 But it didn’t give rise to a grassroots movement. The seemingly outlandish project went unnoticed by large parts of the population, especially the foreign-born in Kreuzberg.65 Hence the broad civic commitment of church representatives, architects, urban planners, students, administrative employees and a handful of small-business owners was ultimately a minority effort, whose considerable influence and national appeal were due not least to their enormous public presence. The Kreuzberg churches were decisive in promoting these developments. But the role of the church would change around 1980, the more urban renewal became politicized. Once a motor of development, it increasingly played the part of a mediator. Church representatives assumed intermediary positions in commi ees because people trusted them the most to act without self-interest and to follow the principle of consensus. In the so-called Häuserkampf of 1980–81, pastors and parishes became sponsors of occupied buildings and acted as advisors, intermediaries, supporters and later even as the authorized representatives of legalized buildings.66 The director of the Kreuzberg church district, Superintendent Gustav Roth, exercised an important function as a liaison between church

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and communal authorities on the one hand and the squa ers’ scene on the other.67 The district synod protested individual evictions and appealed for donations. But it also called for a nonviolent approach and declared this a prerequisite of church support.68 The church’s role as a mediator put it in an increasingly awkward position, however. The open support of church leaders for the “justified concerns of rehab squa ers” only antagonized the police and the governing mayor.69 At the same time there was pushback within the church against le ist pastors like Klaus Duntze and the “squa er-friendly” policy of Kreuzberg church leadership. Many parishioners demanded a focus on the church’s “actual” responsibilities, and individual church communities, the Emmaus parish among them, withdrew completely from community work. In line with an overall trend towards conservatism evident in the early 1980s, conservative forces grew stronger in the church, denouncing the critical social engagement of certain church representatives as “le ist.” When two pastors from the Passion Church in Kreuzberg spent the night in a squat on Mi enwalder Strasse in February 1981 in order to act as a “protective shield” against impending eviction, many church members felt that a boundary had been crossed.70 The Häuserkampf politicized church parishes and put them to the test. The situation escalated in the early 1980s, but in itself was nothing new. The first such test had come on October 2, 1974 with the occupation of Holy Cross Church, sending shock waves through the Protestant Church of West Berlin. Sympathizers with the Baader-Meinhof gang wanted to draw a ention to the hunger strike by members of this terrorist group incarcerated in Moabit and hoped that the church would support their cause. The pastor and the congregation of Holy Cross Church decided not to call in the police and forcibly remove them. The occupation ended voluntarily two days later following talks between the protestors and church leaders. In return, West Berlin bishop Kurt Scharf (1902–90) paid a visit to the prisoners on October 23, 1974. This move was highly controversial in the church and the political public sphere, being roundly criticized in particular by newspapers belonging to the Springer publishing group as well as by conservative activists in the Evangelische Aktion Berlin group. With the murder of Günter von Drenkmann (1910–74), president of the West Berlin Supreme Court, on November 10, 1974, two employees of the Protestant Church of Berlin were arrested, and Bishop Scharf was criticized by the media for his involvement in the affair. The accusations against him proved unfounded, but were nonetheless a source of considerable irritation, with tensions erupting once again in the early 1980s at the height of the squa ers’ movement.71

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St. Thomas Church and the Häuserkampf The conflict potential of the squa ing issue was particularly evident in St. Thomas parish of Kreuzberg. The 1980s brought a whole new set of challenges for this church on Mariannenplatz.72 The parish was drastically affected by events in the decades a er the war. Located directly on the sector border, it lost some of its members a er the erection of the Berlin Wall.73 Between 1968 and 1983, the parish shrank even more, losing two-thirds of its remaining members, with only 4,348 out of 12,450 le .74 The gigantic church building—with seating for over three thousand, the largest church in Berlin at the time of its consecration in 1869—was now much too big for its divided and dwindling congregation.75 Unlike the le -wing Martha parish, the more conservative St. Thomas congregation responded to the challenges of secularization with very traditional parish work until the mid-1970s. Its activities included a sewing club, a singing club, a mothers’ club, a youth club, a children’s group and a church choir. In other words, this parish in “the remotest corner” of Kreuzberg remained largely focused on itself.76 Thanks to the squa ing movement, however, St. Thomas Church was suddenly in the thick of things. The occupation of the vacant student-nurse dormitory of the former Bethany Deaconess Hospital in 1971 had already put Mariannenplatz in the spotlight. The Georg von Rauch House, as the occupied building next to St. Thomas Church was subsequently referred to, and the “Rauch House Song” by rock band Ton Steine Scherben brought this area particularly impacted by redevelopment to the a ention of a wider public.77 By the mid-1970s, things then changed within the parish itself. In 1975–76, pastors Verena Janzen (b. 1944) and Ludwig Bultmann78 came to the parish, two young clergy members greatly influenced by the student movement and by the church reform movement.79 They took an interest in urban redevelopment and the foreign-born population in northeastern Kreuzberg, shi ing their parish work to social issues in a local context. The parish thus became involved in the MariannenplatzNord tenant group (Mietergruppe) and supported the establishment of a storefront tenant initiative (Mieterladen) on Mariannenstrasse. The traditional parish newsle er, the Thomasbote, developed more and more in the late 1970s into a neighborhood paper, not only reporting on parish life but also informing readers about important local events, the existence of abandoned buildings and the possible speculative interests linked to them, or commenting on rehab squats.80 But this reorientation of parish work to address the concerns of the neighborhood proved deeply divisive within the parish. Many parishioners still valued older civic traditions and cherished their longstanding

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ties to the congregation. “The parish remained lovingly and stubbornly faithful to the Kreuzberg of old.”81 The result was a conflict with the two new pastors. The parish council accused Bultmann and Janzen of being unchurchly and impious. A er protracted and bi er disputes, the two clerics le the parish in 1980 and 1981, respectively.82 But their successor, Manfred Bahmann (1930–2017), who became the parish pastor in 1982, would prove even more polarizing. Raised in Dresden and Berlin, Bahmann did his graduate and postgraduate work in the United States and was strongly influenced by Latin American Liberation Theology. Irmela Mukurarinda, Bahmann’s fellow pastor at St. Thomas later on, recalls: “Like a locomotive at full steam, he rammed through the frightened, blinking parish, roused the sleepy congregation, was either cheered or rigorously rejected . . . Bahmann became a well-known figure in the neighborhood.”83 He interpreted the Bible with a view to problems in the neighborhood and uncompromisingly sided with the squa ers. Tensions reached a peak on June 18, 1983, when thousands of le ist Kreuzberg residents demonstrated at Ko busser Tor against the so-called Konservative Aktion, a right-wing group that had distributed flowers to Turkish residents the previous day, urging them to leave West Germany. The closing rally a er the protest was eventually dispersed by the police, leading to violent clashes. The protesters were driven from Ko busser Tor to Mariannenplatz, where the street festival underway there was forcefully dispersed as well.84 A squat on Heinrichplatz, at Oranienstrasse 198, known as “Besetz(A)-Eck” and home to squa ers since 1980, was likewise forcefully vacated by police, even though this building was actually in the process of being legalized by the new redevelopment agency Sta Bau.85 About fi y squa ers subsequently fled to St. Thomas Church, where they sought asylum. Pastor Bahmann wanted to keep the evicted squa ers from rejoining the riots, so he offered them the opportunity to spend the first night in the church or the parish center if they promised to steer clear of the disturbances. The squa ers, numerous homeless punks among them, complied with his demands and slept in the parish center of the church.86 The promised night of asylum in the church dragged on for a total of nine weeks. A er three days at the parish center the squa ers moved into a tent city, hastily set up next to the church with help from social services and complete with bathrooms, electricity and water. The police did not shut down the camp, assuming—wrongly—that the tents were set up on church property. The squa ers soon christened their tent city “LummerReisen [Lummer Travel] ’83,” a er the controversial senator of the interior Heinrich Lummer (1932–2019), and regularly a ended religious services, sometimes bringing their dogs along. Reactions to this were quite varied. Some parishioners criticized the church for dealing with what they con-

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sidered “lowlifes” (Lumpen) and “anarchists” (Chaoten). Others saw the Christian message being put into practice.87 The parish was divided over how to deal with the tent-dwellers. On August 1, 1983 Pastor Bahmann organized a discussion meeting at St. Thomas Church, sending out two thousand invitations to his parishioners. The aim was to bring Senate and district representatives into conversation with parish members and tent-dwellers and to find a solution for ge ing the squa ers back to Oranienstrasse. A famous photo was taken at the meeting, depicting a church representative in dialogue with a squa er (Figure 8.1). The contrast between these two women, not identified by name, could hardly be more pronounced. Whereas the woman from the parish is neatly dressed in white summer clothing, the young squa er is wearing a black T-shirt and sporting a conspicuous Mohawk. In a pose that is both self-confident and standoffish, the la er listens to the church representative who argues her cause with expansive gestures. The remaining panelists are visible in the background, some amused, others bored, as they follow the two women’s conversation (on the far right is city building commissioner Werner Orlowsky). The photo was taken by Hans-Peter Siffert (b. 1954) and was first published in Zurich in Tagesanzeiger Magazin.88 Siffert and journalist Rudolf Schilling (b. 1940) had come to Kreuzberg for research purposes to re-

FIGURE 8.1. A squa er in dialogue with a church representative at St. Thomas Church (1983), photo. Hans-Peter Siffert.

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port on cautious urban renewal. Twenty years later, in a festschri for Hardt-Waltherr Hämer, Schilling characterized the photo as the “image of a situation symbolic for Hämer’s own ambitions regarding his method of urban renewal. A photo characterizing the adjective ‘cautious’: it only works in collaboration, conflicts must be put on the table, only dialogue will lead to progress, enmities must become learning opportunities for finding a way together.”89 In Schilling’s view, the photo embodies the guiding principle of cautious urban renewal. Südost-Express came to a completely different conclusion. Its report on the event, which included a similar photo of both women, went as follows: “The a empted dialogue between parish community and occupiers failed for lack of an audience. The event was a ended not by citizens but by politicians who used the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of what it means to be citizen-friendly: talking people’s ears off instead of listening.”90 The paper heavily criticized Social Democratic city council members, who supposedly wouldn’t let the few parishioners in a endance get a word in edgewise during the discussion. The dissatisfaction over Bahmann’s “brotherly love” remained as it was before, it argued. In actual fact, the parish council decided to strip the pastor of his management duties as a consequence of his support for the squa ers.91 But Bahmann later came to the conclusion that his efforts had paid off in the end, since the squa ers were allowed to return to their building on August 27, 1983.92 The Senate gave in to the enormous public pressure triggered by the extensive media coverage given to the tent affair and agreed that the newly founded Sta Bau GmbH would hold the neighborhood squats in trust for the Senate and renovate them together with the squa ers.93 It was thus largely the public commitment of St. Thomas Church that led to the squats being legalized and the Häuserkampf ending in a negotiated peace. Yet the social tensions in Kreuzberg remained, even escalating as the 1980s wore on. The widespread unemployment and homelessness of young people was one major problem and resulted in numerous church initiatives. In 1986, for example, St. Thomas parish teamed up with neighboring St. Michael Catholic parish to set up Café Krause, a contact point for the unemployed and homeless. The focus of parish work at St. Thomas had thus shi ed to poor relief.94 Klaus Duntze had been trying since 1982 to initiate a second Strategies for Kreuzberg competition with an emphasis this time on revitalizing business in order to address the causes of the precarious economic situation in Kreuzberg. The procedure proved difficult, however. The Senate relied on a peer-review process instead of a renewed public call for proposals. Following elections to the Berlin House of Rep-

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resentatives in March 1985 the Senate finally lost all interest in “Strategies II,” which fizzled out inconclusively.95 The success of the first competition from 1977 could not be repeated. Klaus Duntze himself concluded: “The experiences of Strategies for Kreuzberg may have been useful for coming up with a concept for the [new] project, but neither the overall framework nor the political circumstances of 1977 were reproducible—you never step in the same river twice.”96 On May 1, 1987, social tensions in Kreuzberg erupted in a violent way. Looting during the May Day riots revealed that the events were in part economically motivated. The Kreuzberg church district appealed for non-violence and tried to negotiate between the conflicting parties. The Kreuzberg parishes urged the Berlin senator of the interior not to resort to police intervention but to restore peace by engaging in a dialogue about the social causes of these violent outbreaks. Clergy and church employees of the Protestant and Catholic parishes in SO 36 met for months on end in crisis meetings to organize talks between autonomists, police and politicians of various parties as well as to prepare public “neighborhood palavers” between Kreuzberg residents. Their unequivocal commitment, including the decision to cancel all church festivities in the context of the 750-year-anniversary celebrations, resulted in a considerable gain in prestige for Kreuzberg parishes in the “neighborhood public sphere” (Kiezöffentlichkeit) of those days, allowing them to assume a pioneering role in social policy making.97 And yet this would be the high point of the church’s involvement in urban affairs. The sustained loss of parishioners, which could not be counteracted by demonstrating a civic commitment, had led by the late 1980s to a greater focus on internal parish work. The Protestant Church in Kreuzberg reinvented itself as a “neighborhood church” in the 1970s and 1980s. It laid the foundation for a new neighborhood public sphere and, in a sense, invented the term Kiez. But this neighborhood public sphere increasingly detached itself from the church in the course of the 1980s and assumed a life of its own. The Kreuzberg parishes remained an important protagonist in local urban development but were merely one of many “providers,” though to be sure one with a high social standing. The church assumed a mediating role in the politicized atmosphere of the West Berlin Häuserkampf that led to internal quarrels and proved a crucial test. Most parishes subsequently withdrew from the politics of urban renewal. Social Protestantism had drawn a ention to specifically urban problems. By the 1990s, this focus would shi to more global issues, such as refugee and asylum policy. Klaus Duntze, who switched to St. Thomas Church himself, becoming one of its pastors in 1991, came to a sobering conclusion: “The involvement of the Berlin church in urban affairs has largely petered out.”98

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Notes 1. The Kreuzberg church district (Kirchenkreis) was created in 1975 and coincided for the most part with the municipal-district boundaries. In 1998 it merged with the Stadt I, Stadt III, Friedrichshain and Tiergarten-Friedrichswerder church districts to form the new Berlin Stadtmi e church district. 2. The following Protestant churches were built during the period of urbanization in what would later become the district of Kreuzberg: St. Jacobi-Kir e on Oranienstrasse (1845), St. Lukas-Kir e on Bernburger Strasse (1861), Christuskir e on (today’s) Stresemannstrasse (1864), St. Thomas-Kir e on Mariannenplatz (1869), Kir e zum Heiligen Kreuz on Blü erstrasse (1888), Emmaus-Kir e on Lausitzer Platz (1893), St. Simeon-Kir e on Wassertorstrasse (1897), Martha-Kir e on Glogauer Strasse (1904), Tabor-Kir e on Taborstrasse (1905), Melan ton-Kir e on Planufer (1906), Passionskir e on Marheinekeplatz (1908) and Ölberg-Kir e on Paul-Lin e-Ufer (1922). For an introduction to the churches of Kreuzberg, see Wesner, Kreuzberg und seine Go eshäuser. 3. Ibid., 17. 4. On Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche, see Georg Uehlein (ed.), Kreuz und Pickelhaube. Großstädtische Gesellscha und Kirche zwischen 1850 und 1945 am Beispiel der Heilig-Kreuz-Gemeinde in Berlin, Berlin 1995. 5. Wesner, Kreuzberg und seine Go eshäuser, 42. 6. This entanglement of the protagonist and observer role is a common feature of many of the sources and literature on the topic. The main studies on church activism in Kreuzberg were penned by Klaus Duntze himself, who earned his doctorate at the Theology Department of Heidelberg University in 1989 with a dissertation on the responsibility of the church for the urban community which began as part of a research project at the Sociology Department of the Technical University in Berlin. Duntze goes into great detail about his own work in the area. Despite distancing himself verbally—Duntze refers to himself exclusively in the third person—his scholarly study is likewise a first-hand testimony or “ego-document,” which this chapter draws on extensively. Klaus Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen. Eine Untersuchung zum Verhältnis von kirchlicher Arbeit und Stadtentwicklung in Berlin (West) von 1968 bis 1985 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Bezirks Kreuzberg, Frankfurt am Main 1993. 7. On the (auto)biography of Duntze, see ibid., 5 f., fn. 5. 8. On the seminary in West Berlin, see also Werner Radatz and Friedrich Winter, Geteilte Einheit. Die Evangelische Kirche in Berlin-Brandenburg 1961 bis 1990, Berlin 2000, 54. 9. See esp. Harvey Cox, The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective, Harmondsworth 1968. 10. Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 298–305. 11. Ibid., 446. 12. Ibid., 287 f., 302. 13. Bethany Deaconess Hospital was built on Mariannenplatz between 1845 and 1847, making it one of the oldest existing buildings in Kreuzberg. Spode, “Das Krankenhaus der Diakonissen-Anstalt Bethanien zu Berlin.” 14. Klaus Duntze, “Sanierung muß ihre Kriterien aus der Gegend selbst gewinnen,” Bauwelt 60 (1969) no. 41. 15. The state of Berlin subsequently bought the property and declared it a historical monument. On the dispute over how to use Bethany Hospital, see Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 95–101, 121. 16. Most Kreuzberg congregations had already been forced to give up their own churchrun social-welfare centers and adopt a home-care model. Petra Heidebrecht, “Die

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17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

St. Thomas-Gemeinde zu Berlin 1860 bis 1969,” in Kirchengemeinde St. Thomas (ed.), 125 Jahre St. Thomas-Kirche, Berlin 1994, 15–98, here 79. Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 303. On the structural reforms in the Western part of the Protestant Regional Church (Evangelische Landeskirche) of Berlin and Brandenburg, henceforth called the Provincial Church (Provinzialkirche) and/or Synod of Berlin (West), see Radatz and Winter, Geteilte Einheit, 65. Klaus Duntze, Der Geist, der Städte baut. Planquadrat, Wohnbereich, Heimat, Stu gart 1972. Ibid., 9. Ibid., 11. In 1973, Duntze received a wri en reply from the district office of Kreuzberg: “We understand redevelopment [Sanierung] as urban renewal in the sense of healing; our job is to heal the architectural eyesores of the first Industrial Revolution and the Founders’ Era,” quoted in Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 152. Duntze, Der Geist, der Städte baut, 45. Ibid., 24. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 29–34. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York 1961; Bahrdt, Die moderne Großstadt. Duntze, Der Geist, der Städte baut, 34. Ibid., 37. Ibid., 44. Ibid., 45. Ibid., 45 f. Ibid., 122–124. Ibid., 125. Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Duntze, Der Geist, der Städte baut, 162 f. Ibid., 163. On the newly formulated public mandate of churches in 1960s West Germany, see Bösch and Hölscher, “Die Kirchen im öffentlichen Diskurs,” 24. For an introduction to St. Martha’s church, see Wesner, Kreuzberg und seine Go eshäuser, 56–61. Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 123 f. When Duntze le in 1977, it was mainly used for parish work. St. Martha’s church became a church explicitly for women. A women’s café (Frauencafé) was opened there in 1978. On the public use of church premises, see Bösch and Hölscher, “Die Kir en im öffentli en Diskurs,” 25. Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 206. Verein SO 36, “. . . außer man tut es!” 24. Duntze, Der Luisenstädtische Kanal, 330. On the history of the term Kreuzberg mix, see chapter 5 of this book. On the public significance of these church congresses, see Mi mann, “Kir e im performativen Wandel,” 139. Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 307. Ibid., 307–313. Added to which, Duntze switched to being director of studies at the (West) Berlin Evangelical Academy in early 1977 with a focus on “city-related church work,” albeit under

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48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

81.

the condition that he could continue his work on the Strategies for Kreuzberg project. Ibid., 238. Senat von Berlin, Strategien für Kreuzberg, Berlin 1977. Verein SO 36, “. . . außer man tut es!” 35. Ibid., 34. Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 315. Verein SO 36, “. . . außer man tut es!” 35. On the razing of the pump station (May 12, 1977) and the firehouse (June 14, 1977) on Reichenberger Strasse as a turning point in the politics of urban renewal, see MacDougall, “In the Shadow of the Wall,” 169. The workshops dealt with the following topics: 1) project procedure and project status; 2) “Kreuzberg mix”; 3) new social order; 4) neighborhood public sphere. Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 318. Verein SO 36, “. . . außer man tut es!” 35. Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 321–325. For more details on the winning entries, see Senat von Berlin, Strategien für Kreuzberg, Berlin 19792. On Südost-Express see also chapter 3. Verein SO 36, “. . . außer man tut es!” 43. The SO 36 neighborhood commi ee was presided over by Klaus Duntze until 1985. On rehab squa ing, see Kreis, “Heimwerken als Protest.” Günter Schlusche, Die Internationale Bauausstellung Berlin. Eine Bilanz, Berlin 1997. Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 81, 315. Klaus Duntze, “Die Luisenstadt,” in Kirchengemeinde St. Thomas, 125 Jahre St. ThomasKirche, 203. Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 326. On the role of the church in the Berlin squa ing movement, see Radatz and Winter, Geteilte Einheit, 70 f. Superintendent Gustav Roth was even informed about pending evictions by Senator of the Interior Heinrich Lummer but Roth refused to play the role of “messenger.” Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 64. Ibid., 62. Ibid., 244–259. Radatz and Winter, Geteilte Einheit, 59–62. For an introduction to St. Thomas Church, see Wesner, Kreuzberg und seine Go eshäuser, 42–48. To be more precise, 10 percent of its members. Heidebrecht, “Die St. ThomasGemeinde,” 78. Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 446. Wesner, Kreuzberg und seine Go eshäuser, 48 Heidebrecht, “Die St. Thomas-Gemeinde,” 78–81. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 131–133. No biographical data could be found on Ludwig Bultmann nor any information about a possible family connection to theologian Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976). Heidebrecht, “Die St. Thomas-Gemeinde,” 81. Christian Müller, “‘Arme habt ihr allezeit bei euch’—die Herausforderung durch die Armut in den 125 Jahren der St. Thomas-Gemeinde,” in Kirchengemeinde St. Thomas, 125 Jahre St. Thomas-Kirche, 139–180, here 172 f. Irmela Mukurarinda, “Auf der Suche nach St. Thomas 1977-1990,” in Kirchengemeinde St. Thomas, 125 Jahre St. Thomas-Kirche, 183–190, here 184.

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82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

98.

Müller, “‘Arme habt ihr allezeit bei euch,’” 172. Mukurarinda, “Auf der Suche nach St. Thomas,” 186. Verein SO 36, “. . . außer man tut es!” 67. The Südost-Express construed this as an act of compensation, the police having been unable to react to stone-throwing demonstrators. Südost-Express 7-8/1983, 22. Manfred K. Bahmann, “St. Thomas im Berliner Häuserkampf,” in Kirchengemeinde St. Thomas, 125 Jahre St. Thomas-Kirche, 191–195, here 192. Ibid., 192–194. Tagesanzeiger Magazin, September 3, 1983. The photo was reprinted a year later in Senator für Bau- und Wohnungswesen, Idee, Prozess, Ergebnis, 98. Schilling, “Behutsame Stadterneuerung,” 179. Südost-Express 9/1983, 14. Manfred Bahmann would leave the parish three years later. Bahmann, “St. Thomas im Berliner Häuserkampf,” 195. Südost-Express 9/1983, 14. Bahmann, “St. Thomas im Berliner Häuserkampf,” 194. Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 276 f. Verein SO 36, “. . . außer man tut es!” 64 f. Ibid. Reinhard Herbolte, “St. Michael und St. Thomas—Stationen ökumenischer Zusammenarbeit,” in Kirchengemeinde St. Thomas, 125 Jahre St. Thomas-Kirche, 196–199, here 197. “Die Traditionslinie der Ortsgemeinde. Ein Pfarrer im Ruhestand über seine Mitwirkung bei der Berliner Stadtentwicklung, Klaus Duntze im Gespräch mit Ralf Bei der Kellen,” Deutschlandradio Kultur, May 25, 2013, h p://www.deutschland radiokultur .de/die-traditionslinie-der-ortsgemeinde.1278.de.html?dram:article_id=247864 (accessed April 14, 2016).

Chapter 9

THE CHURCH AS A SURROGATE PUBLIC SPHERE IN FRIEDRICHSHAIN

( For a long time the history of the Protestant Church in Friedrichshain was very similar to that in Kreuzberg. Here too numerous new churches were built starting in the mid-nineteenth century, symbolizing the alliance of throne and altar.1 The Evangelischer Kirchenbau-Verein (Society of Protestant Church Buildings), established in 1890 under the patronage of Empress Auguste Viktoria, was particularly active in this neighborhood. The future district of Friedrichshain saw the construction of a comprehensive network of towering churches during the imperial era intended to help improve the architectural infrastructure of proletarian eastern Berlin. First and foremost, however, they were meant to serve as a conservative stronghold to protect against the threat of Social Democracy. The situation changed fundamentally a er World War II. The church’s role as a representative of state interests gave way in the East to a fundamental hostility of the state toward the church. Religion, under state socialism, was now considered a private affair. All the same, many churches in Friedrichshain were quickly rebuilt. An impressive testimony of this will to reconstruction was the Church of the Revelation (Offenbarungs-Kirche) on Simplonstrasse, newly built in 1949 following plans of O o Bartning (1883–1959).2 In 1969–70, the Protestant Church of Berlin-Brandenburg effectively acknowledged the division of the city by spli ing the regional church into two synods and subsequently restructuring the parishes and church districts. And yet Protestant parishes in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg still faced many of the same problems. One of the challenges on both sides was massive secularization, evident on either bank of the Spree in the form of a drastic decline in parish membership and in the lower frequency of religious services, as well as sometimes radical urban transformations whose social consequences directly affected these parishes.3 Both church Notes for this chapter begin on page 208.

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districts reacted to this in the 1970s by specifically addressing problems in the neighborhood. Social-welfare work was a crucial part of this. A key focus of this in Friedrichshain was work with maladjusted youths. Well into the 1970s and 1980s, the old tenements of eastern Berlin continued to house a proletarian milieu that was hard to integrate into the SED’s official youth policy.4 So-called Platzcliquen, or “public-square gangs,” would gather at places like Kotikowplatz (today’s Petersburger Platz), constituting a persistent thorn in the side of East German authorities, as these young people were resistant to the offers of the FDJ and publicly expressed their nonconformism in their flagrant dress and excessive alcohol consumption.5 Whereas the authorities reacted with strict disciplinary measures, the Protestant Church opened its doors to these young people. The Friedrichshain church district had its first “social deacon” (Sozialdiakon) as of 1978, responsible for the social integration of these “problem youth.” A number of Friedrichshain pastors took things one step further and conducted their work in an “open” manner—meaning open to atheists, open to new approaches, and even openly opposing the state’s monopoly on education.6 The youth work of Friedrichshain parishes was a double provocation in the eyes of the SED. It called a ention to the state’s integration problems on the one hand and exceeded the authority of the church on the other.7 The biggest problem, though, was that church youth work in Friedrichshain gave rise to the most important non-state mass event in 1980s East Berlin. The blues masses (Bluesmessen), originating in the Samaritan Church in Friedrichshain in 1979, developed into a unique surrogate public sphere in the GDR and will therefore be the focus of this chapter. There are multiple accounts of these blues masses, mostly authored by former participants.8 Their focus is mainly on the oppositional character of these services, the blues music performed at them, as well as on the a empts of the state and the church to contain them.9 The following depiction places more emphasis on the character of blues masses as a local form of surrogate public sphere under SED dictatorship. I will begin with a brief description of these masses before investigating the question of the public sphere they constituted. Finally, I will address other public activities hosted by the Samaritan Church in Friedrichshain in the context of church peace initiatives, including the peaceful revolution of 1989–90.

Pastor Rainer Eppelmann and the Blues Masses The blues masses all started with a fateful encounter.10 In the spring of 1979, blues musician and former construction soldier Günter Holwas

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(1950–2014) showed up outside the apartment of pastor Rainer Eppelmann (b. 1943), offering to perform a blues concert in his church for a charitable cause. Eppelmann had been a construction soldier himself a er serving time in prison as a conscientious objector and later went on to study theology, eventually becoming pastor of the Samaritan Church in northeastern Friedrichshain in 1975. He was also district youth pastor of Friedrichshain.11 Together with his pastor colleague Heinz-O o Seidens nur (b. 1950) from the neighboring Church of the Resurrection (Auferstehungskirche) he took Holwas up on his offer—albeit under the condition that the concert be a religious service. The two pastors prepared a brief liturgy. Günter Holwas, a.k.a. “Holly,” and his friend “Plant” were to play a couple of blues songs set to a few Bible verses dealing with the topic of love. With the parish council’s blessing, the first blues mass at Samaritan Church took place on June 1, 1979 on Samariterstrasse in Friedrichshain.12 The event was an unexpected success, a racting unusual visitors and offering the pastors an unparalleled opportunity. About two hundred and fi y people showed up for the first blues mass, compared with the usual thirty to fi y people in a endance at normal Sunday services at the church.13 The new crowd was mostly young men with long hair and from working-class families who apparently had never stepped foot in a church before, bringing red wine and cigare es with them to the mass.14 Rather than seeing this as a provocation, Eppelmann saw it as a unique opportunity to introduce unreligious youth to the church. Apart from the chance to missionize, he saw the event in the spirit of social welfare as a way to give young people more self-confidence.15 The event was repeated and dubbed a “blues mass” the second time around.16 This time Eppelmann and his church colleagues prepared the service more thoroughly and tailored it to a younger audience.17 Eppelmann recalls: “My idea with the blues masses was to strike out on a new path. We didn’t just select a clever Bible verse and translate it into the present day and age, but asked ourselves: What moves young people? What hopes do they have, what frustrations? And then we consulted the good, thick book and looked for answers and inspiration.”18 Encouraged by the “political night-prayers” in the Federal Republic and individual youth services and “open workshops” in the GDR,19 the blues masses soon developed their own ritual form. Some words of welcome and special announcements by the pastors were followed by prayers interspersed with theater skits, then the “readings” with a short sermon, the closing prayer and the intercessions, a final blessing and the offertory.20 Holwas and his band would perform in between, playing mostly Afro-American blues, “because the ups and downs of life, the joys and

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sorrows, the hates and hopes find their expression in blues.”21 Indeed, blues music with its roots in the American Deep South was an appropriate means of emotional expression,22 the situation in the GDR being interpreted as comparable to the oppression of black slaves in America. Moreover, there was a broad and loyal fan base for blues in the GDR ever since the 1970s, as described here by Michael Rauhut: The Blueser [as blues fans referred to themselves] were the East German equivalent of the flower children. They modeled themselves a er the hippie movement, in the spirit of Woodstock, and formed the most vital and enduring youth culture of the GDR. Whereas the West had long since done away with the myth of flower power, they held alo the ideal of love, peace and intoxication as a counter-model to philistinism and narrow-mindedness well into the 1980s.23

The crowds at the blues masses steadily grew, with a endance doubling from event to event. About 250 people came to the first blues mass, 450 to the second, and as many as 1,200 to the third.24 Before long, young people from the entire GDR were coming to Friedrichshain to experience the blues masses firsthand. This posed a challenge to the organizers, who weren’t prepared for crowds of this magnitude. They therefore set up an “info-group” to provide logistical support, consisting of approximately fi y individuals who consciously sought to get people from the abovementioned street gangs involved in the masses.25 Problem youth from the neighborhood were thus given a meaningful activity and new selfconfidence. These young people were also invited to select the themes of each blues mass.26 The youth members of the info-group commanded particular respect among their peers and managed to prohibit the participants from drinking and smoking during the services. A special “schnapps check” was created where visitors could leave their bo les for the duration of the event.27 Of course, with their language and appearance they still posed a considerable challenge to many of the church’s parishioners, as Eppelmann recalls: Most of our churchgoers were over the age of fi y, lovely people, and it was largely thanks to them that the parish hall and church still existed at all. They dutifully paid their church taxes. And now they had to look on as loads of young people came to the church, people they were scared of when they saw them on the street and who smoked and drank in a house of God until we finally got them to stop.28

Added to this generation gap were theological scruples. Not all church colleagues and members considered this form of worship appropriate. The Catholic-sounding name, blues mass, also caused some problems. But

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in the end the parish council of Samaritan Church supported Eppelmann, a majority of the body being convinced that the blues masses were an important cause.29 Local residents faced challenges no less great. The events led to huge crowds that could hardly be accommodated by the narrow streets around the church. Traffic would come to a standstill, disrupting the usual peace and quiet of this dreary residential neighborhood. A contemporary witness recalls the state of exception in the neighborhood: Already in the a ernoon, hundreds of freaks had besieged the neighborhood, the grocery stores, the local supermarket, and taken the last remaining seats in the bars, which were few and far between to begin with. Ordinary people who wanted to procure their usual weekend supply of alcohol had to watch as longhaired deadbeats snatched it up from under their noses and emptied the bo les like barbarians right outside the store. All they got in exchange were puddles of urine in the entranceways of their apartment buildings. . . . The empties were not returned to the stores but ended up sha ered on the streets and sidewalks.30

Astonishingly enough, the chaotic circumstances surrounding the blues masses resulted in hardly any complaints being lodged by local residents. The surviving petitions were most likely the work of the communal authorities themselves.31 For the authorities and organs of the state and the Party the blues masses themselves were by far the greatest challenge. It was less the music they found offensive than the large-scale public event, the uncontrolled gathering of a crowd of young people with li le or no sympathy for the state. But the blues masses took place in a period of diplomatic détente between the church and state, and the SED couldn’t bring itself to prohibit these events with all the means at its disposal.32 The talks between the church and state on March 6, 1978 had secured a kind of truce and this was one reason the blues masses could develop the way they did at all.33 Only a er a year did the Ministry for State Security decide to take more decisive action against the blues masses. The Stasi launched its Operational Case “Blues” against Pastor Eppelmann34 and infiltrated the preparatory commi ee of the blues masses, planting multiple informers who reported on the events in detail.35 Bogus le ers served to disinform potential visitors and aimed to “corrode” church commi ees from the inside out.36 Finally, on June 13, 1980, an act of sabotage was commi ed, a stink bomb of butyric acid being set off during the event.37 But these measures could not put a stop to the blues masses. And so communal and state authorities ratcheted up the pressure on church leaders, who were regularly summoned to the district office of Friedrichshain. Ultimately the real issue had always been the public character of these blues masses.

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The Blues Masses as a Surrogate Public Sphere According to East German law, all public events in the GDR had to be registered in advance with the authorities. The Concert and GuestPerformance Directorate of the GDR was responsible for all public performances in East Germany. The only public events not subject to registration were religious services, which were the responsibility of the respective pastor or priest.38 A straightforward blues concert would have to be registered; a religious service with blues music wouldn’t.39 It was precisely here that local and state authorities brought their criticism to bear. They repeatedly questioned whether the blues masses were in fact religious services at all. The organizers held their ground. Eppelmann declared that only the church could decide what constituted a religious service.40 Church leaders saw a ma er of principle at stake here. The bishop and the consistory held fast to their privilege to define the religious nature of their activities and supported the organizers of the blues masses. The district and regional synods also got behind the events.41 Church leaders and internal church commi ees thus signaled quite clearly to the state that they were willing to take responsibility for the blues masses.42 Support from two key individuals in the church hierarchy was particularly crucial here. Ingrid Laudien (1934–2009), the superintendent, and the first woman to preside over the church district of Friedrichshain, defended the efforts of Eppelmann and his allies against his detractors at the municipal district council.43 The communal authorities were baffled when she, for her part, declared that she had no real authority over the pastors in her church district.44 Unlike Party-state structures, the church was democratic in its inner workings and marked by a culture of discussion that was wholly alien to the hierarchical thinking of East German authorities.45 So the la er tried their luck with the next-higher level of church leadership. But the general superintendent of the Berlin dioceses, Hartmut Grünbaum (1930–83), defended the blues masses as well. He admi ed that, personally, he was no fan of the events, but came to the conclusion that they were in fact religious services and did not require a permit.46 Only when East Berlin bishop Albrecht Schönherr (1911–2009) agreed to define more clearly what constituted a religious service did the situation become critical. This would have allowed the authorities to actually assess in concrete terms whether events like the blues masses fulfilled the criteria of a religious service. But the bishop was ultimately dissuaded by the resistance of young people working in the church47 and church authorities retained the freedom to host the blues masses. An uncontrolled communicative space thus emerged under the protection of a religious ceremony. But seeing the blues masses as a mere

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music concert camouflaged by theology would be a mischaracterization.48 The content and substance of the blues masses soon gained importance in their own right. The sermons, talks and other contributions addressed in straightforward language the militarization and disciplinary character of East German society, the dishonest portrayal of reality in the GDR in the news, in schools and elsewhere, the fear of speaking one’s mind, the frustration of living behind the Wall and a sealed-off border, the career impediments faced by the younger generation, military education in schools, as well as environmental pollution.49 The problems of young people were talked about at the blues masses with unprecedented candor. The Bible and the blues both allowed a variety of interpretations. The stories of the Old and New Testament and the songs of oppression in the Deep South of the United States were equally transposed to the East German present. There were also critical skits and sketches, adapting the methods of the Theater of the Oppressed from Brazil and meant to directly appeal to young people. In a sketch set in “Angsthasenland” (Scaredy-Cat-Land) the actors wore bunny ears (as per the German metaphor) and mixed with the audience, taking aim at the ever-present informers.50 The sketches performed at the blues masses were thus a way of coping with fear. The crowds were generally very sympathetic to the sermons, talks and theater skits. They catcalled and booed at depictions of authority figures and applauded any critical remarks. To Eppelmann this had something “scandalous” and “liberating.” He describes the blues masses as “the first large-scale event in the GDR where thousands of individuals could finally hear what people really thought, hoped, desired, what bothered them, what they feared and what they abhorred.”51 For the first time they were able to say and hear in public the things they otherwise kept to themselves or expressed through their outward appearance.52 In other words, the blues masses were a surrogate public sphere in which the organizers and several thousand young people created a communicative space for publicly negotiating the state of affairs in the GDR. The really unique thing about it was that it didn’t just happen once, but on a regular basis. The blues masses established themselves as an institutionalized form of a critical and unregulated communicative public sphere in a dictatorship that normally didn’t allow such a thing. The blues masses were a step from private towards public criticism of the state. But it wasn’t just about bigger social issues; the blues masses foregrounded the private sphere, too, by addressing the individual hopes and fears of young people and the role of the individual in East German society. This dual character of the blues masses was inherent to their religious structure, forming a community while addressing the individual. The same went for the music, which provided a collective listening expe-

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rience while simultaneously expressing a radical subjectivity. Blues was all about private emotions. The lyrics did not describe merging into the church community but the right to pursue one’s personal happiness. The blues masses thus served to amplify the intimate emotions and individual desires that were increasingly being bartered away in the GDR of the 1980s.53 But they went even one step further. The blues masses not only publicly articulated the bo led-up frustration of young people in the GDR and their claim to personal happiness, they likewise addressed in quasi autopoietic fashion the public sphere in state socialism. The blues masses playfully took issue with the dual public sphere in the media.54 The different use of language by East and West German media outlets was caricatured in theater skits.55 This was made blatantly clear by the juxtaposition of reports referring to the same incident—the rock concert at Alexanderplatz on October 7, 1977, for instance, which resulted in heavy clashes between young people and the police. A skit performed at the fourth blues mass on February 29, 1980 made reference to this when one performer recited the official version in the East German press: “Young hooligans disrupt the national holiday of our republic,” while a second performer recited the version offered in the West German media: “Dissident youth protests in East Berlin on October 7th.”56 East Germans made such comparisons every evening.57 Doing this in public, though, and in such a form was highly unusual. Western media played an important role for the blues masses in another respect as well. On the advice of Robert Havemann (1910–82), Eppelmann used the Western media—the most important surrogate public sphere in the GDR58—to draw a ention to the minor surrogate public sphere constituted by the blues masses.59 Despite some opposition in the parish council, Eppelmann was clear on one thing: “Since the media in the GDR were censored and we had no chance to reach the public through them, we had no other option but the indirect route through the West.”60 This indirect “public relations work” by way of the Western media followed a dual objective. For one thing, it served to safeguard the events, for the more well-known the blues masses became, especially in the West, the less likely they were to be forcibly dispersed. For another, Western reporting was free publicity for the blues masses, which had hitherto only been advertised through notice boards and by word of mouth.61 Indeed, more and more people were a ending the blues masses. The events at Samaritan Church became a nationwide event, with ever more young people and young adults from other districts in the GDR traveling to East Berlin to take part, o en hitchhiking and with no place to stay once they got there.62 The fi h blues mass on April 25, 1980 drew about 1,400

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people, well more than the church could hold. About five hundred people had to be turned away, clogging up the streets outside in their disappointment.63 The organizers realized it couldn’t go on like this, that they would only end up giving the authorities a pretext to ban the events for security reasons. So they hit upon the solution of holding the blues masses in shi s at two locations, the Samaritan Church and the Church of the Resurrection. Those who couldn’t get into Samaritan Church were escorted a mile and a half through town by members of the info-group until they reached the other church. The bluesmen first played Samaritan Church, then rushed straight to Church of the Resurrection. But this turned out to be just as impractical.64 The crowds that gathered for the eighth blues mass on September 12, 1980 were so big that they knocked down the brickwork parapet separating the sidewalk from the churchyard. No one was injured, and the wall was repaired a few days later by young volunteers,65 but the organizers now felt completely overwhelmed. Eppelmann sought a new alternative: The organizational efforts for the blues masses ultimately exceeded the capabilities of the few full-time church employees and their approximately forty young assistants. My wife suggested that I ask the church leadership of Berlin-Brandenburg for help. The la er agreed, under the condition that they have a real say in the content of these masses. This proved to be drawback, because now church leaders interfered in the topic planning and the scheduling if they found them too explosive.66

Eppelmann implies here that the inclusion of church leaders in organizational ma ers was a double-edged sword. They ensured that the blues masses could continue, but changed their content and character. On the one hand they found an alternative location, the Church of the Redeemer (Erlöserkirche) in the neighborhood of Lichtenberg, with a larger outdoor area where the participants could gather prior to the event.67 In 1983, seven thousand people were able to take part in the blues masses, which sometimes took place four times in a row on a single day at Church of the Redeemer. On the other hand the blues masses lost their political edge. Church leaders, who had previously held a protective hand over the masses, now actively intervened, insisting that the lyrics, sermons, talks and skits be submi ed to them in advance for approval. Their interventions not only sought to eliminate the vulgar language used in earlier blues masses but also topics such as the political developments in Poland that were strictly off-limits. Many of the initiators of the blues masses express their disappointment nowadays over how the masses transformed over time. They accuse church leaders of not wanting to jeopardize the positive outcome

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of the state-church talks of 1978 and of subordinating everything else to the organization of the church congress slated to take place in East Berlin in 1987.68 The blues masses had ultimately been “sacrificed” to this end, they claimed, being discontinued without further ado in 1986 a er twenty masses and numerous repeat performances having drawn about fi y thousand participants all in all. A endance at Church of the Redeemer had dropped sharply, prompting Dirk Moldt to conclude that the Stasi’s so-called corrosion tactics, its a empts to harass and intimidate, had ultimately been successful.69 But other factors hastening the demise of the blues masses have to be taken into account as well. For one thing, blues music had been something of a passing fad. Nonconformist youth in the GDR had meanwhile discovered punk, and the two musical styles were not particularly compatible.70 For another, other forms of public protest had since developed in Friedrichshain.71 The blues masses had effectively lost their pioneering role as a surrogate public sphere.

The Samaritan Church as a Peace Church In the course of the 1980s, the Protestant Church was the starting point and an important umbrella for new forms of public protest in the GDR. Samaritan Church in Friedrichshain continued to play a prominent role here. On January 25, 1982, Eppelmann joined Robert Havemann in signing the Berlin Appeal. Under the slogan Frieden schaffen ohne Waffen (creating peace without arms) and with eighty initial signatories from the Berlin peace movement and the youth-work arm of the church, they called for a solution to the peace question, which they saw bound up with the German and the European question.72 The appeal was decidedly aimed at East and West Germans alike, and was published in the Frankfurter Rundschau, a West German daily.73 Eppelmann was subsequently arrested but had since become so prominent that the authorities had no choice but to release him three days later. The involvement of Western media had once again proven a useful protection for staging public protests.74 A peace group (Friedenskreis) was formed at Samaritan Church in the wake of the Berlin Appeal. For Eppelmann this was “the logical continuation of what the blues masses stood for.”75 The peace groups offered a new opportunity to meet. Some of those gathered here were the same people who’d a ended the blues masses before, some of whom had been disappointed by the church leadership’s “gagging order.” The critical public sphere had thus moved on to greener pastures.76 The peace group organized regular events during ten-day “peace weeks” (Friedensdekaden) and entered into partnerships with church congregations in NATO countries—

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for example, with St. Salvatoris Church in Geesthacht (West Germany), with the Åmot Lutheran Church in Rena (Norway), and with the Trinity Lutheran Church in New Jersey (U.S.A.). The parishes made peace promises and agreed to pay each other mutual visits, which necessarily remained one-sided at first.77 In 1984, the partner parishes in the West took part in the festival week marking the ninety-year anniversary of the Samaritan congregation. An elaborate program was held from October 20th to 28th, including a sermon by Bishop Go fried Forck (1923–96) and a youth service with gospel music, blues and spirituals. The poster advertising the festival events had to first pass through state censors, though. The initial design with the “swords to plowshares” symbol was rejected by the relevant authorities, the Council for Interior Affairs and the Secretariat for Church Affairs in the Municipal District Council of Friedrichshain.78 The printed poster that was eventually approved displayed a photo that was no less provocative, however (Figure 9.1).79 It showed the Samaritan Church in 1896, in the middle of an open field.80 This historical photo proved particularly symbolic eighty-eight years later. It not only demonstrated that the church had been there first; it also showed that, against all odds, the church was still standing, enthroned above a sea of houses in the middle of the East German capital. Samaritan Church presented itself as a bastion of peaceful resistance.81 In the mid-1980s the Samaritan Church had yet another neighborhood focus. The parish took the initiative to beautify the street, planting trees on an otherwise gray Samariterstrasse. This was preceded by an ongoing struggle with the district office, the la er only agreeing a er years of resistance under the condition that the Eastern CDU be involved. The official version would then be that the trees were planted by the CDU with the assistance of the church parish. The bloc party, in other words, would help keep up appearances. When the parish launched another initiative— picking up all the li er on the street and demonstratively displaying the trash bags on church property—the district office was quick to intervene.82 Initiatives like these, in this case highlighting environmental pollution in the GDR, were always a problem for the authorities when they deliberately addressed the public.83 This was precisely the aim of the ecological working group formed in 1987 as a subgroup of the peace group at Samaritan Church and that drew a ention to itself in the church’s parish bulletin aktuell. Though the five-page brochure said “for internal church use only,” it was clearly intended as a counter-public sphere.84 Samaritan Church increasingly developed into a focal point of the critical public sphere. In 1986, the first major survey exhibition of East German alternative art, “wort und werk” (word and work), took place

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FIGURE 9.1. Poster advertising the festival week marking the ninety-year anniversary of Samaritan Church (1984). Evangelische Galiläa-Samariter-Kirchengemeinde.

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in the church.85 The following year it hosted an “Old Berlin evening,” where Lutz Rathenow (b. 1952) and Harald Hauswald (b. 1954) presented their volume of photographs Berliner Ansichten (Views of Berlin) portraying the gri y sides of East Berlin, as well as a performance of Woyzeck by the Ho heater of Prenzlauer Berg and concert evenings by dissident singer-songwriter Stephan Krawczyk (b. 1955).86 But Samaritan Church was not the only church in Friedrichshain to serve as a surrogate public sphere. In 1982, at the initiative of physicist Bernd Kantner, a peace library and an antiwar museum were set up at St. Bartholomew Church (Bartholomäuskirche), gaining considerable notoriety through traveling exhibitions—and somehow managing to avoid the interference of state authorities for the duration of the GDR.87 “Open youth work” at Pentecost Church (Pfingstkirche) on Kotikowplatz gave rise to the Church from Below group (Kirche von Unten, KvU), which in June 1987 held a Church Congress from Below that ran alongside the official church congress in East Berlin and resonated well beyond Friedrichshain.88 The blues masses served as a “door opener” for all of these forms of oppositional public sphere in East Berlin.89 They gave rise to a communicative space that was filled with ever new initiatives during the 1980s. Young people in grassroots organizations who had once a ended the blues masses now laid claim to the church as a public space in which free speech and peaceful dialogue could be practiced.90 This public space served as a surrogate for the public media, which in the GDR were occupied by the state and the Party. It therefore seems reasonable to refer to the blues masses and subsequent church initiatives as a surrogate public sphere. And yet the blues masses did not directly lead to the peaceful revolution of 1989. By 1986, the event format had gone out of fashion. But they’d established the church as a place of public protest that would serve as an important framework for the opposition at the end of the GDR. They were one factor among many leading to a dissident scene in East Berlin that met in older neighborhoods and ultimately played a key role in the collapse of SED rule. Some of the structures that emerged in this context would remain influential even a er the fall of the Wall. Thus, the Church from Below would be a co-initiator of the squa ers’ movement on Mainzer Strasse in the spring of 1990.91 Moreover, the relatively small group of dissidents in East Berlin lent the older, dilapidated neighborhoods they lived in an aura of nonconformist urbanity that would later serve as a symbolic foundation for the subsequent gentrification of Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg. The aesthetics of resistance had made old, prewar buildings trendy long before renovation work began.

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The Church: Conclusions Built at the height of urbanization around the turn of the twentieth century, churches in both Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg served initially as conservative islands in the midst of proletarian eastern Berlin, an expression in stone of the close relationship between the state and the Protestant faith. That relationship changed fundamentally a er 1945, albeit more drastically in the East than the West. The Protestant parishes in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg now took a position far more critical of the state. They also faced similar challenges both inside and outside the church, the former due to massive secularization and unchurching, the la er due to profound processes of social and urban transformation. Churches responded to these challenges by focusing on social work in the neighborhood founded on a human-oriented, critical theology. At the heart of this community work was a commitment to those who had been socially uprooted by these transformation processes, mostly the young and the old. The church, itself now marginalized, increasingly looked a er people at the margins of society. Since the social commitment of churches clearly exceeded their economic resources and political influence, the Protestant Church in both East and West focused much of its time and energy on fulfilling its unique public mandate. It redefined itself as an agent of civil society and created new spaces for a critical public sphere to emerge that consciously resisted the claims and aspirations of respective communal and state representatives. The underlying conditions for this were quite different in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. Whereas in Friedrichshain only a limited public sphere could emerge in a tug-of-war with the organs of SED dictatorship and under the protection of the church, the church being the only independent institution in the GDR, in Kreuzberg the Protestant Church managed to have a much stronger influence on the whole of urban society, giving rise to a critical neighborhood public sphere that would ultimately have a significant impact on urban development. This neighborhood public sphere went beyond being a counter-public sphere, gaining hegemony in Kreuzberg on the one hand and usually involving state authorities at the behest of the church on the other. In Friedrichshain church activism helped foster a surrogate public sphere that served as an alternative to state-controlled public assembly and public media and that set the stage in the long term for the peaceful revolution of 1989 by offering the freedom and communicative spaces necessary for dissident activities to unfold. The church public spheres in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg focused on different issues with varied social implications. The neighborhood

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public sphere in Kreuzberg primarily addressed the city, whose ongoing renewal was o en seen in the context of more fundamental social questions. The surrogate public sphere in Friedrichshain, on the other hand, was mainly aimed against the state, though church initiatives for the most part were necessarily local by nature, encompassing specific measures. The formation of church public spheres also followed different trajectories in East and West. Whereas the heyday of church activism in the urban development of Kreuzberg was during the 1970s, the Protestant Church playing more of a mediating role in the subsequent West Berlin Häuserkampf, the critical public sphere that developed under the roof of the church in Friedrichshain reached its pinnacle in the 1980s. Both public spheres had in common, however, that they unleashed transformation processes that later began to detach themselves from their original church contexts, reaching broader segments of society. In both districts the critical engagement of Protestant churches, which had always depended on the commitment of individual pastors, encountered resistance within the church as well, and did not inevitably reverse the tendency towards secularization. In this respect, the increased public significance of the church was very much compatible with continued secularization, especially when the la er is understood as an opening up of the church to the world. Finally, there was remarkably li le entanglement to speak of between the church congregations in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg under investigation here. The construction of the Berlin Wall separated these parishes, even though the contact between them was o en maintained at first in rather demonstrative fashion. They generally had partnerships with parishes in the other Germany, but usually not directly on the other side of the Wall. It is apparent that the new church public spheres in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg generally did not cross borders but for the most part remained limited to their respective parts of the city. The issues that were dealt with in these church public spheres diverged considerably in the 1970s and 1980s. Church representatives working within a democratically organized society to achieve more citizen participation and more caution in the process of urban renewal were operating in a different framework than those who were using the protective umbrella of the church to guarantee freedom of expression and thereby challenge the prevailing social order. Thus, although the predominant mood a er the fall of the Wall was the euphoria over unity regained, the church communities that had grown apart since 1961 failed in the years to come to grow back together again. Three decades of division o en carried more weight than a longer, shared history.92

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Notes 1. The following Protestant churches were built during the period of urbanization in what would later become the district of Friedri shain: St. Markus-Kir e on Weberstrasse (1855), St. Andreaskir e at Stralauer Platz (1856), St. Bartholomäus-Kir e at Königstor (1858), Samariterkir e on Samariterstrasse (1894), Auferstehungskir e on Friedenstrasse (1895), Lazaruskir e on Grünberger Strasse (1907), Pfingstkir e at Petersburger Platz (1908), Zwingli-Kir e at Rudolfplatz (1908) and Galiläa-Kir e on Rigaer Strasse (1911). For a detailed look at the ur es in Friedri shain, see Jan Feustel, Turmkreuze über Hinterhäusern. Kir en im Bezirk Friedri shain, Berlin 1999. 2. Ibid., 115–124. 3. On the secularization of East Berlin, see Radatz and Winter, Geteilte Einheit, 119, 150–153. 4. Marc-Dietrich Ohse, Jugend nach dem Mauerbau. Anpassung, Protest und Eigensinn (DDR 1961–1974), Berlin 2003. 5. On the significance of nonconformist youth fashion in the GDR, see Rebecca Menzel, Jeans in der DDR. Vom tieferen Sinn einer Freizeithose, Berlin 2004. On alcohol consumption, see Thomas Kochan, Blauer Würger. So trank die DDR, Berlin 2011. 6. The open youth work of Pastor Gerhard Cyrus at the Galilee Church was particularly influential. Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR, 296 f. 7. Ibid., 443. 8. See, esp., the autobiography of Rainer Eppelmann, Fremd im eigenen Haus. Mein Leben im anderen Deutschland, Cologne 1993, 146–169; idem, Go es doppelte Spur. Vom Staatsfeind zum Parlamentarier, Holzgerlingen 2007, 100–111; quite informative from the perspective of the former provost of the Protestant Church of Berlin and Brandenburg is Friedrich Winter, “Die Ostberliner Bluesmessen. Ein Insider-Bericht über sieben Jahre Lernprozess,” in Michael Rauhut and Thomas Kochan (eds), Bye Bye, Lübben City. Bluesfreaks, Tramps und Hippies in der DDR, Berlin 2004, 154–172. 9. This chapter draws heavily on the well-documented account of Dirk Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung; on the role of blues music, see also the other contributions in Rauhut and Kochan, Bye Bye, Lübben City. 10. The early history of the blues masses is one that has o en been told, the narrative perspective of Rainer Eppelmann becoming a recurrent thread. See Eppelmann, Fremd im eigenen Haus, 146 f. From the perspective of Holwas, see Thomas Kochan, “Berlin, Toronto, Wernsdorf. Günter ‘Holly’ Holwas—hart, aber herzlich,” in Rauhut and Kochan, Bye Bye, Lübben City, 203–210. 11. For a brief biography of Rainer Eppelmann, see h ps://kommunismusgeschichte.de/ biolex/article/detail/eppelmann-rainer-28/ (accessed April 29, 2020). 12. Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 55–66. 13. Eppelmann, Go es doppelte Spur, 100. 14. Winter, “Die Ostberliner Bluesmessen,” 154. The crowd would eventually become more varied, a racting a wider range of visitors. Church representatives and secret-police informers were present from the very start. Referencing Elwood from The Blues Brothers, Günter Holwas gave a special welcome to “all the representatives of the law-enforcement community.” Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 106. 15. Winter, “Die Ostberliner Bluesmessen,” 160. 16. The term Bluesmesse was coined by Friedrichshain social deacon Bernd Schröder. Interview with Rainer Eppelmann (April 22, 2015). 17. Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 67–87. 18. Quoted in “Teufelszeug im Go eshaus. Gespräch mit Rainer Eppelmann,” in Rauhut and Kochan, Bye Bye, Lübben City, 173–180, here 173 f.

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19. These included the “beat masses” in Weisswasser in 1973, the “Bible blues beat” at Bernburg’s Castle Church in 1979, as well as the “June 1978” and “June 1979” open-workshop weekends in Rudolstadt which apart from bazaars, art exhibits, night worship services and readings also hosted folk and blues concerts. Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 57 f.; Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR, 297, 441 f. 20. Winter, “Die Ostberliner Bluesmessen,” 156 f. 21. Holwas, quoted in Winter, “Die Ostberliner Bluesmessen,” 156. At first only Holly’s blues band performed, later Stefan Diestelmann, Freygang, Georg K., Gurkensalat, Infarkt, the Jonathan Blues Band, Monokel and the Tröger-Lied trio. Ibid. 22. Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR, 442. 23. Michael Rauhut, “‘Am Fenster’. Ro musik und Jugendkultur in der DDR,” in Sti ung Haus der Ges i te der Bundesrepublik Deuts land and Bundeszentrale für politis e Bildung (ed.), Ro ! Jugend und Musik in Deuts land. Begleitbu zur glei namigen Ausstellung im Zeitges i tli en Forum Leipzig und im Haus der Ges i te der Bundesrepublik Deuts land in Bonn, Berlin 2005, 71–77, here 75. 24. Winter, “Die Ostberliner Bluesmessen,” 169. 25. The members of the info-group were deliberately not referred to as Ordner (stewards), in order to distinguish them from the FDJ. Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 101 f. 26. Interview with Rainer Eppelmann (April 22, 2015). 27. Winter, “Die Ostberliner Bluesmessen,” 158, 164. 28. Eppelmann, Go es doppelte Spur, 102. 29. Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 152. Rainer Eppelmann a ributes this majority support in the parish council to his own “staffing policy,” having managed over the years to get trusted allies into this body. Eppelmann, Go es doppelte Spur, 110. 30. Quoted in Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 179. 31. The authorities ultimately failed to arouse any kind of “public outrage” towards the blues masses. Ibid., 180 f. 32. Winter, “Die Ostberliner Bluesmessen,” 165. 33. To be sure, the SED used the agreements of 1978 to put church representatives under pressure and compel them to uphold their mutual “peace.” Rainer Eckert, “Grundelemente der kommunistischen Diktatur in Deutschland. Widerstand, Opposition und Repression,” in Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 9–30, here 24. On the ambivalent character of the church-state negotiations of March 6, 1978, see also Neubert, “Die ‘Reproduktion von Kirche in der DDR,’” 5. 34. Eppelmann, Fremd im eigenen Haus, 145 f. 35. MfS surveillance records offer the most detailed perspective on what transpired at the blues masses. A key document was a report by Stasi informer “Conni” on her visit to the blues mass at Samaritan Church on Friday, June 13, 1980, BStU MfS AOP 8695/91, fols. 48 f., reprinted in Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 413–416. 36. Thus, the Stasi spread rumors about Eppelmann’s supposed ambitions within the church and faked a le er with the facetious lines, “Wir brauchen keinen schönen Mann, wir brauchen Bischof Eppelmann!” (We don’t need a pre y boy, we need Bishop Eppelmann!), quoted in Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 167. 37. It has yet to be determined if the Stasi was actually behind this. Ibid., 147. 38. Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR, 443. 39. Winter, “Die Ostberliner Bluesmessen,” 154. 40. Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 78 ff. 41. Ibid., 95. 42. Winter, “Die Ostberliner Bluesmessen,” 162. 43. Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 42, 88.

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44. Evelyn Schulz, Gegenwartshistorische Analyse zur Rolle von einzelnen Kirchengemeinden im Kirchenkreis Friedrichshain in der Zeit von 1980 bis 1989, unpublished manuscript, Berlin 1993, 16. 45. Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 40. Eppelmann even talks about the church in the GDR being a “school of democracy.” Interview with Rainer Eppelmann (April 22, 2015). 46. “Bericht über die Blues-Messe am Freitag, den 25. April 1980 in der Samariterkirche von Generalsuperintendent Hartmut Grünbaum, Sti ung Aufarbeitung, Bestand Rainer Eppelmann,” reprinted in Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 397–401. See also Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR, 443. 47. Eppelmann, Go es doppelte Spur, 107. 48. Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 59. 49. Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR, 442 f. 50. The MfS jo ed down the dialogues of “Angsthasenland,” some of which are reprinted in Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 157–159. 51. Interview with Rainer Eppelmann (April 22, 2015). 52. Ibid. 53. Katherine Pence and Paul Be s, “Introduction,” in idem (eds), Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics, Ann Arbor 2008, 1–34. 54. On the dual public sphere in the media, see Axel Schildt, “Zwei Staaten—eine Rundfunk- und Fernsehnation,” in Arnd Bauerkämper, Martin Sabrow, and Bernd Stöver (eds), Doppelte Zeitgeschichte. Deutsch-deutsche Beziehungen 1945–1990, Bonn 1998, 58–71. 55. Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 104. 56. Quoted in ibid. 57. Hochmuth, “Feindbild und Leitbild. Westfernsehen in der DDR,” in Martin Aust and Daniel Schönpflug (eds), Vom Gegner lernen. Feindscha en und Kulturtransfers im Europa des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt am Main 2007, 271–292, here 275–277. 58. For a detailed account, see Kuschel, Schwarzhörer, Schwarzseher und heimliche Leser. 59. Eppelmann, “Teufelszeug im Go eshaus,” 179 60. Eppelmann, Go es doppelte Spur, 110. 61. Interview with Rainer Eppelmann (April 22, 2015). 62. Ibid. 63. Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 114. 64. Eppelmann, Go es doppelte Spur, 103. 65. Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 177–180. 66. Eppelmann, Go es doppelte Spur, 108. 67. Eppelmann, “Teufelszeug im Go eshaus,” 174. 68. Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 389. 69. Ibid., 33, 387–389. 70. There was one punk performance at a blues mass in 1983, but this would be the exception. According to Wolfgang Müller, the concert was an unofficial gig by the West German group Die Toten Hosen organized by Englishman Mark Reeder (b. 1958) and was the first time a Western punk band performed in the GDR. Müller, Subkultur Westberlin, 83. For an introduction to punk music in the GDR, see Roland Galenza, “Zwischen ‘Plan’ und ‘Planlos’. Punk in Deutschland,” in Sti ung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland and Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Rock!, 97–103. 71. Winter, “Die Ostberliner Bluesmessen,” 170. 72. Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR, 408 f. 73. Frankfurter Rundschau, February 9, 1982. 74. Eppelmann was disciplined by church leaders a erwards, however, and called on to exercise more restraint. Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR, 411.

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75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

81.

82. 83.

84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

Eppelmann, “Teufelszeug im Go eshaus,” 180. Interview with Rainer Eppelmann (April 22, 2015). Schulz, Gegenwartshistorische Analyse zur Rolle von einzelnen Kirchengemeinden, 84. Ibid., 89 f. Interview with Rainer Eppelmann (April 22, 2015). The church had been built just two years before, partly for development purposes, on the as yet unbuilt northern side of Grosse Frankfurter Strasse. Feustel, Turmkreuze über Hinterhäusern, 52. This fits well with the reference on the back of the poster to Wilhelm Harnisch (1887– 1960), who was pastor at Samaritan Church under three different political systems, from 1931 to 1953, and distinguished himself for his commitment to the unemployed and the victims of political persecution. As a member of the Confessing Church, he underwent more than sixty Nazi interrogations. Lorraine Bluche and Dirk Moldt, “Das Samariterviertel,” in Düspohl and Moldt, Kleine Friedrichshaingeschichte, 62–73, here 70–72. Interview with Rainer Eppelmann (April 22, 2015). Julia Elizabeth Ault, “Saving East Germany’s Nature. The Struggle between Socialist Environmentalism and Independent Activism, 1968–1990,” Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 2015. Reprinted in Schulz, Gegenwartshistorische Analyse zur Rolle von einzelnen Kirchengemeinden, 147. Moldt, “Friedrichshain,” 26. Schulz, Gegenwartshistorische Analyse zur Rolle von einzelnen Kirchengemeinden, 144. Dietlinde Peters, “Das Barnimviertel,” in Düspohl and Moldt, Kleine Friedrichshaingeschichte, 36–45, here 45. Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR, 685–690. Moldt, Zwischen Haß und Hoffnung, 390. Ibid., 386; Eckert, “Grundelemente der kommunistischen Diktatur in Deutschland,” 28. For more detail, see chapter 14. The eastern parts of St. Thomas parish remained with St. Peter and Mary’s. The estrangement is most evident, however, in the case of St. Michael’s Catholic Church, which was likewise divided between Kreuzberg and Mi e in 1961. Their fusion a er the fall of the Wall and German reunification foundered on the incompatibility of parish styles in spiritual and worldly ma ers. The two parishes eventually merged with other Catholic parishes: St. Michael’s (East) with St. Hedwig’s in the eastern part of the city; St. Michael’s (West) with Our Lady St. Mary’s in Kreuzberg. Duntze, Der Luisenstädtische Kanal, 298 f.; Wesner, Kreuzberg und seine Go eshäuser, 109.

PART IV

Entertainment

(

Chapter 10

ENTERTAINMENT AS A CONSTITUTIVE FIELD OF THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPHERES

( When Hans Rothfels (1891–1976) defined the term “contemporary history” (Zeitgeschichte) as “the epoch of those still living with us [Epoche der Mitlebenden] and its scholarly treatment” he certainly didn’t have entertainment in mind.1 The founder of West German contemporary history was more concerned about how individuals were personally affected by the great political upheavals of a universal age that for him began in 1917.2 But if we follow Thomas Lindenberger and understand contemporary history as the epoch of those who heard and saw it happen (die Mithörenden und Mitsehenden), o en or even primarily by way of radio and television, then we have to take the culture of entertainment into account.3 For the new mass media of the audiovisual age, which began about the same time as Rothfels’s historical watershed, not only served to convey and reinforce political events and developments but above all to entertain and amuse. Indeed, many contemporaries of the more recent past remember their life stories largely through the lens of their own pop-cultural socialization. The widespread retro trend that emerged in the 1990s is therefore more than just a mere marketing strategy for recycling earlier styles and forms of expression.4 It is also a response to the fact that many people link their “generational homeland,” or Zeitheimat,5 not just to political experiences or social achievements but to their pop-cultural socialization and the entertainment of their youth.6 This is particularly true of the second half of the twentieth century, when modern mass culture and entertainment culture experienced their ultimate breakthrough and would have a lasting impact on the daily lives of most people. Contemporary history, having concerned itself at first mainly with the dark sides of German history, for obvious reasons, has meanwhile begun to focus on entertainment, an Notes for this chapter begin on page 222.

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area of investigation which had previously been the reserve of disciplines such as cultural anthropology, media studies, literary criticism and cultural studies.7 But a contemporary history of entertainment is not to be confused with apologetic window-dressing. Entertainment was subject to power structures no less than it helped to change them. The question of entertainment in contemporary history is linked to a number of difficulties. The term entertainment (Vergnügen) refers to an emotive, subjective form of reception, a fleeting moment that standard historical methods are not equipped to capture.8 In this sense entertainment is an active process, as are the semantically related terms “fun,” “amusement,” “diversion,” “recreation.” The problem with these terms is that they tend to suggest a certain immutability—entertainment as an anthropological constant—whereas a proper historical investigation of entertainment has to inquire into its transformations. In other words, entertainment has to be sufficiently historicized. The following investigation will therefore make reference to “entertainment culture” in order to put these entertainments in their appropriate historical context. The term should be seen as distinct, however, from a number of other designations that are o en used synonymously with it.9 One of these is “recreational culture” (Freizeitkultur), emphasizing the aspect of leisure time—an important prerequisite of any entertainment taking place outside the workplace—but glossing over the fact that entertainment means work and earning a living for those employed in the modern entertainment industry. The term “mass culture” underlines the enormous spread of entertainment culture during the twentieth century, yet carries something of the “trash” (Schund) discourse that bourgeois elites used to delegitimize “mass democracy.”10 “Popular culture” is normally used in a similar sense and, according to Kaspar Maase, refers to the “widely disseminated commercial art and entertainment in contrast to that classified as high culture.”11 But the distinction between “commercial” and “serious” art likewise perpetuates the artificial dichotomy of lowbrow and highbrow culture. “Entertainment culture,” on the other hand, is a more open concept, not only emphasizing the supply side, which is easier to study, but also the practices and reception of entertainment. Entertainment culture is understood here as the sum of all things offered, practiced and perceived as entertainment at a given point in time. Entertainment culture usually has a commercial interest and is aimed at a large audience that appropriates these offerings in an active, self-willed manner. Entertainment culture is generally publicly accessible, widely available and o en the object of political co-optation, control or condemnation.12 In the following I will discuss some perspectives on the public, private and political dimensions of entertainment in the twentieth cen-

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tury, in light of the fact that entertainment culture is a constitutive field of the public and the private sphere.

Public Entertainment Modern entertainment culture emerged around 1900. Alongside older places of entertainment such as inns, summer gardens and theaters, new places emerged such as dance halls, amusement parks and especially cinemas.13 Entertainment expanded exponentially during the “long turn of the century”14 from the founders’ era (Gründerzeit) into the Weimar Republic. It was mainly an urban phenomenon, evolving in larger cities and sometimes turning them into metropolises. The two key prerequisites of modern entertainment culture were urbanization and an increase in leisure time allowing the emergence of a new kind of entertainment industry. Hence, the history of entertainment is linked to labor history as well.15 Urban entertainment around the turn of the century was usually public entertainment.16 The many places of entertainment included bars and beer gardens, street and courtyard festivals, concerts and sporting events, parades and processions, fairs and amusement parks. But modern entertainment culture was not just a result of rapid urbanization; it explicitly addressed the experiences of city-dwellers and new modes of life in the city, which were unfamiliar to many newcomers and presented considerable challenges. This “re-enactment of life in the big city”17 helped “internalize” urbanization.18 From a social-history perspective, one significant aspect of modern entertainment culture was its potential to level social differences. Places of entertainment represented a public space where different classes could gather with relatively li le conflict. This was true not only of downtown entertainment districts such as Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse, which a racted tourists as well as locals, but equally applied to ordinary residential neighborhoods, where the usual social segregation was intermi ently overcome at bars, theaters and cinemas.19 But there were also places of entertainment that represented and reproduced social dividing lines,20 as pointed out by Pierre Bourdieu, who noted that “distinctions” were crucial in the consumption of entertainment.21 The fact that entertainment can also level out social inequality and integrate minorities and migrants is a relatively new discovery, by contrast, thanks in large part to the work of metropolitan studies.22 In other words, modern entertainment culture served the purposes of distinction as well as integration.23 The public entertainments of the turn of the century o en took place out-of-doors. They included numerous open-air sporting events, the

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many beer and summer gardens, as well as annual courtyard and street festivals. Many of these entertainments transformed in character in the twentieth century or disappeared entirely. This is true of traditional public festivals or the classic amusement park in big cities, which entered a crisis in mid-century and were reinvented as theme or adventure parks in more rural areas.24 Overall, an ongoing trend towards experience-oriented recreation has been evident since the second half of the twentieth century, including not only established places of entertainment such as movie theaters (offering laser shows) or soccer stadiums (with their fan culture), but institutions that had previously been strictly bourgeois, such as museums (now featuring the so-called long night of museums) or symphony orchestras (performing outdoors at open-air venues), the la er two having increasingly embraced the modern notion of event culture and becoming forms of popular entertainment in their own right.25

Private Entertainment The most notable trend in the contemporary history of entertainment culture for the period under investigation was the increasingly domestic nature of entertainment beginning in the second half of the twentieth century. Radio and television were key here, but also the various new technologies for audio and visual home entertainment—stereo systems, movie projectors, casse e tapes, VCRs, CDs, and so on.26 This private entertainment in the form of new mass media was made possible not only by increased leisure time and purchasing power but also by life in the city, because only in an urban context did a self-determined private sphere emerge, free of the social controls of village life.27 Conversely, the private consumption of mass media eventually spread to rural areas too. Private entertainment, especially television, was crucial to the “inner urbanization” of villages and small towns in the twentieth century as it promoted a separation of the public and the private spheres.28 The flip side of this increasingly domestic entertainment, however, was the partial demise of public forms of entertainment. The most striking example of this was the “death of cinemas” (Kinosterben) in West Germany that began about 1957 with the rise of television in German homes.29 Only in Berlin did the process take a li le longer, as West Berlin border cinemas, which catered to viewers from the East, held on strong until the Wall was built in August 1961.30 Public places of entertainment like the cinema, appropriated in a private way by their patrons, were especially important in the “entangled society”31 of East and West Berlin. In other words, the West Berlin border cinemas not only linked East and West but also the public

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and private spheres. It was the erection of the Berlin Wall that ultimately succeeded in keeping East German moviegoers out of West Berlin cinemas for good, causing the economic basis of these border cinemas to vanish overnight. Most West Berlin border cinemas shut down before the end of 1961.32 Television gradually replaced movie theaters. Like radio before it, this new audiovisual means of communication was initially conceived as a journalistic medium intended primarily as a source of information and a means of cultural education, thus serving the be erment of the population.33 In practice it was mainly used as a form of entertainment, however, which is all radio and television audiences seemed to care about from the very start.34 The media history of the Federal Republic and ultimately of the GDR as well can therefore be described as the successive reaction of programming directors to the prevailing tastes of their listening and viewing audiences.35 Accelerated in 1984 by the introduction of a dual system of commercial and public broadcasting in West Germany, public broadcasters largely accommodated the desire for more entertainment. In this respect too there was a significant privatization of entertainment. The power of the consumer is evident here. If true of radio and television, it was even more directly the case with new sound-recording technologies in the second half of the twentieth century. An eye to the charts and the prospect of producing a hit were o en the determining factor in the creation and marketing of pop music.36 At the same time, new playback technologies for home use such as tape recorders and Walkmans gave music consumers more self-determination, allowing them to decide for themselves what they listened to, when and where. Multiple generations in the second half of the twentieth century were thus the makers of their own, formative pop-culture experiences. Alongside this private entertainment came a variety of new, more public entertainments such as discos and rock concerts for which a differentiated market emerged geared towards young West German consumers with an unprecedented degree of purchasing power. In this respect, the new mass consumption of entertainment had a democratic aspect as well.

Political Entertainment Modern entertainment culture was more than just a pre-political consumer phenomenon.37 Cultural studies have emphasized that popular entertainment was indeed a political experience for the consumer when it rebelled against hegemonic structures.38 The private consumption of jazz and rock was particularly political in the postwar era. Dancing to the seemingly

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lascivious rhythms of rock-and-roll broke norms of race, class and gender, emancipating proletarian youth from a bourgeois system of social values that, despite the conflict of political systems in East and West, was largely rooted in the prewar era.39 Political and pedagogical elites in both East and West Germany initially reacted with the same resentment towards the new forms of entertainment enjoyed by postwar youth, condemning them as “trash and smut” (Schund und Schmutz) merely because they didn’t conform to traditional educated middle-class notions of high culture and serious entertainment. In the GDR, Western-oriented juvenile entertainment was branded as an “ideological diversion of the class enemy”40 and was hence doubly stigmatized.41 This politicization of entertainment by cultural critics on both the right and the le was in fact a basic feature of entertainment culture in the twentieth century, and is one of the main reasons for the wealth of source materials at our disposal. Whereas the conservative establishment saw popular entertainment culture well beyond the mid-twentieth century as proof of the insufficient maturity of the masses and hence an argument against their political participation,42 le ist cultural criticism in the context of the Frankfurt School endeavored to show that the entertainment offerings of the modern capitalist culture industry manipulated the consciousness and jeopardized the independent thinking of consumers.43 Entertainment in the twentieth century did indeed serve to manipulate the masses politically. This is particularly apparent in the targeted use of various entertainment genres for Nazi propaganda purposes.44 During the Cold War, news and information programs were mixed with entertainment in order to reach as big an audience as possible on the other side.45 The political dimension of entertainment in contemporary history went well beyond this aspect, however, combining multifaceted elements. Entertainment in the GDR could be affirmative or subversive.46 It was neither an exclusive instrument of manipulation nor an alternative world to dictatorship that made it possible to survive the confines and coercion of the GDR. Rather, entertainment in the GDR must be understood as an integral component of daily life.47 There were state-sponsored forms of recreational entertainment such as vacations through the FDGB trade union48 that were meant to win people over to state and Party, and there were supposedly apolitical forms of entertainment that offered a certain freedom from the many demands of the ruling SED. These escapist distractions in the GDR included the excessive consumption of alcohol49 but most of all tuning in to Western radio and television programs.50 But this widespread consumption of Western stations should not be interpreted as a mere escape from reality or as a form of resistance and a cause of the GDR’s downfall.51 The initially rather apolitical consumption of Western

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media o en had a stabilizing effect, no ma er how political the content.52 East German television imported ever more West German entertainment shows in the 1980s for this very reason,53 the authorities having concluded that it was be er for East Germans to watch Western TV than to actually leave the country and go to West Germany. But the reception of Western programs remained a political issue. The distinction between public and private was a lesson learned early on in the GDR thanks to Western entertainment.54 Schoolchildren were careful about what they revealed in public about the TV programs they watched at home. Under no circumstances were their teachers allowed to find out that they and their families were familiar with Western television. Thus, many parents impressed upon their children from a very young age that it was be er to keep quiet in public about their evening viewing habits, because even a candid answer to seemingly harmless questions—what the “Li le Sandman” character looked like in the East German bedtime show or the trademark East German clock ident—could serve as an indication to teachers which TV stations they watched at home and hence get parents or pupils into trouble.55 In West Germany, too, popular entertainments were initially o en politicized. But the old knee-jerk anti-Americanism and rejection of “Western” entertainment culture per se gradually gave way to a more open-minded approach. This was aided by the country’s political integration in the West as well as by the discovery of young consumers as a moneyed and hence serious group of buyers when it came to popular entertainment. Moreover, by the 1960s the deviant behavior of juvenile delinquents o en associated with popular entertainment was increasingly viewed from a psychological perspective as an age-typical and passing phenomenon rather than a criminal or political activity.56 The working classes and their understanding of popular entertainment were thus able to be socially integrated. Taste and class differences began to dissolve as bourgeois elites opened themselves (sometimes ironically) to popular entertainment. In this respect entertainment culture in the Federal Republic fostered a broad acceptance of the Western postwar order.57 The socio-economic boom of the first three postwar decades was followed by a second one, an entertainment boom, starting in the 1970s.58 Despite or because of the many new disappointments and perceived crises, entertainment culture—similar to tourism and mass consumption59— entered a phase of expansion in the decades that followed, marked by diversification and digitalization. This trend has continued unabated. Commercial TV, multimedia entertainment and the internet not only constitute the end of the “Gutenberg galaxy,” they also signify a tendency towards the dissolution of distinctions between (ever more numerous) providers

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on the one hand and consumers whose everyday lives and recreational behavior have fundamentally shi ed on the other. The transformation of entertainment culture in the twentieth century had a marked influence on the relationship between the public and private spheres in an urban context. This will be investigated in the following chapters using select case studies that represent only a small part of the urban entertainment culture in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. The bars and taverns on Fruchtstrasse will give us a flavor of the “neighborhood entertainment” in eastern Berlin during the first half of the twentieth century, which underwent a considerable shi starting in the 1960s with the diversification of bar culture in Kreuzberg, the subsequent focus of the next chapter. The festival cultures of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain also followed different paths in the postwar era, to be shown here using the example of the Chamissoplatz festival in Kreuzberg and the ND press festival at the Volkspark in Friedrichshain. The following case studies reference streets and places depicted in the previous chapters, the urban topography of entertainment in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg being inextricably linked to the public and private spheres described above.

Notes 1. This chapter is partly based on Hanno Hochmuth, “Vergnügen in der Zeitgeschichte,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 62 (2012) nos. 1–3, 33–38. 2. Hans Rothfels, “Zeitgeschichte als Aufgabe,” Vierteljahrshe e für Zeitgeschichte 1 (1953) no. 1, 1–8. 3. Thomas Lindenberger, “Vergangenes Hören und Sehen. Zeitgeschichte und ihre Herausforderung durch die audiovisuellen Medien,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 1 (2004) no. 1, 72–85, h p://www.zeithistorische-forschungen .de/1-2004/id=4586. 4. Simon Reynolds, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past, London 2011. 5. The writer W. G. Sebald coined the term Zeitheimat (literally “time homeland”) to describe the feeling of belonging to a particular historical period, a particular moment of history. Heinz Bude later adopted the term and defined it as an expression of “the feeling of a generation [Generationsgefühl] evoked by the viewing of still and moving pictures.” Quoted in Ulrike Jureit, Generationenforschung, Gö ingen 2006, 7. 6. For an in-depth discussion of pop history, see Alexa Geisthövel and Bodo Mrozek (eds), Popgeschichte, vol 1: Konzepte und Methoden, Bielefeld 2014. 7. On entertainment from a cultural-anthropology perspective, see esp. Kaspar Maase, Grenzenloses Vergnügen. Der Aufstieg der Massenkultur 1850–1970, Frankfurt am Main 1997. For an introduction to cultural studies, see Jan Engelmann (ed.), Die kleinen Unterschiede. Der Cultural Studies-Reader, Frankfurt am Main 1999. 8. Richard Dyer, Only Entertainment, London 2002, 1–9.

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9. On associated concepts in German, see Hans-O o Hügel (ed.), Handbuch Populäre Kultur. Begriffe, Theorien und Diskussionen, Stu gart 2003, esp. 23–90. 10. Kaspar Maase, Was macht Populärkultur politisch? Wiesbaden 2010, 79–111. 11. Ibid., 79. 12. This definition is based on Tobias Becker and Johanna Niedbalski, “Die Metropole der tausend Freuden. Stadt und Vergnügungskultur um 1900,” in Tobias Becker, Anna Li mann, and Johanna Niedbalski (eds), Die tausend Freuden der Metropole. Vergnügungskultur um 1900, Bielefeld 2011, 7–20, here 13–15. The editors and authors of the aforementioned volume are concerned with analyzing entertainment through the perspective of the “spatial turn.” They focus on individual places, spaces and scenes of urban entertainment, make neighborhood and city comparisons, and inquire into transfer relationships. Paul Nolte defines entertainment culture as the “spheres of activity and institutions that emerged and expanded in the modern city at the end of the nineteenth century with the primary aim of providing their clientele or audiences with entertainment, amusement and diversion, o en in typically commercial forms.” Paul Nolte, “Verdoppelte Modernität. Metropolen und Netzwerke der Vergnügungskultur um 1900,” in idem, Die Vergnügungskultur der Großstadt, 1–11, here 4. 13. Karl Christian Führer, “Auf dem Weg zur ‘Massenkultur’? Kino und Rundfunk in der Weimarer Republik,” Historische Zeitschri 262 (1996), 739–781. 14. August Nitschke et al. (eds), Jahrhundertwende. Der Au ruch in die Moderne 1880–1930, 2 vols, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1990; Paul Nolte, “1900. Das Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts und der Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts in sozialgeschichtlicher Perspektive,” Geschichte in Wissenscha und Unterricht 47 (1996), 281–300. 15. Uebel, Viel Vergnügen, 7. 16. Ibid., 7–9. 17. Nolte, “Verdoppelte Modernität,” 8. 18. The concept of “inner urbanization” stems from Go fried Korff, “Mentalität und Kommunikation in der Großstadt. Berliner Notizen zur ‘inneren’ Urbanisierung,” in Theodor Kohlmann and Hermann Bausinger (eds), Großstadt. Aspekte empirischer Kulturforschung, Berlin 1985, 343–361. 19. For more detail, see chapter 11. 20. Hochmuth and Niedbalski, “Kiezvergnügen in der Metropole.” 21. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice, Cambridge 1984 [1979]. 22. Peter Jelavich, “Wie ‘jüdisch’ war das Theater im Berlin der Jahrhundertwende?” in Becker, Li mann, and Niedbalski, Die tausend Freuden der Metropole, 87–104. 23. Paul Nolte, “Ausblick,” in Morat et al., Weltstadtvergnügen, 235 f. 24. Sacha Szabo (ed.), Kultur des Vergnügens. Kirmes und Freizeitparks—Schausteller und Fahrgeschä e. Face en nicht-alltäglicher Orte, Bielefeld 2009. 25. Winfried Gebhardt, “Gemeinscha en ohne Gemeinscha . Über situative Event-Vergemeinscha ung,” in Ronald Hitzler, Anne Honer, and Michaela Pfadenhauer (eds), Posttraditionale Gemeinscha en. Theoretische und ethnografische Erkundungen, Wiesbaden 2008, 202–213. 26. Bodo Mrozek, “Verhaltenslehren des Vergnügens. Zur Zeitgeschichte der Party,” Zeitschri für Ideengeschichte 9 (2015) no. 4, 20–30. 27. Bahrdt, Die moderne Großstadt. 28. On the influence of “mass culture” on the layout of the industrial suburb, see Wolfgang Maderthaner and Lutz Musner, “Die Logik der Transgression. Masse, Kultur und Politik im Wiener Fin-de-Siècle,” in Roman Horak et al. (eds), Metropole Wien. Texturen der Moderne, vol. 1, Vienna 2000, 97–168, here 99 f.

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29. Axel Schildt, “Der Beginn des Fernsehzeitalters. Ein neues Massenmedium setzt sich durch,” in Axel Schildt and Arnold Sywo ek (eds), Modernisierung im Wiederau au. Die westdeutsche Gesellscha der 50er Jahre, Bonn 1993, 477–492. 30. Lemke, Vor der Mauer, 483–509. 31. Ibid., 20. 32. Hochmuth, “Eine Brücke zwischen Ost und West,” 200. 33. Simone Barck, Christoph Classen, and Thomas Heimann, “The Fe ered Media: Controlling Public Debate,” in Konrad H. Jarausch (ed.), Dictatorship as Experience, New York 1999, 213–230, esp. 223. 34. Michael Meyen, Hauptsache Unterhaltung. Mediennutzung und Medienbewertung in Deutschland in den 50er Jahren, Münster 2001; Wolfgang Mühl-Benninghaus, Unterhaltung als Eigensinn. Eine ostdeutsche Mediengeschichte, Frankfurt am Main 2012. 35. See, e.g., Knut Hickethier in collaboration with Peter Hoff, Geschichte des deutschen Fernsehens, Stu gart 1998; Meyen, Denver Clan und Neues Deutschland. 36. Klaus Nathaus, “Turning Values into Revenue: The Markets and the Field of Popular Music in the US, the UK and West Germany (1940s to 1980s),” Historical Social Research 36 (2011) no. 3, 136–162. 37. Detlef Siegfried, Time Is on My Side. Konsum und Politik in der westdeutschen Jugendkultur der 60er Jahre, Gö ingen 2006. 38. Rainer Winter, “Spielräume des Vergnügens und der Interpretation. Cultural Studies und die kritische Analyse des Populären,” in Jan Engelmann (ed.), Die kleinen Unterschiede. Der Cultural Studies-Reader, Frankfurt am Main 1999, 35–48, here 41. 39. Poiger, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels. 40. Quoted in Gunther Holzweissig, “Massenmedien in der DDR,” in Jürgen Wilke (ed.), Mediengeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn 1999, 573–601, here 589. 41. Dorothee Wierling, “Die Jugend als innerer Feind. Konflikte in der Erziehungsdiktatur der sechziger Jahre,” in Hartmut Kaelble, Jürgen Kocka, and Hartmut Zwahr (eds), Sozialgeschichte der DDR, Stu gart 1994, 404–425. 42. Kaspar Maase, Populärkultur, 79–111. 43. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Au lärung. Philosophische Fragmente, Frankfurt am Main 1988 [1947]. 44. See, e.g., Patrick Merziger, Nationalsozialistische Satire und “Deutscher Humor”. Politische Bedeutung und Öffentlichkeit populärer Unterhaltung 1931–1945, Stu gart 2010. 45. Radio in the American Sector (RIAS) played an especially important role in this ba le of the media. See Bernd Stöver, “Radio mit kalkuliertem Risiko. Der RIAS als US-Sender für die DDR 1946-1961,” in Klaus Arnold and Christoph Classen (eds), Zwischen Pop und Propaganda. Radio in der DDR, Berlin 2004, 209–228. More generally on the role of mass media in a world of competing systems, see Thomas Lindenberger, “Geteilte Welt, geteilter Himmel? Der Kalte Krieg und die Massenmedien in gesellscha sgeschichtlicher Perspektive,” in Arnold and Classen, Zwischen Pop und Propaganda, 27–44, as well as the contributions in Thomas Lindenberger (ed.), Massenmedien im Kalten Krieg. Akteure, Bilder, Resonanzen, Cologne 2006. 46. Ulrike Häußer and Marcus Merkel, “Wie in der DDR gefeiert, gelacht und gespielt wurde,” in idem, Vergnügen in der DDR, 14–18. 47. Stefan Zahlmann, “Vergnügen in der DDR. Oder: Unvereinbarkeit als Möglichkeit,” in Häußer and Merkel, Vergnügen in der DDR, 9–13, here 11. 48. Andreas Stirn, Traumschiffe des Sozialismus. Die Geschichte der DDR-Urlauberschiffe 1953– 1990, Berlin 2010. 49. Kochan, Blauer Würger.

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50. Kuschel, Schwarzhörer, Schwarzseher und heimliche Leser; Schildt, “Zwei Staaten—eine Rundfunk- und Fernsehnation.” 51. Hochmuth, “Feindbild und Leitbild.” 52. The district of Dresden, where there was virtually no reception of Western television, had more applications for emigration than anywhere else in the GDR. Stefan Wolle argues by implication that the possibility of “mental emigration” every night in the rest of the GDR may very well have helped stabilize these regions. Stefan Wolle, “Der Traum vom Westen. Wahrnehmungen der bundesdeutschen Gesellscha in der DDR,” in Konrad Jarausch and Martin Sabrow (eds), Weg in den Untergang. Der innere Zerfall der DDR, Gö ingen 1999, 195–212, here 200. See also Michael Meyen, “Geistige Grenzgänger. Medien und die deutsche Teilung. Ein Beitrag zur Kommunikationsgeschichte der ersten beiden Nachkriegsjahrzehnte,” Jahrbuch für Kommunikationsgeschichte 1 (1999), 192–231; idem, “Kollektive Ausreise?” 53. Wolfgang Mühl-Benninghaus, “Medienpolitische Probleme,” in Heide Riedel (ed.), “Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit . . .”. 40 Jahre DDR-Medien, Berlin 1993, 9–20; Franca Wolff, Glasnost erst kurz vor Sendeschluss. Die letzten Jahre des DDR-Fernsehens (1985-1989/90), Cologne 2003, 118. 54. Dorothee Wierling, Geboren im Jahr Eins. Der Jahrgang 1949 in der DDR. Versuch einer Kollektivbiographie, Berlin 2002, 148 f. 55. Kuschel, Schwarzhörer, Schwarzseher und heimliche Leser, 9. 56. Poiger, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels. 57. Kaspar Maase, BRAVO Amerika. Erkundungen zur Jugendkultur der Bundesrepublik in den fünfziger Jahren, Hamburg 1992. 58. Konrad H. Jarausch (ed.), Das Ende der Zuversicht? Die siebziger Jahre als Geschichte, Göttingen 2008; Anselm Doering-Manteuffel and Lutz Raphael, Nach dem Boom. Perspektiven auf die Zeitgeschichte seit 1970, Gö ingen 2008. 59. Sina Fabian, Boom in der Krise. Konsum, Tourismus, Autofahren in Westdeutschland und Großbritannien 1970–1990, Gö ingen 2016.

Chapter 11

NEIGHBORHOOD ENTERTAINMENT: FRUCHTSTRASSE TAVERNS

( There was no need to go to Friedrichstrasse to have a good time in Berlin in 1900. A wide range of entertainment was available locally to the residents of lower-middle-class and proletarian neighborhoods, entertainment that directly catered to them. This Kiezvergnügen,1 or neighborhood entertainment, was an integral part of metropolitan culture during the “long turn of the century”2 from the founder’s era to the Weimar Republic. It had a formative influence on the recreational habits of the masses in Berlin and their understanding of entertainment and culture. Yet modern urban entertainment was more than just “mass culture,” and entertainment culture, like life in tenement buildings, was not solely characterized by urban anonymity. Many of the entertainment establishments in working-class parts of town had a familiar, neighborhood feel to them and clearly catered to the needs and predilections of specific social-moral milieus. There were places of entertainment that were more socially heterogeneous. Larger cinemas and variety theaters, for example, were places of social encounter and hence places of local mass entertainment across class lines. Others reflected and reproduced social differences. Most of the bars and “fleapit” cinemas in the neighborhood were of this sort. People mostly stuck to their own kind here, though social differences could have an effect on the reception and appropriation of entertainment. Both tendencies, social inclusion and social segregation, existed alongside each other in Berlin tenement neighborhoods into the 1930s.3 Local, neighborhood entertainment—one aspect of metropolitan entertainment4 around the turn of the twentieth century—was surprisingly varied. It included restaurants, cafés and bars, dance halls and beer gardens, cinemas and theaters, variety shows and concerts, circuses and fairs, street processions and courtyard festivals, club and family celebrations, and as of the 1920s radio. The majority of these entertainments were characterNotes for this chapter begin on page 236.

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ized by a commercial orientation and a marked multifunctionality. The local bar scene, the subject of the next section, was representative of this.

The Tavern Survey of the SAG Entertainment Commission Bars were an integral component of the neighborhood entertainment that existed in many areas of Berlin around 1900. Whereas the history of bar culture in other neighborhoods has only been preserved in fragments and has barely been the subject of scholarly research,5 it is particularly well documented in Stralauer Viertel. This is mainly thanks to contemporary studies conducted by the Social Working Group of Eastern Berlin (SAG), whose ethnographic investigations are a unique source on the history of everyday life in eastern Berlin.6 The SAG aimed to spread Christian evangelical standards of coexistence and to bring culture to uneducated workers in eastern Berlin, especially by endeavoring to offer its young proletarian residents opportunities for a “moral community life” (si liches Gemeinscha sleben). In order to get young workers on the straight and narrow, Protestant pastor Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze (1885–1969) moved to the neighborhood himself and used the SAG to conduct empirical investigations about life in Stralauer Viertel.7 Several commissions were formed for this purpose, each dealing with an important area of life of the locals. The SAG’s so-called entertainment commission (Vergnügungskommission) was meant to investigate the recreational habits of workers in Stralauer Viertel. Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze developed an elaborate research concept, comprising the whole panorama of contemporary urban entertainment: • Eating and drinking establishments [Lokale] ◦ For socializing: cafés with and without music, cafés with dancing, cafés with cabaret, bars, wine bars with cabaret (dance floors), dance halls ◦ Clandestine: hostess bars, homosexual cafés and dance halls, cocaine dens • Cinema and theater performances ◦ Cinema, cinema with stage shows, revues, variety theaters and cabaret, theater (Rose, Residence and Wallner), concerts, misc. performances: sports, etc. • Fairs [Rummelpläĵe] • Festivals and celebrations ◦ Family celebrations: baptisms, confirmations, engagements, weddings, funerals, youth initiation [ Jugendweihe], birthdays, Christmas, New Year’s

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◦ Club

•

•

• • • •

celebrations [Vereinsfeste]: political organizations (Reichsbanner, Red Front, parties), savings clubs, bowling clubs, choral societies, theater clubs, gymnastics clubs, swimming clubs, social clubs ◦ Courtyard festivals (harvest festivals), allotment-garden festivals ◦ Excursions, gentlemen’s outings, swimming outings, Zoo, Kreuzberg, Tempelhofer Feld Stralauer Fischzug, etc. ◦  ◦ Religious festivals (cf. church commission) ◦ Occasional festivals, specific anniversaries, topping-out ceremonies, business deals Street entertainment ◦ Traveling salesmen: food (ice-cream, sausage, waffles, etc.), sleight of hand [Nepp] (fortunetelling, horoscopes, magicians, toys, etc.) Touting, advertising, etc. ◦  Courtyard entertainment ◦ Music: recitals (cabaret character, with and without music), vocal, instrumental: organ, harmonium, accordion (bandoneon), harmonica, violin, cello, guitar, mandolin, harp, horn, jazz, one-man orchestra, individual or group performances ◦ Touts: hawkers, repairmen, criers (political or other announcements) ◦ Performances: animal impersonators, athletic performances: acrobatics, expanders, etc. Radio ◦ Contact the post office Be ing offices/racing Confectionaries Children and their games ◦ Street games (tag [Verwechselt, verwechselt das Bäumelein], Baltic Sea dunes [Ostseedünen], sand games between stones, etc.), contact schools, find out more through school essays.8

The scholarly objectives and the mixture of methods underpinning the investigation are impressive. First they would gather material, then arrange it according to statistical and sociological criteria, and finally supplement this with qualitative milieu descriptions. To be sure, the entertainment commission was unable to fully implement this ambitious concept, but it did carry out some detailed substudies on select areas of entertainment in eastern Berlin, providing us with a unique ethnographic source. These studies were strongly marked by a paternalistic, bourgeois perspective, as Jens Wietschorke has pointed out:

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the prevention and improvement strategy of the SAG and hence its a endant rejection from a culture-critical perspective of the lived-in proletarian world thwarted a genuine, existentially felt understanding and fascination with everyday life in the east [of Berlin]. They felt a passion for their “neighbor” without the fascination of the “other.” The “therapeutic gaze,” as it were, held the “ethnographic” one in check.9

In any case, the evangelical ethnographers from the SAG were very precise observers, meticulously and systematically noting their impressions of eastern Berlin. Their results are interesting not only for the history of urban and social research10 but, whatever their merits or demerits as sources, are also unique documents of the social and cultural history of Berlin. This is especially true of the detailed tavern surveys conducted by the SAG entertainment commission in Stralauer Viertel.11 The SAG had its headquarters on Fruchtstrasse 62–63, hence the street is particularly well documented.12 In the winter of 1924–25, a group of theology students disguised as blue-collar workers were sent on assignment by Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze to pay a visit to every bar on Fruchtstrasse and record their impressions in handwri en notes. They later did a statistical analysis of their observations and mapped out the street in detail (Map 11.1).13 Their reports contained notes on the brand of beer served, the price of nonalcoholic beverages, as well as on the size and type of the bar and its respective clientele,14 thus bearing testimony to the social topography of taverns in Stralauer Viertel.

The Social Topography of Taverns in Stralauer Viertel The cityscape of turn-of-the-century Berlin was marked by countless corner bars and other eating and drinking establishments.15 The SAG tavern survey recorded the existence of thirty-two such establishments on the half-mile stretch of Fruchtstrasse between Grosse Frankfurter Strasse and Mühlenstrasse. Using the address-book entries as a guide, there were 1,327 households living on Fruchtstrasse in 1925. With an average family size of three individuals, about four thousand people must have lived on the street, not counting night lodgers.16 Thus, there was one tavern for every 125 inhabitants.17 The capacity of individual bars varied considerably, however. The students conducting the survey counted on average no more than twenty-five seats per establishment, with all the bars on Fruchtstrasse having a total seating capacity of 796 people. The actual number of patrons, which the students also noted in their surveys, was consid-

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MAP 11.1. Taverns on Fruchtstrasse, hand-drawn map of the SAG Entertainment Commission (1924/25), Evangelical Central Archives in Berlin, EZA 626/II 29/7.

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erably under capacity, however. On their six-hour excursion through the taverns of Fruchtstrasse they counted a total of 294 customers, distributed relatively evenly across each individual establishment. Each one had an average of nine patrons, and surprisingly it made li le difference if the students went there at six in the evening or at midnight. Their comments on the social status of these patrons are especially revealing.18 Eight of the sixteen establishments given a specific classification were patronized exclusively by working-class and/or unemployed individuals. Only two of the establishments were characterized as solidly middle class. Finally, there were six taverns frequented by both a middleclass and a working-class clientele. This social mix corresponded precisely to the social profile of Fruchtstrasse.19 The type of establishment gives no clear indication of the social class that patronized it. The most frequent type, the “restaurants and breakfast rooms,” were sometimes purely proletarian and sometimes had a mixed crowd. This was also true of the eight so-called Gross-Destillationen, “big distilleries” or gin mills, that differed from the ordinary drinking establishments neither in terms of what they sold nor the number of people they could accommodate. Only the two middle-class establishments, well-located in corner buildings on Küstriner Platz and Mühlenstrasse, respectively, were unique in character, the one being dubbed a “restaurant-casino with billiards,” the other a “restaurant, alehouse and wine tavern.” Their patronage signified social distinction, whereas other bars were more socially heterogeneous. The taverns o en bore the names of the beer brand they exclusively served. This was a form of advertisement but also underscored the tavern owner’s dependence on Berlin’s big breweries, which usually provided all of the furnishings as well as the costly tap equipment.20 Taverns o en changed hands but usually didn’t shut down. Only during World War I did a large number of taverns in Stralauer Viertel close, the furnishings then being stored at the breweries. While the big beer halls did not survive the war, inflation and hyperinflation, being converted into movie theaters or making way for office buildings, many of the smaller taverns were able to weather the storm and go back to business as usual a er the war.21 The most popular types of beer were the bo om-fermented ones, brewed Bavarian-Bohemian style, which most Berlin breweries had specialized in since the late nineteenth century. Unlike traditional top-fermented wheat beer, pilsner beer was easier to tap, drink and bo le.22 The predominant beers on Fruchtstrasse were the bo om-fermented brands made by the large breweries whose facilities and cellars were very close by, on the loamy slopes leading up to the Barnim plateau.23 The most common brands were Patzenhofer, brewed on Landsberger Allee, Löwenbräu from Böhmi-

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s es Brauhaus on Friedenstrasse, and Engelhardt from nearby Stralau peninsula.24 Some taverns offered a wider range of alcoholic beverages. These included the three hostess bars on Fruchtstrasse.25 The SAG reports offered depictions of one called Eldorado on Fruchtstrasse 52, in which “two older female employees were scrounging cigare es and cordials and being very pushy” in an effort to get the bar’s patrons to drink as much as possible.26 The students observed four middle-class patrons, one of whom spent the lavish sum of 90 reichsmarks, but also three working-class teenagers apparently in search of their first sexual encounters. These findings are of a piece with the picture of Berlin’s hostess bars painted in 1928 by the “ethnographer of the dark side of Berlin,”27 Hans Ostwald (1873–1940). “It was not just men from the lower-middle classes who patronized such establishments. All classes and professions had their share of patrons at hostess bars.”28 People of different social classes evidently moved about freely at these particular establishments. The “lusty physical comingling” that neutralized social differences took place here in a semi-public se ing.29 Hostess bars were therefore part and parcel of the democratic nature of urban mass entertainment.30 But social differences nonetheless remained. Only the more moneyed, middle-class patrons usually had access to the so-called wine room, to which the hostesses could withdraw with their clients. Working-class patrons generally had to content themselves with the obligatory sofas in the seating area out front, and this only on their payday.31 But they, too, combined alcohol consumption with sexual pleasures. This was the cross-class entertainment that hostess bars offered despite spatial segregation. Sexual services were not limited to hostess bars, however. The whole of Stralauer Viertel was considered a den of prostitution.32

The Functions of Taverns The taverns of Fruchtstrasse fulfilled a variety of functions. This multifunctionality was not specific to eastern Berlin but was true of taverns in general. Ueli Gyr a ributes the following main functions to bars: first, as a place to make and stabilize social contacts and relationships; second, as a place of recreation, relaxation and distraction; and third, as a place of identity-forming and therapeutic group- and self-orientation.33 All of these characteristics apply to Fruchtstrasse, and another might be added: given the particularly cramped living conditions in eastern Berlin, bars served as an “extended living room” and a refuge from a dreary reality. Werner Sombart (1863–1941) described this in his study on the proletariat:

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coziness and homeyness [Heimlichkeit und Heimischsein] stop here; here where in the summertime through open windows—for no one can bear to be in these rooms with windows closed, what with all the cooking, washing and ironing going on there—here where all the gossip and bickering, all the cla ering, buzzing, whirring and humming of sewing and shoemakers’ machines, all the screams of children, all the thundering machinery of the courtyard factories, all the fumes and odors of the forty or fi y kitchens with their smell of tallow and their rancidness intrude, where no door can be opened without prying, envious or maliciously gleeful eyes peering in, here the home must seem like hell, the tavern or brothel like heaven by comparison.34

Sombart’s lumping together of taverns and brothels in his critique of tenement buildings suggests that bars were a refuge primarily for their male residents. The SAG studies revealed the same. Adult males made up the majority of patrons the students encountered on their evening fact-finding missions in the bars on Fruchtstrasse. Adult women only accounted for 18 percent. Apart from working, females had to run the household and look a er the children, while the men went out to bars to escape the confines of their homes.35 The SAG also established that 12 percent of the patrons were underage. Moreover, the students counted seventeen persons, male and female, who were visibly inebriated. Given their avowed interest in Christian evangelical missioning and social work, it was these findings that probably alarmed the members of the SAG the most. The bars on Fruchtstrasse also served as a contact point for the many migrants staying or living in Stralauer Viertel. This was true not only of the many young men and women from the eastern provinces of Prussia who sought a modicum of happiness as factory workers or maids in Berlin.36 Schlesischer Bahnhof was also a meeting point for the bulk of Polish migrants, many of whom lived close to the station, if the names in the address books can be taken as a guide.37 The neighborhood around the station also had a Chinese colony, known as the “yellow quarter.”38 For many people, especially Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Schlesischer Bahnhof was merely a stop on their way to America. In the 1880s it was the “immigrants’ station,” and the surrounding bars served as its waiting room.39 Confidence tricksters, pickpockets and bag-snatchers were o en lying in wait to swindle unsuspecting travelers. Countless pe y criminals peopled the bars of Stralauer Viertel, which were known as a hub of organized crime.40 In the politicized atmosphere of Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic, bars and taverns were also important political meeting points, especially for the labor movement, which organized itself in such establishments a er the passing of the Anti-Socialist Laws.41 Taverns boasted a mix of traditional forms of popular recreation with modern forms of polit-

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ical organization42 and offered the labor movement a sorely needed home. Numerous societies and organizations linked to Social Democracy were also heavily dependent on these taverns.43 Other bars served as meeting points for right-wing political movements. In late 1929 there were a good dozen Nazi hangouts and Sturm taverns in Friedrichshain. By 1932 there were twice as many, including Alte Fritz at Stralauer Tor, Stadtwappen at the corner of Koppenstrasse and Breslauer Strasse, and the notorious Keglerheim on Petersburger Strasse.44 For the owners of these taverns, political meetings meant a constant source of income—albeit with political consequences down the road for those hosting le -wing groups. A socalled Militärverbot, the prohibition on military personnel from entering certain establishments, was imposed on numerous bars during the German Empire.45 In eastern Berlin this meant the payment offices of Social Democratic electoral associations, where copies of Vorwärts and other socialdemocratic papers were available to the public. Such party taverns were regularly visited by plainclothes police investigators who recorded their observations.46 The conversations they listened in on were o en not overtly political.47 But taverns were a key place of political socialization. The bars and festival halls of Stralauer Viertel were multifunctional establishments, in other words. They were a core public space. And yet one function always occupied center stage: regardless of their social, national or political character, they were all places of entertainment and amusement. As documented by the SAG’s survey, they served the purposes of intoxication, pleasure-seeking and escaping from reality. In order to survive in the face of tough competition, tavern owners had to cater their entertainments to the needs of mostly local crowds and open themselves to an array of social groups. Certain social boundaries held sway, and yet there were a range of socially inclusive taverns and places of entertainment where class boundaries were more porous. The sheer number of establishments enabled almost everyone to participate in this form of entertainment, although going out to a bar clearly remained a maledominated activity. Bars were the quickest and easiest way for people in the neighborhood to amuse themselves. They were thus a basic unit of the entertainment topography of eastern Berlin. The taverns on Fruchtstrasse were supplemented by a vast ensemble of other entertainment places. There were several big festival halls in Stralauer Viertel that were used for political rallies and converted to large cinemas a er World War I.48 Added to this were a range of older, more established movie theaters and smaller cinemas mostly located along Grosse Frankfurter Strasse.49 The traditional Rose Theater was also found there, a local place of entertainment well known throughout the city for

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its folkloric stagings of theater classics and its spacious summer garden. Then came the Plaza, which opened in 1929 in the former Ostbahnhof at Küstriner Platz, reputedly the largest popular variety theater in the world with seating for up to three thousand people, who were promised “the greatest, most exquisite program at rock-bo om prices.”50 It also served as a popular venue for the Berlin labor movement and later as an opere a theater before the new Nazi authorities “Aryanized” the venue and its repertoire, using the Plaza as of 1938 as a variety theater of the staterun Strength Through Joy leisure organization, hosting stars such as Paul Lincke (1866–1946), Claire Waldoff (1884–1957) and the young Peter Frankenfeld (1913–79). The Plaza was closed in 1944 and soon therea er went up in flames in the street fighting around Küstriner Platz.51 The end of the war brought the end of this varied neighborhood entertainment in eastern Berlin, which had hitherto evinced a considerable continuity across changing regimes and political watersheds. In war-torn Stralauer Viertel, only a couple of bars were able to continue their prewar existence. Some of them survived till the end of the GDR despite forced nationalization, the expansion of home entertainment and widespread redevelopment. Most of the bars in Friedrichshain actually remained in private hands. In contrast to the diversification of bar culture in Kreuzberg, they tended to retain their traditional “Old Berlin” character, which is why they were especially a ractive to visitors from West Berlin. The plain home cooking at Pamela, a bar at the corner of Rotherstrasse and Lehmbru strasse in the Rudol iez section of Friedrichshain, drew countless West Berlin correspondents with its traditional knuckle of pork, beer and schnapps, and its quaint prewar charm.52 A piece of Old Berlin seemed to have been preserved in the East. The approximately 150 Friedrichshain taverns retained a number of their traditional functions during the GDR.53 The legendary Feuermelder (“Fire Alarm”) on Krossener Strasse 24, which Torsten Schulz immortalized in his novel Boxhagener Platz, continued a er the war to be a place where hawkers from the weekly market at Boxhagener Platz could take a break and warm themselves up in the colder months of the year.54 The Glühlampe (“Lightbulb”) on Rudolfstrasse had a similar function, with workers from the VEB NARVA lightbulb factory stopping in at shi changes. The clubrooms were still used by skat and soccer clubs as well as for family gatherings. In this sense, the taverns in Friedrichshain under state socialism continued to fulfill many of the functions that the old ones on Fruchtstrasse had had. In Kreuzberg, on the other hand, a completely new array of bars emerged, which will be the focus of the following chapter.

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Notes 1. The following depiction of Kiezvergnügen is based on a collaborative research project with Johanna Niedbalski. Hochmuth and Niedbalski, “Kiezvergnügen in der Metropole”; Johanna Niedbalski and Hanno Ho muth, “Kiez und Kneipe. Gastgewerbe und Vergnügungskultur im Berliner Osten um 1900,” in Nolte, Die Vergnügungskultur der Großstadt, Cologne 2016, 135–160. 2. Nolte, “1900. Das Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts und der Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts in sozialgeschichtlicher Perspektive.” 3. Hochmuth and Niedbalski, “Kiezvergnügen.” 4. Becker, Li mann, and Niedbalski, Die tausend Freuden der Metropole; Nolte, Die Vergnügungskultur der Großstadt; Morat et al., Weltstadtvergnügen. 5. A notable exception here is Uebel, Viel Vergnügen. 6. On SAG, see also chapter 4. 7. Similar se lement movements were common in industrial cities of Britain and the United States around the turn of the century with the aim of overcoming segregation, defusing social tensions through educational work, and ameliorating class struggle through hands-on charity. An important strategy here was “slumming,” descending into the “seamy side” of cities, o en in disguise. Seth Koven, Slumming. Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London, Princeton 2004. 8. EZA 626/II 20/4: Konzept der Vergnügungskommission. Unfortunately the document is undated. It is safe to assume that it was drawn up in the second half of the 1920s, since radio is listed as a separate activity. 9. Jens Wietschorke, “Stadt- und Sozialforschung in der Sozialen Arbeitsgemeinscha Berlin-Ost,” in Heinz-Elmar Tenorth et al. (eds), Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze. Ein Leben für Kirche, Wissenscha und soziale Arbeit, Stu gart 2007, 51–67, here 65. 10. The more recent scholarship of Rolf Lindner and Jens Wietschorke is guided by this epistemological interest. 11. The SAG questionnaires are now in the estate of Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze at the Evangelical Central Archives in Berlin: EZA 626/II 29/7. 12. For a detailed history of Fruchtstrasse in Friedrichshain, see chapter 4. 13. Dressing up as simple workers was a commonly used method around the turn of the century for blending into the unfamiliar world of others (usually the poor). The investigative journalist Hans Ostwald kept several costumes on him, just in case, on his sojourns into Berlin’s underbelly: Ralf Thies, Ethnograph des dunklen Berlin. Hans Ostwald und die “Großstadt-Dokumente” (1904-1908), Cologne 2006, 49. See also Rolf Lindner, “Ganz Unten. Ein Kapitel aus der Geschichte der Stadtforschung,” in Werner Michael Schwartz, Margarethe Szeless, and Lisa Wögenstein (eds), Ganz Unten. Die Entdeckung des Elends Wien, Berlin, London, Paris, New York, Ausstellungskatalog der gleichnamigen Ausstellung, Wien Museum Karlsplatz vom 14. Juni bis zum 28. Oktober 2007, Vienna 2007, 19–25. 14. Both studies investigating Fruchtstrasse are contained in EZA 626/II 29/7. Die Kneipen an der Fruchtstraße 1925. Eine Übersicht über die Kneipen der Fruchtstraße, Madaistraße und der Straße “Am Schles. Bahnhof” mit Plan, Beschreibung und Statistik von Hans Rücker, stud. theol., Heilbronn am Neckar. 15. In 1905, there were approximately four bars for every hundred families in Berlin. Manfred Hübner, Zwischen Alkohol und Abstinenz. Trinksi en und Alkoholfrage im deutschen Proletariat bis 1914, Berlin 1988, 108 f. 16. The 1925 census counted 108,900 households in Friedrichshain with a total of about 330,000 individuals. Thus, the average household was made up of three persons. Mielitz, “Eine soziale Studie über den Osten Berlins.”

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17. This figure was well above the Friedrichshain average of 209 inhabitants per bar in 1924, which you get by dividing the district’s 330,000 residents by the 1,574 establishments fully or partially licensed to serve alcohol. There were also 54 establishments serving only nonalcoholic beverages, which presumably included the so-called Kaffeeklappen run by the SAG—simple working-class eateries not serving alcohol—as well as 291 stores with liquor licenses. In all of Greater Berlin there were 246 inhabitants per bar in 1924. Dr. jur. Jason, “Kino-Theater und andere Vergnügungsstä en. Ein statistischer Überblick,” Reichsfilmbla no. 28, July 11, 1925, 13–14. Manfred Hübner, Zwischen Alkohol und Abstinenz, 108, offers different numbers, with an average of 129 inhabitants per bar in Old Berlin, albeit for the year 1907. He also provides corresponding figures for other German cities. 18. The students working for the SAG entertainment commission based their assessments of social class on their own educated middle-class perspective, looking down, as it were, on the clientele of these establishments. It is therefore all the more astonishing how nuanced and systematic their perception of eastern Berlin was, as recorded in their notes on Fruchtstrasse and its taverns. 19. On the social profile of Fruchtstrasse, see chapter 4. 20. Magnus Hirschfeld, Die Gurgel Berlins (Großstadtdokumente 41), Berlin, undated [ca. 1907–8], 37–38. See also the exhibition material “Gebraut und gesoffen” zur glei namigen Ausstellung im Heimatmuseum Friedri shain (1999), FHXB Ar iv des Museums Friedri shain-Kreuzberg. 21. Regina Hübner and Manfred Hübner, Trink, Brüderlein, trink. Illustrierte Kultur- und Sozialges i te deuts er Trinkgewohnheiten, Leipzig 2004, 194; Frank Freudenberg, Bier-Metropole Berlin. Bierges i te, Brauereien und Kneipen der Hauptstadt, Nuremberg 1996. 22. Gustav Stresemann, “Die Entwicklung des Berliner Flaschenbiergeschae s,” Ph.D. diss., Leipzig 1900, 1–4; Feustel, “Gebraut und gesoffen”; Theodor Constantin, AltBerliner Kneipen, Berlin 1989, 16. 23. The same was true of the numerous Kreuzberg breweries that sprang up on the Teltow plateau, the loamy soil there offering optimal conditions for extensive brewing and storage cellars. Uebel, Am Berg gebaut, 9. 24. Feustel, “Gebraut und gesoffen.” 25. Similar to the middle-class establishments, the hostess bars were located close to the two main thoroughfares, Mühlenstrasse and Grosse Frankfurter Strasse. Their convenient location presumably made them more a ractive for patrons from middle-class neighborhoods. 26. EZA 626/II 29/7: Die Kneipen an der Fruchtstraße 1925. The hostess bars mostly served wine and liqueur, seeing as these were the most profitable. 27. Thies, Ethnograph des dunklen Berlin. 28. Hans Ostwald, Das galante Berlin, Berlin-Grunewald, undated [1928], no pagination. See also Hirschfeld, Die Gurgel, 42–46. 29. Ulrich Linse, “‘Animierkneipen’ um 1900. Arbeitersexualität und bürgerli e Si enreform,” in Dagmar Ki (ed.), Kirmes, Kneipe, Kino. Arbeiterkultur im Ruhrgebiet zwis en Kommerz und Kontrolle (1850–1904), Paderborn 1992, 83–118. 30. Ibid., 105. See also Paul Thiel, Lokal-Termin in Alt-Berlin. Ein Streifzug dur Kneipen, Kaffeehäuser und Gartenrestaurants, Berlin 1988, 94. 31. And yet working-class patrons eagerly adopted the condescending tone of male superiority exhibited by middle-class patrons, viewing the hostesses as morally and social inferior. Linse, “Animierkneipen,” 96–100, 117. 32. Proeger (alias “Weka”), Stä en der Berliner Prostitution.

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33. Ueli Gyr, “Kneipen als städtische Soziotope. Zur Bedeutung und Erforschung von Kneipenkulturen,” Österreicherische Zeitschri für Volkskunde XLV/94 (1991), 97–116, here 101. 34. Werner Sombart, Das Proletariat, Frankfurt am Main 1906, 29 f. 35. Beier, “Leben in der Mietskaserne,” 251. 36. On maidservants, see Hitzer, Im Netz der Liebe. 37. Gröschner, “‘Heute prima rote Rüben,’” 130. 38. Yu-Dembski, Chinesen in Berlin, 20–26. 39. Demps, Der Schlesische Bahnhof in Berlin. 40. On organized crime in Stralauer Viertel, see chapter 4. 41. James S. Roberts, “Wirtshaus und Politik in der deutschen Arbeiterbewegung,” in Gerhard Huck (ed.), Sozialgeschichte der Freizeit. Untersuchungen zum Wandel der Alltagskultur in Deutschland, Wuppertal 1980, 123–139. 42. Ibid., 124. 43. Ibid., 129. This is why most Social Democrats rejected the radical temperance movement. Renouncing alcohol would have meant giving up a key meeting place. 44. Podewin, “Als Friedrichshain vor 80 Jahren umbenannt wurde,” 86. 45. Dobler, Von anderen Ufern, 20. 46. Documented in the Berlin State Archive: LArch A Pr. Br. Rep. 030 Tit. 94 Nr. 13502. For Hamburg, see Ri ard J. Evans, Kneipengesprä e im Kaiserrei . Die Stimmungsberi te der Hamburger Politis en Polizei 1892-1914, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1989; Frank Bös , “Zeitungsberi te im Alltagsgesprä : Mediennutzung, Medienwirkung und Kommunikation im Kaiserrei ,” Publizistik. Vierteljahreshe e für Kommunikationsfors ung 49 (2004), 319–336. 47. Political conversations in the narrow sense were only noted by these vigilance officers in about a quarter to a third of the taverns they visited. Armin Owzar, Reden ist Silber, S weigen ist Gold. Konfliktmanagement im Alltag des wilhelminis en Obrigkeitsstaats, Constance 2006, 335. 48. Niedbalski and Hochmuth, “Kiez und Kneipe,” 151. 49. For more detail, see Esther Sabelus and Jens Wietschorke, Die Welt im Licht. Kino im Berliner Osten 1900–1930, Berlin 2015. 50. Hochmuth and Niedbalski, “Kiezvergnügen,” 127–134. 51. Uebel, Eisenbahner, Artisten und Zeitungsmacher, 31–56. 52. Interview with Martin Wiebel (October 9, 2015). Wiebel (b. 1943) grew up on Rotherstrasse in Friedrichshain and following a successful career as a dramaturge with West German Broadcasting (WDR) moved back to the neighborhood in 1998, where he founded the non-profit association Kulturraum Zwinglikirche e. V., hosting a variety of events and exploring the history of the neighborhood. See Wiebel, East Side Story. 53. Pachmann, Stadtbezirk Friedrichshain, 59. 54. Abramowski, Boxhagen, 44–47; Podewin, Marx und Engels grüßen aus . . . Friedrichshain, 259.

Chapter 12

THE DIVERSIFICATION OF KREUZBERG BAR CULTURE

( Until the mid-twentieth century, entertainment culture in Kreuzberg was scarcely any different than in Friedrichshain.1 Kreuzberg, too, had countless bars and taverns. Some intersections had them at every corner. All of these bars were local in character and usually had a regular clientele hailing from the immediate vicinity. Like in Friedrichshain, however, there were a number of entertainment places with a wider appeal. One of them was Tivoli. Opened in 1829, its expansive beer gardens, brewery and roller coaster were bought by Schultheiss brewery in 1891.2 There was also the Berliner Bock brewery on Tempelhofer Berg, which likewise took advantage of the favorable soil conditions on the slopes of Teltow plateau, and which served sausages, Bockwurst, with its bock beer.3 Also well known was Neue Welt (“New World”) at Hasenheide park, with a large banquet hall and an extremely popular summer garden used for a range of festivals and concerts.4 Even in the nineteenth century the area around Kreuzberg was considered a center of entertainment for people of all classes. This was the main reason the newly formed district was given the name Kreuzberg in 1921,5 lending the impoverished district a positive association by linking it to these entertainment establishments. Li le changed at first in Kreuzberg’s entertainment culture during the Weimar Republic. In place of the popular Kaiser parade on BelleAlliance-Strasse (today’s Mehringdamm), there were political parades by competing parties. With the Nazi seizure of power, many places that had previously served as Sturm taverns were now transformed into torture chambers and wildcat concentration camps.6 Other taverns served as places of conspiratorial resistance.7 These developments notwithstanding, most Kreuzberg bars remained traditional places of day-to-day amusement, serving beer and corn schnapps with meatballs in an Old Berlin Notes for this chapter begin on page 250.

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ambience. This would only change in the postwar era, when the range of Kreuzberg bars noticeably expanded. Crucial factors here were Kreuzberg’s location in a “frontline city” and “outpost of freedom,” the abolition of the evening curfew in West Berlin in 1949 as a result of this,8 and the development of Kreuzberg into a center of the le -wing alternative scene. The new Kreuzberg counter-public spheres conquered the bars in the district. And the bars, for their part, made their own contribution to the proliferation of the “Kreuzberg myth” outside of Berlin.

The Leierkasten and Kreuzberg Bohemians It all started with the Kreuzberg art scandal. In late November 1960, artist Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern (1892–1982) and some of his painter colleagues were preparing an exhibition at Kreuzberg Town Hall. District councilmen from the CDU considered Schröder-Sonnenstern’s nudes pornographic and promptly had the paintings removed. In a show of solidarity with Schröder-Sonnenstern the other artists backed out of the exhibition, which threatened to fall through entirely. At this point junk dealer and painter-poet Kurt Mühlenhaupt (1921–2006) stepped in, offering to hang some of the pictures at his bar on the corner of Zossener Strasse and Baruther Strasse. This is how the Leierkasten (“Barrel Organ”) became an artists’ tavern.9 The impromptu show was a surprising hit for Mühlenhaupt’s bar, as Kreuzberg poet and Leierkasten regular Gerhard Kerfin (1935–2016) recalls: “A er just a year or two, the bar became the most popular, famous and well known artists’ and bohemian hangout in Germany.”10 Mühlenhaupt had only just recently opened the Leierkasten a er leasing the space in February 1960 from the Löwen-Böhmisch brewery in Neukölln as a project for his favorite artist’s model “Rosi” (Rosemarie Kendziora),11 who ran the bar with a girlfriend and offered her sexual services in an adjoining room.12 The bar had previously been called Bei Paule (“Paul’s Place”) and was a typical Berlin corner bar with three rooms, frequented mainly by printers from the industrial complex across the street and hosting the traditional initiation ceremony (Gautschfeier) for the journeymen who’d passed their examinations.13 The bar acquired a whole new character when it turned into the Leierkasten, including a new interior, which Mühlenhaupt brought with him from his nearby junk store on Blücherstrasse 11. The furnishings included an original Bacigalupo barrel organ, manufactured on Schönhauser Allee, which lent the bar its name. There was also a piano, a jukebox, and a couple of worn-out sofas, very

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popular among the regulars. The walls were crammed with works of art by Kurt and Willi Mühlenhaupt as well as by Schröder-Sonnenstern.14 The artsy design was continued on the facade outside, with verses by Paul Scheerbart (1863–1915) and Peter Hille (1854–1904). The building itself was a semi-ruin. The roof and upper floors were badly damaged from wartime bombings and missing their windows.15 Only the building’s first upper floor was occupied—by artists and waiters. This was good for the bar, since no other neighbors in the building would be disturbed by the frequent concerts.16 Habitués at the Leierkasten included journalists such as Hellmut Kotschenreuther, artists the likes of painter Artur Märchen (1932–2002) and neighborhood “characters” such as organ-maker Oskar Huth (1918– 91), who entertained customers almost every evening with his stories and piano interludes.17 Regular silent-movie screenings were also very popular. Even movie stars such as Brigi e Horney (1911–88), who had emigrated to the United States, patronized the bar and purchased for considerable sums pictures by Kurt Mühlenhaupt.18 The Leierkasten became a veritable tourist a raction and an important forerunner of the later Kreuzberg bar scene.19 More than a mere place of entertainment, however, it created its own local public sphere. In 1963 Mühlenhaupt began publishing his Biertrinkerblä er aus dem Leierkasten (Beer Drinkers’ Sketches from the Leierkasten) containing writings and drawings by his customers and friends. The third edition, in which Kreuzberg author Karl-Heinz Herwig (1932–90) parodied the human notion of God being gendered in his poem “Fräulein Jesus,” was confiscated by the police on charges of blasphemy and ultimately had to be pulped. Only five editions of the Biertrinkerblä er were published in the end,20 but the booklet would be an important precursor to subsequent bar publications in Kreuzberg.21 Kurt Mühlenhaupt had set a trend. A range of so-called Sperrmüllkneipen (“bulk-trash bars”) was soon to follow, all modeled a er the Leierkasten with its signature combination of art and junk.22 A second important artists’ tavern opened in Kreuzberg in September 1961, the Kleine Weltlaterne (“Li le World-Lantern”) on Kohlfurter Strasse.23 Its owner, Hertha Fiedler, had come to West Berlin from Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz) shortly before the Wall was built and took over the space from the parents of movie star Günter Pfitzmann. Her original plan was to open a hostess bar, but when an artist neighbor was looking for a place to exhibit his pictures she offered him her space. Hence the Kleine Weltlaterne became an artists’ tavern more by happenstance, and Hertha Fiedler a “matron of the arts.”24 Unlike the Leierkasten, the Kleine Weltlaterne went for a decidedly bourgeois atmosphere. Hertha Fiedler organized readings and a racted cer-

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tain members of the West Berlin literary scene, including writers Nicolas Born (1937–79) and F. C. Delius (b. 1943), as well as “idiot bards” Ingo Insterburg (b. 1934) and Karl Dall (1941–2020).25 The Leierkasten and the Kleine Weltlaterne were prototypical West Berlin artist hangouts, located smack dab in an old working-class neighborhood but living off their middle-class clientele. The mix of artists and regular customers was fairly balanced, at least to begin with, and the difference between them was fluid anyway. The bars were frequented by Kreuzberg bohemians with a marked affinity for critical realism in contrast to the abstract art found in the Charlo enburg scene.26 Another pioneer of Kreuzberg’s reputation as a haven of bohemian artists was the Zinke gallery on Oranienstrasse, which opened in 1959 and featured readings by the likes of Günter Grass (1927–2015), Johannes Bobrowski (1917–65) and Hermann Kant (1926–2016). The Kreuzberg art market on Blücherstrasse, organized by Kurt Mühlenhaupt, quickly took on the character of a public festival27 while Kreuzberg itself acquired the image of a “Berlin Montmartre.” The myth of Kreuzberg was in the making, as described by Barbara Lang: “Indeed, a social milieu developed in Kreuzberg during the 1960s giving rise to an unorthodox art scene and culture industry along with unconventional and antibourgeois lifestyles.”28 Geisterbahn (Ghost Train), a contemporary novel by Robert Wolfgang Schnell (1916–86), vividly portrayed this milieu, creating a literary monument to it.29 But the Kreuzberg art scene developed in other directions as well. In 1975, the former Bethany Deaconess Hospital was converted into an artists’ house, and a new center for nonconformist art was set up on Chamissoplatz.30 Artsy bars were a passing phenomenon, but nonetheless played an important role in the transformation of the bar scene in Kreuzberg. Heavily in debt, Kurt Mühlenhaupt gave up the Leierkasten at the end of 1966.31 Peter Böhm took it over, turning it into a bar for college students.32 From then on the Leierkasten served as a jazz bar where the who’s who of the radical le -wing scene would gather, including terrorists Andreas Baader (1943–77) and Thorwald Proll (b. 1941), and anarchist Peter Paul Zahl (1944–2011),33 who depicted the le -wing milieu in Kreuzberg in his picaresque novel Die Glücklichen (The Happy Ones).34 Numerous jazz and Dixieland bands played the Leierkasten before it was finally demolished in October 1980.35 The bar had been an institution in Kreuzberg’s entertainment culture and helped give the district the reputation of being West Berlin’s “party mile.” It is therefore no surprise to learn that the Bla schuss Brothers were among the many performers who had gone on stage at the Leierkasten,36 a band that would play a crucial role in propagating the Kreuzberg myth.

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“Kreuzberg Nights Are Long”: The Song of the Myth of Kreuzberg The Bla schuss Brothers (in German, Gebrüder Bla schuss) made their first appearance on West German television on October 23, 1978 on ZDF’s Hit Parade. Their song “Kreuzberger Nächte” (Kreuzberg Nights) reached No. 2 on the German singles chart, where it remained for a total of twentyfour weeks. More than just a breakthrough for the Bla schuss Brothers, the song established the image of Kreuzberg as an entertainment district with countless bars and no curfew. The track was wri en by Beppo Pohlmann (b. 1951), who formed the group in 1976 together with Jürgen von der Lippe (b. 1948), Hans Werner Olm (b. 1955) and three other band members.37 Pohlmann had wri en the first version in 1974.38 The more famous second version was wri en in 1978. Gebrüder Bla schuss: “Kreuzberger Nächte” (1978)39 Ich sitz schon seit ’ner Stunde ziemlich dumm allein an einem Kneipentisch herum. Ich trinke schnell, obwohl ich’s nicht vertrag. Weil ich weder volle noch leere Gläser mag. Da plötzlich setzen sich sechs Mann zu mir, und bestellen lautstark: “Bring ’Se mal drei Bier!” Ich seh’ schon doppelt und das aus gutem Grund, denn in Eckkneipen geht es nun mal rund. Kreuzberger Nächte sind lang Kreuzberger Nächte sind lang Erst fang ’se janz langsam an Aber dann Aber dann Jetzt fragt mich doch so’n Typ, ob ich studier. Ich sag: “Ja, Wirtscha spolitik, drum sitz ich hier.” Da sagt er, dass er von der Zeitung wär, und da wär er der Lokalredakteur. Ein Rentner ru : “Ihr solltet Euch was schäm’n.” Ein anderer meint, das läge alles am System. “Das ist so krank wie meine Leber,” sag ich barsch. Die zwölf Semester war’n doch nicht so ganz umsonst. Refrain Und wie immer erscheint dann diese Frau. Und bei der sind auch nicht nur die Augen blau. Ich sag: “Verschwinde, liebe Sünde, rasch von mir.

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In diesem Lied bleibt’s ausnahmsweise mal beim Bier.” Frühmorgens wach ich auf, sechzehn Uhr zehn. Die ganze Welt scheint sich um mich zu dreh’n. Nur im Magen fühle ich mich nicht so recht. Eins von den dreissig Bierchen gestern war wohl schlecht. Refrain (three times) The Bla schuss Brothers: “Kreuzberg Nights” (1978) Been si ing around like an idiot for an hour alone at a table in a bar. Been drinking fast even though I can’t hold it. Don’t like my glasses empty or full. Six men then come and sit down at my table, they order loud and clear: “Three beers!” I’m seeing double, and that’s no surprise, ’cause there’s never a dull moment in bars like these. Kreuzberg nights are long Kreuzberg nights are long They start off really slow But then But then Some guy asks if I’m a college student. I say, “Yes, an economics major, that’s why I’m si ing here.” He says he’s from the paper, the editor for local news. A retired man shouts, “Shame on you both!” Another one says it’s the system. “It’s as a sick as my liver,” I say and cut him short. I didn’t do twelve semesters for nothing. Refrain And like always this woman shows up. Blue-eyed and wasted. I say, “Buzz off, sweet sin, get ou a here. This song, for once, is all about beer.” I wake up early next morning, four-ten in the a ernoon. Whole world seems like it’s spinning. Just my stomach feels funny. One of those thirty beers I had must have been bad. Refrain (three times)

The song is a snapshot of the transformation of Kreuzberg bar culture. The grumbling old people are still around, the kind who once populated the

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working-class bars of eastern Berlin. But the long-term students are now there too, drowning their gloomy future prospects in alcohol and blaming “the system” for everything. Finally, there’s the local reporter, sniffing out the latest trends. By his own admission, Pohlmann wrote these characters from first-hand experience. As a student of German literature he had rented a one-room apartment for 60 deutschmarks a month in a rear building on Liegnitzer Strasse 16, almost all of the building’s young tenants having come from Osnabrück like him.40 Together they would go to the Uhrenkneipe (“Clock Bar”) next-door, on the corner of Liegnitzer Strasse and Reichenberger Strasse.41 The bar was frequented by students as well as by workers from nearby factories, which still existed in Kreuzberg at the time. Pohlmann depicts it as a typical Berlin corner bar, with the sole exception that it closed at midnight. It was here of all places that the song “Kreuzberg Nights” was born.42 The song was actually intended as a parody of a traditional drinking song and was rarely performed at Bla schuss Brothers concerts, at best as an encore and even then reluctantly. But when the group’s second album needed one more track, the song was added more or less at random. Its subsequent popularity came neither from sales of this 1978 album nor from the band’s numerous live appearances, but ultimately from radio play, when Radio Free Berlin (SFB) included “Kreuzberg Nights” in its heavy rotation. Only then were five thousand singles of the song produced, especially for jukeboxes, thus bringing the song full circle, back to the bars that are celebrated in its lyrics. In just a few weeks, twenty thousand EPs had sold in West Berlin. This qualified the song for the hit parade on ZDF, an invitation the Bla schuss Brothers originally turned down. But when the television station offered a fee of 3,000 deutschmarks, the band took up the offer and soon became a nationwide sensation. “Kreuzberg Nights” went on to sell over eight hundred thousand singles—and Pohlmann’s fate as a musician was sealed.43 The song had a lasting influence on the image of Kreuzberg in West Germany. The district’s claim to fame was now no longer just its Turks and squa ers but also its many bars. The song was well known in the GDR, too, by way of western media, as Pohlmann discovered a er 1990 during his many performances in former East Germany, where people knew the lyrics by heart and sang along.44 Granted, “Kreuzberg Nights” was interpreted differently there. East Germans perceived it as a freedom song, about a life lived free of surveillance and paternalism, and it ultimately gave rise to their idea of Kreuzberg as the “Wild West” of West Berlin. This was in stark contrast to the reaction in Kreuzberg itself, where the song was generally pooh-poohed.45 Le ist students bemoaned that the song had commercialized the neighborhood, and accused the Bla schuss

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Brothers of selling out Kreuzberg to capitalism. Pohlmann admits having not given much thought to this, but sees in the le ist critiques of his song a general skepticism towards mass culture and a curiously elitist form of status-quo thinking. The song simply didn’t reflect the consciously exclusive le -wing image of Kreuzberg, he says, because now suddenly everyone had their own notion of Kreuzberg.46 Kreuzberg’s fame outside of Berlin probably was in large part thanks to “Kreuzberg Nights.” It reinforced the myth of Kreuzberg47 by publicly depicting it as a hedonistic entertainment district, which in some ways it was, given the plethora of bars there. In this regard the song was a successful piece of mythmaking as well as a historic document of Kreuzberg’s entertainment culture, which was clearly in transition during the mid-1970s. Alongside socioeconomic and demographic changes affecting this old working-class district, the old traditional working-class bars were also disappearing and/or being discovered and taken over by new social groups, especially by the many young students living in the neighborhood’s old tenement buildings. For a while people of varied social backgrounds patronized the same establishments, giving rise to a unique class- and generation-spanning tavern public sphere. By the late 1970s, however, the Kreuzberg bar scene had increasingly diversified into various sub-public spheres. In addition to the traditional Old Berlin bars, a few of which are still in existence, there were now student bars,48 punk bars,49 gay and lesbian bars,50 as well as le -wing alternative bar collectives, which will be the focus of the following section.

“In a Broad Spectrum”: The Leftist Bar Collective at MehringHof “In a Broad Spectrum”—this was the upbeat anthem that the Kreuzberg band Pille Palle und die Ötterpötter dedicated to the le -wing alternative movement. The band, founded in 1978 by Michael Stein (1952–2007) and Jochen Staadt (b. 1950), wrote the song to celebrate not only the broad le -wing alternative spectrum and the threat of older ideals falling by the wayside, but also the place where le -wing ideals could ripen under the influence of alcohol: the “Spectrum” bar collective at MehringHof.51 From 1980 to 1984, Spectrum was the public and social core of the biggest and most prominent project of alternative self-governance in Kreuzberg, becoming the key gathering place for the West Berlin squa ers’ movement in 1981–82. As a self-governed bar collective, Spectrum conformed to the sociopolitical aims of MehringHof, but soon encountered the practical limits of its self-formulated ideals; it shut down in 1984, having become

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the victim of its own success. Spectrum is therefore a good example for describing the transformation of the Kreuzberg bar scene and the district’s character as a social laboratory. The Spectrum bar was originally founded in 1975 in Schöneberg.52 Four employees from a tavern called Liliom had lost their jobs when the establishment was boyco ed by regulars a er considerable price increases. They responded by opening up a bar of their own, leasing a space from Berliner Kindl brewery on Koburger Strasse. They called it Spectrum and ran it on a collective basis right from the very start. “Work without repression” was the main objective; any surpluses would go to support political activities.53 But the bar was in the red to begin with. Accounting was done from a shoebox, and taxes had to be estimated by the authorities.54 Regulars at the original Spectrum included parts of the Schöneberg spontaneist and anarchist scene. The collective was closely connected with Red Aid (Rote Hilfe), a le -wing prisoner support group, and made its back room available for conspiratorial meetings.55 It wasn’t long before the bar outgrew its premises and had to find a larger space, not to mention one where the neighbors wouldn’t complain. In 1979, the bar was contacted by a local self-governing adult-education center, the Schule für Erwachsenenbildung (SfE), that was planning to buy its own school building where adults without a high-school diploma could finish their formal schooling. The school was looking for potential partners with an interest in purchasing a disused factory on Gneisenaustrasse 2a in Kreuzberg, which the Berthold Type Foundry had put up for sale. The Wilhelmine industrial complex, where for almost a hundred years phototypese ing machines were produced, was 5,000 m2 (around 54,000 2), too big and too expensive for the school to buy on its own. Hence the Mehringhof Property Management Co. (MehringhofGrundstücksverwaltung GmbH) was born. Its seven founding members, apart from the school, included the le ist Self-Help Network, Sta buch publishing house, the Ästhetik und Kommunikation publishing house, the Mixed Media collective, a society for alternative medicine called the Gesundheitsladen, and finally the Spectrum bar.56 Despite pushback from the governing Kreuzberg SPD, which feared not least for the security of the district office located across the street and tried with every means at its disposal to block the sale of the complex, the purchase agreement with Berthold Type was signed in December 1979. The le ist project consortium acquired MehringHof, as it was subsequently known, for 1.75 million deutschmarks.57 The first projects, Spectrum among them, moved in in April 1980. The le -wing activists had trodden an unusual path in co-purchasing MehringHof. Unlike the UFA factory in Tempelhof not long before, Meh-

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ringHof was not occupied by squa ers but acquired legally in the framework of civil law. The seven founding members had to raise their own capital resources of 50,000 to 100,000 deutschmarks, supplemented by start-up loans offered by various sympathizers.58 The loans were to be repaid with the rental incomes from an additional twenty-five to thirty spaces being rented out to other projects aside from the principal partners. One such project was the Berlin History Workshop, which rented a space at the MehringHof complex from 1981 to 1983.59 The tenants’ association representing all of the projects was to gradually become a principal partner of MehringHof GmbH so that none of the founding members could siphon off their rental money. The alternative economy of MehringHof endeavored to socialize its property.60 The tenants’ association served at the same time as MehringHof’s self-administration. The plenary commi ee, which met every two weeks, monitored the repayment of loans, the (o en minimal) participation in self-administration, and compliance with the cleaning plan. It also decided on the admission of new tenants. The main criteria here were that the projects be organized collectively, did not make a profit, and were independent of state, church or other associations.61 The last item was particularly important to MehringHof activists, who were proud of their economic independence. Unlike many other le ist projects, they had no need to “kowtow” to the authorities for working space and subsidies.62 One of the blessings of private ownership was the unique protective space, barely subject to state control, that MehringHof offered to le -wing alternative activists63 who otherwise showed li le respect for the notion of private property. Ironically this went for squa ers as well, who could hold their meetings undisturbed at MehringHof and were granted asylum there when evicted from their squats.64 The 350 m2 (nearly 3,800 2) Spectrum was the main meeting point at MehringHof. The multifunctional bar served as a music venue, a beer temple and a political meeting place.65 Located on the ground floor of the first courtyard, the bar had a kind of gatekeeper function; anyone entering MehringHof had to pass by the bar first. Here’s where the activists from MehringHof would come when they finished their work, and where they planned their next activities. Collective self-administration was practiced in the bar as well. Once a week the fourteen-person collective would sit down for a plenary session to schedule shi s at the bar. The collective agreed on a uniform monthly wage of 1,200 deutschmarks, and adhered to it even when business was booming—on a normal day at Spectrum, four hundred liters of beer were served, six crates of wheat beer, and four crates of wine.66 This resulted in enormous surpluses, which went into legal and illegal le ist projects, being spent on solidarity with Nicaragua

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and benefiting a variety of le -wing activists.67 Spectrum proved to be a gold mine for the le -wing alternative milieu. The bar’s success brought problems in its wake, however. The minutes of a MehringHof plenary in June 1980 contained the following note: “Problem of Spectrum: the bar is too full, contact between MehringHof groups is becoming difficult; just as difficult is ge ing people to leave the bar and go home. . . . We’ll hold the next tenants’ meeting at Spectrum so that customers know the bar is not just a filling station.”68 Spectrum was intended to be a political place, a le -wing counter-public sphere, but was increasingly becoming an “alternative Ho räuhaus,” as Johann Georg Schabach from the bar collective recalls.69 The barkeepers seemed to lose control over the gigantic space. They feared the bar would blow up in their face if they insisted on their fi een-minute break and briefly stopped serving beer. The members of the bar collective felt more and more overwhelmed: Not that we weren’t willing to work hard, but at some point it was nothing but stress, and you were happy to just lock the door behind you at three in the morning. As if that weren’t enough, you opened the door and found them standing outside, whether people from the school or punks with plastic bags full of beer, wanting to come inside and warm up from the cold. You told them they could stay, but not to make such a mess all the time or to clean up a er themselves, and they’d tell you, sure thing, man, we totally agree, and then in the end you cleaned the puke up yourself again.70

A new generation in the le -wing alternative scene was evident here in the early 1980s. Most of the members of the bar collective had been socialized as hippies or as part of the protest generation of 1968 and felt increasingly helpless dealing with a younger crowd “in the age of squa ers and this era of punk.”71 Added to this were the increasing number of tourists coming to MehringHof, who even back then were eyed suspiciously by le -wing Kreuzberg activists.72 Finally, the members of the bar collective were put off by some of the other projects going on at MehringHof, which seemed too mainstream and social democratic to them.73 Following some changes in membership, the bar collective dissolved in 1984. The money that remained went to a housing project in Nicaragua, where a number of the former members of the collective withdrew temporarily.74 The success of the Spectrum bar had caught up with the collective and shown them that a good time for some meant a lot of work for others. The stress of running a business combined with a traditional le ist critique of the unpolitical forms of consumption they saw on a daily basis at the bar had prompted them to throw in the towel, the Spectrum ultimately capitulating in the face of the commercialization of le -wing alternative entertainment culture in Kreuzberg.

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But there were numerous other bar collectives in Kreuzberg.75 The Ex-Spectrum (referred to as “Ex” for short), run by fi een different barkeeper groups from various political contexts and alternative housing projects, soon took up the slack at MehringHof, opening at the very same location.76 Two further bar collectives were opened in the area of Chamissoplatz: Schlemihl on Arndtstrasse 25 and Godot on Willibald-AlexisStrasse 40.77 These establishments had in common their desire for a nonhierarchical management as well as their a empt to break the traditional dependency on big Berlin breweries. Instead of selling Berliner Kindl, they imported their beer directly from Franconia or other beer-brewing regions.78 Some brought entire truckloads of Rhine wine to Kreuzberg at their own expense in order to break the “beer monopoly” of Berlin bars.79 In culinary terms as well, the Kreuzberg bar collectives became more sophisticated. Thus, Italian spontaneists operated Osteria Nr. 1 on Kreuzbergstrasse 71, generally considered the first Italian restaurant in Kreuzberg, not to mention the first distribution point for the collectively run le -wing newspaper taz as of 1979.80 Finally, in the late 1980s, the first gay and lesbian bar collectives opened, among them Café Anal on Muskauer Strasse 193.81 The spectrum of collectively owned and operated bars had thus become more diverse over time. But the standard Old Berlin style of bar still existed in Kreuzberg as well. The traditional form of running a tavern, a self-employed barkeeper with several employees, also remained the norm here.82 But the Kreuzberg bar scene developed dynamically starting in the 1960s. Bohemian bars, with their mismatched furnishings salvaged from the trash, introduced a new style that was adopted by countless new student bars during the 1970s, bars which had a formative influence on Kreuzberg’s reputation for nightlife. Kreuzberg bars were not meant to be mere temples of entertainment, however; they had a political function too. The alternative milieu conceived of the bar as a le -wing counter-public sphere and a place where new and egalitarian forms of management were practiced. With its collectively run establishments, some of Kreuzberg’s bars were ultimately more collectivist than many bars in East Berlin, which remained a part of the traditional private sector despite widespread nationalization.

Notes 1. Still a standard work on entertainment culture in Kreuzberg: Uebel, Viel Vergnügen. 2. With yearly sales of 709,000 hectoliters (nearly 19 million gallons) in 1898, Schultheiss in Kreuzberg was Germany’s biggest brewery. Ibid., 26.

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3. Ibid., 32. 4. Lothar Uebel, Die Neue Welt an der Hasenheide. Über hundert Jahre Vergnügen und Politik, Berlin 1994. 5. Abramowski, Siedlungsgeschichte des Bezirks Friedrichshain, 6. 6. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 50. 7. Uebel, Viel Vergnügen, 59–65. 8. Curfew in the three Western zones was abolished on June 20, 1949 by order of the Allied Control Council with the aim of promoting the restaurant and tavern industry and making West Berlin a more a ractive location in the competition between systems. The curfew in the Soviet sector had successively been expanded to midnight prior to this. The American and French commandants did not want to lag behind the Soviets. And so the curfew in West Berlin was abolished entirely, against the objections of the British. Ro , Die Insel, 53 f. 9. Interview with Hugo Hoffmann (May 9, 2015). Hoffmann (b. 1947) was one of Kurt Mühlenhaupt’s key collaborators and a regular at the Leierkasten. 10. Gerhard Kerfin, “Bohème, Begriff und Entwicklung,” Neuenburger Nachrichten. Kleine Zeitschri für Kiez und Kultur, no. 8, April 1, 2015, 10–12, here 10. 11. Gerhard Kerfin, “Der Kreuzberger Leierkasten,” Neuenburger Nachrichten. Kleine Zeitschri für Kiez und Kultur, no. 8, April 1, 2015, 1–6. 12. At least according to the recollections of Peter O. Chotjewitz, quoted in Dobler, Von anderen Ufern, 266. 13. Interview with Hugo Hoffmann (May 9, 2015). 14. For a description of the Leierkasten, see Chris Frey, “Erinnerungen an die Kreuzberger Künstlerkneipe Leierkasten,” Neuenburger Nachrichten. Kleine Zeitschri für Kiez und Kultur, no. 8, April 1, 2015, 7–8; Kerfin, “Der Kreuzberger Leierkasten,” 3. 15. Kerfin, “Der Kreuzberger Leierkasten,” 1. 16. Frey, “Erinnerungen an die Kreuzberger Künstlerkneipe Leierkasten,” 7. 17. Berliner Morgenpost, October 19, 1980, 11. 18. Kerfin, “Der Kreuzberger Leierkasten,” 4. 19. Uebel, Viel Vergnügen, 66. 20. Schwartzkopff-Lorenz, “Kurt Mühlenhaupt,” 160 f.; Kerfin, “Der Kreuzberger Leierkasten,” 5. 21. These included Kreuzberger Chronik, published as of 1998 by Hans W. Korfmann, and the newspaper Kiez und Kneipe, appearing since 2004. 22. Interview with Hugo Hoffmann (May 9, 2015). On the bulk-trash furnishings of trendy le -wing bars in the 1970s and 1980s, see Reichardt, Authentizität und Gemeinscha , 576. 23. Kerfin, “Der Kreuzberger Leierkasten,” 3. 24. Interview with Hugo Hoffmann (May 9, 2015). 25. Kerfin, “Bohème,” 11. 26. Schwartzkopff-Lorenz, “Kurt Mühlenhaupt,” 39. 27. Ibid., 36; Kerfin, “Bohème,” 12. 28. Lang, Mythos Kreuzberg, 114. 29. Robert Wolfgang Schnell, Geisterbahn—Kreuzberger Ballade, Darmstadt 1973 [1964]. 30. Interview with Hugo Hoffmann (May 9, 2015). In order to get a studio space in the newly created Künstlerhaus, Hugo Hoffmann and Gerhard Kerfin founded the Kreuzberger Künstlerkreis (Kreuzberg Artists’ Circle) in 1975 at the suggestion of Kurt Mühlenhaupt. Kerfin, “Bohème,” 11. On the art scene at Chamissoplatz, see chapter 5 in this volume. 31. In 1979, the Kleine Weltlaterne moved to Nestorstrasse in Wilmersdorf. The original location on Kohlfurter Strasse now houses a Greek restaurant by the name of Kreuzberger

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32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39.

40. 41.

42. 43.

44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51.

52. 53. 54. 55.

Weltlaterne. The second generation of bohemian and artists’ bars in Kreuzberg from the mid-1970s included Nulpe on the corner of Grossbeerenstrasse and Hornstrasse as well as Yorckschlösschen on Yorckstrasse, which still exists today. Kerfin, “Bohème,” 12. Kerfin, “Der Kreuzberger Leierkasten,” 5. Interview with Hugo Hoffmann (May 9, 2015). Peter Paul Zahl, Die Glücklichen. Schelmenroman, Berlin 1979. Berliner Morgenpost, October 19, 1980, 11. Frey, “Erinnerungen an die Kreuzberger Künstlerkneipe Leierkasten,” 7. The Bla schuss Brothers broke up in 1983. Since 1988, Beppo Pohlmann has continued the group as a duo with Kalle Ricken. See h p://www.beppo-pohlmann.de (accessed April 15, 2016). Interview with Beppo Pohlmann (May 6, 2015). Kreuzberger Nächte sind lang (original). Text and music: Beppo Pohlmann, © 1977 by Sinus Musikverlag Hans-Ulrich Weigel GmbH, Berlin. Reprinted with permission. The lyrics of the second version and a live performance on ZDF from October 30, 1978 are available on YouTube: h ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKaIehw4ItY (accessed April 15, 2016). “Chain migration” of this sort was typical for young people moving to West Berlin. The bar was actually called Alt Berlin (Old Berlin) but was usually referred to as the “Clock Bar,” on account of its being filled with old grandfather clocks that barman Martin Bonnet collected. The establishment existed until 2012, when it was demolished to build a “car lo ”—an apartment building allowing you to take your car into your apartment. See h p://www.beppo-pohlmann.de/liegnitzerstrasse.htm (April 15, 2016). Interview with Beppo Pohlmann (May 6, 2015). Even today Pohlmann, by his own admission, can live off the royalties from the song, though he sometimes can’t even stand to hear it. Interview with Beppo Pohlmann (May 6, 2015). Prior to 1989 Pohlmann had only been in East Berlin twice. Pressed for a reason, he explained that he had never been interested in the East and never seriously questioned the existence of the GDR. Interview with Beppo Pohlmann (May 6, 2015). Pohlmann moved away in 1978, to the neighborhood of Wilmersdorf. Interview with Beppo Pohlmann (May 6, 2015). Lang, Mythos Kreuzberg, 116. See, with a multitude of period photos, Hans-Werner Klünner, Berlin und seine Kneipen, Berlin 1981, 76–79; Reichardt, Authentizität und Gemeinscha , 572–583. Müller, Subkultur Westberlin, 101 f. See esp. Dobler, Von anderen Ufern, 269–291. On more recent developments in gay and lesbian bars and clubs in Kreuzberg a er 1990, see Holger Brühns and Jürgen Frohmaier (eds), Olfen. Reise ins internationale Freundscha slager, Berlin 2010. On MehringHof, see Elisabeth Bolda, Rainer Nitsche, and Jochen Staadt (eds), Der Mehringhof. Ein unmöglicher Betrieb, Berlin 1988. The song’s lyrics are reprinted on p. 100. The band itself still has a practice space at MehringHof. On this and the following, see the self-portrayals of “Hansi” and “Paul” in Bolda et al., Der Mehringhof, 98 f. Ibid., 99. The bar collective had to learn the hard way, having all its beverage deliveries invoiced rather than procuring some under the counter as customarily practiced. Ibid. Red Aid, founded in 1975, had close ties to the recently established Communist Party of Germany/Marxists-Leninists (KPD/ML) and supported le ist activists in the 1970s and 1980s who ran afoul of the law in Germany. Helmut Pollähne, “Rote Hilfe(n). Hilfe für

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56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64. 65. 66. 67.

68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76.

77.

78. 79. 80.

die RAF und/oder gegen die Justiz?” in Volker Friedrich Drecktrah (ed.), Die RAF und die Justiz. Nachwirkungen des “Deutschen Herbstes”, Munich 2010, 139–170. Bolda et al., Der Mehringhof, 7. Ibid., 10. Though the entrance to MehringHof was actually on Gneisenaustrasse, the adjacent street, Mehringdamm, named a er Berlin Social Democrat Franz Mehring (1846–1919), offered the le ist consortium more positive points of reference than the Prussian general August Neidhardt von Gneisenau (1760–1831). Bolda et al., Der Mehringhof, 21. On the Berlin History Workshop, see chapter 5. Mehringhof, Die Broschüre, Berlin 1983, 13. Ibid., 8. Bolda et al., Der Mehringhof, 34. MehringHof was nonetheless searched by police several times during the 1980s. The most serious police intervention occurred on May 1, 1987, when the office of census opponents was searched, directly provoking the May Day riots in Kreuzberg that same day. Even in 1990, the squa ers on Mainzer Strasse found refuge at MehringHof a er their eviction. See the later MehringHof brochure of 1999. On the multifunctionality of le -wing alternative bars in general, see Reichardt, Authentizität und Gemeinscha , 575. Bolda et al., Der Mehringhof, 107. Interview with Johann Georg Schabach (May 8, 2015). “Hansi” Schabach (b. 1948) was a member of the Spectrum bar collective from 1980 to 1984 and ran Ma o bar at Chamissoplatz from 1998 to 2006. Quoted in Mehringhof, Die Broschüre, 19. Interview with Johann Georg Schabach (May 8, 2015). Quoted in Bolda et al., Der Mehringhof, 106. Ibid., 105. Ibid., 24, 112. The collective’s criticisms were mainly aimed at the Self-Help Network, which since the early 1980s had been offering sightseeing tours of alternative life in Berlin. Interview with Johann Georg Schabach (May 8, 2015). The first bar collectives in Kreuzberg existed as far back as 1968. They included the Schwarze Rose (“Black Rose”) on Reichenberger Strasse 47, which vehemently rejected “pseudole ist” bars like the Kleine Weltlaterne and the Leierkasten. Bolda et al., Der Mehringhof, 106 f. Ex shut down in 2001 a er two years of steady losses. The spokesman of the collective presumed at the time that bartenders were “generously providing their friends with free beer.” He also didn’t rule out the possibility “that one person or another was occasionally helping themselves to the cash register.” Berliner Zeitung, January 5, 2001. Since 2004 the location has been home to Clash, also run collectively. Schlemihl now houses the Haifischbar (“Shark Bar”), Godot was followed by the Bebob Bar, meanwhile out of business. The former Bistro Chamisso on WillibaldAlexis-Strasse 25, which had a cult following in the 1980s, reopened in 2016 under the name Peter Schlemihl. Interview with Johann Georg Schabach (May 8, 2015). Interview with Gabriele Klahr (December 10, 2015), who belonged to the Godot bar collective in the mid-1980s. On the early history of taz (a.k.a. tageszeitung), see the material and document collection on the ten-year anniversary of the paper: Mathias Bröckers (ed.), Die taz. Das Buch. Aktuelle Ewigkeitswerte aus zehn Jahren tageszeitung, Frankfurt am Main 1989.

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81. Wolfgang Müller, “Lokalrunde,” in Brühns and Frohmaier, Olfen. Reise ins internationale Freundscha slager, 22–31, 104–114, 182–186, here 112 f. 82. The number of bars and types of bar in Kreuzberg are hard to determine. Figures are only available for the whole of West Berlin, which in 1980 had about 5,500 beer bars. Klünner, Berlin und seine Kneipen, 66. Sven Reichardt offers the figure of 214 le ist bars in West Berlin. Reichardt, Authentizität und Gemeinscha , 579.

Chapter 13

FESTIVAL CULTURE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

( Well into the twentieth century most people in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg had li le income and li le free time. Prior to 1918, the mass of working people had a ten-hour workday and two weeks of vacation a year at best. In the period between the wars, many unemployed had no money to spend on pricey entertainment. An average working-class family in a big German city in 1927–28 had only 5.68 reichsmarks a month for books and newspapers, education, culture and the social activities of all family members combined.1 And yet—or precisely because of these limited means— eastern Berlin was a traditional place of entertainment. Social adversity and the need for distraction were directly related.2 But urban entertainment had more than just the effect of stabilizing the status quo, as le ist cultural critics o en claimed. City-dwellers created their own forms of entertainment—frequently in conflict with communal and state authorities. Moreover, urban entertainment provided many people with employment opportunities. Apart from job creation, modern entertainment served as an emancipatory space for ordinary people who exercised their power as consumers in a self-determined fashion.3 Taverns, cinemas and movie theaters were the main places of neighborhood entertainment.4 These fixed places of entertainment were supplemented by temporary ones. Apart from numerous itinerant carnivals and circuses touring from city to city, periodic festivals formed an integral part of local entertainment that gave the year a sense of structure. The range of festivals was considerable. Supposedly anonymous tenement buildings held regular courtyard festivals with a semi-public character and that all tenants were invited to a end. Numerous street festivals and block parties mobilized the entire neighborhood. There were also a number of festivals that a racted visitors from all of Berlin. By far the most popular public Notes for this chapter begin on page 272.

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festival in Berlin was the Stralauer Fischzug, the Stralau Fishermen’s Haul, with origins dating back to the sixteenth century.5 In the nineteenth century, the Stralauer Fischzug drew tens of thousands of Berliners to tiny Stralau peninsula, which back then was still located outside the city gates, only becoming a part of Friedrichshain in 1920. Used by the Nazis for their own political purposes,6 the procession was revived in East Berlin under the new socialist regime, as will be shown in the following.7 The socialist notion of folk traditions inevitably clashed with the traditional character of the Fischzug as a popular festival, however, prompting the regime to cancel it and integrate parts of it into the ND press festival (of which more below). The example of the press festival will show how the private entertainment needs of East Berliners were increasingly accommodated in the 1970s and 1980s while the political side of the festival became increasingly ritualized. Wholly different political aims were pursued in Kreuzberg, where several new street festivals were started at about the same time. But these festivals too were subject to the dynamics of entertainment culture, as I will a empt to show at the end of this section using the example of the Chamissoplatz festival, one of the major alternative street festivals in Kreuzberg during the 1980s.

Traditional Festival Culture: The Stralauer Fischzug The Stralauer Fischzug dates back to the year 1574. Elector Johann Georg (1525–98) declared St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24th, open season for fishing in the Spree, lasting until Easter. The event was marked by a set ritual. The first catch always went to the City Council of Berlin and the village pastor of Stralau; only the last haul of the day could be kept by local fishermen. In return, the City Council provided half a barrel of beer and a simple meal.8 The ritual developed over the centuries into a local public festival, even a racting the a ention of the Prussian royal family in the late eighteenth century. The heyday of the Stralauer Fischzug was during the Vormärz period, thanks in part to the popular descriptions of Adolf Glassbrenner (1810–76).9 In 1841, the festival a racted more than fi y thousand visitors, who amused themselves on the peninsula outside the gates of the city with picnics and plenty of alcohol.10 Despite a strong police and military presence, there were repeated instances of brawling, vandalism and lewd behavior. This resulted in the festival being prohibited in 1873 by the chief magistrate of Stralau. Industrialization had meanwhile altered the character of the peninsula. A summer retreat in the countryside had turned into a factory village.11

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During the 1920s, the Society for the Preservation of the Historical Fishermen’s Haul of Stralau endeavored to revive the popular festival. The first historical procession took place in Stralau in 1923.12 Nazi authorities built on this, using the Stralauer Fischzug for their own purposes as of 1935.13 For reasons of prestige, the capital of the Third Reich needed a traditional popular festival to use as a staging ground for the Nazi “national community,” or Volksgemeinscha . The Stralauer Fischzug would be used to invoke the manpower, motivation and military preparedness of the German people. Thus, the 1936 festival featured field exercises on both banks of the Spree. It was also an entertainment a raction on the sidelines of the Olympic Games of 1936.14 A historic procession with forty floats and fi y marching groups anticipated the celebrations of the 700-year anniversary of Berlin, completely ignoring the Slavic se lements predating this.15 In the subsequent anniversary celebrations of 1937 a total of 4,200 people took part in the historical pageant, more than half of them representing the era of the Third Reich. The Stralauer Fischzug was eventually discontinued during the war.16 It was revived again in 1954 in the context of the ensuing Cold War. East Berlin authorities used the festival tradition to appeal to the unity of the city while at the same time demonstrating its claim to cultural superiority. In contrast to the “Western entertainment industry,” they wanted to present the GDR as a state with cultured entertainment in which the “working population” avidly participated. The city’s cultural representatives put the focus on German folk traditions, reinterpreting the festival ideologically using elements of traditional folklore previously absent from it. The Stralauer Fischzug now included costume shows, folk dances, and demonstrations of traditional handicra s.17 The newly revived historical procession also fit well in the cultural concept of the SED.18 Thus, the parade from Strausberger Platz to Stralau on August 22, 1954 presented the development of society towards socialism from the perspective of Marxist historical theory. The heralds at the fore not only called out the procession itself but also underscored the feudal system in the form of fishing levies. In costumes borrowed from comic opera, the four hundred participants in the festival procession then represented the key historical stations on the path to socialism: Karl Marx’s stay in Stralau in 1837, the Berlin revolutionaries of 1848, the striking workers at the Stralau glassworks, and the Spartacist fighters of the November Revolution. The culmination were the floats of various Friedrichshain factories, demonstrating the achievements of socialism.19 Thousands of visitors from East and West Berlin were waiting in Stralau when the procession arrived there. But the refreshment stands only opened at 3 p.m., and by 5 p.m. they were sold out.20 The ferry service

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from Treptow and the Island of Youth did not work as planned either, making it hard to reach the peninsula.21 Even though over two hundred thousand people a ended the two-week festival, the debacle at the start prompted the municipal authorities of East Berlin to delegate responsibility for subsequent festivals to the district council of Friedrichshain.22 But the municipal district, too, was overwhelmed with the organization of the festival during the years to come. Organizers in the cultural department of Friedrichshain faced considerable difficulties planning the festival, which Cornelia Kühn summarized as follows: “They had to satisfy culture-political guidelines as well as the expectations of visitors, not to mention coping with the disinterest of the mass organizations and overworked factories and (factory) culture groups.”23 With the change in cultural policy in the late 1950s expectations diverged even further. The Stralauer Fischzug was referred to as a “socialist cultural festival” as of 1958 in the context of the Bi erfeld Path.24 Agitation posters replaced socialist folklore,25 and instead of a festival procession there was now a festive boat parade on the Spree, where Friedrichshain factories presented their products.26 At the entrance to the festival grounds there was also a fair each year, with carousels, booths, and concession stands selling eel and pickles. The fairground a ractions were far too popular as far as the authorities were concerned, who had a hard time each year motivating the factories to participate in the main event. An internal assessment from 1959 bemoaned that there were too many fair booths and too many “carnival characters,” destroying the positive impression made by the cultural events.27 Added to this were yearly complaints of deviant youth acting like hooligans and disrupting the festival.28 Following the logic of the Cold War, the festival organizers always presumed that these young people were agents provocateurs from West Berlin, and yet this age-old problem was largely homegrown. Over time the Stralauer Fischzug became less and less a ractive to young people, the municipal district council being determined to “tolerate no concessions to so-called public tastes.”29 Unpolitical entertainment was not on the agenda of the East German “educational dictatorship” (Erziehungsdiktatur) of the 1950s and 1960s. The Stralauer Fischzug ultimately foundered on the permanent contradiction between rigid cultural-policy guidelines and the desire of those a ending the festival to have some fun and entertainment.30 Despite a number of experiments with the format of the festival, multiple changes to the festival dates and a tripling of expenditures, the organizers nonetheless failed to reconcile their own demands with public expectations.31 In the end, both sides were disappointed. A empts fell flat to imbue the festival with ideology, only reinforcing the public’s disinterest and resulting in a decline in a endance each year.32 With the construction of the Wall, the

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peninsula’s exposed position close to the Spree border made it a security risk as well. Hence, the last Stralauer Fischzug took place in September 1962. In its place came the Neues Deutschland press festival, which had come into existence a few years before.33

Socialist Festival Culture: The ND Press Festival The Neues Deutschland (ND) press festival was first held in 1958 and was the biggest popular festival in East Berlin for the three decades to follow.34 It was organized by the Party newspaper, the “central organ of the SED,” and was meant to express the Party’s solidarity with the working people by bringing together the paper’s journalists and its readers.35 If the Stralauer Fischzug was marked by unwelcome elements of traditional urban festival culture which were seen as undermining the festival’s supposedly socialist character, the ND press festival offered the opportunity for a new beginning without these vestiges of a capitalist past. The first ND press festival was appropriately held on Stalinallee, on June 29, 1958.36 The new socialist showcase boulevard offered a suitable framework for the new socialist popular festival. The ND press festival was to be “a giant festival of culture, sports, dance, joy and humor.”37 Countless folklore ensembles performed on stage, cyclists raced around Strausberger Platz, children could be dropped off at a day-care center set up especially for the festival, and the whole event culminated in an enormous fireworks display over Stalinallee. The “combination of popular festival and political rally”38 proved hugely successful. Over two hundred events at thirty locations were a ended by three hundred thousand Berliners. Neues Deutschland appraised the press festival as a “breakthrough increasing the popularity and authority of our Party’s leading newspaper,”39 while the Berliner Zeitung viewed the international mass rally with a special appearance by East German Prime Minister O o Grotewohl as the highlight of the festival. The following year saw a repeat of the festival with a clearly political focus.40 This time there were performances by army ensembles from the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the GDR, the Seven-Year Plan was presented in diagrams, whereas the districts of the GDR organized a big open-air exhibition under the mo o “Socialism Is Victorious.”41 In the long run, Stalinallee proved poorly suited for the preparation and organization of such a large festival. Thus, in 1961 the press festival was moved to the nearby Friedrichshain Volkspark “in order to provide Berliners and all other guests with hours of genuine recreation, joy and relaxation in the park’s vast greenery.”42 The 50-hectare (123-acre) park

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grounds with numerous open spaces offered much more room for the festival, which henceforth took place there every year for two consecutive days.43 The park had a big outdoor stage, built in 1950, with seating for two thousand people that could be used for concerts and other gatherings during the press festival.44 Dedicated and opened to the public in 1840, the park also offered numerous points of reference to the history of the labor movement. Its location right next to the Cemetery of the March Fallen and the victims of the November Revolution allowed the SED to tie into these proletarian traditions of Berlin and demonstrate its solidarity with the working classes. Neues Deutschland used the festival to vie for the favor of its readers and the people. In its centrally located press center, the paper offered a “behind-the-scenes glimpse of the ‘black arts.’”45 An exhibition showed a telex machine, a functioning model of a modern rotary press, and an automated jobbing press. Next door, editors and correspondents of ND, including editor-in-chief Hermann Axen, answered the questions of curious visitors.46 Moreover, representatives from friendly socialist dailies from all around the world—from Pravda in Moscow to l’Humanité in Paris—gathered in the press center, bringing a piece of the great wide world to the East German capital. But the festival evoked more than international solidarity. Before the Wall was built, the ND press festival laid claim to being an all-German event. In June 1961, the paper summed up: “Shoulder to shoulder, thousands of Berliners from both parts of the city listened to the performances on twenty stages and other locations during the 4th ND Press Festival in the Volkspark of Friedrichshain.”47 Even a er the Wall went up, the ND press festival continued to grow in size and importance, especially since absorbing the function of the former Stralauer Fischzug and consciously opening up to outside visitors.48 East German radio and television broadcast live from the festival, which purported to represent the entire breadth of culture in the GDR: There were artists from the opera, stage, film and variety theater, the folklore ensembles and athletes that no press festival would be complete without. There were the army orchestras from People’s Poland and socialist Czechoslovakia, the orchestra of the Soviet armed forces temporarily stationed in the GDR and of the Ministry of National Defense of the GDR. Young and old talents stood on stage, bearing witness to the achievements of the Bi erfeld Path, to the sense of community between professional and amateur artists, and to the socialist way of life that has unlocked new creative potential.49

As a socialist popular festival, the ND press festival was not primarily about having a good time in the early 1960s, but more about offering cultured entertainment. In the spirit of the Bi erfeld Path,50 it was important

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that the cultural program was not exclusively carried out by professional artists but that a host of amateur artists from factories and the armed forces played a role in making the festival happen. The ND press festival was supposed to bridge the gap between art and life. Visitors were not just meant to passively consume the events but to actively take part in them. The festival program became ever more crammed. The paper never tired of pointing out the huge selection of events on offer, and in the days leading up to the festival repeatedly highlighted its “blockbusters” (Knüller). These preliminary reports and detailed event information on the actual days of the festival allow us to reconstruct the festival program. Some items were fairly constant over three decades and formed an integral part of the event. Aside from the press center located next to the Schwanenteich (Swan Pond), these were mainly the various mass sporting events. Bicycle races, track events, gymnastics exercises, amateur boxing and chess tournaments mobilized the masses and promoted a healthy lifestyle. Arts-and-cra s booths kept children busy while parents checked out the fashion shows at Märchenbrunnen (Fairy Tale Fountain) put on by Berlin clothing manufacturers. Well-known writers did readings and book signings. The SED drummed up support for its latest donation drives on behalf of freedom fighters around the world—the African National Congress, Palestine Liberation Organization, or Sandanistas. International solidarity was also the theme of the giant raffle, one of the main draws of the festival—not least because of the chance to win a Trabant, an East German car. On the other hand, the festival program underwent many changes over the years. The presentation of military technology was given more a ention every year. The National People’s Army (NVA) showed off its newest weapons and let children climb into armored cars, the Society for Sports and Technology (GST) invited people to participate in target practice, and the People’s Police (VP) demonstrated the skills of their police dogs. Military exercises were not just for the sake of recruitment and to put on a display of military might, they were also meant as entertainment. This was particularly true for younger visitors to the festival, who flocked to these military events out of curiosity and fascination. These war games were of a piece with the festival’s greater focus on entertainment starting in the 1970s. What had once been a socialist popular festival was turning more and more into a temporary amusement park. In 1971, ND held out the following promise: “The program offers a wealth of a ractions and surprises; relaxation and entertainment are what it’s all about at the grand popular festival of Neues Deutschland and the people of Berlin.”51 While there were still some political events—for example an exhibition on the prepa-

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rations for the Eighth Party Congress of the SED—the interests and needs of festival-goers were increasingly taken into account. More and more “dance and light music” was performed on stage, a wine restaurant at Märchenbrunnen promised a taste of the French way of life, a classic-car parade drew technology buffs, and a book and record bazaar run by Centrum Warenhaus department store offered highly coveted literature and music.52 The organizers increasingly recognized the consumer demands of festival-goers and tried to satisfy them with a wide variety of consumer choices, which they began to openly advertise: a good one thousand women and men from retail trade are ready and waiting for their customers at the sales booths for books, records, sporting goods, toys, beverages, snacks, sweets, flowers, souvenirs and much, much more. Incidentally, so many bockwurst sausages were sold last year that if you laid them out from end to end they would form a chain from the press center to the top of the TV tower. But of course there’s more than our beloved Berlin sausage. Poultry, fish and grilled meats are also on offer. The Ore Mountain “Charcoal Pile” [erzgebirgischer Meiler], the Harz “Charcoal-Burners’ Huts” [Harzer Köhlerhü en] and the Spreewald Folklore Restaurant are all well-stocked. Additional restaurant seating has been provided for more than a thousand people. Every bigger stage is equipped with a concession stand selling snacks and refreshments. In other words, you can sit back and relax and enjoy the varied program of events.53

Every effort was made to ensure that there would be no shortages at the ND press festival in the East German capital. And these expanded catering services were not just during the two days in June when the festival was running. Friedrichshain Volkspark became a place of permanent entertainment. To this end the park grounds were extensively redesigned between 1969 and 1973. A recreation center was set up at the S wanentei , complete with facilities for ninepins, table tennis, miniature golf and outdoor chess.54 Moreover, two permanent beer gardens were opened in the park for the very first time. The Harzer Köhlerhü e and the Spreewaldhaus soon became the main beer temples in East Berlin and were rumored to have the best broiled chicken (Goldbroiler) in the capital.55 They also served as advertisements for two popular vacation destinations in the GDR, the Harz mountains and the Spreewald wetland forest. Copious consumption of food and drink was meant to strengthen local patriotism. The changing ND press festival and the transformation of the Volkspark into a place of amusement are paradigmatic of the new consumer policy during the Honecker era that a empted to win the people’s loyalty by making concessions to popular tastes.56 Another outcome of this state entertainment policy was the Sports and Recreation Center (Sport- und Erholungszentrum, SEZ), designed by a

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Swedish team of architects and offered as a “gi to the people of Berlin” before elections to the Volkskammer on June 14, 1981.57 The rec center featured a spectacular wave pool, a sauna, tanning beds, bowling alley, gymnasium, several exercise rooms as well as a roller rink that was converted into an ice rink in the winter.58 The combination of sports facility, water park and food court a racted upwards of fi een thousand people a day.59 The workout show Medizin nach Noten, which was filmed at the SEZ and broadcast on East German television, made the center famous outside of East Berlin.60 People from all over the GDR came to the capital to see this unique architectural structure.61 In 1987, the center hosted part of the ND press festival, opening its expansive outdoor facilities to festival-goers, including a miniature-golf course and jungle gyms, and featuring a “fishing” contest at the swimming pool, the catch being inflatable animal-shaped pool floats—an a empt to revive the Stralauer Fischzug a quarter of a century a er it was discontinued.62 The contest was indicative of the rediscovery of local history, a trend which reached its pinnacle in 1987. The press festival that year took place against the backdrop of the 750-year anniversary celebrations of Berlin.63 Accordingly, a historical market atmosphere was re-enacted at many of the booths. The “Paintbrush Heinrich” (Zum Pinselheinrich) restaurant tent was a nod to Berlin illustrator and painter Heinrich Zille (1858–1929) and the milieu of Old Berlin he captured in his work. Historical gymnastic exercises and rowing rega as offered a journey into the past that would have been unthinkable just a few years before. The same went for the entertainment program. Instead of the usual Warsaw Pact military bands there were now performances by groups called Rockhaus (Rock House) and Formel I (Formula I) as well as the British band The Equals, while Dixieland, bluegrass and skiffle music was playing on other stages. The FDJ center offered a program including rock and pop music, fashion and skateboarding, while a group of tightrope artists called Traber (Tro ers) performed daredevil motorcycle stunts.64 The festival outdid itself. Never before had its program been so varied as it was in 1987, with 5,800 professional and amateur artists and 800 hours of events on 47 stages, podiums and other event locations. The Berliner Zeitung promised “nonstop action” and made abundantly clear which way the wind was blowing.65 The newfangled mixture of historicizing folklore and Western entertainment had the desired effect. With 460,000 official festival-goers, the ND press festival of 1987 had set a new a endance record.66 Like every year, the high a endance figures were interpreted by Neues Deutschland as an expression of the people’s solidarity with the party of the working classes. Though many of the shows on offer were extolled by the festival organizers as “achievements of socialism,” they were generally not per-

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ceived as such by the many festival-goers.67 In the press festival’s thirtyyear history, its organizers were forced to successively acknowledge that the majority of those a ending were mainly interested in having a good time. Originally conceived as a socialist popular festival, a counter-model to the carnival-like popular festivals traditionally held in Berlin, in the course of the 1970s the ND press festival increasingly developed into a commercialized event with a focus on entertainment and consumption. Political propaganda and socialist solidarity remained important parts of the festival, but ever more space was reserved for entertainment with countless concessions being made to Western standards of popular entertainment. At the same time, older traditions were being revived. The press festival not only increasingly referenced the history of Berlin’s working-class and entertainment culture, it also celebrated itself to an ever greater degree. On the occasion of the thirtieth ND press festival on June 3–4, 1989, which would be the last of its kind in this form, the newspaper called on its readers to share their personal mementos from the three decades of the festival’s existence.68 As with the reader photo competitions of the three preceding years, readers were expected to reinforce their links to the Party and its paper through new forms of participation. What was new with these campaigns was the fact that they no longer looked to the future but shi ed their focus to the past. Homegrown traditions now had a value of their own and meanwhile served as a be er guidepost than the waning belief in progress. Ultimately the ND press festival wound up where the Stralauer Fischzug had le off: traditional pleasures and pleasurable traditions had taken the place of the socialist popular festival.

Alternative Festival Culture: The Chamissoplatz Festival In West Berlin, too, traditional festival culture was revived a er 1945. Popular local festivals such as the Steglitzer Heimatwoche (Steglitz Homeland Week) and the Maientage (May Days) in Hasenheide park drew on older traditions and were meant to be a pleasurable distraction during the postwar reconstruction of Berlin.69 This was also true of the Kreuzberger Festliche Tage (Kreuzberg Festive Days), an annual summer festival held in Viktoria Park since 1949. The festival offered variety shows, folklore, vocal performances, dance groups as well as sporting events, a racting tens of thousands of Berliners. The fact that the food there could be purchased without ration cards was another reason for its popularity. Stands selling meat, coffee and chocolate were extremely popular in the postwar era.70 Pleasure-seeking was linked here to deeper existential needs.

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There were likewise political festivals in West Berlin in the context of the Cold War and the competition between East and West. The GermanAmerican festival on Clayallee (since 1961) and the German-French festival at the festival grounds in Tegel (since 1963) were meant to express solidarity with Germany’s Western allies and established new traditions in West Berlin festival culture.71 The press festivals of the major dailies were part of these new traditions as well. One paper in particular, Wahrheit, put out by the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin (SEW), played a special role here.72 The paper and the festival were generously funded by its East Berlin sister party, Wahrheit being intended as an outpost of the SED in West Berlin.73 Thus, in the 1970s and 1980s, prominent bands from the GDR like the Puhdys and Karat made appearances at the Wahrheit press festival at Neue Welt beer and concert hall.74 In this regard, the political festival of the SEW followed in the footsteps of traditional entertainment culture at Hasenheide park, which even in the nineteenth century was an entertainment hot spot, so to speak.75 Like the ND press festival in East Berlin, the Wahrheit festival took place outdoors. But compared to the hugely popular festival in East Berlin, the SEW festival in West Berlin was a drop in the bucket in West Berlin’s polyphonic festival culture. Around 1970, a number of new festivals emerged in Kreuzberg devoted to local neighborhood issues rather than overarching political concerns. The aim of these street festivals was to generate a neighborhood public sphere against the backdrop of local redevelopment projects. Some of these early festivals took place in eastern Kreuzberg (SO 36), where local residents were beginning to feel the effects of redevelopment. In the summer of 1969 the Emmaus parish organized a street festival under the mo o “Many people talk about Kreuzberg—We live here.” Homemade “I like 36” pins were sold there, encouraging a sense of local patriotism.76 On May 1, 1972 the first big street festival took place at Mariannenplatz, celebrating the occupation by squa ers of the derelict student-nurse dormitory formerly belonging to Bethany Deaconess Hospital with a performance of the “Rauch House Song” by the band Ton Steine Scherben. Comparable alternative neighborhood festivals took place in western Kreuzberg (SW 61) much later, when redevelopment began there as well. This direct connection between urban transformation and neighborhood festival culture is likewise evident in the Chamissoplatz festival. The first tenant festival at Chamissoplatz was held on August 14, 1977, just before the neighborhood was formally declared a redevelopment area.77 The festival was organized by the planning commissioner of the Kreuzberg district office and was meant as a prelude to the public discussion of redevelopment plans for Chamissoplatz. The district had several info booths promoting its ideas and presenting its planning models.78 Given the con-

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flictual nature of urban renewal in SO 36, the authorities were intent on displaying more transparency this time. But here too local residents reacted with concern, hanging numerous banners from their windows that voiced their demands with regard to rent policy.79 The following year, the newly founded Chamissoplatz tenant council assumed the task of organizing the street festival, which subsequently took place on a regular basis in August. The initiative for the festival was effectively transferred from local authorities to a locally elected body representing those affected by redevelopment and which used the greater part of its public subsidies for the Chamissoplatz festival, inviting numerous le -wing initiatives to take part. Thus, apart from the tenant council itself, co-organizers of the festival included the SPD, the SEW and eventually the AL. The Passion Church, a number of organizations from MehringHof, among them the History Workshop, as well as le ist bookstores and antiquarian booksellers all had stands at the event.80 The festival extended in T-shaped fashion between Kloedenstrasse and the playing field on Willibald-Alexis-Strasse all the way down to Arndtstrasse. Two stages hosted discussions of redevelopment issues alternating with musical performances by a variety of artists. There were also cabaret shows from the alternative comedy scene. The aim of this “political festival” (Politfest)81 was to strengthen social ties between tenants and create a le -wing counterpublic sphere.82 “Everything had a political reference,” recalls one of the former event organizers.83 The Chamissoplatz festival became even more political when on August 15, 1981 it turned into a ba leground of the Berlin Häuserkampf. While 1,500 people were enjoying themselves at Chamissoplatz, just two hundred yards away the police were searching Crautscho—a squa ers’ café on Willibald-Alexis-Strasse 42 that served as headquarters for the upcoming TUWAT congress of the le -wing alternative scene84—and vacating a freshly occupied apartment on Willibald-Alexis-Strasse 10. Word of the police operation, which resulted in four arrests, soon spread to nearby Chamissoplatz. Several dozen festival participants headed to the police station on Friesenstrasse to demand the release of the squa ers. The police, for their part, reacted with a massive deployment of forces, pushing back the demonstrators to Chamissoplatz. When a barricade was erected on Kloedenstrasse, the police responded with truncheons and tear gas, dispersing the festival that evening. Police intervention ended with the nigh ime storming and evacuation of the Heidelberger Krug bar, to which numerous festival-goers and organizers had withdrawn.85 The following day, the Chamissoplatz tenant council, the Kreuzberg SPD, Galerie am Chamissoplatz, the Passion Church and the Kreuzberg SEW condemned the police operation in a joint declaration, calling it a

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targeted provocation of the Senate Department for Internal Affairs which consciously sought to escalate the situation by conducting searches in the immediate vicinity of the festival.86 Writing in Südwest-Express, the neighborhood periodical for western Kreuzberg founded in 1981 and modeled a er Südost-Express, the festival organizers emphasized their own peaceable behavior by pointing out the tenant council’s nonviolent self-conception: One of the reasons we do the festival is to offer some enjoyable moments to residents of the redevelopment area. In addition, we wanted to inform them about upcoming redevelopment measures, establish good neighborly relations, promote understanding between German and foreign citizens, defuse tensions between various political and social groups, point out injustices and find ways to solve them together. These objectives alone make plain that we don’t want anything to do with violence.87

The organizers rejected any responsibility for the situation having escalated and protested in the strongest terms to what they perceived as a fully disproportionate police intervention. On August 21, 1981, the participants in a discussion event held at the Passion Church finally vented their bo led-up frustration.88 The new CDU senator of the interior Heinrich Lummer faced off against an audience of approximately 1,100 people along with building senator Ulrich Rastemborski (1940–94), city building commissioner Werner Orlowsky and pastor Klaus Duntze. His stubborn and unapologetic stance gave Lummer the reputation of being a hardliner, an image that would only be reinforced throughout the fall of 1981 when he became the bugbear of the West Berlin alternative scene. The senator of the interior, who had canvassed Kreuzberg votes at the Heidelberger Krug as recently as 1980, was largely unimpressed by the accusations of festival organizers. Tensions then reached a peak when Hans-Wilhelm Kruse appeared on stage and exhibited the sixinch laceration on his head and severe bruising to his entire body inflicted on him by policemen as he was walking home that evening and happened to get caught in the melee initiated by the police.89 Deeply marked and with a bandaged head, he now stood in front of the senator of the interior and blamed Lummer for his injuries. The question of police escalation is significant, as the reputation of the Chamissoplatz festival as a political event was solidified by the ensuing public debate. This not only went for the abovementioned selfunderstanding of the festival organizers; in the eyes of the tenant council, the political adversary in the form of the senator of the interior seemed to take the festival so seriously that he was willing to break it up with police violence. Police intervention lent the festival an importance it didn’t have

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before. Hence in the years to come the festival only got bigger. In 1983, a poster by cartoonist Klaus Stu mann (b. 1949) promised visitors the following: “Music for young and old, dancing, games, theater, information, good food and drink and a lot more.”90 The program included political cabaret and four rock bands on stage I; a female singer-songwriter and four jazz bands on stage II; a soccer tournament and miniature theater (Bauchladentheater) on the playing field; a children’s cinema and narrated slide shows in the old bakery dealing with the topics of Chamissoplatz as a redevelopment area and international peacekeeping policies; an exhibition at Galerie am Chamissoplatz on the everyday life of young people in Kreuzberg in the year 1933; and screenings of the 1932 proletarian film classic Kuhle Wampe at the Arbeitslosenladen.91 Numerous concession stands provided food and drinks. The tenant initiative retained the monopoly on beer, however. Beer was sold at a uniform price of 2.80 deutschmarks, 30 pfennigs of which were to go to the construction of a youth center in San Rafael del Sur in Nicaragua.92 Hence drinking was for a good cause: international solidarity. But not everyone abided by the event organizers’ beer monopoly. Hawkers selling their own beverages mingled among the stands. Another source of irritation was people renting stands and not selling what they claimed to be selling—especially artisans selling things that weren’t homemade.93 If it was just a few “black sheep” to begin with, the trend proved unstoppable. Lothar Uebel, one of the festival’s founders, denounced the whole event’s commercialization. In a le er to his friends in the tenant council from 1984 he complained: What does the festival have to do with the Chamisso neighborhood anymore? Couldn’t it basically take place anywhere? . . . Why the posters at U-Bahn stations in other districts, ads in entertainment guides, etc., if it only results in the square being filled to bursting and if many people—especially older neighborhood residents—would rather run away from it than take part? How are “normal people” supposed to kick back and enjoy a brewski in the midst of all the hubbub? . . . One stand next to another, mostly for purely commercial reasons, though possibly “alternative.” In other words, Chamissoplatz once a year as an “alternative” Oktoberfest? Are there no longer any grassroots initiatives and ideas, or have they all been crushed by the welter of kebab stands, jewelry huts, decal vendors and SEW Party parasols?94

The fear of the Chamissoplatz festival being commercialized, threatening the public character of the event, clearly runs through these criticisms. In the place of a neighborhood public sphere and “normal” people, extensive promotion and the growing professionalization of the festival had, in his opinion, a racted too many people from all over Berlin. His com-

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plaint about the commercialization of alternative culture culminated in the reproach that the event was degenerating into a kind of alternative Oktoberfest. As in other debates of that period, the traditional Bavarian festival, routinely celebrated in Berlin as well,95 served as the symbol of an allegedly unpolitical pastime solely motivated by private interests. This, in the eyes of its anxious critics, is precisely what the Chamissoplatz festival was not supposed to be. The tenant council responded to these criticisms. In 1986, the festival was held solely on the square itself, there was only one stage, the number of booths was reduced to twenty-five, and no commercial vendors were allowed except for the businesses located on the square.96 Booths were run on the condition that they offer the festival paper, detailing the intention to abolish rent control and the slated redevelopment of Chamissoplatz, and that organizers retained a monopoly on the sale of beer, wine and grilled meats, the sale of hard liquor being generally unwelcome.97 But these resolutions didn’t last long. In 1987, the festival took place in the framework of the two-week Kulturtage am Chamissoplatz (Chamissoplatz Cultural Days) from August 27 to September 13, organized by Wasserturm e. V. (the Water Tower Society).98 The avowed aim of its organizers was to “rebuild a culture unique to Kreuzberg.”99 This meant a “counter-culture” in the sense of a political counter-public sphere that the le ist neighborhood festival was supposed to help generate. Protest and pleasure were to no longer be mutually exclusive. According to the festival invitation, “Only those who know how to put on a festival can hope to succeed in their struggle!”100 In reality, food, drink and cra s increasingly relegated information booths to the sidelines. Commercial offerings, intended to help refinance the festival, ultimately created a ri between its organizers.101 There was pushback against the concert lineup as well. The punk bands performing at the festival were too loud for some of the tenant-council members.102 More than anything, though, they felt that the Chamissoplatz festival was no longer a community effort.103 One member of the tenant council, Uwe Hübsch, recalls that the number of festival organizers declined while the festival-goers’ sense of entitlement grew. The tenant council was increasingly viewed as a service-provider and maid-of-all-work. Whereas local residents used to pitch in and help set up and take down the festival, over time it was the tenant council that was stuck with all the clean-up work while the others just sat around in bars.104 A er a period of ups and downs, by the late 1990s no one was willing anymore to run the Chamissoplatz festival, especially considering that the festival’s original function had since passed on to the neighboring Bergmannstrasse festival. The la er, a popular jazz festival taking place

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in June, was started in 1994 and nowadays draws over three hundred thousand visitors with its three stages and countless stands in the western half of Bergmannstrasse. Chamissoplatz, for its part, now hosts the “Kreuzberg cooks!” event during the Bergmannstrasse festival, where celebrity chefs of Kreuzberg offer samples of their culinary arts along with pricey wines. Both events are paradigmatic of the transformation of public entertainment in Kreuzberg into an event culture, their critics viewing these festivals as a clear indication of Kreuzberg’s ongoing gentrification. A similar debate is currently underway over the so-called MyFest, which began in 2003 and is held in eastern Kreuzberg each year on May 1st.105 Widespread criticism of the festival’s commercialization and the sheer mass of people a ending, a festival whose very purpose was to return to the neighborhood’s political roots, are strongly reminiscent of the conflicts surrounding the Chamissoplatz festival back in the 1980s. The origins of Kreuzberg’s present-day event culture can undoubtedly be traced back to the district’s alternative street festivals. Though these festivals may have failed in terms of their political aspirations, their protest culture and the rediscovery of the public sphere as a place for entertainment culture have nonetheless had a long-term impact on Kreuzberg’s new urbanity. It is no accident that this conflict-ridden process is reminiscent of the abovementioned rediscovery of old tenement buildings, since alternative festival culture was intricately bound up with the question of redevelopment. Events like the Chamissoplatz festival propagated the notion of cautious urban renewal, inventing a neighborhood public sphere in the process which, though now far removed from its alternative origins, is still a good part of what makes the district so a ractive.

Entertainment: Conclusions A varied entertainment culture had established itself in eastern Berlin in conjunction with the process of urbanization near the end of the “long turn of the century.” It not only offered a temporary respite from arduous work routines, but also functioned as a “re-enactment of life in the big city.” As was the case with housing and the church, the entertainment cultures of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg were still very similar in the first half of the twentieth century. Usually part of the private economy, they catered to private needs while at the same time creating hugely a ractive public spaces. This is what later made them so appealing as a potentially political public sphere. But these a empts at politicization, as examples from East and West have shown, frequently failed, either on account of traditional needs and local manifestations of urban entertainment, which remained

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remarkably persistent in the second half of the twentieth century, or because of a tendency towards commercialization running counter to the objectives of event organizers. Entertainment culture seems to have had inherent laws of its own, spanning system boundaries and evading the a empts of organizers to impose their political will on it. This is evident in the socialist popular festivals in Friedrichshain as well as in the alternative bar and festival culture in Kreuzberg. Private needs held the upper hand in most instances of public entertainment. At the same time, new forms of entertainment and socializing developed a er 1945, with greater social freedoms being evident in Kreuzberg. Whereas bourgeois commentators in the West and state functionaries in the East leveled similar critiques against new forms of pop culture, the politicization of “mere” entertainment persisted much longer in the East, where critiques of capitalism and its cultural manifestations followed the logic of the Cold War and competing economic systems well into the 1970s. Entertainment culture in Friedrichshain remained much more traditional in character despite a empts to make it socialist in its content and forms of organization. Entertainment offerings in Kreuzberg were much more varied by comparison, particularly its bars and taverns. This unequal transformation in East and West is due not only to different ownership structures but also to different framework conditions and different public spheres. Alternative bar collectives and neighborhood festivals in Kreuzberg aimed at establishing a critical counter-public sphere, though admi edly these le ist entertainment offerings o en failed to satisfy the political objectives linked to them. Instead, this alternative entertainment culture contributed to a new urbanity and the revival of the public sphere in Kreuzberg. Entertainment in Friedrichshain, by contrast, was more focused on the private sphere. The transfer of new forms of entertainment from West to East was not a simple ma er, especially considering that bars and festivals were strongly place-bound. Much stronger entanglements were found in audiovisual mass media, which thanks to technological progress and the spreading of these technologies formed a common, cross-border communicative space. Given the extent that Western media was politicized in the GDR, the enjoyment of Western entertainment was mostly a private affair restricted to more intimate surroundings, hence the difficulty of reconstructing these entanglements historically. Not being very regionally specific and eluding an urban-history approach, the mass-media public sphere and its East-West entanglements was not a focus of this study.106 And yet it is plain to see that this media entanglement was largely asymmetric on account of the greater appeal of Western entertainment. Whereas Western music, for example, was avidly followed in Friedrichshain, Kreuzberg

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subculture of the 1980s more or less completely ignored the East.107 In this respect, the history of entertainment culture in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg exemplifies the asymmetric histories, parallel and entangled, of East and West Germany.

Notes 1. The calculation is based on surveys by the Statistisches Reichsamt (Reich Office for Statistics) conducted in 1927–28. Karl Christian Führer, Medienmetropole Hamburg. Mediale Öffentlichkeiten 1930–1960, Hamburg 2008, 42. 2. Uebel, Viel Vergnügen, 8. 3. Maase, Grenzenloses Vergnügen, esp. 58–63. 4. Hochmuth and Niedbalski, “Kiezvergnügen in der Metropole.” 5. For a general account of the Stralauer Fischzug and its checkered history, see HansJürgen Wesener, “Der Stralauer Fis zug im Spiegel der Jahrhunderte,” Berlinis e Monatss ri 2 (1993) no. 8, 25–30. 6. On the Stralauer Fis zug in Nazi Germany, see Hans-Jürgen Wesener, “Der Stralauer Fis zug im Zei en dirigistis er Kulturpolitik. Wiederbelebungsversu e des alten Berliner Volksfests im Dri en Rei und im real existierenden Sozialismus,” in Luisenstädtis er Bildungsverein (ed.), Streifzüge dur die Berliner Kulturges i te. Von Bräuen und Missbräu en, Festen und Feiern, Gewöhnungen und Gewohnheiten, Berlin 1993, 35–45. 7. On the history of the Stralauer Fischzug in the GDR, see esp. the relevant works of Cornelia Kühn: Cornelia Kühn, “Sozialistische Folklore? Der Stralauer Fischzug in Berlin zwischen 1954 und 1962,” Deutschland Archiv 44 (2011) no. 4, 561–569, as well as Dominik Kleinen and Cornelia Kühn, “Heimatfest und Freundscha sfeier. Die Inszenierung von Heimatgeschichte in Berliner Volksfesten der 1950er- und 1960er-Jahre,” Zeitschri für Volkskunde 108 (2012) no. 2, 215–245. 8. Wesener, “Der Stralauer Fischzug im Spiegel der Jahrhunderte,” 25–27. 9. Kleinen and Kühn, “Heimatfest und Freundscha sfeier,” 220. 10. Wesener, “Der Stralauer Fischzug im Spiegel der Jahrhunderte,” 27 f. 11. Ibid., 29. 12. Kleinen and Kühn, “Heimatfest und Freundscha sfeier,” 221. 13. The festival was organized by the Institute for German Economic Propaganda. Ibid., 221. 14. Wesener, “Der Stralauer Fischzug im Spiegel der Jahrhunderte,” 30. 15. On the 700-year anniversary celebrations of Berlin, see Thijs, Drei Geschichten, eine Stadt, 71–92. 16. Wesener, “Der Stralauer Fischzug im Zeichen dirigistischer Kulturpolitik,” 41. 17. Kühn, “Sozialistische Folklore.” 18. Ibid. 19. The following year, however a number of participants refused to play workers since they wanted to appear in historical costumes. Bericht über den Stralauer Fischzug 1955, 1.9.1955, LArch C Rep. 135-01 Nr. 357, vol. 1, fols. 1–24, here 18 f. 20. Kühn, “Sozialistische Folklore,” 565. 21. Berliner Zeitung, August 24, 1954.

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22. Wesener, “Der Stralauer Fischzug im Zeichen dirigistischer Kulturpolitik,” 43. 23. Kühn, “Sozialistische Folklore,” 566. 24. Ibid. On the Bi erfeld Path, see Simone Barck, Bi erfelder Nachlese. Ein Kulturpalast, seine Konferenzen und Wirkungen, Berlin 2007. 25. Some of these are reproduced in a photo album of the 1957 Stralauer Fischzug, FHXB Alben zur Geschichte des Bezirks Friedrichshain. 26. Kleinen and Kühn, “Heimatfest und Freundscha sfeier,” 227. 27. Document submi ed to the office of the Party district leadership of Friedrichshain by the district council of Friedrichshain, October 17, 1959: Auswertung des Stralauer Fis zuges 1959 und die Vors läge für die weitere Entwi lung zum soz. Volksfest im Rahmen des Siebenjahrplanes LAr C Rep. 121—Magistrat von Berlin, Abt. Kultur, no. 1095 Stralauer Fis zug, 1955–1956, fols. 2–8. 28. Kühn, “Sozialistische Folklore,” 568. 29. Rat des Stadtbezirks Friedrichshain, Abt. Kultur, Konzeption zum Stralauer Fischzug 1959, March 13, 1959, LArch C Rep. 135-15, Nr. 52, fol. 15. 30. Kühn, “Sozialistische Folklore,” 568. 31. Wesener, “Der Stralauer Fischzug im Zeichen dirigistischer Kulturpolitik,” 44. 32. See the table on crowd a endance in Kühn, “Sozialistische Folklore.” 33. Or so it said in a document of the municipal district of Friedrichshain from December 1961 on the future planning and development of cultural work with the masses. “The Stralauer Fis zug is no longer workable. The traditional core idea of artistic selfactivity [künstlerische Selbstbetätigung] linked with a direct political message can be achieved with other popular festivals. The festivals are to take place on meanwhile traditional holidays: May 1st, May 8th and October 7th, as well as during the ND press festival in June of each year and the Friedrichshainer press festival in early September at the Friedrichshain Volkspark.” Rat des Stadtbezirks Friedrichshain, Abteilung Kultur, document prepared for the office of the district leadership of the SED, December 20, 1961, LArch C Rep. 135-01, Nr. 362, vol. 6, fols. 1–5, here 1 f. 34. There is virtually no scholarly literature on the ND press festival, which is surprising given its importance as a mass festival. A few brief references are made to it in Ciesla and Külow, Zwischen den Zeilen, 129–131. 35. Stefan Sommer, Lexikon des Alltags der DDR, Berlin 1999, 239. On ND, see also chapter 4 of this book. 36. Burghard Ciesla and Dirk Külow incorrectly date the festival to June 1, 1958. Ciesla and Külow, Zwischen den Zeilen, 129. The occasion for the first ND press festival was the 110th anniversary of the first edition of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, founded and run by Karl Marx. Neues Deutschland, July 3, 1958, 2. 37. Neues Deutschland, May 10, 1958, 3. 38. Ciesla and Külow, Zwischen den Zeilen, 130. 39. Neues Deutschland, July 3, 1958, 2. 40. Berliner Zeitung, July 1, 1958, 6. 41. Neues Deutschland, June 4, 1959, 8. 42. Neues Deutschland, May 18, 1961, 8. 43. The festival was only cancelled twice—in 1979 and 1984—due to the National Youth Festival of the FDJ taking place at the same time. Ciesla and Külow, Zwischen den Zeilen, 131. 44. Lischke, “Der Volkspark Friedrichshain,” 56; Sabine Molter, Friedrichshain und Prenzlauer Berg. Rund um den Volkspark Friedrichshain, Berlin 1991. 45. Berliner Zeitung, June 5, 1961, 1. 46. Ibid.

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47. Neues Deutschland, June 5, 1961, 1. 48. Rat d. Stadtbezirks Friedrichshain, Abt. Kultur, Vorlage für das Büro der Kreisleitung der SED, December 20, 1961, LArch C Rep. 135-01, Nr. 362, vol. 6, fols. 1–5, here 1 f. 49. Neues Deutschland, June 18, 1963, 8. 50. The Bi erfeld Path, declared in 1959, was intended to give working people access to art and culture, encouraging workers themselves to “take up the pen” and urging artists to make the work of nationalized factories the subject of their own creative work. Barck, Bi erfelder Nachlese. 51. Berliner Zeitung, June 8, 1971, 8. 52. Neues Deutschland, June 9, 1971, 8. 53. Neues Deutschland, June 4, 1977, 8. 54. The center is now called Café Schönbrunn and is located in the middle of the park between the two hills. 55. Lischke, “Der Volkspark Friedrichshain,” 61. On the significance of roast chicken, referred to in the GDR as a Goldbroiler, see Patrice Poutrus, Die Erfindung des Goldbroilers. Über den Zusammenhang zwischen Herrschaftssicherung und Konsumentwicklung in der DDR, Cologne 2002. 56. André Steiner, “Die DDR-Volkswirtscha am Ende,” in Klaus-Dietmar Henke (ed.), Revolution und Vereinigung 1989/90. Als in Deutschland die Realität die Phantasie überholte, Munich 2009, 113–129, here 114. 57. Landesdenkmalamt Berlin, Denkmale in Berlin, 45; Moldt, “Friedrichshain,” 24. 58. Pachmann, Stadtbezirk Friedrichshain, 45–49. On the Sports and Recreation Center, see also the Kurt Bothe holdings in the FHXB archive as well as the FHXB Alben zur Ges i te des Bezirks Friedrichshain. 59. Moldt, “Friedrichshain,” 24. 60. In the 1980s, the show featured an aerobics-style workout following the Western trend. 61. A House of Youth with restaurants, discos, reading rooms, concert halls and a youth hostel was supposed to be built near the Sports and Recreation Center. Construction at the so-called Drachenwiese, or “kite meadow,” on Werneuchener Strasse right next to the Volkspark was halted, however, for financial reasons in 1988. Moldt, “Friedrichshain,” 24. 62. Berliner Zeitung, April 20, 1987, 8. 63. Neues Deutschland, May 21, 1987, 8. See also Thijs, Drei Geschichten, eine Stadt. 64. Berliner Zeitung, June 15, 1987, 8. 65. Berliner Zeitung, June 12, 1987, 12. 66. Neues Deutschland, June 15, 1987, 1. 67. Von Saldern, “Öffentlichkeiten in Diktaturen,” 460. 68. Neues Deutschland, May 24, 1989, 8. 69. On the Steglitzer Heimatwoche, see Kleinen and Kühn, “Heimatfest und Freunds a sfeier,” 227–234. 70. Brochure on the 37th Kreuzberger Festliche Tagen 1985, 6, Tempelhofer Vorstadt archive. 71. Kleinen and Kühn, “Heimatfest und Freundscha sfeier,” 234–241. 72. Detlef Krenz, “Die ‘Wahrheit’—Parteizeitung der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Westberlin,” in Kreuzberg Museum (ed.), Jürgen Henschel—der Fotograf der Wahrheit. Bilder aus Kreuzberg 1967–1988, Berlin 2006, 179 f. 73. On the SEW, see Thomas Klein, SEW—die Westberliner Einheitssozialisten. Eine “ostdeuts e” Partei als Sta el im Fleis e der “Frontstadt”? Berlin 2009. 74. The Wahrheit press festival had previously taken place at the Reichsbahn repair shop in Berlin-Tempelhof. Detlef Krenz, “Der Fotograf der Wahrheit,” in Kreuzberg Museum, Jürgen Henschel, 45–48, here 47.

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75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

85. 86. 87. 88. 89.

90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98.

99. 100.

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On the Neue Welt, see Uebel, Die Neue Welt an der Hasenheide. Duntze, Die Verantwortung der Kirche für das großstädtische Gemeinwesen, 122. See also chapter 5. Bremer et al., Kreuzberg Chamissoplatz, 50. Interview with Uwe Hübsch (November 18, 2015). Uwe Hübsch (b. 1956) actively accompanied the process of redevelopment as of the mid-1970s as district councilman and later citizen deputy of the SPD and also as a member of the Chamissoplatz tenant council. Interview with Uwe Hübsch (November 18, 2015). Interview with Werner Tammen (May 12, 2015). Di mar, “Eine ‘Insel’ im Großstadtmeer Berlin,” 218. Interview with Barbara Rolfes-Poneß (October 9, 2015), who was active in the Chamissoplatz tenant council as of 1978 and co-organized the festival. The TUWAT congress (a facetious acronym that, read aloud, meant “do something”) in West Berlin running four weeks from August 25, 1981 came on the heels of the TUNIX (“do nothing”) convention of the West Berlin spontaneist scene held in January 1978 and commonly considered to have marked the birth of the West German alternative movement. Various political factions, emancipatory initiatives and splinter groups of the German le ist counter-public sphere came together here to discuss future alternative political models with panelists including Michel Foucault. The title of the congress, held at the Technical University of Berlin, referenced “the right to be lazy,” an 1883 manifesto by Karl Marx’s son-in-law, Paul Lafargue. Müller, Subkultur Westberlin, 77; Friedrichs, “Mapping Kreuzberg,” 96–98. For a chronology of events on August 15, 1981, see the special edition of SüdwestExpress, August 1981, 3. Printed in the special edition of Südwest-Express, August 1981, 4. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 10. Kruse had been a guest of honor of the governing mayor earlier that evening at the opening of the Prussia exhibition taking place at the Gropiusbau, having collaborated on the exhibit in his capacity as an architect. See the special edition of Südwest-Express, August 1981, 3, with a photo of his injuries. Poster advertising the Chamissoplatz festival, July 1, 1983, Tempelhofer Vorstadt archive. Program of the Chamissoplatz festival from 1983, Tempelhofer Vorstadt archive. On Galerie am Chamissoplatz see chapter 5. Program of the Chamissoplatz festival for July 13, 1985, Tempelhofer Vorstadt archive. Interview with Uwe Hübsch (November 18, 2015). Le er from Lothar Uebel to the Chamissoplatz tenant council, July 14, 1984, Tempelhofer Vorstadt archive. Uebel, Die Neue Welt an der Hasenheide, 60. Flyer of the Chamissoplatz tenant council, July 21, 1986, Tempelhofer Vorstadt archive. Minutes of July 28, 1986 of the tenant council’s festival-preparation meeting on July 17, 1986, Tempelhofer Vorstadt archive. Wasserturm e. V. was established in 1984 as a youth cultural center in the former water tower at the corner of Fidicinstrasse and Kopischstrasse and served ever since its founding as a co-organizer of the Chamissoplatz festival. Its staff were employees of the Kreuzberg district office, hence there were no registration fees for it taking part in the festival. Interview with Uwe Hübsch (November 18, 2015). Kulturtage am Chamissoplatz brochure, 1987, Tempelhofer Vorstadt archive. Ibid., 19.

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101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106.

Bremer et al., Kreuzberg Chamissoplatz, 50. Interview with Uwe Hübsch (November 18, 2015). Interview with Barbara Rolfes-Poneß (October 9, 2015). Interview with Uwe Hübsch (November 18, 2015). Berliner Zeitung, April 11, 2016, 9. For a detailed look at the consumption of Western TV in East Berlin, see Hanno Hochmuth, “Politisiertes Vergnügen. Zum Konflikt um das Westfernsehen an Schulen in der DDR,” in Häußer and Merkel, Vergnügen in der DDR, 287–303. 107. See, e.g., Christian Semler, “1968 im Westen—was ging uns die DDR an?” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 53 (2003) no. 45, 3–5. The remark of West Berlin musician Blixa Bargeld (b. 1959) was paradigmatic when he admi ed in an interview from the mid1980s that he had never been to the eastern part of the city. The interview can be seen in the documentary film B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979–1989, Federal Republic of Germany 2015, 92 min., wri en and directed by Jörg A. Hoppe, Klaus Maeck, Heiko Lange.

 

PART V

After the Wall

(

Chapter 14

PERSPECTIVES: FRIEDRICHSHAIN AND KREUZBERG IN TRANSFORMATION SINCE 1989–90

( When the Berlin Wall fell on November 9, 1989, people surged across Oberbaum Bridge. This historical link between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg became a place of East-West encounter overnight. The border crossing on the war-damaged bridge had previously only been open to pedestrians from West Berlin, so-called kleiner Grenzverkehr or low-level cross-border traffic.1 Now the wall that had divided the city and these two districts for twenty-eight years suddenly opened here, as it did at most other checkpoints in the city. Around midnight, a rapidly formed orchestra gave an impromptu performance of Dvořák’s New World Symphony on the bridge.2 In the months to come, the people of Friedrichshain explored the new world on the other side of the Spree. But more than that, they felt their own world changing from the bo om up. Nothing illustrates this radical process as vividly as the functional and structural transformation of the Berlin Wall itself. In the spring of 1990, 118 artists from 21 countries painted a 1,316-meter-long stretch of the hinterland wall along Mühlenstrasse right next to Oberbaum Bridge. These works of art addressed the historical transformation taking place right before the eyes of these artists and other observers. The eastern side of the Wall, which until then had been gray and white, was now bathed in color and as vibrant as the western side. While most of the Wall soon vanished, the painted section on the Spree was preserved.3 Lethal border facilities had morphed into the East Side Gallery. This transformation of color and function is symbolic for the overall process of revolutionary change that took place in the East. All areas of political, economic, social and cultural life were painted over, as it were, to Notes for this chapter begin on page 298.

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match the Western model. In place of the piecemeal transfers from West to East described in this book, 1989–90 brought a fundamental transformation. This process, which the social sciences and economics have investigated in detail over the years,4 can be understood as an “abrupt change in institutional framework which, in the case of postsocialist transformation, meant establishing the basic institutions of a market economy, democracy, a constitutional order and the welfare state.”5 The transformation process in the course of reunification affected Berlin to a special degree. Hermann Rudolph, who followed these changes over the years for Tagesspiegel newspaper, put it in a nutshell when he said: “Berlin is the intensified version of unification.”6 The integration in a very narrow space of a once divided and now reunified city had to succeed here. If an even more heightened form of this social challenge is conceivable, it would be the transformation of two directly adjacent districts, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, a er the events of 1989–90. The two districts had both belonged to impoverished eastern Berlin before growing apart during the decades of political division. Now the historical experiment had come to an end: Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg were converging in a radical fashion. This also meant the convergence of radicalism, as I will show in the following using the example of squa ers on Mainzer Strasse in Friedri shain. The events between the spring and fall of 1990 mark a first culmination in the conflict-ridden process of the East catching up with developments in the West, in this case the squa ing movement and its public forms of protest. But the consequences of forced eviction on Mainzer Strasse also demonstrate that many transformations in the East had repercussions on the West. The forced eviction of squa ers on Mainzer Strasse not only meant the failure of the Red-Green coalition in the West Berlin Senate shortly before the first joint elections to this governing body; the violent end to this squa ing movement also ushered in the end of the movement in the western part of the city. It is therefore entirely valid to speak of co-transformations in Kreuzberg.7 As I will show below, both districts faced considerable problems in the transformation process, being equally hit by deindustrialization, unemployment, out-migration and population decreases. The fusion of the two districts in 2001 and the renovation of older neighborhoods marked a turning point, however, the social implications of which have been widely and critically discussed. Concerns about the increasing gentrification of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg are nowadays accompanied by the struggle to preserve public spaces and protect them from increasing privatization. The controversies over development projects on the banks of the Spree show that the question of the public and private spheres is still hugely relevant in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg.

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Radical Catch-Up Processes: Squatting and Forced Evictions on Mainzer Strasse The squa ing and forced evictions on Mainzer Strasse8 during 1990 marked the culmination of a number of developments in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg described in this book: the occupation of empty buildings in light of considerable housing shortages, the commitment of the church in ma ers of social policy, the quest for an alternative public sphere, and the surprisingly consistent will to appropriation of a locally oriented protest culture with a remarkable degree of agency and a fundamental contempt for private property. And yet this much-evoked “brief summer of anarchy” marked a singular historical situation, the old order of party dictatorship having dissolved with the new order of unified Germany and Berlin yet to be established. For many squa ers East Berlin was a legal vacuum and a laboratory of social experimentation.9 There were occupied houses in East Berlin before the collapse of SED rule. In the summer of 1989 an entire apartment building was occupied at Schönhauser Allee 20/21.10 Already in their death throes, East German state authorities no longer intervened. Thus, the practice of squa ing, usually done in secrecy, could now be done openly.11 In 1990 the number of squats in East Berlin increased to about 130.12 Mi e and Prenzlauer Berg had about 20 each, while Friedrichshain with its approximately 90 occupied buildings became the stronghold of the squa ers’ movement in East Berlin.13 The Church from Below, which emerged from the context of the blues masses, played an important role here, bemoaning the huge number of vacant apartments in East Berlin. In April 1990, these East German church activists published an appeal in the West German autonomist magazine Interim, making reference to the many empty apartments in East Berlin.14 The appeal directly addressed potential squa ers from the West, responding rhetorically to any scruples they might have had: “Why not? If there are really enough potential squats there [in East Berlin] for everyone, if there’s a lack of people willing to be squa ers, if maybe the destruction of housing following the Western model can be prevented or thwarted there?”15 Detailed lists of vacant apartment buildings were handed out at a demonstration in Kreuzberg on May 1, 1990. Mainzer Strasse in Friedrichshain was at the top of the list. Indeed, half of Mainzer Strasse was empty. Almost the entire western half of the street had been cleared of tenants in the years before with the aim of replacing these dilapidated prewar buildings with modern panelized apartment blocks like in the case of neighboring Colbestrasse between 1987 and 1989. But plans changed on November 29, 1989, when the East German Ministry of Construction under the new Modrow government

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declared a moratorium on demolition for Mainzer Strasse. The derelict Wilhelmine-era buildings remained empty, however, and continued to fall into disrepair, until suddenly, in May 1990, about 250 people moved in, occupying a total of twelve buildings (Map 14.1).16 Most of the squa ers came from the West, many of them from Kreuzberg. They were the first West Berliners to move to the eastern part of the city.17 The squa ers took over an entire row of ten connected buildings, converting them to suit their needs.18 A variety of groups from the le -wing alternative scene each moved into their own building. There was a spontaneist house, a women’s and lesbian house, and a “queer tower,” where the Forellenhof gay bar was located. There was also the Volxküche communal kitchen, the Nervensäge (“Pain in the Ass”) theater café, a hip-hop disco, the Max Hoelz le ist used-book store and—at the time a real novelty—a convenience store, or Späti, where the squa ers could buy beer and food a er hours.19 But they first had to repair their ramshackle apartments, not making too much progress in the summer of 1990. Lived utopia seemed more important to most of them than the arduous task of renovation.20 Mainzer Strasse developed into a kind of nerve center of the new East Berlin squa ers’ scene, which banded together into an “alliance of occupied buildings” (Bündnis der besetzten Häuser) boasting a total of eighty-one buildings by the end of July 1990.21 A PR group also formed on Mainzer

MAP 14.1. Map of occupied buildings on Mainzer Strasse in 1990, h p://berlin-besetzt.de.

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Strasse, representing the interests of squa ers to the outside world and establishing contact with local residents.22 The squa ers met with li le resistance at first. The Communal Housing Administration (KWV), later transformed into the Friedrichshain Housing Association (WBF), tolerated the occupation of its properties and did not take any legal or other measures.23 As of late May 1990, it even entered negotiations with the squa ers.24 SPD politician Helios Mendiburu (b. 1936), who took office as the first freely elected district mayor of Friedrichshain on June 1, 1990, likewise tolerated the squa ers, though always emphasizing their illegality. He was put off by their antiauthoritarian a itude, combined with their demands for public funding to finance their renovation work.25 But the district didn’t have the leverage to take any action against them. The People’s Police had neither the authority nor the experience in dealing with squa ers, and was hardly ever taken seriously by them. The newly elected East Berlin municipal authorities under Tino Schwierzina (1927–2009) did not intervene against the Mainzer Strasse squa ers either, deciding instead to adopt the so-called Berlin Line of Reason as practiced in West Berlin since 1981. Thus, as of July 24, 1990, no new squats would be tolerated, provided the landlord had plans for renovation and filed charges against the squa ers. Since Mainzer Strasse had been occupied before this cut-off date, however, the rule did not apply.26 But conflicts there only multiplied. First, there were the longtime local residents on the other side of the street who now complained about “unreasonable living conditions” and an unacceptable noise level.27 Many of them also felt morally outraged by the banners hanging from these buildings, especially the “queer tower.” It was not so much the violation of private property that bothered these longtime residents, but the unfamiliar and provocative way the squa ers occupied public space. Added to this was the fact that many East Berliners could not understand why they themselves had had to wait years for the allocation of a new apartment while the squa ers simply took what they wanted. The East German socialization of local residents in this case came up against the “Western” anarchism of the squa ers. But these residents soon adopted Western forms of sociation themselves, joining forces in the Mainzer Strasse citizens’ initiative (later the citizens’ commi ee of WB 47—residential district 47). All summer long, they assailed politicians and administrative authorities with le ers demanding the eviction of the squa ers.28 Second, there were numerous altercations with neo-Nazis, who repeatedly raided the squats in Friedrichshain. The autonomists got even by a acking the Nazi stronghold on Weitlingstrasse 122 in the district of Lichtenberg. In the power vacuum of 1990, right-wingers and le ists waged civil-war-like street ba les and urban warfare in Friedrichshain reminis-

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cent of the late phase of the Weimar Republic. An a ereffect of this escalating violence was the murder on November 21, 1992 of le -wing activist Silvio Meier, who was stabbed to death by neo-Nazis at the Samariterstrasse subway station. When several dozen neo-Nazis a acked Mainzer Strasse on Pentecost 1990 in plain view of the People’s Police, the squa ers decided to barricade their buildings with barbed wire, shu ers and trap doors. Mainzer Strasse was transformed into a fortress—not for fear of being evicted but to stave off neo-Nazi a acks—which only stoked the suspicions of local residents even more.29 Third, communal life in the squats proved difficult, as summed up by Udo Grashoff: “The squa ing wave in Berlin began as the euphoric coexistence of East and West Germans. They shared the same ideals but had fundamentally different life experiences, which soon led to conflicts in the buildings they occupied.”30 Many East German squa ers had problems with what they perceived as the West Germans’ greater propensity to violence and an unwillingness to compromise, repeatedly accusing them of acting like colonial overlords when they tried to set the agenda.31 Their initial sense of sympathy and solidarity soon gave way to the feeling of being overwhelmed by a foreign culture. Western squa ers, for their part, were irritated by their Eastern counterparts’ “naive belief in a good-natured state” as evidenced by their a empted negotiations to legalize their squats on Mainzer Strasse.32 Ultimately the compromise-averse hardliners prevailed. Fliers announced their intent to perpetrate “a million in property damage per eviction,” giving the authorities a scare.33 Persistent legal uncertainties complicated the negotiations even more, since the Unification Treaty called for deferring property claims and refraining from creating any faits accomplis until October 13, 1990.34 The authority of the state was strengthened in another respect, however. On October 3, 1990, policing authority in the eastern part of the city was effectively transferred to the West Berlin police under the direction of Georg Schertz (b. 1935). Now Western officers with experience in dealing with squa ers could be deployed instead of insecure and poorly equipped members of the former People’s Police. Formally the eastern police forces were still subordinate to inner-city councilman Thomas Krüger (b. 1959), but East-West authorities had essentially been combined, the East Berlin municipal authorities (Magistrat) under S wierzina and the West Berlin Senate under Walter Momper (b. 1945) having formed the so-called “MagiSenat.” The first joint elections to a Berlin Senate comprising East and West would take place in December 1990. The election campaign was already casting its shadow.35 Under these circumstances, the events that led to the forced eviction of squa ers from Mainzer Strasse on November 14, 1990 had a special

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dynamic.36 The catalyst occurred on Monday, November 12th, when two occupied buildings—on Pfarrstrasse 112 in Lichtenberg and Cotheniusstrasse 16 in Prenzlauer Berg—were cleared by the police. Both had been occupied by squa ers a er July 24th, the cut-off date of the Berlin Line a er which no more new squats would be allowed. The respective housing associations had expressed their desire to evict the squa ers from both buildings. When news of the subsequent eviction was broadcast on Radio 100, a le -wing autonomist station, about fi y squa ers from Mainzer Strasse engaged in a spontaneous solidarity protest on Frankfurter Allee, blocking outbound traffic. Police pushed the protestors back into Mainzer Strasse. There were violent street clashes in which the squatters set up barricades and streetcars went up in flames. The police reacted with water cannons and tear gas. Despite repeated a empts at negotiation by Helios Mendiburu, Bärbel Bohley (1945–2010), Renate Künast (b. 1955) and other politicians and civil-rights activists, the clashes lasted until well a er midnight, when the police withdrew from Mainzer Strasse. The following Tuesday was the calm before the storm. The squa ers used a backhoe to dig deep trenches, the mediators held press conferences, the opposition demanded immediate eviction, and the MagiSenat held an extraordinary meeting while the two mayors Momper and Schwierzina were on an official state visit in Moscow. At 6:30 on Wednesday morning, the Berlin police, aided by back-up forces from North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony, launched their offensive on Mainzer Strasse. About three thousand police officers advanced from the north and the south simultaneously. Special forces took the roofs of the buildings which they used as a base for storming the occupied apartments. The squa ers put up a fierce resistance, firing tracer ammunition and lobbing Molotov cocktails at the police. The ba les, waged on both sides with unprecedented fury, lasted two-and-a-half hours. In the end Mainzer Strasse was completely cleared of squa ers and sealed off until further notice.37 The police, by its own count, had 75 of its officers injured and made 417 arrests.38 The police took stock the following evening, taking down the particulars of 300 of the individuals in custody,39 159 of whom came from West Berlin, 52 from East Berlin, and 78 from the remainder of Germany, with no distinction being made in this case between the former East and West German states due to time constraints. The predominance of West German squa ers was evident. Walter Momper came to an unambiguous conclusion. Back from Moscow, he stated at a press conference on the a ernoon of November 14th: “These people are exporting riot from Kreuzberg.”40 The Frankfurter Rundschau talked about a proxy war being fought by western officers against western squa ers in eastern Berlin.41 The events were a heavy burden on the future integration of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg.

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In the days to come, the participants blamed each other for what happened.42 The squa ers spoke about a targeted provocation, rejecting the claim that they hadn’t been willing to negotiate. They argued, the clearance of Mainzer Strasse had long been planned.43 Numerous local residents on Mainzer Strasse complained to the municipal authorities about the lack of intervention before the police operation, eventually greeting the la er as a “liberation from the despotism of squa ers.”44 The governing mayor imputed to the squa ers a “willingness to kill.”45 The Berlin police spoke of “civil war,” alleging that the squa ers threw paving stones from the roofs at police and made Molotov cocktails with 20 liters (5 gallons) of gasoline.46 The Berlin policemen’s union blamed Senator of the Interior Pätzold for the failure of his de-escalation strategy and demanded his resignation.47 The riot police from North Rhine-Westphalia complained to their Berlin colleagues that they hadn’t been sufficiently prepared, that the operation had not been properly coordinated, and that they didn’t know their way around the neighborhood.48 Finally, the Alternative List accused their coalition partners from the SPD of not informing them about the decision to clear Mainzer Strasse with force. Two days a er the police operation, AL faction leader Künast terminated the coalition with the SPD. Walter Momper vehemently denies this accusation even today.49 His coalition partners were well-informed about the intention to evict the squatters, he claims, and were involved in the respective Senate resolution. The Senate had reached a point where it was no longer willing to tolerate such conditions on Mainzer Strasse, in his view, and had the responsibility to restore public safety given the road blocks and trenches. The SPD, for its part, stood to gain nothing from the situation, he says. As in the case of the West Berlin Häuserkampf of 1981, they were stuck between “the targeted provocations of anarchists [Chaoten] on the one hand and the security demands of Berliners on the other.”50 By his own account, Momper has nonetheless never regre ed the clearance of Mainzer Strasse even though it cost him his office of mayor and put an end to the first experiment in a Red-Green coalition at the state level in Berlin.51 The clearance of squa ers from Mainzer Strasse le many people traumatized. Numerous policemen had suffered extreme violence and were not offered any psychological support.52 Most of the squa ers, for their part, avoided comparable confrontations with the authorities in the future. The removal of squa ers from Mainzer Strasse thus marked a radical transformation process following the Western model as well as the abrupt end to the squa ing scene in East Berlin. It was also the culmination and endpoint of the West Berlin squa ers’ movement, which had had a formative influence on 1980s Kreuzberg. The squa ing scene, now united, felt paralyzed a er their defeat on Mainzer Strasse and did not dare occupy

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any new squats once the new state authorities had been established.53 Both sides henceforth endeavored to reach negotiated solutions. While there are still occasional clashes over squats north of Frankfurter Allee, most of these have meanwhile been legalized. The vacant buildings on Mainzer Strasse were quickly renovated a er the fall of 1990 to prevent their being reoccupied. But this speedy renovation would tend to be the exception in the district. It would take some time for renovation in Friedrichshain to really kick in a er 1990.

Demographic Development and Structural Transformation Expectations were high in Berlin a er reunification. Many castles were built in the sky. But “the euphoria of a new start turned more and more into shock,” concluded longtime Tagesspiegel editor Hermann Rudolph.54 Berlin, like the new federal states of former East Germany, entered a deep transformation crisis.55 Friedrichshain was affected by this in particular, as evidenced by its considerable population loss. From 1990 to 1999 its population declined by 7 percent, from 107,844 inhabitants to only 100,345.56 The reasons for this population shrinkage were a dramatic decline in the birth rate, which in all of eastern Germany resulted in considerably more deaths than births, as well as out-migration consistently exceeding inmigration.57 Both developments affected not just Friedrichshain but all of Berlin, which like many big Central European cities in the 1990s had a higher mortality than birth rate and which looked on rather helplessly as large numbers of people moved out into the suburbs, too many to be offset by in-migration from the rest of Germany.58 A shrinking population was accompanied by soaring unemployment in Friedrichshain. In 1999, the unemployment rate was a whopping 20.8 percent.59 This was mainly due to the radical economic restructuring the district underwent in the 1990s. Friedrichshain was a traditional workingclass neighborhood well into the 1980s. This changed dramatically with the liquidation of its largest industrial enterprises such as the NARVA lightbulb factory and the carburetor and filter-construction plant on Frankfurter Allee.60 The district’s previous economic structure had effectively collapsed. Friedrichshain was symptomatic of the overall collapse of the economy in eastern Germany, whose factories were unproductive, plagued by an outmoded employment structure, and ultimately uncompetitive in the face of West German and global competition.61 Added to this was the controversial practice of privatization and closure applied by the Treuhand agency responsible for the restructuring and sale of state-

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run enterprises, which only accelerated this radical structural transformation in Friedrichshain.62 One result of this structural transformation was Friedrichshain’s belated tertiarization, its shi to a service economy. This was evident, for example, in the tenfold increase of small businesses in the district.63 Streets like Simon-Dach-Strasse went virtually overnight from being purely residential areas to being lined with bars and restaurants—much to the dismay of many local residents.64 The Ringcenter shopping mall at Bahnhof Frankfurter Allee (Frankfurter Allee Station), opened in 1995, was one of the first of its kind in Berlin, ushering in a new, concentrated form of consumption that would pave the way for similar shopping centers all over the city. Structural transformation was also apparent in the conversion of former industrial plants. The industrial area of Stralau, with its glassworks at Rummelsberg Bay, became a laboratory for urban experimentation, being chosen as the site for the Olympic Village in Berlin’s bid to host the 2000 Summer Olympics. When the bid fell through in 1994, these plans were modified and a new project was born: Wasserstadt Stralau (Water City Stralau) with its 450 residential apartments.65 Li le had happened on the peninsula prior to this, since many property owners were speculating that the value of their property would go up.66 Added to this were unresolved property disputes, which affected Friedrichshain as they did all of eastern Germany. The primacy of “restitution over compensation” set down in the Unification Treaty meant that it o en took years for property to be restored to its rightful former owners or their heirs.67 This proved a barrier to investment in many places,68 impeding the process of renovation and redevelopment in Friedrichshain. The restitution of property to former owners (as opposed to paying compensation) and the privatization of state-owned property caused the district to undergo a double privatization which many longtime local residents found alienating and was publicly criticized by the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the SED’s successor party. This rejection of the new state of affairs o en went hand in hand with an idealized take on conditions in the GDR.69 In Kreuzberg, too, however, the period a er 1990 was perceived by many as a crisis. The western district faced many of the same challenges and exhibited comparable developments. Kreuzberg likewise suffered from population shrinkage between 1990 and 1999, its number of residents dropping from 153,915 to 148,246. While this decline of 3.7 percent was not as dramatic as in Friedrichshain, it was part of a consistent downward trend.70 Unemployment in Kreuzberg also reached unprecedented levels.71 In 1999, a total of 18,659 individuals were registered as out of work—the highest in Berlin second only to Neukölln.72 At 37.4 percent,

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the district’s foreign population was disproportionately affected by unemployment.73 Many Turkish employees lost their jobs in the 1990s, being replaced by labor from the eastern part of the city or being made redundant by economic restructuring.74 Several large industrial enterprises were shut down or relocated their production, including the communications company DeTeWe. Kreuzberg had previously been home to many contract manufacturers for large West German companies that profited from considerable tax breaks during the period of political division,75 and was hit hard by deindustrialization once the Cold War ended. Many foreign workers subsequently became self-employed and opened small stores.76 Kreuzberg, like Friedrichshain, experienced a certain degree of tertiarization, though new employment opportunities in the service sector could hardly compensate for the loss of manufacturing jobs.77 This had dire consequences on the district’s social structure, which was marked by considerable social segregation brought on by the flight of middle-class residents. New problem areas emerged—at Ko busser Tor, for example, which developed into the center of the Berlin drug scene. One clear difference between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg existed with regard to the share of foreign residents, which was twenty-two times higher in Kreuzberg in the year 1990. In this respect too, however, the two districts slowly converged, as more and more people with foreign passports moved to Friedrichshain.78 Most of these individuals came from Eastern and Southeastern Europe rather than from Turkey.79 In the 1990s both districts were among the lowest-income areas of Berlin.80 This was wholly in keeping with historical precedents.81 The old eastern part of the city was once again—like the previous century—the poorhouse of Berlin.

The Fusion of Districts and Gentrification A er lengthy debates the Berlin Senate decided to reduce the number of administrative districts in the city by way of a constitutional amendment of April 3, 1998 (art. 99a) and the Territorial Reform Law (Gebietsreformgesetz) of June 10, 1998. The twenty-three existing districts were to be fused into twelve. Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg would become a single administrative district. Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, as it was now called, and the new district of Mi e, created from the former (old) district of Mi e, Tiergarten and Wedding, were the only new districts comprised of former East and West Berlin districts. The reform took effect on January 1, 2001.82 The new district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg had 251,769 residents living in an area of 2,016 hectares (4,982 acres or 7.8 square miles).83

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Their comparable sizes and socio-structural similarities made their fusion a natural fit. But many local residents perceived it as a “forced marriage.”84 Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg had had enough troubles already becoming part of an integrated Berlin. They began with traffic connections. Oberbaum Bridge, the sole road linking Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, was reopened to automobile traffic on November 9, 1994, the fi h anniversary of the fall of the Wall, and against the strong opposition of many residents. Citizens’ initiatives on both sides of the Spree feared traffic congestion and population displacement. Protesters even briefly occupied the bridge in the summer of 1992, but the Senate ultimately prevailed.85 Political integration proved to be another hurdle. Many representatives from Friedrichshain felt marginalized and patronized in the new joint District Assembly (Bezirksverordnetenversammlung). In the old western district, on the other hand, some were suspicious of the fact that more renovation funds were flowing into the eastern part and hence lacking in their own neighborhoods. Thus, accusations of colonialization from the former eastern district came up against feelings of envy from the former western one. In many respects the conflicts between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg resembled the general difficulties encountered in the process of German reunification. At about the turn of the millennium, however, a transformation began which would relativize these differences.86 The demographic trend noticeably reversed. As of 2001 the new district has registered more births than deaths and more in-migration than out-migration.87 It is now home to 276,996 people, 151,827 of these in Kreuzberg and 125,169 in Friedrichshain.88 The reasons for this development lie partly in the city-wide boom experienced by Berlin since the end of the crisis of the 1990s. Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg have profited in particular from the capital city’s increasing appeal. But the demographic upturn is also due to the completion of most renovation work and redevelopment in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. Following the Kreuzberg model, three redevelopment areas were declared in Friedrichshain in 1993–94 in order to meet the Senate’s target of modernizing almost 67,000 apartments and over 5,000 commercial spaces:89 the Samariterviertel (Samaritan Quarter), the area around Traveplatz and Ostkreuz, and the one around Warschauer Strasse.90 Tax breaks offered incentives for owners to invest, many of whom had only just had their property restored to them. Rent and occupancy control were put in place at the same time to mitigate displacement processes caused by housing upgrades, enabling the previous residents to remain in the neighborhood. But this modernization and renovation program was discontinued in 2002, and rent controls a er renovation were abolished in 2006. By 2008,

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when redevelopment work had been completed in the three designated redevelopment areas, most of their former residents had le . While the many smaller apartments in Friedrichshain are prone to a high turnover for purely structural reasons, a demographic shi of 85 percent was evident in a period of just fi een years. This was accompanied by a marked social transformation. If the average income in redevelopment areas before renovation was well below the Berlin average, the influx of higher earners a er modernization pushed the average income in Friedrichshain well beyond this level.91 There were hardly any old people, any single parents or unemployed people le in the area a er redevelopment. These precarious social groups, which had previously gravitated to the neighborhood’s older buildings, had largely disappeared. This rapid social transformation has sparked considerable criticism in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. The scholarly term “gentrification” has become a staple of these public debates, defined by geographers and sociologists as the “neighborhood-based exchange of lower-status population groups with higher-status ones as a result of market strategies for increasing real-estate values or politically motivated housing upgrades.”92 Gentrification has become a political catchphrase for describing the rapid migration or displacement of long-time residents as a result of physical improvements to the housing stock. But the concept, o en used polemically and in very generalized fashion, has to be viewed in a more nuanced light, because the process is not universal in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg; it is almost exclusively limited to renovated older buildings, and even there it is not entirely the result of this renovation.93 There are a number of possible explanations for the gentrification of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. One frequently cited reason, especially with regard to Kreuzberg, is the desire to reclaim the neighborhood’s historic function as a city center.94 Pushed to the periphery by Cold War political divisions, Kreuzberg re-emerged, as it were, from the shadow of the Wall. Apart from a generally warranted skepticism towards this kind of environmental determinism,95 the argument cannot explain why gentrification in Kreuzberg was almost nonexistent at first.96 Andrej Holm refers to a “belated upgrade” rather than “dynamic gentrification” in Prenzlauer Berg and Friedrichshain, pointing in particular to a number of political factors.97 The main reason for gentrification in Kreuzberg, in his view, was the end of subsidy programs and the a endant abolishment of rent controls. “The modest rent development in Kreuzberg, successfully held in check by ‘cautious urban renewal,’ is nowadays seen by investors as a yield gap that needs to be closed.”98 The reason for the migration of former residents is not to be found in rising rents, he argues, but in the high indemnities paid out for moving, greater freedom of choice with regard

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to one’s place of residence, or a perceived alienation from rapidly changing surroundings.99 The la er indicates the importance of cultural push and pull factors. Older buildings in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg were not only physically restored but upgraded symbolically as well, a process which o en preceded their economic improvement, a racting new residents to the district. Barbara Lang sees these urban-cultural discourses as decisive for “actual socio-economic processes of transformation. They make the case for gentrification, promoting change through words.”100 This cultural shi did not begin in 1989–90, but with the revaluation of older Wilhelmine-era buildings, evident in Kreuzberg since the 1970s and in Friedrichshain since the 1980s. These dilapidated prewar buildings offered the freedom to make more individual lifestyle choices and acted as a springboard for the creation of new public spheres with a significant mobilizing power. Squa ers in the West and the East—Hausbesetzer and Schwarzwohner, respectively—were the “pioneers” evoked in gentrification theory, who by moving to these neighborhoods created a new social milieu that made the area hip before more affluent residents pushed them out (or they themselves became affluent).101 These processes did not overlap with the watershed events of 1989–90 and the ensuing period of structural transformation: whereas the pioneer phase began before the fall of the Wall, the displacement of “pioneers” by new urban elites only occurred a er wholesale renovation. They point to long-term processes of dissolution and redefinition with regard to social milieus and their accompanying, population-specific lifestyles. In this respect, gentrification in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg had a long history.

The Debate over Privatizing the Banks of the Spree It was the pioneers of gentrification who first moved into the former death strip between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg a er the fall of the Wall. In the spring of 1990, so-called Rollheimer (“roll-homers”) set up a le -wing alternative trailer park—their Wagenburg or “wagon fort”—on Mühlenstrasse, between the Spree and the hinterland wall. The former border offered a downright metaphorical and at times almost uncontrolled threshold space.102 The trailer park was followed by beach bars, clubs and circus projects, all of which made creative use of wasteland. They included popular clubs such as Maria, Oststrand and Bar 25, the Yaam youth club, and the Cabuwazi circus.103 This onetime no-go zone became a publicly accessible space and a new center of alternative entertainment culture where residents of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg could meet. This was made possible not only by the fall of the Wall but also by deindustrialization on

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both sides of the Spree, which at first made the riverfront seem economically una ractive. But the Berlin Senate was keen on coping with the abovementioned structural transformation and, given its heavy indebtedness, pursued a largely neoliberal regional economic and privatization policy. It banked on future industries like the creative economy and media enterprises. Following the example of the London Docklands and Hamburg’s HafenCity, the waterfront areas and harbor facilities of the upper Spree between Jannowitz Bridge and Elsen Bridge were to be converted into prime real estate.104 With sometimes considerable subsidies, the Senate managed to lure a number of media corporations to the banks of the Spree. In 2002 Universal Music moved into the former cold-storage egg warehouse (Eierkühlhaus) next to Oberbaum Bridge, followed in 2004 by MTV, which took up residence in the former storage depot at Osthafen.105 A deciding factor for these media companies was the creative use of this riverfront space just prior to their arrival, especially by the alternative scene in Kreuzberg and the electronic-music subculture that emerged a er the fall of the Wall. The corporations hoped to tap into the spirit and authenticity of these subcultures, using them as a brand so to speak.106 Initially, however, there was no demand at all for more office space in Berlin so that very few such investment projects even made it beyond their planning phase. But in 2001 six investors teamed up to form the Mediaspree GmbH site-development company.107 In 2004 twenty investors, property owners, representatives from the Berlin Senate and the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, as well as district officials founded the Mediaspree Regional Management association.108 The 180-hectare (445-acre) site, extending for 3.7 km (2.3 miles) along both banks of the Spree, was to see the erection of numerous new buildings for residential, commercial and cultural purposes, as well as for the service, hotel and restaurant industries. Mediaspree was to serve as an anchor point for future industries, creating up to forty thousand new jobs.109 In anticipation of positive structural effects, the Berlin Senate sold many state properties along the Spree to various private investors. No sooner had Mediaspree gone public, however, than the protests began in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. Aerial depictions of numerous new high-rises along the Spree provoked a public outcry.110 The promise of economic improvement to surrounding residential neighborhoods was not seen as a blessing by many local residents but unleashed fears that the area would undergo rapid gentrification.111 Club owners along the Spree were afraid that new construction would drive them away, causing them to suffer the classic fate of gentrification pioneers. In essence, though, the protests were more about the privatization of public space.

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Critics pointed out the loss of public sphere taking place on three levels. First, they bemoaned that the decision-making process for building up the riverfront site had transpired beyond the public’s reach thanks to a new kind of public-private partnership.112 Second, they complained that the state was selling off ever more public properties. And third, they feared that privatization would endanger public access to riverside promenades. In the fall of 2006, an initiative to block these riverside development plans was formed under the mo o “Sink the Mediaspree!” In October 2007, activists with ties to the alternative Christopher Street Day (CSD)113 launched a citizens’ initiative (Bürgerbegehren) at the regional level demanding “Banks of the Spree for Everyone!”114 In doing so they were making use of a new instrument of direct democracy introduced just a year before by the Red-Red (i.e. Social Democratic and Democratic Socialist) Senate. The citizens’ initiative made three concrete demands. First, no new buildings were to be erected on a fi y-meter-wide strip of land along the banks of the Spree; second, no new buildings were to exceed the traditional Berlin eaves height of twenty-two meters; and third, no new traffic connections for cars were to be built across the river.115 The Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg initiative managed to collect 16,500 signatures in just five months.116 Subsequent negotiations with the district were inconclusive, so that ultimately a referendum was set for July 13, 2008 in which eligible voters in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg could choose between proposals of the citizens’ initiative and a compromise solution presented by the district. The referendum resulted in a surprising victory for the citizens’ initiative: 87 percent of the thirty-five thousand votes went to its proposals, the necessary quorum of 15 percent also being reached with a voter turnout of 19.1 percent.117 The activists had succeeded in gaining relatively broad support for their cause and mobilizing many people to vote. There were three main things working in their favor. First, the initiative’s objectives united a broad social spectrum, from radical le -wing activists through creative entrepreneurs to parts of the alternative middle class.118 Motivations varied from classic NIMBY (“not in my back yard”) positions to a fundamental distrust of the Senate’s urban development policies.119 Second, the initiative’s three demands were very concrete and focused on clear objectives.120 Third, the members of the initiative developed creative and ironic forms of protest, following in the footsteps of the spontaneists and appealing to a broad public. Activists in inflatable ra s and paddleboats pulled up alongside a tour boat with Mediaspree investors, cheering them on and ultimately forcing them to abandon their outing ahead of schedule.121 The initiative also organized a Spree parade, used wi y cinema advertising, and came up with a distinctive logo which it placed

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on posters, stickers, T-shirts, mugs and jute bags, borrowing the motif of the Titanic to visualize in iconographic fashion the sinking of Mediaspree (Figure 14.1).122 The outcome of the referendum was not politically binding. The neoliberal FDP and the Berlin Chamber of Industry and Commerce called for ignoring the referendum entirely. But the Greens, as the governing party in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, could not afford to alienate their base.123 Hence, in October 2008, the district set up a special commi ee to work out a plan to implement the referendum. The commi ee comprised nine district councilmen from every political faction (3 from the Greens, 2 from The Le , 2 from the SPD, 1 from the FDP, 1 from the CDU) as well as four citizen deputies from the initiative. But the activists bailed out fi een months later when it became apparent to them that they were not in any position to push through their demands.124 The district feared compensation payments to the tune of 165 million euros, since most of the investors already had building rights.125 The Senate, for its part, threatened several times to revoke the district’s planning authority if development plans ran counter to “overall city interests.”126 And investors ultimately pointed to their valid development plans and accused the initiators of the referendum of abusing participative democracy for selfish purposes.127 The conflict between neighborhood interests and capital seemed virtually insoluble.128 The initiative succeeded only in part, namely with regard to state properties. Public space was enlarged in a couple of places, plans for a high-

FIGURE 14.1. Logo of the “Sink the Mediaspree!” initiative, Wikimedia Commons, h ps://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Mediaspree_versenken_logo_ msv.jpg.

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rise at Elsen Bridge were scu led, and Brommy Bridge was to be rebuilt for pedestrians and cyclists only.129 But the big construction projects on the Spree could no longer be stopped. The most prominent and also the most controversial project was the event arena of U.S.-based Anschutz Entertainment Group which opened in October 2008 under the name O2 World. More than 1,200 demonstrators protested at the dedication ceremony of this multipurpose hall on Mühlenstrasse.130 Much of the criticism was aimed at the fact that a 45-meter stretch of the Berlin Wall, part of a section that had been preserved, had to be dismantled and moved so that O2 World could have its own exclusive landing pier. This marked the first instance of a section of the East Side Gallery being sacrificed to private interests. It happened a second time five years later. In March 2013, additional sections of the East Side Gallery were slated to be removed in order to ensure access to the construction site of a private high-rise building. Investor Maik Uwe Hinkel (b. 1963) was planning to erect a thirteen-story, sixty-meter-high penthouse directly next to the Wall, having already secured a building permit for the project back in 2005.131 Renewed protests erupted when construction workers were about to remove the first segments of the Wall. Another citizens’ initiative was formed with the programmatic name “Save the East Side Gallery.” Some of its members were disillusioned former activists from the “Sink the Mediaspree” initiative. The list of protestors included individuals from public places of entertainment such as the Sage Club, Kater Holzig, Tresor, Lido and the Berlin Club Commission.132 Sascha Disselkamp (b. 1964), the la er’s spokesman, scandalized the proposed construction project: “People died here. Pu ing in luxury apartments at a spot like this is kind of like building a gas station on Museum Island.”133 The Green district mayor of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Franz Schulz (b. 1948), added: “The East Side Gallery will lose its open se ing and seem like a garden fence in front of these new buildings.”134 But the protests were obviously about more than just the destruction of a cultural artifact; they addressed the broader issue of urban redevelopment and its social implications, as summarized by Jonathan Bach: “This combination of legacy and le politics allowed the East Side Gallery to become metonymically linked with anti-gentrification sentiment in Berlin.”135 On March 17, 2013, about ten thousand people gathered at the East Side Gallery to protest the resumption of demolition work. In an ironic twist on the revolutionary slogan “The Wall must go,” the crowd now chanted “The Wall must stay.”136 The bizarre highlight of the mass demonstration was an appearance by David Hasselhoff (b. 1952), who performed “Looking for Freedom” before the cheering crowd, just as he’d done at the Brandenburg Gate on New Year’s Eve 1989 shortly a er the fall of the Wall. The

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Tagesspiegel was rather astonished that a “TV star from the United States, more ridiculed than admired in le ist circles,” could become “the figurehead of an alternative neighborhood protest against large-scale investors” (Figure 14.2).137 Le ist neighborhood politics had joined forces in a surprising way with local and global entertainment culture to picket for the priority of public over private interests. But even the high-publicity protest of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg activists could not stop the breach in the Wall. At five in the morning on March 26, 2013, a er four weeks of failed negotiations, the excavators arrived under cover of darkness. With 250 policemen to protect them, the access road was built.138 Ironically enough, less than two weeks later Spiegel magazine reported that investor Maik Uwe Hinkel had allegedly worked as a Stasi and KGB informer during the 1980s.139 The heated debate over the preservation of the Berlin Wall thus took an unexpected turn, though construction work on the luxury high-rise continued unimpeded. The penthouse at the Wall has meanwhile been completed. Just opposite, the Mercedes star is emblazoned on the auto company’s new distribution center, and O2 World has been renamed Mercedes-Benz Arena. Despite public protests, the privatization of the riverfront site has largely run its course, and the East Side Gallery, despite its missing segments, has nonetheless become a magnet for visitors and ever growing streams of tourists.140 Once more the gallery has become a symbol of more gen-

FIGURE 14.2. Performance by David Hasselhoff at the East Side Gallery (2013), photo. Sco Krause.

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eral developments in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. If it once embodied the radical Westernization of the East back in 1990, it is now a symbol of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg’s growing touristification. The conversion of factories into hostels, of apartments into vacation rentals has been criticized by many observers as the final stage of gentrification.141 And yet this gentrification has its pros and cons. Living conditions in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg have considerably improved in the last quarter of a century, helping the neighborhood achieve an unprecedented standard of life, which many onetime activists profit from as well. But the massive increase in rents has made it hard for many others to share in this development. Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg are now among the most expensive locations in Berlin for new rentals. The traditional socio-spatial pa ern that characterized this part of Berlin for more than a century and a half has effectively been reversed, the poorhouse of eastern Berlin having changed beyond recognition.

Notes 1. Christiane Borgelt and Regina Jost, Mauerübergänge Berlin. Transit, Grenzverkehr, Flucht, Berlin 2010, 29. 2. Martin Düspohl, Detlef Krenz, and Ulrike Treziak, “Die Spreegrenze,” in Düspohl and Moldt, Kleine Friedrichshaingeschichte, 146–155, here 154. 3. Gerhard Sälter, “Das Verschwinden der Berliner Mauer,” in Klaus-Dietmar Henke (ed.), Revolution und Vereinigung 1989/90. Als in Deutschland die Realität die Phantasie überholte, Munich 2009, 353–362. 4. Li le research has been done, by contrast, on social transformation in eastern Germany, as recently noted by Dierk Hoffmann, Michael Schwartz and Hermann Wentker. See Hoffmann, Schwartz, and Wentker, “Die DDR als Chance,” 60. One exception is Gerhard A. Ri er, Der Preis der Einheit. Die Wiedervereinigung und die Krise des Sozialstaats, Munich 2006. 5. Raj Kollmorgen, Wolfgang Merkel, and Hans-Jürgen Wagener, “Transformation und Transformationsforschung,” in Raj Kollmorgen, Wolfgang Merkel, and Hans-Jürgen Wagener (eds), Handbuch Transformationsforschung, Wiesbaden 2015, 11–27, here 17. 6. Hermann Rudolph, “Die Einheit in Berlin. Eine Fallstudie,” in Martin Sabrow and Alexander Koch (eds), Experiment Einheit. Zeithistorische Essays, Gö ingen 2015, 123–134, here 123. 7. On co-transformations in the West, see Philipp Ther, Die neue Ordnung auf dem alten Kontinent. Eine Geschichte des neoliberalen Europa, Frankfurt am Main 2014, 277–305. 8. A seminal work on squa ing and forced evictions on Mainzer Strasse is Arndt et al., Berlin Mainzer Straße. The book offers extensive documentation, and while clearly sympathizing with the squa ers lets all the protagonists have their say: squa ers, local residents, mediators and the police. 9. A. G. Grauwacke (ed.), Autonome in Bewegung. Aus den ersten 23 Jahren, Berlin 2008, 256.

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10. Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, “Historische Streiflichter zu Wohnungsnot und Mieterwiderstand in Berlin,” in Arndt et al., Berlin Mainzer Straße, 231–259, here 256. 11. On squa ing in Friedrichshain, see chapter 6. 12. Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen, 173. 13. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 117 f. The first squat in Friedrichshain was on Schreinerstrasse 47. Between March and April 1990 eight buildings on Kreutziger Strasse followed. 14. Grauwacke, Autonome in Bewegung, 252. 15. Quoted in Arndt et al., Berlin Mainzer Straße, 32. 16. Ibid., 30 f. 17. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 117 f. 18. The ten buildings were Nos. 2 to 11, as well as Nos. 22 and 24 on the opposite side of the street, the la er being only partly occupied. 19. On the various individual house projects, see Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen, 172 f. 20. Grauwacke, Autonome in Bewegung, 254. 21. Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen, 173. 22. Arndt et al., Berlin Mainzer Straße, 86. 23. Ibid., 32 f. 24. Grauwacke, Autonome in Bewegung, 253. 25. Arndt et al., Berlin Mainzer Straße, 163. 26. Ibid., 39. 27. Ibid., 36 f. 28. Grauwacke, Autonome in Bewegung, 258. 29. Ibid., 256. 30. Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen, 173. 31. Grauwacke, Autonome in Bewegung, 252. 32. Quoted in Arndt et al., Berlin Mainzer Straße, 77. 33. Ibid., 165. 34. Tilman Harlander, “Wohnungspolitik,” in Gerhard A. Ri er (ed.), Bundesrepublik Deuts land 1989–1994. Sozialpolitik im Zei en der Vereinigung (Ges i te der Sozialpolitik in Deuts land seit 1945, vol. 11), Baden-Baden 2007, 1033–1068, here 1053. 35. Rudolph, “Die Einheit in Berlin,” 131. 36. For a chronology of these events, see Arndt et al., Berlin Mainzer Straße, 10–29. 37. A spontaneous protest demonstration in the evening with ten thousand participants did not manage to break through to Mainzer Strasse and was dispersed at Frankfurter Tor. Ibid., 27. 38. Moldt, “Friedrichshain,” 29. 39. Dir VB S III, Betr.: Einsatz 14./15.11.1990, Auswertungsergebnis, Polizeihistoris e Sammlung Berlin. 40. Presseerklärung des Regierenden Bürgermeisters von Berlin Walter Momper vom 14.11.1990, Polizeihistorische Sammlung Berlin. 41. Frankfurter Rundschau, November 15, 1990. 42. Documented, e.g., in the Berliner Zeitung, November 19, 1990. 43. Infobla des Info-Büros Mainzer Straße und andere besetzte Häuser vom 24.11.1990, Polizeihistorische Sammlung Berlin. 44. Brief von 18 Mietern aus der Mainzer Straße an den Ost-Berliner Oberbürgermeister Schwierzina vom 19.11.1990, Polizeihistorische Sammlung Berlin. 45. Presseerklärung des Regierenden Bürgermeisters von Berlin Walter Momper vom 14.11.1990, Polizeihistorische Sammlung Berlin.

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46. EA 5/1, Betr.: Auswertung von Erfahrungen anläßli gewal ätiger Aktionen bei Häuserräumungen in Berlin, 17.1.1991, Polizeihistoris e Sammlung Berlin. 47. Info Nr. 18/1990, Betr.: Der große Bluff oder die wundersame Wandlung des Eri Pätzold (Trauerspiel in mehreren Teilen), 15.11.1990, Polizeihistoris e Sammlung Berlin. 48. Bereits a spolizei NW—Abt. I—SI—1553, Protokoll über die Einsatzna bespre ung des Einsatzes in Berlin vom 13.-20.11.1990 anläßli der Hausräumungen im Berei Mainzer Straße, 14.1.1991, Polizeihistoris e Sammlung Berlin. 49. Interview with Walter Momper (January 4, 2016). 50. Ibid. 51. At Senate elections in December 1990 the CDU turned out to be the surprise winner. The SPD henceforth became a junior partner in the Grand Coalition under Eberhard Diepgen (b. 1941). 52. Interview with Hartmut Moldenhauer (December 2, 2015). In November 1990, Moldenhauer (b. 1942) was the senior officer at state police headquarters and nowadays works as a volunteer maintaining the Berlin Police History Collection. He mentions an officer who tried to process his experiences in a model diorama of the street clash. The diorama is pictured in Das Ende der Anarchie—20 Jahre danach, Sonderdruck des Förderkreises Polizeihistorische Sammlung Berlin e. V., Berlin 2010, 4. It was put on public display in the “Alltag Einheit” (Everyday Life under Unification) exhibition of the Deutsches Historisches Museum, which ran from May 26, 2015 through February 29, 2016. 53. Grauwacke, Autonome in Bewegung, 261. 54. Rudolph, “Die Einheit in Berlin,” 127. 55. For an introduction, see Andreas Rödder, Deutschland einig Vaterland. Die Geschichte der Wiederverreinigung, Munich 2009, 304–310. 56. Düspohl and Moldt, Kleine Friedrichshaingeschichte, 8. 57. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 62. 58. From 1991 to 1998, Berlin lost more than 106,000 people to out-migration while only gaining 11,000 through in-migration from the rest of Germany. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 93. 59. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 64. 60. Moldt, “Friedrichshain,” 12. 61. Rödder, Deutschland einig Vaterland, 309. 62. Kerima Bouali, “Gentrifizierung in Friedrichshainer Altbauquartieren,” in Düspohl and Moldt, Kleine Friedrichshaingeschichte, 32–35, here 32. 63. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 63. 64. Dirk Moldt, “Boxhagen und Friedrichsberg,” in Düspohl and Moldt, Kleine Friedrichshaingeschichte, 74–84, here 83. 65. Wasserstadt Stralau was presented at EXPO 2000 in Hanover as an example of sustainable urban development. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon FriedrichshainKreuzberg, 63. 66. Moldt, “Friedrichshain,” 29. 67. Harlander, “Wohnungspolitik,” 1054. 68. Rödder, Deutschland einig Vaterland, 327. 69. This becomes apparent in the critical assessment of local historian Wanja Abramowski of the post-reunification period in Friedrichshain: “Not until the unpopular incursion of the West Berlin squa ers’ scene on Mainzer Strasse in 1990 did a massive process of social, cultural and mental repression take hold in the whole district. Curiously enough, it was these squa ers who acted as the first enforcers of deutschmark-based capitalist rule around Boxhagener Platz. The Hausbesetzer (squa ers) were followed by Hausbesitzer (landlords), who in turn were followed by new store and bar owners from

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70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

93.

94.

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regions west of the Spree and the Elbe. The original bar, store and business milieu was almost completely eliminated by the year 2000. Public spaces were reconfigured and willful chaos improved upon, including the now ‘historic’ Boxhagener Platz, through dubious restructuring processes. The most conspicuous thing, however, was the change in mentality brought about by an exchange of residents. Whereas elsewhere people banded together, life here was atomized. Living conditions and local identities became problematic. Poorhouse and yuppie mile, cheap and quiet small apartments, streets lined with trendy bars and dog droppings are the cornerstones of a tense configuration dominating the crisis of urban space in the early twenty-first century.” Abramowski, Boxhagen, 48. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 62. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 149–154. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg (ed.), Statistisches Jahrbuch Berlin 2000, Potsdam 2000, 259. Ibid. In 1999 their share of the population was 33.0 percent. This is captured quite impressively in the documentary film Duvarlar—Mauern—Walls, USA 2000, 84 min., wri en and directed by Can Candan. Ralf Ahrens, “Teure Gewohnheiten. Berlinförderung und Bundeshilfe für West-Berlin seit dem Mauerbau,” Vierteljahrschri für Sozial- und Wirtscha sgeschichte 102 (2015), 283–299. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 149–154. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 64. In 2001, the share of foreigners was 32.6 percent in Kreuzberg and 8.3 percent in Friedrichshain. Ibid., 13 f. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Statistisches Jahrbuch Berlin 2000, 56. Bouali, “Gentrifizierung in Friedrichshainer Altbauquartieren,” 33. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 25. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 11. This worked out to 124.9 residents per hectare (50.5 per acre), making FriedrichshainKreuzberg by far the most densely populated district of Berlin. Ibid., 14. Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 156. Clemens Villinger, “Der Abriss der Berliner Mauer in der öffentlichen Auseinandersetzung nach 1989,” master’s thesis, Humboldt University of Berlin 2012, 81–89. Rudolph, “Die Einheit in Berlin,” 134. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Statistisches Jahrbuch Berlin 2014, 45. Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Statistischer Bericht: Einwohnerinnen und Einwohner im Land Berlin am 30. Juni 2015, 2019, 27. Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 61. On redevelopment in Friedrichshain, see Bouali, “Gentrifizierung in Friedrichshainer Altbauquartieren.” Ibid., 34. Andrej Holm, “Zeitschleife Kreuzberg. Gentrification im langen Scha en der ‘Behutsamen Stadterneuerung’,” Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 11 (2014) no. 2, 300–311, h p://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/2-2014/id=5105. On the varied processes of gentrification in Berlin inner-city neighborhoods, see Andrej Holm, “Berlin’s Gentrification Mainstream,” in Ma hias Bernt, Bri a Grell, and Andrej Holm (eds), The Berlin Reader: A Compendium on Urban Change and Activism, Bielefeld 2013, 171–187; Bouali, “Gentrifizierung in Friedrichshainer Altbauquartieren,” 34. E.g., in the detailed introduction to Mende and Wernicke, Berliner Bezirkslexikon Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, 61.

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95. See the critique of materialist-essentialist approaches in Stephan Günzel, “Topologie und städtischer Raum,” Der Architekt 3/2008, 8–10. 96. E.g., Düspohl, Kleine Kreuzberggeschichte, 149. 97. Holm, “Zeitschleife Kreuzberg,” 303 f. 98. Ibid., 311. 99. Häußermann and Kapphan, Berlin. Von der geteilten zur gespaltenen Stadt, 197 f. 100. Lang, Mythos Kreuzberg, 36. 101. Grashoff, Schwarzwohnen, 180. 102. Jonathan Bach, “The Berlin Wall a er the Berlin Wall: Site into Sight,” Memory Studies 9 (2016) no. 1, 48–62, here 56. The trailer park was cleared in 1996. 103. Düspohl et al., “Die Spreegrenze,” 155. 104. Albert Scharenberg and Ingo Bader, “Berlin’s Waterfront Site Struggle,” City 13 (2009) nos. 2–3, 325–335, here 327. 105. Martin Wiebel, “Das Quartier Rudolfplatz. Berlins Upper East Side,” in Düspohl and Moldt, Kleine Friedrichshaingeschichte, 101–115, here 113 f. Neues Deutschland, which had its editorial offices in an old administrative building at Osthafen from 1995 to 2005 due to legal disputes, can also be counted among the media companies located on the Spree. Uebel, Eisenbahner, Artisten und Zeitungsmacher, 77. 106. Scharenberg and Bader, “Berlin’s Waterfront Site Struggle,” 330. 107. Tagesspiegel, November 17, 2001. 108. Düspohl et al., “Die Spreegrenze,” 155. 109. On Mediaspree, see esp. Jan Dohnke, “Spree Riverbanks for Everyone! What Remains of ‘Sink Mediaspree’?” in Bernt et al., The Berlin Reader, 261–274. 110. Düspohl et al., “Die Spreegrenze,” 156. 111. Dohnke, “Spree Riverbanks for Everyone,” 263. 112. Scharenberg and Bader, “Berlin’s Waterfront Site Struggle,” 329. 113. The alternative Christopher Street Day developed as an alternative to the actual Christopher Street Day celebrations, which to many members of the le ist LGBT movement had become too commercialized. 114. The citizens’ initiative addressed the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district, which was formally responsible for construction measures. 115. AG Spreeufer, Infobroschüre “Spreeufer für alle!” des “Initiativkreis Mediaspree versenken!” undated; online at: h p://www.ms-versenken.org/ (accessed March 22, 2016). 116. This was three times as many signatures as were needed. Tagesspiegel, March 20, 2008. 117. Almost 30,000 of the 180,000 individuals eligible to vote. On the results of the referendum, see Tagesspiegel, July 14, 2008. 118. Scharenberg and Bader, “Berlin’s Waterfront Site Struggle,” 332 f. 119. Dohnke, “Spree Riverbanks for Everyone,” 267. 120. Scharenberg and Bader talk about a single-issue movement. Scharenberg and Bader, “Berlin’s Waterfront Site Struggle,” 332 f. 121. Tagesspiegel, July 2, 2008. 122. Dohnke, “Spree Riverbanks for Everyone,” 266 f. 123. Tagesspiegel, July 14, 2008. 124. Dohnke, “Spree Riverbanks for Everyone,” 271. 125. The citizens’ initiative had been anticipating 40 million euros. Ibid., 268. 126. Tagesspiegel, February 28, 2009. 127. Dohnke, “Spree Riverbanks for Everyone,” 268 f. 128. In the opinion of Arno Orzessek in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 2, 2008. 129. For an outcome assessment, see the “Spreeufer für alle!” information brochure, 14 f.

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130. Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 4, 2008. 131. Only in 2006 was the East Side Gallery declared a historical monument, being assessed by the Berlin Senate in its overall concept for preserving the memory of the Berlin Wall as a particularly unique and valuable expression of the euphoria felt over the fall of the Wall and its subsequent “aesthetic appropriation.” Düspohl et al., “Die Spreegrenze,” 154. 132. Tagesspiegel, February 24, 2013. 133. Tagesspiegel, March 5, 2013. 134. Quoted in Tagesspiegel, March 18, 2013. 135. Bach, “The Berlin Wall a er the Berlin Wall,” 57. 136. Ibid. 137. Tagesspiegel, March 18, 2013. 138. Tagesspiegel, March 28, 2013. 139. Der Spiegel, April 8, 2013. 140. Hanno Hochmuth, “HisTourismus, Public History und Berlin-Tourismus,” in Christoph Kühberger and Andreas Pudlat (eds), Vergangenheitsbewirtscha ung. Public History zwischen Wirtscha und Wissenscha , Innsbruck 2012, 173–182, here 181. 141. See the polemic arguments of Peter Laudenbach, Die el e Plage. Wie Berlin-Touristen die Stadt zum Erlebnispark machen, Berlin 2013.

CONCLUSION

( In 2017, the number of years since the Berlin Wall fell was equal to the years it existed. The criteria of historical observation are shi ing as the period of division between East and West Berlin seems more and more like an episode from the “century of extremes.” The same goes for the now century-long history of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, marked at first by extreme living conditions, then by extreme wartime destruction and housing shortages, and finally by extreme system conflict. But Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg did not simply mirror the twentieth century’s major fault lines. There were far more continuities during the period of Cold War division than generally presumed, which in turn engendered new developments that would only come to fruition under conditions of an untrammeled market economy a er the fall of the Wall. In some respects, the accelerated transformations of the decades since reunification seem even more radical than the developments during the decades before, in particular the reversal of traditional socio-spatial orders, that is, the transformation of an old working-class district into an upmarket historical neighborhood. This astonishing development, which forms the key finding of this investigation, is rooted in the transformation of the public and private spheres in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg during the Cold War. The following will a empt to summarize this and other conclusions before offering a few brief methodological reflections on the conceptual starting points of this study. First, the contemporary history of the public and private spheres in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg is not a history of decline. Citizens’ initiatives and neighborhood festivals as well as alternative forms of living all indicate a progressive expansion and entanglement of the public and private spheres. The dynamics of the public and the private partly resulted from processes of urban development which, especially in older residential neighborhoods, created the freedom necessary for new public and priNotes for this chapter begin on page 311.

Conclusion | 305

vate spheres to develop. In other instances, however, they had a causal effect on urban development in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, as seen, for example, in the political commitment of the Protestant Church. Starting in the 1970s, in particular, the public and the private spheres interacted in novel ways. Südost-Express and other neighborhood periodicals in Kreuzberg created a new kind of public sphere which served to protect a newly won private sphere, while the blues masses in Friedrichshain gave public voice to the private concerns and needs of young people. Conversely, transborder media public spheres created new possibilities for retreating into the private sphere. Thus, the binary of public and private spheres became blurred and ambiguous areas of overlap emerged—a characteristic feature of the modern era. Still, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg followed different paths in this regard. Hence various manifestations of the public and private spheres and their respective appropriation indicate multiple forms of modernity.1 Second, the democratic nature of West Berlin lent Kreuzberg much greater freedom for the public and private spheres to unfold than was the case for Friedrichshain in socialist East Berlin. Countless new forms of the public and private sphere in Kreuzberg, however, aimed to subvert this status quo, propagating alternative political ideas and lifestyles which as of the 1970s were increasingly linked to a specific urban space. Decidedly le -wing counter-public spheres emerged in the form of local newspapers, le ist galleries, exhibitions, history workshops, bar collectives and neighborhood festivals, all of which saw themselves as alternatives to the “bourgeois public sphere” of the prevailing social order. These counterpublic spheres gained a certain cultural hegemony in Kreuzberg, evident, for instance, in their heavily influencing and usurping local agendas and language. In other respects, the political demands of these counterpublic spheres o en failed due to a lack of commitment, the inability to build a consensus, and the persistence of private interests and individual needs. Third, SED dictatorship and its state-controlled media resulted in very limited possibilities for an independent public sphere to develop in Friedrichshain, resulting in a tendency to retreat into the private sphere. And yet even state propaganda was subject to countervailing dynamics that evaded the political will of the SED, as seen, for example, in the ND press festival, the Party-state being forced here to make ever more concessions to the needs of the people for private entertainment and consumption. Alternative public spheres likewise developed, sometimes with a surrogate function. Films such as The Legend of Paul and Paula used available artistic freedoms to publicly address the pursuit of personal happiness against the backdrop of urban transformation in Friedrichshain. Petitions to state

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and communal authorities gave rise to a kind of surrogate public sphere in which the people could remind the powers that be of unfulfilled political promises and their own individual needs. Finally, the blues masses at Samaritan Church created a selective counter-public sphere, addressing, for example, the problem of a dual media public sphere, an official Eastern one and an unofficial Western one. These forms of public sphere, however, were usually limited to a narrowly circumscribed neighborhood se ing. This also applied to the development of alternative forms of living in the private sphere which, as in the case of squa ing, were only tolerated if they took place under the radar. Fourth, the various forms and concepts of the public and private sphere were not only subject to an overall social framework but were likewise dependent on local structures in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. The two districts exhibited numerous shared traditions, from urban structures through church congregations to their bar and festival cultures. Added to this were common challenges, such as persistent housing shortages given the decay and destruction of Wilhelmine-era housing, challenges both districts had to face regardless of their political differences. This resulted in a situation where, despite the political division of the city and competing social and economic systems, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg only diverged to a limited degree in questions of urban planning, with each one’s solutions to local problems being closely watched by the other side. Fi h, the most pressing problem in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg from the entire postwar era down to reunification in 1990 was how to solve the housing question. East and West had similar urban-planning policies, which until the 1970s called for the demolition of older rundown buildings and replacing them with modern housing developments. These housing projects in East and West were almost entirely financed or subsidized with public money, the housing question being understood as a public responsibility ever since the Weimar Republic, a claim that both postwar German states had to live up to. In practice, redevelopment lagged in both districts, compounding the issue even more, as countless apartments stood empty while the housing shortage continued unabated. Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain saw numerous apartments occupied by squa ers as a result. This practice of appropriating residential space illegally resulted in the emergence of new private forms of living in shared apartments and communes in old tenement buildings, which originally had offered only limited privacy. While these spaces in Friedrichshain were generally sought out and negotiated individually and in private, the squats in Kreuzberg were a highly contentious public affair that succeeded in mobilizing a variety of social protagonists.

Conclusion | 307

Sixth, a key actor in the process of urban development in Kreuzberg turned out to be the Protestant Church, which “reinvented” itself in the spirit of civil society. In place of the historical alliance between throne and altar, the 1960s saw the church become critically engaged in society, drawing on older social-Protestant traditions and trying to offer answers to specific community problems. The same was true for parts of the Protestant Church in Friedrichshain, although criticism here was directed not at the city but the state, the church being the only public space in the GDR that was able to maintain the structures of an independent civil society. Marginalized itself in the wake of massive unchurching, the Protestant Church in both the West and the East increasingly turned to people living at the margins of society, those affected by redevelopment or who had li le to hope for from life in the GDR. It combined social-welfare work with a critical public sphere that could assert itself against local, state and Party-state decision-makers. The church public sphere in Kreuzberg stimulated a new neighborhood public sphere; in Friedrichshain it served as an umbrella for a dissident surrogate public sphere. In this manner the church triggered important transformation processes, helping in the West to put an end to a policy of redevelopment that had proved unpopular and in the East to pave the way to the peaceful triumph over SED dictatorship. Seventh, a particularly important public and private sphere was the urban entertainment culture of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, which underwent a profound transformation in the second half of the twentieth century. Numerous forms of public neighborhood entertainment from the long turn of the century entered into a crisis, evident in the slow demise of corner bars, fleapit cinemas and traditional popular festivals. Entertainment shi ed more and more to the private sphere thanks to rapid increases in purchasing power and leisure time, accompanied by technological progress. This shi allowed the linkage of East to West via electronic mass media, even a er 1961. Popular Western radio and television programs formed part of an entangled entertainment culture that also offered East Germans a surrogate public sphere, reinforcing a tendency among East Germans to retreat into the private sphere. In Kreuzberg, too, entertainment culture encouraged a retreat into the private sphere before new forms of public entertainment emerged in the 1970s. The la er included a diversified and mythically inflated Kreuzberg bar scene, but above all new neighborhood festivals with a decidedly political bent and the aim of establishing a critical counter-public sphere. And yet le ist utopias, a empted in the form of bar collectives and neighborhood festivals, repeatedly came into conflict with the needs of patrons and festivalgoers for private consumption and entertainment. Entertainment culture seemed to have inherent laws of its own which frequently evaded the a empts of

308 | At the Edge of the Wall

organizers to impose their political will on it as well as a empts by the authorities to contain it. It was thus less a political agenda than a new aesthetic of resistance in alternative entertainment culture that contributed to a new urbanity and the revival of the public sphere in Kreuzberg. Eighth, in the 1970s and 1980s Kreuzberg developed into a laboratory of social experimentation, enabling individuals to try out new forms of social participation and self-determined lifestyles. Individualization in Kreuzberg went hand in hand with new choices and liberties, the district adopting many of the liberal tendencies and the critical potential of the Federal Republic while in turn having a formative influence on it.2 Kreuzberg offered two, only seemingly conflicting preconditions for this. For one thing, it provided the urban anonymity and incomplete social integration that many young people moving to West Berlin were looking for, being eager to escape the social norms of West Germany and, more importantly, opt out of military service. For another, the geographical and social remoteness of this “Gaulish village” allowed new forms of community to emerge in the form of an alternative and hedonistic communal lifestyle for which Kreuzberg was ideally suited, large parts of the district being of li le economic interest and hence correspondingly neglected by the authorities. The dilapidated buildings in its Wilhelmine-era neighborhoods offered niches for social experiments and post-Fordist lifestyles. This was also true to a certain extent of Friedrichshain in the 1980s, where a number of nonconformist subcultures emerged that rejected the SED regime but were poorly networked due to restrictions on the public sphere. Ninth, the preservation of these buildings that enabled new forms of living was a key reason for the rejection of planned utopias in the form of large-scale modernization schemes and extensive urban highways. This was accompanied by a positive reappraisal of historical architecture, manifest both in the revaluation of old housing and the reinvention and rapid spread of the now ubiquitous term Kiez for neighborhood. This development was conservative and progressive at once, uniting a broad range of protagonists from historic preservationists through church representatives to le ist squa ers. In an effort to preserve the neighborhood, new forms of codetermination were tested and numerous local histories were wri en. One of the main upshots of these developments was the concept of “cautious urban renewal,” which emanated well beyond Kreuzberg. By the same token, the developments in Kreuzberg were part of an overall social transformation taking place since the 1970s that was marked by the “end of certainty” in the years “a er the boom”3 and corresponded to a profound historico-cultural transformation. Reflecting on the past eventually promised more orientation than faith in progress did. A similar trend was evident in the GDR during the 1980s. Friedrichshain saw the reval-

Conclusion | 309

uation of older buildings, which—largely for economic reasons—were now being restored in the context of “complex reconstruction” rather than being torn down as planned to make way for prefabricated panelized housing. In short, even before the fall of the Wall there was a convergence of urban-planning concepts in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. Old tenement buildings, which for decades had been seen by policymakers and urban planners as a scourge of city life, were now thought to possess a particular historical authenticity.4 Tenth, the revaluation of older buildings forms an important historical foundation for today’s gentrification of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. This process of urban and social upgrading goes back to the period before 1989–90. Students and squa ers in Kreuzberg and squa ers in Friedri shain were the pioneers of gentrification, trying out new forms of living in old buildings and thereby creating a new, post-Fordist urbanity. This symbolic upgrading was followed in the new millennium by the economic improvement of this meanwhile largely renovated older building stock, former squa ers o en becoming property owners themselves or being displaced by more affluent urban elites—a development that has fundamentally changed the socio-spatial character of the now unified district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg. The social costs of urban upgrades are now the focus of public debate around issues of gentrification, privatization and touristification, a discourse spearheaded by a very particular and tradition-steeped local culture of protest which itself was a major contributor to the district’s current appeal by dint of its generating alternative forms of the public and private sphere. In this respect, the present investigation of the historical origins of this ambivalent development sees itself as a contribution to the “problem history” of our present.5 The aim of this study was to compare the public and private spheres in Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, thereby making a contribution to an integrated German postwar history, a key task of German contemporary history.6 By comparing these two neighboring districts, which belonged to competing social systems for over four decades, I inquired on a small scale into commonalities, differences and entanglements between East and West. The particular appeal of a comparative study of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg is the unique historical constellation underlying it. The shared history, temporary division and ultimate unification of these two districts provide a historical test case, condensing into a manageable framework the complex history of German-German postwar history. That said, West Berlin cannot be equated with West Germany nor East Berlin with East Germany. Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg were neither typical nor atypical of German-German postwar history. They are not

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exchangeable case studies of general historical structures and processes. Rather, these two districts in the divided “frontline city” of Berlin were a historical exception, but also a kind of microcosm of more general social tendencies. The history of Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg therefore enables a look at the general by way of the specific, combining urban history with contemporary history. The question of the public and private spheres necessarily shi ed the focus of this study to parallel developments in Cold War Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg. East-West comparison was not limited to a mere contrastive history of dictatorship vs. democracy but revealed numerous commonalities alongside elementary differences. Admi edly, the question of historical entanglements has o en been hard to answer. Select case studies revealed fewer entanglements between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg than assumed at the outset. This is a finding worth heeding, since there is no point in artificially producing historical entanglements, as it were, through a one-sided focus on unifying aspects. Thus, rather than showing concrete entanglements, the present study has o en limited itself to assumptions of plausibility with regard to cultural transfers and their inherent asymmetries between East and West. Finally, two useful ways of broadening the entanglement approach are worth pointing out here. First, entanglement in most investigations of German-German postwar history is understood as a compensatory and generally peaceful means of overcoming an anomalous division. In point of fact, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg were not only bound together by the friendly exchange of art, culture, media, lifestyles and urban-planning paradigms, but also, paradoxically, by a monstrous border that violently separated and at the same time inextricably linked these two districts. In this regard, the very symbols of division formed an element of “entanglement in demarcation.”7 Thus, the Western bridgehead of Oberbaum Bridge was regularly used by West Berliners for demonstrations of solidarity with their “brothers and sisters” in the East. It is therefore no coincidence that the bridge is now depicted in the coat of arms of the unified district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg. Second, historical entanglement was obviously not limited to the district level. Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg were integrated in manifold ways in the city-wide and overall social context of system competition. This is especially true of the transborder audiovisual-media public spheres in East and West, which largely elude an urban- and local-history approach. What’s more, the question of German-German entanglements mustn’t blind us to transnational entanglements. Kreuzberg subculture of the 1970s and 1980s was closely linked to intellectual, artistic and musical inspirations in the rest of the Western world and tended to ignore what

Conclusion | 311

was happening on the other side of the Wall. Finally, of key importance in Kreuzberg was the transnational entanglement created by migrants from Turkey, many of whom picked up the slack when the Wall was built in 1961, replacing the entanglements—personal, professional and social— that once existed between East and West Berlin. The diverse everyday lives and experiences of migrants had a considerable impact on this Western district, with no comparable migration processes affecting its Eastern neighbor. In this regard Kreuzberg was more entangled with the wider world than it was with its eastern neighbor on the other side of the Spree.

Notes 1. Konrad H. Jarausch, Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the 20th Century, Princeton 2015. 2. On the liberalization of the Federal Republic, see Ulrich Herbert, “Liberalisierung als Lernprozess. Die Bundesrepublik in der deutschen Geschichte—eine Skizze,” in idem (ed.), Wandlungsprozesse in Westdeutschland. Belastung, Integration, Liberalisierung 1945–1980, Gö ingen 2002, 7–49; Konrad H. Jarausch, Die Umkehr. Deutsche Wandlungen 1945–1995, Munich 2004. 3. Jarausch, Das Ende der Zuversicht?; Doering-Manteuffel and Raphael, Nach dem Boom. 4. Martin Sabrow and A im Saupe, “Historis e Authentizität. Zur Kartierung eines Fors ungsfeldes,” in idem (eds), Historis e Authentizität, Gö ingen 2016, 7–28, here 21–24. 5. Hans Günter Ho erts, “Einführung,” in idem (ed.), Koordinaten deuts er Ges i te in der Epo e des Ost-West-Konflikts, Muni 2004, vii–xv, here viii. 6. Stefanie Eisenhuth, Hanno Ho muth, and Konrad H. Jaraus , “Alles andere als ausgefors t. Aktuelle Erweiterungen der DDR-Fors ung,” Deuts land Ar iv, January 11, 2016, www.bpb.de/218370. 7. Arnd Bauerkämper, “Verfle tung in der Abgrenzung,” in Ulri Mählert (ed.), Die DDR als Chance. Neue Perspektiven auf ein altes Thema, Berlin 2016, 71–78, here 77.

 

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Online Resources h p://berlin-besetzt.de (website on squats in Berlin) h ps://pressegeschichte.docupedia.de/wiki (supplementary materials of the GDR Press Portal) h p://www.beppo-pohlmann.de (homepage of singer Beppo Pohlmann) h p://www.berghain.de (homepage of Berghain nightclub) h ps://kommunismusgeschichte (BioLex online reference work, incl. “Who Was Who in the GDR”) h ps://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/bundestagswahlen/2017/ergebnisse.html (Bundestag election results)

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h p://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/die-traditionslinie-der-ortsgemeinde .1278.de.html?dram:article_id=247864 (interview with Pfarrer Klaus Duntze) h p://www.dwds.de (Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, online German dictionary) h p://www. xb-museum.de (homepage of the FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum) h p://www.histomapberlin.de (historic maps of Berlin) h p://www.moana.de/FilmeDeutsch/DCh/DChIv.html (homepage of filmmaker Rudolf Thome) h ps://ms-versenken.org (homepage of the “Sink the Mediaspree!” initiative) h ps://www.museum-digital.de (museum-digital, incl. materials from the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum) h ps://www.ostel.eu (homepage of the Ostel hostel) h ps://www.slub-dresden.de/sammlungen/deutsche-fotothek/fotografen/ borchert (website of the Saxon State Library/the State and University Library of Dresden on the work of photographer Christian Borchert) h ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKaIehw4ItY (performance of the Bla schuss Brothers on ZDF’s Hit Parade) h p://zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/ddr-presse (GDR Press Portal) h ps://digital.zlb.de/viewer/cms/141 (Berlin address books)

Films and TV Shows B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979–1989, Federal Republic of Germany 2015, 92 min., wri en and directed by Jörg A. Hoppe, Klaus Maeck, Heiko Lange. Berlin Chamissoplatz, Federal Republic of Germany 1980, 112 min., directed by Rudolf Thome, wri en by Rudolf Thome and Jochen Brunow. Die Kinder aus No. 67 oder: Heil Hitler, ich hä gern n’paar Pferdeäpfel (The Children from No, 67, or Heil Hitler, I’d Like a Couple of Road Apples), Federal Republic of Germany 1980, 103 min., wri en and directed by Usch BarthelmeßWeller and Werner Meyer. Die Legende von Paul und Paula (The Legend of Paul and Paula), GDR 1973, 105 min., directed by Heiner Carow, wri en by Ulrich Plenzdorf. Duvarlar—Mauern—Walls, USA 2000, 84 min., wri en and directed by Can Candan. Kiezgeschichten (Neighborhood Stories), seven-part miniseries produced by East German television, first aired on October 23, 1987, directed by Jens-Peter Proll, wri en by Rolf Gumlich.

Interviews with Contemporary Witnesses Martin Düspohl (June 4, 2014) Rainer Eppelmann (April 22, 2015) Hugo Hoffmann (May 9, 2015)

318 | Bibliography

Uwe Hübsch (November 18, 2015) Christa Jancik (May 23, 2014) Gabriele Klahr (December 10, 2015) Susanne Köstering (June 5, 2014) Thomas Lindenberger (June 3, 2014) Hartmut Moldenhauer (December 2, 2015) Dirk Moldt (August 13, 2014) Walter Momper (January 4, 2016) Beppo Pohlmann (May 6, 2015) Barbara Rolfes-Poneß (October 9, 2015) Johann Georg Schabach (May 8, 2015) Werner Tammen (May 12, 2015) Martin Wiebel (October 9, 2015) Jörg Zintgraf (June 4, 2014)

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INDEX OF STREETS

( All references to historical streets are listed under their present-day names. Ackerstrasse, 97 Adalbertstrasse, 134–35 Admiralstrasse, 54 Alexanderplatz, 1, 45, 60, 66, 114, 200 Alexandrinenstrasse, 51 Am Ostbahnhof, 104, 234 Andreasstrasse, 40, 43 Arndtstrasse, 139, 250, 266 Arnimplatz, 151 Askanischer Platz, 48 Badstrasse, 143 Baerwaldstrasse, 61 Baruther Strasse, 240 Belle-Alliance-Strasse. See Mehringdamm Bergmannstrasse, 269–270 Bernburger Strasse, 189 Bersarinplatz, 56, 151 Bethaniendamm, 51 Blücherstrasse, 60, 174, 240, 242 Blumenstrasse, 41 Boddinstrasse, 45 Boxhagener Platz, 235, 300–301 Breslauer Strasse. See Am Ostbahnhof Bülowstrasse, 59 Chamissoplatz, 58, 126–132, 222, 242, 250, 264–270 Clayallee, 265 Colbestrasse, 281 Cotheniusstrasse, 285 Cuvrystrasse, 48 Dönhoffplatz, 122 Dresdener Strasse, 54, 61

Eisenbahnstrasse, 61 Fidicinstrasse, 130, 141, 275 Frankfurter Allee, 41, 49, 53, 151, 285, 287–88 Franz-Mehring-Platz, 45, 107–18 Friedenstrasse, 208, 232 Friedrichstrasse, 52, 65, 217, 226 Friesenstrasse, 60, 266 Fruchtstrasse. See Strasse der Pariser Kommune Glatzer Strasse, 64 Gleimstrasse, 29 Glogauer Strasse, 175, 178, 189 Gneisenaustrasse, 59, 247 Goltzstrasse, 141–42 Görlitzer Strasse, 84 Grenzallee, 45 Gröbenufer. See May-Ayim-Ufer Grossbeerenstrasse, 252 Grosse Frankfurter Strasse. See Karl-Marx-Allee Grünberger Strasse, 208 Hallesches Ufer, 61 Hedemannstrasse, 46, 63 Heinrich-Heine-Strasse, 52 Heinrichplatz, 185 Hermannplatz, 45, 47 Holzmarktstrasse, 38 Hornstrasse, 252 Husemannstrasse, 152 Karl-Marx-Allee, 1–2, 4, 38, 43, 46, 49–50, 66, 101, 112–113, 116, 122, 159, 211, 229, 234, 237, 259 Katzbachstrasse, 62 Klausenerplatz, 159

Index of Streets | 345

Kloedenstrasse, 266 Koburger Strasse, 247 Kochstrasse, 43, 114 Kohlfurter Strasse, 241 Kopischstrasse, 275 Koppenstrasse, 120, 234 Kotikowplatz. See Petersburger Platz Ko busser Ufer, 46 Krautstrasse, 37 Kreutziger Strasse, 299 Kreuzbergstrasse, 62, 250 Krossener Strasse, 235 Küstriner Platz. See Franz-Mehring-Platz Landsberger Allee, 42, 231 Lange Strasse, 104 Lausitzer Platz, 2, 189 Legiendamm, 61 Lehmbruckstrasse, 235 Leninplatz. See Platz der Vereinten Nationen Liegnitzer Strasse, 245 Lindenstrasse, 43, 46, 54, 56 Lobeckstrasse, 51 Mainzer Strasse, 19, 22, 205, 253, 280–87 Marheinekeplatz, 61, 189 Mariannenplatz, 176, 184–85, 189, 265 Mariannenstrasse, 184 Mauerstrasse, 122 May-Ayim-Ufer, 52 Mehringdamm, 54, 58, 239, 253 Mehringplatz, 54 Mi enwalder Strasse, 183 Moritzplatz, 42 Mühlendamm, 38 Mühlenstrasse, 51, 101, 229, 231, 237, 279, 292, 296 Mühsamstrasse, 157, 158 Muskauer Strasse, 250 Naunynstrasse, 46, 143 Nestorstrasse, 251 Neuenburger Strasse, 140 Niederkirchnerstrasse, 46 Nostitzstrasse, 46 Oranienstrasse, 51, 128, 137, 185–86, 189, 242 Palisadenstrasse, 101

Paul-Lincke-Ufer, 189 Petersburger Platz, 194, 205, 208 Petersburger Strasse, 64, 234 Pfarrstrasse, 285 Planufer, 189 Platz der Vereinten Nationen, 54 Potsdamer Platz, 42 Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. See Niederkirchnerstrasse Prinzenstrasse, 51 Pücklerstrasse, 61 Putbusser Strasse, 159 Reichenberger Strasse, 93, 181, 191, 245, 253 Revaler Strasse, 53 Rigaer Strasse, 208 Ri erstrasse, 42 Rotherstrasse, 235, 238 Rudolfplatz, 208 Rudolfstrasse, 235 Saarbrücker Strasse, 122 Samariterstrasse, 145, 195, 203, 208, 284 Schöneberger Strasse, 42 Schönhauser Allee, 240, 281 Schreinerstrasse, 65, 299 Seestrasse, 45 Senefelderplatz, 122 Simon-Dach-Strasse, 158, 288 Simplonstrasse, 193 Singerstrasse, 116, 123 Sorauer Strasse, 14, 84–100, 101, 104, 106 Stalinallee. See Karl-Marx-Allee Stralauer Allee, 51 Stralauer Platz, 42, 208 Strasse der Pariser Kommune, 14, 19, 54, 101–19, 226–35 Strausberger Platz, 1, 50, 257, 259 Stresemannstrasse, 189 Taborstrasse, 189 Tauentzienstrasse, 59 Traveplatz, 290 Warschauer Strasse, 123, 290 Wartenburgstrasse, 59 Wassertorstrasse, 51, 189 Weberstrasse, 208 Weidenweg, 101 Weitlingstrasse, 283

346 | Index of Streets

Werneuchener Strasse, 274 Wilhelmstrasse, 54 Willibald-Alexis-Strasse, 126, 250, 253, 266 Wühlischplatz, 61

Yorckstrasse, 39, 59, 252 Zimmerstrasse, 43 Zossener Strasse, 240

INDEX OF PERSONS

( Aly, Götz, 142 Augner, Peter, 180 Auguste Viktoria, 174, 194 Axen, Hermann, 113, 260 Baader, Andreas, 183, 242 Ba , Sabine, 125 Bahmann, Manfred, 185–87 Bahrdt, Hans Paul, 8–11, 25, 177 Bargeld, Blixa, 276 Barthelmess-Weller, Us , 95 Bartning, O o, 194 Bebel, August, 43 Behrends, Jan C., 11 Berger, Joa im, 134, 142 Berthold, Erika, 145–46 Be s, Paul, 20, 147 Beuys, Joseph, 144 Biermann, Wolf, 123, 146 Bismar , O o von, 75 Blankenstein, Hermann, 41, 61 Bobrowski, Johannes, 242 Bohley, Bärbel, 285 Böhm, Peter, 242 Born, Nicolas, 242 Bös , Frank, 20 Bourdieu, Pierre, 71, 217 Braun, Adolf, 86 Bü er, Karl, 85 Bu holz, Martin, 131 Bultmann, Ludwig, 184 Carow, Heiner, 116–17 Casanova, José, 164 Cobbers, Arnt, 18 Cox, Harvey, 175 Cyrus, Gerhard, 208 Dall, Karl, 242

Deix, Manfred, 128 Delius, F.C., 242 Delmare, Fred, 117 Diepgen, Eberhard, 142, 300 Disselkamp, Sas a, 296 Dobler, Jens, 19 Domröse, Angelica, 116, 123 Donath, O o, 108, 110 Drenkmann, Günter von, 183 Dülli , Udo, 52 Duntze, Klaus, 138, 175–188, 267 Düspohl, Martin, 19, 134, 143 Dü mann, Werner, 54 Engels, Friedri , 43, 82 Enzensberger, Ulri and Dagrun, 145 Eppelmann, Rainer, 195–202 Fe ner, Herbert, 123 Feldmann, Wilhelm, 128 Fiedler, Hetha, 241 Fontane, Theodor, 38 Forck, Go fried, 203 Frankenfeld, Peter, 235 Fraser, Nancy, 11 Gaus, Günter, 74 Geist, Johann Friedrich, 20 Gißke, Erhardt, 159 Glaßbrenner, Adolf, 256 Glatzeder, Winfried, 116 Gneisenau, August Neidhardt von, 253 Godard, Jean-Luc, 126 Graf, Friedrich Wilhelm, 169 Grashoff, Udo, 20, 148–49, 284 Grass, Günter, 128, 242 Gröschner, Anne , 19, 110 Grossmann, Carl, 104, 120 Großbölting, Thomas, 169

348 | Index of Persons

Grotewohl, O o, 259 Grünbaum, Hartmut, 198 Gumlich, Rolf, 154 Gyr, Ueli, 232 Haberkern, Paul, 83–85, 94–95 Habermas, Jürgen, 10–11, 178 Haderer, Gerhard, 128 Hämer, Hardt-Waltherr, 151, 159, 187 Harnisch, Wilhelm, 211 Härtig, Volker, 154 Hasselhoff, David, 296 Häußermann, Hartmut, 18 Hauswald, Harald, 205 Havemann, Robert, 146, 200, 202 Hegemann, Werner, 23 Henselmann, Hermann, 49, 159 Herrmann, Joachim, 115 Herrnstadt, Rudolf, 114 Herwig, Karl-Heinz, 241 Hessel, Franz, 78 Hildebrandt, Rainer, 65, 66 Hille, Peter, 241 Hobrecht, James, 39, 41, 57, 61, 83, 138 Hochmuth, Arno, 122 Höding, Hans, 123 Hoffmann-Axthelm, Dieter, 136 Hoffmann, Hugo, 140, 251 Hoffmann, Ludwig, 41, 61 Holm, Andrej, 291 Hölscher, Lucian, 20 Holwas, Günter, 194–95 Honecker, Erich, 1, 76, 142, 153 Horney, Brigi e, 241 Hübsch, Uwe, 269, 275 Huth, Oskar, 241 Igel, Pelle, 128 Insterburg, Ingo, 242 Jacobs, Jane, 25, 177 Janzen, Verena, 184 Jarausch, Konrad H., 17 Johann Georg, 256 Johnson, Uwe, 145 Kant, Hermann, 242 Kapphan, Andreas, 18 Karwelat, Jürgen, 133 Kendziora, Rosemarie, 240 Kerfin, Gerhard, 240 Kleßmann, Christoph, 7, 17, 24

Kluge, Alexander, 11, 127 Kna , Axel, 154 Ko , Gerhard, 175 Kohl, Helmut, 132 Koselle , Reinhart, 135 Kots enreuther, Hellmut, 241 Krawczyk, Stephan, 205 Kressmann, Willy, 51 Kressmann-Zs a , Siegrid, 51 Krolow, Wolfgang, 130 Krüger, Thomas, 284 Kruse, Hans-Wilhelm, 267 Künast, Renate, 285–86 Kunzelmann, Dieter, 145 Kürvers, Klaus, 20 Lang, Barbara, 19, 242 Laudien, Ingrid, 198 Legal, Marga, 154 Lemke, Michael, 18 Li te, Heinri , 88 Liebkne t, Wilhelm, 43 Lin e, Paul, 235 Lindenberger, Thomas, 215 Lindquist, Sven, 132 Lippe, Jürgen von der, 243 Lüdtke, Alf, 132 Luedeking, Horst, 90–92 Lummer, Heinri , 185, 191, 267 Maase, Kaspar, 21, 216 MacDougall, Carla, 95 Malli h, Alexander, 147 Mär en, Artur, 241 Marx, Karl, 37, 257, 275 Mehring, Franz, 115, 123, 253 Meier, Silvio, 284 Mendiburu, Helios, 283, 285 Messel, Alfred, 41 Messmer, Arwed, 110 Meyen, Mi ael, 20 Mielitz, Paul, 45, 120 Mits erli , Alexander, 25, 136 Moldenhauer, Hartmut, 300 Moldt, Dirk, 19, 202 Momper, Walter, 284–86 Mosse, Rudolf, 43 Mühlberg, Dietri , 141 Mühlenhaupt, Kurt, 127, 240–42 Mühlenhaupt, Willi, 241 Mukurarinda, Irmela, 185 Müller, Heiner, 131

Index of Persons | 349

Müller, Uwe, 131 Nagel, Lucas, 96 Naumann, Konrad, 150 Nausedat, Günter, 180 Negt, Oskar, 11, 127 Niethammer, Lutz, 132 Nolte, Paul, 27, 223 Noske, Gustav, 43 Olm, Hans Werner, 243 Orlowsky, Werner, 182, 186, 267 Ostwald, Hans, 232, 236 Pagel, Manfred, 151 Pätzold, Eri , 286 Pfitzmann, Günter, 241 Piets ker, Rudi, 180 Pinkus, Theo, 132 Pints , Julius, 42 Pohlmann, Beppo, 243–46, 252 Poiger, Uta G., 21 Proll, Jens-Peter, 154 Proll, Thorwald, 242 Rastemborski, Ulrich, 267 Rathenow, Lutz, 205 Rauhut, Michael, 196 Reagan, Ronald, 2 Reeder, Mark, 210 Reichardt, Sven, 20 Requate, Jörg, 12, 20 Ribbe, Wolfgang, 18 Ridder, Dorothea, 145 Ripp, Winfried, 143 Ristock, Harry, 180 Ri ersporn, Gábor T., 11 Rive e, Jacques, 126 Rolf, Malte, 12 Roth, Gustav, 182 Rothfels, Hans, 215 Ro , Wilfried, 18 Rudolph, Hermann, 280, 287 Sabo, Oscar, 45 Saldern, Adelheid von, 20 Sander, August, 91 S aba , Johann Georg, 253 S arf, Kurt, 183 S aroun, Hans, 49, 54, 56 S eerbart, Paul, 241 S elsky, Helmut, 11, 73

S erl, August, 43 Schertz, Georg, 284 Sche le, Horst, 122 Schilling, Rudolf, 186 Schmi , Carl, 11 Schnell, Robert Wolfgang, 242 Schönherr, Albrecht, 198 Schröder-Sonnenstern, Friedrich, 240–41 Schulz, Franz, 296 Schwierzina, Tino, 283, 285 Seehuber, Dagmar, 145 Seelenbinder, Werner, 64 Seidenschnur, Heinz-O o, 195 Senne , Richard, 11 Seyfried, Gerhard, 128 Siedler, Wolf Jobst, 136 Siegmund-Schultze, Friedrich, 104–5, 227, 229 Siffert, Hans-Peter, 186 Simmel, Georg, 9 Singer, Paul, 43 Sombart, Werner, 232 Sowa, Mi ael, 128 Spode, Hasso, 139 Springer, Axel Cäsar, 114, 183 Staadt, Jo en, 246 Stein, Mi ael, 246 Stimmann, Hans, 151–52 Stöver, Bernd, 18 Ströbele, Hans-Christian, 3 Stu mann, Klaus, 268 Tammen, Werner, 127–28, 131–32 Tebbe, Krista, 131, 143 Thijs, Krijn, 18 Thome, Rudolf, 125–26 Tiedemann, Fritz, 110, 112, 122 Uebel, Lothar, 21, 131, 268 Ulbri t, Walter, 49 Ullstein, Leopold, 43 Vir ow, Rudolf, 42 Voigt, Wilhelm, 104 Volland, Ernst, 127–28 Waldoff, Claire, 45, 235 Warnke, Stephanie, 117 Weber, Max, 8, 24, 163 Wessel, Horst, 46 Wiebel, Martin, 238

350 | Index of Persons

Wolf, Gerry, 154 Wolle, Stefan, 225 Wüstenberg, Jenny, 133

Zahl, Peter Paul, 242 Zille, Heinri , 40, 152, 263 Zis ler, Hanns, 125