Berlin Experiences

27/04/2024

Do NOT buy bananas at Lidl in Berlin...

While unpacking boxes of bananas, employees at several Lidl supermarkets in Berlin discovered large quantities of co***ne.

19/04/2024

Had the East German government decided to build a weapon capable of obliterating entire non-socialist planets to enforce the Empire's reign of terror, it may have started a bit like this...instead they constructed the tallest structure in Germany, that still stands today right next to Alexanderplatz.

It was finished in 1969 - a full 8 years before the Star Wars Death Star graced the silver screen...

03/04/2024

Grunge in Berlin...Soundgarden's Matt Cameron and Billy Gould of Faith No More trying to start Billy's Trabant 601 in Berlin in 1992 on the Guns N ’ Roses European tour. Billy had bought the Trabant at the start of the tour and drove himself to the gigs.
-
📷 Matt Cameron Instagram

17/03/2024

"Strongman rule is a fantasy. Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won't. In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it. "
Timothy Snyder
Author of 'On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century'

08/03/2024

Happy International Women's Day from Berlin!
-
So-called 'Rubble Women' pictured in 1948 helping rebuild the Berlin district of Friedrichshain.

17/02/2024

“The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The House of the Dead

02/04/2023

AI art is redefining the past, present, and future. And nothing is real anymore. Watch out what you believe.

26/11/2022

Very happy to be featured on the BBC Broadcasting House programme tomorrow morning talking about the appeal and absurdity of the Berlin rental market... Tune in to Radio 4 at 9.30am GMT to maybe learn something or tune out!

22/11/2022

Christmas has already landed in .

30/08/2022

RIP Mikhail Gorbachev: the man who helped relieve the world of the Soviet Union and then went on to act in this zany commercial introducing Pizza Hut to Russia...

Without him Berlin would likely have remained divided for a little while longer...

This is the original :60 version that ran internationally.

29/07/2022

"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made" - Immanuel Kant

Prague's Old Jewish Cemetery & Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

16/07/2022

All roads lead to Berlin.

27/04/2022

The Brandenburg Gate
(1961-2022)

In planning the construction of the Berlin Wall (codename Operation Rose) in August 1961, East German advisors mapped every inch of the internal border between West and East Berlin (around 45km) and the remaining stretch that separated West Berlin from the countryside of the neighbouring East German state of Brandenburg.

This spot - the Brandenburg Gate - would end up in the 'death strip' of that zone from 1961 until 1989. Initially barbed wire, then wall, and eventually a full area of obstacles and traps.

Three weeks before the solidification of this frontier began, the East German technocrat and carpenter responsible for the department that oversaw the preparations reported to his superior about the material shortages of necessary supplies. Fifty-six-year-old Bruno Wansierski would be one of the few people in the country familiar with the extent of the project, in his capacity as director of the Department for Security Questions of the Socialist Unity Party’s Central Committee. Not only would this mammoth undertaking require barbed wire, but also concrete pillars, metal cramps, connecting wire, mesh wire, and timber. Trucks from the industrial town of Eisenhüttenstadt near the Polish border had already brought in hundreds of concrete pillars and stockpiled them in a police barracks in the district of Pankow. But the remaining supplies necessary would have to be gathered in secret, as such not to draw the attention of the prying eyes of the West, or give any indication to the people of East Germany of what was to come.

Much of the barbed wire required for this initial phase would be bought in bulk from several different manufacturers in West Germany and in Great Britain. To avoid suspicion whilst planning to envelop West Berlin it was seen as necessary to distribute the acquisition of the quantity needed to a number of innocuous looking East German purchasers, who negotiated the deals directly. Echoing the prediction commonly attributed to Vladimir Lenin: “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Albeit, with one significant perversion, the rope would be used to suffocate nearly 18 million East Germans.
_____
Images: CIA/Matt Robinson

15/04/2022

Stasi Headquarters
(1980-2022)

Here we see an official meeting of the two East German Erichs - Honecker and Mielke - the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany formally greeting the head of the East German Ministry for State Security, better known as the Stasi - back in 1980.

The setting for this brotherly reception - the entrance to Haus 1 at the Stasi headquarters in the Berlin district of Lichtenberg. A sprawling complex of buildings that for more than 40 years appeared as nothing more than a black mark on maps of the country – the administrative headquarters of a terrifyingly bureaucratic behemoth that loomed darkly into the minds of the millions of people who called East Germany home.

Look closely at this first photo and notice beyond the two Erichs, a third celebrity making an appearance - an agent of capitalism that has managed to infiltrate the inner sanctum of the socialist state: a western car in the GDR.

The Citroen CX, visible behind the grey-coated General Secretary, served as Honecker’s sedan of choice from 1979 until 1989. Although Honecker never obtained a driving licence, he was plenty content being chauffeured around in the lap of French luxury. In total, a fleet of 15 were imported to the workers’ and peasants’ state for his personal use, with one converted into his 'Sonderschutzfahrzeug', complete with special armour plating. In-fact, Honecker was not alone in his preference for the CX amongst the leadership of the Eastern Bloc states. Elena Ceaușescu, wife of Romania’s long-standing leader, Nicolae Ceaușescu, was given a CX Prestige by King Juan Carlos I of Spain, which she used until her ex*****on in 1989.

While ordinary East Germans fortunate enough to have access to a car were most likely to be seen rattling around in a two-stroke Trabant, members of the country’s Politburo exhibited a certain fondness for Volvo limousines - with the suburban Wandlitz estate where many of East Germany’s ruling officials were housed earning the moniker ‘Volvograd’ as a result.

Both Erichs had Volvo 264TE Landaulets at their disposal in the 1980s - although while these limousines in the service of socialism would appear superficially similar, Honecker would make sure his was 50 centimetres longer than the standard - and 30 centimetres longer than Mielke’s.

For where all Volvos were supposed to be equal, the General Secretary’s was more equal than others. And the Citroen CX reigned supreme.

13/04/2022

Schloss Sanssouci
(1900-2022)

Prussian King, Frederick the Great, remains one of the greatest enigmas of German history. His true identity still leaves much room for speculation. A celebrated military commander who greatly expanded his kingdom’s territory through his military victories. But also a supporter of enlightenment values, dedicated to the arts and sciences, who composed more than 100 flute sonatas – and aspired to be remembered first and foremost as a philosopher. <

He would inherit his father’s kingdom in 1740 and with it a formidable army. One that would become the envy of the world over time – and the scourge of Frederick’s European enemies. His first act on assuming the throne was one of belligerence, invading neighbouring Silesia to the east. His greatest military achievement though came twenty three years later, in 1763, when Frederick effectively dispatched the Austrian, French, and the thoroughly negated Russian forces. Succeeding where it mattered most for the kingdom he ruled from 1740 to 1786 – as the longest standing Hohenzollern monarch – by turning Prussia into a Great European Power.

The son of the 'Soldier King' Fredrick I, he grew to become a renowned battlefield commander as much in spite of his father, as because of him. As a boy he would be woken every morning with cannon fire, forced to drill his own unit of ‘Potsdam Giants’, and come to witness his close friend (and possible lover) be executed by his father’s soldiers after a failed attempt to flee to England in his youth. Terrorised by this harsh and demanding patriarch, Fredrick often dreamed of a life of quiet contemplation and philosophy.

A life he would create for himself in 1747, at the top of a hill he had been allowed to play on as a boy, when he constructed the Sanssouci Palace – his private residence in Potsdam, south west of the Prussian capital of Berlin. A must-see on any visit to Berlin’s neighbouring city, this 13-room villa, decorated in an intimate Frederician Rococo style, sits at the top of a vineyard and amongst the pleasant surroundings of the Potsdam Sanssouci park.
_____
Images: Public Domain/Matt Robinson

12/04/2022

The Berlin Wall
(1988-2022)

The designation ‘victim of the Berlin Wall’ can be applied to anyone who died between August 1961 and November 1989 as a result of the construction of the Berlin Wall and the policing of its ‘death strip’ by the East German government.

Currently the tally stands at 140, according to the official Berlin Wall Documentation Centre. That number includes not only the first victim to be shot by an East German border patrol while trying to escape to the West - Günter Litfin. But also the five young boys from West Berlin who drowned in the river Spree, where East meets West, and whose bodies could only be recovered after their deaths - for fear of angering the East Germans whilst trying to save them. Giuseppe Savoca, Cetin Mert, Cengaver Katranci, Siegfried Kroboth, and Andreas Senk. Each victims of the circumstances of the Wall’s construction.

In the centre of this image it is possible to make out one of the 302 guard towers that lined the 160km of the Wall and were staffed by Grenztruppen of the so-called German Democratic Republic. A number of these men would also become ‘victims of the Berlin Wall’ either following escape attempts of their own - or when they were killed by those trying to escape. Jörgen Schmidtchen, Siegfried Widera, Peter Goering, Reinhold Huhn, Gunter Seling, Egon Schultz, Rolf Henniger, Ulrich Steinhauer. Each of these men are also listed as victims by the Berlin Wall Documentation Centre.

Still controversial to admit in its entirety, the important aspect here is that these 140+ deaths at the Berlin Wall were each preventable - including those of the border guards. Without the Wall and the actions of the East German state these people very likely would not have met their ends here in this ‘death strip’.

The case of the first known victim of the Berlin Wall underlines this further - 58 year old, Ida Siekmann, who died trying to jump from her apartment block on Bernauer Strasse into the French sector on August 22nd 1961. Killed not by a bullet fired by an East German border guard - as happened in around 75% of cases - but from the injuries she sustained as a result of her personal leap to freedom.
______
Images: Fortepan/Matt Robinson

10/04/2022

Gendarmenmarkt
(1945-2022)

Like many of Berlin’s representative squares, Gendarmenmarkt fell victim to the exuberance of National Socialism. In more ways than one.

From 1871 until 1936, this particular section of the square - between Markgrafenstrasse and the striking neo-classical Schauspielhaus designed by Prussian architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel - was known as Schillerplatz, named after the celebrated German writer, Friedrich Schiller.

A statue of Schiller had been introduced to the centre of this square - paid for in equal measure by the future German Emperor, Wilhelm II, the Berlin government, and the local population - the year of German Unification. The flow of traffic was redesigned and decorative gardens introduced. Later two fountains were added to the ensemble.

Three years after the N**i Party seized power in Germany, the Schiller statue on Gendarmenmarkt was removed - to create space for parades and propaganda. The gardens destroyed and replaced instead with the large-scale pattern of square slabs that can still be found visible on the ground of the square today. While annual ceremonies for young boys being initiated into the Hi**er Youth movement would take place on the square until 1945.

That year, the full force of the Second World War - and more than 2 millions soldiers of the Soviet Red Army - arrived in Berlin for a final reckoning with National Socialism. As many of the same young boys who had been lionised here as the future of Hi**er’s Thousand Year Reich were instead dispatched alongside the thread-bare remnants of the Wehrmacht and SS to defend its ever shrinking frontier.

Look closely at the repaired exterior of the Schinkel’s Schauspielhaus (now known as the Konzerthaus) today and you can still see evidence of where the brown tide in Berlin was eventually rolled back. The statue of Friedrich Schiller returned to Gendarmenmarkt - just out of the frame to the right - in 1988.

08/04/2022

The Berlin Wall
(1988-2022)

By quirk of the construction of the Berlin Wall, it was not uncommon to find abandoned cars, discarded furniture, and all manner of debris hugging the Western side of this ignominious concrete snare during the Cold War period. Beyond the abundance of graffiti, this deluge of refuse was one of the visually defining aspects of the Wall for many visitors from the West.

When the East German government sealed off the border with West Berlin in August 1961, care was taken not to overstep the mark - no piece of this so-called ‘Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart’ should be constructed on territory claimed by the British, Americans, or French. With Berlin divided into sectors largely based on the district borders of the Greater Berlin Act dating back to 1920, the intention was a Wall rather than a war.

With this in mind a slither of land would often be left on the western side of the Wall so that the East German border guards could patrol along that side should there ever be the need (to check for and repair damage in the Wall for instance) or so that workers could further develop this border fortification without trespassing in the western zones.

To the common folk in West Berlin, however, this provided the ideal opportunity to engage in a little fly tipping - taking advantage of the peculiarity presented by the buffer zone created next to the border.

Parking your car here meant no chance of a fine from the West, dumping building waste or spraying graffiti here meant you were out of the jurisdiction of the West Berlin police and couldn’t be held accountable. To some it served as a middle finger gesture to the East and the very idea of the Wall - and for the East Germans to stop you… well there was a sodding great piece of concrete in the way.
-----------
Images: Fortepan/Matt Robinson