For various reasons I've been avoiding dealing with the demolition of the Palast der Republik. But today I found a few interesting sources and wallowed a little in the melancholy: a (more or less) daily journal of the process, and a webcam at the DHM that's trained on the Palast.
I'm feeling rather nervous about the trip, because I'll be leaving before my Very Important Life-determining Meeting has taken place, but I figure, why not fret about what I wrote somewhere more interesting than here? Can't do anything about it anyway...
With less time than ever to be doing this, I've been peeking around a little to see what's on in the artworld in Berlin. ArtNet is featuring this review of the "Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst."
What interested me more than the news that Berlin now has a major contemporary art prize was the mention that the show is sharing space with the Bernd and Hilla Becher retrospective. Hurrah! It's up until January, another thing I'm adding to the might-see list.
Michelle reports on some carefully-worded racism at a P'berg cafe. Words fail me. But you should read hers. And watch this clip if you want.
"...und Kunst nobilitiert den Kommerz." Sebastian Preuss adds his two cents to the Grothe v. Berlin matter. He's wondering, mainly, whether the real estate magnate is gambling that Berlin (or even the Bund) will want a fancy new museum enough to intervene and override the Bezirk's unwillingness to cave in to Grothe's various stipulations.
Just in case you didn't see this over at Mike's, here is a nice entry at Berlin Bites about the history of Rosenthaler Platz. Ed Ward, who writes Berlin Bites, also has some interesting reminiscences of Austin, as it was before I knew it. Good reading. Thanks, Mike.
Philipp L. has posted a whole mess of photos from last weekend's demos in Berlin. There are several nice shots among them.
A while back I registered surprise that someone would consider Prenzlauer Berg to be dangerous. The discussion became chiefly about how race can effect our perception of the relative safety of a locale, and it made me reevaluate my impressions of what I'd previously thought of as a very safe place. Yesterday in P-berg a friend, who is white, and male, and athletic, was beaten up in the morning right in front of his local bakery; this (a very literal coda to that earlier discussion) has effectively cured me of any romantic or misguided notions I once had of the Bezirk.
In conjunction with the RAF show [see Michelle's commentary and this nice compendium of responses to the show], the KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin) is having a film series at Arsenal, including Stammheim, One Day in September, and several others. Schedule here.
[update: maybe not.]
Apparently the recent troubles of the Berliner Symphoniker haven't been resolved by an appeal to private financial backers; the orchestra gave its last concert this weekend. (This is the smallest of Berlin's orchestras, not to be confused with the Philharmoniker.)
The story at the Berliner Zeitung. Not much else out in English yet.
Nice photo of a snowy Kreuzberg. The hill, not the neighborhood.
From the FR's report on Oberschöneweide's pending big-deal contemporary art center:
"Zuerst muss immer die Kultur kommen, damit was passiert!", ruft der Direktor, und wenn alles klappt, passiert Folgendes: Die Reinbeckhallen in Oberschöneweide, eigentlich dem Abriss anheim gegeben, werden sich bis Anfang 2007 in ein Zentrum für internationale Gegenwartskunst verwandeln. Neben über einem Dutzend namhafter Galerien wie Gagosian New York und Privatsammlungen, darunter John Smith und Vicky Hughes, werden auch zwei Dependancen bedeutender Museen einziehen - das New Yorker Whitney Museum of American Art und das MMK Frankfurt.
["continue reading" for English]
Oberschöneweide is on the southeast side of Berlin, part of the region Treptow-Köpenick. Looks like it's the site of a major renovation campaign (as this slightly clunky overview of the area illustrates). The local SPD (among others) report that up to five departments of Berlin's Fachhochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft (University of Applied Sciences) will be moving to Oberschöneweide, as well: projected completion by 2007.
If all this comes together it would be a major step towards spreading around some of Berlin's 'cultural capital.' I wonder if it'll work?
"First culture has to come in, in order for anything to happen!" declares the director, and if everything works out, here's what will happen: by the beginning of 2007 the Reinbeck Halls in Oberschöneweide, which had actually been written off for demolition, will be transformed into a center for international contemporary art. Alongside more than a dozen prominent galleries like Gagosian New York and privat collections, including that of John Smith and Vicky Hughes, two branches of important museums will also move in - New York's Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt.
Hey German Readers, is this story true? Did it go through the German media? Because it's all over the "human interest" pages of certain English-language media:
A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.[from the Telegraph UK story]
I find this hard to believe, and since I can't find anything through Google's German news, I thought I'd ask.
[update: good info in the comments (thanks, Armin and Scott): see Snopes and Metafilter.]
Beautiful pics at Flickr by Ralf2.
As someone who has been "massiv gestört" by chatty chatterboxes in the library, I was happy to read at Jurabilis that the Stabi has new! harsher! rules about using phones in the reading room. If they nab your chattin' self, they'll kick you out for a day. And repeat offenders can get barred for longer.
From the [PDF!] Stabi's announcement:
Das Klingeln eines Handys, das geführte Gespräch und auch das eilige Durchqueren der Lesesäle zur Entgegennahme eines mittels Vibrationsalarms angekündigten Gesprächs – zur Not auch in der Toilette – sind trauriger Alltag in der Bibliothek. Dies schlägt sich nicht zuletzt in zahlreichen Beschwerden derjenigen BenutzerInnen wieder, die sich dadurch massiv gestört fühlen. Nachdem also Hinweise und Bitten nicht ausreichen, werden wir nun ab 7. Februar 2005 jedem, der ein Handy innerhalb der kontrollierten Bereiche benutzt, ein Hausverbot für einen Tag erteilen. Dabei werden wir die Benutzerausweisnummern und ggf. die Personalien notieren und im Wiederholungsfall auch längere Hausverbote aussprechen. Jeder Mitarbeiter und jede Mitarbeiterin der Bibliothek ist berechtigt, die eintägigen Hausverbote zu verhängen.
If you're in Berlin this weekend, you might want to check out Saturday's opening of the RAF show.
(via the multipurpose sack)
For a little background, the SZ has an interview with Felix Ensslin, Gudrun Ensslin's son and one of the organizers of the show. Worth a look.
Craig has an extensive guide to Berlin at Flip Flop Flyin'. Recommended reading! There's a strip of fun photos on the side, many of them from our one-time neck of the woods.
[I know I'm always beating the why'd-we-leave-berlin-horse, but seriously. Why? Right before our friends moved into our neighborhood?]
These pics of the Warschauer Strasse bridge, from someone called Hans_, are exactly the kinds of images of Berlin I love to see. Just stuff going on, people doing things or going places. Nice.
For those of you in Berlin with an interest in things gender-y, Rochus invites you to this workshop at the FU this coming weekend. Looks really interesting. Voranmeldung wird erbeten etc.
Found this at ORF:
Schlingensief will Intendant des Deutschen Theaters werden
Regisseur Christoph Schlingensief kann sich vorstellen, die Intendanz des Deutschen Theaters in Berlin zu übernehmen. "Das Deutsche Theater würde mich sehr reizen", sagte Schlingensief der "B.Z." (Montag-Ausgabe).
Sounds like the ideal situation in some ways: a 'difficult' director for a 'difficult' position. Unfortunately there isn't anything at the BZ's online edition about this yet; maybe the interview will show up a little later. Looking over the BZ's Kultur/Szene section was a lot of fun, though. Much different from your usual stuffy feuilletons. For example: an interview with the TH's Campino and some marvelous headlines: "Berlins Kultursenator Flierl:
Ja, die Stasi hat versucht, mich anzuwerben;" "Hanna Schygulla - Ich wollte ein Kind von Fassbinder." Too great.
[update: a bit more info at the FR today.]
HeiKu has this shot of Berlin in the fog of fireworks. The most representative of all the New Year's pics I've seen so far. I wish those sparks had been raining down on me!
[only linking to the photo because that server is slooow and doesn't need me to drag it down further.]
The NY Times has a little write-up of Wladimir Kaminer today. I'm a big fan, though somehow I never made it to Kaffee Burger--even though it was all of ten minutes' walk from our house. Oh well. Next time.
I'm just getting around to reading yesterday's NY Times, in which there's an article in the travel section about barhopping and clubbing in Friedrichshain, "on the Edge". I really thought F'hain was not much of a hotspot anymore, at least not to anyone but annoying tourists. It's not "increasingly hip," is it? What about all that talk of lopsided development in which no new businesses open except bars, and rent prices continue to skyrocket in spite of the fact that there's no place to go grocery shopping? These kind of badly-informed write-ups irritate me (mostly because I'm not there to see for myself).
So I've been reading Raskal Trippin for about a month; impressions of Berlin from someone rapidly adapting to it. Via her I ended up at Berlin Blog, which you'd think I would have seen before. Also worth a read. Try today's entry on the Ordnungsamt.
Last night we finally watched the best Billy Wilder movie ever, One, Two, Three. I've seen it on German t.v., which was a sort of weird experience; but for sheer laughs it's best in English. The characters are so perfectly caricatured and there are so many wonderful dialogues. Here's the one I'm working into my dissertation:
Schlemmer (Mac's assistant) klicks his heels.
MacNamara: That old Gestapo training, huh?
Schlemmer: Please, Mr. MacNamara, you must not say that. It is not true.
M: Just between us, Schlemmer, what did you do during the war?
S: I was in the Untergrund. The underground.
M: Resistance fighter?
S: No, motorman. In the underground, you know, the subway.
M: Of course you were anti-Nazi and you never liked Adolf.
S: Adolf who? You see, down where I was I didn’t know what was going on up there. Nobody ever told me anything.
This against the backdrop of West Berlin as the Wall is being built. Really excellent.
„Als das Kind Kind war, hatte es von nichts eine Meinung, hatte keine Gewohnheit, saß oft im Schneidersitz, lief aus dem Stand, hatte einen Wirbel im Haar und machte kein Gesicht beim Fotografieren.“
As a kid (14, maybe 15 years old) I saw Wings of Desire and sort of fell in love with both Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander. I've followed them along in various things ever since. In a few weeks, Ganz will return to the screen as a different kind of anti-hero, playing Hitler in Bernd Eichinger's adaptation of Joachim Fest's book Der Untergang. Hitler und das Ende des Dritten Reiches and Traudl Junge's memoirs. The German press has already seen the film and there are a ton of reviews trickling in.
The trailer was quite arresting, doing everything I suspect the movie will do - mainly eliciting an unpleasant and confusing empathy in the viewer (me). What does it mean to get up close and personal with Hitler and his retinue in the final days of the war? Obviously this returns us to all the debates about representing German history, and I'm hoping there will be some interesting discussion in the press. Me, I'm all set to rip it apart, just as soon as it makes its slow way across the ocean. Grumble. Guess I'll read the response in the press instead.
[Update: an interview with Eichinger at the FAZ.]
[Update: a bit of a closer look at Ganz and the film at the Süddeutsche.]
Yesterday we went to see the Bourne Supremacy. I remember liking the first one well enough, though I don't remember any specifics. But we decided to go see this one in the theatre rather than waiting for rental because a large part of the movie is filmed in Berlin.
I enjoyed seeing the sweeping panoramas of Alex and Mitte (I did a lot of quick "Can we see our house from here?"), as well as the random shots of Ostbahnhof. Oh, and I especially liked the demonstration that gets in the way during an abduction on Alexanderplatz; a few hundred people with banners and attac posters; it was a fake demo but the "Bildung ist keine Ware" signs would have fit right in last fall and winter. (I felt such glee to see attac on the screen. How excellent.)
And then, we started to pick things apart. The major chase scene through Berlin (I guess this counts as a spoiler? Not really.), for example, starts at the S-bahn at Zoo, but cuts to Friedrichstrasse when they need him to make a daring jump off a bridge and onto a passing barge. I spent a few beats thinking, wait, there's no water like that at Zoo, right?
The photography of Berlin is pretty limited to making downtown Mitte look a little post-Soviet shabby, so much that when the film moves on to Moscow it's sometimes hard to tell they've switched cities.
Overall, I must say I enjoyed the feeling of a return to the Spy Movies I liked to watch as a kid. Only in this one, the Germans aren't bad, it's—oh wait, it's the Russians. Never mind. But there are bad Americans in it, too.