The First Days of Berlin
Описание книги
Berlin in the early 1990s, right after the fall of the Berlin Wall: this is the place to be. Berlin-Mitte, the central district of the city, with its wastelands and decaying houses, has become the centre of a new movement. Artists, musicians, squatters, club owners, DJs and ravers are reclaiming the old city centre and bringing it back to life. This interregnum between two systems – the collapse of the old East Germany, the gentrification of the new Berlin – lasts only a few years. West Berliners, East Berliners and new residents from abroad join together to create music, art and fashion, to open bars and clubs and galleries, even if only for a few weeks. In the months following the fall of the Wall, there is a feeling of new beginnings and immense possibilities: life is now, and to be in the here and now feels endless. The phrase ‘temporary autonomous zone’ is circulating, it describes the idea – romantic and naive but, in the circumstances, not absurd – that, at a certain moment in history, you can actually do whatever you want. Ulrich Gutmair moved to West Berlin as a student in autumn 1989: two weeks later the Wall came down. He spent the next few years studying during the day in the West and exploring the squats, bars and techno clubs in the East at night. He fell in love with House and Techno and raved at Tresor, Elektro, Bunker and many other places that in the meantime have almost disappeared from collective memory. Ten years later he decided to write a book about that period in between, when one regime was brought down and a new one wasn’t yet established. When utopia was actually a place to inhabit for a moment.
Оглавление
Ulrich Gutmair. The First Days of Berlin
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Guide
Pages
THE FIRST DAYS OF BERLIN. The Sound of Change
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Preface to the English Edition
1 How Long is Now? It reeks of Bitterfeld
The man who sat by the kiosk outside Tacheles
The vacant plots vanish
2 The Year of Anarchy. The Mitte Temporary Autonomous Zone
The buried past
The GDR is like a predigital Facebook
The neighbourhood policeman
The end of the VEBs
From squatting to temporary licence
3 Occupying the Government District. The night the Wall came down
West-Berlin, Westberlin, Restberlin
In the mouse hole: Stadtmitte underground station
A community of squatters
4 At the Elektro, Mauerstrasse 15 ‘Full Customer Satisfaction’
In bed with Mo
Anti-money-grabbing
5 The Nineteenth-Century ‘Founders’ of Berlin. The bulldozer moves in
The crash of 1873
6 USP. All things are possible – Berlin is free
Bibliography
POLITY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
Отрывок из книги
Ulrich Gutmair
Translated by Simon Pare
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Around noon on 13 February 1990 Leo Kondeyne, Clemens Wallrodt and their friends pull up in an old fire engine outside what remains of the former department store in the Oranienburger Strasse. The squatters climb onto the roof of their vehicle and in through a first-floor window. It is evident from the back of the building that the GDR’s demolition experts carried out their task with great precision. They blew up the majority of the sprawling complex around its central dome because the East German capital’s urban planners wanted to build a street here. The building was still in use in the 1970s. The squatters stand in the large empty space behind the building and stare up into open rooms that have been cut in half.
After the founding of the German Democratic Republic, it was used by the Free German Trade Union Federation and the College of Foreign Trade. The Oranienburger Tor Lichtspiele, a picture house, opened in the building first, followed by the Studio Camera Berlin, the cinema of the state film archive. A branch of the Berlin savings bank and a lingerie shop also moved in. The large cellars were later flooded for structural reasons, and in the early 1980s demolition work commenced.
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