Time Travel in Berlin: Places Lost and Found Linda Rootamm
Conflict in Cities: Europe and the Middle East
The photographs presented here and the accompanying comments by former East Berliners’ about their experiences related to particular sites and places in Berlin, bring together issues of past, transition, and present. They not only reflect on conflicts which, as perceived by these individuals, existed in the city prior to 1989; but also reveal how the past barriers have in some instances not disappeared while in others they have transformed into new kinds of boundaries. The interrelation between memory, place and narrative, being indicative of issues about State and identity, comes together in reflections on the present urban experience. The material presented here has been collected during walking tours with former East Berliners who are now in their early 40s.
Ute (lives today in Prenzlauer Berg): ‘I used to live on that street... and exactly on that street was the border, and I had to always show my ID when I walked there, even when I entered my own building. They [the border police] knew me, but still, in order to enter my building, I had to show my ID. And I could never have guests because they first had to register themselves. That’s why I moved away...’
Marcel (lives today in Mitte): ‘I had never seen the Brandenburg Gate... I never went close to it, don’t know why... I first saw [it] in ’89... this zone in front of it was always so uncomfortable ‘cause there were security posts, everything had to be checked... I didn't feel like being asked for my ID, I wasn't keen on the border police and I didn't know why I should go to it, it was a bit like, what should I be looking for there?’
Andreas (Köpenick): ‘it was called a ghost underground train, it was a West Berlin train but it drove through East Berlin... then there were ghost train stations, the trains drove through there of course, but these [stations] were walled in. I found it insane, because you knew that there’s a train driving through ‘cause there are these kinds of grids in the ground and when the train drives through some air moves up from there and then you knew… But you never saw it. It was of course insane because you could travel until lake Baikal in Russia but then 5 metres under us was a different world.’
Andreas (Köpenick): ‘…when the Wall was gone, they opened the ghost train stations. I was there by a coincidence... Since I loved to travel, it was a strange moment for me... there were a few guys walking in front of me with a pushcart and they had... an electric hammer, and they stopped suddenly... And then I thought, what are they doing now?... they examined the wall... then they say ‘we’re opening the station now’. And then, like in a film, they really started with the hammer and first they pierced through a bit and looked, if it was the right spot, and then they had to step aside ‘cause everyone else wanted to look through it as well.’
Marcel (Mitte): ‘ ...the first months even until summer you still had to change trains… on the Friedrichstraße was still the border... here you arrived from the East and didn’t go further, and there was the western part. I had never seen it. There was a steel wall in between [the tracks]. And they removed that relatively late. So you had to step out here and until 1989 you had to go through the Tränenpalast (the palace of tears) and through a pedestrian tunnel and continued your journey [on the western side].’
Brigitte (Hohenschönhausen) talks about her home district: ‘... you can see it here... in the summer it is very very green. You move around much more than in the city centre, and the streets here are really wide and the houses are not so densely together and it is actually really beautiful. You just really have the feeling that you have more space, the air is nicer and that’s why it is good to live here.’
Brigitte (Hohenschönhausen): ‘Yes, many don’t know this place at all. They have prejudices that Marzahn, Hohenschönhausen, Hellersdorf, that they’re all the same thing, that these districts have no distinctive features. And they were never here but they have the prejudices. And they have no idea, what it is like here. But I know really many people, who say that they definitely want to keep living here and don’t want to leave. ‘
Image 8 Posters and Derelict. Belfast. 2010
Ute (Prenzlauer Berg): ‘I feel to be a bit of a stranger on some streets of Kreuzberg… It is somehow ghettoised by Arab culture and… it scares me a bit… I sense somehow that I’m not at all wanted there. Well, in the stores it is all written in Arabic or Turkish. I don’t feel invited to go in and buy something… I think that’s the real border here in Berlin, it’s not the border between East and West but much more between being a foreigner or not being a foreigner.’
Elias (Köpenick): ‘For example, this [football] stadium [in the east of the city], … this compound would normally be public property, meaning it belongs to the city. Now if a club wants to restore a stadium then normally it is the city’s business, it has to give money for it, public money. And here, for example, it was refused. They didn’t get any public money. And there is Hertha [West Berlin FC] on this big old Berlin Olympic stadium… And they even get deductions for rent, basically everything is done for them.’
Elias (Köpenick): ‘And then at some point we said, ok, if the city is not going to pay for our stadium, we don’t care, they did that already during the GDRtimes... Then we took the reins in our own hands and built the thing ourselves. This stadium was basically built by the fans... for example a friend of mine is an electrician. He didn’t work for a year and earned nothing, so that he could build this stadium. And that is of course something that again shapes your identification.’
Marcel (Mitte) talks about working on Potsdamer Platz: ‘I work in this building. It has a really famous architect… I told a friend about him and he anyway knew him… My son came for a visit and you have seen how it is in our home, how we live - and he said "Dad, I was looking for an old building. I had no idea you work in such a building!"
Ute (Prenzlauer Berg): ‘On my way to work there’s a small bridge that connects East and West. The border was in front of it. I ride with my bike almost every day to work over this bridge... and it is suddenly a square that is very unusual for this city, it has a lot of sky, a lot of free spaces. And I ride to Wedding... from Prenzlauer Berg. And... every time I think that now I can ride along here!! ‘
Conflict in Cities and the Contested State research project, supported by the ESRC (grant number RES-060-25-0015)
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