Exberliner Issue 138, May 2015

Issue 138 • €2.90 • May 2015
MARK REEDER: “She said: ‘I’ll meet you at the Palast der Republik in
the cocktail bar.’ I was a bit wary about what this could be.” (p.30)
YASMINE HAMDAN: “It’s sexual harassment but with humour.” (p.38)
PETER GREENAWAY: “You know and I know that most artists only
have one or two ideas.” (p.43)
BERLIN
BLOODSUCKER
Interview with
a vampire
END
PROHIBITION
The case for
making all
drugs legal
NEW!
A Berlin comic
and a spy
column
PLAYING
TO LOSE
A look behind
casino doors
WORK ­
AHOLICS
Is the startup
scene
burning out?
Addicted!
From booze to smartphones, computer games
to prescription pills, slot machines to Botox
– is there anything Berlin’s not hooked on?
www.exberliner.com
What’s on? • Art Fashion • Film • Food • Music • Nightlife • Stage
100% made in Berlin.
Printed on recycled
paper.

Theatertreffen-Performances
with english surtitles:
Die Schutzbefohlenen
(The supplicants)
Warum läuft Herr R. Amok?
(Why does Mr R run amok?)
die unverheiratete
(the unmarried)
Common Ground
Warten auf Godot
(Waiting for Godot)
John Gabriel Borkman
Die lächerliche Finsternis
(The ridiculous darkness)
Tacita Dean: Event for a stage
(Film, 2015)
Fassbinder film night
at Delphi Filmpalast
all movies with English subtitles
Theatertreffen Camp
selected workshops with
English translation
Foto © Krafft Angerer, Gestaltung: Ta-Trung, Berlin
Berliner Festspiele are funded by
Theatertreffen is funded by
Media partner

ISSUE 138, MAY 2015
SPECIAL: ADDICTION
06 Verbatim Charité specialist Andreas
Heinz on what defines an addiction
10 Kitchen confidential Drug and alcohol
abuse in Berlin restaurants
11 The anti-addicts Inside the straight
edge scene
12 Legalise everything! Should drug
decriminalisation go beyond pot?
14 Smart at the barbecue Going down
the smartphone black hole
15 Interview with a vampyre Meet Lilith,
a Berlinerin with a craving for blood
16 The 13-year blur An expat recalls his
struggle with prescription drugs
18 The most dangerous game? Hooked
on computer gaming
Smartphone addiction, page 14
20 The talk of shame A sex addict speaks
21 The men in the mirror Tattoos and
Botox: getting addicted to change
22 Is Berlin burning out? Workaholism
takes root in the German capital
24 Spinning out of control Behind the
doors of Berlin’s Spielhallen
FRANCESCA TORRICELLI
REGULARS
03 Werner’s political notebook
04 Best of Berlin Central Berlin: DDR
Limited, Cucula, East & Eden, open stages
46 NEW! I, spy Annie Machon’s great LEAP
forward
47 Fashion What’s hot and what’s not
48 Berlin bites Salt ‘n’ Bone, Dabbawalla,
Kala, delivery wars
50 The Berlin Guide
53 Ask Hans-Torsten Dogs and the law
54 Save Berlin Endangered artists’ studios
55 Ask Dr. Dot
56 NEW! Comic Bjørn in Berlin
57 Letters to the editor
WHAT’S ON
26 Events calendar
28 Film
34 Stage
37 Music and nightlife
42 Art
Blind Tisch
Takako Suzuki and Pär Thörn
WED 13 THU 14 May
Vaivén
Juan Kruz Díaz de Garaio Esnaola und Antonio Ruz
SUN 17 May
To this purpose only
matanicola and Fattoria Vittadini
SAT 23 SUN 24 May
Radial Night Haydn2032
with
Il Giardino Armonico
Giovanni Antonini
FRI 08 May
Foto: Sebastian Bolesch
Foto: Sebastian Bolesch
Holzmarktstraße 33 · 10243 Berlin
www.radialsystem.de · 030 288 788 588
1
Holzmarktstraße 33 · 10243 Berlin
www.radialsystem.de · 030 288 788 588

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Tue 5th 9:30 (KUBRICK) DR. STRANGELOVE or: How I Learned
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Presented by Inge Borg and Gisela Sommer / Admission free!
Sun 24th 9:30 LA FAMILLE BÉLIER
Verstehen Sie die Béliers? Fren./Germ.sbtls
Mon 25th 9:30 GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL Engl./Germ.sbtls
Tue 26th 9:30
Wed 27th 9:30
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OUTLOOK PROGRAM JUNE
Mon 1st 9:30 (KUBRICK) A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
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Tue 2nd 9:30 (ROSA VON PRAUNHEIM) TOUGH LOVE Härte
Germ./Engl.sbtls
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Berlin

Interview with
a vampire
The case for
making all
drugs legal
A look b ehind
casino doors
www.exberliner.com
Issue 138 • €2.90 • May 2015
MARK REEDER: “She said: ‘I’ll meet you at the Palast der Republik in
the cocktail bar.’ I was a bit wary about what this could be.” (p.30)
YASMINE HAMDAN: “It’s sexual harassment but with humour.” (p.38)
PETER GREENAWAY: “You know and I know that most artists only
have one or two ideas.” (p.43)
A Berlin comic
and a spy
column
Is the startup
scene
burning out?
BERLIN
BLOODSUCKER
END
PROHIBITION
PLAYING
TO LOSE
Addicted!
From booze to smartphones, computer games
to prescription pills, slot machines to Botox
– is there anything Berlin’s not hooked on?
NEW!
WORK-
AHOLICS
What’s on? • Art Fashion • Film • Food • Music • Nightlife • Stage
100% made in Berlin.
Printed on recycled
paper.
ISSUE 138
Photo by
Jason Harrell
Printed in Berlin
100% recycled paper
EDITORIAL / DESIGN
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Nadja Vancauwenberghe
ART DIRECTOR Erica Löfman
COPY/DEPUTY EDITOR Rachel Glassberg
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PHOTOGRAPHERS Jason Harrell, Francesca
Torricelli
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■ Werner's political notebook By KONRAD WERNER
How to solve the
refugee problem
People are panicking in Germany about the
refugees. But it’s not that big a problem and
it’s not that hard to solve. Not that you’d know
from the news. Here are three stories from the
morning I wrote this: “Shots Fired at a Refugee
Shelter in Hesse”, “Thuringia State Premier Bodo
Ramelow gets Death Threats after Refugee Shelter
Proposal”, and “Geert Wilders Coming to Speak
at PEGIDA Rally”. There were 150 attacks on
asylum seekers in Germany in 2014 – three times
as many as in 2013 – and according to Pro Asyl
there have already been 38
in the first three months of
this year. Punctuating all the
reports about the terrible,
soul-corroding incidents at
refugee shelters are feature
articles about the terrible,
soul-corroding conditions in
refugee shelters. Rotten beds,
cockroaches, dead people
remaining undiscovered for
weeks, things like that.
There was much outrage in January when it was
reported that a town called Schwerte in North
Rhine-Westphalia was going to use a building that
used to be part of a Nazi concentration camp to
house refugees. This is pretty bad, but then, most
refugee shelters in use at the moment aren’t much
better than concentration camps. Meanwhile at
Schönefeld airport, what is basically a prison has
been set up in a no-man’s zone, making it possible
to send people back to the war zone they came from
before they even officially arrive in the country.
All this is terrible and depressing, but the way
people throw their hands up – “hey ho, it’s just the
apocalypse, we can’t care for all these people, what
are we meant to do, we’re all gonna die anyway” –
is even worse. Last year, around 200,000 people
applied for asylum in Germany, and there will
probably be more next year. But it’s just another
stream in the overall flux of humanity going in
and out of this country
of 80 million people.
Per year, there are
around 600,000 births,
850,000 deaths, about
1.2 million immigrants,
and about 800,000
emigrants – so a couple
of hundred thousand
more is not in any way
an actual crisis, even if the government were to let
all 200,000 in, which they’re not anyway.
The reason why it appears to be a crisis is because
A) the media loves to write about PEGIDA
demos and burning refugee shelters and pretending
the world is a big war
between Muslims and
Nazis, and B) because
government politicians
are spooked by this and
have abrogated all responsibility
for looking after
refugees to local councils
so that they don’t look
bad. The local councils,
meanwhile, are fucked,
because they really don’t have enough money. That’s
what leads to the concentration camp situation, or
the Tröglitz situation, where a poor village of less
than 3000 people gets told by Berlin it needs to
divert some of its infrastructure money to building
a shelter for 40 asylum seekers who are not allowed
to work during the eight months while their applications
get processed. Obviously everyone involved
is going to resent that, especially after Interior
Minister Thomas de Maizière announces that the
federal government won’t be giving the councils any
more money to deal with the refugee situation.
There is only one solution – get the applications
processed quicker so that the asylum seekers can
move into the job market, and that means A LOT
more investment in district councils to give them
the capacity to do that. That’s obviously easier said
than done, but there needs to be a start. And that
means Merkel’s government needs to stop acting
like scared shits and take responsibility. ■
IT’S TERRIBLE AND
DEPRESSING, BUT
THE WAY PEOPLE
THROW THEIR HANDS
UP IS EVEN WORSE.
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3

BEST OF BERLIN
BY THE EXBERLINER EDITORIAL TEAM.
Best mid-week performance fix
Open mics are one of those win-win-win situations
– bar owners get a reliable crowd on an
otherwise sluggish evening, Berlin’s inexhaustible
supply of earnest musical amateurs gets
an outlet and audiences get a free show. As
live venues that actually pay their musicians
(like Intersoup, see page 48) meet their demise
one by one, the city is seeing an open stage
explosion, especially in Neukölln, where dimea-dozen
bars dilute weeknight traffic. Craving
the spotlight yourself? You’ll find three options
on Wednesday nights alone, the newest being a
singer-songwriter night at OBLOMOV launched
in March by Geraint Jean and Olivier Bernard, a
pair of British and French lads. Already known
for its popular monthly klezmer session, the cosy,
candlelit 40-capacity room fills with the pleading
strains of folk crooners and acoustic guitar
slingers every second and fourth Wednesday of
the month. For those seeking a more professional
experience, the surprisingly huge café
PRACHTWERK (photo), opened last year, offers
a decent sound system and a real stage. The
line-up also favours singer-songwriters, but it’s
more regimented than Oblomov – make sure to
sign up in advance if you want to play. For those
who don’t want to fly solo, there’s the more
under-the-radar jam session at LITTLE STAGE.
Hosted by African slam poet, rapper and allaround
good guy Jay C. Patsson, it’s the kind of
low-pressure scenario where a part-time musician
can dust off a neglected instrument and
comfortably accompany the rhythm section, or
even take a seat behind the electronic drum kit,
without fear of judgement. While the musical
level is sometimes inconsistent, the vibes are always
positive. AB Oblomov, Lenaustr. 7, Neukölln,
U-Bhf Schönleinstr., open stage every other Weds from
20:00; Prachtwerk, Ganghoferstr. 2, Neukölln, U-Bhf
Rathaus Neukölln, open stage Weds from 20:00; Little
Stage, Jonasstr. 1, Neukölln, U-Bhf Karl-Marx-Str.,
open stage Weds from 21:00
Best great Danes
It might be the next step in Mitte’s inevitable transformation
into Little Scandinavia, but at least new café EAST & EDEN
isn’t run by the usual too-cool-for-school Nordic twentysomethings
– at age 47 and 52 respectively, Danish owners
Ulla Skaaning Mathiesen and Orla Damgaard left behind
established careers as architects and interior decorators in
Copenhagen to fulfil a lifelong dream of working abroad. On
arriving, they immediately set up partnerships with the locals:
Bonanza coffee roasters, recent tea startup TeaTales and a
certain tarte baker whose name they won’t reveal (only that
he’s based out of Moabit). He’s the one behind the delicious
quiche (€6.90 with a side salad), served in generous rounds
with a moist interior and crisp crust. The meat version comes
with Serrano ham, sun-dried tomatoes, leek and parmesan,
but we preferred the less orthodox, sweet-salty vegetarian
one with Asian-spiced feta cheese, spinach and dates. If
you’re craving a real Danish experience, end your lunch by
picking up some fancy liquorice from high-end manufacturer
Johan Bülow (€7-12/150-170g) and – truly a rarity for a Berlin
café – swiping your EC or credit card. SA East & Eden, Torstr.
141, Mitte, U-Bhf Rosenthaler Platz, Mon-Fri 8-18
PHOTO BY: FRANCESCA TORRICELLI
4 • MAY 2015

VERENA BRÜNING
Best chairs for a good cause
Looking for some handmade local furniture with a great backstory?
Kreuzberg-based organisation CUCULA sells simple wooden
chairs, shelves and tables, the kind that wouldn’t look out of place
in an artist’s loft or third-wave café – designed by 1970s Italian
modernist Enzo Mari, built by refugees. The project was initiated
in late 2013, when local designer Sebastian Däschle began
teaching five young West African asylum seekers staying at the
youth organisation Schlesische27 how to create furniture for their
rooms based on Mari’s 1974 book Autoprogettazione. The idea
caught on, quickly growing into a workshop spearheaded by the
refugee group, Däschle and designer Corinna Sy. They now sell
12 different Mari designs, with the money going towards the
refugees’ education and cost of living. Thanks to over €120,000
in crowdfunding, they’ve expanded this year to include a learning
programme that teaches 15 refugees German. The furniture itself
– plain wood, hard lines, boxy shapes – doesn’t look too comfortable,
but it does look classic, and the child-sized chair (“the Bambino”,
around €130) would probably be a nice, durable choice for
a playroom. You can order online or visit the workshop, a small,
bright space off Schlesische Straße, by appointment. Any orders
you place now might take a while: Cucula is exceptionally busy
this spring as the team works on the 330 chairs ordered as part of
the crowdfunding campaign. But with record numbers of refugees
coming to Germany this year (see page 3), we can expect more
community-based programmes like this one to help integrate the
new arrivals into Berlin with style. JBE Cucula, www.cucula.org
JASON HARRELL
Best scratch ‘n’ sniff street
Walking along Karl-Marx-Allee, do you ever
wonder what Berlin’s widest, most imposing
boulevard was like during its socialist
glory days? CENTRAL BERLIN, DDR LIMITED
(€29.90) is a bilingual coffee table book
that celebrates the Ku’damm of the East and
its central square, Strausberger Platz. While
the bulk of the book is devoted to interior
design photos showing the contemporary use
of the buildings that line the street, the real
highlights are the black-and-white pictures
of everyday life along the boulevard from
the 1960s-1990s by photographers like Max
Ittenbach and Harald Hauswald. There’s
also a chapter about the street’s construction
in the 1950s and the challenges of chief
architects Henselmann and Paulick. The most
surprising inclusion is the last chapter, “The
Smell of History” – a scratch-and-sniff page
that gives off a faint aroma of tar and paper:
“scents from Strausberger Platz in the 1950s
and now”. Beautiful photos of architectural
details by Hans-Georg Esch offer peeks into
buildings that you wouldn’t normally enter, although
the accompanying texts and captions
can tend toward the clunky, misleading or totally
clueless. But then again, the pleasures of
this book are from looking rather than from
reading. Or smelling. EL Central Berlin, DDR
Limited, published by Skjerven Group, 2015
5

ARTICLE VERBATIMTAG
Department of
Psychiatry and
Psychotherapy
at university
hospital Charité
in Berlin, Mitte.
6 • MAY 2015

“It is tempting to label
behaviours that we don’t
like as addictions.”
Does getting hooked happen in the body or the brain? Is being
addicted to your phone the same as being on drugs? And what about
the new “magic pill” that treats alcoholism? We asked Charité
researcher Andreas Heinz. By Ruth Schneider. Photos by Jason Harrell.
ARE WE ALL
ADDICTS?
In the middle of the Charité campus in Mitte
stands a rather beautiful brick building from
the 1900s. Above the elaborate arched entryway,
the words “Psychiatrische u. NerveNkliNik”
hearken back to the early days of brain
science. Inside, the neo-gothic vaulted ceiling,
elliptical semicircular stairwells and maze of
narrow off-white corridors, abandoned closets
and spooky corners reek of bygone times when
women were diagnosed with hysteria and shock
therapy was the treatment of choice. Now, 115
years later, all is quiet in the psychiatry department
of Charité. The bust of eminent psychiatrist
Carl Westphal – the man who coined the
term “agoraphobia” – is missing from its pedestal
and you hardly pass a breathing soul in the long
corridor separating neurology from psychiatry,
just one man stomping through, soliloquising
on politics at the top of his lungs, completely
unaware of the pretty view over the walled
garden with century-old trees and rose bushes.
On the third floor of a rear building is the office
of Professor Andreas Heinz, who has headed
the psychiatry department for the last 13 years.
Potted plants and Rothko paintings make for
a congenial atmosphere, but the padded doors
remind the visitor that some 78 patients are still
treated here, in the quiet muffled atmosphere of
Berlin’s reputable psych ward...
You’re about to release the results of a
highly publicised trial about baclofen, a
controversial drug that’s been hyped as a
cure against alcohol addiction. The results
are encouraging – what’s next? Usually you
need two positive studies in a country to get a
medication approved. So, the results would be a
strong argument to do another study, and if that
was also positive, it would be possible to apply
to the authorities to use baclofen as a regular
drug in the treatment of alcohol abuse disorder.
For now, it is only approved as a first-line treatment
for muscular spastic paralysis, its original
indication.
Why haven’t there been more studies like
yours? The problem is that when a drug is
already on the market as a generic, like baclofen,
the pharma corporations have no interest in
financing a study for a new indication. Baclofen
is not patented anymore, so it doesn’t earn any
money when you bring in a new indication.
How did you manage to finance this trial,
then? We were lucky to have some public funding
which made the study possible. We are part
of a Cluster of Excellence, a network of researchers
applying for funds to cure neurological and
psychological disorders. Altogether, some €60
million went to Charité, and we were able to use
about €120,000 or so for this study. It was a very
cheap study, which is why there were relatively
few patients, but it was successful and that
makes it worthwhile.
The medication is now used in France,
apparently pretty successfully. Why is the
German medical establishment so sceptical
about it? Is this to do with the personality
of Dr. Ameisen and the way he hyped
his discovery as “the magic pill that can
cure alcoholism”? That was not very helpful.
I liked Ameisen a lot, but he said that with baclofen,
you don’t need any treatment anymore.
That was unnecessarily polemical. A medication
might reduce cravings and relapse risk. But it
doesn’t mean that if you’re in debt and you have
no friends and you’re sitting home alone, it will
magically solve everything. People need a reason
to stay abstinent. They may need a self-help
group and support, they may need to fix their
relationships, all of these things. Medication can
simply reduce certain aspects of your problem,
like your craving for alcohol. Ameisen was not
only a cardiologist, he also was a pianist who
drank to overcome his stage fright. Baclofen, as
a muscle relaxant, probably also calms you down
and replaces the need to drink alcohol by giving
you a similar relaxing effect without addiction.
It may be particularly effective for people
who drink alcohol to reduce anxiety. It will not
help everybody, and it will not replace self-help
groups and therapy.
Many of your colleagues I talked to say
that alcoholism is too complex an addiction
to be cured with pills… But then, nobody
would say that depression is so complicated that
you shouldn’t take a medication just because it
doesn’t alter your original problems. The idea is
to help you reach some sort of plateau. In my
view, medication should never be given alone
without psycho-social treatment – referring a
patient to a self-help group and having him regularly
see a consultant. This doesn’t need to be a
doctor; it could be a social worker.
In America, people still stand by Alcoholics
Anonymous and the 12-step programme. It
is almost heretical to think that one could
get rid of alcohol addiction easily – with
the help of a pill, for example. We have had
similar discussions here, in some Berlin consultation
offices. Counsellors saying, “We don’t need
doctors to treat our patients” – quite an interesting
comment!
So is alcohol abuse a disease? Or about some
demon inside yourself that you have to defeat,
as purported by the likes of AA? There
is a South Park episode called “Bloody Mary” – it’s
about AA meetings and it makes a joke out of the
concept that alcohol is a disease. They nail down
a few problems associated with this religious idea
behind AA: “I have a very bad disease, I need a
higher spirit to help...” Many anti-Church jokes
come up. I still believe it is a disease, but stating
that you are helpless and need a higher power only
fits for some patients, not all.
“I don’t think there is a personality that makes
you safe against addiction. Everybody can find
something that excites them enough so that
everything else pales in comparison.”
▼
7

▼
“You actually fulfil DSM5 criteria for alcohol abuse
disorder for just liking a glass of wine.”
It’s a pretty puritanical dogma. It’s very
puritanical – you should control yourself, you
shouldn’t do this and you shouldn’t do that. I
don’t want Bible Belt fanatics to tell me that
having sex before you marry is sex addiction,
reversing all the liberties we have developed over
the past 30, 40 years in Western societies. This is
why I am very careful about labelling too many
social or behavioural problems as addictions.
Are rehabilitation programmes as popular
in Germany as in the US, where it is a huge
business? Rehab clinics work quite well, but
only 3-4 percent of alcohol-dependent patients in
Germany are in them. Another four percent are
in psychiatry departments for detoxification. And
all the rest never see a specialist. They see general
practitioners for somatic issues, like liver problems.
How does the prevalence of alcoholism
compare to other drugs in Germany? About
three million Germans have alcohol abuse disorder,
mostly men – women more often suffer from
depression, but alcoholism affects 5-7 percent of
the male population. The most common addiction
in Germany is still smoking, which a lot of
my colleagues don’t see as an addiction, but as
a bad habit. In my view, it’s the most dangerous
addiction – about 100,000 patients per year die
due to smoking. About 40,000 people die of
alcohol problems, mainly in combination with
nicotine – it’s a good match. Then about 1000
die of illegal drugs. Even if you compare death
rates, nicotine and alcohol are above heroin.
With alcohol and smoking, there is the
matter of what one considers the threshold:
addiction or bad habit? Where do
you draw the line? The line for addiction as
dependence is rather clear: there was a British
alcohol researcher called Edwards whose main
idea, which I think is correct, is that you have
dependence when you have tolerance development,
when the brain is in a state of equilibrium
with the drugs and you get withdrawal
symptoms, like shivers, shaking and sweating,
if you stop. This is the core of the dependence
construct. The other part is that you have a
strong craving, and reduced control. Unfortunately,
in the States they have mixed the concept
of dependence up with the much less defined
construct of abuse or harmful use. Because
classifying something as ‘harmful’ depends very
much on society. When I was in Kabul, Afghanistan,
my hotel was blown up and I wanted to
drink a glass of wine in the evening – that would
be harmful alcohol use. It’s absolutely forbidden,
and you get into a lot of social trouble if you do
it. You actually fulfil DSM5 criteria for alcohol
abuse disorder for just liking a glass of wine. In
Germany you are allowed to drink from the age
of 16; in the States you have to be 21. So there
are lots of cultural differences.
Are you in favour of legalisation, or at least
decriminalisation, of drugs? It’s a difficult discussion.
I think society could legalise cannabis. To
my understanding, the medical risks of cannabis
are not really worse than alcohol. The problem
with legalisation is how to protect the youth. In
Germany, a 12-year-old can get strong spirits in the
supermarket... so if we treat cannabis like alcohol,
we will have a disaster. Also, the one percent of
the population that is prone to schizophrenia will
be at a higher risk of triggering their psychosis. So
it would have to be carefully regulated.
Pro-liberalisation champions claim that
prohibition doesn’t help – quite the contrary
(see page 12)... In the case of alcohol,
the idea that Prohibition didn’t work is wrong.
Alcohol consumption during Prohibition went
down. Of course crime went up, as we all know.
But I am concerned about cocaine and heroin. I
really wouldn’t want my kids or anyone getting
addicted to these drugs.
So you feel that if they were legal, more people
would get addicted? That’s my concern.
Do you make a distinction between psychological
addiction and physiological addiction?
I don’t think so, because every psychological
procedure has a physiological correlate.
Everything you do has a correlate in your brain.
I am a strong opponent of separating what they
call the somatic and psychological parts of an
addiction. They say craving is psychological and
withdrawal is somatic, but that’s nonsense. They
both originate in the brain.
What about the difference between substance
addictions, like tobacco, alcohol
and drugs, and behavioural addictions, like
computer games? The problem with defining
behavioural addictions is that they don’t usually
have a strong sedative effect on the brain. When
you stop them, you don’t usually have withdrawal
symptoms. So many passions are characterised
by cravings and reduced control. A scientist who
is having a breakthrough will probably cut out
eating or talking with his family to do his experiments.
I am strongly against labelling passionate
forms of living as pathologised addictions.
But at Charité you have groups working on
gaming addiction... I think you can, carefully,
use the concept that you lose degrees of freedom
when you’re really into behavioural addiction. It
boils down to whether playing games for hours
and hours really cuts down on your ability to
interact socially. But you have to be careful about
labelling a behaviour an addiction just because
it’s socially undesirable.
It’s kind of a slippery slope... Absolutely. My
example is always “drapetomania” – this was the
supposed addiction of African American slaves
to running away. They supposedly had a ‘craving’
to escape. It was labelled a disease 160 years ago.
It is tempting to label everything that you don’t
like as an addiction.
Is there such a thing as an ‘addictive personality’
– people who really thrive on extreme
behaviour? There are personality differences,
but everybody can become addicted if the
drug is strong enough. When you’re on cocaine,
you release about six times as much dopamine
as you do in the most exciting social interaction,
including sex. Drugs can be overwhelming.
Of course there are predispositions, but I don’t
think there is a personality that makes you safe
against addiction. Everybody can find something
that excites them enough so that everything else
pales in comparison.
What about internet and social media addiction?
Are they just buzzwords? Trendy
concepts? You have to see what people actually
do on the internet. You can be addicted to gambling
on the internet – it’s rather well-described
that with gambling you can not only have craving
and reduced control, but you can also develop
Born in 1960 in Stuttgart, Andreas Heinz
studied medicine, philosophy and anthropology
at the Ruhr University in Bochum, the
Free University in Berlin and Howard
University in Washington, DC. Since 2002
he’s been the director of the Department of
Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Charité
Hospital in Berlin. He is the author of several
books on migration and mental health and
more than 500 scientific articles on many
topics, including addictive disorders. He has
also contributed to a guideline on group
therapy for alcohol addicts and other works
on alcoholism. After meeting Olivier
Ameisen in Berlin (they appeared on Stern
TV together), Heinz decided to pursue
further evidence on baclofen as an alcoholism
treatment and initiated Charité’s study
of the compound (BACLAD) in 2011.
8 • MAY 2015

withdrawal symptoms and tolerance rather
similar to substance abuse addiction. There are
actually people who stand next to a gambling
machine and sweat and shiver if they can’t play.
When it comes to social media, like relentless
posting or chatting, I’m not really convinced
that this should be called an addiction. There
is a strong desire to not be lonely and to stay in
contact with friends, and with all these internet
connections we can do that faster and with
more people at the same time. It’s very typical
of our time, but I don’t think it’s an addiction
– there would have to be some tolerance development
and withdrawal symptoms, otherwise
you’re not talking about the same concept.
So social media might not be an addiction,
but gambling is? We can say gambling
resembles alcoholism in certain ways, but
there are lots of differences with respect to the
reward system. One thing is important: I don’t
think addiction is a thing in the brain. Addiction
is a concept one uses to describe similarities
among behaviours, but these behaviours
are very heterogeneous. There’s no symmetry
in that every addiction alters dopamine in the
same measurable way. Everything that interests
us, as far as we know, interferes with our
neurotransmitter systems, including dopamine.
It’s a question of degree – it’s not a categorical
difference where you can say, okay, now the
addiction has started.
But are we all equal before substances?
Does alcohol work in the same way for
everyone, for example? We do know that all
addictive drugs activate dopamine transmission,
but the degree to which they alter it is different.
Many alcohol-dependent patients look like
the normal controls – it’s just a few that really
stick out. Again, you can understand patterns
and alterations, but people are different from
one another. Some people might profit from an
anti-alcoholism medication, while others won’t.
It’s the same with anti-depressants – they work
in about one out of six to eight patients.
Baclofen: Magic pill on trial
Touted by medical professionals
and recovering alcoholics
since 2009 for its ability to reduce
cravings, the muscle relaxant
baclofen still isn’t approved
to treat alcohol abuse disorder
in Germany. The results of Andreas
Heinz’s trial of the drug
(Baclofen for the Treatment
of Alcohol Dependence, or
BACLAD), released too much
anticipation at the end of April,
could change that.
The first clinical trial of baclofen
as a treatment for alcoholism in
Germany, BACLAD was initiated
by Heinz after Dr. Olivier Ameisen,
the French cardiologist who first
recognised the potential of the
drug, came to Berlin to present his
findings in 2009. The three-year
study at Berlin’s Charité hospital, a
rigorously conducted double-blind
placebo trial, might pave the way
for recognition of baclofen as a
regular treatment for alcoholism in
Germany – in the wake of France,
where the drug has already been
granted temporary approval by
health authorities and is currently
being widely prescribed (with reported
success) to alcoholics.
As devised by Dr. Christian Müller,
who led the study, 56 patients
suffering from alcohol dependence
were administered either the drug
(30-270mg) or a placebo at random.
Patients with “side disorders” such
as depression were excluded. “Our
trial was the first one whereby the
dosage was varied. We’ve gone
up to about 270mg based on the
report by Ameisen,” says Heinz.
This was crucial as many previous
trials used dosages far below
Ameisen’s recommendation, which
according to baclofen supporters
explained the poor results. In the
Charité study, the success rate was
unexpectedly high: 68 percent of
patients who were given baclofen
maintained total abstinence during
the high-dose phase compared to
23.8 percent of those who received
a placebo. Reduction of alcohol
intake – an objective supported by
Ameisen, who continued drinking
moderately while taking his maintenance
dose – was not accounted for.
“It was clearly positive. Patients
on baclofen drink less than on
placebo. And it appears that higher
doses have a tendency to be more
effective,” concludes Heinz. According
to Müller, no serious side
effects were observed and there
is no evidence of baclofen addiction.
Supporters of the drug hope
the results will convert Germany’s
sceptical medical establishment to
the new medication, and two major
pharma firms (French Ethypharm
and UK Indivior) are already working
on cashing in with new, patented
formulations of the old generic.
Müller, however, calls for caution:
“I think the most important thing
to communicate is that nobody is
promising anything to alcohol dependent
patients,” he says. “After
the release of Ameisen’s book, it
was like a religion for some patients
who called us and said ‘Help me,
this is the medication that will solve
my problem.’ There is no Wunderpille.”
But then again, whatever
works... n
What about the genetics? The genetic
component explains about 50 percent of what
goes on. But the most clear-cut genetic finding
is that people who can drink a lot, do drink
a lot. In Asia, a lot of people get these flush
reactions because their alcohol metabolisation
is genetically different. In Europe, genetic variation
in serotonin neurotransmission influences
how much alcohol you can drink before you
get intoxicated. If you don’t have strong side
effects, then you tend to drink more. It doesn’t
make you an addict automatically, but it helps
you drink too much. Then neuroadaptation and
tolerance development starts – at that point,
some patients could drink a bottle of vodka and
not be comatose, while I would be. n
9

BEHIND THE SCENES
Kitchen confidential
Alcohol and drug abuse in Berlin restaurants is an open secret. But is it the stress of the job
that leads to the habit, or vice versa? Three chefs tell their stories. By Andrew Bishop
On a mild Saturday in May, Steven*
woke up early and headed to his job
as a chef at a Berlin hotel. Like many
mornings, his head ached fiercely
from the previous night’s drinking. Shaking off
his hangover and arriving at the kitchen to start
setting up, he could tell something was wrong. He
found one of the front desk staff, who told him
it was in fact 8pm on Sunday, a full 36 hours later
than he had thought – he had blacked out for a
day and a half, and later discovered that he had
suffered a concussion. At 33, after 12 years in the
restaurant industry, he was having what people in
recovery refer to as a moment of clarity. The following
day he attended his first AA meeting.
Now 58 and sober, he is the owner of a popular
Kreuzberg restaurant. A slight man with an
engaging presence, he speaks candidly about
his personal struggles with drug and alcohol
dependence and his continuous effort to keep his
predilections in check. About stealing money to
feed his addiction, about endless lies and compromised
principles, and about the darkest moments
when his thoughts turned to suicide. He
has the rapturous aura of many adherents of the
Alcoholics Anonymous programme, describing
his recovery in terms of acceptance of a higher
power. While his tale of overcoming his demons
to succeed as a business owner is impressive, his
story of addiction is not a rare one in the industry
– the high stress, the often long and grueling
work hours and easy access to alcohol and drugs
tend to encourage overindulgence.
Brian*, a young professional chef who came
to Berlin for a restaurant position four years ago
and has worked everywhere from “top places
in London to shit houses in Kreuzberg”, claims
that stress and overwork is what led him to start
using speed. “You know, I’m working my fourth
double shift in a row, the head chef doesn’t care
what state I’m in as long as I’m producing.” His
drug use wasn’t because he wanted to be happy
and high at work, but because he was “running
out of juice and just needed it to keep going.” At
one restaurant, the head chef used their Christmas
tips to order “500 dollars worth of fucking
cocaine for the staff. That was our holiday
bonus.” He says rampant drug use was equally
as likely at quality restaurants as at the holes-inthe-wall,
but that compared to other cities where
he’s worked, Berlin is especially prone to the
phenomenon due to sheer availability. “It’s part
of the culture. Here, everybody takes drugs.”
While Steven agrees that kitchen work can be
stressful, he says the people who claim that stress
10 • MAY 2015
drove them to drink or do drugs on the job are
often making excuses. Growing up in Ireland,
he learned how to “drink like a gentleman” from
his alcoholic father, who raised him nearly solo
while his mother was in and out of the hospital
with cancer. Preparing for his high school exams,
he would take his books to the pub where his
studies would be sidelined by the third or fourth
pint. Forced to choose a profession where grades
didn’t matter, he entered catering college. “I felt
like the career chose me.”
Pierre*, the owner of a small French restaurant
in Berlin, has stayed clean for the last 20 years. He
agrees that access to substances attracts certain
types of people to the kitchen. These days he
encourages his staff to follow his lead of sobriety,
and to that end no longer offers them a shift
drink at the end of their workday. He says that
too often it would end up in multiple toasts and
more booze for the road. “It’s a slippery slope.
I find it’s just easier this way.” Other drugs were
common in the kitchen during his time as a young
chef, including cocaine. At one restaurant and bar
where he worked, the dealer would give free cocaine
to the barmen in order to keep them quiet
about selling on the premises, and the barmen
would in turn distribute the product among the
staff. “It’s a bit of a classic, really. I know too many
guys in the business who fell into the abyss that
way. It starts with a glass or two but soon enough
they’re totally wasted on the job on a daily basis.
One day, you hear they’ve got to close down –
and sometimes it was very popular places.
Of course, some will never admit that the
problem was their alcoholism. Many are
in total denial.” Pierre says he recently
had to fire a young cook who had
taken up the bottle. “It was becoming
difficult for everyone. Until
they admit their problem, there’s
not much you can do.”
At one
restaurant, the
head chef used
Christmas tips
to order “500
dollars worth of
fucking cocaine for
the staff.”
So where can kitchen workers in Berlin turn if
they find themselves falling into self-destructive
patterns? For alcoholics, at least, there is some
help. While it has been recognised that alcoholism
is likely rooted in the restaurant industry’s
workplace culture, alcoholism itself is not considered
an occupational disease under Germany’s
Berufskrankheiten-Verordnung (Occupational
Diseases Ordinance). However, employees can
go on a detoxification programme prescribed by
their doctor if they can prove they are alcohol
dependent. Their Krankenkasse will cover the cost
of detox while state pension insurance will pay
for rehabilitation.
For Steven, this kind of support was non-existent
when he was cleaning up 25 years ago. And
when he bought his restaurant in Berlin nine
years ago, he knew the stakes of a relapse had
become higher. These days, his staff is aware he’s
a recovered alcoholic and, in fact, he occasionally
dispenses “little wisdoms” to those he can
see slipping into the patterns he once knew all
too well. Asked why he’s decided to stay in an industry
where alcohol and drugs are so prevalent,
Steven says it’s a matter of self-awareness. “I’m
a stubborn son of a bitch. I decide not to drink
way more often than you decide to drink.” n
* Names changed
PHOTO BY: FRANCESCA TORRICELLI

DRUG-FREE
The antiaddicts
In the shadow of Berlin’s
reputation as a drugfuelled
party mecca stands
a sizeable community of
substance-free straight edgers
– and yes, they’re “still
doing that”. By Rebecca Jacobson
Spiky punk blares through the dimly lit
basement of Rigaer Straße 94, a longtime
Friedrichshain squat with a history of
being stormed by the police. The red walls
are plastered with typical lefty paraphernalia: anti-
Nazi stickers, the anarcho-punk A, posters for
animal rights demonstrations. The crowd – mostly
tattooed twenty- and thirty-somethings – huddles
at the bar. What are they drinking? Fritz-Kola.
Welcome to one of this city’s straight edge
meetups, a monthly gathering of Berliners
aligned with a label that has its roots in the
American punk and hardcore scene of the 1980s,
when bands like Minor Threat and Government
Issue preached an ascetic lifestyle as the ultimate
rebellion. Straight edgers in Berlin tend to be vegan,
and they’re also tightly knit with anti-fascist
and animal-rights groups – all par for the course
here. It’s their hard line on substances – no
drugs, no tobacco, no alcohol – that makes them
stand out in Germany’s famously beer-swilling,
pill-popping, cigarette-rolling capital.
The power of the label
Evey Lin, 32, estimates the Rigaer Straße
meetup draws about 30 people each month.
“In Berlin, it can be hard to find a place that’s
smoke-free,” she says. Lin has been straight edge
for 10 years. In her early twenties, she booked
hardcore bands at a bar in her hometown in
Austria, an experience that exposed her to
the straight edge community – and tested her
patience with drunken hordes. She’d never been
a heavy drinker, but didn’t like relying on alcohol
to reduce her inhibitions. “And since I come
from the punk movement,” she adds, “where
everybody is so shocked when you say you don’t
drink, it feels super punk not to drink.”
Hagen Freyheit, 28, likewise found his way to
straight edge through punk and hardcore, but he
also flirted with the kind of short-term puritan
experimentation popular today, spending a month
here and there as a vegan teetotaler. It took a
while to embrace the “straight edge” stamp. But
for Freyheit – wearing a denim vest emblazoned
with a Hello Kitty patch and a button reading
“I’m a feminist and I riot” – the label became
a way to quickly and clearly communicate his
beliefs. Foregoing alcohol and drugs isn’t just a
way to keep his mind clear, but to protest those
industries. Being vegan isn’t about having clear
skin or a healthy gut, but a statement against
animal cruelty. Hardcore and punk provide an
important bedrock – and Berlin has a handful of
straight-edge bands, chief among them X Walk
Away X and La Linea Negra – but it goes beyond
music for Freyheit. “For me, it’s all connected,” he
says. “It wouldn’t be straight edge if it’s not vegan
or not political. It has to be more meaningful.”
Lin and Freyheit admit living in a substancefree
bubble makes it easy to forget about the
druggier, sloppier sides of the city. “I don’t go out
much,” Lin says. “Living in Friedrichshain, it’s
crazy on the weekends, but I hardly ever see it.
My Berlin is full of parks and lectures and other
things that end at eight o’clock at night.”
The musician in the middle
Not all straight edgers are isolated from the
party scene. Nico Webers (photo), a musician
and DJ who grew up in Berlin, has little choice
but to be around it: Berlin has no devoted
straight edge venues, so he wouldn’t be able to
book gigs otherwise. He’s also one of the sole
straight edgers in his social circle. But Webers,
who’s been straight edge since age 17 – he spent
his mid-teens stealing Jack Daniels from the
supermarket and was thrown out of school at
age 15 for punching a teacher he says espoused
Nazi views – says it doesn’t feel incongruous to
be straight edge in Berlin, and that the drugs and
alcohol are neither bothersome nor tempting.
(Though he could do without the smoky clubs,
particularly when singing.) “That’s just part of it,”
says Webers, a slim 36-year-old with an orange
octopus tattoo creeping up his neck. “I love going
to Berghain, where the drug use is extreme,
but it doesn’t matter to me. You’re autonomous,
you’re anonymous. Anarchy rules, and everyone
can do what they want.”
Having been straight edge for 20 years, Webers
has seen societal perceptions evolve. Fifteen
years ago, people asked if it was a sect. Now it’s
a socially acceptable term – even if people sometimes
get a little laugh out of it, or if American
bands express surprise that he’s “still doing that”.
Radical cupcakes
London transplant Caro Berry runs Minor Treat,
a “hardcore vegan baking unit”. For the past year,
Berry has been churning out chocolate-orange
brownies, coconut-lemon cupcakes and peanutbutter
blondies on a pop-up basis – at hardcore
concerts, for example, or at a “queer fat femme”
clothing swap in February.
Although Berry’s website proudly proclaims
Minor Treat is “anarchist, feminist, queer and
straight edge”, Berry, 32 – who identifies as genderqueer
and pansexual, and asked that gendered
pronouns not be used – is “gravitating away” from
the straight edge label. “I used it initially to make
clear to others what I do or don’t participate in, as
well as what people can expect from Minor Treat,
but I’ve since discovered many problems with it.”
Chief among them, according to Berry, are tendencies
in the straight edge scene toward misogyny,
homophobia, queerphobia and transphobia.
Slurs, Berry says, are common. Berry sings in the
straight-edge band La Linea Negra and recalls
being approached by a man after a concert at the
Köpi squat in Mitte: “He said, ‘Great show, good
music, but leave the talking to the boys.’”
Berry also isn’t interested in riding on the
coattails of the new strain of puritanism hitting
Berlin – the juice fasters and trendy vegans. Lin
agrees, tsk-ing at the buzz that builds each time a
new vegan joint opens in Kreuzberg. “This hype
feels like it’s about being healthy, not about being
political,” she says. “Straight edge is an alternative
to the mainstream, and these are still very
mainstream people. They’re totally missing the
subculture connection.” n
FRANCESCA TORRICELLI
11

CONTROVERSY
Legalise everything!
A judge, a former police officer and an ex-addict have a crazy new idea: make
all drugs legal. Whatever they’re on, maybe they’ve got a point. After all,
criminalising drug use hasn’t exactly worked, has it? By Ben Knight
Drug policy is probably the most irrelevant
policy there is. Whatever the
government decides we can and can't
put in our bodies, a lot of us will do
it anyway. And even if we don’t, we’ll probably
have to deal with people who do. According to
government stats, a quarter of adult Germans
have taken an illegal substance at least once in
their lives.
Many governments have recently decided that
they can trust their citizens to try a little pot,
and instituted a creeping decriminalisation. But
in Germany, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC,
is, like heroin, amphetamines and cocaine, a
“Category 1” substance – which means you’re
not allowed to grow, manufacture, deal, import,
export, sell, buy or own it. Medical cannabis
has been allowed since 2011, but that isn't really
a world-changer, given that doctors have been
administering much stronger drugs than that for
decades. Also, most German health insurers do
not cover medical marijuana, so your access to it
depends on how rich you are.
The law lags far behind current attitudes
towards the substance – even German police unions
have called for a relaxing of the rules on possession,
if for no other reason than that it would
save them a lot of time. The US organisation
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) is
planning to start a German chapter this summer
(see page 46). In March, the Green Party sparked
up the cannabis debate again with a new draft
law which would allow adults access to cannabis
for “personal recreation”.
But there are others who want to take legalisation
a lot further. Die Linke’s Frank Tempel,
a former policeman, is calling for a “radical
re-thinking of drug policy.” By that he means
the controlled legalisation of, well, pretty much
everything.
End prohibition
Tempel is persuasive enough on the shortfalls
of the current situation: “Prohibition fuels organised
crime, and consumers’ rights and legal protection
of children cannot be implemented on
the black market,” he says. “Instead of reducing
drug-related crimes, prohibition literally causes
the crime, since many normal taxpaying people
are depending on illegal markets.”
That much is backed up by the statistics.
Prohibiting drugs has not prevented people from
using them. According to German police reports,
12 • MAY 2015
the number of first-time ‘hard drug’ offenders
has remained steady at around 20,000 a year
over the past 12 years, and the number of overall
drug offences steady at around 230,000 year.
Meanwhile, there is plenty of evidence that the
criminalisation of drug use damages people and
society. People arrested for possession routinely
find themselves in a spiral of stigmatisation –
arrest, job loss, prison – that can and does turn
them into petty criminals.
Another outspoken liberaliser is Andreas
Müller, a youth court judge whose brother was a
cannabis dealer who became a heroin addict: “He
didn’t become a heroin addict because he took
cannabis. He became a heroin addict because
society broke him,” he says. “Stigmatisation.
Locking away. Young offenders’ home. Prison. Of
course that breaks a human being.”
Müller says there is an increasing consensus
among judges that the current drug laws
are pointless – an endless treadmill that does
nothing but push people into prison while drug
consumption remains exactly the same. “People
who have to deal with the rules say, ‘What are we
doing here? We have to apply laws that belong
in the rubbish bin.’ A heroin addict who buys
heroin shouldn’t be punished. He's already punished
enough by the fact that he’s addicted.”
Stop repression
The government’s drug policy is based on four
planks: repression, prevention, treatment, and
containing the social damage drugs do. The
point that Tempel and Müller are making is that
repression takes up vastly more resources than
the other three, and does the least good. On the
other hand, Germany has made a lot of progress
in the last 20 years when it comes to treatment.
Dirk Schäffer was a heroin addict in the early
1990s, and he says in those days he had two
Current drug laws are
pointless – an endless
treadmill that does
nothing but push people
into prison while drug
consumption remains
exactly the same.
options: “Either you took
drugs or you went to jail.”
He himself spent two
years in custody. “If you
didn't want to steal from
others, you used to deal
small amounts – some you
bought for yourself, and
some you sold on,” he says.
“Then you were picked up
by the police and searched
and in Germany that always
led to some kind of punishment,
especially when it
came to ‘hard drugs’.”
Treat
Schäffer is now a social
worker and drug policy
spokesman for the charity
Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe, and
he says the treatments have
vastly improved, thanks in part to more relaxed
drug laws. Back in 1990, you could be arrested just
for owning “consumption utensils” – now, in many
German cities including Berlin, drug users can go
to exchange points to get clean syringes, which
has vastly reduced cases of HIV and hepatitis
among addicts. In fact, the number of illegaldrug-related
deaths has dropped by half – from
2030 to 1002 between 2000 and 2013. Not only
that, Schäffer says Germany is one of the leaders
when it comes to the number of drugs available
for substitution programmes, such as diamorphine
and methadone. However, doctors face such huge
bureaucratic and legal obstacles from health insurance
companies and authorities that they have
to be extremely dedicated to offer substitution
treatment: “To be honest, if I were a young doctor
I wouldn't put myself through all that.”
Decriminalise
But incremental measures like this towards
decriminalising drug consumption have had a
noticeable effect on improving public health and
reducing the burden on police. There are other
steps that could be taken. In Spain, for instance,
you can start a club where registered members
can grow cannabis for their own use, as long as
they don’t try to sell it. Portugal has some of the
most liberal drug laws in the world, where possession
of what is considered 10 days’ personal
supply is treated as a misdemeanor, like a parking

RASA URNIEZIUTE
ticket. Tempel also suggests another small measure
that could easily be taken in Germany, but isn’t:
allowing the use of screening equipment, especially
in nightclubs, so you can check whether the drugs
you bought have been cut with toxic chemicals.
Legalise?
While there is a debate to be had about incremental
liberalisation, the big question is: how far
do we want to go? What would it actually mean
to legalise all drugs? Schäffer imagines special
pharmacy-type shops, which only those over 18
would be allowed to enter. “There would be specialists
working there who would guarantee purity
and offer advice on health risks and different types
of consumption,” he says. “Either customers would
have a prescription, or they would simply be able
to buy them.”
But surely some substances are too toxic to sell?
Even Tempel says he would draw the line at crystal
meth – though he thinks it would be banned under
regular consumer protection laws anyway. “We
need more research in this field in order to develop
a less harmful substitute for crystal meth in the
long run, which could be then legally available under
certain medical conditions,” he says. Schäffer,
though, thinks that crystal meth could be safe if
its production were controlled. “Crystal meth is
so dangerous because it’s produced in people’s garages,
kitchens and cellars, completely disregarding
any safety or quality standards.” If the manufacture
were regulated, consumer protection laws could
be enforced. Similarly, regulated drug retail would
reduce the risk of overdoses, because users would
know exactly what they were taking.
The problem with total legalisation, of course, is
that no one has ever tried it. Many people fear that
it would lead to an explosion in use. Schäffer disagrees.
“The experience of the Netherlands shows
that more people don’t take drugs than before,” he
says. “The people who never had anything to do
with drugs before don’t have anything to do with
them afterwards, because it’s just not their world.”
The liberalisation of drug laws could well have
public health and safety benefits, and legislators in
countries like Portugal and Netherlands have clearly
decided that some measure of decriminalisation is
worth a try, if only because criminalisation hasn’t
worked. Then again, it could be that Tempel (a
former cop), Schäffer (a former addict), and Müller
(a judge) are all naïve utopians who don't know what
they are unleashing. The German Government’s
drug commissioner, Marlene Mortler of the Christian
Social Union, does not share their views. She
maintains that people need to be protected from
themselves. She actually makes little distinction
between legal and illegal drug consumers, and is also
in favour of tighter controls on alcohol and tobacco.
For her, the big question, as formulated in a recent
interview with The European, is this: “What can and
must we do to reduce consumption to the goal of
absolute abstinence?” How's that for a utopia? n
13

ZEITGEIST
“I’m not even sure you can be addicted to a phone. I mean, it’s not heroin.
I refreshed my email. Nothing. I sighed.”
Smart at the barbecue
On Saturday I took my Tinder date
to a barbecue. She was really hot,
although she had a way of looking
at me like she was trying to
eat the thoughts from my brain,
which was kind of a turn-on, but also scared me
shitless. I found myself looking away quite a lot,
and when I looked away I forgot she was there
and got my phone out so I wouldn’t be bored.
When she reminded me she was, I apologised
and told her it was okay, I’m not addicted to it,
I just had an article to write about the subject
– that’s this one – and she was cool with that. I
showed her the app called Menthal I was using
to measure my phone use. It was invented by
some boffins at the University of Bonn. I said,
“I guess Menthal is like menthol cigarettes, you
know, like, for quitting smoking.”
“Mental,” she said, and grinned at me.
The pictures I Instagrammed of the barbecue
looked really professional. I couldn’t get close
to the food, though. The wi-fi signal cut off over
there and I needed to stay in range for Menthal,
and because I was waiting to hear about a job
I’d applied for. I got my Tinderette to bring me
plates of pork while I hovered midway up the
garden, running my thumb over the surface of
my thing. But then she’d go off and talk to people
who were out of range, leaving me all alone.
I texted her a few times to ask her to come
back, but she might have had her phone turned
off. That was okay. It gave me a bit of time to
breathe and Tweet my feelings.
A guy stood with me in the wi-fi arc for a
while. He had round-lens sunglasses, long socks
and a waxed moustache.
“I see you have a phone,” he said. I thought he
might be a bit simple. Turns out he should probably
be writing this article rather than me.
“Did you know smartphone ‘penetration’ in
Germany reached 55 percent in 2014, up from 41
percent in 2013?” he said.
“Well blow me down, I did not,” I replied. I wiggled
my phone at him. “I’ve also been pene trated.”
That was an ‘icebreaker’, but his ice stayed
intact and he looked away. I unlocked my phone.
No new notifications.
Then he said, “According to a survey by B2X
Care Solutions, a German company, Deutschland
ranks in the top five of most ‘smartphone addicted’
countries, along with India, the US, China
and Brazil, with around half of users saying they
may have a problem.”
What are you? A fucking blog? I thought.
Instead I said, “I’m not even sure you can be
addicted to a phone. I mean, it’s not heroin.” I
refreshed my email. Nothing. I sighed. He was
talking again, or maybe he hadn’t stopped.
“It’s also been claimed that people who are constantly
checking their phones may be depressed;
that they may be looking to dispel some kind
of negative mood by finding something positive
in their phone; that this mind-wander may be a
cause or an effect of their addiction, or both; that
these people may be prone to irritability.”
“Fuck off,” I said. “I doubt depression has
anything to do with it. I’m the happiest I’ve
ever been in my life, and I check my phone for
confirmation of that. When I find nothing there I
don’t get down about it. I move on.”
“A site called Tech Addiction suggests that one
in 10 smartphone users are so distracted they
admit to using their phones in the shower or
even while having sex.”
I laughed. “I have never used my phone in the
shower.”
I was becoming extremely tired of this man,
but as he turned to leave I felt a weird need to
ingratiate myself with him. “If you’re implying
I have some kind of problem, it’s okay – I have
an app that measures my phone use. I think it
would tell me if there was something wrong.
Here…” I opened the app and handed him my
phone. I felt a shadow pass over me, but when I
looked up there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
“Mmm-hmm,” he said, “daily app use, time
on phone, app filters, personality test, mood
calendar, yeeesss…”
My phone vibrated in his hand. He didn’t give
it back to me, just kept scrolling through the
screens. “It’s green,” he said. “Nice colour.”
I started to sweat. I cleared my throat a few
times. He didn’t notice. It was like he was on
that thing for years.
“Whoa,” he said, “you unlocked your phone
over four hundred times today!” I had to snatch
it out of his hand and run to the toilet, where I
learned the vibration was a spam mail, something
about the Amish.
Back outside I was alone again, which was
okay, except it wasn’t because each time I
checked my phone there was no message and
it started to dawn on me that I hadn’t got the
job. Not only that, but no one had liked any
of my photos. Luckily, I was standing right
next to a plate of chopped onions so when my
Tinderette came to check on me I blamed my
tears on them.
All’s well that ends well, though. She still came
home with me, despite the mini-breakdown
and us not really getting to know each other.
I guess either she thought it would be cool to
sleep with someone writing a real article, or she
must genuinely have liked me. Time would tell.
Although it wouldn’t, because of what happened
in the bedroom.
I don’t know exactly what happened. I was
nuzzling her neck, my arms around her back,
flicking through Tinder to set up a date for Sunday,
and she kind of bucked, rolled, then flipped
me; I dropped my phone and landed on it. She
couldn’t pull it out of my rectum herself, and the
waiting time was so long I didn’t get out of the
hospital until Sunday morning.
I just about went mad sitting there with my
phone inside me and nothing to do. And when I
got it back there were still zero notifications and
I thought about shoving it right back in.
The next day I was dead tired. I stayed home,
cleaned my phone and played around on it until
I went to bed. I made sure to keep at least one
finger on the screen at all times, so it wouldn’t
lock even once. That way, my Menthal results
for the day would be those of someone who was
busy and popular, not some kind of sad, twitching
maniac.
By PHILLIP TURO
14 • MAY 2015

ARTICLE PROFILE TAG
PHOTO BY FRANCESCA TORRICELLI
Interview with a vampyre
Lilith isn’t a creature of the night, and she’s not allergic to garlic. She’s just your average
transgender, theatre-loving, Celtic-ritual-performing Berlinerin... with a craving for blood.
By Peer Jon Ørsted
Do you remember the taste of blood?
As a child, when you fumbled with
scissors or fell from a tree, did you put
your mouth to your wound and suck it?
And did it make you feel different; did it sharpen
your senses? Perhaps you should try it again – it
could just be the thing you need to trigger your
awakening. To become a real, living vampyre.
That’s what happened to Lilith Desideria
B., née Büschof. And yes, that Y is intentional.
“There is a big difference between vampire and
vampyre,” says Lilith. “A vampire is a fictional
book or Hollywood character. A vampyre is an
actual person that believes they need to get
energy from others to survive. We as vampyres
are not immortal, we are not undead, and we
don’t die by sunlight. We actually like sunlight, it
gives us energy. The only similarity is that I just
need a little bit of blood.”
Raised by a Greek Orthodox mother and
a German/Irish Catholic father in the small
conservative village of Rodalben, she (then a he)
had her awakening at age 13 – in more ways than
one. “Within that year it became clear to me that
I was trapped in the wrong body, and I had my
first homosexual relationship. Then came the
blood thirst.” This happened after accidentally
biting her partner during oral sex. “Suddenly
everything was clearer to me, like an overdose
on sensitivity. At first, I just thought it was the
best sex I ever had, but a few days later, I started
having an urge for more. More blood. He became
my first-ever donor for the next two years.”
Today Lilith has several willing donors, all
fellow vampyres who have given testimony to a
healthy, non-diseased blood exchange. “No HIV,
syphilis or hepatitis; no psychic diseases, borderline
or self-cutting behaviour. If they have any of
those, I don’t drink from them.”
The process itself is also very clinical. A sterile
needle in the vein of her donor, 25mg of diseasefree
blood extracted and mixed with red wine,
Bulgarian preferably. Only once every four weeks
is enough for her to avoid what she describes
as withdrawal symptoms. “If I go three months
without drinking, I go crazy. I become aggressive,
apathetic and very, very nervous. My hands
will shake and if I walk out in public, I’ll literally
stop seeing people in front of me and only imagine
their veins and hear the blood pulsating. And
then, of course, I have to control myself not to
do bad things to them.”
Lilith remembers how after her first taste of
blood, she became thirsty for more. ”Once my
mother was making dinner, some steaks, and I
took the package where the rest of the blood
was and drank it in front of her. She freaked
out.” Her parents brought her to a psychiatrist.
“Maybe he had had another client before me,
because he knew about a guy in Frankfurt who
practised vampirism and that there were many
others. My parents kicked me out of the house,
and my only option, it seemed, was to look up
the guy in Frankfurt. I never returned.”
There, she lived in a “haven” – a collective
vampyre hive. “When vampyres live together,
they’re more bloodthirsty. We had a game where
if you could succeed in biting into someone’s
neck, the person had to give you blood. And I
was really good at this,” she says, laughing. After
about 10 years of daily human blood consumption,
including house “bloody Marys” (vodka
mixed with pig blood) and embracing the occult
to the fullest, the Frankfurt collective dissolved
and Lilith made her way to Berlin.
Here, she found a secret community of likeminded
bloodsuckers: “There are about 1500 in
Berlin. I know a judge, a policeman, a lawyer and
a doctor – the best part is, he works in the blood
bank. I also know a few nurses in the Charité
hospital who are vampyres.” She also found
her true self. “I reached a point of no return
in 2006: either I keep living as a male and end
up killing myself, or I get an operation done.
Through the next three years I went through
every obstacle there is to becoming a woman.
Name change, operation and telling everyone,
including my estranged family. Since 2009 I’ve
been what I am: a female vampyre. I am much
calmer today. It was the best decision of my
life.” It wasn’t her first transformation. In 2000
she had her teeth filed into fangs by cult figure
Father Sebastiaan, the American former dental
assistant who founded the now-international
gathering Endless Night Vampire Ball.
Aside from practicing vampirism, Lilith works
as a female druid, or Celtic priestess, and makes
money performing Celtic rituals for clients looking
for love or better health. She volunteers in
the kitchen at Berlin’s Twelve Apostles Church
– which, she says, knows all about her lifestyle.
And she’s an avid performer – whether role-playing
at medieval markets, going onstage as the
drag queen “Vivian Vermont”, working as a scare
actor at Filmpark Babelsberg’s horror nights in
October or singing in a street choir.
So is her blood consumption a performance
as well – or, as some claim, a sexual fetish? “No,
it’s not a fetish. It’s more like a disease – I need
the energy; that’s why I take blood. But blood
definitely spices up my sex life. I have sex with
two of my donors.” As for the taste, “If a donor
eats oranges for a month, the blood will taste
like oranges.” Blood oranges. n
15

FIRST-PERSON
The 13-year blur
One expat’s struggle with prescription drugs
spanned two decades and four countries.
He recalls his descent into the abyss and his
resurrection in Berlin. By Jason Harrell
I
arrived in Berlin in August 2008, 08-08-08 to be exact. I remember that
date. But I don’t really remember the details about why or how I decided
to move here. This lack of clear memories defines most of the time that
I was on benzodiazepines – anti-anxiety medications like Valium, Xanax
and Klonopin. Thirteen years like watching fuzzy television on mute. The
images are somehow there, but I have very little connection to them.
I was first diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorder when I was
nine years old. I don’t remember being depressed. All I can recollect is
falling sick with food poisoning after Thanksgiving dinner. After that, I
felt sick whenever I ate and lost a lot of weight. My doctor ordered tests.
When they all came back negative, he concluded I must be depressed and
prescribed me Prozac. It was 1988, I was nine and Prozac was new. It was
all over the news and on TV. My mom was taking it too.
After a while, I started to feel better. The situation at home had
changed. My mother divorced her third husband, we moved to a new
neighborhood and I started going to a different school. The depression
and anxiety subsided, so I quit taking the medication.
NEW YORK: Under pressure
At 17, I moved to New York City from Atlanta to go to music school.
Moving to NYC had been a dream since I was a kid, but the reality was
a lot harsher. The school had rented out the top three floors in a welfare
residential hotel as their dorms. The other half of the roach-infested
building was populated by mental cases and drug addicts. Students would
buy weed from them. I remember a young woman,
a heroin addict, telling me how the year before she
had had a miscarriage in the lobby after falling down
the stairs. I was on a full scholarship, and the stress
to perform and live up to the expectations that were
placed on me was overwhelming. So was the cutthroat
rivalry between students.The school recommended
a Park Avenue psychiatrist who readily gave me a
prescription for Klonopin. His instructions to take
the medication regularly every day would have made
anyone an addict within weeks. I wasn’t the only one
in the dorms with these little orange pills, and having
them gave me a feeling of empowerment that there
wasn’t anything to worry about anymore. There was
no reason to be afraid, because on the drugs there
simply wasn’t any fear.
After that first year in New York, I left music school
and began studying literature and photography at another university in the
city. I also had a different Park Avenue doctor, who was the sponsor of the
advertising campaign for some psychiatric medication, her photo adorning
the posters for the drug. I saw her every couple of months and every time
she would give me different drugs to try. One day, as she sat behind her
desk wearing sunglasses to conceal her cosmetic surgery procedures, she
pushed across a new “script” for Xanax.
Despite taking all of these pills, I didn’t see myself as having a problem. I
wasn’t a “junkie”. It actually seemed normal. I knew so many people taking
the same meds and especially during the 1990s, the era of the anti-depressant,
it seemed to me that it was what you had to do. Advertisements for psychopharmaceuticals
were everywhere you looked. It was just a part of daily life.
I was referred to
a young English
doctor who
doubled my daily
dosage. Later, I
found out that he
was known as
“Dr. Drugs”.
PARIS: The next level
In 1999, I moved to Paris as an exchange student. I lived in the red-light
district along Rue Saint-Denis and it was here that my benzo addiction was
kicked up to the next level. I was referred to a young English doctor who
mainly served the expatriate community from his small office in the Marais.
He doubled my daily dosage. Later, I found out that he was known as “Dr.
Drugs”, known for handing out prescriptions for whatever you wanted.
Dr. Drugs introduced me to a liquid variant of Klonopin which came
in a tiny brown bottle and had to be dosed out carefully in drops. This
added an element of ritual and made taking the drugs into an event. I had
a specific mug that I reserved just for this. Filling it halfway with water, I
would carefully count the amount of the slow-falling drops. If there were
accidentally too many drops in the cup, there was no way of putting them
back in the bottle, so I would drink all of it at once.
The medications were a lot less expensive in France, even without insurance,
and it was much easier to have the prescriptions
filled. In New York, there were special triplicate forms
for medications that have a certain abuse potential. In
Paris, the script was just scribbled onto the doctor’s
stationary pad. It was filled in the pharmacy for cash
and no questions were asked.
AMSTERDAM: Nearing overdose
I eventually ended up in Amsterdam to finish my
degree. The drug culture that is so associated with this
city wasn’t what attracted me. I still didn’t see myself
as a drug addict.
After my first year there, everything seemed to
spiral downwards. I ended up in a crappy room in the
north part of town far away from my friends in the
city. I couldn’t follow my courses, because even after a
year of Dutch and passing the state exam, my language
skills weren’t yet good enough to follow the fast-paced
literature and philosophy courses at the university. I felt more and more
alienated, and this resulted in more and more drugs.
It was during this time that I started to feel like an addict. If the pills
ran out, I wouldn’t be able to sleep and my hands would start trembling
uncontrollably. If it went more than a day, there would be nausea and
vomiting. Once, I arrived at the doctor’s office just a few minutes too
late to pick up a prescription. I rang the doorbell frantically, hoping for
someone to give me the slip of paper. Instead, the police arrived and
asked me to leave.
The drugs made me completely oblivious to everything, to working, to my
studies and especially to other people. I trampled over other people’s emo-
JASON HARRELL
16 • MAY 2015

tions, because, being so high all the time, I was unable to perceive – and
most times simply didn’t care – what they might be feeling and thinking.
Most of the few friends I had distanced themselves from me.
As I was nearing the end of my degree, I was being given ridiculously
high amounts of Valium and Klonopin. Every day for months, I
would wake up, go to the grocery store, eat breakfast, pop four or five
pills and lie on the sofa staring out of the window or at the ceiling. It’s
around this time that the memories start to fade away. Somehow, I
don’t know how, I was able to graduate.
BERLIN: Resurrection
In 2009, in Berlin, having taken these meds since 1996, I finally decided
it was time to stop.
My doctor here told me that my withdrawal would have to be carried
out in a detox clinic at the hospital because coming off such high
doses over such a long period of time could lead to severe symptoms
like seizures. Since I lived in Neukölln, I would have to be treated at
Neukölln Hospital, so I went and checked myself in. Drug treatment
was in one of the several older, smaller facilities separate from the
giant, gleaming, modern building. To get in, I was escorted through
one of two electronically locked doors to a security checkpoint, and
then we were buzzed in through the other door. All those locks were
imposing – wasn’t I supposed to be there voluntarily?
Inside it was gloomy and dark, much like the nightmare dorm
where I had first lived in New York. On the wall, there was a shoddily
made sign listing the different steps of recovery, obviously drawn up
by some of the patients a long time ago. A few of them were walking
up and down the hallways wearing jogging clothes and bathrobes.
I sat down while I waited to be shown to my room. Very quickly,
other inmates came to me. They were there because of heroin and
alcohol. A nurse came over to take me to my room. I would have
to share it with four other drug addict strangers. That was when I
thought, “I can’t do this here.”
A few days later, I made a plan with my doctor to do the withdrawal
at home. I was supposed to reduce the dosage by half four
times over two months until I got down to zero. I can’t make it
sound easy or empowering, because it wasn’t. It was like having a
really bad flu for a week, getting better and then getting sick again,
over and over. The panic attacks came back – the crippling conviction
that everything in my life was absolutely wrong. It was worse
than anything I’d felt before.
Somehow I got through it, and by summer, I was off the drugs. But
no one had really explained to me what it would be like afterwards.
My ears were always ringing. I had recurring panic attacks and a constant
feeling of restlessness and fear. I also lost a lot of weight, around
100 pounds in six months.
The way I understood the world around me had changed. Time
moved a lot more slowly than before. The U-Bahn travelled at a snail’s
pace. Songs that I loved before seemed to drone on annoyingly for
hours. Written language and grammar were hard for me to comprehend,
and it was very difficult to translate ideas into words. I had set
up a photo lab in my bathroom, but when I went to take pictures I
couldn’t see things the way I had before. Before, scenes popped out
from the background as if they were just waiting to be captured, but
now everything was muddy and blended together at wrong angles. I
dismantled the lab.
Benzodiazapine withdrawal syndrome can last for years – sometimes
it can even be permanent. Six years on, I’m still coping with
the aftereffects of my addiction. Things I learned while taking the
medication are hard to access now. I once spoke fluent Dutch and
even wrote stories and poems in that language. Now, a lot of it is gone.
On the other hand, quitting the medication made everything seem
refreshingly new. Every experience felt like it was the first time. The
streetlights buzzed brighter at night. Even tastes were different. I
started to love spicy Thai food, which I hated before. I stopped going
to university – I had lost so many years to addiction, and couldn’t
stand the thought of more days stuck in a library. I’m now a photographer,
and I work twice as hard as before. I’ve got to make up for those
half-remembered years. n
ENGLISH WITH GERMAN SURTITLES
MAY 27 - 30, 8pm
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GLAMOUR
A Queer Intervention
TICKETS: 030 - 754 537 25
17

w
GAMING
The most dangerous game?
When does a hobby become an addiction? For video and
computer gamers, the line isn’t so easy to draw. By Mary Biekert
“
I
would
spend all night dungeon crawling,”
says 28-year-old Berliner Jonas*. “Sleep didn’t
matter to me, only the game. When I was
away from it, my temper tantrums would
get so bad that once, I considered suicide, I was
that unhappy. Yet if I was able to play, a mere five
minutes later I would feel perfectly fine again.”
Even in their most elemental form – Pong,
Donkey Kong, Super Mario – video games can get
you hooked. But as technology has improved, what
was once confined to arcade consoles now comprises
entire fictional universes, complete with social
networks and economies. It’s easy to spend hours,
days or weeks getting lost in those worlds. But are
the people who do so really equivalent to alcoholics
or heroin users? Increasingly, specialists seem to
think so.
Chantal Mörsen is the chair of a research
group at Charité Hospital which focuses on
behavioural addictions, gaming in particular. She
states that her research has revealed that video
game addictions can be as powerful as any. “The
brain mechanisms of substance and behavioural
addictions are actually the same,” she says. “The
same neurological systems are activated and the
reward system releases dopamine, giving you the
drive to keep reaching your goal, a drive that can
be nearly as strong as any substance addiction.
Although the addict can’t experience strong
physical withdrawal, behavioural withdrawal
is very present, including symptoms such as
nervousness, extreme irritation, impatience and
depression.” Aside from her research, Mörsen is
presently counselling 20 Berliners who are addicted
to gaming – primarily massive multiplayer
online role-playing games (MMORPGs) such as
World of Warcraft. “MMORPGs are extremely
addictive for three main reasons,” she says. “For
one, your reward mechanisms are constantly
triggered because these games offer a low-risk,
high-reward environment to play in. The social
aspect allows people to obtain a social factor
that they are missing from their life, and these
games also offer a highly immersive escape aspect
that allows the player to avoid their reality.”
Fun and games
Walking into Meltdown, a bar in Neukölln solely
devoted to eSports, it’s easy for even a gaming
newbie to get drawn in. Over the sounds of beer
glasses clinking, gamers sit at desktop computers
situated off to the side, effortlessly tapping
away at the keyboard, looking calm, almost
hypnotised, as they battle opponents playing live
from Meltdown London. They’re playing DotA
(Defense of the Ancients), a spinoff of Warcraft
in which players kill each other to earn points
and gold. Others watch the competition on
large television screens. “You have to be pretty
good to play here,” says Meltdown regular Alex.
“It obviously requires a great deal of practice at
home to get to this level, hundreds of hours of
playing time.” All that playing can also lead to
serious cash. While the stakes at Meltdown are
fairly low – cash prizes for tournaments rarely
exceed €50 – truly talented gamers can compete
in international playoffs like the DotA competition
held annually in Seattle, where the winning
team receives $5 million.
But money isn’t gaming’s only important
reward. “Gaming offers an accepting community
of friends to anyone who is looking,” says Alex.
“MMORPGs especially make it so that gamers
can easily communicate and make new friends.”
Among the young men who make up the
greater part of Berlin’s tech scene, gaming serves
both as a social glue and a way to cope with job
stress. Daniel*, a 27-year-old native Berliner,
start-up entrepreneur and computer engineering
student, has been a keen gamer since he received
his first computer in 1993. Now, he plays between
20 and 50 hours a week, usually Minecraft, often
starting off playing with his housemate but
continuing after he has gone to bed. “Games
give you a feeling that can’t compare to anything
else. You get this light feeling in your chest and
good vibes that spread through your body.” Even
after spending a 14-hour workday in front of the
computer, he still plays. “I use the game to forget
about my life and to de-stress before heading off
to bed. For some reason working with my team
18 • MAY 2015

JASON HARRELL
members to beat the other team makes me feel
better at the end of the day.” Daniel is an avid
player, but is he an addict? Mörsen would say no.
“Video game addictions are characterised by the
inability to control the amount of time played,
decreased interest in socialising and neglecting
important obligations.”
When the game plays you
What remains a relaxing if time-consuming
passion for some can turn into an out-of-control
habit for others. “For me, gaming started as an
after-school activity to do with my brother when
I was a teenager,” says Jonas, “It all changed when
the first expansion set of World of Warcraft was
released in 2007. It was a super big deal to the
gaming community.” Adding new environments
and characters to the original game, World of
Warcraft: The Burning Crusade sold nearly 1.6
million copies in Europe in its first month of
release alone. “The world was undeniably addictive.
It gave me a sense of exploration, a sense of
accomplishment. All of my problems, all of my
obligations, all of my responsibilities, they just
faded away.” He had started his Abitur late, and
the age difference between him and his peers
meant he had few friends outside of the game. “It
gave me a sense of community, where nothing in
reality could compare.”
According to Mörsen, young men in “protected,
safe” environments are most at risk for gaming
addiction. During summer vacation, living at
home with no job to go to, Jonas says, “I would
wake up at 4pm and game until 5am. I barely
went to see friends anymore. I started to feel incredibly
guilty, like a failure.” Stepping away from
the game only led to more guilt. “These gaming
societies are a major aspect of what holds you
in. When I wasn’t in the game, I felt as if I was
letting down hundreds of friends!” The personal
responsibility to other gamers along with his
feelings of worthlessness among his schoolmates
kept Jonas gaming until 2010. After starting
university at the Berlin School of Economics and
Law, he made a conscious decision to kick the
habit and truly focus on the life ahead of him.
Game over
While Jonas was able to cut himself off from
gaming on his own, others don’t find it so easy
to stop. Jannis Wlachojiannis
is the head project
coordinator at the Lost
in Space Rehab Center
in Kreuzberg. Originally
established as a counselling
centre for gambling
addicts, Lost in Space
expanded to include computer
and video games in
2006; they now have nearly
500 gaming clients, up
from the original 40. Half
of these are relatives of
addicts who have come to
receive advice on helping
loved ones recognise and
address their gaming problem. “For some of my
clients, the addiction is so strong that many
experience withdrawal symptoms,” says Wlachojiannis.
“I had one client in his mid-twenties
who, whenever his mother would disconnect
the internet, was subject to intense rage.” Another
client, Wlachojiannis explains, went two
years ‘sober’, entering into a steady relationship
which helped to keep his mind off it all. “When
he and his girlfriend broke up, though, he immediately
relapsed.”
Wlachojiannis’ rehab programme uses what
he calls a “traffic light” method. “The idea is to
identify which situations or things are subject to
influence addicts to start gaming – these things
we put in a ‘red zone’. ‘Yellow zone’ items might
trigger the need to play, so caution is necessary.
‘Green zone’ components would be something
completely unrelated to gaming, like drinking a
“I would wake
up at 4pm and
game until 5am.
When I wasn’t in
the game, I felt
as if I was letting
down hundreds
of friends!”
cup of tea in the sun. I encourage my clients to
only partake in behaviours from the yellow and
green zones. The best way to cut a video game
addiction is to just stop cold turkey.” His clients
receive individual counselling sessions along with
anonymous group meetings where they discuss
their progress and later move onto something
more social, such as playing
Frisbee in the park. Yet,
even with a well organised
rehab program, Wlachojiannis
admits that 60-70
percent of his clients are
still likely to return. For her
part, Mörsen admits to very
high relapse rates in the beginning
of her treatments,
dropping to 25 percent after
a full year of therapy.
While some of Mörsen’s
Charité colleagues, such as
Andreas Heinz (see page 6)
remain sceptical that gaming
(and other behavioural
addictions) can be classed along with alcoholism
and drug dependence, video and computer game
addiction is being taken more and more seriously.
“Although some studies are still lacking, it seems
that the WHO will most likely give video game
addiction a legitimate classification in the next
year,” states Dr. Mörsen. Daniel, on the other
hand, hopes that the public can come to a better
understanding of video games before demonising
them. “Yes, video games are powerful, they are a
substantial thing that negatively affect people at
large. I hope society doesn’t take these people’s
problems for granted. But I also hope they can
understand that video games are a way for people
to enjoy themselves, even if they do decide to
play for 40 hours a week. As with everything in
life, a healthy balance is all that is needed.” n
*Names changed
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19

ANONYMOUS
The talk of shame
It’s en vogue to claim sex addiction these days – but finding an actual, real-life
sex addict willing to speak up is harder than it seems. By David Mouriquand
Speaking out as a sex addict is not easy.
Unlike a recovering alcoholic or heroin
user, someone dealing with sex addiction
cannot proudly declaim his or her tamed
demons. There’s no triumph involved; instead,
the pride of getting clean is replaced by cultural
stigma and doubt. Half the battle, it seems, is
proving that sex addiction even exists.
There is no clinical diagnosis for sex addiction.
The condition is often dismissed by medical
and government bodies, who continue to
deny its status as an official psychiatric disorder
– not to mention the media, which trivialises sex
addition as a trendy, celebrity-endorsed excuse
for lack of restraint.
In Berlin, though, at least two groups exist
for those seeking help: Sex and Love Addicts
Anonymous (SLAA) and Sexual Compulsives
Anonymous (SCA). The latter holds men-only
meetings, while SLAA holds up to six mixed
meetings per week with 12-15 attendees per session.
Two are in English, to assure that language
barriers don’t prevent anyone from speaking
up. Whether suffering from an overpowering
craving for sexual intimacy or a compulsive
attitude towards pornography, the common denominator
among attendees is a lack of control:
days organised around sex, to the detriment of
everything else.
The recovering addicts we met there were
keen for the word to get out that there are supportive
places and programmes for those who
struggle with sex addiction. However, when
it came to answering further questions about
their experiences, noses rapidly crinkled and
heads started shaking. Some believed that a
flash-in-the-pan piece could never do justice to a
condition that has shattered many lives. Others
only wanted to talk to someone who has been
through the same experience, for fear their addiction
would be conflated with paedophilia or
sex crimes. Understandably, many balked at the
idea of unveiling something so personal.
Jane* agreed to answer a few questions. It
would have to be on the phone, though. The
other conditions were that the conversation
would be on her terms and that we’d not reveal
her identity.
“I loved masturbating. I just couldn’t get
enough of it. The slightest thing would set me
off. A sound, someone’s voice on the phone.
I’d do it at home, at work, in public places... It
completely took over. I obsessed over it until it
wasn’t enough. At the time, I had a steady relationship
and my partner got off on it.
For a while.”
That relationship didn’t last. Her sexual
impulses grew and became less manageable. Jane
began going to clubs more regularly and found
herself lowering her standards, just as long as
it guaranteed taking someone home. “Anyone
would do.”
It was fun at first. “It was my secret life and
I loved the fact my friends and co-workers
weren’t a part of it. I thought I was making up
for my rather tame student days, and picking up
someone has never been particularly challenging
in Berlin. At the time, I felt empowered by my
ability to get guys into bed. I liked being a slut,
calling myself a slut. I was trying things I never
thought I’d do. It was a huge turn-on, a high.”
A high with a steep comedown. “It stopped being
fun when I started feeling like shit. The regular
sex was alright, but even a decent fuck wasn’t
enough after a while. I also got sick of having to
deal with some pretty disgusting guys and having
to use protection all the time. The rush didn’t
stop me from feeling agitated and annoyed. The
highs wore off quicker and I started getting edgy
with friends and at work. Ultimately, I didn’t feel
satisfied or loved. By anyone.”
Jane now describes herself as a recovering
addict. She confides that while she no longer
frequents her Berlin haunts, she still has her
moments. She laughs for the first time in the
conversation, joking that she still probably
yearns for physical intimacy more than the average
person. The difference is that she’s now in
control.
She doesn’t want to talk about any group
meetings but admits that she didn’t fully adhere
to the spiritual facet of the programme. As in
Alcoholics Anonymous, there is frequent reference
to a higher power or god. Steps include
the decision to “invite a higher power into the
sex addict’s life” or asking for divine help in
recovery. But according to Jane, “What helped
me the most was being around people who
shared their stories, judgement-free. It was their
honesty that got me, not the spiritual awakening
part.” It helped her understand that sex was
her outlet, the way she could hide from “bigger,
scarier things”.
How does she react when confronted with
people who believe that a clinical addiction to
sex is a myth? “There’s enough out there for people
to make up their own minds.”
As Jane wants to wrap up the conversation, we
venture one last question. Why agree to share
with a journalist, one who was starting to give up
all hope of ever having a frank conversation with
a sex addict?
“Beyond the Russell Brands of this world is a
real addiction that is the source of much misery,
and it needs all the press it can get.” n
“The slightest thing
would set me off. A
sound, some one’s voice
on the phone. I’d do it at
home, at work, in public
places... It completely
took over.”
20 • MAY 2015

SPOTLIGHT
The men in the mirror
An illustrated man and
a Botox fan explain how
addictive it is to change the
way you look. By Jill Blackmore Evans.
Photos by Arvid Samland
“Botox is kind of an addiction,” says make-up
artist and stylist Nicolas Henneberg, 23. He gets
the procedure every three months. “Once you
feel you can start moving your forehead again,
you know you want to go back.” According to
Henneberg, Botox doesn’t hurt at all. Your face
simply feels a bit numb afterwards, like after
you’ve been to the dentist.
Henneberg began his regimen at age 18,
thanks to a circle of friends in the Berlin film
and TV industry. “I started at a Botox party,
at a friend’s flat in Charlottenburg,” he says.
“And I liked it, so I kept doing it. I actually just
went yesterday!” he adds with a laugh. He also
gets soft tissue fillers injected about every six
months, intended to make the face appear fuller
and younger.
According to Henneberg, it’s becoming increasingly
common for teenagers to start Botox
early – as a preventative measure intended to
stop wrinkles from ever forming. “Some people
say that age makes a person look more interesting,
but I don’t really think so.” Botox needs to
be injected every three to six months to keep
you looking fresh, and getting a fix isn’t cheap:
one session typically costs a minimum of €300.
Luckily for Henneberg, as a friend of one of
Berlin’s top plastic surgeons, he gets his for half
the usual price.
Rigo Pitschmann, 30, is also obsessed with
changing his skin. He estimates that he has
spent about €21,000 on tattoos by 34 different
artists, covering most of his body. “Every
time I get a new tattoo, I’m like a newborn,”
Pitschmann says, sitting in Schöneberg’s B52
Tattoo, drinking a Coca-Cola. “I come from the
studio with a big grin on my face. It really is like
Christmas morning for a child.” Pitschmann,
who works as a bodyguard as well as a tattoo
artist, says his obsession started early: “It goes
way back to my childhood, when I would tag all
over my arm with a pen. Later, I’d get stick-on
tattoos.” Pitschmann’s parents were strictly
against real tats, so, at 15, he faked his mum’s
signature in order to get his first piece, a nowfaded
red heart on his right arm. “From there on
I was hooked.”
It’s hardly surprising for a tattoo artist to be
tattooed head to toe, but for Pitschmann, it’s the
experience that matters the most. “I quite simply
find great pleasure in the noise of the needle
and the machine and the pain of it touching my
skin,” he says. “It’s like acupuncture for me. It’s
just a very relaxing and pleasant experience.” In
the past 15 years, the longest he’s gone without a
new piece was seven weeks – at the end of which
”I felt really moody,” he says. “There was a time
when I would come to this studio every week.
There always had to be a chair saved for me, in
case I spontaneously wanted something new. It
really was the peak of my addiction.”
Henneberg and Pitschmann may look different,
but they have the same defiant attitude about
their physical appearance. Henneberg says he
doesn’t understand why some people value the
natural look so much: “They believe you have to
be the way God made you, or whatever,” he says.
“But I think that’s kind of stupid.” For his part,
Pitschmann says that he hates looking at photos
of himself without tattoos. His infatuation has
taken precedence over careers and relationships:
“I applied for a job as a banker once, and of course
they didn’t want me. As they shook my hand and
saw my tattoos on it, they refused me instantly.”
This is why tattoos are off limits for his son, now
aged six: “He already said he wants his own tattoo,
but I said no way. It does close a lot of doors, jobwise.”
He adds, “I have had girlfriends who’ve said
to me enough was enough, giving me an ultimatum.
I always chose the tattoos.”
“I think a lot about eternity,” says
Pitschmann, who considers himself religious.
“And when the day comes when it’s my turn to
leave, I can say that I’ll bring my tattoos with
me.” He’s planning his next one right now. Although
the design is still a secret, he says it will
cover one of the last empty spaces he has left on
his body: his scalp. Henneberg’s also thinking
about the future. “I would get a nose job,” he
says. “I love plastic surgery.” n
Additional reporting by Peer Jon Ørsted.
21

WORKAHOLISM
Is Berlin burning out?
Work addiction is taking root in the laissez-faire German capital – but when does
the condition go from a badge of pride to a real problem? By Betti Hunter
Berlin’s known more for midday starts and
leisurely meetings at coffee shops
than the nine to five grind.
What, though, of those who
reject binging at Berghain for allnight
marathons at the office?
“I always kind of knew that
I was working too much, but
I had this vision that I had to
manage it in order to meet my
deadlines,” says Johannes*, a
28-year-old videographer who
moved to Berlin three and a half
years ago after graduating from
university in the Netherlands. “I
started to create longer days for
myself. I would go through to 4am,
eating in front of the computer
while working and barely tasting the
food, have a short sleep then get up
and do it again. I knew I was destroying
myself, and the people around me
could see it too.”
Workaholism, a term first coined back
in 1971 by psychologist Wayne Oates, is said
to differ from simple work engagement if the
patient is motivated to work not by enjoyment,
but by internal pressures and fear of
failure. When the compulsion to work starts
to negatively affect their lifestyle and the lives
of those around them, that’s generally when it
starts to be referred to as an addiction.
As Berlin’s start-up scene has boomed, so too
has a work culture based on the American ideal of hyperperformance
that until recently was mainly seen in more business-oriented
cities like Frankfurt and Munich. Dr. Brian Pheasant, a psychotherapist
and California native who has been living in Berlin for the past
eight years, has watched the competitive atmosphere in the city intensify.
“American capitalism has really taken root here, which has helped to
create the corporate climate in the city,” he says. “Many companies, even
small start-ups, find themselves having to work as many hours as the
Americans, Canadians and Japanese because that’s their competition.”
With their lack of fixed office hours and constant connectivity enabled
by smartphones and social media, it’s especially easy for Berlin’s young,
self-employed workforce to get sucked in. The classic profile of a workaholic
is someone in their mid-forties working in senior management, but
here it’s just as likely to be a perfectionist freelancer like Johannes – or a
Silicon Allee wunderkind.
“My 26-year-old boss lives and breathes for work,” says James*, an
intern at a Prenzlauer Berg start-up. “He works a minimum of 80 hours
a week and says that relationships are unproductive. Sometimes I arrive
at work and my colleagues are sleeping on the floor – they’ve been there
all night.”
22 • MAY 2015
James himself is not a workaholic – yet.
But often there’s a fine line between being
exploited by a performance-obsessed
boss and ‘exploiting’ yourself. For
young people building their careers
in the wake of the 2009 recession,
the constant pressure to stand
out in a crowded job market can
take its toll. Fear of being usurped
by the next capable, enthusiastic
new graduate keeps many people
tethered to underpaid positions or
long-term internships where expectations
are impossibly high, leading
them to up their hours and sacrifice
their social lives in order to stay on
top. Says Pheasant, “I can see how a
25-year-old might feel overwhelmed,
because they’re expected to perform like
a 50-year-old.”
Perhaps one of the major contributing factors
to this so-called ‘epidemic’ is the initial praise that
those who dedicate themselves to their jobs receive
from colleagues and peers.
“Society actually rewards workaholism,” says Simon*,
the group coordinator for Berlin’s work addiction recovery
group Anonyme Arbeitssüchtige. The group, which has a core of
five members and meets weekly, works with the 12-step method
and allows addicts to share their experiences, listen to others and
work on healing themselves. But getting people to relinquish their
condition is often problematic. “Because of this cultural approval,
most workaholics don’t actually want to recover.”
The number of people who call themselves “workaholics” – one in
nine in Germany, as many as one in four in the US – testifies to the
addiction as a marketable quality. “Contemporary opinion is that
workaholism is not a disease as such, but a personality condition,” says
Dr. Dominique Piber of Charité Hospital. “Actually, some researchers
have described workaholics as very satisfied and productive people.”
While being obsessed with work can start as a positive commitment
to the job, it can rapidly spiral out of control. Piber describes patients
who, over the course of months or even years, find that work overtakes
every aspect of their lives. They rarely see their families, they abandon
social and leisure pursuits, and after a while their sleeping, eating and exercise
patterns take a major knock. If this lifestyle continues unchecked,
“The big moral advantage of the
burnout stereotype is the thought
that the problem is with your job,
not yourself – it implies that you
burned brightly before!”
ILLUSTRATION BY AGATA SASIUK

work addicts risk developing severe mental and physical
health complications – also known as “burning out”.
Characterised by complete exhaustion and an inability to
focus or to complete day-to-day tasks, burnout, the ‘overdose’
that follows work addiction, has become quite the buzzword
in Germany over the past decade. With statistics from health
insurer AOK stating that one in 10 sick days in Germany are
a result of this affliction, costing businesses up to €10 billion
per year, it’s easy to see why. But despite myriad articles on
the subject, the World Health Organisation and the American
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
have yet to classify burnout as a syndrome or condition, and
mental health professionals are still debating its very existence.
“It’s not a diagnosis, it’s not a disease,” asserts Dr Markus
Pawelzik of the EOS psychiatric clinic in Münster. “From a
clinical vantage point most ‘burnout’ sufferers fulfil the criteria
for depression, but they don’t want to be called depressed.
The so-called burnout epidemic is a bottom-up stereotype
developed by our population and our culture, and one that
the Germans perhaps like more than others thanks to the
ingrained Protestant work ethic.”
Like “workaholic”, the word “burnout” has acquired something
of a badge of honour status that most workers find more
palatable than “depression”. Says Pawelzik, “The cognitive
stereotype of depression is that people who suffer from it are
deficient in some way. The big moral advantage of the burnout
stereotype is the thought that the problem is with your job,
not yourself – it implies that you burned brightly before!”
Burnout has become big business in Germany. Private
hospitals like the Oberberg Clinic in Brandenburg offer
outpatient and inpatient treatment for victims of burnout
that centre on mindfulness, cognitive behaviourial therapy
and good old-fashioned rest and recuperation – for up to €510
per day. Pawelzik believes that such clinics are capitalising on
burnout treatment, creating a pseudo-treatment plan for a
condition that has yet to be officially recognised. “This is just
the market, you know, enlarging the domain of what you sell,”
he says. “It’s not real medicine because it’s not a disorder. It’s a
self-diagnosis.” When burnout patients are referred to him, he
immediately re-diagnoses them – most often with depression
– before commencing treatment.
Once you’ve decided you truly want to shed your addiction to
work, how easy is it to slacken your grip? “With alcoholism it’s
hard enough to be totally abstinent, but when you’re a workaholic
it’s even harder – you can’t be abstinent from work!” says
Piber. “You need to make realistic goals. If you work 120 hours
a week, you can’t go back to 40, at least not immediately.”
Johannes’ turning point came when the freelancers with
whom he shared a coworking space stopped inviting him to
take a lunch break with them, knowing he would refuse. After
that, he says, “I started being really strict towards clients,
telling them I was only available certain hours. I started asking
how important the work was and how necessary it was to do it
right away. There are only so many hours in the day, right?”
How realistic is it to choose your hours in a frantic 24/7
work world that powers on regardless? The decision, says
Johannes, is often made for you. “Actually, since cutting down
my work time, I also have far fewer clients. These days I’m not
working much at all!” n
*Names changed.
DEUTSCH.
SOWIESO!
goethe.de/berlin
Sprache. Kultur. Deutschland.
23

ARTICLE GAMBLING TAG
SHIRIN BARTHEL
Spinning out of control
Fascinated by the blacked-out windows of Berlin’s ubiquitous Spielhallen, Ruvi S. decided
to take a look inside... and ended up indulging more than just his curiosity.
It is 4am and I am trudging slowly in the
shadow of the Ringbahn between Wedding
and home. In my head, I am rehearsing the
excuses I can offer to my girlfriend for why I
will be returning, in the middle of the night,
with no money: I lost my wallet. My pocket was
picked. I ran up an unexpectedly ginormous drink bill.
The drizzle makes my coat smell of every
night I have spent carousing in bars since the last
time it was cleaned. I feel thoroughly miserable.
It is a familiar sensation, this self-pity and regret,
like waking up the morning after a debauch that
ends with unclear memories of behaviour it will
take a lot of apologising to get over. All addictions
have moments like this, I have learnt.
Beyond that is the realisation that this is what
I wanted. I was curious to know what it really
felt like to gamble, and the only way to do that
was to lose. And yet there is another thought,
more intense, throbbing insistently in my mind.
The cherries, melons and BAR symbols tumbling
over themselves with their mesmeric clicks and
esoteric rhythms keep recurring like a melody I
can’t get out of my head. And whenever they do,
I wish I had a few more coins, because in spite of
all evidence to the contrary, part of me believes
that my fortune is finally about to change.
To understand how I reached that point, it is
necessary to go back several months. It was
somewhere along Schönhauser Allee that I
realised I was passing more automated casinos
than any other type of store. From Wedding to
Tempelhof, Moabit to Neukölln, beyond the Imbiss,
Spätkauf and Kneipe, there is no more ubiquitous
sight in Berlin than the blacked-out windows, neon
proclamations and strategically placed CCTV
cameras that signify a newly opened Spielhalle.
Gambling feeds off the desire for instant success
that incubates where unemployment and poverty
reign. And while Berlin may be steadily turning
into the glitzy European capital of its dreams,
during this century’s first decade, lax regulations
and a surfeit of disused commercial spaces saw
Spielhallen extend themselves like Pac-Man eating
the ghosts of failed capitalist ventures from the
past. The number doubled between 2005 and 2011,
when city officials decided to regulate Spielhallen
more strictly. Among other restrictions, the
Spielhallengesetz limited the casinos’ opening hours
and proximity to each other, and forbid them from
serving alcohol. Next year, when the Spielhallen
built before this law have to reapply for their
licences, the number is expected to shrink to 100.
For now, though, there are still around 500 of these
establishments in Berlin.
Seeing them took me back to my childhood,
when I fell in love with the mystique of forbidden
places from sex shops to the heavily-leaded doors
of public bars where I used to loiter, waiting to
catch a glimpse inside. Behind the windows of the
Spielhallen, anything could be happening. I readily
imagined a louche demimonde populated by
anonymous hustlers who chanced their arm in
games of skill or luck, a subterranean world where
people rejected the brightly lit social Darwinism
of success and nice clothes. And if that sounds like
an absurd way of romanticising the sad men and
women who lose more than they win, there was
something much more irresistible beneath these
sociological constructions. A question with the
power of an elemental force. Am I lucky?
My flights of fancy might have run their
course, but for the fact that there are
Spielhallen all over the city, not including
the machines in corner bars and restaurants.
Regulations state you can only gamble in
Spielhallen between 11am and 3am, but when you
can cheerily blow your money over a beer or
kebab in the nearest all-night Kneipe, the
possibilities to rage against fortune run 24 hours
a day and seven days a week.
On Schönhauser Allee alone I could choose
from a range of casinos, some run by chains like
Vulkan, others clearly independent. I selected
one next door to a mattress store, rang the bell
and after a momentary pause in which, presumably,
I was scrutinised via the CCTV camera
set above my head, got buzzed inside. It was
astonishingly busy, the atmosphere one of muted
intensity. Both myself and my friends had always
imagined that the mushroom growth of Spielhallen
was a cover for illegal businesses and money
laundering. As such, I expected them to be mostly
deserted. Instead, nearly all of the 14 machines
(six more than the legally allowed number) were
occupied. And it was only mid-afternoon.
I made my first mistake in approaching one of
the machines that looked as if it was not in use,
to be angrily shooed away by an intense-looking
middle-aged German man dividing his attention
between three machines, all set spinning
automatically. I watched, slightly dazzled by the
kaleidoscope of colours on the digital display as
beeps and bells went off continuously.
The machines were occupied by elderly Germans,
Vietnamese women, Turkish men and kids
who appeared scarcely old enough to play. Sitting
down at a recently vacated stool, I selected
from among the 20 games on offer. They range
from the classics, with their cherries and melons
harking back to the original, mechanical slot
machines that circumvented American gambling
24 • MAY 2015

laws by paying out in chewing gum instead of silver
dollars, to flashier incarnations indulging in mad
flights of fancy. There are mermaids, toreadors,
knights and damsels-in-distress.
After deliberating, I hit on “Book of Ra”, an
ersatz Indiana Jones adventure. I put in €5 and
hit spin. I had absolutely no idea what was going
on and everyone else was far too absorbed in their
own games to offer help or advice. So I kept hitting
spin, everything accompanied by so many noises
and lights that I was soon doing so almost unconsciously,
swept along by the machine’s peculiar, mad
rhythm. It took me some time to realise I could
touch the screen as well as the buttons, but by that
time and with classic idiot’s luck, I had won €20.
Perhaps that first, undeserved and unexpected
pay-out was the fatal moment. From that moment,
I relaxed and the game’s mechanics began to
unfold readily to my comprehension. An assistant
appearing at my elbow offered me a cup of coffee.
Since the €20 credit in the machine was, to my
mind, free money, I decided to keep playing.
There is, of course, no skill and almost no intelligence
required. You are confronted with symbols
divided into three horizontal and five vertical
rows that make combinations in straight and
diagonal lines. You can raise or lower the amount
staked on each spin, and after each winning
combination you can place side-bets on simple
50/50 choices like whether you will draw black
or red from a deck of cards. Inserting an element
of excitement is a “Scatter”
symbol that is a kind of Holy
Grail: three of these and you
receive 10 or 15 free spins and
a far greater chance of winning
combinations. These symbols
(in “Book of Ra” they look like
open copies of the Egyptian
Book of the Dead) would
become the glory and terror of
many nights to come.
I
learned the basics, and in the
process lost both the €20 I’d
won and my initial €5 stake.
After that, I may not have
been hooked, but something
had subtly changed. I developed
a habit of putting coins
into machines whenever I was
waiting to be served in a Späti
or Imbiss. I lost far more than I won, and yet the
I readily
imagined a
louche demimonde
populated by
anonymous
hustlers who
chanced their
arm in games
of skill or
luck...
relatively infrequent times when I did win were so
memorable as to erase all of the others.
Gradually, I found myself haunting several
casinos around Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg, as
well as the machines in the Imbiss that used to
stand on the corner of Torstraße and Rosenthaler
Straße. It was there that I won my largest ever
jackpot: €300. While the machine bleeped as if
about to take off into the stratosphere and my
money spewed out in an avalanche of €2 coins,
the proprietor intervened angrily and set it to
restart. When I told him I wanted to keep playing,
he shook his head. No more on that machine,
although I was, of course, welcome to try my luck
on either of the other two.
The truth behind the ingratiating smiles, free
coffees and warm welcomes in every gambling
den from Shanghai to Las Vegas: Win, but not too
much. Play, but only on the machines at which we
want you to play. It was an attitude I would discover
later, when trying to speak with casino employees.
The moment I told them that I wanted
to write about my experiences, their manners stiffened
and their eyes grew wary. Even the simplest
questions regarding how many people played, or
what was the biggest jackpot they had seen, were
met with silence and the unspoken message that I
could make my own way to the exit.
As I played, I met a cross-section of people
representing the diversity of the city itself, people
like Micha, a chef in his early 30s who winds down
from the adrenaline rush of service by playing at
his local Spätkauf. In between spins, he told me
about reckoning his losses in the tens of thousands
without a hint of regret. Others I met contented
themselves with dribbling away €10 or €20 as an
excuse to socialise with friends.
Despite the solitary nature of pushing buttons
while staring at a computer screen, I discovered
something basically social in these smoke-clogged
rooms where you lose your sense of day or night.
We are all in it together, all addicted to the intoxication
of a fortune that can change in an instant.
And yet the aim is not really money. That €300
jackpot did not get spirited into a biscuit tin and
placed under the mattress. I blew it the same
night it was won in a blur of liberty and largesse.
Like Dostoevsky’s gambler, the
pleasure comes from the anticipation.
To consume your winnings
as quickly as possible is just the
fastest way to get back to that necessary
state of intensity. Or maybe
it is about something else: that all
true gamblers are not playing to
win, but to lose.
After my 4am journey home,
I continued to play for a
while, but never with the
same intensity or passion. For me,
the interest passed – perhaps I
never really had it in me to throw it
all away on chance. It is now some
time since I last played, and the
attraction is harder for me to
understand because it was like an
obsessive but dangerous liaison that
only made sense when heavily involved. I look
back from a distance and wonder – why?
What does come readily back to me are the
people populating those spaces behind the
blacked-out windows with their faces lit by colourful
symbols. In a world that fetishises success,
there will always be punters looking for a shortcut
to fortune. Or maybe there will always be masochists
who find something to complete them in
the desperation of when luck turns its back.
When I was a boy, I was convinced that I could
influence events by rolling dice or drawing cards.
Six and this will happen, four and it will be so. I
felt the same in the Spielhallen. One more spin, one
more spin. This time, fate will smile on me. But it
didn’t. And it won’t – at least, not if you measure it
by spinning wheels and jackpots. n
WEST:BERLIN
WEST:BERLIN
14.11.2014
28.06.2015
EINE
AN ISLAND
INSEL AUF
IN SEARCH
DER SUCHE
OF
NACH
ITS MAINLAND
FESTLAND
14.11.2014
28.06.2015
EINE INSEL AUF DER SUCHE NACH FESTLAND
ephraim-palais
poststrasse 16 | 10178 berlin
opening times
tue, thu – sun: 10 am – 6 pm
wed: 12 pm – 8 pm
admission
adults: 7,– euro
Concessions: 5,– euro
(booklet included)
25
www.west.berlin

What’s on
CALENDAR
May 2015
1
Theatertreffen opens
THEATRE FRIDAY, MAY 1 In its
52nd year, Germany’s biggest
theatre festival (see
page 34) opens with Elfriede
Jelinek’s Die Schutzbefohlenen,
based on Aeschylus’
2500-year-old
play The Supplicants. Berliner
Festspiele. Starts 19:00.
May 1:
May Day and
MyFest
Kreuzberg
2
Freiluftkino Kreuzberg
opens
FILM SATURDAY,
MAY 2 Break out the
booze and blankets
– open-air cinema
is back! Kreuzberg’s
famed FLK kicks off
the season with Citizenfour.
Starts 21:15.
Alaska 5000, May 5
3
Alaska 5000
DRAG TUESDAY, MAY 5 Local
Drag Race host Pansy brings
American drag performer and
show contestant Alaska 5000
over for an episode screening
and live performance. SO36.
Starts 21:00.
8
Comedy sans frontiers
COMEDY FRIDAY, MAY 8 On the
70th anniversary of peace in
Europe, a night with six incredible
international comics, including
the UK’s Eddie Izzard,
Germany’s own Michael Mittermeier
and a surprise US guest.
Admiralspalast. Starts 20:00.
Nightmares on Wax
MUSIC SATURDAY, MAY 9 Perhaps
best known for his
1990s albums Smokers Delight
and Carboot Soul, the
British DJ and electronic composer
George Evelyn keeps reinventing
new styles. Bi Nuu.
Starts 23:59.
11
ensemble focuses on the true
Welcome to Germany
THEATRE MONDAY, MAY 11 A
bizarre, surreal new piece by
Berlin’s Monster Truck
story of a German colony in
Chile. Also May 7, 8, 9.
Sophiensaele. Starts 20:00.
(see page 36)
Freiluftkino Kreuzberg opens, May 2
16
Bella Figura
THEATRE SATURDAY, MAY 16
The familiar set-up of two couples
whose engagement with
one another spells disaster
is played out in a parking
lot in Yasmina Reza’s new
play. Schaubühne. In German.
Starts 20:00. (see page 36)
17
Uncle Vanya
THEATRE SUNDAY, MAY 17 Director
Nurkan Erpulat breathes
new life into Chekhov’s classic
family drama. Premiering
May 2, this is the second and
last time this month with English
surtitles. Maxim Gorki. Also
May 10. Starts 18:00. (see
page 36)
EXBlicks: Achtung Film
Festival Winner
FILM MONDAY, MAY 18 At last
month’s Achtung fest, we pre-
18
sented the Exberliner Film
Award to Tami Liberman’s engaging
refugee portrait Napps.
It screens tonight with Oranienplatz
doc Insel 36. Lichtblick.
Starts 20:30.
18
Impressionism – Expressionism, May 22
My perfect Berlin weekend
NICO WEBERS (see
page 11) is a German
DJ and musician
who’s been straight
edge – no alcohol, no
drugs, no animal products
– since he was
17. His substance-free
stance doesn’t stop
him from indulging in
Berlin’s party scene.
FRIDAY 13:00 Head
to Core Tex Records
(Oranienstr. 3, Kreuzberg)
and Bis Auf’s
Messer (Marchlewski
Str. 107, Friedrichshain)
for some record
shopping. Follow
it up with a huge shopping
spree at the vegan
grocery store Veganz
(Warschauer Str.
33, Friedrichshain) so
I’m prepared for the
weekend. 15:00 Shred
the Shelter Skatehalle
(Revaler Str. 99,
Kreuzberg), then skate
some more at Vogelfrei
(Tempelhofer Feld).
19:00 Dinner at Viasko
(Erkelenzdamm
49, Kreuzberg), a
100-percent-vegan restaurant.
21:00 Meet up
with friends for a concert
at Magnet Club,
Bi Nuu, Astra or Lido.
SATURDAY 14:00 After
breakfast, take in
some spa time at Vabali
(Seydlitzstr. 6,
Mitte). 20:00 Join
friends at the pond at
Engelsbecken (Michaelkirchplatz,
Kreuzberg).
01:00 Bounce to
hip hop and house at
Prince Charles (Prinzenstr.
85F, Kreuzberg).
SUNDAY 14:00 Table
tennis at Böcklerpark
(Prinzenstr. 1,
Kreuzberg). 17:00 Party
at Berghain (Am
Wriezener Bahnhof,
Friedrichshain) till...
FRANCESCA TORRICELLI
21
Xposed Festival
FILM FESTIVAL THURSDAY,
MAY 21 The 10th edition of
Berlin’s queer film fest features
something for all you friends
of Dorothy: a return to Oz with
the Aussie classic Priscilla:
Queen of the Desert.
Moviemento. Starts
21:00. (see page 33)
28
passed since reunification, the
Unification: German
Society in Transition
EXHIBITION THURSDAY,
MAY 28 With 25 years having
Deutsches Historisches Museum
presents an intensive look
back at the still-divided Germany
of the 1990s. Through Jan 3.
May 29-31:
Berlin Festival
at Arena Park
22
mostly German and French
Impressionism
– Expressionism
ART FRIDAY, MAY 22 This collection
of 170 works from
artists highlights surprising
similarities between two of Europe’s
most important artistic
movements. Through Sept
20. Alte Nationalgalerie.
29
the modernism that shaped
Radically Modern
EXHIBITION FRIDAY, MAY 29
Berlinische Galerie reopens
after renovations with a look at
post-war Berlin with a spotlight
on architects like Walter
Gropius and Mies van der
Rohe. Through Oct 26.
Berlinische Galerie.
26 • MAY 2015

Nick Cave, May 6
5
13
Confirmation
THEATRE WEDNESDAY,
MAY 13 An award winner at
the last Edinburgh Fringe Fest,
UK performer Chris Thorpe’s
piece explores the concept of
confirmation bias through a dialogue
about political extremism.
Through May 16. English
Theatre Berlin. Starts 20:00.
19
The Soft Moon
MUSIC TUESDAY, MAY 19 The
weird, addictive synth/psych/
techno/punk sound of Oakland’s
Soft Moon gets even
darker – and more digital – on
new album Deeper. Schwuz.
Starts 21:00. (see page 40)
25
outdoor debauchery.
Karneval der Kulturen
FESTIVAL MONDAY, MAY 25 May
Day has passed but here’s
another chance for some
Everyone’s favourite multikulti
street fest returns with a huge
market, street food, music
and parade. From May 22.
Kreuzberg 61.
Karneval der Kulturen, May 25
29
JURINO REETZ BUBAMARA
Nick Cave
6
MUSIC WEDNESDAY, MAY 6 The
man with the red right hand
sheds his Bad Seeds for a
solo performance in a venue
barely big enough for the legend’s
ego. Friedrichstadt
Palast. Starts 20:00.
14
Duato – Kylian
DANCE THURSDAY, MAY 14 Halfway
through his first season
as artistic director of the Staatsballet,
buzzed-about dancer/choreographer
Nacho Duato
has finally introduced his
own piece to the repertoire.
Staatsoper im Schiller Theater.
Starts 19:30. (see page 36)
The Rake’s Progress, May 15
20
27
Nico & the Navigators
MUSICAL THEATRE WEDNESDAY,
MAY 27 The new piece by Berlin’s
ensemble of “full-body poets”
, Die Stunde da wir zu viel
voneinander wussten delves
into the communication overload
of our age with music, theatre
and dance. Also May 28-
31 . Radialsystem. Starts 20:00.
30
EXBlicks: B Movie
FILM SATURDAY, MAY 30
Nostalgic for the wild party
that was 1980s West Berlin?
Relive the hedonistic fun with
B Movie – mostly unreleased
footage documenting the
creative and crazy West (and
East!). Lichtblick Kino. Starts
20:30. (see page 33)
May 7-10:
XJAZZ
Festival!
RUTH WALZ
Briefs – Excentric
Body Circus
7
PERFORMENCE THURSDAY,
MAY 7 All the way from Australia,
this all-male cross-dressing
circus (billed as a “Boylesque”)
combines music, dance and
acrobatics for a glamorous and
crazy show. Through June 10.
Tipi. Starts 20:00.
The Rake’s Progress
OPERA FRIDAY, MAY 15 Acclaimed
director Krzysztof Warlikowski
updates Stravinsky’s
15
classic opera about the corruption
of a country boy with
modern costumes and a Berlin
sensibility. Also May 21,
24, 29. Staatsoper. Starts
19:00, 19:30.
20
Hot Chip
MUSIC WEDNESDAY, MAY 20
Their sounds keep coming over
and over and over – and now
the long wait for their new album’s
finally over as well, with
Why Make Sense? out just days
before this show. Heimathafen
Neukölln. Starts 21:00.
EXBlicks: B Movie, May 30
26
31
Die Ungehaltenen
THEATRE SUNDAY, MAY 31
Based on the eponymous debut
novel by author Deniz Utlu,
the play about two young children
of Turkish workers on a
road trip from Kreuzberg to Istanbul
premieres with English
surtitles tonight. Maxim Gorki
Theatre. Starts 20:30.
May Programme in English
2.5. / HAU1 FILM
Frances Stark
My Best Thing
Afterwards: artist talk with Diederich Diederichsen
2.+3.5. / HAU3 DANCE
Josep Caballero
García with Black
Cracker and Océan
LeRoy
T/HE/Y
5.5. / HAU1 / part 3/5
22.5. / HAU3 / part 4/5 DIALOG
Jeremy Wade /
Kerstin Stakemeier
Moi Machine Moi – The DRAWN-
ONWARD Reading Group
6.–22.5 / private flats in BerlinTHEATRE
Rimini Protokoll
Home Visit Europe
6.–13.5. / HAU3 DANCE
A retrospective by
Isabelle Schad &
Laurent Goldring
On Visibility and Amplifications:
Collective Jumps / Der
Bau / An Un-Folding Process /
Unturtled #4 & #1
7.+8.5 / Relaxa Hotel THEATRE
Gob Squad
Room Service (Help Me Make It
Through The Night) / German and English
20.–23.5. / HAU3 DANCE
An Ian Kaler
o.T. I (the emotionality of the jaw)
21.+22.5. / HAU1 DANCE
Laurent Chétouane
Pas de Deux and more (working
title)
30.+31.5. / HAU3 DANCE
Mette Ingvartsen
69 positions
27
www.hebbel-am-ufer.de

What’s on
FILM
STARTS APR 30
Eden
D: Mia Hansen-Løve
(France 2015) with Félix
de Givry, Greta Gerwig
◆◆ The biographical
tale of her brother Sven’s
journey from successful
garage DJ to impoverished
Parisian novelist, Mia
Hansen-Løve’s Eden owes
much to her husband Olivier
Assayas’ Something
In The Air as it nostalgically navigates the choppy waters
of youthful dreams and adult disillusionment. It’s got a
hip soundtrack to be sure, but while the film loses itself in
music, its characters, pacing and central intrigue are way
off. Paradise lost perhaps, but it feels more like an eternal
sentence in purgatory. MW
ALL FILMS ARE
IN OV WITH
GERMAN
SUBTITLES
UNLESS
OTHERWISE
STATED
STARTS APR 30
The Gunman
D: Pierre Morel (Spain, UK,
France 2015) with Sean
Penn, Javier Bardem, Mark
Rylance ◆ A rocky
past involving the assassination
of the Congolese
mining minister returns to
bite a reformed hitman
turned development
worker (Penn) when
someone takes a shot at
him. Who’s behind it? With Morel (Taken) directing, the
only mystery here is why Penn has jettisoned activist and
acting credentials and compromised those of his A-list
cohorts in favour of rock-hard abs, a paltry script and
a leaky plot – also featuring Idris Elba as an enigmatic
secret service agent. At least he keeps his shirt on. EL
STARTS MAY 7
Hedi Schneider steckt fest
D: Sonja Heiss (Germany
2015) with Laura
Tonke, Hans Löw, Leander
Nitsche ◆◆◆ The
tranquil life of happygo-lucky
Hedi, Uli, and
young son Finn is thrown
off balance when Hedi
suddenly starts having
panic attacks. Despite
mounting financial and
emotional stress, the couple tries to hold it together, but
wittiness cannot mend discontent and resentment. This
tender and skilfully paced tragicomedy beautifully juggles
droll mockery and drama. A mélange of strength and
fragility in Tonke’s eye-widening performance, set against
a bohemian chic backdrop, is perfectly opportune. YC
STARTS MAY 7
The Forecaster
D: Marcus Vetter, Karin
Steinberger (Germany,
USA 2014) documentary
◆◆◆ Conspiracy theorists
rejoice: documentary
whiz Vetter has found a
subject to tickle all financial
meltdown theorists in
the person of “forecaster”
Martin Armstrong, who
used the number pi to
accurately predict economic blips and related conflicts –
until he was imprisoned for failing to divulge the basis of
his calculations to US authorities. Vetter allows the newly
released Armstrong to cut an authoritatively concerned figure,
according to whom the next critical downturn is due in
October 2015. Believe it or not: your spine will tingle. EL
Truth and fiction By EVE LUCAS
If you’re into cinema of the furrowed-brow
variety, you can count on prolific British director
Michael Winterbottom to construct medial versions
of altered truths, QED his take on Sterne’s
already meta-fictional Tristram Shandy in A Cock
and Bull Story. Challenging perceptions of reality,
Winterbottom has excelled at undercutting
these with work that explores violence
in explicitly political, social and sexual
contexts (The Road to Guantanamo, In this
World, The Killer Inside Me).
“You can’t tell the truth unless you
make it fiction” is apposite advice given to
Thomas Lang (Brühl), a film director tasked
with making a movie about a notoriously violent
and sexually motivated murder case in a sleepy
Italian university town. So Winterbottom’s THE
FACE OF AN ANGEL is not set in Perugia and the
murder victim is not an innocent young British
student called Meredith Kercher, rightly suggesting
that media reporting on such crimes has
lost itself (and us) in Daily Mail-National Enquirer
reality-fiction mazes. The terror and tragedy beyond
is secondary to salacious details and profit
margins. Should intellectualised versions of truth
(like this film) be part of the picture? These are
the possibilities and theories that Lang ventilates
with an in-crowd of hard-baked coverage
journalists, including the gently exasperated love
interest Simone (Beckinsale), whose book is to
form the basis of Lang’s filmic treatment. Many
arguments here are obvious, but bear repeating
as factors in a world predisposed to immediate
shortcuts. It’s Lang’s own confusion (and Brühl’s
portrayal of it) that is likely to challenge viewer
patience as the hapless director decides to link
his version of events to Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Struggling with literary correlatives, alienating
his backers and Skyping with his daughter, Lang
takes refuge in a symbolically freighted friendship
with Melanie – another wide-eyed “young
British student” (Delevingne) with whom he
ends up playing cards at the seaside.
EDITOR’S
PICK!
Winterbottom’s often well-framed response to
our fascinations with sex and violence, innocence
and corruption wanders around here in
a labyrinth of ambiguities and there are some
heavy casualties – coherence being one – in the
battle between truth and fiction. But he will
make you think and this, surely, is worth
more than purely visual delight?
Which is the chief joy to be derived from
Alan Rickman’s second session on the
directorial stool. Purporting to aim for A
LITTLE CHAOS (photo), Rickman gives us the
fictional figure of Sabine De Barra (Winslet),
a gardener who catches the eye of André Le
Notre (Schoenaerts), chief landscape architect
of Sun King Louis XIV (Rickman). Versailles
is in the making and De Barra manages to seal
the deal on designing a small water garden. The
opulence and lavish set production of costumes,
landscaped gardens and natural wildernesses are
doubtless intended to reflect obliquely on the
stultification of court life versus De Barra’s unorthodox
creativity. And with actors like Winslet,
Schoenaerts and Rickman on board, there are
early hopes of a scenario that could – and should
– have disturbed the well-documented truths of
absolutist politics with a spark of fictional roughand-tumble.
But smelling the roses of garden life
and re-discovering the humanity of honest passion
does not count as chaos, with Stanley Tucci’s
turn as the king’s gay brother serving merely to
remind us that some devils just wear satin and
silk to hide the lack of substance beneath. ■
STARTS APR 30
A Little Chaos ◆◆
D: Alan Rickman (UK 2014) with Kate Winslet, Alan Rickman,
Matthias Schoenaerts
STARTS MAY 21
The Face of an Angel ◆◆
D: Michael Winterbottom (UK, Italy, Spain 2015) with Daniel
Brühl, Kate Beckinsale, Cara Delevingne
28 • MAY 2015

STARTS MAY 7
The Water Diviner
D: Russell Crowe (Australia, Turkey, USA
2014) with Jai Courtney, Russell Crowe, Olga
Kurylenko ◆ Boasting the visual
opulence of a cross-continental
spread and the historical gravitas of
World War I, this drama-adventure
nevertheless fails to engage, move
or inspire, proving that debut director
Russell Crowe still has some
way to go as a storyteller. Based on
the true story of a family man from
Australia who ventures into the
turbulent political hot zone of postwar
Turkey to find his missing sons,
one suspects the potential for an
emotions and adrenalin-filled ride is
there. Sadly, such promise is not to
be, for the film is doubly dulled by
a lack of focus and the plainness
of its voice. Subplots that don’t
go anywhere get picked up and
dropped off with little consideration
for timing. The blandly benevolent
tone used to describe forgiveness,
reconciliation and a burgeoning
romance lends the proceedings an
overall sense of limitation despite
the obvious grandness of their
scale. The movie does feature
striking imagery, with the baffling
geometrical wonders of a mosque
interior and the stunning shades
of light thrown by the setting sun
gloriously captured on fine, dusty
lens. But all that beauty ultimately
can’t make up for the low stakes,
the weak pulse and the punch that
never comes. ZS
REGISTER NOW AND
EARN 250 POINTS!
STARTS MAY 21
Lost in Karastan
(Welcome to Karastan) D: Ben Hopkins (UK
2015) with MyAnna Buring, Matthew Macfadyen
◆◆◆ Playing Emil Forester,
a filmmaker who’s so down on his
luck that he accepts an invitation
to a film festival staged in the autocratically
ruled Caucasian Republic
of Karastan, Matthew Macfayden
makes the most of a deliberately
low-budget mockumentary-like
excursion into tropes of artistic
obscurity and obfuscation. As he
bumbles through a script happily
ensconced in the absurd, Emil
attempts to raise enthusiasm for
his oeuvre at screenings of his
two films marked by Kafkaesque
dislocation, with barely adolescent
kids rapt at the sight of determined
shagging. Then the real reason for
his invitation comes to light: would
he like to make a film on the life
of the medieval figure regarded as
Karastan’s founding father? Finally,
a chance to pay his cleaner back
home and the dog food to which
his pet feels entitled. Emil accepts
and soon finds himself lost in the
translation of culture and language,
with not-so-hidden agendas, elusive
subjects, mysterious love interests,
reluctant stars, ambiguous backers
and a preference for endings that
feature thoughtful horses staring
into the camera. Itself thoughtful
and funny, Hopkins’ latest feature
comes with a price-tag of deliberate
loose ends, undermining the tidy-all
school of artistry with the authenticity
of creative doubt. EL
• Earn 10 points for every 1 € spent in cinema or online. Spend points on
free tickets or prizes from 10 visits* or 1,250 points on.
• Various price savings and attractive sweepstakes.
• Exclusive events and special screenings.
• But the best thing is: The CineStarCARD is completely free of charge.
*Average revenue of ten tickets incl. snacks at a total value of 125 €.
Get the CineStarCARD application
in cinemas or online at cinestar.de
29

What’s on
FILM
STARTS MAY 7
Papusza
D: Joanna Kos-Krauze,
Krzysztof Krauze (Poland
2013) with Jowita Budnik,
Zbigniew Walerys, Antoni
Pawlicki ◆◆◆ The
career of distinguished
Polish-Romani poetess
Bronislawa Wajs, known
as Papusza, stems from
her tumultuous early life
and her entanglement
with the writer Jerzy Ficowski
at both professional and personal levels. Whereas
poetry is her salvation, sudden fame leads to her banishment
from the Roma community, and lifelong loneliness.
This biopic, shot in serene black-and-white and with
enchanting camerawork, spans several decades and
brings to light the unexplored secrets of Roma culture and
its place in 20th-century European history. YC
STARTS MAY 7
The Misplaced World
(Die abhandene Welt)
D: Margarethe von Trotta
(Germany 2015) with
Barbara Sukowa, Katja
Riemann ◆◆ After
her similarly New York-set
Hannah Arendt, Margarethe
von Trotta returns
with Barbara Sukowa in
The Misplaced World, only
this time Katja Riemann
takes the spotlight. As part-time singer Sophie (Riemann)
heads across the Atlantic in search of her mother’s spitting
image – opera singer Caterina Fabiani (Sukowa) – it’s
a Chabrolesque tale of doppelgängers and lost identities.
But with an uninspired script and clumsy camerawork,
The Misplaced World makes for a painfully dated excavation
of the skeletons of the past. MW
STARTS MAY 7
Redirected
(What the Fuck heißt
Redirected) D: Emilis
Velyvis (UK, Lithuania
2014) with Scot Williams,
Gil Darnell, Vinnie Jones
◆◆ You’ll need a
large dose of loo-level
humour to help digest this
romp that takes Michael
(Williams), a guard in Her
Majesty’s Royal Service,
from a failed heist involving three con-mates from London
to Lithuania, where he struggles gamely to assert his innocence
whilst his friends indulge in Baltic barnyard frolicking
and other forms of wayward partying. Will Eastern
Europe ever lose the stigma of uncouth corruption? EL
STARTS MAY 14
A Second Chance
(En chance til) D: Susanne
Bier (Denmark 2014) with
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau,
May Andersen ◆◆◆◆
Serena? Which Serena?
Bier is back in form and
in league with scriptwriter
Anders Thomas Jensen
(After the Marriage, In a
Better World) in this harrowing
portrait of policeman
Andreas (Coster-Waldau), his wife Sanne (Andersen)
and a family tragedy, which Andreas wants to make good at
all costs. Not a word too much, nor a single redundant look
clutter this bare-bones exploration of Bier’s beloved topic:
the role of justice and guilt in a coincidental world. EL
ALL FILMS ARE
IN OV WITH
GERMAN
SUBTITLES
UNLESS
OTHERWISE
STATED
Reeder, a music producer and artist in his own
right, was drawn to Berlin’s electronic pop and
nascent punk scene when he came over from
the UK in the late 1970s, making a name for
himself amongst future icons like Nick Cave,
Blixa Bargeld, Die Toten Hosen and many, many
more. His documentary premiered at this year’s
Berlinale and screens at our Exblicks event on
May 30 (see page 33).
The film is made up of previously unreleased
material from film and TV. You’re
the narrative thread, telling your own story.
How did that come about? Originally Jörg
Hoppe, one of the producers, was looking for
someone to restore the music. Then he delved
a bit into my background. The original idea was
to make some groupie girl waltz us through the
story and then he realised, like, wait a minute,
here’s someone who was actually involved in the
actual scene as a participant but also viewing it
from the perspective of a foreigner in Berlin at
that time.
What was it like the first time, stepping into
Berlin? It was like Manchester, actually. It was a
rainy June evening, a depressive sort of ambience.
In a sense, I felt really at home. The next day, I
thought I better call my mum and let her know
that I’ve arrived safely, so I’ll go and get some
change for the phone. There was this bar on the
corner of the street and there was a transvestite
there and he was like: “Yes, darling, what do you
want?” And I thought: I’m in Berlin! With this
guy in a bar with bright red hair and a polka dot
top on. You’d never see something like that on the
streets of Manchester. And one thing led to another
and I kind of like fell into this Berlin scene.
Listen to the
full interview
on exberliner.
com!
“I was deemed subversive,
obviously”By KEVIN CANERS
MARK REEDER’s narrative of events and atmospheres during the
pre-Wall decade is the backbone of B Movie: Lust and Sound in
West-Berlin 1979-89.
What was it about the city that made you
want to stay? The fantastic music scene. Interesting,
exciting people. And then, there was East
Berlin. Nobody knew anything about East Berlin.
All the punks and people who looked weird
never went there because of the way they looked.
Blixa? They’d never have let him in. I was able to
conform to their image of what a conservative
man could look like. Short hair, shirt and tie.
Looked straight.
You put on a secret gig there... A girl wrote
to me from East Germany. A postcard. It must
have taken about two weeks to get to me. And
she said: “I’ll meet you at the Palast der Republik
in the cocktail bar.” I was a bit wary about what
this could be, but she actually just wanted to
sound me out. We were sitting at a table drinking
beer and this hippy in a Wrangler jacket and
frizzy hair overheard us talking. He said: “I’ve
got an electric guitar.” I asked, “Where d’you
play it?” “At what’s known as a Blues-Messe.” A
kind of gospel church thing where someone
plays “Go Tell It on the Mountain” on a guitar.
So I thought, “I’ll take Die Toten Hosen over.”
There happened to be a band called Planlos
who were going to do a gig in the church, so we
kind of hijacked that. It was really small. Only
like 50 people came. But it became this legendary
thing in East Berlin because somebody had
dared to do this. That was really invigorating and
I was deemed subversive, obviously, by the East
German authorities. “What’s his agenda? He’s
obviously got something up his sleeve.”
It sounds like the scene was starting to
wane even before the Wall came down.
What changed, exactly? Probably the fact
that everyone tried to better themselves musically.
Like Einstürzende Neubauten. Originally,
they’d just go to a building site, grab what they
could get and perform with it. Once they’d
made an album, with Gareth Jones, it started
to become more regimented. At gigs, they had
to play the album. They had to practice that. It
started to become more normalised. Started to
go towards the coffee table. ■
30 • MAY 2015

LOFT.DE
FACEBOOK.COM/LOFTCONCERTS
STARTS MAY 7
The Babadook
D: Jennifer Kent (Australia 2014) with Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman
CON: Ba-ba-boring
◆ While its
coldly pristine photography
pleases
the eyes and
the rare femaledriven
narrative is
very much to be
appreciated, this
insipid excuse of
a horror film bores
more than anything
else. Yes,
childrearing is
tough and exhaustion
could be the
least agreeable
of sensations,
but a tired mother
and petulant son do not make for a scary movie. In the course of
the story, which weaves together the familiar haunted house setup
and a frustrating case of ineffective parenting, we feel sympathetic
toward our first overtaxed, then wrongly accused heroine. But fear –
that trickiest of emotions to artificially encourage – remains elusive.
There are jumpy moments (almost exclusively the result of sudden
movements or loud noises) but the difference between such instant,
knee-jerk reactions and the lingering, purely psychological response
of dread should be clear.
And so we wait for the poor woman to relax, the nasty kid to calm
down, and the director to stop startling us with pop-ups or screams.
But that’s pretty much it. The performance by Essie Davis is intense
and technically sound, marking the progression of her character's
unravelling with escalating force. But seen from the perspective of a
genre film lover, it feels like a wasted effort in a fundamentally
misguided attempt to terrorise. ZS
I AM KLOOT
14.5. POSTBAHNHOF | 20H
ANDREYA TRIANA
14.5. GRÜNER SALON | 20H
HUDSON TAYLOR
20.5. BANG BANG CLUB | 20H
HONNE
20.5. PRINCE CHARLES | 20H
MANU DELAGO HANDMADE
21.5. BADEHAUS SZIMPLA | 20H
ROCKY VOTOLATO
24.5. POSTBAHNHOF | 19:45H
SEAN BONNETTE OF ANDREW JACKSON JIHAD
26.5. CASSIOPEIA | 20H
SLOWLY ROLLING CAMERA
27.5. BADEHAUS SZIMPLA | 20H
LIANNE LA HAVAS
28.5. GRÜNER SALON | 20H
COASTS
31.5. MAGNET | 20H
TICKETS: KOKA 36 (030) 611 013 13
ST. PAUL & THE BROKEN BONES
15.6. POSTBAHNHOF | 20H
METZ
24.6. CASSIOPEIA | 21H
BEATSTEAKS
3.7. WUHLHEIDE | 19H
ZUSATZSHOW
THÅSTRÖM
5.7. POSTBAHNHOF | 21H
TIMBER TIMBRE
14.7. HEIMATHAFEN NEUKÖLLN | 21H
THE CAT EMPIRE
17.10. HUXLEYS | 20H
CARO EMERALD
3.11. COLUMBIAHALLE | 20H
ANTILOPEN GANG
19.12. ASTRA | 20H
PRO: Whose mind is it anyway?
◆◆◆ Worried
about things that
go bang in the
night? You should
be. Not the pagebound
variety, the
Babadook nursery
spook of infantile
fears with which
young Samuel
(Wiseman) terrorises
single mother
Amelia (Davis),
insisting on nightly
inspections of
dark spaces before
creeping into
her bed and robbing her of what little sleep remains.
No. It’s inner demons that can rise and destroy. Like all good monsters,
they’re in the mind – and not just those of children. First-time
director Kent hints as much when we learn early on that Amelia was
the author of “oh, some children’s books” before she lost her husband
in an accident on the way to the hospital for Samuel’s birth. Six
years on, that violent tragedy and its unarticulated legacy has found
darkness in Amelia – and in a terrible voracity that sucks mother and
child into the cellar of unresolved trauma. Set largely in a house of
blues and greys that reflect chillingly on a doomed family, Kent develops
the Babadook as an amateur monster who moves with desperate
crudeness before exploding into a metaphor for mind games that we
ignore at our peril. Frightening in implication more than affect, The
Babadook will throw its shadow over your dreams for longer than you
might expect. EL
31

What’s on
FILM
STARTS MAY 14
La Buena Vida – das gute Leben
D: Jenz Schanze (Columbia,
Germany, Netherlands,
Switzerland 2015)
documentary ◆◆◆◆
Energy has a price. And
it’s not monetary. As
Europe shuts down its
mines, coal is imported
from other sources such
as the Correjón mine in
Columbia which gobbles
up indigenous villages as it digs ever deeper and wider.
Schanze’s overpowering collage of images traces the
resettlement of the Wayúu Indians from their forest home
to a dustbowl of four-square concrete huts as they make
way for progress and big business. Mandatory watching
for anybody with a light switch. EL
STARTS MAY 21
Dora oder die sexuellen Neurosen
unserer Eltern
D: Stina Werenfels (Switzerland
2015) with Victoria
Schulz, Lars Eidinger
◆◆◆ Refreshing in
its subject matter and
the frankness with which
it confronts taboos, the
Berlin-set drama about
the sexual awakening of a
young, mentally impaired
woman offers a rare look
inside the psyche of someone limited from birth. Fine,
provocative lines between exploitation and genuine fondness,
jealousy and parental care are walked with commendable
delicacy. Though the film ends rather abruptly
with futures left wide open, superb performances and
adept cinematography nonetheless ensure a memorable
journey alongside those struggling for love. ZS
STARTS MAY 21
Dancing Arabs
D: Eran Riklis (Israel,
Germany, France 2014)
with Tawfeek Barhom, Ali
Suliman, Yaël Abecassis
◆◆◆ Riklis’ renewed
visitation of the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict was
a favourite at Locarno.
Taking a deliberately
inconclusive look at the
flukes of identity, Riklis
interweaves the stories of Palestinian Eyad, who leaves his
family to attend a prestigious Jewish school in Jerusalem
in the early 1980s, and Edna, the Israeli with whom he
falls in love. Powered by great young performances, its
quiet, sometimes overt subtlety is a timely contrast to
virulent contemporary rhetoric. EL
STARTS MAY 21
Café Ta’amon, King-George-Street, Jerusalem
D: Michael Teutsch (Israel,
Germany 2013) documentary
with Mordechai Kopp
◆◆◆ Run since 1960
by Mordechai Kopp
and his wife with the
assistance of a Moslem
cook and handyman,
Jerusalem’s most famous
café has seen activists
meet to discuss everything
from the occupation to Greater Israel and, more recently,
the Olmert corruption scandal. Talk is what made this café
famous, so if Teutsch’s ode to this gemütliche crucible of
disputation suffers slightly from the talking heads scourge
of documentary filmmaking, that’s not even a bad thing. EL
ALL FILMS ARE
IN OV WITH
GERMAN
SUBTITLES
UNLESS
OTHERWISE
STATED
AUG & OHR MEDIEN
Flicks our picks
Special screenings, festivals
and retrospectives you shouldn’t
miss this month
MAY 6-10
Salad days of punk
For the fourth year in a row, Moviemento’s
PUNKFILMFEST will bring punk rock back to Kreuzberg.
Ranging from a long-overdue recognition of
the first black punk band (hell, the first ever punk
band!) in A Band Called Death, to the pop punk
adventures of high school couple Rudy and Ava
in the genre-messing O-Star to the less polished,
self-proclaimed hardcore version of a punk musical
in Sacrificial Youth about a teen punk with an
attitude living in a fully suburbanised environment,
this year’s films are set to disturb and entertain.
Acclaimed documentary Salad days: The DC Punk
Revolution on the early (1980-90) DIY punk scene
in the US capital also deserves a mention: 30
years on, Washington, DC’s original punk spirit
still serves as a reminder of the hopefulness of
youth, the power of community and the strength of
conviction. Spiced up, as per usual, with concerts
and other activities, including a seasonal open-air
showing of Salad Days on May 3. Full programme
at www.toodrunktowatch.de. PJØ TOO DRUNK TO
WATCH – 4. PUNKFILMFEST BERLIN | Moviemento, Kottbusser
Damm 22, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Schönleinstr.
MAY 10-20
From the House of Shiva to
Coney Island
Featuring over 30 films, the 21st JEWISH FILM
FESTIVAL opens with a film that shows how the
world was forced to open its eyes onto Holocaust
reality. Directed by Paul Andrew Williams, The Eichman
Show recreates the TV coverage of Adolf Eichman’s
1961 trial, as director Leo Hurwitz (Anthony
LaPaglia) and producer Milton Fruchtman (Martin
Freeman) delivered material that was shown worldwide
and later honoured with Emmy and Peabody
Awards. With original footage of witnesses testifying
in Eichman’s impassive presence, Williams
brings the viewer into the courtroom to listen
and watch, fearing to look or look away, here as
elsewhere in films such as A La Vie, (Zilbermann),
EXBLICKS
May 18
NAPPS — MEMOIRE OF AN INVISIBLE MAN
which brings together three Auschwitz survivors, or
the visually overwhelming study of Theresienstadt
In Silence”. Lighter fare comes in a second focus
on culinary themes including Famous Nathan,
on the seller of world famous hot dogs from the
Coney Island boardwalk, the Ottolenghi biopic
Jerusalem on a Plate and the feature film Dough,
about a Jewish baker in London’s East End and
his Muslim apprentice. For something decidedly
different, don’t miss a 2002 short with Udo Kier
as Hitler living as Mrs. Meitlemeihr in post-war London
and submitting to the attention of a persistent
Jewish neighbor. Gay avek! EL JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL
BERLIN | nine cinemas throughout Berlin, check www.jffb.de for
full programme
MAY 18, 20:30
And the winner is...
This month at Lichtblick, expect a duo of powerful
documentaries that deftly put a face (and a
voice) on one of the thorniest facets of the city’s
intercultural identity: the fate of the refugees and
asylum seekers who can’t quite call Berlin home.
Tami Liberman’s 30-minute production NAPPS –
MEMOIRE OF AN INVISIBLE MAN, the winner of last
month’s Exberliner Award at the Achtung Berlin
Film Festival, takes a singular approach to the topic.
Driven by the sheer logistical necessity of his
limbo-like legal state, forbidden from work of any
kind, her West African subject, known only as “Mr.
X” to protect his anonymity, picks up the camera
and becomes the filmmaker himself, capturing the
simultaneous stasis and uncertainty of an asylumseeker’s
life with a wellspring of strength, patience
and humour. It’ll be shown with INSEL36, a fellow
Achtung film helmed by Asli Özarslan. A moving insight
into a one-time fixture and now-vanished landmark,
it documents the trials of the 250 refugees
who set up their protest camp on Oranienplatz to
campaign for better conditions. Filmed over the
bitter winter of 2012, the film finds its heart in the
courageous and indefatigable Napuli, the camp’s
sole female refugee who ignored the weather,
stonewall bureaucracy, NIMBY residents and public
indifference to organise protests, speak to the
press and publicly advocate for both the cause
and fellow camp members. Members of the films’
production teams will be present for a post-film
Q&A, served with traditional complimentary wine.
CE EXBLICKS | Lichtblick Kino, Kastanienallee 77, Prenzlauer
Berg, U-Bhf Eberswalder Str.
32 • MAY 2015

XPOSED
May 21-24
PRISCILLA: QUEEN OF THE DESERT
MAY 21-24
Quintessentially
queer for 10 years
Get prepared for XPOSED to bare all again as
the international queer film festival opens up
for the 10th time. This year XPosed comes
full circle, returning to Oz and the geographical
focus of the first fest. Rather than screen
faddish new releases, XPosed goes for quality
as reflected in the opening film: Stephen
Elliott’s 1994 cult hit The Adventures of
Priscilla: Queen of the Desert. If you’re not
familiar with the campy tale of three genderbending
performers and “Priscilla”, their
majestic means of transportation, catch it
now to find that 20 years haven’t tarnished
its outrageous charm. Also out of Australia,
Lawrence Johnston’s Night Out (1989), shot
in black and white with a 1950s “youth gone
wild” atmosphere, brings a surprising focus
to the tale of a gay man stepping out for
a late-night dalliance while the boyfriend’s
away only to be beaten by four hoods. This
year, XPosed joins the ranks of film festivals
showing TV shows with Josh Thomas’
much-loved Aussie comedy Please Like Me.
Thomas writes the show and plays the main
character, a twenty-something who realises
he’s gay after breaking up with his girlfriend.
Aside from two wonderful short programmes
with an Australian focus, XPosed branches
out to other locations, with Spain offering
up a troubling take on love in Amor Eterno,
in which an older teacher has sex with his
teenage pupil and one social transgression
leads to another, leaving the viewer gutted
by the end. Also not to be missed is Desiree
Akhavan’s hilarious Appropriate Behavior,
in which an Iranian-American Brooklynite
faces life with an endearing but dry wit. Also
launching this year is the Queer Short Film
Fund, in which prospective queer filmmakers
submit their screenplays for a chance to win
€2000 and make that film a reality. All that,
and let’s not forget the international shorts,
German shorts and special “naughty room”
shorts also on offer during the fest, as well
as the requisite party at Südblock. WC
10. XPOSED INTERNATIONAL QUEER FILM FESTIVAL |
Moviemento, Kottbusser Damm 22, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf
Schönleinstr.
MAY 2-AUG 27
Something in the air
Shake out those picnic blankets, unfold
the folding chairs (and maybe dust off the
mosquito spray) – it’s time to appreciate
cinema beneath the stars again at Berlin’s
bounty of open-air theatres. Our friends at
FREILUFTKINO KREUZBERG are first past
the post, with a sprawling OV spread heavy
on major award winners such as opening
Snowden doc Citizenfour (May 2, 21.15) as
well as more esoteric pickings like Nick Cave
curio 20,000 Days on Earth (May 10, 21:30).
Too much cinematic wholesomeness? Get
your dose of sequined summer Eurotrash
at the free Eurovision screening (May 23,
19:30). FREILUFTKINO HASENHEIDE offers
a biweekly OV screening of the year’s highlights,
opening with the hysterical Oscarsweeping
freakout Birdman (May 27, 21:30)
whilst CENTRAL KINO warms up for their
programme of classics with some athletic
pogoing care of the Punk Film Festival with
Salad Days (see left). CE OPEN AIR CINEMA |
various locations; for all films, dates and times, check
the OV search engine at www.exberliner.com
MAY 30, 20:15
Lost and found?
When directors Jörg A. Hoppe, Klaus Maeck
und Heiko Lange set out to capture the cauldron
of musical Berlin in the decade prior to
re-unification, British musician and producer
Mark Reeder (see interview, page 30) provided
a more than fortuitous way into the
confusion. In B-MOVIE: LUST AND SOUND IN
WEST BERLIN 1979-1989 Reeder chronicles
how his interest in German electro pop
brought him to Berlin in 1978, where his own
career as musician/producer and lively curiosity
put him in close touch with Nick Cave
and Blixa Bargeld, Die Toten Hosen, Malaria!
and Frantic Elevator as well as the musical
buzz in East Berlin. Join us as we merge pop
and subculture back when “days were short
and the nights were endlessly long” along
with realeyz.tv, the directors and Reeder for
full creative immersion and a glass of wine.
EL EXBLICKS: B MOVIE: LUST AND SOUND IN WEST
BERLIN 1979-1989 | Lichtblick Kino, Kastenienallee
77, Prenzlauer Berg, U-Bhf Senefelderplatz
CONFIRMATION
by CHRIS THORPE (UK)
THEATERTREFFEN
STÜCKEMARKT
REVISITED
etb
International Performing Arts Center
Plus the International Comedy
Showcase, a concert by Ian Late
& Band, THE LAB and the Berlin
International Youth Theatre!
May 2015
ETBERLIN.DE
33

What’s on
STAGE
Theatertreffen
at a glance
CASTORF CONTROVERSY
Frank Castorf, the legendary direcor at the helm of Berlin’s
Volksbühne since 1992 , is no stranger to controversy.
His Münchner Residenztheater production of BAAL
was attacked by Bertolt Brecht’s publisher, Suhrkamp, as
an “unauthorised adaptation” – Castorf added numerous
other texts to the original script. (He also takes Brecht’s
story of a debauched young poet and transplants it to
the Vietnam War, complete with a dead pig, a life-sized
helicopter and plenty of orgiastic chaos.) Suhrkamp took
the Residenztheater to court, and in February of this
year it was ruled that the production could be shown
only twice more: a final time in Munich, and once at this
month’s Theatertreffen. It’s arguably the hottest ticket
at this year’s festival, made even hotter with the recent
news of Castorf’s 2017 departure from the Volksbühne,
so good luck getting into the four-and-a-half-hour show.
BERLIN’S BEST
The Theatertreffen jury selected two works from the German
capital: Yael Ronen’s COMMON GROUND (Maxim
Gorki Theater), a cathartic and remarkably exuberant
show about the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, and Ivan
Panteleev’s take on WAITING FOR GODOT (WARTEN
AUF GODOT, Deutsches Theater in a co-production with
Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen).
NO GERMAN REQUIRED
More than half of this year’s productions have English
surtitles: DIE SCHUTZBEFOHLENEN, DIE UNVER-
HEIRATETE, JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN, COM-
MON GROUND, WAITING FOR GODOT, WARUM
LÄUFT HERR R. AMOK? and DIE LÄCHERLICHE
FINSTERNIS.
FOCUS FASSBINDER
Theatertreffen celebrates the 70th birthday of the late,
great Rainer Werner Fassbinder with a heap of special
events devoted to the German director. In addition to
the main-stage production of WARUM LÄUFT
HERR R. AMOK?, there are other stage adaptations
of Fassbinder’s films, numerous movie
screenings, a day-long symposium and two museum
exhibitions. Patrick Wengenroth, a Schaubühne director,
also presents some sort of “theatrical action”, and actress
Hanna Schygulla sings poems written by Fassbinder.
MARKET FRESH
What’s the next big thing in European theater? Possibly
something you’ll see at the Stückemarkt, a showcase of
five new plays by young writers from across the continent.
This year’s selections include ZERSPLITTERT by Alexandra
Badea (Romania/France), a tale of globalisation that
follows four characters in four very different parts of the
world; and Der Staat by Alexander Manuiloff (Bulgaria),
a play that turns audience members into actors. For
the particularly intrepid, there’s also the daylong Talking
Straight Festival from Daniel Cremer (Germany), which will
occur entirely in an invented language.
Visit berlinerfestspiele.de for full schedule and ticket
information. For ongoing English-language updates
from Exberliner, head to the Theatertreffen blog at
theatertreffenblog.de.
From pirates to
bourgeois striptease
By REBECCA JACOBSON
The annual THEATERTREFFEN is a chance to catch 10 of the best and
buzziest productions from across the German-speaking world. We
caught up with two of this year’s invitees: director Susanne Kennedy
and playwright Wolfgang Lotz.
JU OSTKREUZ
THEATER-
TREFFEN
MAY 1-17
Susanne Kennedy:
Running amok
with Fassbinder
Forty-five years ago, when actors showed up on the
set of WARUM LÄUFT HERR R. AMOK?, co-directors
Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Michael Fengler didn’t
greet them with a script. Instead, they handed them an
outline: a broad-stroke guide to the film’s scenes, but
no instructions for what to say or how to behave. The
result is one of cinema’s greatest exercises in tedium:
88 minutes of improvised and excruciatingly mundane
conversation about financial problems, Christmas
presents, television programmes and the minutiae of
Herr R.’s job as a draftsman at an architectural firm.
At the end of the film, Herr R. clubs his wife, kid and
neighbor to death with a candlestick. Fassbinder later
called it a kind of “bourgeois striptease”.
But for director Susanne Kennedy, whose adaptation
of the film comes to Theatertreffen this
year, the material couldn’t be juicier. “In the film,
the actors just chattered, and after it came out,
someone wrote up a script,” she says. “What you
get is total everyday speech, with lots of ‘umms’
and ‘aaahs’ and repetitions. It’s such strange
material, because they talk about absolutely
nothing. And when you combine that with the
fact that nothing happens in the film, it’s an
unbelievable tension to bring to the stage.”
Kennedy, 37, knows tension well. At last year’s
Theatertreffen, she showed Fegefeuer in Ingolstadt,
a polarising production that relied on
starkly formalised movement and vocal playback
– the actors lip-synced to recordings of their
lines. At the premiere at the Münchner Kammerspiele,
some audience members responded with
boos and jeers. With Warum läuft Herr R. Amok?,
Kennedy – who moved to Berlin a year ago after
a long stint in the Netherlands – digs deeper into
the same playbook. (The production is also part
of the festival’s Fassbinder spotlight, see sidebar.)
She’s again working with the playback technique,
but this time the recorded voices aren’t the actors’
own: They belong to people on the street,
the assistant director’s parents, even employees
from the Kammerspiele’s props department.
As in Fegefeuer, the actors lip-sync to these
recordings. And now, instead of thick white face
makeup, they’re in even creepier silicone masks.
“I needed an extreme form – an artificial form,
let’s say – in order to come even closer to reality,”
Kennedy says. “As a viewer, masks ask something
different of you. They appeal to your imagination
in different ways. But you also realise that the
body is always looking for a way to express itself,
even if it’s just in the hands, and these details become
incredibly important and incredibly strong.”
Kennedy knows her work can be demanding: “I
like it when it hurts,” she told Die Tageszeitung last
year. But she promises it’s not sheer sadism.
“My most exciting experiences in the theatre,
or in art generally, have been those when I’ve
arrived somewhere and don’t know how to orient
myself,” she says. “Pain is crucial – that’s how
you grow. It’s important that things continue to
affect you, and when it hurts, you know something
in you has been touched.” May 3-4, 19:30 |
Deutsches Theater, Schumannstr. 13, Mitte, S-Bhf Friedrichstr.
JU OSTKREUZ JAN VERSWEYVELD
34 • MAY 2015

Wolfram Lotz: Lost in the Afghan rainforest
One of Germany’s most lauded young playwrights,
Wolfgang Lotz comes to Theatertreffen with DIE
LÄCHERLICHE FINSTERNIS (The Ridiculous Darkness),
a play that finds Westerners venturing into an
unfamiliar world. The Leipzig-based playwight draws
not only from Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse
Now but also from current events – piracy in Somalia,
for example, and the war in Afghanistan.
It’s a political piece of theatre, and one that mines
the absurdities of our postcolonial world. As the
protagonists descend deeper into the “Afghan rainforest”,
they meet an idiosyncratic cast of characters,
including Italian UN peacekeepers overseeing mineral
extraction for mobile-phone production, a talking
parrot and a Balkan war refugee selling bedsheets,
noodles and investment funds. The piece, which Lotz
wrote as a radio play, has been immensely popular – by
season’s end, it’ll have been mounted at eight different
theatres. The production coming to Theatertreffen
is not the one that opened late last year at Berlin’s
Deutsches Theater, but the world premiere staged by
Dušan David Parízek at Vienna’s Burgtheater. As a kid
growing up in a small town in the Black Forest, Lotz
knew no theatre beyond Christmas pageants. With its
sheep costumes and Jesus baby dolls, theatre always
seemed, Lotz says, “an impossible form.” But by the
time he hit university, and had begun to write poetry,
he reconsidered. “At first, I had nothing to do with
theatre,” says Lotz, 33. “It struck me as ridiculous. But
when there’s something problematic with the form, it
gives you the chance to address this question of resistance,
which I always find interesting.”
The germ of Die lächerliche Finsternis was the
2010 trial of 10 Somali pirates in Hamburg. It was
Germany’s first piracy trial in 400 years, and it
spiraled into a two-year judicial circus. “It made me
angry,” Lotz says. “For me, it’s lunacy to judge people
when you don’t know anything about their way of
life. But it’s also quite like the problem of writing –
how do I write about something without judging it,
or saying I know what it’s like?”
And so the play begins with a long monologue
from a Somali pirate explaining his path to high-seas
swashbuckling – which includes earning a degree in
piracy at a university in Mogadishu. From there, two
German soldiers emerge, and the Western narrative
“swallows up” the Somali one, Lotz says. The play’s
structure came to him quickly. But where he ran into
difficulties, he says, was writing women into the script.
Whereas the Deutsches Theater version features only
one woman in the show, Parízek addressed the issue in
a canny way: with a four-person, all-female cast.
“That was a very clever decision,” Lotz says. “The
journey into the wilderness is a very manly thing,
but in the Vienna production you see women on the
stage playing men. Which means we see them acting.
The problem is apparent the whole time.”
And wrestling with such problems – whether in
theatre or society – is exactly what Lotz is after.
When asked if he sees himself as an anarchistic
playwright – as Die Welt described him last year – he
grins, somewhat sheepishly, but with a bit of pride.
“Aesthetically, I try to cross lines and break rules,” he
says. “That word, ‘anarchistic’ it’s of course difficult
to say.” He smiles again. “But I like it.” May 13,
20:00, May 14, 19:00 | Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Schaperstr.
24, Wilmersdorf, U-Bhf Spichernstr.
REINHARD MAXIMILIAN WERNER
REINHARD MAXIMILIAN WERNER
35

What’s on
STAGE
MAY 6-22
Hausbesuch Europa
The newest project from
Rimini Protokoll sounds
like a cross between a
house party and a game
of Risk: 15 people gather
in a private apartment
somewhere in Berlin, lay
out maps, and determine
the future of Europe.
Anybody want to test what
happens if Greece leaves
the Eurozone? Should we appoint Angela Merkel leader
of the entire continent? Or, if we’re really reaching here,
see if we can finally get that new airport built in Berlin?
A “table robot” will apparently dispense instructions,
and about a quarter of the shows will be held in English.
Address provided after ticket purchase; more info at
rimini-protokoll.de
MAY 7, 8, 9, 11, 20:00
Welcome to Germany
Gießen-based performance
collective Monster
Truck describes its latest
piece as a balancing act
between documentary
theatre and surrealistic
installation. It’s about
Villa Baviera, a bizarre
colony run by German
immigrants in the Chilean
Andes from the early
1960s to the late 1980s in which a seemingly idyllic
world of folk music, traditional costumes and Wurst hid
a secret torture centre. Today, it’s become a gaudy tourist
trap. Expect ample use of video, probably some oldschool
folk songs and maybe even a dirndl or two. Sophiensaele,
Sophienstr. 18, Mitte, U-Bhf Weinmeisterstr.
MAY 14, 16, 18, 19, 20:00, MAY 20, 18:00
Bella Figura
Thomas Ostermeier
directs the world
premiere of a new work
by Yasmina Reza, which
the French playwright
wrote specifically for the
Schaubühne ensemble
(including Nina Hoss and
Mark Waschke). The play
revolves around marriage
and infidelity, unfolding
over the course of a single evening. It’s not the first time
Reza, a two-time Tony Award winner, has seen her work
immediately translated from French into German: God
of Carnage had its world premiere in Zürich in 2006.
Schaubühne, Kurfürstendamm 153, Charlottenburg,
U-Bhf Adenauer Platz
MAY 13, 14, 20, 22, 23, 25, 30, 19:30
Duato | Kylián
Once an upstart newcomer,
Nacho Duato has
now spent a full season
as artistic director of
the Staatsballett Berlin,
and the Spaniard is
finally setting some new
choreography on the
dancers. The company
is mum about exactly
what to expect from the
new piece, titled Static Time. Also on the bill: White
Darkness, Duato’s 2001 piece about drug abuse, and
Czech choreographer Jirí Kylián’s Click-Pause-Silence,
a stark and austere work from 2000. Staatsoper im
Schiller Theater, Bismarckstr. 110, Charlottenburg, U-Bhf
Ernst-Reuter-Platz
FERNANDO MARCOS ARNO DECLAIR
MARÍA JOSÉ AQUILANTI
“Nothing happens in the lines, but a
lot goes on in between them” By REBECCA JACOBSON
NURKAN ERPULAT goes
back to Chekhov at the
Maxim Gorki with a new
production of Uncle Vanya.
Erpulat, a resident director at
the Gorki, took his first crack at
Chekhov two years ago with a take
on The Cherry Orchard that some
criticised as simplistic parable – it
drew parallels with Turkish guestworkers
in Germany – and others
as cliché-laden cabaret. (A few found
it genuinely funny.) But the Turkishborn
director, who first built a name
for himself at Ballhaus Naunystraße,
wasn’t cowed, and now he’s tackling
Uncle Vanya, a tale of dashed hopes,
the perpetual search for meaning and
clumsy gun-slinging.
Why did you want to direct
another Chekhov play? What interested
you about Uncle Vanya in
particular? For me, Chekhov is one
of the greatest writers of his century.
He is a gift for theatre people, because
his plays are about life. Of course,
theatre in general is about life. But
Chekhov captured how sometimes
absolutely nothing happens – that
life is sometimes characterised by
meaningless events, by daily routines.
He opens up these moments, and that interests
me. In Chekhov’s plays, nothing happens in the
lines, but a lot goes on in between them. What
especially interests me about Uncle Vanya is the
question of how people deal with the fact that
they might have to change their lives. It’s an
attitude that’s familiar today. The stagnation he
describes is very modern.
As a director, what was your approach? As
audience members, what can we expect?
I’m trying to listen between the lines. I think
that’s the only approach in theatre, but it’s
particularly the case for Chekhov. The audience
can expect a picture of life, of a life filled with
missed moments.
Some reviews of Cherry Orchard were very
critical – did that affect your
approach to Va nya? Unfortunately,
only a few reviews were ultimately all
that critical – I’d actually expected a
lot more criticism. What we’re doing
here, I think, sometimes has the quality
of being done for the first time:
Until recently, you didn’t see certain
segments of the population onstage.
Theatre supposedly holds up a mirror
to society – that’s its purpose, at least
UNCLE VANYA
(ONKEL WANJA) May
1, 2, 10, 19:30; May
17, 18:00 | Maxim
Gorki Theater, Am
Festungsgraben
2, Mitte, S+U-Bhf
Friedrichstr. (with
English surtitles)
according to Shakespeare – but these segments of
the population have been forgotten in Germany,
and people don’t even notice that they’ve been
forgotten. Showing a society onstage that corresponds
to today’s reality was, on its own, a political
exercise in Cherry Orchard. But it’s not about
reviews or opinions, it’s instead about bringing
particular issues to the stage. It’s about the
question: What kind of theatre has been made
in Germany in the last 45 years? This is what we
must critically engage with.
What sorts of issues have you brought to
the stage here? In Uncle Vanya, it’s about dealing
with change, which includes dealing with
political positions. Chekhov addresses other
exciting questions, too: What is our purpose
in the world? What is work, what is freedom?
What am I doing to create a better world? For
instance, there’s Sonya, the professor’s
daughter, whose father left her
behind in the village, and she sees
him for the first time only after
many years. That mirrors the phenomenon
of today’s “Kofferkinder”
[children of guest workers], who
were also left behind because their
parents went to work in another
country. This is precisely our subject
matter. ■
ESRA ROTTHOFF
36 • MAY 2015

What’s on
MUSIC AND NIGHTLIFE
The Doppel Gang By D. STRAUSS
Regular radio listeners born after 1995 can be
forgiven for thinking that pop music only comes
in a few varieties – sexually emancipated R’n’Bflecked
pop, gender empowered pop-flecked
R’n’B, and masked advertisements for Pharrell’s
haberdasher (who is generally impressive). As
capitalism preferences monopoly and monopoly
thrives on a cheap and easy monoculture, this
shouldn’t just seem understandable, but
inevitable: if the trains run on time, not
many care which colour they’re painted.
But capital also creates waste, which
leads to a paradoxical diversity. You know
what else creates waste? Bookers who don’t
bother to talk to one another and so schedule
similar, less mainstream acts on the same night.
If you need evidence of Berlin’s complicated relationship
with commerce, look no further than the
intra-genre competition that occurs on this city’s
stages with monthly precision: a battle over the
euros of those who don’t appear to possess any.
For example, a dozen prosaic punk-metal showcases
pass through Berlin every month, rarely as
inspired as their names (the month I’m writing
this brings us Walking Dead on Broadway), yet
when LITURGY and VOIVOD – generationallyseparated
virtuosic art-metal titans in sympathy –
come to town, they play on the same date. Why?
The metal world can be so divisive, with microslices
of snack cake gobbled up and defended by
its H.G. Geiger insect denizens. As the ancient
Voivod preferences nutty prog shifting riffs over
Liturgy’s static, building chords, perhaps they’ll
change time signatures to another night.
Almost as virtuosic as the fingerings of
metal are those that tickle within the concert
hall. With much bemusement, Berliners have
watched former resident CHILLY GONZALES
(photo) transform himself from Canadian piano
geek Eminem-ite laugh riot to Paris’ go-to guy
for keyboard drops. Somewhere along the line,
EDITOR’S
PICK!
the more jokes he told, the more he was taken
seriously and his recent gig as Public Speaking
Music School Pedagogue feels vaguely like a
Vinny Gallo put-on. Now that he’s going Full
Monty at the Philharmonie with a string quartet,
let’s just put the powdered wig on his head and
be done with it. In the meantime, minimalist
composer and piano virtuoso LUBOMYR MELNYK,
playing the same night, must settle for the
space above the Volksbühne as he rubs
his hands together over his last piece of
toast while Gonzales is spoon-fed caviar
by Daft Punk robots (an experiment
which could, admittedly, go horribly, horribly
wrong).
Would it be sexist to compare the (self-evidently)
female artists LAURA MARLING and Bethany
Cosentino of BEST COAST, just for the sake of
continuing the conceit of simultaneous bookings?
I’ve been shaming a lot of people online recently
and I don’t want to be called out as a hypocrite.
Still, though their musical styles don’t really overlap,
both pull from the opposite ends of the sundappled
Laurel Canyon spectrum, with Marling
phrasing like a Lady of the Canyon and Cosentino
attempting to merge early Wilson brothers
surf epiphany with their later power-popped
Pacific Ocean Blue approach. As well, Marling is
the big Mumford-y star trying to establish indie
cred while Cosentino remains in the alt-rock
ghetto with ambitions toward the Fleetwood
Mac mainstream. I guess all music is similar if
you think about it long enough. If the bookers
wanted to save a little, they could just have the
same act play over and over and ask me to explain
how the same songs are actually entirely different
compositions. Should they be interested, my rates
are reasonable and my email is below. n
Music Editor D. Strauss may be contacted
at strauss@exberliner.com
CHILLY GONZALES & KAISER QUARTETT Mon, May 11, 20:00 | Berliner Philharmonie, Herbert-von-Karajan-Str. 1, Tiergarten,
S+U-Bhf Potsdamer Platz LUBOMYR MELNYK Mon, May 11, 21:00 | Roter Salon, Linienstr. 227, Mitte, U-Bhf Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz
BEST COAST Sat, May 16, 20:00 | Bang Bang Club, Mehringdamm 61, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Mehringdamm LAURA MARLING W/
GILL LANDRY Sat, May 16, 21:00 | Heimathafen Neukölln, Karl-Marx-Str. 141, Neukölln, U-Bhf Karl-Marx-Str. LITURGY Mon, May
25, 20:00 | Berghain Kantine, Rüdersdorfer Str. 70, Friedrichshain, S-Bhf Ostbahnhof VOIVOD Mon, May 25, 19:00 | Cassiopeia,
Revaler Str. 99, Friedrichshain, S+U-Bhf Warschauer Str.
Intro & Piranha präsentieren:
MARINA
& THE DIAMONDS
Fr. 08.05. Einlass 20:00 Astra Kulturhaus
motor.de, nbhap & Spex präsentieren:
SEKUOIA
Do. 14.05. Einlass 20:00 Berghain Kantine
Musikexpress präsentiert:
PATRICK WATSON
Fr. 15.05.
Einlass 20:00
ByteFM & Testspiel.de präsentieren:
PUBLIC SERVICE
BROADCASTING
Fr. 22.05.
Einlass 19:00
wegen der großen Nachfrage
verlegt ins Gretchen
KulturNews, putpat.tv & The Leisere Society präsentieren:
JONATHAN JEREMIAH
Fr. 15.05. Einlass 20:00 frannzClub
verlegt in den Postbahnhof
ByteFM präsentiert:
BRISTOL
Di. 26.05. Einlass 19:00 Gretchen
Visions präsentiert:
BLACK REBEL
MOTORCYCLE CLUB
Fr. 26.06. Einlass 19:00 Astra Kulturhaus
DAMIEN RICE
spec. guest: Mariam The Believer
Di. 04.08. Einlass 18:30 Tempodrom
Infos unter www.mct-agentur.com
Online Tickets unter www.tickets.de Ticket Hotline: 030 - 61 10 13 13
Every Wednesday // Maschinenhaus // 8 pm
IMPROTHEATER PATERNOSTER
Dein Held – Deine Geschichte
Fri 05/01 // Maschinenhaus // 8 pm
CHRISTOPHE SCHWEIZER &
BILLY HART QUARTET //
AKI TAKASE ROLLED UP WITH
JAN RODER & OLIVER STEIDLE
The ultimate “Jazz-experience”
Wed 05/27 // Maschinenhaus // 8 pm
GINGER BAKER WITH PEE WEE ELLIS
The world’s greatest drummer (Cream)
enters the German stages
Sat 05/30 // Maschinenhaus // 8 pm
EAST BLUES EXPERIENCE
Support: The White Dukes
06/02 – 06/05 // Kesselhaus // 8 pm
JAZZDOR BERLIN 2015
4 days, 11 bands, 8 premieres!
Wed 06/10 // Kesselhaus // 8 pm
BERGE – RECORD RELEASE CONCERT
Berlin Hippie-duo with new album
TICKETS 030 44 31 51 00 // WWW.KESSELHAUS.NET 37

What’s on
MUSIC AND NIGHTLIFE
CLUB PICKS
FRI, MAY 1, 14:00
StartRAMPE (Ramped-up Techno)
So begins another club
season and also another
club, this one plopped
down on the banks of the
Spree near the skeletal
bones of many of your
old favourites. Welcome
aboard, Rampe, and
congrats for not letting
Berlin get to your head
with fancy-pants nü
money ideas, as the many DJs tonight are pulled from
the general techno well, including booker TOM CHORDS,
tech-house totaliser GEORGE MOREL (photo), WOLLE
XDP, MUKKI LEDESMA, Tresor regular FABIAN DREWS and
whoever might swim to shore. Rampe, Michaelkirchstr.
23, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Heinrich-Heine-Str.
SAT, MAY 2, 23:59
Bondage Music Label Special (S&M Techno)
Rush the mic for the kings
of wrap music, as the
Bondage label spellbinds
with techno, minimal
and deep house crimes
from the likes of manly
MARKUS HOMM (photo),
pervy and pointy Bondage
label heads PORNBUGS,
8bit Records’ EL MUNDO,
jerky JACK JENSON,
make-out NINA MAKO, and the monstrous SWAM:THING.
Clothing optional, as one’s true bondage is internal. Why
isn’t this at Kit Kat Club? Salon Zur Wilden Renate, Alt-
Stralau 70, Friedrichshain, S-Bhf Ostkreuz
SUN, MAY 10, 14:00
Berlin Beach Festival (Boat Boogie)
If the opening dates are
any indication, the desire
for open air festivals
may exceed what nature
provides, so cross your
fingers and tie your swim
trunks for an afternoon
of techno sounds that
shouldn’t grow as dark as
potential rain clouds, with
Get Physical’s up-andcoming
SOKOOL, Highgrade hero DANIEL DREIER (photo),
Exploited’s BARA BRÖST, Ultra’s DAVID LUCA and SASCHA
DANIELS and the folks from TANZ UNTER FREUNDEN. But
you’ve been up for the last three days, so stick to the
beach chairs. Badeschiff, Eichenstr. 4, Treptow, S-Bhf
Treptower Park
SAT, MAY 30 - SUN, MAY 31, 20:00
Hush Hush Garden Edition: Plaid/Jacques
Palminger (Wild Cards)
Whoever planted this
garden must have been
drunk on apple cider,
because the acts that
sprouted up have little
to do with one another
but, like most weeds, are
nourishing if prepared
properly, including exiled
IDM kings in the land of
EDM, PLAID (photo), and
the busy German indie-dubsters of JACQUES PALMINGER
& THE KINGS OF DUBROCK. These ghosts in the machinery
of the early web will be accompanied by a host of more
techno-oriented companions, including Kosmos Musik’s EL-
EGANTER ELEPHANTER, Dystopian’s dark ALEX.DO, Freude
am Sitzen’s HKS97. And a dozen more. About Blank,
Markgrafendamm 24c, Friedrichshain, S-Bhf Ostkreuz
“You are not singing
it like it should
be sung!” By SALMA N. ARZOUNI
During her spotlighted singing in Only Lovers Left
Alive, Jim Jarmusch’s tale of bohemians as
vampires, YASMINE HAMDAN’s smoky eyes
outacted Tilda Swinton.
It was the Paris-based Lebanese singer’s introduction
to a larger audience. But Hamdan has
been an enchanting and unpredictable mainstay
on the world music scene for two decades – in
Beirut’s trip-hop duo Soapkills, with Madonna
producer Mirwais as Y.A.S., and in collaboration
with Marc Collin of Nouvelle Vague and
Bristol, who produced her self-titled 2012 debut,
a timeless-feeling electronically-tinged take on
Arab pop from the 1920s to the 1950s, reissued
the following year as Ya Nass (Crammed Discs).
You’ll be nodding “Ya” yourself when she takes
the stage at Lido on Tuesday, May 19.
How do you manage to appreciate your
background without being “Orientalised”
in a European setting? Well, I don’t think of
myself or my identity as being this “Oriental”.
It is, rather, a projection from others onto the
surface of our cultures. And I don’t think there
is only one Arab culture, or a pure Arabness.
We are very multiple, especially our generation,
which is very multilayered. And, in fact, there
is a huge diaspora outside the Arab countries
which is even more mixed. What connects us
is the language. This identity mix is something
I show in my work. It is something I don’t put
effort into – I just do it naturally. Being multiple
is how I do things. My family played a part in
bringing communism to Lebanon. Do you know
[Marxist philosopher] Mehdi Amel?
I do. His name is Hassan Hamdan. He wrote
the Encyclopedia of Arab Socialism. He was the
uncle of my father. He was assassinated in 1987.
You have a very similar situation to mine
– my family is half-Communist/half-Hezbollah.
No, I don’t have Hezbollah, because
my mother’s side is Sunnite. So, I am a Sushi,
you know. [laughs] My mother is kind of – she
doesn’t like Shias, so she is racist. [laughs] There
is something we say, “I am a Shia light!”
The monolithic image of Arabs only got
worse after the attack on Charlie Hebdo in
Paris, your home.Well, after this first shock
is over it is necessary to look at the
complex reality in which the tragedy
falls. Terrorism is not only a danger
for the West. We should not forget
the hundreds who are being killed daily
in the Middle East and North Africa
by those same criminal factions,
YASMINE HAMDAN
Tue, May 19, 21:00
| Lido, Cuvrystr. 7,
Kreuzberg, U-Bhf
Schlesisches Tor
who see themselves as the Godchosen
Muslims. Those monsters
emerged out of the ruins of our
modern societies and neoliberal
economic system, which we have
to dare to question. I don’t relate
to what is seen as “Arab culture”.
I relate to what I explore myself,
what is around me.
Including classic Arabic music
and poetry. This research
was my resistance against a
monolithic image of our cultures,
of my roots. I have a huge collection of tapes
and recordings – I could open a cassette shop
[laughs]. I actually love the clean, emotional romanticism
of Arab classics. I love it because I can
break it. Certain emotions can only be expressed
and liberated through this effect. When I started
doing this with Soapkills, it was not easy. There
were a lot of conservative reactions to the way we
interpreted old classics: “You are not singing it
like it should be sung!” And I always fought this
categorising in haram and halal. When you listen
to a recording in Arabic from 1932 or 1920, it
makes you travel, it connects you to a past, to an
unknown part of yourself. And I was investigating
in a natural way, like going to school [laughs].
You pushed the envelope performing the
belly dance anthem “Aziza” in a Cairo concert
last year during Ramadan. “Yasmine,
we heard you made a scandal in Cairo!” [laughs]
I was in the same theatre where Umm Kulthum
used to perform every Thursday. It was like a
football game! Egyptians are quite incredible
people. They have everything: the culture, the
music, the scenes. So much of Arab music and
art started there. I have a big fascination with
old Egyptian music, and I also grew up watching
old Egyptian movies, which makes me an insider.
I am Lebanese with an Egyptian twist [laughs].
You sing about everything from romance
to sexual harassment. Even your voice is
a subject: you perform with two different
microphones, switching from a
soft female voice to a more aggressive,
sexy tone. I don’t think
it is different. I think emotion and
tenderness are also part of sexuality.
This song you are referring to in
particular is a very funny song – it is
38 • MAY 2015

JOY WELLBOY
06.05. Berghain Kantine
ODESZA
07.05. Gretchen
ERRORS
17.05. Bang Bang Club
EAST INDIA
YOUTH
19.05. Berghain Kantine
MAN WITHOUT
COUNTRY
26.05. Bang Bang Club
TORRES
03.06. Privatclub
AUSTRA
10.06. Berghain
ILOVE-
MAKONNEN
30.06. Postbahnhof
MAJOR LAZER
08.10. Columbiahalle
ROMANO
11.10. Lido
TANIA_FEGHALI
meltbooking.com
facebook.com/wearemeltbooking
very funny to sing “Aziza”. It is sexual harassment
but with a lot of humour. That is, it is not serious
but the message is serious. But, you know, the
character of Aziza is also ridiculous, because she
is also kind of playing the game. It takes two to
play in our society. So, for me, we women in Arab
society have to somehow stop playing games if
we want some change.
Did you get a chance to read the interview
with Björk in Pitchfork about the challenges
of being a female musician? I haven’t
read the interview but I heard about it. She has a
point about women in general, that we’re under
huge social pressure. Even if we’re going toward
equality in some places, I don’t think that this
is happening everywhere. If we look at facts, it
is difficult for a woman to exist and survive and
sustain in a music world that is very much ruled
by men. You can have a lot of attention on you,
of course, because you are a woman, but you
have to also go through a lot of pressure about
the way you look, the seductive aspect. When I
started my music, my language was the weapon I
had in my hand to rebel.
In the end, it all comes down to language.
For me, language went through my sexuality,
through my being a woman. Doing Arabic music,
it was also a weapon for me, to kind of be political
in my way. It was how I rebelled vis-a-vis all
these stigmas that I did not identify with or I
perceived as racist. I didn’t see myself as an Arab
doing music, but I wanted to sing in Arabic. It
was important to me to carry on with this language
and take it to places and try things with it,
and it is also a very rough material and very raw,
so many things can be done. It’s that space that
I kind of designed for myself. I think that, for
me, these difficulties were painful but were part
of the pleasure I got because every time I succeeded
at something, I won something for me. It
was a great victory.
The personal was political. And it was not
only about me; it was also about the way I wanted
the world to look. I refuse to be identified as Arabic,
or “this is world music”. But I also found myself
rejected in many places because of me being
an Arab or singing in Arabic. Everybody wants me
to sing in English, I love to sing in English, but
for me it was important to sing in Arabic [laughs].
You cannot make difficult choices and expect that
it will be easy. I mean, if it was easy it would not
be fun. I never wanted things to be easy. n
Yasmine
Hamdan in
five dates
1997 Her Beirut-based
rock band Lombrix
breaks up; she and
fellow member Zeid
Hamdan form Soapkills,
the Middle East’s first
electronica act.
2002 Moves to Paris for graduate studies in
cinema. One of her collaborators is the
Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman, whom she
would marry.
2007 After teaming up with French touch
master Mirwais as Y.A.S., releases 2009’s
Aräbology (AZ), sampling both Kraftwerk &
Madonna.
2012 Releases self-titled solo debut.
2013 Crammed Discs puts out an expanded
version as Ya Nass, after which Hamdan steals
the show in Only Lovers Left Alive.
ADRIAN MESKOTIF
39

What’s on
MUSIC AND NIGHTLIFE
CONCERT PICKS
THU, MAY 7 - SUN, MAY 10
Xjazz Festival (Ex-Jazz)
Though most of this year’s
Xjazz Festival is barely
jazz, and the venues don’t
appear Xtasy appropriate,
the line-up of the threeday,
multi-venue event is
more than merely “jazzy”,
with world music-flecked
DJs MO’KOLOURS and (of
course) JAZZANOVA mixing
it up with super-serious
electro improvisers BRANDT BRAUER FRICK (photo)
and Ethiopian keyboard legend HAILU MERGIA. Plus,
actual jazz artists such as saxist GEBHARD ULLMANN. Go
figure. Various venues; check www.jazz.net for details
FRI, MAY 15 - SAT, MAY 16
Maximum Circus Festival (Heavvvy)
And the Lord did not
come down from the
Heavens, but was instead
forced to descend from
the sky because, yea, he
was heavy, but not as
heavy as this two-day,
mostly Italian metalpsych
melee. Headliners
include English nü-psych
pioneers GNOD (photo),
Stoned Karma’s VIBRAVOID, the ex-Cheetah Chrome
Motherfuckers of DOME LA MUERTE AND THE DIGGERS,
DA CAPTAIN TRIPS, the Netherlands’ RADAR MEN FROM
THE MOON and APE SKULL, so watch your back lest
someone go all 2001 on your ass. Tiefgrund, Laskerstr.
5, Friedrichshain, S-Bhf Ostkreuz
THU, MAY 21, 20:00
Tyler, The Creator (Angry Jazz Rap)
Sometimes it appears as
if, minus Frank Ocean,
the OFWGKTA collective
exists as a collection of
Game of Thrones family
crests designed by TYLER,
THE CREATOR along
with James Franco, each
imbued with The Magical
Power of Website. But with
Earl as Lancelot to his
cuckolded King Arthur, Tyler has aged out of the game a
bit and must settle for being merely talented, which might
explain all the smooth jazz on his new album. Then again,
when’s the last time a rapper used the seed of Kenny G
as a confrontational tactic? C-Club, Columbiadamm
9-11, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Platz der Luftbrücke
FRI, MAY 29 - SUN, MAY 31
Berlin Festival (Not So Indie)
Over the past few
years, Berlin Festival
has undergone such a
series of venue shifts and
personality transplants,
that one couldn’t tell you
exactly what it stands for
these days. Located in
the packed-to-the-rafters
Arena Park for the second
year in a row, the festival’s
emphasis has shifted from indie to electronic, with UN-
DERWORLD (photo), JAMES BLAKE and RÓISÍN MURPHY
headlining, and lots of less-expensive, home-bred DJ
talent, such as ELLEN ALLIEN, FRITZ KALKBRENNER, PAN-
POT, WESTBAM, TIEFSCHWARZ, RICHIE HAWTIN and ATARI
TEENAGE RIOT, taking the concept of a Berlin Festival
rather literally. Arena Park, Eichenstr. 4, Treptow, S-Bhf
Treptower Park
A few questions for...The Soft Moon
By SCOTT MCBURNEY
Now THE SOFT MOON, Luis
Vasquez had considered giving up
on music when Captured Tracks’
Mike Sniper found his demos
while surfing Myspace.
Vasquez’s knack for synthesizing historical
strains of outsider pop – from new wave to postpunk
to krautrock – has made him, ironically, an
artist of the moment. He’ll be proclaiming “We
are We” to his fellow Berliners at Schwuz on
Tuesday, May 19.
You’ve mentioned having a recurring
post-apocalyptic dream. I don’t know why,
but I kept dreaming the world was coming to an
end in hundreds of different ways. I never really
understood why, but in a weird way, I sometimes
find a sense of beauty in the end of the world. I
suppose it comes from a fear of death. The funny
thing is, I haven’t had these dreams in over a
year. It might be closure in a way. I used to get a
lot of anxiety, but that doesn’t happen anymore.
But the goths still love you. It wasn’t till
journalists started comparing me to these other
bands that I’d never heard of that I was aware
of it. I mean, as a teenager I really disliked the
whole goth scene.
You were a skater, right? Yeah, exactly. The
image was too strong when I was a skater. To be
compared to the goth movement now
is weird.
What kind of scene were you in
during your youth? It was skateboard
videos, which kinda opened my
mind in terms of different genres of
music. Punk music was the first genre
of music that I discovered on my own.
Before that, I had external influences,
so when I discovered punk on my
THE SOFT MOON
W/BLUSH
RESPONSE Tue,
May 19, 21:00
| Schwuz,
Rollbergstr.
26, Neukölln,
U-Bhf Rathaus
Neukölln
own, it felt sort of right. Also, I was an angry,
frustrated child. I got into things like thrash
music – angry music, really. I connected with the
anger in punk. I connected more with the sound
than the sentiment.
Was your family supportive of your music?
They would threaten to break my guitar. They
didn’t think it was sustainable. Or they took
issue with the lifestyle that comes with it, they
had this idea of musicians being heroin addicts
or whatever. My mom was completely against it
but now, of course, she supports it. My childhood
with her was pretty traumatic – she knows
that, but she never talks about it. She’s gotten
over it. Well, she hasn’t gotten over it: she just
blanked it out, so I’m the one who keeps talking
about it and she doesn’t want to accept it.
Did you take influence from the chemical
world? Not for the writing process. But I
think there’s a side of me that thinks I need to
do it outside of music to learn about the other
dimension, with creation in mind. I need that
experience, otherwise I can’t really validate what
I’m expressing. When I go back to write I hope
to take something from it. I’ve tried LSD a few
times and actually the experience wasn’t too
great for me.
Did you have any epiphanies? Yeah. One weird
experience was – I’ve never met my father, and I
saw him once when I dropped acid. Although I’ve
never seen him in real life. It was really
weird. It really hit me hard, firstly for
obvious reasons, and secondly because
I thought, I can take this little piece of
paper and put in on my tongue and have
access to this. I mean, I think to myself,
“It’s just a chemical, it’s not real.” But at
the same time, it felt completely real. I
still think about that trip, but I’m at the
point where I’m kinda scared to go back.
Maybe I’ve gained enough, you know? n
JASON HARRELL
40 • MAY 2015

Ich will nicht nach Berlin
Airing out By ANDREW BISHOP
As Berlin experiences its annual release
from hibernation, plans for a dizzying array
of open air events are in the works. A quick
online scan reveals dozens of events touted
as “Open Air” throughout the city, including
shamelessly commercial ones like the Berlin
Summer Rave courtesy of the Kaiser’s coffee
pot. But whatever happened to invading a
public space with as many of your friends as
possible and then destroying it? Increasing
crackdowns on unregulated events has meant
that in present-day Berlin, you’ll need to fill
out a lot of forms to sate your hedonism.
Thomas Sheele is trying to change this
with a series of workshops he’s hosting at
the Berlin Chamber of Commerce (IHK
Berlin) with the fun title of “Geplantes Chaos:
Berliner Dialog Über Free Open Airs im Öffentlichen
Raum” (Planned Chaos: Berlin Dialogue
on Free Open Airs in Public Spaces). Funded
by the EU through the Erasmus+ programme
in cooperation with Clubcommission e.V.,
the free workshops are designed to encourage
dialogue among politicians, administration,
police and promoters, while also helping
would-be party people understand the
quagmire of regulations here. Notes Sheele,
“Making a party is more than just drinking
beer and listening to bad music.”
Like other promoters in the city, Sheele
has, in the past, manipulated Germany’s
strong laws allowing political demonstrations,
the Versammlungsgesetz, in order to
bacchanal on the public’s dime. While he
recognises that this tactic is irresponsible,
he feels that Berlin needs a more viable
alternative to the “14 forms, 10 offices, eight
or more weeks and 300 euros” needed to
hold (or, more likely, get rejected from holding)
a legit open air event. He got his start
by hosting parties in his own seven-person
WG near Tempelhof airport, benefitting
from being in one of only a handful of occupied
apartments in his building and copying
his landlord’s key for one of the abandoned
flats. “We hosted parties in that space for
a year before he found out.” He started an
open-air cinema on the roof.
Bene “The Swift” Bogenberger, a DJ and
promoter with the open air-centric Else
club at Zur Wilden Renate, agrees that it’s
harder to get a free DIY event going in the
city centre than it used to be. However, he
blames the partiers themselves. “Six years
ago, before Renate opened, it was very easy
to do an open air. Then suddenly it got so
popular, and people who were making parties
were not cleaning up after themselves. You
know, it destroyed the whole thing.” He says
promoters have since then mostly gone one
of two ways: hosting less publicised events
outside of Berlin proper, or establishing legal
fixed venues. The latter is the course Swift
and friends took when they started Else
three years ago, a move that was not without
its share of controversy among some illegal
party-making devotees who claimed they
“stole the public space” near Treptower Park
when they started renting it from the city.
For those without the financial means to
start their own club, Sheele says there are alternatives
that Berlin could adopt. He points
to an initiative in Halle in which eight public
parks have been designated as “spontaneous
party spaces”, fully tested for acceptable
noise levels. Prospective party-makers simply
fill out an online form and as long as it’s
submitted 24 hours before the event, barring
anything else already planned for the space,
it’s automatically permitted. Police only visit
if there are issues like noise complaints.
Unfortunately, Halle isn’t Berlin. So fake
a protest, open a supermarket or steal some
public space. n
41

What’s on
ART
Art Detours
Ever feel like you’ve been
trekking halfway across
the city while missing out
on everything on your
doorstep? That was exactly
the motivation young
curator Rachel Walker
had when starting Art
Detours in 2014. Given
in English and limited to
15 participants, her tours
offer a unique insight into local art and culture once a
month, giving the guests a chance to visit artists’ studios
and project spaces and be personally guided around
exhibitions by the most innovative curators and artists
in Berlin. This month they focus on Neukölln, offering a
unique tour of the neighbourhood’s young and flourishing
art scene. PR Next tour May 23; book a spot at hello@
berlinartdetours.de
Du sollst dir (k)ein Bild machen
Using an excerpt from the
Bible’s Exodus 20:4, this
exhibition embarks on an
intricate journey into a
visual representation of
the Lord’s commandment
for man to not make any
graven images of gods.
Mixing artefacts from as
early as 13th-century
southern Germany with
current artworks from artists such as Berlin’s Laura
Bruce and Ai Weiwei, curator, gallerist and Berliner Dom
parishioner Alexander Ochs raises many a question about
worship in the art world. The simultaneous stripping back
and glorification of the works makes you value them even
more, in a different way. FM Through Jun 14, Berliner
Dom, Am Lustgarten, Mitte, S-Bhf Hackescher Markt,
Mon-Sun 9-19
Elaine Sturtevant – Drawing Double Reversal
American artist Elaine
Sturtevant (1924-2014)
made a career out of duplicating
the work of other
artists. With influences
ranging from Warhol to
Duchamp, Sturtevant’s
unique copies raise questions
about the art world
and the idea of celebrity.
What makes one piece
of art more valuable than another? This exhibition, the
first to focus on Sturtevant’s radical drawings, features
over 100 pieces from the 1960s onwards which cement
her enduring status as an important figure in pop and
conceptual art. JE May 30-Aug 23, Hamburger Bahnhof,
Invalidenstr. 50-51, Moabit, S-Bhf Hauptbahnhof,
Tue-Wed, Fri 10-18, Thu 10-20, Sat-Sun 11-18
Mark Flood – Astroturf Yelp Review Says Yes
With some estimates putting
the number of ads we
see daily at over 5000,
branding has become just
another part of life. This
non-stop onslaught of
product placement is US
artist Mark Flood’s medium.
Flood reproduces
and distorts everyday
corporate images until
they become blurred, almost unrecognisable, disturbing.
Shown for the first time in Berlin, his Aged Paintings
series focuses on logos: what happens when you portray
contemporary brands as ancient history? JBE May
1-Jun 13, Peres Projects, Karl-Marx-Allee 82, Friedrichshain,
U-Bhf Strausberger Platz, Tue-Sat 11-18
MARY FANG
“You couldn’t have Jeff
Koons... without the
Renaissance” By FRIDEY MICKEL
British film director PETER
GREENAWAY and Dutch theatre
and visual artist SASKIA
BODDEKE recreate the sacrifice
of Isaac in Obedience, a massive
multi-media installation at the
Jewish Museum opening May 23.
The Akedah, or “binding of Isaac”, is a staple in
Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions. While
it’s told differently by each religion, the
basics are the same: under instructions
from the Almighty, Abraham ascends
Mount Moriah to sacrifice his son
Isaac, only for an angel of God to
intervene at the last minute.
In Boddeke and Greenaway’s retelling,
religious Renaissance-style art is mixed with
video installation and live dance, turning the
visit into an immersive three-dimensional experience.
Brought 2000 years back to stand on the
mountain where Abraham almost sacrificed
Isaac, the visitor is invited to walk through 15
rooms describing the story through various
viewpoints: Jewish, Muslim, Christian, the
sacrificial lamb awaiting slaughter, the mother
viewing her son. The exhibition also focuses on
Ishmael, Abraham’s first-born but less favoured
child, considered to be the
forefather of Islam – and, according
to the Quran, the true subject of
Abraham’s sacrifice. An opening
video featuring young people
stating “I am Isaac” or “I am
Ishmael” uses the parable of the
two sons to allude to children
caught up in modern-day wars.
EDITOR’S
PICK!
OBEDIENCE May
22-Sep 13 | Jewish
Museum, Lindenstr.
9-14, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf
Hallesches Tor, Mon
10-22, Tue-Sun 10-20,
artist talk Jun 24
Greenaway, last seen at the Berlinale with his
latest film Eisenstein in Guanajuato, and Boddeke,
known for her recent work on the virtual reality
platform Second Life, have previously collaborated
on theatre and multimedia installations
such as the Rotterdam Maritime Museum’s Sex
and the Sea.
How does this installation differ from the
theatre collaborations you two have done
before?
SASKIA BODDEKE: It is different because you
aren’t working with live actors. But this also gives
the visitor the possibility to take their own
time and tempo to see it – someone can
maybe see it in a half an hour and have a
complete experience, and others can stay
there half a day. Or I hope that will be the
case. The whole story is combined with dance
– the dance brings emotion into the installation.
So we’ll see people dancing?
PETER GREENAWAY: Yes. We’re actually creating
a live performance, with live people, so there’s
a really interesting background of excitement.
How does the partnership work between
the two of you?
SB: “Saskia Boddeke and Peter Greeanaway”
is more like a brand name. This is the type of
installation that we create. How our
collaboration starts and where it ends
– that’s very much breakfast table
secrets. We finally found a modus and
it works.
PG: I think the general way of
describing it is that we’re questioning
subconscious notions of what
makes an exhibition. We are not
42 • MAY 2015

eally breaking things down into journalistic
segments: “This is cinema and this
is video and this is painting.” We’re using
the definition of artwork going back 2000
years as having to entertain, but also to
instruct. The content here is very powerful
in traditional and historical terms, but also
very, very relevant to the year 2015.
Your exhibition turns the story into
an examination of how people are affected
by war – a very modern topic.
SB: That’s what the aim was, that the child
Isaac is standing for the children and young
adults who are sent into war. Isaac for us
symbolises those people.
The exhibition mixes these contrasting
elements of Renaissance art and
post-modern installation – how are
those connected for you?
PG: People forget, you couldn’t have Jeff
Koons without Andy Warhol, you couldn’t
have Warhol if you didn’t have Marcel
Duchamp, you couldn’t have Duchamp
without Romanticism. And you couldn’t
have any of that without the Renaissance.
We want to introduce the laptop generation
to the notion of the cultural explosion
that once was. Rembrandt, Michelangelo
and Raphael, are as relevant, I would say –
and I’m putting a very subjective scan on
this – as Warhol and Koons.
So are you saying there’s no such thing
as a new idea?
PG: You know and I know that most artists
only have one or two ideas, and spend
their whole life re-working them. But if
those ideas are very big, there is no end to
a theme. ■
The artists will not conform
With the aftermath of Gallery Weekend still
hanging in the air, KUNST FÜR ALLE is exactly the
place to rid yourself from chauffeur-driven BMWs
and too many free lukewarm beers. The duck-eggblue
walls and dark wood modernist interior of
the off-site exhibition space set the scene for a
collection of conceptualist pioneers from Beuys to
Polke to Christo. Private collections aren’t usually
must-sees, but Klaus Staeck was more than just
a collector – he was a catalyst.
It all started in the early 1960s, when artists
were seeking independence from institutions.
Staeck’s publishing house, Edition Staeck, helped
usher in an era in which they could create affordable
art in large quantities to reach a wide audience
– coining the phrase “Art for All”. The Staeck
Collection documents and catalogues the interplay
between art and politics from that time through
the present day. On show are personal letters between
Staeck and Christo brainstorming the possibility
of wrapping Heidelberg’s Amerika-Haus in
canvas as part of the Intermedia 69 festival. Their
correspondence is shown alongside public critiques
of the project, such as an anonymous note
declaring “This shitty ‘packing action’ is obviously
a great publicity gag for the Amis.” The collection
comprises over 400 pieces in total, including
some of Staeck’s own works. He made a name for
himself through political poster art starting in the
1960s, and over the years has created hundreds
of motifs and drawings encouraging and urging
society to get politically involved. He started off by
selling his artwork to Edition Tangente publishing
house to finance his politics; there, he worked
alongside and become friends with Beuys, Dieter
Roth, Nam June Paik and Günter Grass, many of
whom have works in the collection as well.
Throughout the works, you can clearly see the
energy of fierce spontaneous, action against oppression,
not only in Vietnam but also on home
streets. A whole section is given over to the collective
General Idea, which tackled the AIDS Crisis
from 1967-1994. Originally, the collective was
made up of three members, Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal
and AA Bronson; sadly, both Partz and Zontal
died of AIDS in 1994. They’re best known for their
large-scale pill sculptures entitled PLA©EBO, but
their most harrowing edition is presented here: a
simple postage stamp
that culture-jams the
infamous Love print
by Robert Indiana,
exchanging the word
“Love” with “AIDS”.
PENNY RAFFERTY
KUNST FÜR ALLE Through
June 7 | Akademie der
Künste, Hanseatenweg
10, Tiergarten, S-Bhf
Bellevue, Tue-Sun 11-19
Wed - Mon 10am - 7pm, closed Tue
Online-Tickets: www.gropiusbau.de
43

What’s on
ART
Michel Majerus, Albert Oehlen, Laura Owens
– best students, best teachers, best school
Taking its title from a
piece by Majerus, this
show raises questions
about artists and the context
in which they work.
Bringing together three
old friends 13 years after
Majerus’ death, curators
Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen
show the differences
and similarities between
their work – whether or
not Majerus, Oehlen and Owens can even be seen as part
of the same school of art is another question. Working
across different generations, locations and mediums,
these artists contradict and complement each other at
the same time. JBE May 1-Mar 15, Michel Majerus
Estate, Knaackstr. 12, Prenzlauer Berg, U-Bhf Senefelderplatz,
every first Saturday of the month, 11-18
Peter Rose, Erik Bünger and Katarina
Zdjelar – Rediscovery 4
Rediscovery started in
2014 as an exhibition
series examining crossgenerational,
post-modern
art. In its fourth segment,
different positions
of video and performance
are linked to a common
theme: language. The
starting point is American
artist Peter Rose, whose
1980s video works could still be considered groundbreaking
today. Bünger’s performance examines the
fascination with speaking in tongues, while Zdjelar’s video
piece explores equality and cultural integration through
the crude Birmingham vernacular. FM May 22-Jun 20,
Autocenter – Space for Contemporary Art, Leipziger Str.
56, Mitte, U-Bhf Spittelmarkt, Thu-Sat 16-19
Philipp Fürhofer — In Light Of The Hidden
Lying in a hospital bed
in Berlin and looking at
an X-ray of his own chest
cavity was the genesis
for Fürhofer to create
his groundbreaking new
works. The paradox of
seeing his insides displayed
on paper inspired
these multi-layered objects.
Half paintings, half
lightboxes, the organic shapes allow the viewer to spiral
into a dream world. Best know for his award-wining opera
sets, Fürhofer guides the viewer with his ethereal visual
poetry into lands unseen by the naked eye. PR May
1-Jun 27, Galerie Judin, Potsdamer Str. 83, Schöneberg,
U-Bhf Kurfürstenstr., Tue-Sat 11-18
Roman Signer – Kitfox Experimental
A huge red and yellow
plane hangs from a chain
four metres above the
ground, turning hypnotically,
almost lightly in the
breeze of four mounted
wall fans. Harrowing yet
meditative in scale, it
fits seamlessly into the
almost 20-metre-high
boiler house of Neukölln’s
former Kindl Brewery. Roman Signer’s playful visualisation
of nature at work is simple yet utterly compelling. The installation
is nearing the end of its nine-month run – don’t
miss your chance to see it. PR Through Jun 28, KINDL
– Centre for Contemporary Art, Am Sudhaus 2, Neukölln,
U-Bhf Boddinstr., Thu-Fri 14-18, Sat-Sun 11-18
PHOTOS BY MATTHIAS ASCHAUER
“I want them to think
the material is coming
from space” By JILL BLACKMORE EVANS
Turning boring household objects
into compelling, alien works
of art is Vienna-based artist
FREDERICO VECCHI’s specialty.
Originally from Italy, Vecchi has been living
and working in Austria for the past few years.
Painting has always been his focus, but recently,
working as an assistant to the Austrian artist
Erwin Wurm, Vecchi has turned his talents more
towards sculpture – as well as a unique, performative
type of composition which mixes street art
with collage. Ten years after living in Berlin, he
will finally be showing his art here in a solo show
at Mitte’s brand-new Art Von Frei Gallery, running
through June 25.
How do you think your work has changed
in the last few years? It’s better [laughs]. It
becomes better and better… No, basically, I’m
a painter. But in the last year, due to my work
experience, I started to make sculptures and a
collage series. I go to those empty shops, you
know, where posters are attached to the front.
When people take the posters off, because they
are illegal, you just see these little corners of
paper with tape on them. I took that material
and I made the collages out of it. I started to do
this last year. It’s my most performative work,
because I do it live on the street.
What about the sculptures
in the show? The sculptures are
observations about everyday life. I
took really simple shopping bags,
plastic bags, and I modified them
with tape and filled them with
liquid plaster. And then I painted
them again, in order to hide the
FEDERICO VECCHI
Through June 25
| Art Von Frei,
Brunnenstr. 187,
Mitte, U-Bhf
Rosenthaler Platz,
Tue-Sat 12-19
plaster. I don’t want people to wonder what it’s
about, I just want to disorientate them. I want
them to think the material is coming from space,
or from a really exotic place. They all have kind
of zoomorphic, anthropomorphic shapes.
A plastic bag seems so unnatural, not part
of the environment, but then your sculptures
look very organic… Were you thinking
about this contrast? I always wanted to
make sculptures, and my latest work experience
allowed me to work with plaster, with wood,
with other materials, with clay… I always like to
work with my hands. So I was in my studio, and
I just looked around for materials I could use.
And I saw the recycling bins. I started to take
out old shopping bags, old bottles, and I started
to fill them with plaster. It was the most natural
thing. It was instinctive. I like when people
stand in front of my sculptures and say, “Which
material is this?” I just want to let people forget
about the material. I want to let them come into
this colourful world, you know? It’s just about
going into this world which I create.
What about your collage work – in that
case, do you want people to know what’s
behind the piece? The technique is always
important. Especially for the collages. If you look
at the collage you think, “Yeah, okay, it’s colour
composition,” but you have to understand that
I’m not adding anything, I just use what
I’ve found. I showed the collages to
some people and they were like, “Okay,
it’s good...” But when I showed them the
video of me doing it, they were like, “Oh,
wow! You do it there?” The video which
shows the process of doing the collage
is kind of part of the work itself. It’s
between street art and performance. ■
44 • MAY 2015

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56 • MAY 2015
I, SPY
By ANNIE MACHON
Former MI5 spy turned author and activist Annie Machon chronicles her
post-whistleblowing adventures at home and abroad.
My great LEAP forward
As an MI5 whistleblower and therefore persona
not terribly grata with the British Establishment,
I never expected to be invited to No.
10 Downing Street – the London residence of
the British prime minister. Yet there I was, on
a grey day last January, with my finger pressing
the doorbell. Accompanying me were former
undercover police officer Neil Woods and
leading drug reform campaigner Jason Reed.
We were there representing the UK branch
of LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition)
a global organisation with more than
150,000 supporters in 120 countries around
the world (see page 12). Its members include
judges, police officers, lawyers and prison
governors, as well as DEA and intelligence
personnel. What unites us is our knowledge
that the “war on drugs” is a ruinously costly
failure causing harm on both a societal and
personal level. In fact, drug prohibition has
unleashed the biggest crime wave the world
has ever seen, with a global trade worth up
to half a trillion dollars per year, all of which
is pocketed by crime cartels and terrorist
groups. Whole regions have been devastated
by drug-related violence, governments and
banks have been subverted and corrupted by
drug money and millions of people have been
criminalised merely for using drugs.
So how does an ex-spook become a drug
reform campaigner? I have been aware of
at least some of these issues since the early
1990s, when I was working as an intelligence
officer for the UK Security Service. One of
my postings was to investigate terrorist logistics
– the infiltration and exfiltration of both
people and material to the UK – and as such
I worked very closely with HM Customs.
There is a huge overlap between terrorist
groups and drug trafficking worldwide. My
contacts freely admitted that the “war on
drugs” had been lost and was now merely
security theatre to satisfy the political agenda.
However, I had to push aside the issue in
1997, when I helped my former partner blow
the whistle on the crimes of the UK spies. We
ended up going on the run around Europe,
NEW
COLUMN!
living in exile. My partner
went to prison twice. After
the drama ended, I spent
the next decade rebuilding my life as a lecturer
and writer, now based part-time in the dissident
and decadent capital that is modern Berlin. A
few years ago, in 2009, I was on a speaking tour
across Canada when I was approached by a supporter
of LEAP. I was immediately intrigued
and a month later arranged to meet the founder
of the organisation, former undercover cop
Lieutenant Jack Cole, in the bar at Amsterdam
Centraal. In 2012, I became the group’s European
director after attending the annual Commission
on Narcotic Drugs at the UN in Vienna.
In the years since, on behalf of LEAP I
have done nationwide tours and spoken at
events across the political spectrum, from
“free the weed” type festivals, to parliamentary
debates, to police conferences. And I can
tell you, the tide is turning. Latin American
countries are openly calling for legalisation,
US states are regulating cannabis, and many
European countries have successful decriminalistion
programmes. The prohibition
edifice is crumbling.
Meanwhile, Germany surprisingly lags behind
other countries’ more enlightened drug
policies. That’s why next October we'll be
launching LEAP Germany in the Bundestag
with Representative Frank Tempel and soonto-be-former
North Rhine-Westphalia police
president Hubert Wimber. Together with a
pool of experienced officials, we hope to make
the media case for drug legalisation, regulation
and taxation – and in this day and age, even
Germany cannot afford to dismiss the latter.
With credibility and expertise, we will help
administer the anti-venom to the toxic, failed
50-year experiment that is prohibition. ■
HOW DOES AN EX-
SPOOK BECOME A DRUG
REFORM CAMPAIGNER?
MICHAL ANDRYSIAK

FASHION
By JESSICA SALTZ
■ FASHIONISTAS
Black math
Germany’s homegrown avantgarde
fashion talents have a
tendency to emigrate to more
renowned design cities as soon as
they have their first taste of success,
so we should be glad we still
have the very promising ALEKS
KURKOWSKI in Berlin – for now,
at least.
The Polish-born, German-trained
designer made her Berlin Fashion
Week premiere in July 2014 and set
the fashion blogosphere alight with praise for her
all-black line up of men’s and women’s clothing. A year
later the palette remains the same, with dark, slate
greys amongst the lightest hues you’ll find in her collections.
“There was a white shirt once, but it didn’t
fit in the collection, I just love black,” Kurkowski
explains with a smile. The shapes and styles of the
clothes are where the designer continues to experiment.
She studied mathematics and was considering a
career in architecture, but she was drawn to the quick
pace of fashion design versus the drawn-out process
of designing and constructing buildings. The graphic
lines and asymmetric cuts that dominate her clothes
are proof that her maths skills have come in handy. She
is masterful at incorporating unique, often unexpected
details into her work such as a single leather panel
on one shoulder of an oversized coat, diagonally cut
zips or frayed, loose edges. Whilst some pieces in the
women’s collection are distinctly feminine, many of
them have a deliberate “tough, masculine edge,” she
GERHARD ECKARDT
explains, and several looks segue easily from women’s
wear into men’s, with pieces that can be worn by both.
Despite the dark colours, the Aleks Kurkowski label is
also very green. Sustainability and ecological awareness
is so key to the brand that Kurkowski actually
began showing at Berlin Fashion Week's bi-annual
Green Showroom. All the fabrics she uses are natural
and organically produced, and are all sourced from
Europe, mostly Germany and Italy. The leather even
comes from organically raised cows in Germany, and is
dyed using rhubarb. “Because of the natural process, I
can’t have the leather treated or distressed in different
ways, so I have to find other ways to experiment
with it,” she says. Kurkowski insists that the natural
fabric is a perennial mainstay: “It’s a natural skin, and
because of the breathability of it, it is actually perfect
for summer.”
Available at LNFA, Bikini Berlin, or the Aleks Kurkowski atelier,
check www.alekskurkowski.com for updated opening time
■ SHOP OF
THE MONTH
Kauf Dich Glücklich
The Prenzlauer Berg
shop-cum-café is
becoming a chain. The
new Mitte store has
forgone waffles for a
great selection of fashion
and cosmetics, so
go buy yourself happy!
Rosenthaler Str. 17,
Mitte, U-Bhf Rosenthaler
Platz, Mo-Sa 11-20
STEFAN KOCH
FRANCESCA TORRICELLI
SHADES
ADDICT
I am a bit of a floozy
when it comes to summer
eyewear and age has
certainly not tamed my
spirit. I tend to flit around
between four or five pairs
of sunglasses a season:
between the cheap, oneweek-only
holiday flings
that are best left on the
beach, a vintage model
for when I want to feel
more ladylike, and a selection
of sleeker, sophisticated
designer frames.
You know, the kind you
don’t feel embarrassed
being seen out with and
that you want show off to
your friends and family.
But no matter how good
they make me feel, within
a few weeks I am pounding
the streets looking for
my next fix. This summer’s
eyewear is all about big,
round eyes. Think Jackie
O and just keep going
– the bigger the better,
baby. My first fling of the
season (hey, it’s only May)
comes courtesy of a collaboration
between local
cool kids Mykita and Belgian
design powerhouse
Maison Martin Margiela.
The MMDUAL range
comprises round acetate
frames in colours from
a lovely azure to honey
tones and dark brown. I
am currently lusting after
their undulating curves
and am pretty much
desperate to have them in
every shade. Roll on, summer.
www.mykita.com
47 • MAY MONTH 20152014

BERLIN BITES By FRANÇOISE POILANE
Salt ‘n’ Bone:
Meat ‘n’ beer
“You’re so brave for serving meat,” a passerby
apparently commented to house manager
Rebecca Lynch, barman Andy Costello and
chef Sean Duff shortly after they opened their
bar and restaurant Salt ‘n’ Bone. The Prenzlauer
Berg joint is only the latest evidence of
the meaty tide a-turning in the veggie-friendly
Hauptstadt. Think about how high-end vegan
eatery Mio Matto recently closed after barely a
year in business, while offal purveyors Herz und
Niere, roughly the same age, have to beat patrons
away with a (salami) stick. But we digress.
The Berlin-via-Dublin trifecta took over the
former home of music venue Intersoup back
in February, giving it a “gastropub” makeover
that fits as snugly into the international food
zeitgeist as an Edison bulb in its socket (and
yes, they’ve got plenty of those hanging around
to illuminate the obligatory unfinished wood
and vintage photos). But hey, the zeitgeist can
be delicious, and while the combination of craft
beer and gussied-up pub grub might be nothing
new in other parts of the world, it’s still a relative
rarity here.
Their tap and bottled beer selection is
impeccable, ranging from American-style ales
made by the local boys at Spent and Flying
Turtle (€3.20-3.50/.3L), to German standards
like Waldhaus’ “Fucking Hell” pilsner and that
Bamberg Rauchbier everyone’s on
about these days, to Belgian brews
like the intense Trappistes Rochefort
(€5.50) and more. It’s the crisp,
bitter pale ales that pair best with
the food, which is exactly what you’d
expect: all locally sourced meat,
SALT ‘N’ BONE
Schleimann str. 31,
Prenzlauer Berg,
U-Bhf Ebers walder
Str., Tue-Sun 17-2
organic-when-possible ingredients, house-made
everything (including the sausages and all the
condiments) and fusion touches – kimchi,
anyone? – in eye-catching, gut-busting, not
altogether cheap combinations.
A prime example would be the popular starter
“Meat on a Stick” (€8.50), which isn’t quite
as primitive as its name might suggest. Duff’s
skewered pork belly cubes come plated like high
art, their dark, shiny soy glaze contrasting with
a bright yellow sweet potato puree and swirls of
chilli aioli. Take a bite and we’re back to primordial
– the salty-sweet-sticky sauce and juicy meat
hit you right in the reptile brain.
Another bestseller is the Scotch egg (€7.50),
coated in herbed sausage and deep-fried, a
fat-on-fat-on-fat construction made fattier still
with the addition of gribiche sauce –
mayo, Dijon and more egg. Save this
one for UK expats and those with
strong constitutions. It sure does
look pretty, though, as does the hot
dog (“Beef Dog”, €12 with fries) – a
beefy sausage in a milk bun from
Portuguese bakers Bekarei, topped with diagonally
layered sliced cornichons and artistically
drizzled with ketchup and mayo, placed carefully
on a sheet of butcher paper with a pile of fried
shallots on the side and a little cone of mustard
for DIY drizzling. An IPA from Amsterdam’s
Browerij T’ij (€4.50) makes it all go down easy.
Don’t eat meat? Your options are limited, but
not lacking. Duff makes a mean veggie burger,
the components of which rotate weekly. And
if you’re beer-averse, the cocktails, such as the
“low-alcohol” Spring In Your Step (€7.50), an
insanely refreshing rose-coloured blend of St.
Germain, Chambord, cucumber and citrus, still
make Salt ‘n’ Bone worth a visit. But meat and
beer are clearly the cornerstones of the Salt ‘n’
Bone experience, a fact about which Lynch,
Costello and Duff are delightfully unapologetic –
don’t be surprised if you see bowls of chillidusted
pigskin chicharrones gracing tables like
crisps. They’ve also been doing regular Sunday
roasts, in which they cook up a whole animal or
big cut of meat, and, as of this month, brunch.
It’s safe to say you can expect bacon. JS
JASON HARRELL
Dabbawalla: Soul deli
No matter your diet, Berlin has a restaurant for you,
and since the beginning of March, we can add small
Schöneberg deli Dabbawalla to the handful of
places catering to ayurvedic eaters. Owners Dennis
Dührkoop and Jessika Wildner specialise in
Indian-inflected vegetarian and vegan dishes
made according to the Hindu-based medicine
system, which is focused on maintaining balance
inside and outside the body.
Inside, it’s simply furnished with white wooden
chairs and tables and a homely kitchen set-up
behind the counter. Chickpeas, lentils, spices and
ayurvedic teas from tea brand Pukka line the shelves,
ready to be bought by curious costumers willing to give
ayurvedic cuisine a try at home. If you want to eat in, ordering is
simple: just get the Ayurvedic Thali (€7.90/large, €5.90/small), a
DABBAWALLA
Hohen staufenstr.
64, Schöneberg,
U-Bhf
Nollendorf platz,
Mon-Sat 11-18
plate of five components changing on a daily basis,
all seasonal. No matter what, you’ll get some
kind of carbohydrate, a vegetable dish, a protein
and a raw component, plus chutney to “open
your stomach”. In our case, this translated to
basmati and wild rice, sauteéd green beans
seasoned with parsley and thyme, yellow
lentil dal and a green salad. Lastly, three
condiments – bell pepper and pineapple
chutneys and yogurt-herb raita (vegans can
opt for basil pesto). The components are
somewhat basic, but combined in one plate,
it somehow just works – the fact that it’s all
freshly made definitely helps. The pineapple
chutney in particular gave this simple meal a
sweet-spicy boost – the perfect kicker to a delicious
and healthy lunch that left us feeling great
for the rest of the day. SA
PHOTO: FRANCESCA TORRICELLI
48 • MAY 2015

Kala: Simply fish
When a new Imbiss-style restaurant opens
KALA Kienitzer
Str. 95,
in Neukölln, it’s tempting to immediately
assume “döner” – not so for Kala, a new
Neukölln, U-
fresh fish restaurant in Schillerkiez. A
Bhf Leinestr.,
Turkish nickname that translates simply
Tue-Fri 15-22,
to “fish”, Kala is also short for the expression
kala balik, meaning “lots of people”
Sat-Sun 16-22
– that’s what the owners hope to attract
with their deli-style front entrance displaying fresh trout,
mackerel, gilthead and seabass.
The place has the feel of a small family shop, which isn’t
surprising considering owner Nuray Scheck’s fish market Arco
Marino stood in the same location just two years ago. Back
when she was planning a business change from market to restaurant,
she probably didn’t need much convincing to bless her
daughter Estelik’s relationship with cook Pascal Gallus, who
was also looking for a challenge after undergoing apprenticeships
at Nola’s am Weinberg and his uncle’s Jamaican restaurant.
Gallus spent six months carefully sourcing ethical fish
from various local markets while he and Estelik updated the
large storage room to cosy dining space. Vestiges of Kala’s market
past remain – if you’re on your way to a picnic at Tempelhof,
you can pick up some uncooked mackerel or trout stuffed
with tomatoes, onions and lemon and wrapped in tinfoil for
easy grilling (€5-8).
The cuisine here isn’t region-specific, but Gallus has created
some unique Jamaican-style dishes – the patties, filled with fish
and veggies (€2) or just veggies (€1.50), are served with housemade
remoulade and an excellent Jamaican hot sauce. For the
main course, you can choose from various fish options, ranging
in price from the mackerel (€7) to seabass (€14). The mackerel
we had, which Gallus grilled in his diminutive galley behind
the counter, was well-cooked with a pleasantly crispy exterior
and stuffed with fresh onions, tomatoes and rosemary. The
sides were the only disappointment: not only was our order of
grilled potatoes and veggies somewhat oily (it’s one of several
sides which rotate weekly; other options on our visit included
chickpea salad, Turkish rice and polenta), we had to pay separately
for it (€3.50/one person, €5/two). Add in a big bottle of
water (€6) and even without wine, you’re looking at a cheque
in the range of €20 per person. A bit steep for Neukölln, but
the quality of the ingredients and level of presentation, not to
mention the friendliness of the owners, certainly warrants a
slightly higher price tag. AB
Delivery wars!
Move over, Lieferando. There are
three new online delivery services
in town, and they’re all jockeying
for your money – and restaurant
owners’ attention. Arriving on April
1, 20 and 27 respectively, VOLO
(from Munich), DELIVEROO (from the
UK) and RESTO-IN (from France, in
collaboration with Bloomsbury’s) set
about snapping up as many partners
as they could. Deliveroo went for a
diverse range of restaurants from
American (Nalu Diner) to Japanese
(Hashi Izakaya), most based in Mitte
and Prenzlauer Berg. Volo is similarly
Mitte-centric – among its small selection
are ventures like juicery Daluma
and Torstraße Viet-fusion eatery
Royals in Rice. Resto-In goes further
afield, including everything from
Kreuzberg mainstay Hasir to Papaya’s
Thai street food.
To stand out, each is boasting
various bells and whistles: Deliveroo
claims a guaranteed waiting time
of only 32 minutes (although they
do it by only letting you order from
restaurants within a 2.5km radius).
Volo lets you track your order via
GPS, and Resto-In is planning on
expanding to include flower shops,
pharmacies and wineries. In terms
of minimum order, Resto-In has the
lowest (€10) and Deliveroo is the
runner-up (€12), while Volo tops the
list at €15, but makes up for it with
a low delivery fee (€2.90, still higher
than Deliveroo’s €2.50 but better
than Resto-In’s €4.90).
They’ve been taking every measure
to sweet-talk owners into partnering
up, even going so far as to offer free
tablet computers (in Deliveroo’s case)
– but in exchange for the potential increase
in customers, they’re demanding
kickbacks of up to 30 percent.
On the other hand, if you’re a Mitte
start-up worker glued to your desk
and seeking a low-effort lunch, you’re
in a whole new world of luck. SA
FRANCESCA TORRICELLI
NICO AND THE NAVIGATORS
The hour we knew too much of each other
Die Stunde da wir zu viel voneinander wussten
49
SPACE Radialsystem FOR V: ARTS May 27th AND - 31st, IDEAS
8 p.m.
www.radialsystem.de

ADVERTORIAL
The Berlin guide
The new directory to help you find your way around Berlin.
To advertise, contact ads@exberliner.com
mitte
Napoljonska Located just
off Zionskirchplatz, this vegetarian
café offers organic and homemade
delicacies. Enjoy a range of hearty
breakfasts reaching from spinach
omelettes to pancakes and French
breakfast. Here you can sip your organic
latte in a cosy atmosphere
with the young and old, locals and
travellers. Kastanienallee 43, U-
Bhf Rosenthaler Platz, Tel 030 3117
0965, Mon, Fri 08.30 -18.00, Tue-Thu
8.30-16:00 Sat- Sun 09- 19.00, www.
napoljonska.de
Kilkenny Irish Pub Natives
and visitors alike converge to
drink and party at this pub under
the beautiful Hackescher Markt station.
Enjoy homemade and international
pub grub plus a vast selection of
beers and spirits. Catch all the international
sports on big screens. Live
concerts two to three nights a week.
Easy 24h access to public transport.
Am Zwirngraben 17-20, S-Bhf
Hacke scher Markt, Mon-Sun from 10,
www.kilkenny-pub.de
Roland Weiss, Lawyer
Do you have employment law problems?
Roland Weiss (Rechtsanwalt,
German attorney at law) has advised
German and international clients on
labour law for more than ten years.
He speaks German, English, Swedish
and French. Friedrichstr. 210, U-Bhf
Kochstr., Tel 030 3406 0390, www.
weisslegal.de
Icons
Beauty
Coffee
Drinks
Entertainment
Food
Gallery/Art
Health/Wellness
Music
Languages/Education
Services
Shop
Sports/Fitness
Prêt-à-Vélo Carefully handcrafted
bicycles from England, Italy
and Belgium meet high-quality bags,
smart accessories for a day of biking
in the city, chic functional clothing
and office-ready bike shoes. As premium
partners of the brands Brooks
England and Fahrer Berlin, they focus
on sustainably designed products
that are produced in Europe
and that can often only be found in
their store. Fehrbelliner Str. 17, U-
Bhf Rosenthaler Platz, Mon-Fri 12-19,
Sat 10-16, www.pret-a-velo.de
Dolores Founded 10 years ago
as a street food pioneer in the German
capital, Dolores serves excellent
California-style burritos and quesadillas
– inspired by San Francisco’s Mission
district. Recommended by Time
Out, New York Times and Lonely Planet.
Voted #1 value for your money
by Exberliner readers. Rosa-Luxemburg-Str.
7, S+U-Bhf Alexanderplatz,
Tel 030 2809 9597, Mon-Sat 11:30-
22, Sun 13-22, www.dolores-berlin.de
Sauerkraut In a cosy, woodpanelled
room, German and American
cultures (Donald Duck meets
Hansel and Gretel!) clash head-on
with a menu of meaty delights. Seven
kinds of homemade Wurst, interesting
burgers and original tapas.
Daily lunch specials for €7.50.
Wein bergsweg 25, U-Bhf Rosenthaler
Platz, Tel 030 6640 8355, Mon-
Fri 8-1, Sat-Sun 9-1, www.restaurantsauerkraut.de
Kapitel Zwei Conveniently
located in the heart of Berlin, Kapitel
Zwei offers intensive German-language
courses from only €202 per
month. Their experienced teachers
and small class sizes will have you
speaking Deutsch in no time. All levels
offered from beginners to advanced,
start anytime! Karl-Liebknecht-
Str. 29, S+U-Bhf Alexander platz,
Tel 030 9562 5321, Mon-Thu 8:30-
12:30, 13:30-19, Fri 8:30-15:30,
www.kapitel-zwei.de
BTK University of Art and Design
offers a practical, international,
and personal study programme. The
creative minds of tomorrow can develop
their skills in innovative degree
programmes. Photography, Communication
Design and Media Spaces
are taught in English. All programmes
have an interdisciplinary approach;
one semester is scheduled
for practical experience. Bernburger
Str. 24/25, S-Bhf Anhalter Bahnhof,
www.btk-fh.de
BiTS University of Business Leadership
offers bachelor’s and master’s
degree programmes in business, media,
and psychology – “from entrepreneurs
for entrepreneurs”, practical,
international, and focused on
success. On its Berlin campus students
can study Business and Management
Studies and International
Sport and Event Management
in English. Bernburger Str. 31,
S-Bhf Anhalter Bahnhof, www.
bits-hochschule.de
wedding
The Castle Pub is a real pub
in the English/Irish sense of the word,
serving 20 different tap beers including
Guinness, Kilkenny, eight changing
craft beers and more. Monday
night is the prize quiz night when
the place gets packed. This oasis
in Gesundbrunnen gives you a
warm welcome, a big screen for special
match days and more. For special
events check www.castlepub.de
Hochstr. 2, S+U-Bhf Gesundbrunnen,
Mon-Sun 18-open end
PANKE supports edgy
creativity that happens away from
mainstream culture – anything that
they believe needs more exposure
than it currently receives. Enjoy vegan/vegetarian
food at their beautiful
summer terrace by the Panke river. On
Sundays they serve late brunch, and
Wednesdays through Saturdays the
Panke bar is open with a different programme
every day, including cinema
evenings, artist talks, DJs and parties.
Free wi-fi, children- and dog-friendly.
Gerichtstr. 23, Hof 5, S+U-Bhf Wedding,
Wed-Sun from 12, www.pankeculture.com
prenzlauer berg
Hanage is a small and authentic
Japanese restaurant. It‘s the only
place in Berlin where you can eat the
traditional Osaka-style okonomiyaki
– a savoury pancake baked with cabbage
and love. Choose from different
sauces and add fillings like bacon,
cheese or shrimp. Also try the tempting
Japanese desserts and sweets.
Raumerstr. 1, U-Bhf Eberswalder Str.,
Tel 030 120 743 421, www.hanage.de
Godshot belongs to the top of
the league, with excellent coffee and
super-friendly staff. Above all, they
know their stuff. Take your time, enjoy
the casual, laid-back atmosphere
of a great neighbourhood and one
of their delicious cakes. Immanuelkirchstr.
32, U-Bhf Senefelderplatz,
Mon-Fri 8-18, Sat 9-18, Sun 13-18,
www.godshot.de
LPG Biomarkt Your all-organic
neighbourhood supermarket
supplies fruit and vegetables,
meats, cheeses and even cosmetics.
Fill your basket with freshly baked
bread and treat yourself to a selection
of sweet and savoury goodies.
Kollwitzstr. 17, U-Bhf Senefelderplatz,
Mon-Sat 9-21, bakery from 7,
www.lpg-biomarkt.de
Comptoir du Cidre
Arti sanal ciders, perry, pommeau and
calvados... French Canadian siblings
Leila and Sidney Kristiansen are behind
Comptoir du Cidre, continental
Europe’s first bar solely dedicated
to craft ciders. Their tapas menu is a
play on traditional French bistro dishes
with subtle Japanese influences.
Kollwitzstr. 98, U-Bhf Eberswalder
Str., Tue-Fri 17-24, Sat 11-24, www.
facebook.com/comptoirducidre
Lesendro The recently opened
Lesendro on Kollwitzplatz is Berlin‘s
only original fish and seafood restaurant
from Montenegro and the Adriatic
Sea. They serve traditional dishes such
as variations on octopus, Buzara, Brodet
(bouilla baise), scampi baked in sea
salt and a wide variety of Mediterranean
fish. The warm and cosy atmosphere
with live piano at the week ends and
the friendly, heart-warming service will
make you feel right at home. Knaackstr.
45, U-Bhf Senefelder platz, Tel 030
2885 5003, Mon-Fri 17-23, Sat-Sun 12-
23, www.lesendro.de
Memory It’s easy to see why
Kylie Minogue shops here: a haven
for vintage lovers, the small boutique
offers an extensive range of 1950s
to 1970s treasures from handbags
and suitcases to jewellery and evening
dresses… at affordable prices!
Schwedter Str. 2, U-Bhf Senefelderplatz,
Mon-Sat 14-19
friedrichshain
Goura Pakora This vedic-vegan
restaurant and café serves wraps,
smoothies, freshly squeezed juices,
salads, thalis (big mix plates), dosas
(rice pancakes) and crispy pakoras.
100% fresh and homemade with
love! Krossener Str. 16, S+U-Bhf
Warschauer Str., Tue-Sat 12-23, Sun
12-22:30, www.goura-pakora.de
Chili & Paprika is a rare
piece of spicy culture in Berlin! A store
offering traditional Mexican specialities
and products from Latin America.
Their impressive selection of hot sauces,
tortillas, beans, habaneros, chorizo,
taco shells, nacho chips, chipotles,
beer and tequila will not let you
leave empty-handed. For a culinary
night of real Latin flavours and ingredients,
stop by their cosy shop!
Voigtstr. 39, U-Bhf Samariterstr.
Mon-Sat 11-20
50 • MAY 2015

ut very originally decorated parties.
Guests vary from tourists to transvestites
to people in elephant costumes.
Wrangelstr. 93, U-Bhf Schlesisches
Tor, Mon-Fri from 9, Sat from
11, Sun from 14, www.facebook.com/
sofiakreuzberg
ILLUSTRATION BY AGATA SASIUK
Café Morgenland On weekends
and holidays you’ll find a great
buffet here, complete with gourmet
cheese, fresh fruit and veg, crêpes
and other vegetarian dishes, cold
cuts, shrimp cocktails and more. Set
menus from €5. During Happy Hour
drinks are just €3.50 after 20:00. Reservations
suggested. Skalitzer Str.
35, U-Bhf Görlitzer Bahnhof, Tel 030
6113 291, Mon-Fri 9-1, Sat-Sun from
10, www.morgenland-berlin.de
Bastard From Bastard with love:
whether it’s breakfast, lunch or dinner,
this restaurant is not just for those
who were born out of wedlock. Choose
from the changing seasonal menu
created with love for fresh ingredients
and fine food. Our tip: try the homemade
stone-oven bread! Reichenberger
Str. 122, U-Bhf Görlitzer Bahnhof,
Tel 030 5482 1866, Mon-Sun 9-17,
www.bastard-berlin.de
Pic Nic 34 is a piece of real
Italian attitude serving fresh homemade
treats from piadinas to delicious
pasta dishes. Their spaghetti
is hand-made with love and respect
for good food. You might have seen
these guys with their truck serving
the finest Italian street food around
Berlin markets. If you love food,
stop here! Wiener Str. 34, U-Bhf
Görlitzer Bahnhof, Mon-Sat 12-22,
www.picnic34.com
Soylent Bar The bohemian bar
with its shabby-chic style, flea-market
furniture, boom boxes and street
art collection is the place to go to
knock back a few cocktails or try the
unique selection of premium vodkas
and hear an eclectic range of music
from soul to electronic in a local and
intimate atmosphere. Gabriel-Max-
Str. 3, S+U-Bhf Warschauer Str.
No Hablo Español The best
California-style Mexican street food
joint in Friedrichshain. Delicious
freshly made burritos and quesadillas
served by a collection of fun-loving
international people. Once a week,
challenge the NHE team in a game
of rock-paper-scissors and win a halfprice
meal! Kopernikusstr. 22, S+U-
Bhf Warschauer Str., Mon-Sun from
12, www.nohabloespanol.de
Workout Berlin Personal training
on pilates reformers. This unique
fitness studio combines the flexibility
of a gym with the personal attention
of a trainer. The challenging workouts
focus on core strength, coordination,
flexibility and endurance and
leave you feeling lean, strong and
at ease. Simplonstr. 23, S+U-Bhf
Warschauer Str., Tel 0173 5842 236,
www.workout-berlin.de
Monster Ronson’s Ichiban
Karaoke is the world’s craziest
karaoke club. Make out on
their super-dark dance floor, get
naked in the private karaoke boxes
and sing your favourite songs all
night. Warschauer Str. 34, S+U-Bhf
Warschauer Str., Mon-Sun from 19,
www.karaokemonster.de
Schillerburger The legacy
continues from Neukölln to Kreuzberg,
Pankow and Friedrichshain.
Voted one of the top 10 burgers in
Berlin with veggie, vegan, classic
& cheeseburgers with all the trimmings.
”The wise man makes provision
for the future.” – Friedrich Schiller
Wühlischstr. 41/42, S+U-Bhf Warschauer
Str., Mon-Sun 11:30-1, www.
schillerburger.com
Hops & Barley Serving
home-brewed pilsner and dark beer,
this is the place to go to get that proper
brew-pub vibe in Friedrichshain.
Cider and wheat beers are also on
tap. Part brewery, part bar, the interior
is beautifully decorated with antique
tiles. Wühlischstr. 22-23, S+U-
Bhf Warschauer Str., Mon-Sun 17-2,
www.hopsandbarley-berlin.de
kreuzberg
3 Schwestern Housed in a former
hospital turned art centre, this
spacious restaurant with big windows
overlooking a lovely garden serves
fresh, seasonal German and continental
dishes at reasonable prices. Breakfast
on weekends and holidays. Live
music and parties start after dessert.
Mariannenplatz 2 (Bethanien), U-
Bhf Kottbusser Tor, Tel 030 600 318
600, Mon-Sat from 11, Sun from 9,
www.3schwestern-berlin.de
Piri’s Inspired by the flavours
of Portugal, and Piri-Piri sauce in
particular, Piri’s brings the flavours
of Portuguese chicken in burger
form, with their very own special
recipe salsa, combined with delicious
homemade aioli and soft, seeded
buns. Wiener Str. 31, U-Bhf
Görlitzer Bahnhof, Mon-Sun 12-22,
www.piris-chicken.com
Sofia The small, cosy and usually
quite smoky cafe and bar serves hot
drinks until 20:00 and alcohol from
18:00 onwards. Bottled beer is served,
including local brands. Regular
highlights include inexplicably named
Chaparro is the place where
Mexicans go to eat. It‘s difficult to
choose between their delicious tacos,
tortas, tamales, burritos and their
many vegan classics. Get a comida corrida
and wash it down with one of their
homemade aguas frescas or mouthwatering
margaritas. Don‘t miss the one
taco-one euro Wednesday! (They also
sell their corn tortillas and salsas.)
Wiener Str. 14a, U-Bhf Görlitzer
Bahnhof, Mon-Fri from 12, Sat from 16,
Sun from 13, www.chaparro-berlin.de
Santa Maria Eat authentic
Mexican street food right on Oranienstraße,
with a bar offering a full range
of mezcal, tequila and cocktails. Enjoy
favourites like chilaquiles and tacos
de carnitas plus the biggest, tastiest
burritos in town. Oranienstr. 170, U-
Bhf Kottbusser Tor, Mon-Sun from 12,
www.santaberlin.com
LPG Biomarkt Your all-organic
neighbourhood supermarket
supplies fruit and vegetables,
meats, cheeses and even cosmetics.
Fill your basket with freshly baked
bread and treat yourself to a selection
of sweet and savoury goodies.
Reichenberger Str. 37, U-Bhf Kottbusser
Tor, Mon-Sat 8-21, bakery
from 7, www.lpg-biomarkt.de
51

ADVERTORIAL
Chez Michel is an authentic
bistro offering delicious French dishes
at prices from €5 to €14. All dishes
are cooked in the open kitchen, including
mouthwatering quiches, steak
frites, duck confit and daily rotating
specials. For dessert the French tarts
and crème brûlée are very, very seductive...
Adalbertstr. 83, U-Bhf
Kottbusser Tor, Tel 030 2084 5507,
Mon- Fri 11.30 -22.30, Sat- Sun 15-
22.30, www.chezmichel berlin.de
Dr. Dot gives the best massage,
erm, on Earth. Based in Kreuzberg
61, across from Viktoriapark, Dot has
the most famous hands in the biz. Either
she or one of her 850+ strong
team of massage therapists (Dotbots)
can massage you pretty much any
time, anywhere. Deep Tissue is their
specialty. www.drdot.com
neukölln
Pazzi X Pizza offers an amazing
selection of pizzas and creative
topping combinations including
seasonal varieties with pumpkin or
porcini. Innovative antipasti plates,
salads, tasty frappés and a charming
atmosphere. Slices from only €2!
Herrfurthstr. 8, U-Bhf Boddinstr.,
Mon-Sun 11:30-24
Mos Eisley Delicious artisan
gelato, healthy fruit sorbets and
lots of vegan ice cream flavors produced
right in Neukölln. We also offer
the super-good ice cream sandwiches
by “Zwei Dicke Bären“ as well
as great coffee and cakes. The perfect
stop on your way to Tempelhofer
Feld. Life is short, eat dessert first!
Herrfurthplatz 6, U-Bhf Boddinstr.,
Tel 030 6449 8900, www.moseisleygelateria.de
Mama Kalo Dig in to the
best of both German and French
cuisine at this cosy gem in Schillerkiez.
Everything is homemade, from
the Flammkuchen and Spätzle to
the quiche, soups, salads and desserts.
Freshly baked Kuchen, anyone?
Herrfurthstr. 23, U-Bhf Boddinstr.,
Tel 030 6796 2701, Mon-Tue, Thu 12-
22, Fri 12-23, Sat 15-23, Sun 15-22
Hepcat’s Corner Swing,
swing, swing! This comfy, warm Art
Nouveau café and bistro offers a
daily rotating menu including delicious
breakfast, coffee and homemade
cake- all accompanied by the
best swing tunes around. Live lessons
every Saturday from 19:00.
Schinkestr. 14, U-Bhf Schönleinstr.,
Tue-Sat 10-24, Sun 10-21, www.
hepcatscorner.de
Schillerbar serves fantastic
breakfast well into the afternoon
and great cocktails at night. Behold
the authentic red paint on the outside
wall intended to threaten the
bar upon opening, left there, and affectionately
responded to with hearts
stating “Schiller loves you anyway” (in
German of course). Herrfurthstr. 7,
U-Bhf Boddinstr., Tel 0172 9824 427,
Mon-Sun 9-2, www.schillerbar.com
Sala Da Mangiare Authentic,
traditional Italian cuisine. Queens
of the house: cappelletti, ravioli, tagliatelle,
strozzapreti and gnocchi,
handmade fresh every day. Ingredients
are sourced from Emilia Romagna,
organic farms and slow food
suppliers. You’ll feel right at home
in the intimate, friendly atmosphere.
Mainzer Str. 23, U-Bhf Boddinstr.,
Tel 0157 7068 3348, Tue-Sat 19-23,
www.saladamangiare.de
Prachtwerk One of a
kind in Neukölln, Prachtwerk is a spacious
café, music venue and gallery.
With a wide variety of local and
organic items, Prachtwerk serves
up Five Elephant Coffee, beer from
Neukölln’s Rollberg Brauerei, housemade
baked goods, tasty cocktails,
and more. The best part? All profits
benefit social projects. Ganghoferstr.
2, U-Bhf Karl-Marx-Str.,
www.prachtwerkberlin.com
Dr. Pogo Veganladen-
Kollektiv is a vegan-only grocery
store with a tiny café in cosy Rixdorf.
It’s a cooperative shop run by 12
dedicated individuals. Vegans will find
almost anything they need. Non-vegans
are welcome to discover interesting
plant-based alternatives and organic
products amongst 2000 items,
fresh vegetables and lots of bulk ware
for small portions. Karl-Marx-Platz
24, S+U-Bhf Neukölln, Mon-Tue, Thu-
Fri 9-20, Wed 12-20, Sat 9-16, www.
veganladen-kollektiv.net
schöneberg
Salon Bordel! “Qué Bordel!“
What a mess! But names can be deceiving.
Instead of being greeted by
Berliner Schnauze, you‘ll feel welcome
in this cosy, feel-good hair salon.
Their highly skilled staff with
over 10 years of experience will fulfil
your wishes and create the look you
desire. Hohen staufen str. 67, U-Bhf
Nollendorfplatz, Tel 030 2191 2480,
www.salon-bordel.de
Dolores Goes West The place
that revolutionised Berlin fast food
with awesome California-style burritos
ten years ago has a second store
on Wittenbergplatz, across from Ka-
DeWe. This location serves their best
classics and several great new spicy
combos. Bayreuther Str. 36, U-
Bhf Wittenbergplatz, Mon-Sun 11-22,
www.dolores-berlin.de
Kumpelnest 3000 The
legendary bar that made the Berlin
nightlife scene what it is today. This
brothel-turned-bar 25 years ago was
Bono’s hangout during his visits to
West Berlin. Kumpelnest hasn’t lost
any of its authenticity or wild side
over the years. Hipsters beware!
Lützowstr. 23, U-Bhf Kurfürsten-
str., Mon-Fri 19-5, Sat-Sun from 19,
www.kumpelnest3000.com
Computer Service
Julien Kwan Julien Kwan’s elegant
store for Apple computers and
other high-tech goodies is the place
for those who want more than just
a shop-and-go experience. Personalised
service makes browsing the
latest technology a true pleasure.
Vorbergstr. 2, U-Bhf Kleistpark, Tel
030 6170 0510, Mon-Fri 10-19, Sat
12-16, www.deinmac.de
charlottenburg
Café im Literaturhaus
Enjoy a coffee in one of Berlin’s finest
cafés, known for its courteous
staff and pleasant atmosphere in the
elegant and much-loved Literaturhaus
villa. The perfect stop during a
shopping trip on nearby Ku’damm.
Fasanenstr. 23, U-Bhf Uhlandstr.,
Tel 030 8825 414, Mon-Sun 9:30-24,
www.literaturhaus-berlin.de
Schwarzes Café Since the
1970s, Schwarzes Café on Savignyplatz
has been a cult favourite among
artists, anarchists, foreigners and
Charlottenburgers. They‘re open 24/7,
have English menus and serve organic
meat. Kantstr. 148, S-Bhf Savignyplatz,
Tel 030 3138 038, Mon-Sun all
day, www.schwarzescafeberlin.de
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52 • MAY 2015

ADVICE
ask
HANS-TORSTEN
Hans-Torsten Richter answers your questions about surviving and thriving
in Berlin. Write to hanstorsten@exberliner.com.
Dear Hans-Torsten: I was walking my dog,
on a lead, on Boxhagener Platz when a man
approached me. He flashed a laminated
piece of paper ID and said he was from the
“Umweltamt”. Was I aware that there are
no dogs allowed on green spaces that also
have a kids’ play area? That if the Ordnungsamt
comes, I’d be fined €120 for being in
the park with my dog? The man’s German
wasn’t great, and he was possibly new at his
job, so I couldn’t get any clarification: is this
a new regulation to do with the new dog
laws being implemented this year? Are dogs
forbidden because it’s a fenced-in area,
or does this apply to all parks that have
children’s play areas? Is there or isn’t there
a regulation that forbids dogs from all parks
in Berlin, even if they’re on a lead? —Finn
Dear Finn: This is indeed a frustrating and
confusing issue for dog owners. Nobody really
knows where what is allowed. It’s a little known
or much-ignored fact that five years ago, the
district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg officially
banned dogs from various public squares
and streets, including Weber wiese, Annemirl-
Bauer-Platz, Traveplatz, and, yes, Boxhagener
Platz. Presumably to get the ungodly amounts
of dogshit under control. On Boxi, it’s a double
Verbot: the “green” area where you were
walking your dog has some swings on it and
hence qualifies as a playground. For understandable
reasons of safety and hygiene, there
is a citywide ban on canines on playgrounds.
But there is a lot more you should
probably know about the byzantine legal
situation regarding dogs. Under current
law, you’re supposed to have your dog on
a lead on busy squares and streets (like
Alex and Ku’damm) and in all parks with
the green Naturschutzgebiet triangle (often
hard to read thanks to graffiti). But a new
law proposed by the Senatsverwaltung für
Justiz und Verbraucherschutz (Department of
Justice and Consumer Protection) will make
things stricter. The legislation is now making
its way to the Berlin state parliament, and if
it gets passed (which looks likely), it could
go into effect in 2016. The new Hundegesetz
will require your four-legged family member
to be leashed everywhere in the city, except
in designated Hundeauslaufgebieten (leadfree
zones).
Right now a ban on canines around
Schlachtensee and Krumme Lanke in the
Grunewald forest has spurred anger among
owners, as this was a favourite place to let
dogs splash around in the lake and roll in the
mud. Citing dog crap polluting the water and
endangering the health of bathing children,
the officials forbid dogs from swimming or
frolicking on the banks. In Grunewald, that’s
only possible in the Grunewaldsee – which
is already polluted as hell anyway, according
to the city’s website! Speaking of pollution,
next year you’ll feel the full force of my new
favourite German word: Kotbeutelmitführpflicht
(doo-doo-bag-carrying-duty). When
out with your dog you’ll have to always have
poop baggies with you. Always have an extra
unused one in case you get “controlled” by
the Ordnungsamt. And beware, the Senat
is hiring two additional people per district
just to monitor dog compliance. They’ll be
checking that your pooch has its mandatory
collar tag proving you’ve paid your dog tax.
(That’s €120/year for the first dog, €180/year
for each additional one! Pay it at your local
Finanzamt, if you haven’t done so already.)
The new law will bring in a bunch of new
intrusive measures. There’s the controversial
silly sounding “dog driving licence” which will
exempt you from keeping your dog on a lead
everywhere (Leinenzwang) if you pass a test,
the details of which are still murky. Professional
dog walkers will be required to carry
a similar certificate. And the near future will
bring a database of every registered dog in
Berlin containing data like their embedded
chip number, pedigree and whether they’ve
bitten someone. Yes, big data control has
even reached the world of pets. All this is
intended to get the city’s estimated 20,000
unregistered dogs into the system. But for the
100,000 law-abiding dog owners in Berlin, it
sounds like the bureaucrat killjoys just want to
dissuade you from having an animal.
Speaking of
pollution, next year
you’ll feel the full
force of my new
favourite German
word: Kot beutel­
mit­führ­pflicht­
(doo­doo­bagcarrying­duty).
53

ARTICLE SAVE BERLIN TAG
SIGRID MALMGREN
BEELITZER HEILSTÄTTEN
Studio Darwinism
DAN BORDEN on why Berlin needs more
space for artists – and what’s being done.
With two full-sized zoos, Berlin is a safe haven
for some of the world’s most endangered species.
But according to our mayor Michael Müller,
there’s a creature native to our own city that’s
rapidly losing its natural habitat and facing extinction:
artifex famelica, the Starving Artist.
Berlin’s population of young, international
creatives not only bolster the city’s post-Wall
reputation as Capital of Cool, they supply the
cultural mulch for its other burgeoning industries:
music, film and internet start-ups. Emptied
of painters and sculptors, Berlin would morph
into Frankfurt-on-the-Spree. But artists are also
classic harbingers of gentrification who turn dull
or decayed districts into hip neighbourhoods.
Once these pioneers have done the hard work,
real estate speculators move in.
Rising rents hit all Berliners, but artists are
doubly vulnerable because they need both
a place to live and studio space to work in.
They’re like canaries in the gentrification
coal mine. Unscrupulous owners exploit their
desperation, rebranding derelict industrial space
as ‘artists’ studios’, then packing hundreds into
squalid conditions.
A turning point came a few years ago when
several artists and designers were evicted from
affordable Kreuzberg studios. The building had
been sold. But the new owner wasn’t a developer
– it was a British millionaire art star (rumours
point to Douglas Gordon) who claimed the
whole building for himself. The incident signalled
an ugly shift: Berlin, the onetime laid-back
artists’ Eden, had been infected by the winnertake-all
mentality of New York and London.
Mayor Müller’s study warns that 70 percent
of Berlin’s 10,000 artists are currently struggling
to find affordable studio space. With an
average monthly income of €850, their pickings
are getting slimmer. Last year alone, 350 studios
disappeared, and residents of seven major studio
buildings currently face eviction. Berlin’s painters
are packing up and heading to Budapest,
Dresden and Detroit.
To staunch this migration, Mayor Müller has
promised to create 2000 city-funded studio
spaces by the year 2020. A pilot programme
announced in March will move 40 displaced
artists into new live/work spaces in a building at
Erkelenzdamm 11-13 in Kreuzberg. Berlin-based
architects Raumlabor promise a cutting edge
design using pre-fabricated building parts.
While the mayor’s plan is a welcome change,
those 40 new studios are a sparkly plaster on
a gaping wound. Even artists can’t quash the
greed that’s fuelling Berlin’s real estate bubble,
but they are a creative bunch. Here are some
alternative techniques for securing cheap
studio space:
Squat. And re-squat. When a Victorian-era
hospital on Mariannenplatz in Kreuzberg was
slated for demolition in 1974, a collection of
artists and protesters moved in and declared it
the Künstlerhaus Bethanien. After three decades
of artist residencies and exhibits, a group of
anarchists decided the place had become ‘too
establishment’ and squatted the building again.
The new squatters won out. In 2010, the old
guard moved to a new Künstlerhaus Bethanien
in the former Lichtfabrik factory nearby, at
Kottbusser Straße 10.
Take over the asylum. Another abandoned
hospital, the 1902 Beelitzer Heilstätten, is being
converted to a ‘creative village’ with 50 artist livework
flats, albeit an hour from Mitte. Developer
Frank Duske has already done the same with the
Krematorium Wedding, turning it into his Kulturquartier
Silent Green. Preservationists applaud
the decayed building’s salvation, but photographers
and filmmakers will mourn the loss of one
of Brandenburg’s most picturesque ruins.
Let a rock star do it for you. Canadian crooner
Bryan Adams has been an ardent Berlinophile
since before the Wall fell, and now he wants to
give something back. In the summer of 2013,
Adams bought several industrial buildings along
the Spree River in Oberschöneweide, southeast
of Treptower Park, with plans to turn them into
artists’ studios. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei had
been converting the ex-AEG factory into his
own studio in 2011 before he was placed under
house arrest in Beijing.
Mayor Müller’s “Save the Artists” campaign
may backfire. After all, being an artist in the 21st
century is less about making art and more about
“making it” in the cutthroat art world. Handouts
and government subsidies will only dull the claws
of aspiring Picassos and Monets. Adapt, evolve,
survive – that’s the harsh law of the art jungle. ■
The new owner wasn’t
a developer – it was a
British millionaire
art star who claimed
the whole building for
himself.
54 • MAY 2015

SEX
Ask Dr. Dot
q:
You have probably been asked this
before, but I just discovered Exberliner
and from what I have read in the online
archives, I can’t find your advice on this one:
how can I make my girlfriend come? I am 23,
she is 29 and we have been dating exclusively
for almost six months. Shagging our brains out,
sex is grand but I feel inadequate because I
can’t make her get there. I’ve eaten her pussy
till I had lockjaw, got blisters on my fingers and
my cock is ready to hang his head in shame.
Is it possible some women just can’t come or
have I lost my touch? All of my previous girlfriends
came so easily. This one is like a labyrinth
to me. Any feedback would be greatly
appreciated. – Perplexed Peter
a: There’s no way to know if all of these former
girlfriends were pretending or not. Surely some
did come, but some girls do pretend just to wind
things up and/or to make their guy feel like he
is the MAN. So you should not gauge the new
one according to the old ones. Simply ask her to
show you how she masturbates when she is all
alone. There is the sort of masturbation a woman
would do in front of a man just to turn him on, for
the visual aspect of it, and then there is the real
deal, which might not be visually exciting for a
spectator but surely gets them there quickly and
efficiently. This is the shit you need to witness
up close, in person to be able to replicate and
attempt. If she refuses (some chicks keep that a
secret) or it still doesn’t work: put on some Prince
or Barry White, low lighting, glass of wine, massage
her feet for a good half hour, then get her
on top of you, facing you, go in her, and grab her
ankles, slide her back and forth and try sucking
her tits at the same time... lots of work for you
but all the wonderful things in life are worth the
effort.
Send all questions or problems,
whatever they are, to me:
drdot@drdot.com
q:
My husband of one year recently told
me “Schatzi, I am sorry, I love you but I
simply cannot fuck the same pussy for
the rest of my life.” I asked him if he was leaving
me and he said “No, I just wanted to tell
you, I cannot be monogamous.” I was (and still
am) in shock. I just replied “Hmmm” with one
eyebrow raised and acted like it did not bother
me. But it does bother me. He is German and I
am American. Is this a German thing? Am I supposed
to roll with it? Does this mean I too am
free to have affairs? Seriously, Dr. Dot: WTF? –
Shell-Shocked Suzy
a: Such a situation has its pros and cons. Pros:
You can also have flings if you want and if he
catches you, remind him about his anti-monogamy
rant and say, “I thought this is what you wanted?”
Cons: If you are really in love, this shit can hurt
and make you feel like a carpet being walked all
over and if whoever else he is shagging grows
attached to him, you could be on her/his hit
list eventually. But the worst thing about open
relationships is STDs. Even IF condoms are being
used, there are a few nasty ‘gifts’ a person can
take home with them from oral fun – kissing included.
I seriously hate pissing on people’s parades,
but your health is your wealth. On the bright side,
at least your guy is being honest with you; he
could have just carried on for the rest of his life
doing it without you even knowing it. Perhaps, if
you can deal with the open relationship approach
and he agrees it works both ways, you can both
agree to very safe sex, as in, no kissing or oral sex,
just intercourse with condoms. All that depends on
how careful, thoughtful and sober people are, of
course. Note: Berlin is not famous for monogamy.
q:
I am a short guy amongst a city of
giants. I am 163cm tall at age 25. So
women literally look down on me. I can
pretty much eat pussy standing up if the girl
is tall enough. My mates take the piss because
I get rejected constantly when we all go out.
Not going to lie, it stings. I am nearly skint and
contemplating turning gay as the blokes all
seem to love me. Seriously DD, give us a hand
will ya? – Shorty under 40
A. Being bisexual will increase your chances of
getting laid, ’tis true. But just because a woman
tells you to “fuck off” doesn’t mean she won’t
be fucking you someday. What you lack in height
should be compensated with humour, flattery,
charm and generosity. Especially in Berlin, where
men pretty much refuse to buy a woman a drink.
Ladies would probably first be in shock, then disbelief
and finally overjoyed that you would spend
money on or compliment them (another rarity
here in Berlin). Use tactics that the tall stingy guys
don’t need to use. Don’t be afraid to offer a girl
wearing high heels a firm foot massage in a bar,
cafe, restaurant, nightclub, etc. This is the ultimate
icebreaker. I, for example, will pretty much do
anything for a proper foot rub...
www.exberliner.com/directory
55 • SEPTEMBER 2014

56 • MAY 2015

PROPAGANDA
From Hitler’s first right-hand man to homophobic smear campaigns by the left, homosexuality
and fascism have had a long, twisted relationship. What’s behind it? By Jason Harrell
or almost as long as National Socialism
has existed, people have tried to connect
it with homosexuality. Numerous
attempts have been made to try to prove
that Hitler was gay, although there is little to no
existing evidence that he ever slept with anyone,
man or woman. German sociologist Theodor
Adorno even famously wrote, “Totalitarianism
and homosexuality belong together.” The obsession
has continued to this day: the protagonist of
Jonathan Littell’s 2006 award winning novel, The Hirschfeld’s gay rights organisation
Kindly Ones, is an SS officer whose homosexuality Scientific-Humanitarian Committee
is seen as one of his defining characteristics. was shut down as well, as were many of
Perhaps the fascination persists because it the gay and lesbian bars around Berlin’s
seems like such a paradox: the Nazi party, so Nollendorfplatz. But homosexuals had
hellbent on eradicating gays, was itself bursting a powerful and unexpected supporter
with homoerotic imagery – masses of beautiful, in Röhm, who in those early days was
strapping Aryan men in uniform. This hasn’t thought to have maneuvered behind
escaped the gay community. There’s an entire the scenes to hinder persecution.
A group of blond
fetish subculture devoted to the idea of power
young men in Hitler
and masculinity once cultivated by the Nazis – it Homophobia in
Youth uniforms.
is not uncommon to see men dressed in mock SS the anti-Nazi left
and Gestapo uniforms during the Folsom Europe In June 1931, the socialist news paper
leather fetish festival in Schöneberg.
Münchener Post, which campaigned against phobic insults and outing went on throughout the
Hitler’s rise to power, started an effort to out 1930s, and Röhm was an obvious target. In 1933,
The first gay Nazi
top Nazi officials. They published excerpts from Braunbuch, a book about the Reichstag fire published
by the exiled Communist Party attempted
“The link between National Socialism and homosexuality
is very closely connected with the figure discussed his homosexuality – a way to discredit to discredit the Nazis’ claims that the fire was a
Röhm’s private correspondence in which he
of Ernst Röhm,” says sociologist and author Alexander
Zinn. Zinn’s book Das Glück kam immer corrupting the morality of the government he Lubbe, who was arrested for the act, as “Röhm’s
a political opponent they saw as perverted and communist plot by portraying Marinus von der
zu mir (Happiness always came to me) tells the story ‘infiltrated’. (Röhm actually sued the Münchener toyboy”. The book was translated into many
of Rudolf Brazda, the last surviving documented Post for libel; one of the article’s sources killed languages and several million copies were printed.
“pink triangle” concentration camp prisoner, himself in detention).
Other leftist resistance and antifascist publications
echoed this trend, sparking a propaganda
who was persecuted by the Nazis for being gay During and even before the golden years of the
and sent to Buchenwald.
Weimar Republic, sexual liberation went hand in campaign that aimed to slander the Nazi party by
The decidedly non-Aryan-looking Röhm was hand with artistic experimentation. Many leftwing
politicians and members of the avant-garde cialist exile resistance newspaper Deutsche Freiheit
accusing it of being full of homosexuals. The so-
relatively open about his homosexuality and
known within the Berlin gay subculture when were early supporters of gay, lesbian and transgender
rights – but obviously not all. Friedrich Engels tions are breeding nests for homosexuality from
wrote in 1934 that “National Socialist organisa-
Hitler appointed him SA Commander early in
1931. The Nazis’ paramilitary wing played a vital himself was far less progressive, as testified in top to bottom – including the youth organisations
role in securing power for the party, protecting a letter to Karl Marx in which he wrote that – like never seen before in German history.”
members and guarding events while intimidating homosexuality was “extremely unnatural” and that As pointed out by Klaus Mann, the Weimar
and fighting other groups.
these “pederasts” are “converting this smut into author, cabaret activist and gay son of famed
“Hitler had a tactical relationship to homosexuality,”
Zinn says. “He knew that Röhm was homo-
should pass on jokes about prominent German so-
Prague journal Europäische Hefte, left-wing
a theory”. For his part, Marx told Engels that he writer Thomas Mann, in a 1934 article in the
sexual and made him SA Commander anyway, because
he needed him. Röhm was a good organiser homosexuality to a newspaper editor friend if homosexuals – the Jews of the antifascists.” The
cialist politician Johann Baptist von Schweitzer’s organisations were “making scapegoats of the
and had the necessary military knowledge to build they needed to discredit him. While the Nazis homophobic anti-Nazi left was unwittingly but
up the SA the way that he had planned.”
saw homosexuality as a threat by a small deviant surely joining forces with the NSDAP in paving
When the Nazis finally came to power in 1933, group of people who were trying to force their the way for the persecution to come.
one of their first acts of oppression was to burn agenda upon the masses and pollute the healthy
the library of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for German race, homo phobic left-wingers saw it as a Cracking down
Sexual Research, an institution that advocated decadent perversion of the upper classes.
By 1934, membership in Röhm’s SA had exploded
the repeal of German anti-gay law Paragraph 175. Discrediting political enemies through homo-
to well over three million, and Hitler began to see
24 • APRIL 2015
the group as a threat. During that summer, as part
of the “Night of the Long Knives”, Röhm and
countless others were arrested. Around 200 died,
many of whom were murdered on the spot. Röhm
was given the chance to commit suicide. When
he refused, he was killed. It was after the so-called
“Röhm Putsch” that the Nazis began their persecution
of homosexuals in full force. Hitler used
the purge as propaganda against homosexuality in
the party, claiming that the real reason for Röhm’s
murder was that he was ridding the party of the
threat of his perversion. In 1936, SS chief Heinrich
Himmler created the Reich Central Office for
the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion.
The number of convictions under Paragraph 175
doubled in 1936 and quadrupled in 1937.
“Himmler and the others fought incredibly
hard against the idea that homosexuality could
be practiced in men’s associations, in the SS or
the SA,” says Zinn. “It suddenly seemed incredibly
dangerous. It was an anti-modern reaction
to the homosexual emancipation movement of
the 1920s and what was described in Hirschfeld’s
writings.” Zinn continues. During the Nazis’
reign some 55,000 men were deemed to be
criminals because they were homosexual. Around
15,000 of these died in concentration camps.
The present day
Seventy years and the trauma of one genocide
later, LGBTQ people are still the target of the
far right, for whom homophobia remains a big
part of the official discourse.
“The extreme right uses homophobia to
strengthen their group and ideology,” says Stella
Hindemith of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation
project Lola für Lulu, which works to combat farright
homophobia and transphobia in the northeastern
state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. At
the core of this ideology
is the idea that the
German race has to be
protected. Logically, the
most important component
needed to preserve
this is the German family.
Accordingly, Germany’s
most right-wing political
party, the NPD, clearly
states it in its programme:
“Homo sexual partnerships
do not form a
family and should not be
promoted.”
In the Mecklenburg-
Vorpommern parliament
in July 2014, during a
debate over the recent ban
on flying the rainbow flag over Schwerin’s city hall
for the Christopher Street Day Parade (the German
federal government had decided to disallow
the flag as well), NPD MP Stefan Köster argued,
“This small minority is trying to control life in
Germany. My faction will fight against this and we
will not allow a minority to be placed above the
well-being of the majority.” The ban was upheld.
“They advocate for women to have as many
children as possible,” Hindemith explains. “The
men should be like soldiers and take care of the
SS Führer Heinrich Himmler
(centre) looks over the
shoulder of SA leader Ernst
Röhm (right), August 1933.
women and children. You can imagine how this that doesn’t mean nobody in the far right is.
ideology stands in opposition to LGBT people. Carsten S., who is currently on trial in Munich
That’s why Nazis are extremely aggressive to for his complicity in the racist murders of 10
homosexuals and transgender people.”
people carried out by the National Socialist
This aggression, as Hindemith explains, is difficult
to trace, because violence against homosexu-
2000 after fleeing the group; he spent some time
Underground terror cell, came out as gay in
als and transgender people isn’t often recognised volunteering at an AIDS relief centre and a gay
as actually being the result of far-right extremism and lesbian youth organisation.
and the victims might not contact the organisations
who are able to provide support. Germany’s cases of neo-Nazi homosexuality since WWII,
While there have been a handful of other
domestic security agency publishes an annual most of those men also only came out after
report that includes right-wing criminal activities, leaving the right-wing scene. One exception was
but there is no category for Michael Kühnen, a leader of various far-right
homophobic attacks. groups, who came out in 1986 and subsequently
“Many of the problems wrote a treatise titled “National Socialism and
that we have today, all of the Homosexuality”. This treatise argued that gay
misanthropic ideologies – men were best suited for the National Socialist
struggle because they weren’t tied down by
racism, anti-Semitism,
homophobia or transphobia women or a family. Soon after, however, his
– they all have to do with the group fractured and he died of AIDS-related
fact that National Socialism complications in 1991.
hasn’t been processed well To be gay and a neo-Nazi is not as paradoxical
as it seems, says Hindemith. “What
enough,” says Hindemith.
“You have to imagine that it we know about this is that it is something that
is passed down through shouldn’t be out in the open,” she says. “No
families. There were
one should live openly as gay; then you are a
teachers and judges who “Schwuchtel” and that’s not allowed. But if a
were trained during the man has sex with a man but otherwise lives up
period of National Socialism to the far-right ideal, and he doesn’t talk about
and they continued to work it, then that can somehow be tolerated. It is a
in these jobs.”
strange grey zone. I wouldn’t say it’s like that
As Hitler did with Röhm, neo-Nazis also continue
to use propaganda to discredit gays within Nazis who see it like that.”
everywhere, but we know that there are some
the party. Recently, there was a press uproar over Meanwhile, the fascination continues to go
rumours that Holger Apfel, ex-chairman of the both ways, as a good number of out gay men continue
to embrace Nazi imagery – whether subver-
NPD, was forced to resign at the end of 2013
because he tried to put the moves on a younger sively, as in the gay skinhead movement, or purely
male NPD comrade.
sexually, as in the fascist chat groups on hookup
site GayRomeo. The latter sparked a think-piece
A lingering obsession
on queer internet magazine Etuxx titled “Gay
Apfel, who now reportedly lives in Mallorca with and brown: The new trend?” But as we know now,
his wife, may not actually be homosexual – but it’s actually a very, very old one. ■
25
FROM OUR READERS
TO THE EDITOR
In our queer issue (#137), we looked at the complicated connection
between Nazis and homosexuality.
Back to coffee and
Snowden
What about the undeniable
link between fascism
and vegetarianism?
The foundation of which
is at least as broad as that
of your article’s premise…
Seriously, what are
you even talking about?
Nazi connections
F
“Homosexuals
have become the
Jews of the
antifascists.”
Röhm was gay. Big news. What else? Not much. There probably are
some gay neo-Nazis now. And some gay guys might agree that your
second Aryan from the left is rather hot – the others not so much.
Conclusion: EXB should keep focusing on coffee shops, rental
bikes, house music and Edward Snowden. – Lorenz
I don’t want to relate!
While your article about alleged homosexuality among Nazis was
interesting, there is nothing about this kind of investigation that
helps us move on from the terrors of Nazism. Focusing on homosexuality
among the Nazis only serves to humanise them. I had the
same feeling when I read somewhere that Himmler wrote tender
letters to his wife, mostly about their daughter Puppi, while he
committed daily atrocities. It doesn’t make the Nazis more repellent,
it makes them more relatable, something we should take care
not to do. – Hitler Hater
Also in that issue, a trans voice trainer explained the art
of sounding feminine.
Find your own voice
I found your “Queer in the City” article from April’s issue super
informative. However, the “How To Sound Like A Woman” section
is perhaps borderline generalisation. I do not think there should be
so much attention on how ‘high’ girls’ voices sound or how women
elongate their words. And the idea of someone expressing him
or herself should not turn into them trying to conform with the
‘norm’. – Mama Sings Bass
PHOTOS: DEUTSCHE BUNDESARCHIV, CC-BY-SA
“If a man has sex
with a man but
otherwise lives
up to the far-right
ideal, then it can
somehow be
tolerated, as long
as he’s not too
obvious about it.”
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TWO OPEN-AIR STAGES
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