EXBERLINER Issue 148 April 2016

Issue 148 • €2.90 • April 2016
ATHINA RACHEL TSANGARI: “I thought it’d be interesting to
experiment with an all-male cast on a boat.” (p.28)
STEREO TOTAL: “We wouldn’t write a song about Merkel.” (p.36)
HAMID SULAIMAN: “In Syria, no one has the right to say that they have
nothing to do with war.” (p.42)
Drugs, crime, violence:
Is Kottbusser Tor really
a ‘no-go zone’?
START-UPS
Our new regular
section on the
Berlin scene
KREUZBERG
CHARACTERS
“It was a tiny island with
bikers and hippies... and
then came the Ossis.”
www.exberliner.com
NOT JUST
FOR TOURISTS
A Kotti guide for
hipsters, natives,
queers and Easyjetters
CHEAP EATS
ON KOTTI
From burek to baklava,
five great places for that
real Kreuzberg flavour
100% made in Berlin.
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What’s on? • Art • Fashion • Film • Food • Music • Nightlife • Stage

POP
100 Years of Recorded Music
16
April 28
–May 1, 2016
Ebo Taylor
Hieroglyphic Being
Miharu Koshi
Sam Lee & Friends
Reem Kelani
American Epic Sessions
and more
Design: NODE Berlin Oslo

REGULARS
03 Werner’s political notebook The
AfD: Worse than you think
ISSUE 148, APRIL 2016
04 Best of Berlin BierYoga, Noize
Fabrik, Tante Frizzante and cheap
designer specs
SPECIAL:
KOTTBUSSER TOR
06 Is Kotti burning? Drug dealing,
violence, pickpocketing... what’s
happening in Berlin’s most volatile
neighbourhood?
09 Prescription for gentrification
The demise of the corner pharmacy
in Kreuzberg
10 Loving the mess Dan Borden on
the evolution of Kottbusser Tor
12 The boys of Kotti The bikers,
punks, artists and shop owners
who’ve made the Kiez their own
18 Which Kotti are you? A guide for
tourists, hipsters, natives and queers
22 Rant The May Day revolution ain’t
what it used to be...
23 Spotlight Blumen Dilek, the flower shop
that (almost) never sleeps
MARIA RUNARSDOTTIR
48 Berlin bites Kotti food and Allan’s
Breakfast Club
50 Start-ups Our new section
on Berlin tech beyond the hype
53 Close-up Grada Kilomba of
Kosmos²
NEW!
54 Comic: Bjørn in Berlin
55 Ask Hans-Torsten
56 Ask Dr. Dot
57 Letters to the editor
WHAT'S ON
24 Events calendar
26 Film
32 Stage
35 Music and nightlife
40 Art
44 The Berlin Guide
Achtung Berlin and Exberliner Magazine present:
Achtung Film
Festival April 13–20
The
Film Award
APRIL 13, 20:00
Opening reception
at Kino International
APRIL 20, 20:00
Award ceremony at
Filmtheater am Friedrichshain
and after-party at Bassy
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“It was a tiny island with
bikers and hippies... and
then came the Ossis.”
www.exberliner.com
A Kotti guide for
hipsters, natives,
queers and Easyjetters
Issue 148 • €2.90 • April 2016
ATHINA RACHEL TSANGARI: “I thought it’d be interesting to
experiment with an all-male cast on a boat.” (p.28)
STEREO TOTAL: “We wouldn’t write a song about Merkel.” (p.36)
HAMID SULAIMAN: “In Syria, no one has the right to say that they have
nothing to do with war.” (p.42)
From burek to baklava,
five great places for that
real Kreuzberg flavour
U1 Cover 148.indd 2 21/03/16 21:30
Drugs, crime, violence:
Is Kottbusser Tor really
a ‘no-go zone’?
KREUZBERG
CHARACTERS
NOT JUST
FOR TOURISTS
CHEAP EATS
ON KOTTI
START-UPS
Our new regular
section on the
Berlin scene
What’s on? • Art • Fashion • Film • Food • Music • Nightlife • Stage
ISSUE 148
Cover photo by
Miron Zownir
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Maurice Frank, Nadja Vancauwenberghe,
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paper.
■ Werner's political notebook By KONRAD WERNER
The AfD: Worse
than you think
So Germany has a new political party. Last
month, the “Alternative for Germany” persuaded
enough Germans that they should be represented
in three state parliaments. They even took almost
a quarter of the voters in one of those states (Saxony-Anhalt).
Not only that, it was on the back
of a proper turnout (between 60-70 percent), so
you can’t say that voter apathy let extremists get a
representation they don’t deserve. This was what
the people wanted.
But what does the AfD believe? What do they actually
want? These are especially
important questions because,
according to a ZDF poll, some
75 percent of their voters didn’t
vote for them because of their
political demands, but “to give
the other parties a warning”. But
the investigative journalists at
Correctiv last month got hold
of a draft of an AfD manifesto
(to be approved by the party this
month), which maps out some of
their ideas for how to run the country.
Here they are. (TL;DR: Ted Cruz would join.)
Stop trying to save the environment: The
AfD doesn’t believe in man-made climate change,
which they say is based on “computer models whose
conclusions aren’t confirmed by measurements
and observations.” That’s why they want to scrap
Germany’s Renewable Energy Act, which came into
force in 2000 and was updated in 2014 to administer
the transition to renewables. “We will end the
stigmatisation of CO2 as a pollutant and stop all
unilateral action by Germany for the reduction of
CO2 emissions,” the manifesto says. It also wants
to loosen Germany’s fracking law even further and
extend the life of nuclear power stations.
Imprison alcoholics, drug addicts, and the
psychologically disturbed: No more messing
about. The AfD plans to get rid of the rehabilitation
and treatment of criminals with mental illnesses
THE PARTY
WANTS TO
BAN MINARETS,
AS A “SYMBOL
OF ISLAMIC
DOMINANCE”.
– anybody who hurts
someone else or “poses
a danger” should go to
prison, no matter what.
Restrict Muslim and
Jewish rituals, but
especially Muslim
ones: An internal email
exchange between
AfD deputy Beatrix
von Storch and other party leaders, also revealed
by Correctiv, showed that she considers the issues
of asylum and the euro as “all used up” and that
she now thinks the party needs to concentrate on
discrediting Islam. To that end, the AfD wants to
ban circumcision and halal (and
kosher) slaughter. It also wants
to ban minarets, as a “symbol
of Islamic dominance”, as well
as burqas and niqabs in public.
Meanwhile, imams should only be
allowed to teach Islam in German
after having attended a German
university. All this, says the AfD,
will aid integration.
No more “single parent
propaganda”: Don’t really need
to parse this bit of the manifesto for you: “Those
who have fallen into this situation through no fault
of their own of course deserve our empathy and
the support of the community. But we reject any
state financing of the self-chosen lifestyle ‘single
parent’. We are strongly against the attempts of
organisations, media, and politicians to propagate
single parenthood as a normal, progressive, or even
desirable lifestyle.”
No more inheritance tax, profit tax, or
government unemployment benefits: The
AfD plans to get rid of the two taxes that affect
the rich the most. It also wants unemployment
benefits to be privatised, so that “employees will
have the path cleared for their own individual and
tailored solution.”
In conclusion: I think Germany can stop sniggering
and shaking its head about Donald Trump and
his supporters. We just voted them in here. ■
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3

BEST OF BERLIN
BY THE EXBERLINER EDITORIAL TEAM.
Best spiritual boozing
Suffering from a mild existential crisis
after a few Cuba Libres? Want to approach
an ancient cultural practice the
same way you do a night out on the
tiles? Well, of course you do. Combining
the current “mindfulness” craze with
everyone’s favourite hoppy beverage,
BIER YOGA comes to Berlin courtesy of
Jhula, a professional yoga instructor who
first saw the concept at Burning Man. At
the club Loftus Hall on Maybachufer, the
sweet sounds of chilled house, the smell
of dropped pints and meditation guided
by disco lights accompany your journey
into a deeper consciousness. The hourlong
session costs €5; another €6 will
get you two beers or Radlers (shandies),
which Jhula creatively incorporates into
classic yoga moves. Turns out Natarajasana
(or, as it’s known to Western
yogis, the “Lord Of The Dance Pose”)
is easily adapted to include bending a
cold bottle of beer into your mouth. True
yoga practitioners may find it all rather
blasphemous, but consider that the exercise
is still about control: if Buddha once
pressed his tongue against the roof of
his mouth to stem his hunger, then surely
this is the same thing. Full of laughs and
jokes about inner peace and the joys of
beer, the class is taught in German at
a beginner-friendly pace and features
paired moves, too. If this sounds like
your kind of Friday night pre-game, hop
online to bieryoga.de for listed dates. SB
BierYoga, Loftus Hall, Maybachufer 48,
S-Bhf Schönleinstr., every third Friday 19-
20; check website for additional locations
Best don’t-call-it-a-Späti
Amid the garish neon signs and buzzing all-night watering
holes of Hermannstraße, you could almost miss
TANTE FRIZZANTE. But peek into its white-walled interior
and you’ll see crates of beer, bottles of prosecco and
shelves of liquor. So, a Späti? Nope, it’s a self-proclaimed
“drinks concept store”: the beer is craft, the prosecco
is Tante Frizzante’s own brand (€6.70/bottle) and the
doors close promptly at 10pm. “We’ll do shots,” Andreas
Diermeier, one of a trio of Germans who inflicted this
latest hipster business whim on Neukölln back in August,
decides when we arrive. Unorthodox, but he’s onto something:
after necking some Que Fuerte (the house brand
of Mexikaner, made with tequila) we’re definitely more inclined
to overlook the pretension. It’s a specialty they roll
out at parties and tasting sessions. Yes, every Saturday
from 5pm, you can try a selection of Tante Frizzante’s vast
store of “non-mainstream drinks“, comprising around 180
beers, 40 wines and 130 spirits from local producers like
Bierfabrik (€2.70/0.3L), Fräulein Brauer (€3.30/0.3L) and
gin label Elixier (€29/bottle). That the sessions, and the
store, have built up a loyal following over the past months
is hardly surprising: if you’re a neighbourhood craft beer
fanatic looking to taste and buy fancy drinks, Tante Frizzante’s
not just the new kid on the block, it’s the only kid
on the block. And if nothing else, a stop here guarantees
you’ll have the most sophisticated tipple at your friends’
Tempelhof picnic. HB Tante Frizzante, Hermannstr. 95,
Neukölln, S+U-Bhf Hermannstr., Mon-Fri 8-22, Sat 10-22
4 • APRIL 2016

OLIVER MILSTER
Best cheap,
sexy specs
Whether you’re near- or far-sighted,
astigmatic or just need something to
decorate your pretty face, your field of vision
has never been broader. 2016 is shaping up
to be the Year of the Affordable Designer
Spectacle in Mitte, with cheap and stylish
imports piling into a market once dominated
by hometown brands Mykita and IC Berlin.
Exhibit A: the formerly online-only Dutch
company ACE & TATE, whose bookish,
classically styled glasses start at just €98
(including frames, lenses and a vision test). A
year after their pop-up on Torstraße, they
finally opened a branch by Hackescher Markt
last December. Made of, yes, acetate, but
also organic cellulose (as in their new “Black
Is The New Green” collection), available as
prescription specs or sunglasses, these
frames are rapidly becoming de rigueur
among the creative set. If you want to stand
out, consider futuristic contender YUN.
Combining the talents of fashion designer
Ji-yoon Yun and her father, a lens specialist,
the Korean company’s flagship store brings
Asian minimalist design principles and
cutting-edge tech to the table. It won’t
break the bank, either: €149 will get you an
eye exam and a new pair of glasses, made in
just 20 minutes. A machine winding through
the showroom delicately sets the lenses into
one of the 120 frames, from Morrissey-style
horn-rims to funky leopard-print cat eyes. As
chic as Mykita? Maybe not, but definitely
enough to convince prospective Tinder dates
you’ve read some Dostoyevsky. KC Ace &
Tate, Große Präsidentenstr. 10, Mitte, S-Bhf
Hackescher Markt, Mon-Sat 11-20 YUN,
Rosenthaler Str. 11, Mitte, U-Bhf Weinmeisterstr,
Mon-Sat 11-20
see what
you‘re
missing
Best co-working
for musos
At first glance, Oliver Moertl and Marcus Huppi
of NOIZE FABRIK are working off of two faulty
assumptions: that Berlin musicians, producers
and music-related freelancers have money, and
that they’ve somehow been longing to leave the
comfort of their bedrooms for a Betahaus-like
co-working space in the borderlands between
Neukölln and Treptow. But if the above describes
you, Noize Fabrik will be paradise. Located in
the same Hinterhaus as experimental venue NK
Projekt, it sports wide tables ripe with electrical
sockets, comfortable ergonomic seating, plenty
of secondhand couches to relax in, a bar (stocked
with 1312 “riotbeer” from Kreuzberg) and a large
wooden stage packing a full sound system and
projector for music production and industry workshops,
jam sessions and monthly movie nights.
The coup de grâce: three soundproof studios, including
a window-lined rehearsal room that hosts
special live performances for the co-workers.
Considering Noize Fabrik is still getting its legs in
the co-working game, isn’t all that accessible (the
closest S-Bahn station is a kilometre away) and
lacks a proper lunch canteen, the bands might be
playing to empty seats. But even if Moertl and
Huppi fail to attract their ideal musical mix, at just
€10/day or €159/month for a fixed desk, Noize
Fabrik is a pretty good destination for neighbourhood
freelancers looking for a cheap spot to
spread out and get some work done, whether
they can keep a beat or not. KC Noize Fabrik,
Elsenstr. 52, Neukölln, S-Bhf Treptower Park,
Mon-Fri 9-21, Sat 11-19
native speaker
Goltzstraße 12 - Schöneberg
5
215 40 60

COVER STORY
Bustling with Germans, Turks, punks, queers, tourists, dealers, addicts, pickpockets
and beggars – and the same homeless guy always preaching from the top of the
phone booth – Kottbusser Tor’s never been boring. But recently, a rise in gang
activity, assault and petty crime have led to the media dubbing Kotti a “no-go
zone”. What’s going on in Berlin’s most volatile Kiez? By Anna Gyulai Gaal and René Blixer
MIRON ZOWNIR
In any other part of Berlin, you’d expect a
neighbourhood meeting called on the fifth
floor of a museum to be attended only by
a handful of cranky German retirees, a few
concerned mothers and maybe a sprinkling of
well-meaning students. Not Kottbusser Tor.
The Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum is so
packed that they’re showing a simulcast of
tonight’s event on the third floor, on screens that
normally display the video installation “Scenes
from Görlitzer Park”. Up on the top floor, some
300 attendees mirror Kotti’s famed Kreuzberger
Melange. There are Turkish shop owners, ageing
German hippies, young mothers, bespectacled
hipster types, an African refugee, an overeager
anarchist named Andre who won’t wait his turn
to speak before spitting vitriol at the “Bullen” (a
derogatory term for the cops akin to “pigs”)...
and about a dozen journalists.
The topic: “Kippt der Kotti?” Is Kotti on the
edge of collapse?
The changing climate
The German media has
been quick to seize on
residents’ sense of
panic. Die Welt declared,
“If you exit the
U-Bahn here, you’ve
got yourself to blame.”
This isn’t necessarily a new question. Kottbusser
Tor’s reputation as Berlin’s most derelict neighbourhood
dates back to Kreuzberg’s days as an
‘island’ of punks, squatters and poor migrants,
wedged up next to the Wall in the 1970s and
1980s. Kotti was once the turf of mostly-Turkish
street gang 36 Boys, who became famous not
only for their muggings and extraordinary battles
with neo-Nazis, but also for the notoriety later
acquired by ex-gang members (from star chef
Tim Raue to Germany's most famous rapperturned-ISIS
jihadi Deso Dogg). Dealers and
junkies have always been part of the neighbourhood
fabric, even as Kotti’s rents have risen and
its tourist and expat population exploded. “I remember
this bar down on Dresdener Straße that
had holes in the teaspoons so that the junkies
wouldn’t be able to dissolve their heroin. They
also had neon lights in all the toilets, so they
couldn’t see their veins!” says Birgit, a German
teacher who has lived in the area since 1991.
But everyone seems to agree that the past
year or so has been different. New gangs have
moved in, mostly recent arrivals from North
Africa, sparking a new wave of violence, robbery
and pickpocketing. Police confirmed the rise in
crime in February (see box), but residents didn’t
need statistics to tell that the neighbourhood’s
climate had worsened.
“I’m scared to walk through Kotti at night,”
says Cynthia, a 27-year-old Australian who has
lived on Dresdener Straße since May 2015. “I
work at a bar, so I come home late and all alone,
and there are these guys standing there, trying to
rip people off, maybe even physically attacking
them. There was a young woman stabbed right in
front of me in February; fistfights are becoming
more and more common... I often ask my boyfriend
to pick me up from the station now.”
“I avoid the centre of the square,” affirms
6 • APRIL 2016

“They don’t care about
the police and they
don’t respect the locals.
They harass women.
They might have come
with the refugees, but
they are not refugees.”
Birgit, referring to the dark alleys and passages
around the monolithic Neues Kreuzberger Zentrum
(see page 10), the vast 1970s housing and
commercial complex which dominates Kotti.
“These guys can be very violent – and rude. They
told me once that I should lose some weight
when I asked one of them to move from the
middle of the stairs. I’ve heard worse too… I’ve
got friends who are afraid to get their döners, or
who get off the U-Bahn at another stop.”
The German media has been quick to seize on
residents’ sense of panic. An article in the conservative
newspaper Die Welt in March declared
Kotti a “no-go zone”, with the title: “If you exit
the U-Bahn here, you’ve got yourself to blame.“
Who are the new guys?
Nobody sees Kotti’s changing situation more
clearly than those involved with drugs – like the
Turkish-German Hakan*, 26, who dealt heroin,
marijuana and hashish for nearly four years.
He stopped about 18 months ago: he’d met his
now-fiancée and wanted to get out of the game
anyway, but also, he says the business had gotten
a lot more difficult. “I knew everyone doing it.
At the beginning, Turks had more drug business
here – but then Arabic groups came and the area
got divided. The North Africans have taken
over the street and the Turks deal inside.
That wouldn’t be a problem. The problem
is that the new gangs cannot make peace
with each other. There are always newer
and newer people coming; they don’t understand
how important it is to have hierarchy
in this business. And so they fight.”
We meet Hannah*, a 41-year-old who has
been struggling with heroin addiction since
she was a teenager, by the U8 entrance.
She spends a lot of time there, she says,
although “the new guys don’t like us hanging
out around here too long – they do their
business and tell us to leave.” She has seen
dealers come and go around the station for
years. “The groups do change. I’ve been
buying my shit here since 2009; I’ve seen
so many faces amongst the dealers. At the
beginning there were Turks too but now,
I don’t meet any. Here, it’s Arabs. I don’t
know where they are from exactly. Probably
mixed with all of these refugees...”
How exactly the new dealers got here
is a point of some contention around the
Kiez. Erçan Yasaroglu (see page 17) – social
worker, owner of multicultural meeting
point Café Kotti and one of the single most
MARIA RUNARSDOTTIR
quoted voices in the Kotti debate – has been
literally on top of the goings-on around the station
for over six years (his bar is on the NKZ’s
first floor), and he has his theories. “I believe that
these new gangs are part of an organised crime
scene, coming from North Africa using the refugee
routes. It’s the same organisation here as it is
in Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne… I’ve travelled to
all these cities and seen it. But nothing changes,
because these new gangs have no respect! They
don’t care about the police and they don’t respect
the locals. They harass and grab women, they
are violent, and so people are afraid. They might
have come with the refugees, but they are not
refugees,” says Yasaroglu, who hires asylum
seekers at Café Kotti. “And because of them our
whole Willkommenskultur is being destroyed!”
Yasaroglu isn’t the only one to bring up
Cologne: in January, journalist Mark Terkessidis
wrote an article in local paper Der Tagesspiegel
comparing the Kotti situation to the city where
an infamous wave of sexual assaults and robberies
took place on New Year’s Eve. Both were
present at “Kippt der Kotti?”, where the moderator’s
mention of the comparison brought on
immediate angry shouts from the audience
before Terkessidis could even defend himself,
indicative of the conflicted emotions that still
linger months after the New Year’s incident.
“Cologne is different!” “What does Cologne
have to do with this!?”
No definite connection has been made,
beyond many of the criminals’ North African
roots. The 2015 police statistics for the Kottbusser
Tor area show a dramatic rise in pickpocketing,
robbery and drug dealing suspects
with Libyan, Tunisian, Egyptian, Moroccan,
Algerian and Syrian passports. “At least some say
that they are from Algeria,” says Andreas Bembenek
(see page 15). At his café Kremanski, the
upscale oasis located right at Kotti’s centre, he
Rising crime at Kotti
Arrests in police precinct 53, 2014 vs 2015*
PICKPOCKETING
361 (2014)
775 (2015)
ROBBERY
52 (2014)
80 (2015)
DRUG DEALING
35 (2014)
90 (2015)
DRUG POSSESSION
110 (2014)
252 (2015)
*Internal Berlin police statistics as reported
to the Berliner Morgenpost, 2015
sees drug dealers and thieves ply their trade on
a daily basis. “We’ve asked them several times
not to do their business here but it’s hard to
prevent, because I cannot prove it. Otherwise,
they just sit here – they pay for their coffee, and
they are very nice and polite. At the same time,
you can see how the group’s younger members
are ‘dancing’ around people passing by behind
the store and ripping them off, then throwing
their purses back at them once they have taken
the money out.”
He’s referring to “Antanzen”, a “dance trick”
that was also used by the Cologne pickpockets.
Hakan says he's also witnessed those tricks,
though he says the perpetrators might have
different origins: “It’s the other gangs, from Albania
and Bulgaria and of course, the Romanian
gypsies, who end up with petty things like pickpocketing,
because they’re not strong enough to
compete with the Arabs and Turks.”
▼
7

Calling in the Bullen
At “Kippt der Kotti?”, police commander Tanja
Knapp dismisses the Cologne argument entirely:
she doesn’t care where the criminals come from,
only that they get caught. Last year, Knapp was
appointed head of Polizeiabschnitt (precinct) 53,
the police division in charge of the Kottbusser
Tor area. Since then, the police have been a nearconstant
presence in the neighbourhood, with
uniformed officers patrolling near the station
and a plain-clothes team working with café and
shop owners to monitor criminal activity.
“The police has leads about the gangs, of
course,” Bembenek says. “There are forces
around all the time, watching and waiting for a
good opportunity – even as we speak.” He and
many others around Kotti seem to know exactly
who is who in the gangs and where they stand
in the hierarchy. The big bosses come every
once in a while with expensive cars, stopping
just for a few minutes to drop drugs off. Others
are supervisors who sit in nearby cafes, selling
to ‘higher class’ customers and watching closely
over the “flock” of dealers standing directly at
the exit of the U8.
So why are they still on the streets? The Berlin
police has stopped responding to all media
inquiries about Kottbusser Tor, arguing they
can no longer cope with the scores of journalists
asking for interviews. After those incendiary,
scaremongeirng articles published in the press,
they might just want to wait for the hype to
“Of course there’s
twice as much crime,
but there are twice
as many tourists now.
Criminals go where
people are.”
defuse. Cornered after the Kotti
debate, Knapp insists on the difficulty
of the task at hand. “You have
to understand that we cannot just
arrest people because someone’s
pointing at them. We investigate,
and we’ll eventually make an arrest
if there is a reason. But afterwards,
it’s still not in our hands whether
there is proof against somebody or
not. We are doing our job.”
Kottbusser Tor’s special history
as a hub of anti-establishment
resistance means that not everyone
in the neighbourhood has welcomed
Knapp and her team with
open arms. “Do we really need so
many officers?” questions Richard
Stein, owner of Kotti queer
institutions Südblock and Möbel
Olfe. “If something really happens,
it still takes over half an hour till
the authorities get there. It’s shit
for our 'hood as well, suddenly
seeing three neighbours lined up at a wall being
searched, just because they look suspicious!”
Supply and demand
MARIA RUNARSDOTTIR
Bembenek has no problem with the cops, but
fears their efforts may be futile: “Even if they
catch a group and they all disappear, a new
one will come.” And why wouldn’t they? Visit
Oranienstraße any given weekend night and
you’ll encounter roving groups of twentysomethings
speaking English, Spanish or Swedish,
blocking the paths of locals just trying to carry
home their groceries. They’ve read about the
wild nightlife around Kottbusser Tor, and
they’re here to experience it for themselves...
and provide a veritable buffet of opportunities
for dealers and pickpockets. Over the years,
Hannah has seen the variety of drugs offered
around the station increase beyond heroin to
MIRON ZOWNIR
“weed, hashish, pills, cocaine... things like that”
– everything you’d need for an epic Berlin party
weekend. “Of course there’s twice as much
crime, but there are twice as many tourists now.
Criminals go where people are,” points out
longtime Kreuzberger Wolfgang Müller matterof-factly
(see page 13). There’s no stemming the
tide, either: 2015 saw over 1.7 million visitors
to Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, a seven percent
increase over the previous year.
Meanwhile, the locals of Kottbusser Tor are
largely left to fend for themselves. The management
behind the Neues Kreuzberger Zentrum
recently announced plans to hire private security
to supplement Knapp’s police force, and
for the past three months, a group of citizens
has instituted a weekend night watch between
Kottbusser Tor and Görlitzer Park. This is a
neighbourhood that’s fought before – against
right-wingers, racism, homophobia, rising rents,
corporate chains, you name it – and it’s unlikely
that the current uptick in crime will keep Kotti
down for long. Exberliner's own Walter Crasshole,
who’s been living in the neighbourhood for
the past seven years, thinks all the media attention
is only exacerbating the situation. “It got
to the point that I was panicking about going
outside while I was reading all the articles. But
it only lasted till I walked out my door. I realise
there is a problem out there, of course, but to
me, Kotti just feels the way it always does.”
It's late at the Kreuzberg Museum, and as the
“Kippt der Kotti?” meeting comes to an end and
residents scatter away, one can't help thinking
that even though those hundreds of people
might not agree on many things, the very fact
that they bothered to come here tonight and
argue speaks for their immense loyalty to the
neighbourhood. Their solidarity might just be
the silver lining to the whole situation, concludes
Yasaroglu. “If we don’t get together and
take responsibility, we are going to lose. I still
believe in humanity, you know.” n
* Names changed.
8 • APRIL 2016

URBAN CHANGE
Prescription
for gentrification
Defeated by high rents and
low profits, Kotti’s historical
corner pharmacies are being
occupied by chic bars and
cafés. Cause to break out the
antidepressants? By Kevin Chow
When café and cocktail joint Ora
opened last year amid the boutiques,
bookstores and bars on
Kreuzberg’s Oranienstraße, it was
a near-instant blogosphere hit. But it’s not just
the homemade sourdough bread and cinnamon
buns that get the Instagram treatment from a
clientele of fashionable young internationals juggling
Voo Store bags. It’s also the magnificent location,
with stucco ceiling, stone floors and a rich
wooden counter backed by a wall of medicine
bottles and tiny shelves, all over 150 years old.
This was the Oranien-Apotheke, once known
as the “Purveyor of the Emperor and King of
Germany, its Colonies and Armies”. Founded
in 1860 by the pharmacist Rudolph Ernst Emil
Kade, it operated as a neighbourhood pharmacy
until its final owners the Dallmann family, unable
to find a successor, had to close it in 2013.
Now, it’s yet another Kotti business that caters
more to expats and tourists than to the neighbourhood's
longtime residents.
And it’s got company. Just around the corner
from Ora, on Mariannenplatz, is the site of
the former Mariannen-Apotheke, also founded
over a century ago. After closing in 2014, the
pharmacy has become the Apotheken Bar, a
high-end cocktail bar started by mixologist
Sinan Gültekin. With an impressive selection of
liquors – including homemade coriander-infused
gin, and orange and vanilla bitters – it’s become
an atmospheric place to relax amid rows of
amber antique pill bottles. Last but not least,
At a quick glance, it’s
difficult to distinguish
photographs taken of the
pharmacy in 1860 from
the Instagram snaps taken
by the café’s guests.
there’s the Apotheke am Kottbusser Tor, right
by the U-Bahn station, which shut down last
year to become a second location of burger joint
Burgermeister. Their largely English-speaking
client base of tourists wanting to see “gritty
Kreuzberg” hints at Kotti’s dramatic conversion
from a low-income neighbourhood to a hub of
hipster culture and sightseeing.
Nobody’s kept a better eye on this transformation
than the humble and earnest members
of the group Kotti & Co, based since 2012 out
of a wooden Gecekondu (“house built overnight”
in Turkish) off Admiralstraße. There,
people like Ahmet Tunter give a political voice
to the people being priced out of their own
neighbourhood. Tunter moved to Kreuzberg
in 1977, and remembers when rents in the area
were “between 50-200 deutschmarks (€25-
100) per month. Kreuzberg was the poorest
quarter in Berlin.” Now, according to the
latest Mietspiegel, rents for apartments around
Kotti average €9.80/sqm per month – up 5.3
percent in the past year alone. Commercial
space, meanwhile, goes for €30/sqm and up.
These increases are a particularly
bitter pill to swallow for
independently owned pharmacies,
which already must struggle
with high financial strain
due to rising drug prices, not to
mention stiff competition from
websites and big chains. Overall,
the number of independent
Apotheken in Berlin plummeted
from 761 in 2008 to 700 in 2014.
Those that have been able to
thrive are usually located in
upscale neighbourhoods, central
business districts or malls,
where clientele don’t mind paying
full price for medicine, or
else they profit from booming
sales in pricey cosmetics and
wellness products. Pharmacy
owners around Kottbusser Tor
have no such luxury.
But maybe the demise of the
mom 'n' pop corner pharmacy
isn't the worst form of gentrification
– especially when the new
owners are eager to pay homage
to their old tenants’ past. While
the physical pharmacy may no
longer be in their hands, the
pharmaceutical manufacturer Kade launched
in 1860 in Oranien-Apotheke is still in business
today, and spokesperson Sebastian Hamsch
reports that the company is enthusiastic about
the new café. “It really looks exactly like the
historical photographs of Oranien-Apotheke. So
much of the original furniture is still there.” At a
quick glance, it’s difficult to distinguish photographs
taken of the pharmacy in 1860 from the
Instagram photos taken by the café’s guests...
albeit with a few changes. The pharmacy counter
now glistens with sugary Zimtschnecken (cinnamon
rolls) instead of ampoules, and the former
backroom laboratory is now the kitchen.
As for the Apotheken Bar, it was opened
by a local who knew the original Mariannen-
Apotheke from his childhood and caters primarily
to locals in need of an after-work drink. Upon
taking over the location, Gültekin strove to
keep the history of the place alive, keeping the
old shelving and even the old sign – with a fake
stone crashing through it, a gimmick meant to
commemorate the destruction caused by May
Day riots some years ago.
By catering to a clientele willing to shell out
over €6 for a coffee and pastry, €10 for a cocktail
and €9 for a burger and fries, these places
might just be symptoms of our time – reflecting
the changing demographics in Kreuzberg.
Meanwhile, they've become neighbourhood
institutions in their own right. For Ora owner
Lukas Schmid, the café “isn’t just antique, but
has grown its charm from 1860 to today by
adding pieces and bits each decade. When we
entered it for the first time, it was this trip back
through the different eras of Berlin that took
our breath away.” Kotti’s present might hang in
uncertainty, but traces of its past are preserved
in these former pharmacies. n
The Oranien-Apotheke, then and now.
CHRISTOPH MAC
9

SAVE BERLIN
Loving the mess
The evolution of Kottbusser Tor, its monstrous
Neues Kreuzberger Zentrum and its characteristic
Kreuzberger Melange. By Dan Borden
Walk north from the Kottbusser
Tor U-Bahn station and you’re
in a chaotic jumble of shouting
fruit sellers and neon-lit shisha
bars where drug-addled youths cross paths with
shuffling refugees. It’s what most people think of
when they say “Kotti”. It’s the ultimate expression
of the Kreuzberger Melange, the district’s
notorious mix of cultures, people and architecture.
But that vaguely menacing shopping zone
and the 12-story wall of apartments looming over
it, collectively titled the Neues Kreuzberger
Zentrum (NKZ), was a 1970s attempt to bring
Germanic order to chaotic Kreuzberg and stamp
out its messy “melange” once and for all.
The NKZ has 40 years of enemies. At street
level, it’s a rabbit’s warren of dark hallways,
alcoves and hidden stairs as if designed by a committee
of drug dealers and illicit urinators. The
too-tall apartment block hangs over Adalbertstraße,
an intimidating gateway to Kreuzberg’s
SO36 district and an ironic echo of the original
Kottbusser Tor, a gate in Berlin’s long-gone city
wall on that site that led south toward Cottbus.
The complex has been called an eyesore, a
monster and a “profit worm” for its snake-like
plan. One of its nicknames is the “Neues KZ”
– German shorthand for concentration camp.
Just 10 years ago, during the NKZ’s darkest days
The complex has
been called an eyesore,
a monster and a
“profit worm” for its
snake-like plan. One
of its nicknames is the
“Neues KZ” – German
shorthand for concentration
camp.
of neglect and crime, Kreuzberg’s then-Mayor
Franz Schulz asked incredulously, “How could
such a construction be approved?”
To answer that question, walk north from the
NKZ to Oranienstraße and up three floors to
the Museum der Dinge. Here you can peruse the
archives of the Deutscher Werkbund, a group of designers
who, in the early 20th century, invented
modern design. Glass cases show off Gustav
E. Pazaurek’s curated collection of kitsch that
illustrates everything these minimalists hoped
to eliminate: complex shapes, decoration and
nostalgic sentiment. The Werkbund inspired the
MARIA RUNARSDOTTIR
Bauhaus, which led to Germany’s post-war boom
in boxy, flat-roofed apartment blocks. The Neues
Kreuzberger Zentrum was basically this train of
thought driven to its logical destination: a blocky
concrete megastructure that wiped away dozens
of ‘primitive’ 19th-century buildings. Urban planners
in the 1960s issued a drawing illustrating all
the features of the dreaded Kreuzberger Melange
the NKZ would stamp out: the jumble of architectural
styles; apartments and shops coexisting
in the same buildings; the lack of parking.
Those planners couldn’t acknowledge one of
the NKZ’s primary targets: the district’s growing
Turkish population. When the Berlin Wall went
up in 1961, 10,000 workers who had commuted
to West Berlin were suddenly trapped behind
the Iron Curtain. The West German government
invited thousands of Turkish ‘guest workers’
to take their place. These guests – mostly
young men – sent for their families and made
Kreuzberg their new home. A 1960s newspaper
compared multicultural Kreuzberg to the slums
of Harlem: “Young Germans are deserting the
district, leaving only the old, weak, outsiders,
freaks and especially foreigners.” Today, Berlin’s
Turks are part of the city’s social fabric, but as
late as 1982, Chancellor Helmut Kohl drew up a
radical four-year plan to reduce Germany’s Turkish
population by 50 percent. The construction
of the NKZ was a deliberately hostile gesture,
like an alien craft dropped in an urban swamp,
radiating the sanitising glow of German orderliness.
Its message: it’s time to go home!
* * *
Allied bombing in World War II left 40 percent
of Kreuzberg in ruins. Twenty years later, little
had changed and the area was ripe for urban
renewal. Thanks to a kickstart from the US
government, West Berlin was in the midst of a
building boom – projects like the Europa Center
were both symbols of Western freedom and
surprisingly profitable cash cows. In this context,
the NKZ was touted as the “Europa Center for
Kreuzberg”, a beacon of chic meant to draw
prosperous Germans back to the district. Key to
this renewal was an elevated motorway linking
isolated Kreuzberg with the rest of Berlin, running
along Oranienstraße. The NKZ’s extreme
height was justified as a noise buffer between the
cars and apartments to the south. A brochure
proudly promised that all this construction
would leave Kreuzberg unrecognisable.
The concept for the Zentrum was hatched
in the late 1960s by aspiring real estate mogul
Günter Schmidt. Then in his mid-twenties,
Schmidt was late to the Berlin building boom
but eager to cash in quick. He pitched his idea
to Heinz Mosch, West Germany’s most successful
building contractor, who joined as a partner.
Cash for the project poured in via a shady
investment scheme called the Berlin Assistance
Act in which everyday West Germans were encouraged
to pool their personal savings to fund
new construction in the troubled ex-Hauptstadt.
Investors in the 110 million-deutschmark NKZ
included dentists, housewives and secretaries
10 • APRIL 2016

MARIA RUNARSDOTTIR
who reaped tax benefits for decades after.
The NKZ’s design, by architects Wolfgang
Jokisch and Johannes Uhl, was inspired by the
radical megastructure schemes of British
designers Archigram. Now in his eighties, Uhl
recently complained to the Berliner Zeitung that
time and financial pressures undermined the
designers’ utopian plans: a street-level “reading
courtyard” became shops, and light-filled
luxury flats became low-end public housing.
Window flower boxes and a second story
“street in the sky” (supported by columns
painted dark green to match the adjoining
U-Bahn station) vanished altogether.
To make way for the NKZ and the nearby
highway, thousands of people were evicted
from their homes. Zealous developer Schmidt
famously had windows and doors ripped out
of buildings before their residents had even
left. He became Public Enemy #1 in a grassroots
campaign to stop the projects and save
Kreuzberg’s historic urban fabric. When the
highway project stalled, protesters renovated
the vacated buildings and moved in – Berlin’s
famous squatter movement was born.
* * *
Despite setbacks, the NKZ opened in 1974.
Most residents were thrilled to trade their
Altbau flats for homes with modern conveniences
like central heating and indoor
toilets, but the project suffered from classic
problems of low-income housing blocks:
broken elevators, garbage piled in hallways,
piss in the stairs. The roof leaked. Cracks
appeared in the bridge over Adalbertstraße.
Less than 10 years after opening, the NKZ
needed a 2.5 million-deutschmark makeover.
It became a magnet for drugs and crime.
Only half of the spaces were rented, and
residents, unhappy with conditions, stopped
paying rent. The project was on the brink of
bankruptcy for decades.
By 1998, leading Berlin politicians were
calling for the demolition of the NKZ along
with Schöneberg’s “Social Palace” housing
block. CDU boss Klaus-Rüdiger Landowski
declared, “They must go away. They are
crime centres that we cannot get control
of. Otherwise Kreuzberg will be lost.” That
same year, the NKZ gained a new managing
director, Peter Ackermann. As a young lawyer
in 1976, Ackermann had saved the centre
from bankruptcy. Two decades later, he was
a millionaire software developer come back
to turn the NKZ around. He refinanced the
mortgage, then pumped money into critical
improvements like new mailboxes and
trash bins, a playground, better lighting and
securely locked stairwells.
In 2016, the NKZ, now renamed Zentrum
Kreuzberg Merkezi, is financially secure and
fully leased. Instead of driving away Kreuzberg’s
freaks, outsiders and foreigners, the
project capitalises on diversity. Seventy percent
of its apartment residents are foreignborn.
Iconic gay bar Möbel Olfe, in a former
furniture store, coexists with restaurants and
clubs catering to the city’s Muslims, and new
cafés and bars patronised by a young, mostly
English-speaking clientele. In the sweetest
twist, the north end of the project is capped
by the recently completed dome of Mevlana
Moschee, the city’s largest mosque. The
Kreuzberger Melange is alive and thriving. n
A scale model of the NKZ from Berlin artist Larissa Fassler’s 2008 Kotti exhibition.
LARISSA FASSLER
Hasir Titanic hunger
Kottbusser Tor has survived May Day
riots, tourist hordes and urban renewal
blunders, but can it resist the feeding
frenzy of the King of Kebab?
Mehmet Aygün opened Hasir, Berlin’s premier
Turkish restaurant, on Adalbertstraße in 1984,
then parlayed its success into an empire: a chain
of Hasir eateries, from burger stands to steakhouses,
and a dozen resorts ominously named Titanic.
The German press portray Aygün as a secretive
underworld figure, an Anatolian Vito Corleone.
They point to his murky origins in Turkish poverty,
his political cronies, his large family. Most damning:
he purports to be the inventor of the döner
kebab, Berlin’s go-to fast food. A dubious claim,
but would a German-born rags-to-riches entrepreneur
get the same bad rap?
Aygün’s empire stretches from greater Berlin
(a luxury hotel on Gendarmenmarkt; a gourmet
Italian restaurant in Charlottenburg) to Istanbul,
but his heart belongs to Kotti. Besides the original
Hasir Turkish grill house on Adalbertstraße,
there’s a second two doors away, plus Hasir
Burger across the street. That slick Italian place
Paglia on the corner of Oranienstraße is also his
(hasir means “straw” in Turkish, paglia the same
in Italian). Meanwhile Aygün’s Moonday corporation
has been snapping up properties throughout
the SO36 neighbourhood, and locals complain
that businesses they need – a travel agent, a
copy shop – are disappearing in favour of touristfocused
fast food.
The bad blood peaked in 2012 when Aygün
announced plans to expand his flagship Hasir
restaurant north, displacing beloved flower shop
Blumen Dilek. It was a classic David-versus-
Goliath match up, little Dilek’s tulips and roses
crushed under the greedy millionaire’s boot. In
the end, Aygün got his way via a win-win agreement:
Dilek walked away (were bought out?) from
their 12-year lease and reopened their 24-hour
business across Oranienstraße (see page 23).
But with one victory after another, observers
wonder when Aygün’s real estate feeding frenzy
will end. Since McDonalds opened a branch near
Schlesisches Tor in 2010 and sparked a firestorm
of protest, Kreuzberg activists have worked hard
to block an invasion by multinational eateries and
clothing stores. They fear that Mehmet Aygün, a
local boy with political connections, could break
that blockade and trigger a corporate avalanche,
wiping out the SO36 character once and for all.
Aygün’s 2013 application to open a hostel on
Oranienstraße was turned down by then-district
mayor Franz Schultz, but he’ll likely try again.
How long can a district that fought off Starbucks
keep the Kebab King at bay? DB
MARIA RUNARSDOTTIR
11

CHARACTERS
THE BOYS OF KOTTI
It takes a certain kind of character (and yes, apparently some testosterone)
to stick it out around Kottbusser Tor. We talked to the bikers, shopkeepers,
artists and punks who’ve made the Kiez their own. Photos by Maria Runarsdottir
THE ARCH-KREUZBERGER
Frank Weber
Frank Weber, owner of the Kreuzstich Tattoo
Studio in Adalbertstraße and founder of
Europe’s oldest tattoo convention, rolls up
his sleeve. “This one I got at a bus stop in
California. I was waiting for the bus, and an
old Chinese guy knew how to do tattoos,” he
grins, showing off a full-arm collage of snakes
and skulls. It goes well with his general look:
Black leather jacket, black jeans and t-shirt and
a long, loosely tied ponytail hanging down his
back. A little necklace with golden wings glitters
discreetly on his chest, the only indication of
Weber’s rumoured longtime membership in the
Hell’s Angels biker gang.
“I started my first biker club in 1977, just a
few streets from here,” says the 55-year-old.
A born-and-bred Kreuzberger, he grew up in
Waldemarstraße and went to the Otto-Wels-
Schule in Prinzenstraße. “In the 1960s and 1970s
Kottbusser Tor was a poor and dirty area, there
was dog shit all over – like the Bronx in New
York. But it was also more free. It was like a tiny
island with bikers and hippies, everybody knew
each other... and then came the Ossis,” he says,
wrinkling his nose.
In 1981 Weber opened his first shop, selling
Harley Davidson equipment. But after five
years and little profit, he made a spontaneous
decision: “I had been taking English classes in
an evening school, but that was a pain in the ass,
and I didn’t learn anything. So I took my motorbike
and drove to the Luton tattoo convention.
After working a few years in a bar in east
London, I’d learned English.” He travelled the
world, working as a barkeeper and a doorman,
but eventually came back to Kreuzberg, where
he opened Kreuzstich in 2009.
Here, he’s close to his home and his three
adult children, who all live nearby. Last year, he
celebrated the 25th anniversary of Berlin’s Tattoo
“It was like a tiny island
with bikers and hippies,
everybody knew each
other... and then came
the Ossis.”
Convention, which he originally founded as an
experiment in a friend’s discotheque at Oranienplatz.
The first year, no less than 4000 people
showed up, and today the festival has grown to
be the biggest of its kind in Europe.
Chatting to the little plump man with the
smiling wrinkles around his eyes, it’s hard to imagine
him being involved in any kind of criminal
biker business. And he won’t elaborate on the
subject. These days, Weber is often to be found
at the studio in Adalbertstraße – he doesn’t do
tattoos himself anymore, but likes “to keep an
eye on things”. And although he has to deal with
both “the youngsters whose rich parents have
bought Kreuzberg apartments for them” and
“the Turks, who are all competition-minded”,
he still feels at home in his Kiez. “We live with
each other even though we have our differences,
and there is no violence between us. People in
the area know who I am. The Turks even call me
‘uncle’,” he says proudly, pulling down the sleeves
of his jacket. NB
12 • APRIL 2016

“Kotti’s always been
avant-garde. Not just for
art and politics, but for
criminals, too.”
“GIVE KOTTI FIVE
YEARS AND IT’LL
LOOK ROTTEN AGAIN.”
THE OLD GUARD
Steve Morell
He’s a haunting figure on Oranienstraße: pale,
tall and lanky, lost in his own thoughts, dressed
head to toe in black. Don’t let the ghostly pallor
and chilly demeanour fool you, though: hang
around him for long enough, and Steve Morell
will eventually talk your ear off about the history
of Kreuzberg, borrow your phone charger and
smoke your cigarettes until the sun comes up.
The musician, model and founder of record
label Pale Music International came to West
Berlin from Fulda in 1984. “My father said, ‘Oh,
you’re going to Berlin with all those freaks and
faggots?’ and he took my inheritance away. I was
on my own.” Back then, he says, Kotti was “a
little prison. The Wall was just 10 metres away
from my window, and at night there were the
spotlights from the Death Strip. Down there
on Ritterstraße, the Americans would practise
shooting their machine guns.” An ideal environment
for a budding punk. After moving into
the famed squat at Georg-von-Rauch-Haus on
Mariannenplatz in 1987, Morell worked as a DJ
and bartender at bygone Kreuzberg institutions
like Trash Club and the punk hangout Pink Panther,
while rubbing elbows with Nick Cave and
Einstürzende Neubauten at subculture hotspots
O Bar and Risiko on his off time.
But Kreuzberg in the 1980s wasn’t only about
the libertine lifestyle – Morell was there to witness
the historic May 1 riots in 1987, when rioters
looted over 30 businesses along Skalitzer Straße
and burned down a Bolle supermarket. A far cry
from the dance party that May Day has become.
“These days, people don’t have a reason to fight
any more,” Morell says. “The people of this
generation aren’t poor enough. These students
coming from Munich or Cologne, their parents
buy them a cool flat and give them a little bit of
money. We were interested in politics because
we knew – well, we thought – that we could
change something. But for these kids, things are
just fine. Every one of them has at least €50 in
their pocket when they go out drinking.” After
years of going back and forth between Berlin and
London, Morell founded the German-British
label Pale Music in 1999, which he still operates
out of Kreuzberg today. That is, when he’s not
working on film scores or his own music – or frequenting
neighbourhood institutions like Roses,
the ancient gay bar with the fuzzy walls, and
the newer, decidedly un-punk Luzia. Here the
bartenders all know him by name and serve him
a coffee just the way he likes it, with a tiny pour
of milk on the side, before he even sits down.
In spite of the changes, Morell is hopeful for
the future of Kreuzberg. “Give it five years and
it’ll look rotten again,” he laughs. KC
THE ETERNAL PUNK
Wolfgang Müller
“Wir tanzen im Viereck,” screamed Wolfgang Müller
in Die Tödliche Doris’ infamous 1981 punk
anti-manifesto “Tanz im Quadrat” (subsequently
covered by fellow Kreuzbergers Stereo Total,
see page 36). It’s hard to picture this
50-something man in casual buttondown
apparel gesticulating naked
on stage while covered in gold face
paint, as he did in his band’s heyday.
Instead, your first impression is of a
seasoned intellectual with a keen interest
in the esoteric, just as likely to
pontificate on contemporary Icelandic
politics as he is to wax nostalgic
about the old Kreuzberg punk scene.
Müller moved to the neighbourhood
around Kotti from Wolfsburg,
West Germany in 1979. “I had no real
education and no money. The most
important thing was a cheap apartment,”
he remembers. He forged his
proof of employment to apply for
one, but it turned out his 92-year-old
landlord, a Holocaust survivor, didn’t
care about that. He just wanted to
know one thing: “Are you a right-wing
extremist?” Müller naturally wasn’t,
but the leftists in West Berlin’s purely
political corner didn’t take a shine
to him and the wave of young Germans moving
to the Hauptstadt at the time. “They saw us as
decadent, and they had really bad taste.”
Shortly after arriving, he formed Die Tödliche
Doris with Nikolaus Utermöhlen and a host of
others, and took part in 1981’s scene-defining
Geniale Dilettanten Festival alongside Einstürzende
Neubauten, Gudrun Gut and Christiane
F. But Kreuzberg went south not long after
Tödliche Doris’ planned dissolution in 1987,
Müller says, recalling how after the Wall fell, the
scene went from political and arty to the opposite
with the arrival of Westbam, Dr. Motte and
the Love Parade generation. “Kreuzberg was out!
People ran east.”
As Kotti stagnated, Müller turned his attention
to Iceland, going back and forth throughout
the 1990s until lured back to Kiez life with the
opening of queer drinking institution Möbel
Olfe in the early 2000s. In 2013, he published his
tome Subkultur Westberlin 1979-1989, documenting
the Wild West days of Berlin, coinciding with a
regenerated interest in the island city and cementing
Müller as a prime witness to the times. But his
attention is not just directed at the past – he continues
painting, performing and even producing
to this day. And he remains invested in Kottbusser
Tor’s future. “Kotti’s always been avant-garde,” he
says. “Not just for art and politics, but for criminals,
too. They did it with Hutspiele [shell games],
now it’s Antanzen [dance tricks]...” But Müller
doesn’t seem to mind too much. In the 37 years
he’s lived in the neighbourhood, he’s never been
robbed or attacked. The only thing he’s observed
is that “Kotti” has become a brand. And he seems
amused by it. WC
13

CHARACTERS
THE UNDERGROUND ARTIST
Stu Mead
There aren’t many words you could use to describe
American painter Stu Mead’s studio other
than “small”. Its only defining features: a sink,
a bookshelf and a few hangings of Mead’s own
work, a unique blend of folk art, soft porn and
mad comics. Mead explains this was actually the
former back quarters of the gallery Endart. “I
used to sleep here,” he says, pointing to the shelf,
and he begins to shape a rectangle with his arms
to depict how simple it was to live, eat, drink and
create art in the gallery’s studio, “no problem.”
The world he inhabits today isn’t much bigger
than that. With the congenital disease arthrogryposis
affecting his muscles and joints, Mead
explains, “I can walk one or two blocks and
I’ll be at Rossmann and I’ll have everything I
need. I use the bank down the road. I find the
steps of Milch & Zucker difficult, so I don’t go
there much anymore.” On most days you can
find Mead at French bistro Chez Michel on
Adalbertstraße, where two of his works hang
on the wall. “Berlin is like a virus, and Kotti is
its epicentre.”
Mead visited Berlin twice before his official
move in 2000, which saw him “call up my friends
in Minnesota and ask them to box up my things”.
His friend Mark Hipper’s gallery denied his work
initially, but an introduction to Klaus Theuerkauf
of Endart brought him here indefinitely. Now
Endart is gone, but Mead remains. His art –
which often involves trashy, nostalgic renderings
of young female bodies in kinky situations – has
generated outrage, even in Berlin’s sexually liberated
underground scene. Protesters showed up to
the 2004 Bethanien exhibition When Love Turns
To Poison. More recently, an exhibition in Marseilles
saw right-wing extremists accusing him of
paedophilia and zoophilia. Meanwhile, though,
he’s become sought after by collectors and gallerists
alike. “I have a gallery in Luxembourg, and
I’ll be in London next month for the release of
my new book.” After six books with French art
publisher Le Dernier Cri, it’s the Prague-based
Divus editors who’ve compiled his entire work
into a hardback.
Ironically, the man who’s got his work on
international collectors’ shortlists remains
unknown on his home turf – most likely for the
better, given his Turkish neighbours’ probable
outrage at his racy art. Does he mind? “When
I fall, it’s not unlikely some young Turkish man
helps me up and makes sure I’m okay. We’re getting
along in everyday life.”
As both an artist and a man inextricably tied
to his neighbourhood, Mead sees Kotti the way
most don’t. “The old sidewalks here are amazing;
they have diamond stones. It’s pretty to look at as
you walk, rather than the boring horizontal slabs.
Then you have the smaller square blocks of paving
stones – perfect for digging and picking up to
throw on May 1. And then, the day after, you see
the city put the stones back. No problem.” SB
“BERLIN IS LIKE A
VIRUS, AND KOTTI
IS ITS EPICENTRE.”
14 • APRIL 2016

“We had break-ins. But once
we made it clear we’re here
to stay, the theft and robberies
stopped.”
need to work on our Kiez all together.” And Bembenek
is definitely helping effect that change. A few years ago,
the idea of paying €5 for a glass of wine on Kottbusser
Tor would’ve been inconceivable. But the surrounding
shop and bar owners seem to have accepted him
as one of their own. He himself lives just a short walk
away, and his son attends the local Kita. “People from
the community support us,” he says. For example: “Our
neighbours backed us up when we were forced to pay a
fee for early-evening open-air music. We lost, but it still
meant a lot.” SB
THE TURKISH EXPAT
THE STUBBORN BARISTA
Andreas Bembenek
It’s 9:30am at Kottbusser Tor. Just past Rossmann,
two women clad in hijabs are having breakfast al
fresco while a man in a hybrid outfit of pyjamas and
denim sits nearby, looking high off his mind. Here,
among the prefab jumble of gambling bars, döner
stands, baklava joints and other nondescript shops
otherwise known as the Neues Kreuzberger Zentrum,
a collection of bourgeois bohemian types nibble away
at chia seed pudding and gluten-free cake, literally on
display behind floor-to-ceiling glass windows in
a shop that looks like it was teleported in from
Prenzlauer Berg. Welcome to the cosy world of
Kremanski, as devised by Andreas Bembenek,
a fortysomething Bavarian abdominal surgeon
who decided to relocate to the neighbourhood
in 2014 after an eye-opening midlife “gap-year”
trip through South America. He wanted to
start a new career as a café owner, and found
Prenzlauer Berg “too boring!”
Kotti, by contrast, proved almost too interesting.
The newly opened café’s boho vibes –
courtesy of Bembenek’s friend, artist, interior
designer and chef Julian Rouvroy – attracted
not only hipster patrons but would-be robbers.
“The first eight or so months of opening, we
had break-ins. The gangs saw me as a rookie.
But once we made it clear we’re here to stay,
the theft and robberies stopped,” remembers
Bembeneck with some pride. “If you have five
crimes in two weeks and you let it affect you,
then it will affect you...” Instead, the energetic
Kremanski owner concentrated his efforts on
interacting with the neighbourhood around
him, from “the Latin people who live in Kreuzberg
and Neukölln” to locals struggling with
gentrification. This past January Kremanski
hosted an event on the demonstrations and
housing occupations in Kreuzberg in the 1970-
1980s. “The area is changing rapidly and we
Yasin Müjdeci
Before we can even sit down, Yasin Müjdeci wants to
make something clear: no, his parents aren’t behind his
and his older brother Kaan’s business ventures. “People
think we came here with a lot of money and we opened
these places. But that’s not the story: we got a bit of
money from friends and everybody helped us to build
everything as cheap as possible.” You could see how
someone might make that assumption, though. When
locals complain about the invasion of Kreuzberg by
moneyed tourists and expats, the Ankara-born Müjdecis
are Exhibit A. Literally: last year the Kreuzberg-
Friedrichshain Museum updated their exhibition on
Kotti gentrification to include a photo of Luzia, the
café/bar Yasin and Kaan opened on Oranienstraße in
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“We have 50 employees
with 22 different
nationalities – and we
speak English.”
2007. Low-lit, clubby and über-stylish, it attracts
a black-clad crowd of young internationals who
come to Kottbusser Tor solely to hang out there
– as does Voo, the concept store Yasin opened
in 2010. Located in an anonymous Hof, also on
Oranienstraße, the store sells designer home
goods alongside rare garments, jewellery, thirdwave
coffee and €65 myrrh-scented candles.
“We needed a concept store in Kreuzberg,” says
Yasin, who’s just returned from Paris Fashion
Week. “Nobody from Kreuzberg wants to go
shopping in Mitte!”
Yasin now holds down the fort at both businesses
as his brother pursues a career as a filmmaker:
Kaan’s Sivas won the Special Jury Prize
at the Venice Film Festival in 2014. Dressed
in a casual grey sweatshirt under a long black
wool coat, 32-year-old Yasin doesn’t quite fit the
image of your typical boutique owner – nor that
of a Turkish man living on Kottbusser Tor. The
Müjdecis might share a country of origin with
the neighbourhood’s community
of ex-Gastarbeiter families, but
their story is much more in line
with the typical expat narrative:
both brothers came here to
study in their early twenties, fell
in love with the city and stayed.
“My business is not Turkish. It
doesn’t belong to a specific nation,
gender or culture. I cannot
say I am Turkish. Here many
Turks are really scared of losing
their identity and becoming German.
They have to show, ‘I’m a
man! I’m Turkish!’ That’s not my
issue.” Yasin, who speaks flawless
German with only a light accent,
says Kreuzberg’s internationality
is what keeps him in Berlin and
drives his business. “Between
Luzia and Voo Store, we have
50 employees with 22 different
nationalities – and we speak
English. My ideal customer is a
Kreuzberger who is… not from
Berlin, no, but people who come
from somewhere else and think,
‘Wow, this city is interesting!’
and then stay here. Or someone
from Stuttgart who hates Stuttgart
and comes to Berlin, meets
all the international people and
works at a start up. That’s my
client,” he says. KC
THE SHOE WHISPERER
Ibrahim Contur
It’s the early 1990s. A young Yugoslavian model
walks into shoe repair store Abgelaufen with
a pair of swanky designer pumps that she got
to keep after a photo shoot – or that’s how she
describes the four ripped-apart pieces to the
young man behind the counter. She’s been to
every shoe repair store in town, and Ibrahim
Contur is her last hope. At first he too sends her
away, but after an angry visit from her mother,
he finds the right glue, leather and metal parts
and meticulously puts the pumps back together.
“She cried when she saw that I actually managed
to fix them. That was true love!” Contur says,
laughing at the memory.
Now 42 and still operating out of the tiny
store he took over from his father 22 years
ago, Contur has garnered a reputation around
the Kiez for being able to do the impossible.
There’s something about his supremely calm
and affable manner that makes you instantly
want to trust him with your footwear, even
despite the fact that he “never did an apprenticeship.
Whenever I didn’t know how to fix
something I looked up one of the old Meisters
“I’M NOT LEAVING
UNTIL I HAVE TO...
SO PROBABLY
FEET FIRST.”
and I asked them to help me... and
somehow, they always did.”
Contur was born in Wedding in
1974, but his family came here from
western Turkey in the 1970s. His father
opened Abgelaufen in 1986. Since then,
it’s been the store that the other shoe
repair stores in Kreuzberg send their
particularly tricky jobs to. The constant
flow of colourful Kotti customers
makes for an endless wellspring of stories,
which Contur eagerly shares. “One
time someone came back after almost
15 years, apologised for the long wait
and told me he had been in prison.”
Another customer always had two pairs
of boots on rotation – he’d come to
pick up his just-fixed pair of cowboy
boots only to exchange it for his second,
newly ruined pair. This went on
for a few years. “I’ll never forget that guy – I
hope I’ll see him again someday...”
Contur is aware he’s part of a dying trade
and it’s unlikely that his son, who has a walking
disability, or one of his three daughters
will take over. But it doesn’t seem to bother
him too much. His own future here seem
pretty set. “I’m not leaving until I have to –
so probably feet first.” JH
16 • APRIL 2016

Follow us:
#wearemelt
15.16.17 July 2016
Ferropolis, Germany
THE VOICE OF KOTTI
Erçan Yasaroglu
Most Berlin journalists probably have Erçan
Yasaroglu on speed dial. With regional and
national press hankering after his opinion on
everything Kotti-related, he’s become a local
celebrity in recent years – but what makes this
Turkish-German café owner such a vital part of
the debate?
Yasaroglu owns Café Kotti, a smoky “transcultural
meeting point” at the heart of Kottbusser
Tor. He’s lived in Kreuzberg for 33 years, Kotti
for six, and between the café and his day-to-day
efforts as a state social worker, he’s pretty much
as active as you can get in the community. And
it’s not just journalists looking to Yasaroglu for
answers: after settling down with his coffee (milk
and about five sugars) and lighting a cigarette,
his smartphone buzzes. Some rapid Turkish
and a few chuckles later, he ends the call with a
snort. The guys outside saw him rushing to the
café for our interview and thought something
must have happened.
Seeing Yasaroglu in a rush might be worrying.
This is a guy who seems to have life sussed. From
the sculpted grey locks he pushes back from his
face every few minutes to the thoughtful, collected
way he talks about his neighbourhood, there’s
something reassuringly put-together about him.
Originally from Balıkesir in Turkey’s Marmara region,
he studied literature at Anadolu University.
But fleeing Turkey as a political refugee in 1980,
he found himself “stateless, homeless,” roaming
through Syria and Lebanon before reaching
Germany in 1982. And back then, this wasn’t an
easy place to be a refugee. “The Willkommenskultur
that’s developed in Germany over the past
year, it just didn’t exist then,” Yasaroglu remembers.
“Back then, the Berliners saw us with
our shortcomings and differences… and there
was prejudice, there was fear. Turkish, Muslim,
dark-skinned, violent, this and that...” Arriving in
“EVERYONE WHO WALKS
IN THE DOOR AT CAFÉ
KOTTI IS A FRIEND.”
Germany completely alone, the young immigrant
built his life in Kreuzberg – and by 2009, when
he took over the café on Adalbertstraße, he knew
Kotti was where he wanted to be. “So much
happens here, with influences from across the
world… I wanted to live in the middle of it all.”
But things changed last year, he says, when a
new crop of drug dealers invaded the Kiez (see
page 6). Kotti’s become a “rechtsfreier Raum,”
Yasaroglu sighs. A lawless black hole. And it’s
sucking in everything, including his business. “Of
course dealers try and come into Café Kotti,” he
says. “They stand at the door. Look!” He waves
an arm and sure enough, there are a couple of
leather-jacketed guys leaning on the railings outside,
eyes on the ground. There’s no way they’re
coming inside, though: anyone caught dealing
in Café Kotti gets an automatic Hausverbot.
He can ban them from his café, but Yasaroglu
can’t pull the dealers off Kotti’s streets. So why
stay? “Kottbusser Tor’s my home,” he shrugs.
“I’ve started a family here, had children… all my
friends are here.” But don’t get him wrong: Yasaroglu
knows there’s more to life than Kreuzberg.
His next project? A “Café Kotti Zwei”. In Turkey,
no less. Under the careful eye of Yasaroglu’s
brother and sister, this new café is set to open
on the Turkish coast opposite the refugee camps
of Lesbos, allowing Europe’s newest arrivals to
mix with those from all over the world. Yasaroglu
himself employs four refugees in Café Kotti, plus
one intern. “Turkey’s really missing something
like this,” he concludes.
The English-dominated chatter beneath the
veils of smoke may have alienated the locals, but
it’s all part of Café Kotti’s international appeal.
And what do the customers think? “Everyone
who walks in the door at Café Kotti is a friend,”
Yasaroglu corrects us. “Not a customer. A friend.
It doesn’t matter whether or not we speak the
same language.” We think we’re being told off –
but then he smiles. “Like you and me. If we sit
here for long enough, talk together, drink coffee
together… we’re friends!” HB
Disclosure, Deichkind,
Tame Impala,
Jamie xx, Two Door
Cinema Club,
Jean-Michel Jarre,
Chvrches, M83,
Solomun, Boys Noize
(live), Maceo Plex,
Ben Klock,
Modeselektor (DJ-Set),
Skepta
Andhim, Andy C, Andy Stott
(live), Black Coffee, Bob Moses,
Circa Waves, Digitalism,
DJ Koze, DJ Phono, Drangsal,
Ed Davenport, Floating Points
(live), Graham Candy, Helena
Hauff, Ho99o9, Honey Dijon,
Horse Meat Disco, Isolation
Berlin, Jamie Woon,
Kim Ann Foxman, Kollektiv
Turmstrasse, Kytes, Lea
Porcelain, Mano Le Tough, Maya
Jane Coles, Mind Against, Motor
City Drum Ensemble, Mura Masa,
Oddisee & Good Company, Oliver
Koletzki, Pan-Pot, Say Yes Dog,
Sleaford Mods, Stephan Bodzin
(live), The Black Madonna,
Tiga (live), Tijana T, Vril (live),
Woman and many more
The best time in the world. Dance
with 20,000 friends from across
the globe on 3 days, 10 floors and 3
beaches.
17

GUIDE
WHICH KOTTI
ARE YOU?
Our guide to four parallel universes
around Berlin’s most loved/hated square.
Illustrations by Agata Sasiuk
Hasir
KOTTI FOR...
Easyjet-setters
Kottbusser Tor is where the action is! Or at least, that’s
what your guidebook told you. Fresh off your discount
flight, you’re primed to soak up some real Berlin flavour –
and a few litres of tequila. By Hannah Butler
Santa Maria
MARIA RUNARSDOTTIR
Your first 10am at Kottbusser Tor hits
hard. Necking shots in the 24-hour
bar at the COMEBACKPACKERS HOSTEL
(Adalbertstr. 97) when the gang crashed here
at 5am doesn’t seem so smart now – but after
navigating the trains from Schönefeld (“close
to the city centre” your arse) and lugging
your cases up all those stairs, you deserved a
drink. Gotta make the most of your time in
Europe’s party capital, right?
Your stomach’s growling, but faced with the
dreadlocked backpacker pros in the communal
kitchen, you’re not doing the “tourist” thing and
hitting up a café. Time to rough it and grab some
breakfast bits from the nearest supermarket.
Kaisers looks decent. And apparently German
groceries are dead cheap. Soon, you conclude
this was a vicious lie.
Breakfast over, the lads’ Berlin Takeover
begins. First stop? Culture. The hostel guys
recommend the free FRIEDRICHSHAIN-KREUZBERG
MUSEUM (Adalbertstr. 95A). If you’re gonna pull
locals tonight, some research can’t hurt. But the
barrage of info on the neighbourhood's history
makes your eyes glaze over – and you're a little
indignant about the part accusing tourists of
treating locals like “extras in a film”. To prove
your ability to hang with the real Berliners,
you contemplate lunch at the currywurst stand
across the way but you didn’t make it all the
way here to eat on the street. Just up the road,
clean-looking Italian joint PAGLIA (Adalbertstr.
91) seems promising. At €9-10, the pizzas are
pricey, but hey: it is gourmet.
Now’s the bit you planned weeks ago, after
reading an NYT article on these high-end NICHE
ART & ARCHITECTURE TOURS (nicheberlin.de).
Feeling flash, you promptly emailed demanding
the same tour the journalist got, so the
afternoon sees you traipsing round the hidden
nooks and crannies in the gargantuan Neues
Kreuzberger Zentrum housing block framing
the northside of Kotti. Sure, €250 is steep, but
you’re on holiday... and no price is too high for
the likes on these edgy Insta shots.
All showered and Lynxed up, it’s party time.
First stop’s SANTA MARIA (Oranienstr. 170), for
Taco Tuesday and €1 tequila shots. Battering
your way to the bar, you get suitably sozzled and
sweaty before falling back onto the pavement.
Happily, there’s a hip-looking place across the
street – and you’re soon downing a €7 Gin Fizz
in LUZIA (Oranienstr. 34) to a backdrop of bare
brickwork and peeling wallpaper. Ah, Berlin. You
didn’t bring the squad here to stay in one place
all night though, so it’s onwards and, er… down
the road, to BAR 39 and TIKI TONGA (Oranienstr.
39). Tomorrow you’ll swear these were all the
same place. The only difference is the price –
Bar 39 does €5.50 mojitos and Tiki Tonga’s got
a €4.50 happy hour.
Now you’re itching to hit the clubs. You ask
someone where’s good nearby. “Clubbing? You
should’ve gone to Warschauer Straße…” he
laughs. Oh. Shit. But just before you call it a
night, you remember PRINZIPAL (Oranienstr. 178),
a “burlesque bar” you saw on some travel blog.
Time for that legendary Berlin debauchery! You
finally find the place and ring the doorbell. A
suited guy sits you down on a posh leather sofa,
and you get your first taste of cocktail prices
in double figures... but sadly, no naked ladies.
That's only on Saturdays, you're informed.
The night’s becoming a blur now, so you sensibly
agree on a trip to HASIR (Adalbertstr. 12).
The guidebook says döner was invented here:
could this place be any more authentic? Unfortunately,
before you arrive you lose that bet you
made about not chundering tonight. The forfeit?
Someone’s taking a €70 trip to KREUZSTICH
TATTOO (Adalbertstr. 85) tomorrow…
As you stumble back to the hostel, the first
signs of sunrise peeking over the horizon,
you feel for your wallet and realise it’s missing.
A sense of pride overwhelms your aura of
gin, döner and vomit. You’ve officially been
pickpocketed at Kotti! Just wait till the guys at
work hear about this. ■
The guidebook says
döner was invented at
Hasir: could this place
be any more authentic?
Unfortunately, before
you arrive you lose that
bet you made about not
chundering tonight.
18 • APRIL 2016

KOTTI FOR...
Hipsters
Your friends might all live in Neukölln, but you know better.
Where else can you find junkies, old Turkish ladies and authentic
Berliners side by side with all the third-wave comforts of home?
By Kevin Chow and Shiromi Bedessee
With Nietzsche in your tote bag and
the usual stream-of-consciousness
narrative running through your head,
you hit the streets of Kotti for your morning
rounds. First, KREMANSKI (Adalbertstr. 96a) for
the free wi-fi alongside an energising ginger
tea and chia seed pudding (you also love their
eggs Benedict, but you’re after something paleo
today). Next, a brief cigarette and espresso at
CAFÉ KOTTI (Adalbertstr. 96b), where the mix of
refugees and international lefty types makes you
feel all worldly and inspired.
A short walk to Oranienstraße brings you to
MUSEUM DER DINGE (Oranienstr. 25), a collection
of miscellaneous everyday “things” that only
design junkies like you appreciate. This month,
it’s showcasing a retro communist magazine.
You leave hungry, and thankfully Kotti has no
shortage of artisanal lunch spots to suit your
picky palate. After contemplating an €11 plate of
ceviche de pescado at Spanish-Peruvian CEVICHERIA
(Dresdener Str. 120) and the €6.50 “Korean
business lunch“ (vegan bibimbap. miso soup and
tea) at MERCOSY (Dresdener Str. 11), you decide
to cheat on your pescetarianism at the Kotti
As a Berlin expat who’s
spent time in New
York, you were eating
matcha cupcakes before
anyone else.
branch of BURGERMEISTER (Skalitzer Str. 136),
where your favourite burger in Berlin runs
just €9.50 (depending on fries). It’s good to
reward yourself.
To help you digest, you go for an espresso
at ORA (Oranienplatz 14)... your Instagram
followers will eat up the money shot of you
reading your vintage copy of Also sprach Zarathustra
against that old-school pharmaceutical
background. One of them alerts you that VOO
STORE (Oranienstr. 24) is having a release party
for its new Scandinavian shoe shelf, so you take
a peek and end up leaving with an €80 gold Boy
Scout ring, the perfect accessory to the fair-trade
sandals you’ve copped for €16. After yet another
espresso (at the in-store COMPANION COFFEE)
you head to CHARLIE’S ASIAN BAKERY (Oranienstr.
187) because as a Berlin expat who’s spent time
in New York, you were eating matcha cupcakes
before anyone else.
Last week you finally got into Berghain (after
all those rejections), so you’re basically a techno
expert now, and a stop at RECORD LOFT (Adalbertstr.
9), hidden deep in a Hof, will help you
beef up your collection of obscure records with
cool covers to spin at friends’ birthday parties.
By now the sun is coming down and it’s time to
eat again, so you head out to MAROUSH (Adalbertstr.
93) for an authentic shawarma, not a
döner like all the clueless tourists walking slowly
through your Kiez. And at only €3 you can save
the money for booze. You take your
wrap zum mitnehmen and grab a Berlinbrewed
Stone Arrogant Bastard IPA
at the BIEREREI (Oranienstr. 19), an upscale bottle
shop with all the craft beer you can drink.
As you’re rolling a fresh cigarette, Tinder tells
you that one of your cutest matches happens to
be around the corner at WÜRGEENGEL (Dresdener
Str. 122). It must be fate. Together you splurge
on a round of proper gin drinks made by real
mixologists (between €7.50-11). That trust fund
isn’t going to spend itself, right?
After you’ve started feeling the juniper buzz,
you pull him up the dingy stairway leading to
PALOMA BAR (Skalitzer Str. 135), and show off the
minimal techno dance moves you spent all summer
long practising at Club der Visionäre. But
the laid-back atmosphere is harshing your vibe after
all that alcohol, so you hop over to MONARCH
in the same building complex (Skalitzer Str. 134)
and dance ironically to some old-school hip hop,
romantic ambience provided by the U1 flashing
past the window in the background. At some
point you notice that you might have misplaced
your date. Oh well... you remember that “we
should consider every day lost on which we have
not danced at least once,” thus spoke Zarathustra.
You’re happy. You love Kotti. ■
Maroush
MARIA RUNARSDOTTIR
Voo Store
Record Loft
19

GUIDE
KOTTI FOR...
Natives
You rarely venture north of Oranienstraße, you wear leather
under your leather and you still remember when the Berlin
Wall was in your backyard. This is your Kiez, and all the
Scheiß-Touris can clear off. By Nina Branner and Janine Heim
It’s Tuesday morning, and you’re at SÜDBLOCK
(Admiralstr. 1-2) again. You were a bit suspicious
when the glass-walled café-bar-venue
opened up in 2010, but over time you became a
regular – you even get your hair cut here, at the
“Salon Salaam” sessions every second Monday.
Today, though, you’re here for the “Hartzer
Roller” free counselling, collecting a few tips on
how to prolong your unemployment benefits.
The future of your finances secured, you decide
to treat yourself to a mid-morning snack at
PADISAH BAKLAVA (Reichenberger Str. 177, see page
48), passing a couple snooty-looking hotelier types
who’re there to pick up bulk orders. To walk off
the ensuing sugar high, you head to the lobby of
the FRIEDRICHSHAIN-KREUZBERG MUSEUM (Adalbertstr.
95a) for a neighbourhood meeting about
– what else? – gentrification. You and everyone
else agree that your beloved Kotti is overrun with
disrespectful newcomers and something must be
done, but no solutions present themselves. A petition
is circulated to install more public toilets, and
next thing you know, it’s lunchtime.
Sadly, the tourists are mobbing TADIM (Adalbertstr.
98, see page 48), your favourite döner
stand – no homemade durum bread for you
today. Instead, you wolf down a Köfte meat patty
sandwich at the crowded but speedy KONAK GRILL
(Reichenberger Str. 10). You remember you’ve got
some errands to run. Yesterday, you stepped on an
abandoned needle in front of your Späti and ruined
your favourite pair of boots. Fortunately, you
go way back with Ibrahim (see page 16) at ABGE-
LAUFEN (Adalbertstr. 97), who gives you a discount
on a new sole. While you’re at it, you pick up a
handmade leather belt from Ibrahim’s neighbour
at the LEDERREIZ ÄNDERUNGSSCHNEIDEREI (Adalbertst.
88). He’s also an Urberliner, and you swap
some anecdotes about the good old days.
But you can’t stay long. It’s 6pm, and “happy
hour” (which actually lasts all night) at ALIBI CAFÉ
(Oranienstr. 169) has just begun. You’ll need
that €4.50 Caipirinha to work up the courage
to finally ask out that cute dark-eyed waitress
you’ve had your eye on for months. Wanting to
seem cultured, you invite her to an indie film
screening at Kiez favourite FSK FILMKUNST-KINO
(Segitzdamm 2). But she turns you down, so you
go home and eat dinner: a fresh piece of salmon
from the fish shop ÖZ KARADENIZ BALIKCISI (Adalbertstr.
95). You’d been planning to cook it for
the two of you, if the date went well.
Time to drown your sorrows. You’re buddies
with the bartender at the 20-year-old FRANKEN
(Oranienstr. 19a), a smoky dive plastered with
punk concert posters. But even his strongest
Bloody Mary (€8 for friends) isn’t strong enough
for you tonight, so you knock back a few beers
at your Stammkneipe ZUM ELEFANTEN (Oranienstr.
12), which you’ve been frequenting since
way before Sven Regener immortalised it in
the cult Kreuzberg novel Herr Lehmann. At this
point you’re suffering from Kotti nostalgia, so
you swing by punk institution SO36 (Oranienstr.
190), where you used to go see Malaria! and
Einstürzende Neubauten play back in the day.
But all there is tonight is a “Kiez Bingo” tournament,
and it’s already almost over. So you wind
up where you always do: at ROTE ROSE (Adalbertstr.
90). In this hellish Eckkneipe where no
light gets in and the jukebox plays the same 20
songs on repeat, you can enjoy your last beer
and blend into a motley gallery of Kotti characters.
Which might be exactly what you need at
this point. ■
SO36
In this hellish Eckkneipe
where no light gets in
and the jukebox plays
the same 20 songs on
repeat, you can enjoy
your last beer.
Südblock
Padisah Baklava
MARIA RUNARSDOTTIR
20 • APRIL 2016

KOTTI FOR...
KOTTI FOR...
Queers
Forget Forget Schöneberg and and its its yesteryear men-only meat market. You
belong belong here, here, where where the the scene attracts not not just boys but girls and every
gender gender in between in and and beyond... while a a cursory glance at Grindr
shows shows there’s there’s still still plenty of of dick dick to to go go around. By By Walter Crasshole
Since Since the the 1990s, the the venerated punk club has
been been putting on on some of of Berlin’s best queer
parties. Tonight it’s it’s Gayhane, a a gay Oriental
music night started by by local Turkish lesbian
legend Ipek. You bounce around to some Middle
Eastern beats while eyeballing a German
dude dude you’ve already seen around Kotti twice
this this week – – at at the the monthly release party for
queer mag mag Siegessäule at at Monarch; and right
here here at at Esso for for one of of Pansy’s drag shows.
Grindr confirms he’s into you, and the rest
of of your your night is is best left unwritten.
You You wake up up late and decide not to kick
your your paramour out out of of bed, but the hangover
needs to to go. go. Time for for the weekly €9 Sunday
brunch buffet (and more booze) at Möbel Olfe
satellite
SÜDBLOCK (Admiralstr. 1-2). Among
Turkish mothers, construction workers and local
artists, you you catch up up with your queer scene bud-
Your Your evening evening starts starts at the at the neighbourdiesdies,
some of of whom have barely left this very spot
hood’s hood’s first first homo homo hotspot: MÖBEL MÖBEL OLFE OLFE since since Friday night’s Boo Hoo party started.
(Reichenberger Str. Str. 177). 177). Since Since Richard
With so so much going on, you almost forget
Stein Stein opened opened it in it 2002 in 2002 as the as the successor to his to his that that you’ve got got to to head back to to SO36 this after-
legendary legendary Cafe Cafe Anal, Anal, it’s been it’s been the the number-one
noon. There’s an an organisational meeting for the
stop stop for locals for locals and and in-the-know queers queers from from KCSD KCSD – your – your big big gay gay day, the alternative to the
across across the city, the city, with with a no-frills a no-frills Kneipe Kneipe feel feel and and way-too-mainstream CSD at at the Brandenburg
glass glass windows windows that that are perfect are perfect for for people people watch-
Gate. Every year on on the last Saturday of June
ing both ing both inside inside and and out. out. It’s It’s early early on Saturday, on (this (this year year it’s it’s June 29) 29) Kotti and Oranienstraße
which which means means you you can can actually actually find find a seat a seat (unlike
become a huge a daytime explosion of lefty
on super-gay, on super-gay, super-packed Thursday nights) nights) and and queers, taking over the the streets, demonstrating
there there are plenty are plenty of guys of guys here here (unlike (unlike Tuesday’s
and and of of course partying. The cause may be great,
lady-oriented Mädchendisco). At the At the bar, bar, you you but but you you also also can’t wait to to dust off those heels
encounter encounter a tall, a tall, strapping Norwegian in town in town that that only only look good in in daylight. ■
for the for weekend... the promising, until until
dle
he asks he asks you where you where can he can go to go dance to dance
with with some some hot girls. hot girls. Ugh, Ugh, didn’t didn’t he see he see
the “Homo the “Homo Bar” Bar” sign sign on the on the window?
Undeterred, you you take take a trip a trip around around
the corner the corner to ROSES to ROSES (Oranienstr. 187), 187),
a cramped a cramped micro-bar micro-bar that that looks looks and and
feels feels like being like being trapped trapped inside inside a furry, a furry,
hot pink hot pink lava lava lamp. lamp. You You shout shout your your
drink drink order order over over the unending the 1980s 1980s
playlist playlist and are and relieved are relieved to find to find you’re you’re
in the in good the good graces graces of formidable of bartendetender
Gabrielle Gabrielle (who (who simply simply ignores ignores
bar-
the orders the orders of folks of folks she she doesn’t doesn’t like). like).
Roses Roses is a total is a total hook-up hook-up bar, bar, especially
for horny for horny tourists tourists who who don’t don’t know know
where where else to else go, to so go, you so you look look around around
for some for some prey. prey. But But pickings pickings are are slim, slim,
and anyway and anyway you’re you’re being being cock-blocked
by a gaggle by a gaggle of straight of straight girls girls who who want want
you to you be to their be their new new BFF. BFF.
So, still So, filled still filled with with energy, energy, you you head head Möbel Möbel Olfe Olfe
next next door door to SO36 to SO36 (Oranienstr. 190). 190).
JASON HARRELL
21 21

RANT
The revolution ain’t
what it used to be...
Going to Kreuzberg this May 1? Put down that Sterni!
John Riceburg bemoans the orgy of drinking and dancing
Kotti’s once-riotous May Day has become.
I’ve appeared in two major movies, even
though I never agreed to. Do you remember
in The Bourne Supremacy when Matt Damon
and Julia Stiles hide in the middle of a demonstration
at Alexanderplatz? There, somewhere in
the crowd, is yours truly. My second appearance
was in a German production: 1. Mai – Helden
bei der Arbeit, an anthology film about how four
different people experience May 1 in Kreuzberg.
In an establishing shot of the demonstration
around Kottbusser Tor, there I am, walking past
the camera with a red flag and a megaphone.
That was back in 2003 – my first time at the
May Day protests.
The first riots
I’ve celebrated May Day in Kreuzberg 11 times,
but the tradition is much older. International
Workers’ Day was proclaimed in 1889. Kreuzberg’s
grubby version of the same started in
1987 at Lausitzer Platz – at the time, I was in
preschool in south Texas and too young to find
“Berlin” on a map.
How did it start? Just a normal day at Kotti in
the 1980s. Police attacked a lefty street festival,
and autonomists in balaclavas started flipping
cars, breaking windows and looting shops. But in
contrast to an everyday riot, this one was joined
by the workers and families of the Kiez. Before
the Bolle supermarket on Skalitzer Straße
burned to the ground, old ladies were rushing
out of it with armfuls of groceries.
And the rest is history. Since 1988 there has
been a demonstration in Kreuzberg every May 1.
Some years, there are more than 20,000 people
and it feels like a festival. Other years, cobblestones
fly through the air until the early hours of
the morning.
In a battleship
Last year I was in the 12th row of the demonstrations,
my arms locked with punkish kids on
either side. Everyone around me was fitted out
with black hoodies – I was wearing my neon yellow
track jacket (a psychiatrist once told me I’m
a narcissist). The sunset was flooding Oranienstraße
with violet light. Fireworks cracked,
punctuating the deep male voices calling out “A,
Anti, Anticapitalista!”
But our militant parade came to a stop. On
each side of us were Berlin’s Prügelbullen, the
police who live in barracks and only interact with
us civilians via truncheons. In their black armour
and spherical white helmets, they look like a
bulkier version of Robocop. Five metres ahead of
me, they were trying to pull a demonstrator out
to the side – but he had his arms linked in a human
chain, so the whole block was rocking back
and forth like a group of sailors in a musical. The
pungent pepper smell in the air showed the cops
were using their favourite weapon. I turned my
head away and prayed to Marx they would stop
soon. I have gotten pepper-sprayed twice, and I
“The pungent pepper
smell showed the
cops were using their
favourite weapon. I
turned my head away
and prayed to Marx.”
am happy to admit I am a coward. But we all held
fast, the police weren’t able to grab anyone, and
they soon retired. Our black-hooded battleship
continued to the end of the planned route.
The MyFest conspiracy
But last year, there was no riot. In fact, the press
called it “the most peaceful May 1 in decades”.
The demonstration was huge, but sedate –
I saw plenty of protesters pushing strollers.
Even huger was the street festival filling every
intersection of SO36: MyFest. Most May 1 revellers
experience the day as a chaotic potpourri
of parades, parties, outdoor concerts and yes,
maybe some protesting. But by crossing from
the drunken, dancing masses of MyFest to the
shouting demonstrators (who are also drunk,
but less so), they’re actually crossing the line
between revolution and counterrevolution.
MyFest likes to present itself as a “broad
alliance of neighbours, businesses and civil initiatives”.
But it’s really not much more than a front
for Berlin’s Polizei. For decades, they failed to
keep demonstrators off the street. Only in 2003-
2004 did the city’s Social Democratic masters
have a bright idea: The best way to block a demonstration
is to fill the street with other people.
Yes, the police have financed MyFest for more
than 10 years. Just Google it.
This year, there was even talk of MyFest
being taken over by Willi Kausch, the party
manager who gave Berlin the bro-tastic World
Cup Fanmeile at the Brandenburg Gate. Because
what says “International Workers’ Day” better
than a celebration of nationalism, sexism and
homophobia? But after a few days, the district
government declared it “wasn’t the right partner
for a political festival”. Weird. I guess in a sense,
a desperate attempt to keep politics out of
Kreuzberg is political.
Kotti capitalism
Kotti is the focal point of my life, and not just
on May 1. I’m writing this essay at Café Kotti.
Next to me, a Syrian refugee is being interviewed.
Across the room, two different socialist
groups are having meetings. As a reporter focused
on protest movements, I feel like at least
half of my work takes place around Kottbusser
Tor. The locals protesting against rising rents at
the Kotti & Co. shack. The refugees who once
occupied Oranienplatz and the former school
in Ohlauer Straße. And round-the-clock protest
rallies of Kurds and Palestinians.
This all comes together on May Day. That’s
why I’m back every year. But just like MyFest
has introduced a reeking festival of commerce,
any emancipatory initiative like this 28-year-old
anti-capitalist carnival procession can get sucked
into the brutal gears of the market economy.
Even I’m involved in marketing the grubby chic:
I offer walking tours around Kotti to inform
people about the history of the protests, as well
as practical tips for demonstrating. So I’m part
of the problem. Hell, I’m even using demonstrations
to advance my movie career.
But I’m going to be back on the streets of
Kreuzberg this May 1. I’m going to fight against
the rule of money over our lives – and try to earn
a few bucks on the side. Meet me there, with
about 20,000 friends. n
Need some May Day survival tips?
Check www.exberliner.com.
22 • APRIL 2016

SPOTLIGHT
“
The florist that (almost) never sleeps
By Jean-Michel Hauteville. Photo by Maria Runarsdottir.
The main difference between Kotti and
Wedding? Well, for starters, Kotti
never really sleeps,” Bircan Er readily
answers when pressed to compare
the neighbourhood he has lived in since he was
born with the Kiez where he has been selling
flowers since the end of last century. In any
case, Ahmet Igde, the founder and previous
owner of Blumen Dilek, took matters into
his own hands to make sure that at Kotti, one
colourful, fragrant oasis would indeed stay wide
awake every night. In 2008, he decided that his
iconic flower shop at the corner of Adalbertstraße
and Oranienstraße would stay open 24
hours a day, seven days a week.
Blumen Dilek has sold flowers since 1982,
first inside the Kottbusser Tor U-Bahn station,
and then, since 1999, at this bustling crossroads.
1999 is also when Er, then a teenager,
started working at the shop. Twelve years later
Igde, who had immigrated to Germany in the
early 1960s as a Gastarbeiter, effectively retired
and moved back to Turkey, leaving Er in charge.
But why would one decide to keep a flower
shop open through the dead of night in the first
place? “To work less of course,” Igde’s successor
replies with a playful smile. He pauses to let
the irony sink in. “It’s such a massive waste of
time and energy to get all the flowers out of the
shop every morning, and then back inside every
evening. We figured out we might as well never
close at all, just to spare us the hassle,” the
37-year-old goes on matter-of-factly.
Er insists his two night-shift salespeople
really do sell flowers, say, at 3am on a Tuesday.
Blumen Dilek, christened after a popular
female Turkish name which means “wish”,
caters to a little-known but thriving market for
last-minute orders and “emergency situations”.
Like one desperate gentleman who needed 100
roses delivered to Spandau immediately, after
midnight, “to save his relationship,” Er recalls
with a chuckle. “Our drivers don’t work that
late, so we had to deliver the bouquets by taxi,
costing him a hefty surcharge.”
However, Dilek’s success story of nighttime
flower selling is not all moonlight and roses.
At the end of last year, after receiving several
ominous notices and paying a €200 fine,
the shop was forced to comply with Berlin’s
strict Sunday trading laws. As a result, the
Blumenladen is now open a mere nine hours on
Sundays, from 7am to 4pm.
But the worst episode in Blumen Dilek’s
history occurred before that. In late 2012 the
flower shop made local headlines as it faced
eviction, its existence threatened by another
Kotti household name, the ever-expanding
Hasir restaurant (see page 10). Its wealthy owners,
the Aygün family, had purchased the entire
building next to their restaurant and nullified
Dilek’s 12-year tenancy agreement. Luckily, Er
found a new locale, just across the street, at
a safe distance from his slightly overbearing
neighbours. The flower shop opened at the new
location in February last year, thus winning a
three-year battle for its survival.
“They’re powerful investors who bully the
little guys, that’s a shame,” Er says with resignation.
“But when I see the Hasir guys on the
street, we do say hello. We’re just people after
all, and we’re Kotti.” n
23

What’s on
CALENDAR
April 2016
Palaces for the
State Visitor
Fri 1.4.
EXHIBITION East and West Germany
competed for cred by inviting
world leaders into their
stately homes. See how the GDR
lobbied at Pankow’s Schönhausen
palace. Through Jul 3.
Make Me Stop Smoking
Sat 2.4.
TALK An examination and reconstruction
of war-ravaged Lebanon
by actor and artist Rabih
Mroué, whose retrospective runs
Apr 30-Mar 3. HAU1. Starts
19:00. (see page 34)
MOSTAFA ABDEL ATY
36th Berlin
Half Marathon
Sun 3.4
RACE Run, Berlin, run! From Alex
to the Victory Column all the way
to Potsdamer Platz and back in a
21km race. Begins at Karl-Marx-
Allee (near Kino International).
Starts 10:05.
Arab Film Festival
Wed 6.4
FILM The seventh edition of the
festival celebrating cinema from
the Arabic world opens tonight
with As I Open my Eyes from Tunisian
writer-director Leyla Bouzid.
Through Apr 13. Kino Arsenal
and more. (see page 30)
F.I.N.D. Festival
Thu 7.4
THEATRE The Festival for International
New Drama returns to the
Schaubühne for the 16th time,
opening with Ahmed El Attar’s
The Last Supper. Starts 19:30.
Through Apr 17. (see page 32)
Battles + Fields
Fri 8.4
MUSIC Math-rock power trio Battles
return with their electric and
eclectic tunes alongside the
heavy prog sounds of Fields in
this night of experimental and
dance-y rock. Astra Kulturhaus.
Starts 20:00.
Maya: The Language
of Beauty
Tue 12.4
EXHIBITION Sculptures and
ceramics reveal the ancient
world of the Mayans: their concepts
of beauty, relations to the
gods and daily life. Through Jul 8.
Martin-Gropius-Bau.
Achtung Berlin
Wed 13.4
FILM Catch more than 70 films
made in or focusing on Berlin
and Brandenburg, kicking off
with trash-epic Mann im Spagat.
We’ll be on hand to present our
own Exberliner award. Through
Apr 21. (see page 31)
Opening: Modern
Visionaries
Fri 15.4
EXHIBITION They found utopia in
a young Weimar Republic. Check
out designs, texts and drawings
from the early 20th-century
“Glass Chain” dreamers. Through
October 31. Berlinische Galerie.
My perfect Berlin weekend
Brazilian-born film fanatic WELLING-
TON ALMEIDA is Exberliner’s reader
representative on
our film award jury at
the Achtung Berlin film
festival (see page 31).
When not at the movies,
he’s working on
his first screenplay.
FRIDAY 15:30 After getting
off work, head
to Stadtbad Neukölln
(Ganghoferstr. 3, Neukölln)
for an hour’s swim, followed
by a quick coffee and a haircut at
Berlin Friseure (Brunnenstr. 151,
Mitte). 19:30 Meet a friend for homemade
ravioli with butter sauce at
La Bolognina (Donaustr. 107, Neukölln).
23:00 End my evening with
some Netflix (with or without ‘chill’).
SATURDAY 10:00 Get up and clean
the whole apartment 14:00 Pass by
the secondhand shops on Pannierstraße
to find some nice
piece of furniture for my
empty flat. 20:00 Start
the evening with a film
at Rollberg Kino (Rollbergstr.
70, Neukölln)
or Il Kino (Nansenstr.
22, Neukölln), then
a gathering at some
friend’s apartment.
SUNDAY 12:00 After
debating whether
I should join my normal friends
for brunch with the best dessert
chef in town (Kostadin) at Schiller
Bar (Herrfurthstr. 7, Neukölln) or my
vampire friends for a never-ending
techno experience at Berghain (Am
Wriezener Bahnhof, Friedrichshain),
I talk myself into the latter.
Nada Surf
Mon 18.4
MUSIC Twenty years after their
breakthrough record, the sensitive
indie rock lads are still “Popular”
and touring their latest album,
You Know Who You Are.
Huxley’s Neue Welt. Starts 20:00.
Motorpsycho
Sat 23.4
MUSIC Striking somewhere between
Pink Floyd and Tool, the
Norwegian outfit are tripping out
audiences with their latest album
Here Be Monsters. Columbia
Theater. Starts 20:00.
Yuna
Tue 19.4
MUSIC The Malaysian songstress’
latest album Chapters dips between
R&B, soul and hip hop,
with catchy production backing
her jazzy and sultry singing.
Grüner Salon. Starts 20:00.
The Gate Berlin
Sun 24.4
EXHIBITION The ultimate Touri
destination hosts a new multimedia
exhibition about the history
of Berlin from the roaring
1920s to today. Bring your folks!
Brandenburg Gate.
24 • APRIL 2016

Exberliner Kotti party!
Mon 4.4
PARTY Celebrate the release of
our Kottbusser Tor issue, right
there on Kotti. Bring your friends,
check out the Kiez and snag
some free copies! Multilayerladen.
Starts 20:00.
Isa Genzken:
Make Yourself Pretty!
Sat 9.4
EXHIBITION This sweeping retrospective
of one of Berlin’s most
famous artists highlights her major
works, including her foray into
early digital art. Martin-Gropius-
Bau. (see page 40)
Intonations
Sat 16.4
MUSIC Led by pianist Elena
Bashkirova, this festival of Judaism
and chamber music features
pieces from Jewish composers
exiled during the Nazi regime.
Through Apr 21. Jewish Museum.
Apr 4:
EXBlicks:
Berlinized at
Lichtblick!
CLAUDIA DALO
Television
Wed 5.4
MUSIC As Marquee Moon nears
40, Tom Verlaine and co. play
on, one of the last bands standing
from the old CBGB scene.
Berlin will “See No Evil” for the
first time in 12 years. Huxleys
Neue Welt. Starts 20:00.
Nervous
Systems Tour
Sun 10.4
TALK HKW teams up with Tactical
Tech to ask how we can
take back the reins on big data
through art and activism. Feminist
activist Ewa Majewska walks
you through it. Starts 15:00.
Jenny Lee
Mon 11.4
MUSIC Warpaint’s bassist has
struck out on her own with a
New Wave/goth revivalist-style
solo project, which is as emotive
as it is danceable. Frannz Club.
Starts 21:00.
Comic Invasion
Sun 17.4
COMICS Pick up some indie
comics and swag, meet with fellow
comic geeks or connect with
artists and publishers to get your
breakthrough graphic novel in
print. Also Apr 16. Urban Spree.
April Programme in English
30.3.–3.4. / HAU1, HAU2, HAU3FESTIVAL
Outside the Image
Inside Us
A retrospective of Rabih Mroué &
Lina Majdalanie
5.4. / HAU1 DIALOGUE
Laurie Penny
Babys machen und andere Storys
book launch / Moderation: Sonja Eismann
7.4. / HAU1 / Re-run PERFORMANCE
Ivo Dimchev
Fest / afterwards concert: 15 Songs from my Shows
9.+10.4. / HAU1 PERFORMANCE
Ivo Dimchev
Operville
8.+9.4. / HAU2 DANCE
Chétouane / Maertens
/ Mandafounis /
Marklund / Mosca
SOLI
17.4. / HAU2 DIALOGUE
Fearless Speech #2
Reconsidering Foucault
The Order of the Arts
With Rossella Biscotti, Roberto Nigro, Juliane
Rebentisch and Ruth Sonderegger /
Moderation: Pascal Jurt and Ulf Wuggenig
A Maze
Wed 20.4
VIDEO GAMES The indie video
game fest brings together gamers,
developers and digital creatives
for an exhibition of experimental
games and interactive
experiences. Through March 23.
Urban Spree.
Female Gaze
Thu 21.4
THEATRE In what’s sure to be a
fiercely feminist spectacle, a
group of post-migrant students
confront perceptions of women
of colour. Ballhaus
Naunynstraße.
Starts 20:00.
Apr 28-29:
Startup Safary!
(see page 51)
The Most
Unsatisfied Town
Fri 22.4
THEATRE Last chance this month
for Amy Evans’ brutal tale of asylum
and police violence, part
of ETB’s Made in Berlin series.
From Apr 7. English Theatre.
Starts 20:00. (see page 34)
13.–24.4. / HAU2 DIALOGUE / THEATRE / PERFORMANCE
Privacy
Thematic Focus / With Benny Claessens
& Risto Kübar, Srećko Horvat / Gabriele
Rollnik / Karl-Heinz Dellwo, Tiago Rodrigues,
De Warme Winkel & Wunderbaum
14.+15.4. / HAU2 / Re-run PERFORMANCE
Ariel Efraim Ashbel
and friends
The Empire Strikes Back:
Kingdom of the Synthetic
EXBlicks: Achtung
winner screening
Wed 27.4
FILM Catch the very best international
Berlin film from this
year’s Achtung festival, as decided
by Exberliner’s own jury.
Lichtblick Kino. Starts 20:30.
(see page 31)
Gallery Weekend
Fri 29.4
ART This weekend, over 50 Berlin
galleries open their doors. Don’t
miss exhibitions by Wolfgang Tillmans,
Rirkrit Tiravanija, KwieKulik
and many more. City-wide.
Through May 1. (see page 42)
Berlin Burlesque Week
Sat 30.4
FESTIVAL Lace up that corset:
Germany’s biggest burlesque talents
converge for nine days of
non-stop acts! Sexy comedy revue
The Big Tickle at Ballhaus-
Berlin kicks it all off. Various locations.
Through May 8.
27.4. / HAU1 DIALOGUE
Plattenspieler
With Thomas Meinecke and
Lerato Khathi aka Lakuti
27.4., 29.+30.4. / HAU3 / Re-run DANCE / PERFORMANCE
Jeremy Wade
Death Asshole Rave Video
28.–30.4. / HAU2 / Premiere DANCE
Kat Válastur
OILinity
www.hebbel-am-ufer.de
25

FILM
STARTS MAR 31
Ixcanul
D: Jayro Bustamante (Guatemala,
France 2015) with
María Mercedes Coroy
◆◆◆ Winner of the
New Perspectives award
at last year’s Berlinale,
Bustamante’s visually
trippy and powerfully political
debut follows an
indigenous Guatemalan
woman and her young
daughter María as they struggle to make ends meet in a
micro-farming community at the foot of an active volcano.
The farm’s foreman has arranged to be María’s husband,
but the young woman’s burgeoning sexuality has other
ideas. Desire and ritual play out on black volcanic rock as
exploitation looms: nothing remains dormant for long. ROC
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STARTS APR 7
Freeheld
D: Peter Sollett (USA
2015) with Julianne
Moore, Ellen Page
◆ Freeheld is the
based-on-true-events
story of closeted New
Jersey detective Laurel
Hester (Moore) who’s
diagnosed with terminal
cancer. She must come
to terms with the illness
and fi ghts the local council to leave her pension benefi ts
to her partner (Page). While the cast is uniformly strong, it
can’t redeem this well-meaning but tonally jarring drama
from being shameless Oscar-bait that tries too hard to be
inspirational. The important LGBT issue is reduced to tearjerking
material and frankly deserved better. DM
STARTS APR 7
A Man Called Ove
D: Hannes Holm (Sweden
2015) with Rolf Lassgård,
Zozan Akgün ◆◆
Every life story is extraordinary,
so even when all
this Swedish comedic
drama does is narrate
the decades of ups and
downs that helped shape
the grumpy, suicidal old
man we meet at the
beginning, you’ll likely be
charmed despite yourself. Directed with great compassion
if not much originality or fi nesse, the fi lm’s sweet nature
and heartfelt celebration of humanity make it an altogether
easy pill to swallow. Some might say too easy. ZS
STARTS APR 7
Land of Mine
(Unter dem Sand)
D: Martin Zandvliet (Denmark,
Germany 2015)
with Roland Møller, Joel
Basman ◆
Fourteen German soldiers
are sent to the Danish
coast post-WWII to sweep
for and defuse mines buried
by the Nazis. Scenes
of young men crawling
along the beach littered
with dynamite are certainly harrowing, as is watching a
broken spirit looking to end the misery of life. But tension
built on the prospect of imminent explosions hardly feels
classy and the one-note characterisation (oppressorvictim)
gives the story an unsavoury taste of emotional
manipulation. ZS
Of kings and pawns By ZHUO-NING SU
People tend to be labelled leaders or followers,
those who take charge of their destinies and
those who drift along, driven by everything but
their own will. Unlike a game of chess, however,
roles change as life unfolds, as we stumble upon
inspirations or get caught between forces
beyond our control.
In German director Tom Tykwer’s
adaptation of Dave Eggers’ A HOLOGRAM
FOR THE KING (photo), American salesman
Alan Clay (Hanks) starts off a lost
soul. While he’s on an ostensibly high-flying
job pitching his company’s holographic technology
to a Saudi Arabian king, we gradually learn
that he arrives with the baggage of a painful business
failure, the payment for his semi-estranged
daughter’s college tuition and a literal, malignantlooking
lump on his back. Weighted down by
such bothers, he keeps missing the morning
shuttle and relies instead on a private chauffeur
who ends up being his gateway to adventures off
the beaten path.
Clay is the quintessential everyman of our
confoundingly volatile post-modern times. The
appearance of self-made success belies the work
stress, familial duties and personal troubles that
often take choice out of the equation. But fear
not, the movie seems to say. The complexity of
the new world also opens up unexpected opportunities
for change, unforeseen roads to epiphany.
So it’ll be after travelling halfway around the
globe and meeting the beautiful, enigmatic doctor
Hakem (Choudhury) that our reluctant hero
finally feels ready to take control of a life less and
less his own. Tykwer tells the partially comedic/
fantastical tale without much hiccup, if also with
a dispiriting anonymity. The production is polished
and the turns of events smoothed out, and
one glides down the familiar grooves of a studio
picture missing the electric edginess of Run Lola
Run or 3. It doesn’t help that some key dialogue is
lifted from the novel with such heavy-handedness
that all power of metaphor goes out the window.
What remains is an uplifting story with a likable
message, unremarkably executed.
EDITOR’S
PICK!
The journey of winning back one’s prerogative
is reversed in the spy thriller/biopic PAWN
SACRIFICE. Chronicling the rise to fame and
fall from grace of legendary chess player Bobby
Fischer (Maguire) during the Cold War, it first
depicts how the child of an immigrant single
mother growing up in a climate of fear
resolutely grabs onto the one thing that
calms him and turns it into a lifelong
pursuit. With talent, tenacity and tireless
practice, young Bobby sweeps through
tournaments, smashes records and fulfils his
dream step by confident step. When the American
prodigy becomes a realistic threat to Russia’s
longstanding dominance of the World Championship,
however, both superpowers inevitably
get involved, leaving the chessboard a battlefield
and the contestants their unwilling soldiers.
Zwick competently juggles a gritty, genrefriendly
sensibility with dramatic gravitas. The
paranoia that ultimately cripples Fischer’s mind
is fuelled by an informed script sprinkled with
details of psychological warfare and communicated
through effective pacing, sequencing and
acting. Maguire and Schreiber, who plays charismatic
Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky, are
equally compelling to watch. Their iconic 1972
match in Reykjavík distils fierce intelligence,
rival personalities and high-stakes international
politics into moves of quietly belligerent calculation,
aptly mirroring the state of affairs outside.
Enslaved by the militant scrutiny and his own
ever-fading sanity, Fischer would eventually
partake in little of the victor’s glory. Without
compromise, the film ably illustrates this bitter
irony of someone too brilliant to be allowed to
live for himself. ■
STARTS APR 28
A Hologram for the King ◆◆
D: Tom Tykwer (Germany, USA, UK 2016) with Tom Hanks, Sarita
Choudhury
STARTS APR 28
Pawn Sacrifice ◆◆◆
D: Edward Zwick (USA 2014) with Tobey Maguire, Liev Schreiber
26 • APRIL 2016

GERMANY’S
FIRST IMAX ®
LASER PROJECTION
ON BERLIN’S BIGGEST SCREEN
STARTS APR 14
Hardcore
(Hardcore Henry) D: Ilya Naishuller (Russia,
USA 2015) with Sharlto Copley, Haley
Bennett ◆◆ It takes tremendous
skill and unimaginable discipline
to shoot a full-blown sci-fi actioner
using only the first-person POV. No
action/reaction, no multi-cam or
pull-back shots - and no lead performance
either, since we don’t get
to see the hero at all. For that reason
alone, Hardcore – seen entirely
through the eyes of its mute protagonist,
whose face is but briefly
betrayed in reflection towards the
end – never ceases to impress.
Whether this directorial choice is
as meaningful as it is unquestionably
ballsy, however, would depend
on who you ask. Genre fans looking
for kinks will derive great pleasure
from an uncommonly immediate
experience that turns the viewer
into the shooter, stabber, chaser or
dodger in a prolonged and extreme
splatter-fest. We wake up with (or
as) the amnesiac, voiceless Henry
(no actor credited) in a lab, and find
ourselves caught in the crossfire
between an evil Russian kingpin
with ESP and a reclusive, self-multiplying
scientist. Carnage ensues.
Featuring sharp choreography
and some truly stupendous camera
work, the “how-did-they-do-that”
factor of the film is high. That
said, the trick does get old and
the unshakable sense of videogame
superficiality is damning.
It’s a blast for sure, but also total
sensory overkill. ZS
NEW
STARTS APR 14
The Lady in the Van
D: Nicholas Hytner (UK 2015) with Maggie
Smith, Alex Jennings ◆◆◆ What
if Maggie Smith’s Countess of
Grantham had ended up as a cantankerous
bag lady? Based on Alan
Bennett’s memoir and stage play,
The Lady in the Van answers this
question by telling the “mostly true
story” of Miss Shepherd (Smith),
who is temporarily invited to park
her van on Bennett’s (Jennings)
London driveway in 1973. Her stay
ends up lasting 15 years, with the
playwright and the bigoted squatter
developing an unlikely friendship.
The charming odd-couple premise
might set off alarm bells, but
Hytner’s adaptation strikes the right
balance between the wryly comedic
and the poignant. The director relies
on the meta but never crosses into
the cloyingly self-reflexive, and any
smugness is circumvented by the
surreal doppelganger division of the
real Bennett (“you live life”) and the
writer Bennett (“I’ll write about it”).
This balancing act is further exemplified
by the two leads, especially
Smith, who never descends into
parody. You’d expect only greatness
from the actress, but her irascibly
eccentric performance is funny,
affecting and truly memorable. The
big-hearted film’s occasional lack of
focus is eclipsed by the performances
and insights into British
middle-class guilt and an artist’s
search for a subject. DM
FROM APRIL 14 TH
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27

FILM
STARTS APR 7
Ip Man 3
D: Wilson Yip (Hong Kong
2015) with Donnie Yen,
Mike Tyson ◆◆
The latest instalment of
the successful Kung Fu
franchise sees Wing Chun
master Ip Man fending
off gangsters from the
local school, defeating a
calculating challenger for
the champion title and
coping with personal tragedy. Individual action sequences,
including Ip’s climactic face-off with Tyson, kick serious
ass, but the script is bland and the production lacks texture
to go with its scale, so nothing really registers beyond
the grace of those balletic fi ghts. ZS
STARTS APR 14
Fritz Lang
D: Gordian Maugg
(Germany 2016) with
Heino Ferch, Samuel Finzi
◆◆ Dramatising the
serial murder case that
shook Düsseldorf in the
1920s and supposedly
inspired the making of
M, Fritz Lang offers an
intermittently successful
look at one of German
cinema’s true icons and how he arrived at his sick
masterpiece. There’s an undeniable thrill to see echoes
of familiar fi lm scenes play out in a true crime story but
the overall sensationalistic approach cheapens the payoff
somewhat. Finzi is no Peter Lorre but does turn in a
disturbingly assured performance. ZS
STARTS APR 14
Much Loved
D: Nabil Ayouch (France,
Morocco 2015) with
Loubna Abidar ◆◆◆
Four women in Marrakesh
are ladies of the night.
They get summoned to
rich men’s parties to sell
their bodies. Despite great
hardship, they remain
united, dignifi ed, and
much loved. A poignant
social commentary, as well as an empowering tale of womanhood
and friendship, Ayouch’s fi lm intercuts between
close-ups of their weary faces and tracking shots of passersby
representing the whole social spectrum, from collectors
of recyclables to street sweepers. These are all people
who must strive to survive, each in their own way. YC
STARTS APR 14
A War
D: Tobias Lindholm (Denmark
2015) with Pilou
Asbæk, Tuva Novotny
◆◆◆◆ A Danish offi
cer is sent home for
investigation after a fatal
incident claiming the lives
of 11 Afghan civilians.
As the military court tries
to reconstruct what happened,
the man must decide
what to say and face
the trial of his own conscience. With surgically precise,
dispassionate hands, Lindholm dissects moral dilemmas
under extreme circumstances and dares you to pass
judgment on anyone. Carried by Asbæk’s layered, affecting
performance, this is a constantly engrossing portrait of
the physical and emotional casualties of war. ZS
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“It’s irrelevant who wins”
In Greek absurdist comedy
Chevalier, writer/director ATHINA
RACHEL TSANGARI pits six men on
a boat against each other and
themselves. By ZHUO-NING SU
What starts as a game the men play to decide
who’s the best of them all turns biting and
insightful. The latest in a string of A-list festival
hits to come from a country still struggling with
recession, Tsangari’s film (see review, page 30)
won the top prize at the London Film Festival
last autumn.
Chevalier is a pretty conceptual film.
Where did the initial idea come from?
I’d made a film called The Capsule with an allfemale
cast. It was a Gothic vampire film based
on a loose script I had written with the Polish
artist Aleksandra Waliszewska, about a group
of girls who were kept in an institution perched
on a rock. It was fascinating to see how the
personalities of the actors were informing the
characters, and vice versa. So I thought it’d be
interesting to try this experiment with an allmale
cast on a boat, as an inescapable environment.
It’s also a very Greek thing to do – men
going on fishing trips with their buddies for
some male bonding.
Was Chevalier also loosely scripted? This
one was actually pretty scripted out. It was quite
precise in terms of the game, but not so precise
in terms of the characters, so the actual casting
process took a while. It didn’t involve reading
lines or auditions. We just had long conversations
– about life in general, about their personal
lives, all the while trying to create a map of the
energies between them. We rehearsed for some
time on the boat, and the personalities and
power dynamics between the actors were what
made the characters more exact.
As viewers, we never get to see the criteria
with which the characters judge one
another. You wrote it – did you make up
the rules? No! We decided it would be more
interesting and much closer to reality for there
to be no criteria. The whole idea of deciding
who’s the best in general is ridiculous and impos-
CHEVALIER
Apr 21
sible anyway. And the thing is, the way we judge
is always very subjective. Chevalier is actually
a game we all play all the time, subconsciously.
We’re always evaluating others, giving each other
points. And there are no rules on how we do
that other than personal taste and values. In the
end it’s irrelevant who even wins. It was left a bit
ambiguous in the film, so that half the audience
is usually not sure who actually won. The most
important thing is that these men played the
game, and that they were playing it more against
themselves than against one another.
The film ended up making some poignant
points about modern masculinity – imagine
the surprise when people realise it’s
directed by a woman! I did collaborate with
my cast, and I had a male co-writer as well. A
lot of the stuff that rings very true was offered
with great generosity by the cast. We worked
together as a team, instead of them looking
at me as this female director. I didn’t want
this to be a woman’s film about men. We have
preconceptions about what a woman’s gaze, a
woman’s approach or a woman’s film is. There’s
something like a dead end to that conversation.
Women make cinema. That’s it.
Did Greece’s economic struggles affect
the making of Chevalier? We had a relatively
easy time because we got some financing from
the Greek film centre, and some from television.
We also had a German co-producer who
helped us out with a big part of the budget.
So it was a happy combination of things. But
looking forward, I’m really worried: about
Greek society in general, and also about Greek
cinema. Artistically and creatively it’s actually
thriving, but financially it’s getting more and
more difficult. There used to be a much more
vital and active interest from our government,
because in the context of everything, cinema
is a small investment that has a huge return.
We can see how Greek cinema has been a very
positive ambassador for the country in the last
10 years, starting with films like Dogtooth and
what’s often called the “Greek New Wave”. So
it’s really infuriating to have the state being
extremely oblivious, ignorant and not really
giving a shit. ■
28 • APRIL 2016

STARTS APR 14
Song One
D: Kate Barker-Froyland (USA 2014) with
Anne Hathaway, Johnny Flynn ◆◆
Following in the wake of romantic
musical dramas such as Begin
Again, Barker-Froyland’s debut
feature graces our screens thanks
largely to Anne Hathaway, who
both produces and does much
of the film’s heavy lifting, acting
largely by herself against a script
that otherwise sees a lot of its
dialogue disappear into mumbling
conversations.
There’s a naïve simplicity to the
story of Franny (Hathaway), who
leaves her ethnographic studies in
Morocco behind when her brother
is put into a coma after a road
accident. Anxious to awaken him
with familiar sounds, she goes in
search of his musical hero Jamie
Forester (Flynn), with whom she
connects at gigs and during waterfront
trysts against the romantic
backdrop of Manhattan by night.
While the movie is occasionally
mawkish with its coma timeline
and its family reconciliation drama,
there’s an understated amalgamation
of themes about isolation and
finding one’s own song. At its best,
Barker-Froyland’s film works as
an anthropological exploration of
Brooklyn’s music scene. But without
the documentary wherewithal
to let its musicians really shine,
Song One gets frustratingly lost in
its lovely tunes. MW
photo © Spectral | Depositphotos.com
ein Ensemble der
Friday | 29 April 2016 | 8pm
Kammermusiksaal, Philharmonie Berlin
PIETRO BENCINI
Magnificat a 8 voci in 2 cori
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Litanie per la beata Vergine a 9 voci in 2 cori
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STARTS APR 21
The Commune
(Die Kommune) D: Thomas Vinterberg (Denmark,
Sweden, Netherlands 2016) with Trine
Dyrholm, Ulrich Thomsen ◆◆◆ After the
well-received if troubled adaptation
of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the
Madding Crowd, Dogma 95 standard
bearer Thomas Vinterberg returns
to his native Denmark and revisits
some signature themes with a dryly
comic and semi-autobiographical
account of his upbringing in a Copenhagen
commune in the 1970s.
Dyrholm plays Anna, a newscaster
whose husband Erik (Thomsen)
has just inherited the family home.
Anna wishes to form a commune in
the grand old building so, despite
Erik’s apprehensions, they do. It
goes against his grain at first, but
Erik decides to embrace this new
freedom. He even goes so far as
to start an affair with a younger
student who, to Anna’s horror,
ends up living amongst them.
Meanwhile, the daughter of the two
begins her own experiments and
soon a new normalcy is formed.
The director has long harboured
a misanthropic fascination
with despicable characters and
Thomsen’s Erik is the latest to fit
that mould: a selfish, hypocritical
patriarch who would only work to
further infuriate the viewer were it
not for Dyrholm’s sympathetic performance
in the lead role. Anna’s a
bit of a doormat at times, but her
suffering drops an anchor of realism
from Vinterberg’s otherwise
comically cynical show. ROC
ALDOUS HARDING
17.4. PRIVATCLUB
BIG UPS
18.4. CASSIOPEIA
XAVIER RUDD
21.4. HUXLEYS
MUTUAL BENEFIT
22.4. KANTINE AM BERGHAIN
MATT SIMONS
25.4. GRETCHEN
TELEMAN
25.4. PRIVATCLUB
TRIXIE WHITLEY
26.4. COLUMBIA THEATER
SUNSET SONS
28.4. PBHFCLUB
CHARITY CHILDREN
28.4. LIDO
OKTA LOGUE
4.5. MUSIK & FRIEDEN
MARBLE SOUNDS
8.5. GRÜNER SALON
TICKETS: KOKA36(.DE)
DMA´S
9.5. MUSIK & FRIEDEN
TOWN OF SAINTS
12.5. PRIVATCLUB
ALA.NI
12.5. AUSTER-CLUB
MAX JURY
VERLEGT AUF DEN 15.5. IN DEN PRIVATCLUB
LAIL ARAD
21.5. PRIVATCLUB
JAMIE LAWSON
21.5. GRETCHEN
THE HEAVY
23.5. COLUMBIA THEATER
FATHER JOHN MISTY
25.5. PBHFCLUB
PJ HARVEY
20.6. ZITADELLE
EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY
20.6. HUXLEYS
PIXIES
18.7. ZITADELLE
EINZIGES
KONZERT IN
DEUTSCHLAND
EINZIGES KONZERT
IN DEUTSCHLAND
29

FILM
STARTS APR 14
Wild
D: Nicolette Krebitz (Germany
2016) with Lilith
Stangenberg ◆ The
thing is, if you’re asking
your audience to buy a
passionate affair between
an introverted woman
and a wolf she happens
to fi nd in the city park
that involves one-sided
conversations, a spiritual
convergence and lots of inappropriate licking, you have to
earn it. Krebitz’s fi lm throws themes of feminism, sexual
liberation and anarchic rebellion freely around without
giving us any reason to suspend our disbelief. So beneath
all these fantastic ideas with a capital I, it’s laziness and
populist new-age crap you smell. ZS
STARTS APR 21
Chevalier
D: Athina Rachel Tsangari
(Greece 2015) with
Vangelis Mourikis, Sakis
Rouvas ◆◆◆◆ Following
six friends on a fi shing
trip off the Greek coast as
they compete for the title
of ‘Best Man In General’,
Chevalier (see interview,
page 28), with its almost
complete lack of female
characters, wouldn’t exactly pass the Bechdel test. But
focused on male rivalry, it offers a wry look at modern
masculinity, as fraternity quickly dissolves into backbiting.
And while Tsangari might lump all men together in the
same boat, the resulting fi lm is an uproarious take on the
games people play against each other. MW
STARTS APR 21
Gods of Egypt
D: Alex Proyas (USA,
Australia 2016) with
Gerard Butler, Nikolaj
Coster-Waldau ◆
Proyas’ fi rst directorial
outing in seven years retells
the Egyptian legend
The Contendings of Horus
and Seth through an
overdose of CGI. While
the unrewarding humour
is made less painful by the eclectic mix of accents, the
three-dimensional mess is still recommendable only to
those who’re into spending hours looking at exoticised,
over-the-top robo-god-battles. Extra kudos for the
straight-faced depiction of a fl at Earth with Ra’s chariot
heaving the sun around. SB
STARTS APR 21
Embrace of the Serpent
(Der Schamane und die
Schlange) D: Ciro Guerra
(Colombia, Venezuela,
Argentina 2015) with Jan
Bijvoet, Nilbio Torres
◆◆◆◆ The Columbian
Oscar nominee for Best
Foreign Language Film
is a searingly beautiful
black and white vision of
the Amazon, as the last
warrior of an indigenous tribe is confronted by two white
invaders coming in quest of the yakruna fl ower while hiding
their mercenary intentions to steal a lucrative rubber
plant behind promises of friendship. Evoking a lost world
of shamans and animal spirits, Guerra’s fi lm is a poetic
and visually haunting trip. MW
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ARABIC FILM
FESTIVAL
Apr 6-13
Flicks our picks
Special screenings, festivals
and retrospectives you shouldn’t
miss this month
APR 6-10
Viva la Punk
Get overpowered by punk at Moviemento for
the fi fth year in a row at TOO DRUNK TO WATCH:
PUNKFILMFEST BERLIN. Five days of studs and
spikes on celluloid await, kicking off for kids in the
morning with Finnish children’s fi lm Vilja und die
Räuber and for adults with Piss On You – Winnipeg’s
Early Punk Scene, followed by Burning from the
Inside, a documentary on the neo-Nazi scenes of
Berlin and Athens. There’s more to catch in the
following days, notably CRASS: There Is No Authority
But Yourself, a doc on the legendary anarcho-DIY
punk band, and She’s a Punk Rocker UK about the
tough, intelligent and brazen women of the original
UK punk scene, as well as a reading by Attila the
Stockbroker and a Soli-brunch for Sea Watch on
Sunday. For dates and times, check www.toodrunktowatch.de.
WC TOO DRUNK TO WATCH: PUNK FILMFEST
BERLIN | Kino Moviemento, Kottbusser Damm 22, Kreuzberg,
U-Bhf Schönleinstr.
APR 6-13
Arabian nights in April
Fully grasping the diversity of communities and
identities in the Arabic world requires the combined
minds of 20 experts from FU and perhaps
a calendar’s worth of reading. But you can get a
glimpse during the seventh cycle of Berlin’s ARABIC
FILM FESTIVAL (ALfilm), featuring 51 screenings of
shorts, full-length features and documentaries and
even a panel discussion on Jewish-Arab identity.
Kicking off the festival at Arsenal on Wednesday,
April 6, Tunisian debut director Leyla Bouzid’s
coming-of-age drama As I Open My Eyes introduces
us to 18-year-old indie rock singer Farah – played
by first-time actress and real-life singer Baya
Medhaffer, who’ll be present at the screening. Her
rebellion from her mother through music – and the
AS I OPEN MY EYES
price she pays for it – refreshingly challenges the
usual stereotypes, maybe because it’s above all
a woman’s film, sketching out a powerful motherdaughter
relationship you seldom see in Arab (and
even Western) cinema. In the documentary selection,
A Present From the Past sees Egyptian father
travel with his daughter to requite his lost love and
break tradition, and Coma gives insight on female
roles through three generations of Syrian women
addressing their demons, religion and trauma.
The short film programme spans genres – one to
catch is sci-fi short In the Future, They Ate From the
Finest Porcelain, whose lonely, dystopian imagery
– crockery, a dead sister and the line “they only
see us when we rebel”– is compelling if baffling. A
healthy dose of premieres includes the promising
The Rooftops from veteran Algerian filmmaker Merzak
Allouache, but the resurfaced older films in the
Spotlight programme aren’t to be overlooked either.
Eight years apart, historical retelling Where Are
You going Moshe and black-and-white semi-comedy
Theft, Love and Other Entanglements both tackle
the Palestinian-Israeli relationship, while Cannes hit
Much Loved (see review, page 28) which depicts the
underworld of prostitution in Marrakesh, triggered a
huge shitstorm at home (with lead actor Loubna Abidar
having to flee for France following attacks). Full
programme, including times, dates and languages,
at www.alfilm.de. SB/NB ARABIC FILM FESTIVAL | various
venues, check website for details
APR 9-10
Fresh blood
The lineup of this year’s FANTASY FILMFEST
NIGHTS proves once again that this specialty
event is successful for a reason: the folks don’t
just pick good genre movies, they pick good
movies, period. For starters, this might be your
last chance to see Yorgos Lanthimos’ incisive
dystopian relationship comedy The Lobster on the
big screen. Elsewhere, the hellishly tense slasher
fl ick Green Room, set in the neo-Nazi punk rock
scene featuring Patrick Stewart as a ruthless
skinhead, is also an essential cinematic experience
with plenty of edge-of-your-seat moments,
and the British end-times thriller The Survivalist is
30 • APRIL 2016

ACHTUNG
BERLIN
Apr 13-20
BACK TO NOTHING
Thu Apr 07 // Maschinenhaus // 7:30 pm
DOROTHEA AND THE PLANETS
record release concert
Sun Apr 10 // Maschinenhaus // 8 pm
UWE KROPINSKI TRIO
Kropinskis trio with Susanne Paul & Vladimir Karparov
Apr 14 –17 // Kesselhaus
LILLENORGE FESTIVAL 2016
norwegian chamber music festival // with
Camilla Kjøll, Jan Bang, Ingfrid Breie Nyhus a. o.
Apr 15 & 16 // Maschinenhaus // 8 pm
RAZZZ – THE BEATBOXMUSICAL
the Berlin beatbox boys are “back in town”
Apr 23 & 24 // Kesselhaus // 8 pm
THE INSPECTOR CLUZO
the French rock-duo on tour with new album
“Rockfarmers” // support: Bubba Ho-Tep
Sat Apr 23 // Kesselhaus // 9 pm
JAN PLEWKA SINGS RIO REISER
concert with after-show party
TICKETS 030 44 31 51 00 // WWW.KESSELHAUS.NET
a beautifully crafted, deeply unsettling indie gem.
Need insane car chases and choreographed fights
to go along with a mystery and some slapstick?
Korean cop actioner Veteran has that covered. With
Emelie in the programme, even the time-honoured
niche of evil babysitters is represented. In short,
yet another perfect occasion to celebrate our inner
weirdoes of every persuasion. For the complete
programme, check www.fantasyfilmfest.com. ZS
FANTASY FILMFEST NIGHTS | Cinestar Sony Center, Potsdamer
Str. 4, Mitte, S+U-Bhf Potsdamer Platz
APR 13-20
A week of Berlin on film
For the 12th time, ACHTUNG BERLIN is back for this
city’s most self-indulgent cinematic celebration,
rounding up a bunch of new films shot or produced
in Berlin or made by Berlin filmmakers (nearly 100
this year!), and getting Berlin film celebs to award
them prizes – mostly funded by the city government
and supported by Herr Bürgermeister in person.
There are always a few real gems in the mix of
good films, bad films, premieres and re-runs, and
the glitterati of the Berlin film world attends the
opening ceremony in the palatial, commie-chic Kino
International. This year, it’s Timo Jacobs, a ‘face’
of German cinema, who opens the festivities with
a whacked-out UFO of a comedy called Mann im
Spagat, his second directorial effort since Klappe
Cowboy!. Following last year’s opening downer, this
urban fairytale about self-produced water, Elvis
hologram shows and bike rallies should make for an
anarchic kick-off. Eleven movies joust for the New
Berlin Film Award, including Fado by DFFB alum Jonas
Rothlaender, an utterly convincing drama about
a young doctor who leaves Berlin for Lisbon to win
back his ex-girlfriend. Romance (but not fulfilment) is
at the heart of Daniel Carsenty’s slow-burning genre
hybrid After Spring Comes Fall, a bleak tale of a
Kurdish refugee recruited as an informant in Berlin
by the Syrian Security Service. Meanwhile, Yoni
Leyser’s Desire Will Set you Free captures Berlin’s
bruised, messed-up beauty with lots of great standalone
scenes and a who’s who of international
lefty radicals, punks and queers. As usual, it’s the
non-fiction section that truly delivers, with Britta
Wauer’s Rabbi Wolff painting a charming portrait
of rabbi and former political correspondent William
“Willy” Wolff, and Annett Ilijew’s insightful Somos
Cuba taking an intimate seven-year look at workingclass
life in Havana. Another doc that stands out is
Fluchtrecherchen (Skizzen), a compilation of elegant,
at times playful and never preachy shorts on the
refugee crisis. Bonus: keep your eyes peeled for
veteran photographer and filmmaker Miron Zownir’s
latest feature Back To Nothing, a baffling and at
times nightmarishly disorienting odyssey through
abandoned locations in Berlin, starring everyone
from Birol Ünel to King Khan but strangely relegated
(elevated) out of competition status. The less you
know, the better; just know to not miss out! Finally,
this magazine will partake in the self-congratulating
festivities with its own award, handed over to an outstanding
film made by an international filmmaker or
tackling an international subject. Don’t miss out on
the special screening of the winner of the Exberliner
Film Award at Lichtblick on April 27, just one week
after the fest closes. DM ACHTUNG BERLIN | various
venues; full programme at www.achtungberlin.de
APR 20-27
Polished Polish
The east wind brings a little early summer to the
streets as the 11th POLISH FILM FESTIVAL sweeps
through the city from Bundesplatz to the Brotfabrik.
Among the plentiful fiction stock are opener 11
Minutes, Jerzy Skolimowski’s glossy Venice entry,
and stylish Polish-French co-production Raging
Rose, following the titular unruly teen anti-heroine
as she mixes herself queasily into the machinations
of a man hoping to reunite with his estranged
son. Documentary offerings stride boldly into
heartbreak: Wojciech Staron’s meditative Brothers
contrasts the faltering pace and fraternal sniping
of nonagenarian siblings with the Siberian exile
and adventures of their youth, while Karolina
Bielawska’s reflexive Call Me Marianna follows the
increasingly brutal fate of the eponymous transgender
woman with tenderness, partially lensed
through a table reading of a play based on her life.
CE FILMPOLSKA 2016 | various venues; full programme at
www.filmpolska.de
31

STAGE
F.I.N.D.
FESTIVAL
Apr 7-17
APR 1-4, 20:00
Travelogue 1
Sasha Waltz has been
Berlin’s dance darling for
over two decades, making
work around town that
is both expressionistic
and formally complex.
This month, she returns
to her company’s fi rstever
piece, Travelogue
1: it’s the fi rst in their
Travelogue Trilogy begun
in 1993. The piece is an exaggerated, playful take on
daily life, in which dancers re-invigorate domestic spaces
with grotesquely funny movement. Radialsystem V,
Holzmarktstr. 33, Friedrichshain, S-Bhf Ostbahnhof
APR 2, 6-9, 20:00
Tanzabend: Opposition
This is the third instalment
of Theater Thikwa’s
dance evenings – the last
two handled masculinity
and overexposure. In this
format, Thikwa presents
two pieces developed
with Berlin choreographers
and the Thikwa
ensemble. This time
around, they’ll present on
the theme of “opposition” with Iranian Modjgan Hashemian
and Butoh artist Yuko Kaseki. There’s a question of
political opposition, of course, but also of bodies pushing
and pulling against one another. So when the bodies
in question are non-normative ones, it should generate
some pretty thought-provoking dance. Theater Thikwa,
F40, Fidicinstr. 40, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Platz der Luftbrücke
APR 8, 9, 21, 22, 29, 30, 19:30
Wandering Stars
Weristjack presents a
“homeless revue” about
Neukölln: intriguing,
although it might not
actually be about homelessness.
Still, statelessness
and “searching for
a home in Neukölln” is
timely enough, right?
The collective brings
together photographers,
dancers, fi lmmakers, and musicians, so it should be an
interesting mash-up of “fi rst-world problems”, handwringing
about fi nding a WG, theatrical analysis of the
relationship between immigrant and expat, and identity
politics in Berlin’s fastest-gentrifying neighbourhood.
Heimathafen Neukölln, Karl-Marx-Str. 141, Neukölln,
U-Bhf Karl-Marx-Str.
GERMAN PREMIERES
■ DIE UNSCHULDIGEN, ICH UND DIE UNBEKANNTE
AM RAND DER LANDSTRASSE Claus Peymann’s latest
lets Peter Handke, the so-called “poet of anger,” sing. Apr
30, 19:30, Berliner Ensemble
■ HEART OF A DOG Regardless of whether you’ve read
the Bulgakov anti-Soviet parody, the preview photos of
a woman with meat on her face are a signal that this
adaptation is worth checking out. With English surtitles.
Apr 24, 20:00, Deutsches Theater
■ METEORITEN A World Cup fi nal, scorching summer heat,
queers, outsiders, Ovid references... what’s not to love?
With English surtitles. Apr 15, 19:30, Gorki Theater
SEBASTIAN BOLESCH
PETER BRUTSCHIN
JACK WERIST
INTERVIEW
“No bullshit media stories”
For the Schaubühne’s F.I.N.D.
Festival, ANIS HAMDOUN
presents his autobiographical
play The Trip, which tells the
stories of the friends he has lost
in the Syrian confl ict. By LILY KELTING
To call Hamdoun “driven” is an understatement.
The writer-director came to Osnabrück from
Homs, Syria, only two years ago, but he’s already
a rising star in the German theatre world. The
Trip hits the Schaubühne with English surtitles
at 6pm and 8pm on April 8.
How do you get from arriving in Berlin
two years ago to the Schaubühne? I believed
in myself. I have been doing theatre since I was
like 10 or 12. So let’s say I had a special education
in theatre. My grandfather is really big competition:
he’s really famous in the Arab theatre
world. He was my mentor.
Have you ever not wanted to be a theatre
director? I studied chemistry in Syria; I have
a four-year diploma. I think the connection
between chemistry and theatre was easy for me
to figure out: chemistry is all about logic, and
theatre – plots, conflicts – is also for me a kind
of mathematical equation. So chemistry really
helped me to understand the core of theatre:
building a conflict and solving it, exactly like a
chemical equation.
How did The Trip come to be? It was originally
going to be a film. When I had an internship
at the state theatre, I got a meeting with
the intendant and we sat for like half an hour.
He said, “Tell me about yourself, you have an
interesting story, you were a revolutionary in
Syria, you lost your eye because of a rocket, you
lost your friends, your country, and now you’re in
Germany.” He was interested in me as a person.
Is it painful for you to keep seeing people
you’ve lost onstage as this play continues
to tour? All the experiences that I had – from
being a child in Syria, then a theatre maker,
then a revolutionary, trying to achieve freedom
in a civil country – should be seen. And these
people that I knew, that I know, because they’ll
always be in my memory, should be seen. But,
yeah, the first two months it was really hard to
see Osama on stage, a really good friend of mine
who is dead. Or Mazhar, a friend who was killed
next to me when he was shot with a rocket. He
died, I survived. Yes, the first two months I
always cried.
Why do you think these stories need to
be seen? Because of social media and other
media in general, which is so carefully politically
directed by the Syrian government, and
not describing daily life in Syria, the painful
struggle. We lost one million Syrians. Five
hundred thousand people are in Assad’s prisons.
We don’t know if they are alive or not, we
don’t know if they will be released or not. We
only know that they are suffering an enormous
amount of torture every day until they die. And
these facts should be put on stage in an artistic,
theatrical way.
So what’s next? My production team is
planning a docu-fiction film called Newcomers,
which is actually the term that Hannah Arendt
used in her diary about refugees. She said, “I
would prefer to be called a newcomer than a
refugee in America.” Germany has taken refugees
in and Germany has sent refugees around
the world. The same country, two stories. So
the contemporary protagonists will be refugees,
Syrian, Arghanistani, Somali. They’ll tell their
stories. Not bullshit media stories. And on the
other side, parallel, we’ll hear Brecht, Arendt,
Erich Maria Remarque. These famous German
people had such a similar experience.
32 • APRIL 2016

What do you mean by “bullshit media
stories”? We’re not like we’re painted, like
“the poor people.” No. Me, at least: I have a
certificate from Cambridge to teach English. I
come from an international family. I will fight
to be the best of the best in Germany. I mean, a
16-year-old kid who came from Egypt on a boat
to Germany, nine days in the sea with no food
– this is my cousin, by the way, who now lives
in Holland and will study medicine – this kid
has more life experience than a 50-year-old man
who hasn’t seen the war. This cousin of mine has
more intelligence and more power than half the
population. ■
F.I.N.D. 2016:
What else to see
The Schaubühne’s Festival International Neue
Dramatik is in its 16th year and better than
ever. What started as a chance to let young
playwrights shine in a scene dominated by
directors has become one of the leading
international festivals in Berlin, with heavy
hitters like Milo Rau and Romeo Castellucci
alongside emerging international artists from
Egypt (The Last Supper), Iran (Hearing), Sweden
(Wild Minds) and many more.
Rau will premiere the second instalment of
his “European Trilogy”, THE DARK AGES (Apr
16-17, 20:00). As the bonds that tie Europe
together grow increasingly strained, Rau’s
Serbian, Bosnian, Russian and German
actors bring these questions down to the
human scale. His trademark researched-todeath
documentary style is underscored by
the avant-garde Slovenian band Laibach, the
first Western rock group to play Pyongyang,
North Korea.
Meanwhile, Castellucci usually cuts a
controversial figure – we’ve found his work to
be at once inscrutable and sublime. F.I.N.D.
presents his adaptation of the second book of
ethics by Spinoza, NATURA E ORIGINE DELLA
MENTE (Apr 15, 19:00, 21:30; Apr 16, 18:00,
22:30. The philosopher argues that minds
are not separate from bodies and that human
beings are not separate from the rest of
nature. And so provocateur Castellucci stages
a conversation between a woman hanging
from a wire by just her fingertip and a shaggy
black dog.
All performances will be shown with English surtitles at
the Schaubühne, Kurfürstendamm 153, Charlottenburg,
U-Bhf Adenauer Platz.
From 14th of April
upto 22th of May
IRIS
BUTTERFLY
Opera by
P. Mascagni
F.I.N.D. 2016
“The geniuses will be bored”
English-Irish group Dead Centre
bring their mix of philosophical
existentialism and craic to Germany
for the first time. Co-artistic director
Bush Moukarzel talked us through
their two pieces at F.I.N.D.
LIPPY: “It’s based on a true story from Ireland
in 2000: an aunt and three nieces boarded
themselves in a house and starved themselves
to death over 40 days in a mysterious
suicide pact. The event got explained away
through certain narratives: ‘OK, these women
were living in the Silicon Valley of Ireland,
and look how alienated they were,’ that sort
of thing. Lippy involves the whole process of
trying to put words into peoples’ mouths, to tell a
story that isn’t yours to tell. I suppose playwriting
also puts words into people’s mouths. The work
explores the limits of what we know and what we
should be trying to know.” Apr 16, 16:00, 22:30; Apr
17, 18:00
CHEKHOV’S FIRST PLAY (photo): “We’re interested
in so-called geniuses before they were geniuses.
Which is nice, because I’m not a genius. Maybe
there will be a couple geniuses in the audience,
in which case they’ll be bored. Seeing The Cherry
Orchard or these perfect late works of Chekhov
is wonderful, but it’s as elegant as the theory of
relativity. Chekhov’s first play is a sprawling, contradictory,
untitled document. When I look at someone
working something out, that’s where I can come
in. We wanted an unfinished play for unfinished
people.” Apr 8, 20:00; Apr 10, 19:30
JOSE MIGUEL JIMENEZ
Not only lascivious desire
but an entire “culture
war” is projected onto the
bodies of girls in many
places: traditional values
versus the temptations of
modernity, religious and
traditional boundaries
against the rich world,
itself nearly free of taboos
and boundaries, narrated
in this tale of “Iris”.
neukoellneroper.de
Karl-Marx-Str. 131–133
D-12043 Berlin
Tel.: 030 / 68 89 07 77
tickets@neukoellneroper.de
33

STAGE
APR 9-10, 20:00
TITLE
Berlin-based choreographer
Clément Layes studied
fi rst as a philosopher.
In his most recent piece,
TITLE, he thinks through
our relationship with the
material world. He constructs
and deconstructs
worlds of objects on stage
at Sophiensaele – wood
planks, tin cans, a toy car,
a bottle of wine. Layes is spry and playful; the choreography
childlike and almost clown-ish. It’s just a bunch of
stuff, but TITLE spins narrative and emotions out of these
objects, making us reconsider just how intertwined we are
with stuff in our daily lives. Sophiensaele, Sophienstr.
18, Mitte, U-Bhf Weinmeisterstr.
APR 22, 23, 19:30; APR 24, 20:00
Unterwerfung (Submission)
The biggest book-release
brouhaha award of 2015
must go to Michel Houellebecq’s
novel Submission.
The wry dystopian
fi ction, set in 2022 after
a political party called
the Muslim Brotherhood
has been democratically
elected, was released the
day of the Charlie Hebdo
shootings. Directors have made quick work of adapting
the novel for the stage, despite the work’s diffi culty: it was
presented in Hamburg in February. Now, Submission comes
to the Deutsches Theater in a premiere from house director
Stephan Kimmig. With English surtitles. Deutsches Theater,
Schumannstr. 13, Mitte, S-Bhf Oranienburger Str.
APR 30, 18:00
Remote Mitte
Audio theatre, we’ve seen:
but documentary-theatre
stalwarts Rimini Protokoll
use the genre to question
our relationship with the
guiding voices of robots.
Remote Mitte is a kind of
“choose your own binaural
adventure,” complete with
wireless headphones. It’s
one thing to take directions
from Siri, but quite another to do so alongside a group of
strangers, moving and making choices as both an individual
and part of a pack. The piece has been performed
around the world, using cities from Moscow to Bangalore
as backdrop. Now, under the auspices of the Gorki Theater,
the piece returns to Berlin. Meeting point: Invalidienfriedhof,
Mitte, U-Bhf Schwartzkopffstr. Tickets at gorki.de.
COMEDY IN ENGLISH
■ GLEN WOOL Quatsch Comedy Club and host Christian
Schulte-Loh present another English Comedy Night, bringing
international comedic talent to Mitte. This month, Wool
should be a highlight – like being yelled at by a Canadian
Jack Black. Plus Brits Maureen Younger and Markus Birdman.
Apr 27, 20:00, Quatsch
■ WE ARE NOT GEMÜSED Up your cheesy-vegetable-pun
quotient by heading to Neukölln on Tuesday nights, where
you’ll fi nd the long-running comedy open mic hosted by
British comedian Caroline Clifford. There’s a new lineup of
Berlin stand-up regulars and newcomers each time; you
can throw your own hat into the ring on their Facebook
page. Tuesdays, 20:30, Sameheads
ARNO DECLAIR
INTERVIEW
Three questions
for... Amy Evans
In 2005, Sierra Leonian asylum seeker
Oury Jalloh was tied to a bed in a jail cell
in Dessau and burned alive. His killers
have not yet been found. American
playwright Evans premieres The Most
Unsatisfi ed Town, a fi ctionalised take on
Jalloh’s story, at ETB on April 7.
Jalloh died 11 years ago. What’s your take
on his murder’s relevance today? Since I
first heard the story of Oury Jalloh, there have
been so many cases of police brutality. Sandra
Bland, Michael Brown: unfortunately, the list
is extremely long. But even before I started
making those connections, I thought of Emmett
Till. His death became kind of a symbol
for what racism in the South looked like in the
1950s and 1960s.
So what Till was to the American South,
Oury Jalloh is to Germany? Yes. I think it's
extraordinary that the name Oury Jalloh has
become something that carries this weight in
Germany and internationally. It means that in
spite of this consensus of silence on the part of
police authorities in Dessau, there were enough
people, many of whom associated with the
Initative [for Justice for Oury Jalloh], who went
to Dessau every year, who demonstrated, who
PREVIEW
The black hole
in the storm
Lebanese multimedia artist Rabih
Mroué tackles his home country’s civil
war in HAU retrospective OUTSIDE THE
IMAGE INSIDE US.
The Lebanese Civil War has been on Mroué’s
mind for the better part of the last three decades.
Fifteen years of violent confl ict between a handful
of factions makes for a confusing subject: how
do you make sense of the over 150,000 lives
lost? And so Mroué uses all the tools at his
disposal to give these experiences a narrative
shape – performance, writing, video, visual
THE MOST UNSATISFIED
TOWN APR 7-10, 13-16,
19-22, 20:00| English
Theatre Berlin, Fidicinstr. 40,
Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Platz der
Luftbrücke
kept the story in the media. There were enough
people loud enough that not even the Dessau
authorities, who have been trying hard to bury
this thing, could do it.
You researched asylum seekers while writing
this play. Any insights? What struck me
over and over again in 2009-2010 was my feeling
that there was a concerted effort to hide the
presence of people seeking asylum. Once, I had
a teaching gig at a wastewater treatment plant,
about as far out of the city as you can get. And
across the street was a Flüchtlingslager. And I was
like, "You've got to be kidding me, really? This is
where you're going to put people who have come
seeking assistance and support – you're going to
put them out across the field from where Berlin's
shit goes?" And that image has stayed with me.
art, philosophy – with an oblique approach that
results in stunning imagery. His brother’s inability
to process language after a shelling injury
becomes a metaphor for the failure of representation
in Riding on a Cloud (Apr 1, 20:30; Apr
3, 19:00, HAU1). In 33RPM and a few seconds,
Mroué and Lina Majdalanie, a frequent collaborator,
investigate the suicide note of a young
Lebanese artist who insisted that he took his
own life on personal rather than political grounds
(Apr 3, 17:00, 21:00, HAU3). In the performance,
though, the protagonist never appears, a black
hole at the centre of a storm of media attention,
collaged in fi lms and projections. The works are
fi lled with paradoxes like
OUTSIDE THE IMAGE
INSIDE US Mar 30-
Apr 3 | HAU1, HAU2,
HAU3, Kreuzberg,
full programme at
hebbel-am-ufer.de
this: between presence and
absence, fact and fi ction, and
so to see them is to dwell in
a place of uncertainty and
confusion. But not knowing,
or approaching a situation
from many sides, might form
the core of an anti-war ethos
for Mroué. As a retrospective,
Outside the Image Inside
Us shows that keeping the
loose ends untied and the
questions open is what
Mroué’s career has been all
about. LK
34 • APRIL 2016

MUSIC
2 classic alBums in 1 night
d-a-d + thunder mother
04.05.16 · huxleys
cypress hill
13.06.16 · zitadelle
20 Years of placeBo
07.11.16 · mercedes-Benz-arena
COLUMN
Record store daze By KEVIN CHOW
Records: they’re not just for hipsters anymore!
Back when the first RECORD STORE DAY happened
in 2007, the unwieldy format was just
starting to make a return into the homes of
audiophiles and Wes Anderson acolytes
as a reaction against the sterility of the
iTunes library. Now, albums from the
likes of Adele and Kanye West are being
pressed to vinyl with eager collectors
snatching them up, €20-plus price
tag be damned. Coupled with new vinyl
producing factories around the world and Panasonic’s
revival of the iconic SL-1200 turntable
(for a whopping €4000), it seems the scene is
back in mainstream rotation.
All along, Record Store Day has been pushing
the Schallplatte with special releases in limited
quantities shipped out to record shops around
the world. For this year’s edition on April 16, that
includes a glow-in-the-dark re-issue of Outkast’s
“Elevators (Me & You)” 12-inch... as well as 3000
vinyl copies of the Justin Bieber single “Where
are Ü Now”, flogged by “ambassadors” and masters
of integrity, Metallica. (No wonder the real
hipsters have been turning to cassettes lately.)
Meanwhile, Berlin’s indie record store owners
look on with bemusement. “Vinyl died once; it
won’t die twice,” says Detlef Müller, die-hard
vinyl junkie and owner of the 31-year-old GROOVE
RECORDS in Kreuzberg. After the advent of CDs
in the early 1990s, Müller’s stock of records
became practically worthless. Only Berlin’s
turntable-obsessed techno DJs kept Groove
from obsolescence until the current revival.
Several blocks away at the RECORD LOFT
by Kotti (see page 19), stern-faced diggers
flip through some 20,000 techno and dance
12-inches, smoking and taking periodic breaks
to listen to their stack of selections. “The
record shop is a cultural hub,” says owner
BERLIN
VINYL
Christian Pannenborg, who opened his official
store in 2012 after running a semi-illegal one in
a friend’s flat for years. “A record is a physical
manifestation of culture. When you’re
dealing with records you’re dealing with
something that has cultural meaning –
that’s not a joke! Records give people
who don’t fit into the mainstream
culture an identity.”
You won’t see Record Loft or Groove
listed on the participating stores for Record
Store Day – Müller and Pannenborg prefer to
leave the corporate kowtowing to places like
HHV and Dussmann. For Müller, Record Store
Day is just a scheme masterminded by the big
labels. “It’s a big business. You can make a lot of
money on weapons, alcohol and music.” To order
a complete stock of records from the Record
Store Day releases, shops have to shell out over
€2000 for records that don’t necessarily reflect
the taste of the owners. “There’s an emotional
connection to the selection your shop offers,”
says Pannenborg, whose stock, an outgrowth of
his personal collection, reflects the entire history
of dance music. Compared with the seemingly
random and pricey list of Record Store Day
releases, it’s hard to see where they’d fit.
But the Berlin indie record scene has its own
celebration in April: the second annual UNDER-
GROUND EUROPE record swap and fair (April 29-
30, Marie Antoinette) gives a space to celebrate
the love of the outdated format and the music
on it. From hardcore punk to industrial, garage
to electronic and indie to thrash metal, independent
collectors and dealers will be hauling
out their crates for international record nerds to
peruse and swap stories over. It’s moments like
this where the true beauty of vinyl collecting
comes into play – meeting and talking to actual
humans, no Metallica involved. n
katie melua With the gori
Women‘s choir 16.11.16 · admiralspalast
king charles
07.04.16 · musik & Frieden
kygo
+ anna of the north + sonny alven
10.04.16 · columbiahalle
converge blood moon
+ crippled Black phoenix + 40 Watt sun
11.04.16 · PBHFcLuB
james morrison
16.04.16 · Huxleys
nada surf
18.04.16 · Huxleys
loyle carner
19.04.16 · musik & Frieden
allen stone
+ laWrence taylor
21.04.16 · Bi nuu
heather peace
25.04.16 · columbia theater
Walking on cars
03.05.16 · Frannz
southside johnny
& the asBury jukes
10.05.16 · columbia theater
puBlic image ltd.
+ loveByrd
14.05.16 · Huxleys
mark lanegan
+ suzie stapleton
18.05.16 ·Passionskirche
gov‘t mule
19.05.16 · Huxleys
travis
23.05.16 · Huxleys
35
www.trinitymusic.de

MUSIC
SUN, APR 3, 21:00
RuPaul’s Drag Race: Battle of the Seasons
RuPaul’s reality TV franchise,
in which a group
of drag queens compete
for the title of “America’s
Next Drag Superstar”, put
drag on the global map
of mass entertainment.
Hosted by Drag Race
judge Michelle Visage,
the show’s live version
will debut in Berlin with
over a dozen past contestants and all the lip-syncing you
could wish for. In case the words ‘snatch game’, ‘serving
fi sh’ and ‘kai kai’ mean nothing to you, don’t worry. After
an evening with RuPaul’s drag royalty, you’ll be fl uent in
ballroom chatter. MH Admiralspalast, Friedrichstr. 101,
Mitte, S-Bhf Friedrichstr.
MON, APR 4, 19:00
Julia Kadel Trio
The trio, led by Kreuzberg
native and master pianist
Julia Kadel, are celebrating
the release of their
latest album Über und
Unter on the legendary
jazz label Blue Note, joining
the ranks of (primarily
male) jazz piano greats
like Herbie Hancock,
Thelonius Monk and Errol
Garner. Given the release of their second record on such
an iconic label and their nomination for two Echo awards,
this might be one of the last times Kadel and co. will play
such an intimate setting – so if you’re a jazz fan, don’t
miss out. KC Roter Salon, Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Mitte,
U-Bhf Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz
WED, APR 6, 21:00
Amanda Bergman
Amanda Bergman
delivers dreamy synth
compositions with a voice
that has the melancholic
maturity of Beach
House’s Victoria Legrand
and lyrics with the narrative
drive of Bob Dylan.
All these comparisons
might come across as a
little too verkopft, yet the
Sweden-born musician doesn’t shy away from pumping
up the reverb and U2-like displays of fl amboyance. With
her solo debut album Docks, she’s ready to conquer all of
Berlin’s singer-songwriter lovers in a heartbeat. NB
Grüner Salon, Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz 2, U-Bhf Rosa-
Luxenburg-Platz.
THU, APR 7, 21:00
Kometenmelodien: Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith
Inspired by the grandiose
natural setting of Orcas
Island in the northwestern
region of Washington
state, the former sound
engineering student and
sometime fi lm composer
invites us into her
playful, mind-expanding
universe with the
modular synthesiser and
her own voice as the main motors on her third album
Ears. Smith slowly fuses the two instruments in her
polyphonic, yet melodic compositions and creates a
space of rhythmical, meditative patterns. NB Kantine
am Berghain, Am Wriezener Bahnhof, Friedrichshain,
S-Bhf Ostbahnhof
JULIA MÅRD THOMAS SCHLORKE SEAN M JOHNSON
INTERVIEW
“We’re a bit like the mafi a”
Everyone’s favourite Franco-German
liaison STEREO TOTAL takes over
Lido for a threesome with new
album Les Hormones. By Michael Hoh
When Françoise Cactus and Brezel Göring met
at a bakery on Adalbertstraße in the early 1990s,
they laid the groundwork for one of Berlin’s
most beloved lo-fi pop exports. Ten albums later,
the duo has toured the world countless times,
passing through South America, the United
States and Japan, coming home each time to
their humble abode on Oranienplatz. Celebrating
the release of Les Hormones (Staatsakt) with
three consecutive gigs at Lido this month,
Stereo Total invited us in for a little Kiez talk.
As longtime Kreuzbergers, what do you
think of all the Kotti headlines lately?
BREZEL GÖRING: I’ve always felt safe in Berlin
– excluding Hellersdorf maybe. Also, I don’t
think that it’s just been in the past years that
the world around Kotti has changed. In the
1980s, when I moved to Kreuzberg, police
drove through the streets as quickly as possible.
They always had barred car windows, and
their cars had dents all over. That was the usual
appearance of the Ordnungsmacht here, coming
in hordes and wearing helmets. The entire
area here was considered ‘unpacified’. Leftist
structures and squats had an entirely different
momentum and force. That has been largely
replaced by commerce.
Do you feel the need to react artistically?
BG: With the camp on Oranienplatz or the
conflicts at Gerhard-Hauptmann-Schule, I
could have seen myself reacting by organising
concerts, but not through songwriting.
We don’t write songs like Ton Steine Scherben
would have, but our basis is the [former squat]
Georg-von-Rauch-Haus. We live in the remnants
of this past world.
STEREO TOTAL
Wed, Apr 20; Sun,
Apr 24; Mon,
Apr 25; 20:30 |
Lido, Cuvrystr. 7,
Kreuzberg, U-Bhf
Schlesisches Tor
SIM GIL
36 • APRIL 2016

FRANÇOISE CACTUS: Our lyrics are feminist
and convey certain anarchistic vibes, but they
are not political in a direct sense. It’s rather an
atmosphere.
How much political impact can you have
with music?
BG: The shocking element of punk rock music
was sucked up by the mainstream as much
as feminism by Beyoncé or revolution by
Madonna. By now, the media have swallowed
every kind of subversive attitude. It’s illusory
to think that an artist can have great political
impact with music. We live in times without
glamour and grace; things are very prosaic.
On the other hand, it’s pretty easy to create
a disturbing listening experience if the bass is
missing, for example, making common radio
listeners feel uncomfortable immediately.
Are there any subjects you’d refuse to
tackle?
FC: I wouldn’t write a song about Angela
Merkel. [Laughs] Although, why not? Maybe if
I wrote it in Titanic magazine style! I wouldn’t
want to write pornographic songs or a song in
which I flounce around like a sex bomb. Many
mainstream singers always put their sexiness
in the foreground. I wouldn’t want to do it. I
don’t want to embarrass myself. But you can
write songs about everything. You just have to
find the right form, and strike the right chord.
I have heaps of songs in drawers, boxes and
suitcases. Later, when I’m old and there’s no
one to support me, I will sell my songs.
As a couple, do you find it irritating when
people draw conclusions from your songs
about your private life?
BG: Sometimes, people really believe that our
songs are 100 percent autobiographical. Well,
they’re not. When we wrote ”Liebe zu Dritt”,
journalists asked us if we usually have other
‘guests’ in our bed. [Laughs] Of course, everything
an artist does has to do with his or her
life, you can’t separate them, but you can’t take
our songs at face value. There are more layers
to discover.
You’ve proven that couples can also work
together successfully.
FC: I find it more problematic when couples
don’t have anything to do with each other
except going to a restaurant on Wednesdays or
to the cinema once a week. Maybe if they have
good conversations and very good sex, maybe
then it works, but I don’t know for how long.
[Laughs] It’s just a stupid prejudice to believe
that you’ll break up just because you work together.
Quite the contrary. People usually ask,
“How can you do that; living together, making
music together, touring together?” So what,
couples also go on holidays together.
BG: We’re a bit like the mafia. It’s an example
of a well-run family business. [Laughs]
FC: Often problems arise in bands because all
musicians are egomaniacs. They get totally
frustrated when they realise the bass player has
more success and what not. But because he’s my
Stereo Total
in six dates
1993 Françoise Cactus
and Brezel Göring meet
at a bakery on Adalbertstraße.
1995 Release debut
album Oh Ah.
1998 Tour Japan for
the first time with third
album Jukebox Alarm.
2004 Cactus causes
outrage over crocheted
“Wollita” doll at a Bethanien exhibition and
writes a novel about it.
2011 Take the stage at HAU to perform their
musical comedy In der Hölle des Rock‘N’Roll.
2016 Release 10th studio album
Les Hormones.
boyfriend, I’m happy for him when people like
him. I can’t get jealous, that would be strange.
Eight-track recording. Restriction or
blessing?
FC: It’s good to restrict myself in everything
I do. I tend to spread myself too thin. When
I paint, I restrict myself to only using three
colours, for instance. If you start recording
music with 50 different tracks, computer programmes
and such, you get totally lost and blur
your original idea. That’s why I like the sound
of old records. You don’t need a separate mic
and track for each shitty drum part.
BG: These days, it’s not so important to have
overbearing arrangements, it’s more important
to make decisions, and do things fast at the
right time. Primitive techniques like ours help
us a lot in that. It took us a long time to record
our new album, but sometimes we went to our
studio just once every three weeks, recorded a
song and were done. It’s all about a good idea,
and the right vibe when recording it. Someone
said about Bob Dylan that the sound of
his voice might have had more of a political
impact than his lyrics.
Do you think you’d have the same impact
if you had started out in a city like Paris?
FC: It’s a special situation for me here as a
permanent tourist. I would never have written
German songs had I stayed in France; why
should I have? But it would’ve been a pity. I
also would’ve written different lyrics in French.
I play a lot with French clichés. In France, I
probably never would have done that. Not only
the lyrics, Berlin is a unique city with a unique
music history...
BG: Even if people arrive in Berlin from other
German cities, they’re astounded by how people
look here. Everyone falls short of any limits
of taste, which influences the city’s climate. In
the 1980s and 1990s, I always felt like competitiveness
didn’t exist amongst musicians. I was
shocked about the pushy behaviour amongst
musicians in other cities – here, people felt
embarrassed if they were successful. n
LÉON
Mo. 04.04. Einlass 20:00 Prince Charles
COEUR DE PIRATE
Fr. 29.04. Einlass 19:00 PBHFCLUB
TINY RUINS
Mi. 11.05. Einlass 19:00 Monarch
TUXEDOMOON
Fr. 20.05. Einlass 19:00 Astra Kulturhaus
VAUU & MORTIS
So. 29.05. Einlass 19:00 Maschinenhaus
WEAVES
Do. 02.06. Einlass 19:00 FluxBau
Infos unter www.mct-agentur.com
tickets > www.tickets.de und 030-6110 1313
CHVRCHES
Support: SHURA
06.04. Columbiahalle
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
Support: GFOTY
05.04. PBHFCLUB
BATTLES
Special Guest: THE FIELD (LIVE)
& PHILIPP GORBACHEV
08.04. Columbia Theater
THE 1975
Support: THE JAPANESE
HOUSE
08.04. Columbiahalle
MURA MASA
12.04. PBHFCLUB
ASHER ROTH
13.04. Prince Charles
meltbooking.com
facebook.com/wearemeltbooking
JAMIE WOON
Support: JODIE ABACUS
22.04. Heimathafen
PUSHA T
Support: YUNG HURN
25.04. Kesselhaus
JAZZ CARTIER
27.04. Prince Charles
KANO
02.05. Prince Charles
YUNG LEAN
02.05. Yaam
EMPRESS OF
05.06. Kantine am Berghain
37

MUSIC
FRI, APR 8, 23:59
Leisure System Live in Surround Sound
“Life takes place in
surround sound,” is
the motto behind this
exploratory electronic
night, for which Berghain’s
legendary Funktion-One
sound system is being
reconfi gured to accommodate
immersive 3D
performances from three
live acts (Aleksi Perälä,
Max Cooper and Monolake). With music ranging from
ambient to IDM to techno and Leisure System residents
Barker, N>E>D, and Gonsher behind the decks, this special
night at the Big B is perfect for both die-hard partiers
and tech heads alike. KC Berghain, Am Wriezener
Bahnhof, Friedrichshain, S-Bhf Ostbahnhof
SAT, APR 9, 22.00
Guido Möbius
”Music should be
surprising – I’m bored
the minute I know what’s
happening next”, the
Berlin-based multiinstrumentalist,
music
publisher and promoter
Guido Möbius has said,
and he himself seems to
live life according to this
mantra. His main instrument
might be the guitar, but he is no stranger to bass,
mouth harp, banjo, percussion, keyboard or glockenspiel,
which he likes to send through samplers and various
effects creating a teasing, industrial sound that never fails
to keep listeners on their feet. NB Urban Spree, Revaler
Str. 99, S+U-Bhf Warschauer Str.
FRI, APR 15, 21:00
Xiu Xiu Plays the Music of Twin Peaks
“Where we’re from, the
birds sing a pretty song...
and there’s always music
in the air…” Whether
you’re still grieving over
Laura Palmer, eagerly
awaiting the third season
of the 1990s cult classic
or just a Lynch fan looking
for a quick fi x, Xiu Xiu’s
dissonant and electric
interpretation of Angelo Badalamenti’s iconic soundtrack
(commissioned by the Gallery of Modern Art in Australia)
is a one-way ticket back to the dark and mysterious world
of Twin Peaks, made just that little bit darker and more
mysterious by the ex-crematorium setting. KC Silent
Green Kulturquartier, Gerichtstr. 35, S+U-Bhf Wedding
WED, APR 27, 20:00
Aziza Brahim
Dancing between traditional
Sahrawi music and
Western music traditions
like jazz and blues, fl a-
menco and folk, Brahim’s
music is an apt representation
of her life. A refugee
from the deserts of
Algeria, the musician has
gathered infl uences and
experiences from Cuba
and Spain and infused those moments into her music,
rife with dense, danceable rhythms and lyrics that extol
the heartbreak of a search for home. With refugee rights
on the tips of everyone’s tongues, Brahim’s music is more
relevant than ever. KC Yaam, An der Schillingbrücke 3,
Friedrichshain, S-Bhf Ostbahnhof
MARTIN-KURTENBACH SHAUN BLOODWORTH
GUILLEM MORENO
INTERVIEW
A chat with... Liima
Last year, the Danes of Efterklang
joined up with their friend, Finnish
percussionist Tatu Rönkkö, to form
new supergroup LIIMA, coming to
Berghain this month. By KEVIN CHOW
Efterklang went on hiatus in January 2014 to
“explore new musical territories”; judging from
their collaborations with everyone from Vincent
Moon to the South Denmark Philharmonic and
their current project, which combines guitars
with looping electronics and Rönkkö’s inventive
percussion, they’ve been doing just that. Debut
record ii came out last month, and the foursome
hits Berghain on Thursday, April 21.
What inspired the new project?
TATU RÖNKKÖ: We have a “residency” concept
behind this band – we wanted to compose all
the music from scratch in a new place. The
first residency was in summer 2014 in Finland,
then Berlin in autumn 2014, Istanbul in January
2015 and Madeira in May 2015. Four different
environments; four different seasons. We did a
lot of field recording and sampling: a traditional
Finnish instrument, the sound of a grilling steak
or some ice cream bells in Istanbul. It felt like
a natural way of making music. All the songs on
this debut album are from these four residencies.
What’s the meaning of ‘Liima’?
TR: It means ‘glue’ in Finnish. Liima started at a
chamber music festival in South Finland. They
invited Efterklang to do a collaboration with me,
so we called ourselves Efterklang + Tatu Rönkkö
but after half a year it sounded silly. So then we
were rehearsing here and we found the name
after a lot of suggestions.
MADS BRAUER: It’s a hard task. The music comes
LIIMA Thu, April
21, 20:00 |
Berghain, Am
Wriezener Bahnhof,
Friedrichshain,
S-Bhf Ostbahnhof
naturally to us, but everything with names and
titles is difficult. All good band names are taken!
Do you take any influence from Berlin
techno?
CASPER CLAUSEN: Yeah. I go occasionally to
Berghain. In order to really understand Berlin
you have to go to these places. You could hang
out at the Brandenburger Tor if that’s your thing,
but these places are what’s really happening.
Obviously, this electronic element which we’ve
always had in our music gets coloured by where
you are. A lot of the songs on our album have a
lot of this Berlin techno-ish vibe to them; in the
vein of Apparat or someone like that.
Would you say the band fits into the Berlin
electronic music scene?
TR: We don’t think about categories or trying to
fit into a particular scene. Whatever you do here,
there are a bunch of geeks that will come and see
you. Some venues have a very clear stamp of the
scene around them – like Berghain, for example.
CC: What we realised here in Berlin is that we
wanted to make more physical music – music you
listen to with other people, not just by yourself
with headphones in the U-Bahn. That’s what we
want with our live concerts – to get people to
gather around and move their bodies!
TR: In Berlin, we figured out that we might
want to explore this danceable, rhythmic music.
Not like, “Let’s make EDM”, but music with a
danceable quality. Maybe it’s the techno influence
at the back of our minds. Being at a place
like Berghain, it’s a kind of ritual where all these
people dance together or dance on their own but
together in one space. It’s really inspiring to see
them react to your music. n
THOMAS M. JAUK
38 • APRIL 2016

PREVIEW
The great indoors
Just a few weeks before Berlin’s abundance of
open-air shenanigans lures the vampiric winter
club crowd towards sunnier pastures, showery
April is packed with indoor festivals of all
genres. The month starts with a rather mixed
affair, DENOVALI FESTIVAL’s fourth edition at
Heimathafen Neukölln. From April 1–2, Denovali
Records showcases label acts from the pop side
of the spectrum, such as Esben and the Witch,
to the obscurer industrial palette of Demdike
Stare and sombre ambient acts like Grouper and
Subheim. Yet another label presents its talents on
stage with UNCLE M FEST 2016. The Westphalian
imprint travels east to bring labelmates from UK
pop-punkers Muncie Girls to indie rockers Foxing
and ska punks The Bennies, amongst others, to
Cassiopeia on April 22. Meanwhile,
if you couldn’t get enough of punk
after the Too Drunk to Watch fi lm
fest (see page 30), PUNK & DISOR-
DERLY (photo), Europe’s biggest
indoor punk festival, takes over
Astra Kulturhaus from April 15–17
with such acts as The Last Resort,
Discipline, Angelic Upstarts and
The Partisans. A couple weeks
later (Apr 28-30) that same venue
fi lls with all variations of rock and
metal (and no small amount of pot
smoke) for DESERTFEST. Not foreboding
enough for you? The fi fth
edition of Hamburg’s DRONEBERG
festival takes over SO36 for a long
night of doom metal on April 16.
Already announced: Celeste, Year
of no Light, Monarch! and more.
If you’re a true hard goth kinda type, the SINCITY
FESTIVAL at Frannz Club (Apr 29-30) is your cup
of tea – or blood for that matter. Catering to your
dancing needs will be Ben Bloodygrave, Forced
to Mode and other dark souls. Finally, if you need
additional sensory stimulation with your music, 04_AZ_B_Exberliner_April16.indd 1 10.03.16 12:09
the Volksbühne invites you to DECESSION (Apr
30), an evening of electronica and performance
art with a smashing selection of Berlin’s fi nest
up-and-coming producers. Beats by Amnesia Scanner,
M.E.S.H., Physical Therapy, Why Be and more
complement 3D videos, lasers, sperm-scented
perfume, 30-year-old Japanese tea and other
bizarre-sounding delights. So, take your pick and
simultaneously bid farewell to the indoor side of
Berlin nightlife for at least fi ve months. MH
PREVIEW
Pop goes HKW
Another month, another Haus der Kulturen der Welt
festival with a vague curatorial premise and impressive
global roster of performers. This time it’s POP
16, part of the four-year cross-disciplinary project
100 Years of Now. The programme, which proposes
to tackle the roots of pop music from 1900-1930,
is even more eclectic than usual, stretching from
interpretations of Egyptian “golden age” music to
Polish cabaret. Don’t miss 80-year-old Ghanaian
guitarist and music legend EBO TAYLOR (photo; Apr
28, 20:30), whose new ensemble Konkoma revives
the century-old proto-Afrobeat music style of the
same name. Japanese pop singer and Yellow Magic
Orchestra collaborator MIHARU KOSHI, known for
turning Western music into kitsch-bordering J-pop
gems, will delve deep into European music’s back
catalogue and reinterpret everyone from Friedrich
Hollaender to Paul Hindemith to Charles Trenet (Apr
29, 21:30). Veering over to America and Africa, Chicago
house and techno producer Jamal Moss aka
HIEROGLYPHIC BEING will perform his exclusively
commissioned composition The Sirius Mysteries
about the Dogon people of eastern Mali, involving
vocals, African percussion and classical piano. (Apr
30, 22:00). Bringing it all back to Berlin, a guided
tour (Apr 29-30, 14:00) will reveal the city’s forgotten
past as one of the world’s recording industry
capitals. All this plus lectures, installations and
much more; see the full programme at www.hkw.
de. NB POP 16 Apr 28-May 1 | Haus der Kulturen der Welt,
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee-10, Tiergarten, U-Bhf Bundestag
WIM HEUTNIK
25
apr
39

ART
Nervous Systems
Worried about your data?
Have your worries affected
what you do, or even who
you are? Don’t miss HKW’s
masterful exhibition on
big data, this time curated
along with Berlin’s Tactical
Tech collective. Navigate
through the projections
and ethnographic
museum-like displays, and
spend time in the “White Room” – an Apple showroom/
museum/hacktivist community centre where “ingeniuses”
guide you through an offering of alternative apps. Plenty
of great works will pique your curiosity too, including the
iconic “I am Still Alive” by On Kawara and “Theme Song” by
Vito Acconci, amongst many more. ART Through May 9,
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10,
Tiergarten, U-Bhf Bundestag, Wed-Mon 11-19
Isa Genzken – Make Yourself Pretty!
This sweeping retrospective
of one of Berlin’s
most important artists
spans decades of work
that riffs on modernity
and contemporary culture
by appropriating materialism,
urbanism and architecture
with a laugh. The
unapologetic legend was
even one of the fi rst to experiment
with digital technologies in art, and some of that
will be on view. If you’re already interested in Berlin-made
art, expect to fi nd the roots of its aesthetics embedded
here, but almost ironically. It’s non-educational, opting
instead for anarchistic criticality. ART Apr 9-Jun 26,
Martin-Gropius-Bau, Niederkirchnerstr. 7, Kreuzberg, S+U-
Bhf Potsdamer Platz, Wed-Mon 10-19
Jörg Immendorff: LIDL Works and
Performances from the 60s
Get to know the infamous
Immendorff’s early work
not just in fi nished form,
but as a process, in the
fi rst signifi cant exhibition
of his work in Berlin in the
last decade. As a student
of Joseph Beuys at the
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf,
he made plenty of
anti-Vietnam War political
action pieces titled LIDL – one of which even got him
arrested for defacing a German fl ag. They’ll be up along
with archival images and records that highlight why the
now-deceased Neue Wilde neo-expressionist is still one of
Germany’s most important post-war artists. ART Through
Apr 23, Veneklasen/Werner, Rudi-Dutschke-Str. 26, Kreuzberg,
U-Bhf Kochstr./Checkpoint Charlie, Tue-Sat 11-18
Father Figures are Hard to Find
Not shying away from our
many daddy issues, this
group exhibition of international
artists will collectively
redefi ne fatherhood
and kinship. Works by
Juliana Huxtable, the
American instant trans
artist icon, will be on
view, along with pieces by
Rotimi Fani-Kayode and
Berlin-based Danh Vo. Plenty of performances round out
the showing, including one by Berlin power throuple Sadie
Lune, Kay Garnellen and Mad Kate on April 24. ART
Through May 1, nGbK, Oranienstr. 25, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf
Kottbusser Tor, Mon-Fri 12-20, Sat-Sun 12-19
MARIA RUNARSDOTTIR
INTERVIEW
“If it’s necessary, I’ll fi ght”
LEIKO IKEMURA celebrates
female protagonists through
paintings, sculptures, prints,
photographs and haikus in her
solo exhibition …And Suddenly
the Wind Turns at Haus am
Waldsee. By AMANDA RIBAS TUGWELL
In Berlin it’s all too rare to be confronted
with highly personal art that embodies a
non-Western, non-male perspective. Enter
the Japanese-born, Berlin-based Ikemura, whose
emotional and spritual landscapes are so fiercely
subjective that you can’t help but identify with
her protagonists’ struggles – with history, memory,
and tragedy. Ikemura gave us a glimpse into her
own journey, imparting some wisdom from a fourdecade-long
career in art.
How did you start out as an artist? One
starting point for me was words, literature and
philosophy. Then I studied drawing in Spain,
which was very physical and immediate, and
for me still the most honest way I can express
myself. I wasn’t satisfied with what I knew, so I
started painting. But I wasn’t always encouraged.
I would hear, “You’re not talented at
this.” I really hated the word talent. You don’t
necessarily have to be a Raphael or Velázquez
to be a good painter, as Western art history
teaches us. My motivation was much stronger
than just making a nice painting. But through
these difficulties I learned a lot about myself,
and ultimately, my first medium will always be
life itself.
EDITOR’S
PICK!
What drew you to art in the first place? Art is
one of the few fields where you can ask questions,
and the question itself is important. It’s not even
necessary to find an answer. With art, you develop
your perception and consciousness while investigating
the human condition. You’re challenged to
create something that hasn’t been done yet.
You’ve been an active member of the
Berlin art scene for decades, but
this is your first institutional solo
here (aside from an exhibition at the
Asian Art Museum where your work
was shown alongside archival pieces).
Have you experienced discrimination as
a woman, or an expat? I think I did, but I
refused to make a big deal out of it. I could have
complained every day, but I didn’t want to be
ugly with anger like others – it’s not sexy at all!
[Laughs] Humankind has a lot to learn, but if
you compare now to 30 years ago, something has
changed, which is much better than nothing.
In the exhibition, you ask, “How can an
artist assert herself in times of globalisation,
wars and mass migration?” One of
the series on view features an empowered
woman strongly standing alone – is she
your answer? I hope it delivers that message in
a pictorial way. I’ve been critical all my life about
Eurocentrism and male domination, and in the
1990s I painted these girls who were suffering,
lonely, and very introspective. I think over time
their consciousness evolved with me. Figures
that used to lie down are now standing up, and
they even have swords! Here, she’s saying: if it’s
necessary, I’ll fight.
40 • APRIL 2016

Would you say that the female figures in
your work are self-portraits? I would not
say it so simply. Of course every artist, even
Gerhard Richter, is making self-portraits in
some sense. But my interest is not only in
me. I see myself as a mediator.
You also tackle the socially taboo
subject of ageing, particularly with
your photographs of dying flowers.
One of the beautiful truths about ageing is
that nobody can take it away from you. It’s
natural. With the images, I took my time,
and wanted to capture every phase of their
decline, because unlike animals, flowers don’t
really have an exact moment of death.
You were a professor at UdK for 20
years. What makes a good art professor?
I made sure to not be the kind of professor
who told students what was good or bad. I
really wanted to give everyone confidence
in themselves. I never thought, “Oh, I’m a
professor, so I know what art is.”
Why did you decide to leave UdK last
year? The years with my students were important
to me, and I’ll miss them. But I realised
I could not wait one more day to give my
work undivided attention. I wasn’t a success
at 30, but that’s why I survived, because I had
time to develop myself and my career. There
were so many art stars in the 1980s who made
it to the Venice Biennale or Documenta
LEIKO IKEMURA – …
AND SUDDENLY THE
WIND TURNS Through
Apr 17 | Haus am
Waldsee, Argentinische
Allee 30, Zehlendorf,
U-Bhf Krumme Lanke,
Tue-Sun 11-18
and then crashed.
I could have left
after a couple more
years, but I’m full
of energy, only just
starting to get grey
hairs [laughs] and
I’m happy I can
work. ■
PROJECT SPACE
The science guys
Amidst the galleries of Neukölln brimming with
ironic post-internet art by jaded new media students
is SPEKTRUM, a decidedly earnest sciencecentred
multimedia art and performance space.
Drop by on a Friday evening and it looks like your
average hipster-Kneipe – smoky and ambiently
lit, with a few bespectacled folks milling about,
Astras in hand. But once it’s time, “community
builder” Lieke Ploeger will step out from behind
the bar and open the vault door that leads into
the performance space. Formerly a bakery, the
high-ceilinged, tiled room regularly fills with digital
projections and the drone of modular synthesisers.
Longtime friends Ploeger and curator/media artist
Alfredo Ciannameo opened Spektrum just last June
after 10 months of renovation, and it has already
become a fixture in the art/science scene in Berlin.
But like a lot of DIY spaces here,
it’s difficult to peg down. Taking
the name to heart, Ciannameo
selects from a wide range of art
– from sound pieces to dance,
audiovisual performance to
experimental film screenings – to
build his exhibition programme.
The hand-selected performances
often feel like experiments in the
traditional sense of the word,
questioning artificial intelligence,
virtual reality, machine learning
and hacking.
This broad curatorial scope is
doubled by Spektrum’s emphasis
on sub-communities that join art
and science. Seven groups (at
last count) range from the Smell
Lab, which meets monthly to discuss
all things olfactory and embarks
on “field trips” to capture
the scent of areas like Kottbusser
Tor; to the Live Cinema Lab,
which explores the outer limits of audio-visual art
and performance. The pair plan to open a maker lab
within the next year, offering up further resources
for those who want to experiment with technologies
like 3D printing and laser cutting.
If you’re interested in joining one of the communities,
just show up to the meeting with your
curiosity in tow. Want to start your own? Contact
Ploeger and if it fits the space, they’ll be happy to
host you. In the meantime, you can get your foot
in the door by checking out Spektrum’s revolving
programme of performances, with something
going on almost every night of the week. Check
their website for the latest, including the inaugural
Activation exhibition of curious biotechnological
art pieces by the emerging art/science collective
Lacuna Lab (Apr 22-24). Even
if you’re not keen on a night’s
given headliner, Spektrum’s
bar is open for artists, hackers,
nerds and people off the
street to meet and follow their
curiosity. KC
SPEKTRUM
Bürknerstr. 12,
Neukölln, U-Bhf
Schönleinstr.
DORON SADJA
41

ART
Where Are We Now
NBK picks up David
Bowie’s question with their
exhibition of 15 Berlinbased
international artists
awarded the city’s 2016
Fine Art Scholarship. Refl
ect on the political and
social issues of the last
30 years through works
that blend critique, offbeat
humour and inventiveness,
like Carolina Hellsgård’s video of a horseback rider,
“Thunder in My Heart” or Paul Plampers’ sound installation
“Die Schlange”, made up of sneezing and coughing that
slowly develops into speech. NB Through May 1, Neuer
Berliner Kunstverein, Chausseestr. 128/129, Mitte, U-Bhf
Oranienburger Tor, Tue-Sun 12-18, Thu 12-20
Guillaume Bijl
At some point we’ve
all surely been walking
through a mall or sitting
on the U-Bahn when the
realisation hits that the
everyday objects around
us are bizarre, funny, or
even sinister. One of the
most well-known Belgian
artists has been putting
that feeling under a microscope,
and generally toying with the stability of reality, since
the 1970s with unexpected installations like 2002’s “New
Supermarket,” where entire museum halls were refashioned
as markets fi lled to the brim with processed food. His
newest solo shouldn’t be missed. ART Through Apr 23,
Galerie Nagel Draxler, Weydingerstr. 2/4, Mitte, U-Bhf Rosa-
Luxemberg-Platz, Tue-Fri 11-19, Sat 11-18
Keltie Ferris
The NYC-based process
painter’s colourful
abstractions have made
waves since bursting onto
the scene not 10 years
ago. In her fi rst German
solo you’ll see new pieces
like “HER*CU*LES,”
where a combination of
hand and spray-painted
marks create a strangely
pixellated ‘quilt.’ The web of fuzzy, curving lines in “((Bed
Stuy))” will keep your eyes darting, not unlike pieces from
her body prints series. With each painting so different
from the next, you’ll fi nd yourself revisiting the age-old
question: does each artist have a signature style? ART
Through Apr 24, Klemm’s, Prinzessinnenstr. 29, Kreuzberg,
U-Bhf Moritzplatz, Tue-Sat 11-18
Gallery Weekend
Though the annual
event is often diffi cult to
navigate, with over 50 galleries
opening their doors
to bigger and sometimes
better shows than usual,
that’s no reason to be
intimidated. Pound the
pavement for the headliners:
Wolfgang Tillmanns at
Galerie Buchholz, Rirkrit
Tiravanija at Helga Maria Klosterfelde and Tomás Saraceno
at Esther Schipper. But make sure to check out KwieKulik
at Zak | Branicka, Maria Eichhorn at Galerie Barbara
Weiss, Aleksandra Domanovic at Tanya Leighton, and
Christopher Williams at Capitain Petzel too. Check exberliner.com
for a complete guide. ART Apr 29-May 1, visit
gallery-weekend-berlin.de for full programme and details
INTERVIEW
“I draw war to
demand peace”
HAMID SULAIMAN might have
fl ed his home in Syria, but he’s
not done with the war and the
revolution. By RUTH SCHNEIDER
Briefly jailed by the Assad regime for joining
the 2011 freedom protests, the 30-year-old
artist escaped his native Damascus (and being
drafted into Assad's army) for Paris, where, since
2012, he's been pursuing his nonviolent struggle
with hard-hitting canvases, sketches and
cartoons documenting the drama unfolding in
Syria. Freedom Hospital, launched last month at
the Paris Book Fair, is his first foray into the
world of graphic novels. From April 9, Berlin's
Galerie Crone is showing a selection of the
book’s original sheets – high-contrast black and
white sequences that read like the Syrian artist's
attempt to disentangle the baffling confusion
and violence back in his country, evoking the tormented
beauty of 1920s German expressionism.
It's your first graphic novel. Why now?
Were you inspired by the French
comics culture? Actually, that’s the
reason I came to France in the first place
– I had started working on this when I
was in Cairo and I wanted to learn more
about comics in Paris. I've loved comics
since I was a child, but this culture
doesn’t exist much in Syria and I didn't
really know how to do one. It took me
four years altogether to complete this...
It's very strong visually. Depicting horror,
violence and suffering is often a challenge,
but you chose to go head-on in a pretty
realistic, graphic way. You even drew
screenshots from Youtube videos... I took
the simple, direct way to stand against violence:
by really showing it. And what I show is not just
images I found on Youtube, and it’s not another
planet. It’s happening for real, every day. And in
several countries, not only Syria.
HAMID SULAIMAN –
FREEDOM HOSPITAL
Apr 9 - June 18|
Galerie Krone,
Rudi-Dutschke-Str.
26, Kreuzberg,
U-Bhf Kochstr., Tue-
Sat 11-18
For a debut novel, you didn't make it easy
for yourself: it’s a polyphonic narrative
with a cast of 14 protagonists, each representing
one aspect of the hyper-complex
Syrian reality. What's the main protagonist
of your novel – Syria? The Freedom
Hospital? In Europe in general, and not only in
comic books, most stories are about one character
who’s leading the whole story. This is also
linked to living in Europe, where life is centred
around the individual. But in the Arab world, the
place is the real hero – so for me, the Freedom
Hospital is the real hero. Take Naguib
Mahfouz – he’s the first Arab
writer to win a Nobel prize, and all
of his novels are like this.
One intriguing character is Salem,
who starts off as an Assad
secret agent, moves on with the
Free Syrian Army and ends up
with the radical Islamists... Do
42 • APRIL 2016

you feel his personal development is emblematic
of Syria's? Salem is really key to the
story because he is always moving with the collective
subconscious in his society. He's an agent
of Assad during the Assad regime, but when he’s
in a society of rebels he becomes a rebel, and in
a society with Islamists he becomes an Islamist.
I wanted to show the pressure and the confusion
and how who you were born, your education and
the people around you affect your decisions. Nobody
chose to be German or Syrian; Christian or
Muslim; Sunni or Shia. It’s all society’s thinking,
but these labels will stick to you.
You seem to put a lot of effort into educating
the reader – like where the weapons
come from... I draw war to demand peace. And
yes, I believe that all this war is related to arms
dealing, with some 80 percent of all arms coming
from Russia, 16 percent from America and
five percent from all over the world. Meanwhile,
the West is totally against war. They give people
tanks and guns and then call them uncivilised for
using them.
You’re a pacifist and an atheist drawing
about war and religion. Was that a challenge?
Artists draw their inspiration from what
they're living. In my case it's Syria, what I lived
through there and what my family and friends
still live through. I lost my best friend to torture,
and I was in jail – I can't run away from that. But
I can find life in art. I lost my country, and now
my country is my art. It's somehow where I live.
Your character Yasmine starts off confident
that Assad will be kicked out. By the
end, she moves from optimism to what she
calls “realism” – the belief she might never
see the fall of the regime. Is that something
that you share with her? We people of
the Arab Spring, we were dreamers. We went to
the streets and asked for freedom and revolution
even though we knew we could die. It felt like
it wasn’t possible to be born under Assad senior
and live all our lives with Assad junior. We had
that urge... If you start a rebellion, you have to
be a dreamer.
That was 2011; can you, as a Syrian, still
dream nowadays? You can always dream! Nobody
can forbid you
to dream! Yes, it’s a
big war; it started as a
revolution and now it’s
a crisis that everyone
in the world is putting
their hands on. But see,
after living 40 years in a
dictatorship... I don’t want
to say it’s normal, but these
forms of extremism are in
some ways natural reactions.
A lot of people have different
visions, and some people's
dream is to make an Islamic militia.
They couldn't express that
for decades. Now it's just blowing
out... but despite it all, I feel optimistic.
It’s not possible that after
all of this we don’t reach democracy,
we don’t reach freedom. Every war
in the world has ended. There is no
war that will go on forever!
EDITIONS ÇÀ ET LÀ / ARTE EDITIONS, GALERIE CRONE AND THE ARTIST.
Okay, but for now people like Yasmine,
that idealistic young woman
trying to run a clandestine hospital,
find themselves stuck between Assad
and the Islamists and realise that they
cannot remain outside the war... Right now
in Syria, no one has the right to say that they
have nothing to do with war. Freedom Hospital
is about a little society of civilians engaged in a
civil war. They might not want to be involved.
But when you are in the war, you are part of the
war. There is no way out. In the end, Yasmine
understands that.
Can you tell us more about Haval, a young
Kurd who finds his way out to Switzerland
thanks to a cat. It’s so absurd that it must
be a true story, right? Yes. A close friend of
my father always wanted to get a visa to visit his
daughter in Switzerland, even before the war,
but he never got one. And when the war happened,
his daughter said she would try to find
any solution to bring him to her. The only way
she found was to claim asylum in Switzerland for
the dog, and make her father its owner. Because
the dog had a Swiss passport, the father finally
got a way to get out and see his daughter!
You dedicated the book to
your best friend. We shared a lot of
years together and moments in the revolution. I
left Syria and he stayed and got imprisoned, and
nine days later they called his mother to say he
was dead. And on national television, they called
him a terrorist who attacked civilians. I lost a lot
of friends and I can’t stop thinking about this all
the time.
Just after the Paris terrorist attacks,
a Facebook pic of you and your French
girlfriend kissing topless behind a big sign
reading “Love always wins” went viral.
Do you really think that? Yes! In Europe 70
years ago, everyone was traumatised by the war
started by the Nazis. And now there’s peace. You
can move from Paris to Berlin without stepping
over borders. Overall in Syria there are fewer
people dying than in the Second World War, and
our standards have changed. People’s lives have
become more sacred, more respected and now
we know that violence is not the solution. You
need to continue being optimistic, and like we
said in Paris after the attacks, we shouldn't be
afraid and we should keep going out! ■
WEDNESDAY · 27/04 · 7 PM
WITH L. SUBRAMANIAM,
With Jazz and Bluegrass,
Folk and Indian Raga.
HOMAGE TO
YEHUDI MENUHIN
22/04–01/05/2016
43
en.konzerthaus.de/menuhin-hommage

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RESTAURANTS
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CAFES
Godshot Prenzlauer Berg belongs to
the top of the league, with excellent
coffee and super-friendly staff. Above
all, they know their stuff. Take your
time and 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
Marx-Str., www.prachtwerkberlin.com
Barettino Neukölln means “small
bar” and is a unique combination of
great food and good coffee from Italy
and Brandenburg. Everything is
fresh and made with love: The huge
breakfast selection, Italian dishes,
lots of delicacies, toasted paninis and
homemade cakes… Join our events!
Reuterstr. 59, U-Bhf Hermannplatz,
Tel 0176 6464 5307, Mon-Sun 9-22,
www.barettinoberlin.com
Napoljonska Mitte 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
Café im Literaturhaus
Charlottenburg 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
Prachtwerk Neukölln 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, house-made baked
goods, tasty cocktails and more. The
best part? All profits benefit social projects.
Ganghoferstr. 2, U-Bhf Karl-
Marx-Str., www.prachtwerkberlin.com
Trentasei Kreuzberg is the Italian restaurant
to go to in Kreuzberg. The atmosphere
is cosy and sure to get you
in a romantic mood. You will also find
love in the food: home-made pasta,
Italian pizza, and delicious soups. The
impressive wine selection will guarantee
the perfect glass no matter what
the dish. Skalitzer Str. 34, U-Bhf Görlitzer
Bahnhof, Tel 030 6950 6930,
Mon-Fri 12-00, Sat-Sun from 16.30,
www.trentasei.de
Sauerkraut Mitte 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 Rosen thaler Platz, Tel 030
6640 8355, Mon-Fri 8-2, Sat-Sun 9-2,
www.restaurant-sauerkraut.de
Chupenga Mitte When the lunchtime
queue for a burrito looks like
Berghain, you know there’s got to be
something good waiting. Luckily, the
line moves quickly, thanks to an efficient
production line at Chupenga.
You can pick and choose the ingredients
for your burrito, naked burrito,
salad or tacos for a fixed price.
Mohrenstrasse 42, Tel 030 239
369 61 U-Hausvogteiplatz, Mo-Fr:
11.30-20, www.chupenga.com
Bastard Kreuzberg 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! Reichen berger Str. 122,
U-Bhf Görlitzer Bahnhof, Tel 030
5482 1866, Mon, Wed-Sun 9-16.30,
www.bastard-berlin.de
Zerostress Pizza Friedrichshain All
Italian, delicious handmade pizza to-go
or enjoy with the relaxed and fun crew.
They have been feeding Berliners at
festivals, parties and markets, and recently
opened their own restaurant in
Friedrichshain. One of the best pizzas
in town, made with love for food.
Vegetarians and vegans are also welcome!
Colbestr. 3, U-Bhf Samariterstraße,
Mon-Sat 12-23, Sun 17.30-23,
facebook.com/zerostresspizza
Schwarzes Café Charlottenburg
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
FIND FULL GUIDES AT
EXBERLINER.COM/DIRECTORY
44 • APRIL 2016

Dolores Mitte Schöneberg 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.
Bayreuther Str. 36, U-Bhf Wittenbergplatz,
Mon-Sun 11-22, www.
dolores-berlin.de
3 Schwestern Kreuzberg 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 6003 18600,
Mon-Sat from 11, Sun from 10,
www.3schwestern-berlin.de
Café Morgenland Kreuzberg 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
No Hablo Español Friedrichshain
The best California-style Mexican
street food joint in Friedrichshain. Delicious
freshly made burritos and quesadillas
served by a collection of funloving
international people. Once a
week, challenge the NHE team in a
game of rock-paper-scissors and win
a half-price meal! Kopernikusstr. 22,
S+U-Bhf Warschauer Str., Mon-Sun
from 12, www.nohabloespanol.de
Crunch Kantine Moabit is about
quick, simple, affordable food made
from fresh and cooked with love.
Our philosophy on vegetarian cooking:
everything fresh and delicious
and we hope that meat eaters won‘t
notice that there is NO meat. 12 dishes
on the buffet each day with 80%
of them vegan. Siemensstr. 16, S-
Beusselstr., Tue-Sat 12-20, Sun 12-17,
www.crunchkantine.com
Dabbawalla Schöneberg offers a
fine selection of tasty and healthy vegetarian
and vegan dishes – freshly
made according to ayurvedic dietetics.
Main dish is the Thali; also popular are
the salads and the sweet ‘Chia-dream‘.
The cosy deli is also a small health food
store. Hohenstaufenstr. 64, U-Bhf
Nollendorfplatz or U-Eisenacher Str.
Mo-Sa 11-18, www.dabbawalla.berlin
BARS & NIGHTLIFE
Nalu Diner Prenzlauer Berg They call
themselves the Homeland of the Freefill,
but Nalu is much more: here you’ll
score US-style breakfasts, comfort
food and great cheeseburgers plus
tasty lunch and dinner specials. Finish
your meal with a malted milkshake
or root beer float! Dunckerstr. 80a,
S-Bhf Prenzlauer Allee, Tel 030 8975
8632, Mon 9-16, Tue-Sun 9-22,
www.nalu-diner.com
Pune Prenzlauer Berg The place to go
to especially on Sundays for a great
Indian buffet after a stroll on the nearby
Mauerpark fleamarket. They offer
a large menu with various meaty, vegetarian
and vegan dishes, and daily
lunch specials. Don’t skip the cocktail
happy hour! Oderberger Str. 28, U-
Bhf Eberswalder Str., Tel 030 4404
2762, Mon-Sat 12-24, Sun 11-24,
www.pune-restaurant.de
Mani in Pasta Kreuzberg Many
restaurants claim to offer hand-made
tagliatelle, but at Mani in Pasta you
can actually see it happening! The Italian
trio prepares and sells fresh pasta
at Markthalle IX. They also offer daily
traditional or experimental dishes to
enjoy on the spot. Some meaty, some
vegetarian, all delicious! Eisenbahnstr.
42-43, U-Bhf Görlitzer Bahnhof,
Mon, Wed, Sat 10-18, Tue, Fri, 10-20,
Thu 10-22, www.maniinpasta.de
Soylent Bar Friedrichshain 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.
Mon-Sun 18–open end cafesoylent.eu
Hops & Barley Friedrichshain 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.,
Tel 030 2616 918 Mon-Sun 17-2,
www.hopsandbarley-berlin.de
45

Kumpelnest 3000 Schöneberg
The legendary bar that made the Berlin
nightlife scene what it is today.
This brothel-turned-bar was Bono’s
hangout during his visits to West Berlin
25 years ago. Kumpelnest hasn’t
lost any of its authenticity or wild
side over the years. Hipsters beware!
Lützowstr. 23, U-Bhf Kurfürstenstr.,
Mon-Fri 19-5, Sat-Sun from 19,
www.kumpelnest3000.com
Kilkenny Irish Pub Mitte 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
LPG Biomarkt Prenzlauer Berg
Kreuzberg Your all-organic neighbourhood
supermarket supplies
fruit and veggies, vegan groceries,
meats, cheese and even cosmetics.
They offer a huge selection of local
and regional products, preferably
from within 200km from Berlin.
Fill your basket with freshly baked
bread and treat yourself to a selection
of homemade sweet and savoury
goodies. Found already in 8
locations in Berlin to offer you the
fairest, cleanest and most delicious
products nearby, from nearby.
Reichenberger Str. 37, U-Bhf Kottbusser
Tor, Mon-Sat 8-21, bakery
from 7 Kollwitzstr. 17, U-Bhf Senefelderplatz,
Mon-Sat 9-21, bakery
from 7 www.lpg-biomarkt.de
Schillerbar Neukölln 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
SHOPS & SERVICES
Dr. Pogo Veganladen-Kollektiv
Neukölln
is a vegan-only grocery store
Monster Ronson’s Ichiban
Karaoke Friedrichshain 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
with a tiny café in cosy Rixdorf.
Vegans will find almost anything they
need. Non-vegans are welcome
to discover interesting plantbased
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
Rollberg Kino Neukölln With five
screens, Babylon Kreuzberg’s bigger
but lesser-known sister boasts one of
the largest original language movie
selections in Berlin. Located on the
U8 near Hermannstraße in the Kindl
Boulevard shopping centre. Rollbergstr.
70, U-Bhf Boddinstr., Tel 030
6270 4645, www.yorck.de
Computer Service Julien
Kwan Schöneberg 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 10-14, 16-19,
Sat 12-16, www.deinmac.de
Shift Frisöre Berlin Charlottenburg
Do you want to “shift“ your hairstyle?
Visit the Shift flagship store near Kurfürstendamm
and get to know the
English-speaking stylists, Jack from
England and Tomo from Japan. Winner
of the German Hairdressing
Award 2008 for the category Newcomer
and 2013 for the category
Color. They are looking forward to
welcoming you in their salon! Grolmanstr.
36, U-Bhf Uhlandstraße,
Tel 030 3418 545, Tue-Fri 10-20, Mon/
Sat 9-19, www.shift-friseure.de
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46 • APRIL 2016

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47

BERLIN BITES By FRANÇOISE POILANE
Kotti’s best
cheap eats
It may not be a feast for
the eyes, but the nooks
and crannies of the Neues
Kreuzberger Zentrum complex
pack in more authentic
budget deliciousness per
square metre than nearly
anywhere else in Berlin.
Here are our favourites.
Tadim
Nearly two decades old, this Turkish street food
stand is one of the few in the city to have an
English menu – likely instituted after its placement
on all the “best döner in Berlin” lists. It’s
not just the giant cone of 100 percent certified
veal spinning in the window that’s got the guidebooks
salivating; it’s the pillowy, homemadebefore-your-eyes
flatbread (€3.50) durum (€4)
or lamaçun (€4) cradling that meat along with
copious amounts of vegetables and a light touch
with the sauce. We won’t go so far as to call it
health food, but it’s certainly one of the most
virtuous-tasting kebabs you’ll eat. JS Adalbertstr.
98, Sun-Thu 9-1, Fri-Sat 9-2
an honourable job of transporting you out of your
grubby surroundings to the shores of the Black
Sea. Not because of the ambience (there is none)
but due to the fresh salmon, trout, mackerel and
sea bass, served pan-fried with nothing more than
a squeeze of lemon, salad and bread (owner Avni
Kazanci says sauce hides the fish’s flavour). You’ll
see big plates of fried hamsi (Turkish anchovies,
€7) on nearly every table; you can also get your
fish served in a baguette sandwich for a reasonable
€3-3.50. JS Adalbertstr. 97, Mon-Thu 11-
23:30, Fri-Sat 11-24, Sun 11-23
Lasan
It only takes one glance in the window to discern
that Abdullah Gemschied’s Kurdish Iraqi eatery
is all about the Fladenbrot: puffy, chewy naan-like
rounds made by slapping dough onto the inside
of a blazing-hot tandoori oven. Gemschied set
up shop on Kotti seven years ago, opening Lasan
as a sister restaurant to his original bakery of the
same name on Kottbusser Damm. You’ll see dedicated
customers coming in and out to purchase
the bread by the bagful, but we suggest you
enjoy it on the spot with an order of tandoori
chicken (€6.50), some lamb biryani (€12) or a
vegetarian spread with hummus, falafel, halloumi
and salad (€8.50). JS Adalbertstr. 96, Mon-Fri
11-23, Sat-Sun 12-23
Padisah Baklava
Not only is this bakery home to some of the
best Turkish sweets you’ll eat in Berlin, it’s
surprisingly progressive: manager and trained
psychotherapist Çiğdem Balki takes care of
business while her husband Hikmet mans the
oven. The pair have been running the store for
five years now, supplying over 250 Berlin-wide
clients (including cafés, restaurants and big
hotels) with countless permutations of pastry,
nuts and syrup. There’s coconut, semolina
and most importantly, plenty of classic baklava
with pistachios. Antep pistachios, to be
precise. “That’s the main difference between
us and some other stores in Kotti,” boasts
Çiğdem. “We use only high-quality pistachios.
We also buy first-class butter – not margarine
like some do.” You can taste the difference,
and you’ll also have to pay for it, although at
€16-24 per kilo (roughly €1-1.50 per piece),
it’s not that much more expensive than other,
inferior bakeries. Wash that “green gold” down
with some real Turkish Mokka, the thick, milkfree
kind of coffee that’s hard to come by in
Germany. Then lean back and enjoy the view –
which might include Hikmet giving a junkie a
piece of baklava before asking him to shoot up
somewhere else. It’s still Kotti, after all. JH
Reichenberger Str. 177, daily 11-21
Stari Most
Most börek (burek, bureka, you get the picture)
in Berlin tend to be soggy grease bombs. Not
at this 12-year-old Bosnian Imbiss, where chef/
owner Imeri Jusuf rolls up the doughy snacks
with spinach and cottage cheese, brushes them
with oil and bakes them à la minute. The result
is dense but fluffy, a bit crispy on the outside
and a great-value breakfast or light lunch at just
€2.50. A lot of Balkan guys from around the Kiez
also come here for the cevapcici (€4), cylindrical
grilled meatballs served with chilli sauce, kajmak
(similar to cream cheese) and homemade bread.
JS Reichenberger Str. 175, daily 8-21
Taka Fisch House
Kotti’s not exactly the first place in Berlin you’d
look for great seafood, but this Turkish fish
restaurant, here since before the Wall fell, does
Padisah Baklava
Tadim
Taka Fisch House
Lasan
MARIA RUNARSDOTTIR
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48 • APRIL 2016

Allan’s Breakfast Club
Bonjour, mate
ERICA LÖFMAN
Your
Englishspeaking
radio in
Berlin.
If there’s one thing you notice when entering
Allan’s Breakfast Club (ABC), it’s Allan, the
personable chap who immediately comes to
greet you with a mix of casual Aussie warmth
and Gallic bon vivant spirit. Welcome to
Prenzlauer Berg’s first Australian café, where
you can indulge in Antipodean brunch during
the day and sip on French wines at night.
ABC boasts some of both cultures’ best
attributes: free-flowing tap water, friendly efficient
service and a classic croque monsieur.
And they seem to have mastered the art of
poaching eggs, not a small feat for Berlin.
This isn’t some gimmick brought back from
a gap year. Allan is a Frenchman
who lived half of his life in Sydney
and speaks Aussie English with a
French lilt. His mum is a chef, and
during his three years in Berlin,
Allan has worked everywhere
from Grill Royal’s bar to the
recently shuttered Melbourne
Canteen. After a successful
pop-up on Unter den Linden, the
thirtysomething went sedentary and is now
blessing Kollwitzkiez with a proper expat-style
brunch – a novelty in this part of town, where
breakfast largely remains a German hodgepodge
of nondescript cold cuts and cheese.
Besides the mishmash of French (an issue of
Charlie Hebdo) and Australian paraphernalia
ALLAN’S BREAKFAST
CLUB Rykestr. 13,
Prenzlauer Berg, U-
Bhf Senefelderplatz,
Thu-Sun 10-16 (breakfast),
Wed-Sat from
19:30 (wine bar)
ERICA LÖFMAN
(an “I heart Sydney” sticker), the one-room
café is rife with clever design details: a
skateboard truck turned coat hook under the
counter, honey jars certified by the German
Beekeepers’ Association as water glasses. It’s
small and cosy, and on any weekend morning
a startling number of brunchers (make sure to
reserve days in advance!) sit on high stools at
the window or at the counter, or on vintage
school chairs around the long dining table.
So what have they come for? Mostly
beautifully poached eggs served as spicy
shakshouka (€9) or with a side of green asparagus
and prosciutto (€10). And of course
Benedict-style (€10), with a
convincing hollandaise and a
choice of Parma ham or Allan’s
house-cured salmon – a secret
four-day ritual involving beetroot,
hence the unusual reddish
colour. Those beautiful chunks
of fish are something to die for,
and if you have an egg aversion
you can order them with
smashed avocado on top of two bagel halves
(or toasted sourdough, on demand) for €10.
It’s all so rich (in a good way) that we suggest
sharing a plate and keeping some room for
dessert (warm banana bread, brownies...).
For a lighter treat, there are salads (quinoa,
pumpkin, pomegranate and blue cheese,
€10) or simply delicious “avo” toast (€6).
After 7:30pm the place morphs into a
French wine bar with cold plates, cheese soufflé
and a clever DIY boozing concept: help
yourself to as many of the 12 open wines as
your liver can handle, write down each wine’s
number on a provided sheet of paper and pay
at the end (€2.50-5). Noteworthy is the unusual
abundance of rosés, including a Château
Miraval from the Brangelina estate.
Open just four days a week, this is a place
of indulgence, where a friend might drop by
with a box of sweet treats from a Berlin patissier
and Allan will open a glass of champagne
(rosé, of course). It’s a quiet 3pm on a Thursday
– what better way to enjoy a moment of
peace before the evening rush? FP
For
adventurous
thinkers.
www.nprberlin.de 49

START-UPS By SOPHIE ATKINSON
COLUMN
Child’s play
Will Verena Pausder’s Digitalwerkstatt produce the next
generation of programmers? Photos by Maria Runarsdottir
Berlin’s digital revolution is taking place
on a deceptively quiet street in Mitte.
The Digitalwerkstatt is cosy and
brightly decorated. There are squishy
chairs in neon fabrics, beanbags, a wall with
magnetic shapes – “so the children can illustrate
their ideas to one another,” says founder Verena
Pausder – and a 3D printer nestled in the back
of the workshop. It doesn’t look a million miles
away from your average start-up: there’s an
anti-fixed desk policy, for one thing, and a small
library of coding books.
Opened in February, the Digitalwerkstatt
boasts that it’s “Germany’s first coding
workshop for children” (the workshop series
CoderDojo started earlier, in 2013, but it was an
Irish import). For Pausder, it’s not just business,
but pleasure. Berlin’s tech poster girl has
been promoting the digital world to children for
the past five years in her role as co-founder of
the children’s app brand Fox & Sheep but felt
something was missing. She didn’t want children
to passively consume digital products, but to be
inspired to make their own. After running a test
coding course for a group of children last year,
Pausder saw how successful her idea could be
and in just four months she found the Linienstraße
space, furnished it, hired staff from both
educational and digital media and launched the
project. She’s excited to share the positive results
she’s already had from sending her own two
children to the workshop – apparently her son
has been inspired to build an app that’s going to
be “like Clash of Clans, but better!”
Today’s creative coding class, taught in
English and German, begins with the instructor
asking the children to set “objectives” that
they should aim to meet by the end of the class.
You know, like at work. As a grown up. In an office
– probably one with cubicles. However, the
children seem undeterred by the pseudo-corporate
language used and get stuck in with relish.
They use a programme called Scratch to animate
a “sprite” – in non-Scratch English, that’s a
character – and make it move, talk, dance and
change colour. Although they use worksheets to
complete each task, it feels more like playtime
than a lesson – there’s a constant buzz of excited
I’m not sure coding can
compete with breakdancing,
but Isabella
begs to differ. “It’s really
cool. And easy.”
conversation between the children, who are
paired up on projects.
I’m there with Isabella, our photographer’s
10-year-old daughter, who tells me she’ll have
to leave early because she has a breakdancing
session scheduled directly after the class. I’m
not sure coding can compete with breakdancing,
but she begs to differ. “It’s really cool,”
she says. “And easy.”
This is exactly the reaction Pausder is
hoping for. Although the workshop has no
explicit feminist agenda, Pausder finds introducing
girls to coding between the ages of six
and 12 means that they’re less likely to reject
opportunities in tech as “not my sort of thing”
when they’re a little older. Certainly, all the
girls in the class seem very engaged, though
some for less organic reasons than others. On
asking one six-year-old why she’s at the class,
she responds, “Because Daddy says it’s important
knowledge to have for the future.”
But whether you’re a Mitterati helicopter parent
or a tech enthusiast, there’s a class for everyone
– the workshop also offers courses for adults
in the hope that the whole family can become
engaged by the coding world and if Scratch
doesn’t sound like your thing, there’s also MaKey
MaKey classes (hooking up your laptop and fruit
with an electronic kit so you can play bananas
like a piano) and a robot-art class, taught in English,
where participants can programme robots
to draw for them.
The Digitalwerkstatt is already doing a brisk
trade at €25-30 per workshop and €150-170 for a
10- to 17-week course, and Pausder has her sights
set on opening a second workshop in a different
neighbourhood. And beyond Berlin? Rolling out
workshops all across Germany, then the world.
Given the enthusiasm for the digital sector right
now, I’d say the sky’s the limit. n
More information about course dates and
prices at www.digitalwerkstatt.de
50 • APRIL 2016

Q&A
Four questions for...
Maciek Laskus
Startup Safary
Laskus is the CEO and founder of a Berlinbased
initiative to take people on tours of
major start-ups that has now spread to 11 cities
internationally. For this month’s Berlin edition
(Apr 29-30), approximately 60 start-ups, including
big names like Number26 and Dubsmash,
will open their doors to 1000 participants for
talks, presentations and workshops. One-to-one
sessions will also be available with investors and
accelerators, along with the requisite networking
events and parties.
1
How has the start-up scene changed
since you came to Berlin and started
this project four years ago? It has
grown much bigger, and it has professionalised.
When I moved here, it was already very dynamic
but it felt like it was in its early days – there were
only a handful of investors, there were meet-
LORENZO MUSIU
ups but very few professional conferences that
would attract names from around the world.
Today there’s very little that Berlin doesn’t have
in comparison with Silicon Valley or London.
2
Okay, but not all the change has been
positive, surely? What’s your least
favourite thing about the start-up
scene now? It’s become kind of trendy to be
a start-up founder. When the whole ecosystem
was very niche, pre-Facebook movie and billion
dollar exits, there were fewer people attracted
to the scene because they thought it was a good
way to become rich or famous. But now every
office has a foosball table and half of the founders
are indistinguishable from hipsters.
3
Speaking of hipsters: what do you
think about the argument that startups
are raising housing prices and
pushing locals out? The same thing happened
in San Francisco and while there are tragic
stories for individuals, it’s also benefited the
city. People have been complaining that Berlin
is poor for years. This is finally a chance for
Berlin to build a strong industry. The same thing
happens regardless of whether it’s a start-up taking
over your economy or oil being discovered.
Whatever the source of wealth, there’s always
going to be gentrification.
4
Which sectors in Berlin should we
be watching out for? The city itself
creates interesting niches – lots of people
here are not keen on using credit cards, so
there’s a lot of potential for payment methods.
The Bitcoin community’s quite active in Berlin
and lots of start-ups working with Bitcoin or
blockchain are based here. So these alternative
methods of payment may become stronger in
Berlin, because tax regulations surrounding
Bitcoins are friendly in Germany. n
C
M
Y
CM
MY
CY
CMY
K
Sources: Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2015, Studie Deutscher Startup Monitor 2015
FACTS & FIGURES
Truth or hype?
When descriptions like “effervescent” and
”a major global player“ are applied to Berlin’s
start-up scene by publications like The Guardian
and The Global Startup Ecosystem Report,
you know you’ve hit a hype high. Our advice?
Keep your eyes firmly trained on the numbers
to distinguish between buzz and reality.
TRUTH OR HYPE? “Start-ups are the future
of industry in Berlin!”
In an ecosystem that embraces learning
through failing, it’s no wonder
that only 11.4 percent of Berlin startups make
it to their sixth birthday without going bust.
HYPE!
TRUTH OR HYPE? “The start-up scene
is really progressive – it’s a great place
for women.”
The bottom line? Just nine
percent of Berlin start-up
founders are women. With 27 percent female
employees, Berlin might seem like the most
MOSTLY HYPE!
gender-equal start-up ecosystem in Europe…
but when it comes to bosses and execs, it’s
a man’s world.
TRUTH OR HYPE? “The start-up scene
here’s really international, so it’s a great
source of employment for expats”
With 49 percent foreign employees,
Berlin is the second most diverse
start-up scene in Europe, just behind London’s
53 percent (and way above the German average
of 22 percent!).
TRUTH!
51

START-UPS
What’s app, doc?
Chances are if you’re feeling sick, your first move is no longer
a visit to your local Hausarzt, but a quick Google search for
advice and reassurance. And you’re not alone. With around
165,000 medical-related apps globally, health tech is a booming
market – and Berlin’s start-ups are on the pulse. By Alison Bell
Just as the internet has changed how
we travel and shop, so has it started to
transform healthcare. The field of mobile
health (“mHealth”, in start-up-ese) is
attracting more attention – and cash – than ever.
Google Ventures, the early-stage investment
arm of Google, has invested about 30 percent
of its funds into health start-ups. And the trend
has reached this side of the Atlantic. According
to Deloitte, by 2018 Europe will be the largest
mHealth market, worth over €6.3 billion.
And it’s not just “wellness” apps – you know,
the kind that help you map your run or programme
your workout. Start-ups now have the
potential to tackle serious conditions, monitor
and diagnose complex ailments and even provide
online therapy. The hope is that mHealth can
help people to better manage their health independently.
With healthcare services across the
world feeling the strain, technology can help ease
demand – and reduce costs.
Germany is Europe’s largest healthcare market,
so it’s no surprise that the digital health market
here is growing steadily – it’s expected to be
worth €3 billion by 2017. Germans pay over €40
billion per year on health and wellness on top of
health insurance contributions, fuelling demand
for healthcare innovation. That’s where Berlin’s
start-ups come in.
Why Berlin?
The healthcare market is a key pillar of Berlin’s
economy. According to official figures, the sector
generated around €20 billion for the region in
2015. Berlin and Brandenburg are home to over
130 clinics, 30 pharmaceutical companies, over
230 biotech companies and about 300 medical
engineering enterprises, making the region one
of the world’s leading life sciences and healthcare
centres. Add that to the explosive growth of
Berlin’s start-up scene and it makes for a fastdeveloping
laboratory in health technology.
What's also interesting is that big internationals
are taking note. In May 2014, Bayer Health-
Care opened up CoLaborator, an incubator for
biotechnology start-ups in Wedding, its second
in the world after San Francisco. As part of the
“Grants4Apps” accelerator programme, Bayer
also invited five international start-ups (from
Berlin’s own Viomedo, which helps patients find
clinical trials to sign up for, to Estonia’s Medikeep,
which helps you keep track of the pills
in your own medicine cabinet) to move into its
pharmaceutical HQ in Berlin and receive financial
support to the tune of €50,000.
A healthy investment?
Meanwhile, investors in the start-up world
are taking note: Berlin-based XLHEALTH, a
venture capital fund for start-ups that combine
IT and medicine founded in 2013, has planned
investments of over €50 million in the next
three years. Min-Sung Sean Kim, partner at
XLHEALTH, is confident in mHealth’s potential:
“For a long time the digital revolution has
focused on low-hanging fruit such as consumer
apps and e-commerce,” he says. “The smartest
minds over the last couple of years spent their
time working on how to make people click
on banner ads. But right now there’s a shift.
Talented individuals are looking for ways to
have a greater impact on society. Digital health
provides this solution.”
Christophe Maire, CEO of Atlantic Internet,
has invested in a number of Berlin’s health startups,
including medical travel app Medigo (see
sidebar). He agrees: “Healthcare is on the verge
of being transformed by digitalisation. Many of
the companies empower patients and provide
transparency in a way that is unprecedented. The
relationship with doctors is increasingly moving
online, and new technology can help to personalise
treatments and fill gaps in the traditional system.
Medigo is an excellent example – it makes
sense for a patient to be treated where quality
and price are optimal. Medical tourism offers
benefits for patients as well as national healthcare
systems. Done well, the digital revolution is
extremely powerful.” n
Ida Tin, founder of Clue
ROUND-UP
Medical start-ups:
The power players
Contraception
Perhaps the most famous of Berlin’s health
start-ups is CLUE (www.helloclue.com), an app
that helps women track their menstrual cycles.
By entering data about your period, cramps,
mood, cervical fluid, sexual activity and body
temperature, you can estimate when you’re
most likely to get pregnant... or not. Though
Clue doesn’t explicitly bill itself as a birth
control app, Copenhagen-born founder Ida
Tin has said in interviews that she “wants it to
replace the birth control pill, or at least give
an alternative”. Launched here in 2013, it has
received worldwide attention with more than
two million active users in over 180 countries
– and total funding of around €8.8 million.
Information
MEDIGO (www.medigo.com) focuses on
medical travel, enabling patients to search
for affordable medical treatment and clinics
worldwide – for example, if you’re a Berliner
looking for cataract surgery, you’ll save money
by going to a clinic in Warsaw. Founded in
March 2014 and funded to the tune of nearly
€9 million, Medigo has connected 20,000
patients from 178 countries to date. COO and
founder Pawel Cebula explains: “I realised
that the same tools that worked for other
industries could work here: price comparison,
a booking engine, and an online marketplace.
Setting up in Berlin meant that I could
have access to an incredibly international
team, which has been essential for our growth
globally.”
Don’t want to leave home to visit a doctor?
There’s also an app for that. Kreuzberg-based
MEDLANES (www.medlanes.com) connects
patients with certified doctors who can
provide medical advice, tips and explanations
– although for legal reasons, they can’t
officially diagnose anything over the internet.
Founded in 2014, it recently received an
(undisclosed) seven-figure investment.
Treatment and training
The largest online brain trainer in Europe and
the only one in the world covered by health
insurance, NEURONATION (www.neuronation.
com) was founded in 2008 and launched in
2011. It now has over 7 million members using
its programme of over 60 “brain jogging”
exercises, from rapid-fire maths equations
to logic and memory games, developed in
conjunction with Berlin’s Free University.
Through the iOS app MIMI (www.mimi.io), you
can take a hearing test to track your “hearing
age” – and use the results to customise
your music playback settings. Backed by
Charité Berlin, the app is meant to help users
recognise hearing deficits early on and inform
themselves about potential solutions. The test
uses audio processing based on British cofounder
Nick Clark’s 12 years of research.
52 • APRIL 2016

CLOSE-UP
Seven questions for...
Grada Kilomba
Portuguese writer, theorist, interdisciplinary artist and
curator/moderator of the Gorki Theater’s Kosmos² series
7.
1.
What’s the Kosmos series all about?
The concept goes back to Alexander von Humboldt, the
19th-century scientist. He did expeditions to South America,
Cuba, the United States; today we would call them colonial
journeys. They were financed by Spanish royalty – he would
bring back new technologies, and knowledge of these regions
and people, so that the colonial governments could further
exploit them. He held lectures about his project, which he
called Kosmos, at the Singakademie, which is now the Gorki
Theater. So we are working in this very same physical space.
Do you agree with Audre Lorde’s idea
that “the master’s tools will never
dismantle the master’s house”? We have to
create new tools, absolutely. I also find this
Bell Hooks quote very inspiring, that it’s not
enough to oppose, you have to create anew.
And so in my work I attempt to create new,
hybrid forms that don’t fit into clear disciplinary
categories. It’s very futuristic to do that, to create
the discourse of the future in the present.
I’m not so keen on dwelling in the past.
3.
2.
So what do you do with
a legacy like that? The
goal with Kosmos² is to occupy
that same space and turn it into a
place where those who have been
objects become subjects. All our
guests are artists who are asylum
seekers. What’s most important
to me is that people aren’t there
just to expose their misery, but
invited as experts and artists.
Your recent performance is
called Decolonising Knowledge
– can you give an example
of how you do that in practice?
Here’s an example: in Kosmos²,
there is no classic question and
answer session. People should
really come to listen and learn.
The presentations by these artists
are very vulnerable and personal,
and someone in the audience can
respond with aggression that you
can’t control. People say there are
no wrong questions, but there are
a lot of wrong questions. There
are aggressive questions by white
audience members to the invited
refugee artists that echo power
relations from the colonial era. So
I am very careful with that.
4.
As audience members, how
could we help you out? Well,
Germans tend to be Klugscheißer; they
always know everything a little bit better.
“I have something else to add…”
You have to set boundaries. I think it’s
important to learn to listen, and to let
someone’s words work on you, and
then do your research, to read and
watch and hear new things.
6.
Could you speak a bit about your first book, Plantation
Memories? It started with very empirical research: interviews
with black women. I wrote this book with the intention of creating a
new hybrid language, between academic, psychoanalytic and lyrical
language. It was a risk, but I was invited to premiere the book on the
big stage at the International Literature Festival here – it was amazing.
But I got tired of reading the book in the last seven years, and
so I adapted it into a performance.
5.
Is this something you also
thought about as a guest
professor at Humboldt University?
When I teach, I have to train students
to say, “Thank you for your presentation”
before saying “I completely disagree.”
I think it’s this Streitkultur, that
you have to disagree and immediately
say something clever that’s not clever
at all. This shows how patriarchal,
colonial violence is repeated in academia.
It’s important to deconstruct it.
Catch the next instalment of the Kosmos² series, curated and moderated by Kilomba and featuring
artists Rula Ali and Osama Zatar, in English at the Gorki Theater’s Studio on April 3 at 8:30pm.
R
TEXT: LILY KELTING
PHOTO: MARIA RUNARSDOTTIR
TEXT BY LILY KELTING.
53

54 • APRIL 2016

ADVICE
+ DRANGSAL+ FIRST HATE
+ LESS WIN
ask
HANS-TORSTEN
Hans-Torsten Richter answers your
questions about surviving and
thriving in Berlin.
Write to hanstorsten@exberliner.com.
Dear Hans-Torsten: I’m going on holiday and
thinking of subletting or Airbnb-ing my flat
for a little extra cash, but I’m worried about
Germany’s strict downloading laws. How can I
ensure that I don’t get busted for illegal downloading
done by a short-term renter over my
internet connection? – Sarah
Dear Sarah: Several recent German court rulings
have found that a Hauptmieter (main tentant) is
not liable for any dodgy online behaviour (downloading
movies or music) by a subletter or holiday
renter. The matter is most clear-cut when you can
document that you actually weren’t in the flat at
the time of the downloading! Remember, this is
Germany, you have
to document everything
anyway – when
tempted to throw out
a receipt or contract
of any kind, let your
inner Prussian have the
upper hand and file it
away to avoid hassles
later. Trust me.Things
can get trickier in the
case of flat shares. But
either way, the burden
is on the plaintiff suing
for copyright infringement
to prove that it
was the Hauptmieter
(whose name is on the
internet contract) who
actually downloaded
the file and not one of
the subletters. If you’re a Hauptmieter and you get
a letter from a lawyer demanding damges for an
illegal download over your router’s IP adress, don’t
panic. You should have a chat with your subletter(s)
and probably will have to write a letter to the
lawyer explaining the situation. If your German is
crap, don’t rush out and waste hundreds of euros
on your own lawyer quite yet. Get a German friend
to help, or better, write to me (hanstorsten@exberliner.com)
and perhaps I can help you out.
Dear Hans-Torsten: My flatmate left Berlin a year
and a half ago and cancelled her gym membership
before leaving. Holmes Place didn’t process
it as a cancellation, but as a pause, and after a
year, her account was reactivated and she began
getting billed again. She got a bill for €180
(two months at €90 per month). I called on her
REMEMBER, THIS IS
GERMANY. WHEN
TEMPTED TO THROW
OUT A RECEIPT OR
CONTRACT OF ANY
KIND, LET YOUR INNER
PRUSSIAN HAVE THE
UPPER HAND AND
FILE IT AWAY.
behalf and emailed them about getting it sorted
out, but they refused to deal with me directly.
Shortly thereafter, a lawyer sent a letter saying
she not only owed the €180, but would have to
pay a full year of membership fees up front plus
legal expenses, a total of about €1200. Now my
ex-flatmate wants to return to Germany so she’ll
have to deal with this. What do you advise? And
can you go to bat for someone else’s problems
when they’re out of town? – Brian
Dear Brian: None of this surprises me. Businesses
with a subscription-based revenue model can
be ruthless about formalities regarding cancellation
and whatnot – especially in Germany,
where everything seems to auto-renew if you
don’t send a registered letter by a certain date.
A lot of companies won’t go out of their way to
help a confused customer who’s cancelled her
membership. The fact that you (and not she)
tried to communicate with them gives them a
good excuse to ignore your efforts and to get
more money out of your
ex-flatmate. Ideally, she
should have written to
them herself, no question.
Emailing and phoning is
easy, even if you’re out of
the country. But what to
do now that they’ve set
the lawyers loose? There
are many open questions.
Of course, how to deal
with this also depends on
the terms and conditions
of her Holmes
Place membership. Were
Short Story Bonnie Jo Campbell
Memoir: Self, a Workshop in Personal Narrative Debra Gwartney
they justified in simply
Novel Writing Workshop Deborah Reed
Contexts & Contours of the Lyric Adrianne Kalfopoulou
Classics Short Story and Bonnie Theories Jo Campbell of Creativity Sieglinde Lemke
The Memoir:
Short Lives Story
Self, of Bonnie Others: a Workshop
Jo Literary Campbell
in Personal Journalism Narrative Nancy Rommelmann
Debra Gwartney
Novel
Memoir:
Writing
Self,
Workshop
a Workshop
Deborah
in Personal
Reed
Narrative Debra Gwartney
Contexts
Novel Writing
& Contours
Workshop
of the
Deborah
Lyric
Reed
Adrianne Kalfopoulou
Classics
Contexts
and
& Contours
Theories
of
of
the
Creativity
Lyric Adrianne
Sieglinde
Kalfopoulou
Lemke
The
Classics
Lives
and
of Others:
Theories
Literary
of Creativity
Journalism and evidence Sieglinde
Nancy
Lemke
Rommelmann together
The Lives of Others: Literary Journalism Nancy Rommelmann
prolonging the membership
by another year? She
should get as much info
and then try to negotiate
with this lawyer by herself as soon as possible, to
avoid more fees and hassle. She herself should
call both the gym and the lawyer, be patient and
friendly and make a show of good faith, explaining
that she cancelled the membership on time
– and send them a copy of the original cancellation
email. If she deregistered at the Bürgeramt
when she left Germany, she should send them a
copy of that document. Most lawyers are human
beings and open to compromise if you act polite
and sincere. If that fails, email me again before
hiring your own expensive lawyer.
PS: Brits, save this date: on June 23, Britain will
hold a referendum on the Brexit – whether or
not the UK should remain in the EU. Brits living
abroad can vote by post or by proxy. Register to
vote and get all the info at www.gov.uk/votingwhen-abroad.
+ CIARAN LAVERY
+ PLATONICK DIVE
Short Story
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Memoir: Self, a Workshop in Personal Narrative
Debra Short Gwartney Story
Novel Bonnie Writing
Short Story Jo Campbell Workshop Deborah Reed
Contexts Memoir: Bonnie Jo Self, & Contours
Campbell a Workshop of the in Lyric Personal Narrative
Adrianne Debra Memoir: Gwartney Kalfopoulou
Self, a Workshop in Personal Narrative
Classics Novel Debra Writing and Theories
GwartneyWorkshop of Deborah Creativity Reed
Sieglinde Contexts Novel Writing & Lemke Contours Workshop of the Deborah Lyric Reed
The Adrianne Lives
Contexts Kalfopoulou
of Others: Literary Journalism
& Contours of the Lyric
Nancy Classics Rommelmann
Adrianne and Kalfopoulou Theories of Creativity
Sieglinde Classics and Lemke Theories of Creativity
Guest The Lecture
Sieglinde Lives of Lemke Others: Literary Journalism
by Nancy National Book Award Winner Barry Lopez
The Lives Rommelmann of Others: Literary Journalism
Nancy Rommelmann
Guest Lecture
by Guest National Lecture Book Award Winner Barry Lopez
by National Book Award Winner Barry Lopez
01.-14. AUG’16
BLACK 01.-14.
01.-14.
AUG’16 FOREST
WRITING BLACK
AUG’16
7
BLACK
FOREST
FOREST
TH ANNUAL EUROPEAN SUMMER SCHOOL CREATIVE WRITING
WRITING
WRITING
7 TH ANNUAL EUROPEAN SUMMER SCHOOL FOR CREATIVE WRITING
SEMINARS
SEMINARS
SEMINARS
7 TH ANNUAL EUROPEAN SUMMER SCHOOL FOR CREATIVE WRITING
WWW.BLACKFORESTWRITINGSEMINARS.ORG
WWW.BLACKFORESTWRITINGSEMINARS.ORG
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DESIGN: I. BECKER UMBEER DESIGN: I. BECKER UMBEER
DESIGN: I. BECKER UMBEER
55

Drinking problem?
You are not alone!
alcoholics-anonymous-berlin.de
030 787 5188 or 01803-AA HELP
Meetings in English
SEX
Ask Dr. Dot
q
My best friend’s boyfriend keeps hitting
on me when she is not around. I mean,
even if we’re out at a pub, if she goes to
the toilet, he’ll be flirting with me. We are all in
our early twenties, no kids involved or marriage.
He is very fit and good-looking and quite
frankly, it is flattering as my girlfriend usually
gets more attention than I do. I feel like I have
an angel on one shoulder and a horny devil on
the other. This has been going on since September
and I either have to shag this guy or tell my
friend, as the pressure is unbearable (and rather
hot). Please don’t suggest a threesome as I am
not a freak and my best friend is very jealous
and in love. I doubt she would even believe me
if I told her. Help! – Bestie Barb
a: Easy: put yourself in her shoes. Would you
want to know if the guy you loved was trying to
get into your best friend? Pretty sure you are
nodding your head vertically, ‘yes’. Tell her when
you’re out shopping or out for a walk. Don’t tell
her over a drink as emotions could get fuelled
and fists might start flying. Tell her you don’t want
to rock the boat, that they look so happy, etc. If
she doesn’t believe you, leave her to it; she will
find out the hard way, from someone else. And as
far as you even entertaining the thought of shagging
him (rewarding him for bad behaviour) just
remember that he cannot be trusted... so why
lose a best friend over a sneaky fuck like him? He
is just a thrill seeker and will hopefully be put in
his place sooner rather than later. You will feel so
free once you expose him. Don’t let your wilting
ego drive the car; you will just end up crashing.
q
Hi again, I confess I have been here before.
Recently I found my guy messaging a very
attractive woman on social media. I peeked
into his iPhone while he was taking a shit. So I
messaged this lady, from his account, and told
her, “Don’t call me anymore, I am staying with
my girlfriend; my soulmate. Leave me alone.” Of
course he later saw my message and got really
irate at me. But then I turned it around as to
why he was in contact with her, so we were sort
of even in the end. But now I cannot trust him.
I am constantly worrying what he is up to. She
looks to be about 20 years younger than me (I
am 61, my guy is 66). We have been dating for
nine years, so I thought this would be smooth
sailing until the end. How can I redeem myself?
Or should I? It is almost impossible to find a new
man in Berlin at my age... – Sugar Mama
a: Prying and checking up on him will not deter
him from pursuing another vagina. But being
more fun and exciting will divert his attention
back onto you. If you really want to keep him,
stop talking about her and concentrate on your
humour, oral sex skills, sexy nighties and interesting
date ideas (not all at once, as that would be
painfully obvious). Search for comedy shows to
go to, concerts, massage him or get a couples’
Send all questions or problems,
whatever they are, to me:
drdot@drdot.com
massage, go for long walks in the forest, etc.
You want it to be that when he thinks of you, he
remembers how he feels when he is with you –
relaxed, fun, loose, excited. Don’t be the chaser;
be the main attraction.
q
I am shaking as I feel like I made the right
and wrong decision at the same time. I just
ended a six-year relationship with a crackin’
girl. We are both 32, both English and have the
same sense of humour. We dated for three years
(it was bliss) and then I moved into her home. I
thought I’d marry her. But she has two sons from
another bloke; one is 10 and one is 15. What
started out as shagging multiple times per day
turned into me sleeping on her sofa and waking
to two cheeky boys asking me for money every
day. The boys also told me they “hate” me on a
regular basis. She started taking me for granted.
I left her, and I feel gutted about it. On the
other hand, I just want to be free for fuck’s sake.
Was I wrong to walk away from Ms. Right? I
really do love her. I am putting on a happy front
on Facebook but inside I am crying like a wee
bitch. Penny for your thoughts? – Fed-up Franki
a: First things first: if someone is pressed to
choose between a lover and their children, they
choose their children. If they don’t, why would
you want a cold-hearted fuck who puts their
kids second? She cannot get rid of her kids for
you. However, if you really do love her (and she
loves you), just take a break and think, relax,
go on holiday with some mates. Be alone for
a while and perhaps all that shit you ran from
might seem appetising. Thing is, in five years,
her 10-year-old won’t be home much anyway
and the 15-year-old will probably be living with
a girl in his own domestic dungeon by then.
Then you’ll have your Ms. Right pretty much
all to yourself. Think back to the three years
of dating before you moved into her place. If
those three years were great, and you end up
missing her to bits and she misses you too, why
not go back to square one and just date again?
No living together anymore; just date. We are
only on this Earth for a short time; we have to
do what makes us happy while we are here. And
living together can make even the most perfect
couple want to kill each other.
56 • SEPTEMBER 2014

FROM OUR READERS
are the most helpless victims of the immigration
crisis. And that is how they’ll be labelled:
a troubled immigrant rather than a troubled
youth. – Marc Segura
TO THE EDITOR
Meanwhile on exberliner.com, Seymour
Gris challenged readers to come up with
a better slogan for Berlin than the official
“365/24”. The eventual winner? “Shut up,
it’s Berlin!” Here are a few other ideas...
Our March issue on teens
(#147) included stories
about all kinds of adolescents
in Berlin – including
train station drug dealers.
Get these kids off the
streets!
Dear Exberliner: It is always
sad to hear stories about
young children being caught
up in the web that is organised
crime. Having read the
feature about Berlin’s youngest
dealers, I’ve been considering
how such a lifestyle
has become the norm for so
many a migrant child. Where parents may even
pay gangs to bring them over here, to a ‘better
life’, this is hardly what they have in mind. Of
course these gangs should be blamed, but they
are providing a highly requested service that
will not stop any time soon, and the fact that
these children can rarely be held accountable
is a great incentive for these people to stick
to their methods. In my honest opinion the
government is a valid source
of blame for this extremely
messy situation; the fact that
these children can freely
roam around the trains and
stations is to a degree what
has enabled such behaviour.
Think about it. The
openness of the German
railway system is historic but
it provides a vulnerability
in the system and with the
influx of immigrants the
state should impose more
security measures to protect
its people; surely this is at
least a starting point? Or
is that too obvious? Currently, the way child
dealers are dealt with by the law is ridiculously
incompetent. Letting these children back onto
the streets means they will inevitably go back
to their habits. This is somewhat a safety to
them, right? There is an urgent need for the
state to provide help once they’re caught being
a part of this horrible system: they should
be fed, educated and integrated because they
Berlin’s new slogan is...
Berlin: imma wat los (“always something happening”
in Berlinisch) – Kurt
Berlin: come here, drink a beer, fuck here, disappear
– Isabella
Berlin: We Will Wreck You – Simon
Berlin: Curb Your Begeisterung – GD
Berlin: REMARKABLE CITY to enjoy – Bernd
Tell us what you love or hate about this issue and
you could easily win a pair of tickets to a highdefinition
broadcast of Elektra beamed in live
from New York’s Metropolitan Opera on April
30, 19:00 at Cinestar Sony Center. Send your
thoughts to editor@exberliner.com by April 20
for your chance to win.
For terms and conditions, see www.exberliner.com/terms
WRITE
AND WIN
TICKETS!
THE MOST
A BRUTAL CRIME. A COVER-UP. A FIGHT FOR JUSTICE.
UNSATISFIED
TOWN
WORLD PREMIERE
Written by AMY EVANS
Directed by DANIEL BRUNET
Plus the International Comedy Showcase
with headliner Scott Capurro (USA)
and the annual benefit for the
Berlin International Youth Theatre (BIYT)
etb
International Performing Arts Center
April 2016
English Theatre Berlin | International Performing Arts Center
Fidicinstr. 40, 10965 Berlin (Kreuzberg)
Platz der Luftbrücke: U6, Bus 104, 248, Mehringdamm: Bus M19
ORDER TICKETS
ONLINE ETBERLIN.DE
PHONE 030 6911211
EMAIL TICKETS@ETBERLIN.DE
ETBERLIN.DE

7 – 17 April 2016
Festival
International
New
Drama
Do You Still Love Me?
(Serbia/Belgium)
by Sanja Mitrović
Direction: Sanja Mitrović
10.4. / 21:00
11.4. / 18:30
SPEAK!
(Serbia/Belgium)
by Sanja Mitrović
Direction: Sanja Mitrović
12.4. / 19:00
12.4. / 21:00
The Last Supper
(Egypt)
by Ahmed El Attar
Direction: Ahmed El Attar
07.4. / 19:30
08.4. / 21:30
09.4. / 18:00
Chekhov’s First Play
(Ireland)
by Dead Centre
Direction: Ben Kidd,
Bush Moukarzel
08.4. / 20:00
10.4. / 19:30
The Trip
(Germany)
by Anis Hamdoun
Direction: Anis Hamdoun
08.4. / 18:00
08.4. / 20:00
من مروا manmaRo
by Ofira Henig
Workshop presentation
09.4. / 16:00
09.4. / 20:00
The Invention of the Red Army
Faction by a Manic-Depressive
Teenager in the Summer of 1969
(Germany)
by Frank Witzel
Direction: Armin Petras
09.4. / 20:00
11.4. / 20:30
12.4. / 20:30
Mein Jahr ohne Udo Jürgens
(Germany)
by Andreas Maier
Staged concert
Realisation: Patrick Wengenroth
10.4. / 21:00
Compassion. The History
of the Machine Gun
(Germany)
by Milo Rau
Direction: Milo Rau
10.4. / 17:00
11.4. / 18:30
FEAR
(Germany)
by Falk Richter
Direction:Falk Richter
13.4. / 20:30
Hearing
(Iran)
by Amir Reza Koohestani
Direction: Amir Reza Koohestani
13.4. / 19:00
14.4. / 20:00
Wild Minds
(Sweden)
by Marcus Lindeen
Direction: Marcus Lindeen
13.4. / 18:00
13.4. / 20:30
13.4. / 23:00
14.4. / 19:00
14.4. / 21:30
14.4. / 22:30
Natura e origine della mente
(Italy)
by Claudia Castellucci
Direction: Romeo Castellucci
15.4. / 19:00
15.4. / 21:30
16.4. / 18:00
16.4. / 22:30
The Flick
(Germany)
by Annie Baker
Staged reading
Direction: Christoph Buchegger
15.4. / 20:00
17.4. / 16:00
LIPPY
(Ireland)
by Dead Centre
Direction: Ben Kidd,
Bush Moukarzel
16.4. / 16:00
16.4. / 22:30
17.4. / 18:00
The Dark Ages
(Germany/ Switzerland)
by Milo Rau
Direction: Milo Rau
16.4. / 20:00
17.4. / 20:00