EXBERLINER Issue 164, October 2017

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REGULARS Save Berlin By Dan Borden The silent scream Dan Borden on how Berlin’s attempt to solve its housing crisis is only resulting in more outcry. It’s a classic nightmare scenario: trapped in the back seat of a slow-motion car wreck, you scream but no one’s listening. For almost a decade, Berliners howled about rising rents while the city government dozed blissfully at the wheel. In 2017, things are turning around: bulldozers across the city are clearing ground for new, affordable housing projects. We may be finally veering away from the cliff, but now there’s a growing outcry about our new path’s collateral damage – to things like beauty, history, and open space – that’s falling on deaf ears. Mayor Michael Müller has committed to building 30,000 new flats in the next four years... but where? Developers bought up the best building sites while the government was napping. On top of the usual neighbours protesting losing their views to new tower blocks, add the complication of Berlin’s tortured past. The current uproar over one Zehlendorf project isn’t so much a case of “not in my backyard” as “not in my hallowed wooded space with a dark Holocaust history.” On tree-lined Potsdamer Chaussee in the Nikolassee area of Zehlendorf sits a quaint little building with a suitably twee title: the Mutter Mochow Haus. Built in 1796, it served as a roadhouse where two generations of Frau Mochows provided truckers with home-cooked meals and short-term rest. In the pre-CB radio days, it became a de facto nerve centre for Berlin’s road transport system where lorry drivers planned routes and exchanged messages. As World War II ended, the US Army turned the Mutter Mochow Haus into a different kind of nerve centre: this is where survivors of the Nazi concentration camps gathered to register and wait for news of their loved ones. When the rows of barracks were cleared away in 1948, the open space behind the former roadhouse was designated a park named after Yehudi Menuhin. The violin maestro had been the German Palomeque The Mutter Mochow Haus The current uproar over one Zehlendorf project isn’t so much a case of “not in my backyard” as “not in my hallowed wooded space with a dark Holocaust history”. first Jewish musician to come to Berlin after World War II, bravely performing with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1947. He died in Wilmersdorf 52 years later. For the neighbourhood, the Yehudi Menuhin Park is a prized slice of nature, even sacred ground. For officials scouting housing sites, it was a soft target. In November 2015, Berlin announced the first round of new construction, 4400 flats on 43 sites across the city. Among them were 180 new apartments at Wiesenschlag 3, the northern chunk of Yehudi Menuhin Park. How can they put buildings on a city park? During the Cold War, the plot had been re-zoned for a never-built public pool. Berlin-based architects Thomas Müller and Ivan Reimann won the competition to design Wiesenschlag 3. On their website, they stress that the wide variety of architectural styles in the neighbourhood granted them freedom to design something exciting and new. In reality, housing in Nikolassee has one distinct architectural style: two- and three-storey buildings, most with sloped tiled roofs. The new towers’ modular design, resembling pastelcoloured shipping containers stacked six floors high, couldn’t be more alien. It’s likely a tweaked version of one of the architects’ many other housing projects, optimised for cost-effectiveness and dropped in Mutter Mochow’s backyard like a UFO. Residents of Gartenstadt Düppel, the low-rise 1920s housing community surrounding the park, banded together to protest the boorish newcomer. The Steglitz-Zehlendorf building council responded to their complaints – clashing style and height, inadequate parking, loss of green space – by announcing the project was growing from six floors to seven, from 180 flats to 195. Like most Berliners, those grumbling neighbours would welcome new housing – if it fits in. Across the city, apartment blocks are being crudely jammed into awkward sites, with designs so sterile and robotic they make East German Plattenbau towers look elegant. The city insists that, in this time of crisis, this is the best we can do. We can scream all we want, but it’s unlikely to help. n 52 EXBERLINER 164
COLUMN— The Gay Berliner Macho men Walter Crasshole wonders why gay men in Berlin aren’t willing to share with their sisters. Recently I saw the new Tom of Finland biopic (see page 31). It’s a boring, yawn-inducing, pat-on-the-back affair that took me three days to watch in its entirety. But what the real Tom of Finland did had a profound impact on gay culture. He delighted in drawing hyper-masculine versions of men that went a ways in erasing the stereotype of the limp-wristed, ascot-wearing pansy. And over the years, his manly prototype has grown into something to aspire to. For some that’s a great thing, for others not so much. Gay male culture, even in Berlin, seems to have retreated into a masculine black hole. What does this mean for the aforementioned pansy? And worse, did it affect the way we see women? How terrible is it that gay men could be misogynists, too? Remove any sexual motive and it seems like we would be the first to make sure women get treated like human beings. Alas, not. Take sex club Ficken3000. Home to the legendary Pork party and its equally dubious (read: great) successor Icky, this place was like a filthy beacon for us all. And part of the draw was that we could bring our girlfriends with us. Or girls went on their own. At any rate, that never stopped any of us from getting our dicks sucked. But in the past year, management has made the decision to put a “men only” sign above the darkroom. Yes, there are lots of women who don’t have an interest in going down there, but some do. And seriously, what’s with this 20thcentury notion of sexual spaces? Grow (back) up. Other times this gets even more personal. A certain gay bar and sex club in Friedrichshain recently opened up to women. And they come. Guess what? They’re helping pay your bills, especially since the old guard is ageing. So when my friend Scout went for a drink the other night, why did she stand at the bar for 20 minutes without getting served by the shirtless homo wielding the taps? The visible sneer on his face betrayed his reasoning. Just serve her, douchebag. You don’t have to fuck her. She doesn’t want to fuck you, either – she’s a lesbian. But you do have to treat her like a human being. And it’s all just as well, too, because there aren’t any lesbian bars anyway. Why the hell is it so hard for the gay ones to share? Even as more lesbian enterprises crop up – our next EX- Blicks film screening (see page 32), as well as a new weekly sex night at Club Culture Houze in Kreuzberg – others disappear, like the “Mermaids” party on Treptow’s Insel der Jugend, which ended its 12-year run last month. Boys, we need to be supporting our queer sisters. I guarantee you, they’re cool as hell. And let’s not forget the femmy boys. They get enough shit from straight culture as it is. My friend Josh was recently bullied on the train by six white German dudes who joked about “beating up the faggot and stealing his bike”. Meanwhile, other gay men still put “no femmes” in their dating profiles. Why is femininity still the enemy? Is masculinity such a prize? It hasn’t been doing such a bang-up job with the world so far. Let’s not let it control Berlin, too. ■ OCTOBER 2017 Learning german goethe.de/berlin Sprache. Kultur. Deutschland.
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Berlin in English since 2002 164
Page 3 and 4: CONTENTS Exberliner 164 - October 2
Page 5 and 6: Berlin in English since 2002 €3.9
Page 7 and 8: BEST OF BERLIN — October 2017 Bur
Page 9 and 10: CHARLOTTENBURG PORTRAITS WE RUN THE
Page 11 and 12: CHARLOTTENBURG but even if they don
Page 13 and 14: CHARLOTTENBURG ARCHITECTURE KADEWE
Page 15 and 16: CHARLOTTENBURG HOT DISH Whether you
Page 17 and 18: CHARLOTTENBURG As soon as I step in
Page 19 and 20: CHARLOTTENBURG Nov 9-12 Giorgio Car
Page 21 and 22: CHARLOTTENBURG The couple returns f
Page 23 and 24: CHARLOTTENBURG “I know the hip Je
Page 25 and 26: CHARLOTTENBURG south of KaDeWe on M
Page 27 and 28: CHARLOTTENBURG “As you get older
Page 29 and 30: CHARLOTTENBURG ART EXHIBITION THE O
Page 31 and 32: WHAT’S ON — Barry Burns MY PL A
Page 33 and 34: WHAT’S ON — Film Reviews Starts
Page 35 and 36: WHAT’S ON — Film Preview Who Wi
Page 37 and 38: WHAT’S ON — Music Preview Kiddy
Page 39 and 40: WHAT’S ON — Music MY PL AYLIST
Page 41 and 42: WHAT’S ON — Art Preview Eyes on
Page 43 and 44: WHAT’S ON — Art Fressen oder Fl
Page 45 and 46: Ute Langkafel “ Review RAF for ou
Page 47 and 48: WHAT’S ON — Stage What is your
Page 49 and 50: WHAT’S ON three-month retrospecti
Page 51 and 52: ADVERTORIAL — The Berlin Guide 3
Page 53: ADVERTISING — The Language School
Page 57 and 58: REGULARS German Palomeque Brasserie
Page 59 and 60: REGULARS #ROUND-UP Give trees a cha
Page 61 and 62: COLUMN — Ask Hans-Torsten Funky t
Page 63 and 64: Ambrose Akinmusire John Beasley’s
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EXBERLINER Issue 164, October 2017

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