Exberliner Issue 167, January 2018

DIGITAL DAYS 

Concerts, hug machines, 

Chelsea Manning clones... 

CTM and Transmediale 

are back. — p.26 

POLITICS REPORTAGE ZEITGEIST ART MUSIC FILM STAGE 

Forget going vegan! If you really want to save the planet, stop 

flying and hit the tracks. Environmentalists, German railway nerds 

and Deutsche Bahn rivals are already on board. — p.6-25 

BVG EXPOSED 

What’s beneath the Berlin transit 

company’s cool new image? 

Underpaid drivers, corrupt 

controllers and stepped-up 

surveillance. — p.16-23 

167 

€3.90 JANUARY 2018 

WWW.EXBERLINER.COM 

100% MADE IN BERLIN 

PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER

Spy on Me 

The nine-day focus attempts to track down the influence of digital culture and the power of 

analytical methods based on big data, including their political and economic consequences. 

The programme includes works of and with andcompany&Co., doublelucky productions, Houseclub 

and Friends, Peng! Collective, Timo Daum / Felix Maschewski / Anna-Verena Nosthoff a.o. 

17.–25.1. / HAU1, HAU2, HAU3 

➞ www.hebbel-am-ufer.de Picture: n e w f r o n t e a r s, 2017

CONTENTS 

Exberliner 167 – January 2018 

Special: Trains 

Regulars 

What’s On 

06 

Save the world: see it by rail! 

Why environmentally conscious 

Easyjetsetters should abandon the 

skies and hit the tracks 

08 

Locomore’s bumpy ride 

The birth, death and resurrection of 

a Deutsche Bahn alternative 

10 

Trains on the brain 

Trainspotters, collectors and steam 

train enthusiasts tell us about 

their obsessions 

13 

Railway romance never rusts 

Eisenbahn-Romantik remains the 

number-one train show in the world, 

even without its host 

14 

How German trains saved Jewish kids 

One Kindertransport refugee 

tells her story 

16 

Confessions of an U-Bahn driver 

An anonymous BVG employee 

on why “Weil wir dich 

lieben” is a lie 

18 

Controllers out of control 

With corruption and assault rampant, 

who’s keeping Berlin’s ticket 

checkers in line? 

21 

Underground love 

Can the BVG help you find your 

U-Bahn crush? 

22 

Moving you, watching you 

Surveillance, police presence and 

facial recognition are being stepped 

up in our transit stations 

24 

Endstation Grunewald 

The Gleis 17 memorial turns 20 

03 

Konrad Werner 

The best lack all conviction 

04 

Best of Berlin 

New Year’s resolution edition 

50 

Berlin bites 

Upscale Italian from a Russian celeb 

chef and a fake meat taste test 

52 

Save Berlin 

Dan Borden on heartless 

Hauptbahnhof 

53 

The Gay Berliner 

The end of toilet sex? 

53 

New comic! 

Introducing Instabunnies 

26 

Time to transcend 

A Transmediale/CTM preview 

28 .............................. Film 

32 ........................... Music 

37 ............................. Stage 

40 ................................ Art 

44 

Events calendar 

46 

The Berlin Guide 

Berlin’s most authentic French bistro 

NOVEMBER 2016 1

EX 

BER 

LIN 

ER. 

COM 

VISIT OUR 

BRAND NEW 

WEBSITE! 

Artwork by Ellie Dempsey @elliedemps 

AHA. 

DEUTSCH! 

goethe.de/berlin 

Sprache. Kultur. Deutschland.








PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER 

DIGITAL DAYS 

Concerts, hug-machines, 

Chelsea Manning clones . 



BVG EXPOSED 






COLUMN— Political Notebook 

Editor-in-chief 

Nadja Vancauwenberghe 


Deputy editor 

Rachel Glassberg 

Web editor 

Walter Crasshole 

Film 

Paul O’Callaghan 

Art director 

Stuart Bell 

Cover illustration by Agata Sasiuk 

Publishers 

Maurice Frank 

Nadja Vancauwenberghe 

Ioana Veleanu 

Editorial 

Design 

Music 

Michael Hoh 

Art 

Sarrita Hunn 

Stage 

Daniel Mufson 

Food 

Françoise Poilâne 

Graphic design 

Louise Yau 

This month’s contributors 

Graham Anderson, Jenny Browne, Cameron Cook, 

Alexander Durie, Emmanuelle François, Aske Hald 

Knudstrup, Amy Leonard, David Mouriquand, 

Sandra Sarala, Jane Silver, Zhuo-Ning Su, Thomas 

Wintle. Photography: Pavel Mezihorák, Christian 

Vagt. Illustration: Agata Sasiuk. 

Ad sales / Marketing 

Maurice Frank (business manager) 

Ori Behr (sales) 

To discuss advertising please contact us: 

Tel 030 2463 2564, ads@exberliner.com 

Subscriptions 

www.exberliner.com/subscribe 

Iomauna Media GmbH 

Max-Beer-Straße 48, 10119 Berlin-Mitte 

Tel 030 2463 2563, Fax 030 4737 2963 

www.exberliner.com, Issn 1610-9015 

Icons from flaticon.com 

The best lack all conviction 

Konrad Werner explains German politics. 

This month: Why doesn’t anyone want power anymore? 

German politicians don’t seem to be 

power-obsessed junkies anymore. 

They still have that haunted look 

about them, but they don’t seem to be 

the usual shifty fiends who dissemble and 

destroy and embarrass each other just 

for the possibility of an arousing public 

office. Wielding power is supposed to be 

the whole point of their careers, but things 

are different now. German politicians are 

spurning power like it’s a toxic magnetic 

field. On the night of the election, September 

24, a dejected Martin Schulz – the 

Social Democratic Party 

leader who had just given his 

party its worst election result 

ever – declared that the SPD 

would definitely, absolutely 

go into opposition this time. 

Everyone agreed that this 

was the right thing to do. The 

SPD had been in a parasitic 

relationship with Angela 

Merkel for four years, where 

she took the credit for all the 

good, vaguely social ideas they had. The SPD 

needed time alone to gather its thoughts and 

reconceive its life. 

But then Merkel’s negotiations for a new 

coalition with the Free Democratic Party 

and the Greens failed. The FDP leader 

Christian Lindner kept shifting the goals, 

sabotaging the talks with wilful, craven 

policy-free politics. He never wanted to be 

in power in the first place – he was truly 

surprised by the success of his shallow 

election campaign, expecting to drive another 

tired Merkel government before him 

for four years until dispatching her with a 

neo-liberal coup in cooperation with a farright 

CDU at the next election. 

Now he’s got his wish. The SPD has been 

guilt-tripped into assuming power one more 

time by entering coalition talks. After all, 

someone has got to run the country. 

And then there’s Merkel, whose era is 

obviously in its winter now, and who looks 

weary of the crown. She probably would’ve 

readily given up earlier this year, if only 

there had been a viable CDU leader to take 

her place. But no, she was too successful for 

that, having ably neutered all her party rivals 

and established herself as an 

alternative-free option. 

Why are we in this situation? 

Why does political power no longer 

have a hold over those who 

live their lives for it? It could just 

be the world’s apocalyptic mood, 

I suppose. Trump, Erdogan, 

Putin, Orban, Brexit, ISIS – all of 

them represent the love of death 

at the heart of fascism, and the 

vaguely decent, passive people 

like Merkel (“The best lack all conviction, 

while the worst are full of passionate intensity”) 

no longer see the point of trying. It’s a 

global fuck-it. A depression. 

Or it could be because we’ve all decided 

we’d rather be critics than artists. The success 

of the AfD shows that the best way to 

become popular is to undermine and resist 

the need to manage the government in any 

way at all. Opposition is the new centre 

of power. Social media outrage has shown 

that it’s easier to steer the government 

from the outside. Best to just get angry 

rather than offer a solution. ■

BEST OF BERLIN — January 2018 

NEW YEAR’S 

RESOLUTION 

EDITION 

Bar 

CLASS UP YOUR 

NIGHT OUT 

You’ve got a pair of 10cm stiletto heels 

gathering dust in your closet? Feeling that 

a little opulence could erase those winter 

blues? Take a ride all the way to the moneyed 

‘burb of Grunewald, where the tits get bigger 

and the Drakkar gets Noir-er, and treat yourself 

to a grand evening worthy of the gentlemen’s 

lifestyle brand from which the GQ Bar gets its 

name. Opened last month inside the luxurious 

Patrick Hellman Schlosshotel, the man-mag’s 

first outpost in western Europe (there’s already 

one in Dubai, of course) features Twin Peaks-ish 

black-and-white zigzag walls, a €27 Wagyu beef 

burger and leather-gloved bartenders shaking up 

fancy cocktails. “Normal” Berliners might feel 

out of place, but honestly, instead of paying €14 

for that craft Manhattan at some shabby-ass dive 

in Kreuzberg or Mitte, why not sip it on a cosy 

sofa in front of a fireplace whilst surrounded by 

Botoxed Russians, leatherfaced fashion CEOs and 

both founding members of German country-rock 

band The BossHoss? And if you happen to hit 

it off with a fellow patron, the €1600/night Karl 

Lagerfeld suite awaits upstairs... — AJ 

Brahmsstr. 10, Grunewald, daily 12-3 

Pavel Mezihorák 

Gardening 

SPARE YOUR SUCCULENTS 

FROM A LIFE OF MISERY 

You can’t help it: you’ve got a black 

thumb. Every plant you’ve tried 

to keep in your house has ended 

up parched or drowned, limp or brownleaved. 

Well, not this year. And Monika 

Kalinowska – a Polish former journalist 

who left Russian video site Ruptly 

to become a crafty weaver and exotic 

plant connoisseur – is here to help. With 

her seventh How NOT to Kill Your Plant 

workshop, the 30-year-old will teach you 

everything about watering, repotting or 

propagating that sagging Dracaena in the 

corner of your living room (it’s probably 

too close to a radiator). Advice varies 

from where best to locate your potted 

pal to which ingredients you’ll need for 

perfect soil, along with instructions on 

how to perform emergency CPR on your 

drowning plant and a few nifty factoids 

(did you know snake plants are so 

good at purifying the air that they help 

prevent migraines?). Each one-hour, 

20-capacity English-language session 

costs €20, but you get a free cactus to 

take home – and if you manage not to 

kill that one, you can sign up for Kalinowska’s 

Plant Circle Box subscription 

service (€27/month) to receive regular 

“surprise plant packages” by post. — JB 

Next workshop Jan 27, 18:00, Prenzlauer 

Studio/Kunst Kollektiv, Prenzlauer Berg, more 

details at plantcircle.co 

4 

EXBERLINER 167

Dairy-free 

GO VEGAN, 

MAKE YOUR 

OWN CHEESE 

BEST OF BERLIN — January 2018 

You’ve been phasing out animal 

products, but there’s one 

deliciously melty obstacle 

blocking your path to full-on veganhood: 

cheese. If the plastic-tasting 

alternatives sold in supermarkets 

aren’t cutting it, head to Anderson 

Santos’ new vegan deli Kojiterie for 

one of his Cashewbert workshops. 

Who is Anderson Santos? “He’s the 

vegan cheese master of Europe, maybe 

even the world,” affirms a recent workshop attendee who has his own vegan cheese store in 

southeastern France and – like another vegan expert hailing from Israel – has travelled all 

the way here to learn from the Brazilian chef and part-time computer programmer. As you 

might have guessed, this is pretty geeky stuff. If you’re not prepared to take copious notes 

on the proper ratio of koji amazake culture to nut milk, go home and save yourself the €65 

workshop fee. But those with due diligence will be rewarded with an exhaustive guide to 

creating creamy, funky dairy-free Camembert, blue cheese and Gouda, pre-made versions 

of which can be sampled at the end of the workshop. At which point you can take home one 

of Santos’ cheesemaking kits (€54.90, sold separately) and go to town. — AD 

Next workshop Jan 20, 15:00, Hohenstaufenstr. 39, Schöneberg 

Alexander Durie 

It will 

all be 

yours 

…* 

Theatre with English surtitles 

»Richard III« 

by William Shakespeare 

Direction: Thomas Ostermeier 

On January 1 

Franziska Krug 

Spinning 

FIND YOUR WILLPOWER 

You thought a €25/month John Reed 

membership would be enough to get 

you moving? Please. To actually bust 

that flab, you need serious motivation – and 

you’ll find it at Ride Berlin, the German 

answer to the US’ Soulcycle franchise. As of 

November, they have two studios in town 

where groups of 10-15 Berliners, ranging from 

high school students to business managers, 

can get one of this city’s most intensive “fullbody 

cycling” workouts. Don’t be fooled by 

the Zen-like candle-light atmosphere: you’ll 

soon be drenched in sweat, attempting to do 

push-ups on your stationary bike while pedalling 

to the beat of The White Stripes’ “Seven 

Nation Army” and Pitbull’s “I Know You 

Want Me”, under the rewarding encouragement 

of the trainers. It’s easy to get addicted 

to the constant shouts of “Amazing job!”, not 

to mention the luxurious facilities (spotless 

dressing rooms, great showers with free 

products and fluffy towels). Starting a habit 

of it, however, might mean cutting down 

on flat whites and concert tickets: after the 

introductory offer of €26 for two 50-minute 

classes, it’s €120 for five or €400 for a package 

deal of 20. But if you’re the type who 

won’t stick to your resolutions unless there’s 

serious money riding on them, it might just 

be a worthwhile investment. — AHK 

Schützenstr. 70, Mitte; Lietzenburger Str. 86, 

Charlottenburg, see schedule at www.rideberlin.com 

»Professor Bernhardi« 

by Arthur Schnitzler 


On January 4 and 6 

»Hamlet« 

by William Shakespeare 



* »Beware of Pity« 

by Stefan Zweig 

Direction: Simon McBurney 


»LENIN« 

by Milo Rau & Ensemble 

Direction: Milo Rau 


»der die mann« 

after texts by Konrad Bayer 

Direction and Set Design: 

Herbert Fritsch 


JANUARY 2018 

5 

Tickets: 030 890023 www.schaubuehne.de

TRAINS 

GREEN TRAVEL 

You eat only vegan food, bike everywhere and refuse to buy plastic bottles – so 

why are you still flying low-cost airlines all around Europe? Sandra Sarala tells us 

why the EasyJetset should choo-choo-choose more sustainable transportation. 

everal mornings per week, my 

travel-lust gets multiple teases 

from airlines in email form: a 

“Last chance to earn miles easily”, 

another invitation to “Book a flight now for 

autumn 2018”. I sip my organic fair trade 

coffee and glower back at the computer 

screen glowing with renewables-powered 

electricity, reflecting on glyphosate’s license 

renewal, Dieselgate, Anthropocene extinction, 

and the starving polar bears who prove 

that allowing a two-degree temperature rise 

is already 1.5 degrees too many. 

The 21st century is stressful, dammit! I 

practice permaculture, 95 percent of the 

food in my cupboards is vegan and winter is 

long and hard. Surely I deserve a trip in the 

sun... but not like this. Deleting the shameful 

evidence of frequent flyer history from my 

inbox, I resolve to take the train instead. 

UNFAIR COMPETITION 

It’s never been easier or cheaper to take 

to the skies than it is right now. Discount 

giants like Ryanair and EasyJet keep on 

opening new hubs across Europe; the latter 

just took over AirBerlin’s routes between 

Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich and Stuttgart. New 

players like Air France subsidiary Joon and 

Iceland’s Wow Air keep sprouting up. It’s no 

wonder the number of passengers flying out 

of Berlin has nearly doubled in the past 10 

years, from 16,846,469 January-October 2007 

to 28,902,991 for the same period in 2017. 

All those discounters are buoyed by the 

1992 liberalisation of the airline system. 

This allowed airlines to drop prices via 

complex pricing structures which fluctuate 

with demand; use small airports with lower 

landing fees; and offer lower levels of service 

and worse employee conditions. What’s 

more: until very recently, planes weren’t 

paying enough fuel tax. With lofty WWII 

end-game ideals of creating world peace and 

friendship, 1944’s “Chicago” Convention on 

TAKE EASYJET’S NEW FLIGHT 

TO MUNICH AND YOU, 

PASSENGER, ARE RESPONSI- 

BLE FOR EMITTING 39.7 KILOS 

OF CARBON DIOXIDE. 

International Civil Aviation gave massive tax 

breaks to airlines. It was only in 2012 that 

the European Union’s ‘cap and trade’ carbon 

emissions trading system (ETS) enabled fuel 

taxation, and then only for airlines within 

the European Economic Area (the EU plus 

Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein). 

But cheap flights come at a high cost to the 

environment. According to the International 

Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), aviation 

is currently responsible for 2.1 percent 

of global CO2 emissions. Take EasyJet’s new 

flight to Munich at 78.62g/km and you, passenger, 

are responsible for emitting 39.7 kilos 

of carbon dioxide (see chart). On Deutsche 

Bahn’s speedy new ICE route to the same 

city, your figure would be around 4.6 kilos. 

And the good news is that according to 

Christoph Lerche, Deutsche Bahn’s European 

Head of Transport Policy, “All long-distance 

journeys on ICE, IC and EC trains will operate 

100 percent with renewable energy as of the 

beginning of 2018.” DB’s renewable sources 

are mainly hydro and wind energy, mostly 

from external suppliers, often in long-term 

contracts. The company’s total renewable energy 

proportion for long-, middle- and shortdistance 

trains stood at 42 percent in 2016, 

targeting 70 percent by 2030 and aiming for 

CO2-free by 2050 at the latest. Already ahead 

of earlier-set targets, they claim to be “leading 

the energy transition in the transport sector”. 

“Rail doesn’t emit that much, especially with 

electric, which has no emissions except from 

where they buy the power from,” confirms 

economist Gian Carlo Scarsi, a former Head 

of Regulatory Economics who ran comparative 

efficiency benchmark analyses for the 

UK’s Network Rail. “But airlines have a huge 

advantage as opposed to rail. The sky is 

‘free’, they’re not paying enough for the pollution 

generated, they have no infrastructure 

charges such as for rail and other vehicles. 

Lerche can only agree. “It’s more challenging 

for rail to offer better fares than other 

modes of transport. And those inequal conditions 

also include ‘regular’ taxes. Whereas 

international flights are exempted from 

value-added tax, the full tax applies to longdistance 

rail journeys.” The surcharges paid 

by Deutsche Bahn according to Germany’s 

Renewable Energy Sources Act were over 

€150 million in 2017, four times more than 

2012. “Rail is burdened by energy taxes and 

the emission trading scheme.” 

THE DIRTY TRUTH 

Of course, it’s not just planes that railroads 

have to compete with these days – it’s cars 

and buses, as well. Flixbus might take twice 

as long to get you to Munich as Deutsche 

Bahn, but it’ll get you there for less than a 

third of the price. But here, too, the earth is 

paying: according to the most recent EEA 

figures, CO2 emissions for road passengers 

are nearly four times those of rails. 

All railway companies pay distance-based 

charges in the EU. Not so for road vehicles. 

The Brussels-based Community of European 

Railway and Infrastructure Companies 

(the CER, comprising 76 Europe-associated 

rail bodies), lobbies for fairer competitive 

conditions for rail. CER and European Commission 

figures show tolls and time-based 

charges are currently only applied to trucks 

on 20-25 percent of Europe’s network, 

even less for passenger transport. To even 

6 


TRAINS 

SCENIC ROUTES 

Munich-Trento 

(en route Berlin-Venice) 

Pastureland, dark forest, rivers 

cutting through and cliffs 

reaching for the sky, as your 

train climbs and descends 

the dramatic Brenner Pass. In 

warmer months, a chance to 

see the Achenseebahn steam 

engines in action at Jenbach. 

Truly spectacular. 

Dresden-Decin 

(en route Berlin-Prague) 

The Elbe Valley Railway stretch 

follows the Elbe River. The train’s 

dining car is highly recommended 

to enjoy the valley’s 

picturesque, wooded waterway, 

its rock formations occasionally 

studded by historical towers. 

Freiburg-Konstanz (en 

route through fairytale lands) 

Otherworldly and meditative 

after a good snowfall, when passage 

through the Black Forest 

reduces everything simply to 

black and white. 

Herbert Ortner CC BY 2.5 

the playing field, the CER proposes legislative 

changes such as mandatory distance-based 

charges on all major roads, changes they say 

would benefit citizens and the environment. 

We certainly see politicians dragging their 

heels. Consider the Merkel government’s 

failure to address Dieselgate or limit diesel 

vehicle use in cities. Given the burgeoning 

budget airline industry’s continuing “success” 

at pushing a false economy, and the airline 

lobby’s power, the ICAO’s October 2016 agreement 

to set airlines’ carbon emissions in the 

year 2020 as the upper limit of what carriers 

are allowed to discharge may prove a pipedream. 

Given the slow-motion machinations 

of crony democracy, if we want to save our 

under-stress world, we must play our part. 

CREATIVE SAVINGS 

For Berlin’s “poor but sexy” creative set – me 

included – rail might appear pricey. Nevertheless, 

when planning a “performance and permaculture” 

tour of Italy, France and Amsterdam 

last September, the train was my first and only 

option. Declaring my interest, I was privileged 

to receive a journalist Interrail pass for that 

month on the tracks. But even at my own expense, 

when I had to take another work trip in 

November, trains were again the choice. 

One month ahead I booked Berlin-Marseilles 

return, without discount card, for €150: perhaps 

a tad more than cut-price airlines, but not that 

much more. I took four free pieces of luggage, 

enjoyed legroom, used onboard power and nearcontinuous 

wi-fi to work. For that 2400km highspeed 

TGV and ICE return trip, my passenger 

CO2 emissions were 36.8 kg (SNCF, France’s 

national state-owned rail company, prints emissions 

on travellers’ tickets). For the same trip by 

ARE LOW-COST FLIGHTS REALLY WORTH IT? 

How cost- and time-effective is it to take the plane versus the train, 

and how much is it costing the Earth? We compared the two. 

Destination Transport Mode Transit Time 1 CO 2 

kg 2 Fare 3 

Munich Train 4:32 4.6 €37.50 

Plane (Tegel) 4:15 39.7 €57 

Frankfurt am Main Train 4:16 3.5 €19.90 

Plane (Tegel) 3:30 33.3 €57 

Paris Train 10:16 9.8 €68.90 

Plane (Schönefeld) 4:40 69.06 €41 

Venice Train 11:40 23.5 €59.90 

Plane (Schönefeld) 4:10 62.27 €31 

1) From city centre to city centre, including 90 minutes at airport. 2) Estimated from Easyjet’s average figures 

(for Airbus A320-200 fleet, also used by Joon) and Deutsche Bahn calculator, not including airport transfers. 

3) Baseline fares for Deutsche Bahn, EasyJet and Joon as researched in December for travel in January, not 

including airport transfers or checked luggage. 

plane, EasyJet calculates 194.5 kg. No argument. 

The evidence I’ve seen across Europe is that 

trains are usually pretty full; I’m definitely not 

alone in my choice. Deutsche Bahn spokesperson 

said travellers increased from 131.9 million 

to 138.4 million between 2015 and 2016. At the 

end of 2017 they were already seeing a 10 percent 

rise in bookings for a few months ahead. 

Jumping on the bandwagon, so to speak, is a 

rising trend. And people booking ahead secure 

the best Sparpreis fares. 

For passengers loaded with luggage – like 

musicians – trains are often the best option 

compared to Flixbus (which charges for guitars) 

and Ryanair (which makes passengers check or 

buy an extra ticket for large instruments). Local 

performer Karla Hajman, aka Stereochemistry, 

says, “Trains are my main means of transport. I 

tried touring by car one year, never again!” She 

has a BahnCard 25, a card that gives travellers a 

25 percent discount on all trips for €62/year, as 

well as Trenitalia’s CartaFRECCIA for her trips 

to Italy. “It’s dirt cheap compared to Germany, 

and you get larger discounts for longer rides.” 

Agreed overall train positives: comfort, speed, 

price, reading, relaxation, the rocking motion, 

looking out big windows. Singer and comedian 

Tim Whelan, here seven years and a self-confessed 

“massive train nerd”, holds a BahnCard 50 

(50 percent off regular fares and 25 percent off 

Sparpreise for €515/year) and puts his estimated 

savings in the thousands of euros. “The 50 is 

especially great for short-term/last-minute plans, 

while the 25 is ideal for long-term planning.” 

Whelan hates “airports – horrible places – you’re 

sat there like freight, it’s about the necessity of 

getting there. With trains, the pleasure of the 

trip is part of the experience. And for work trips, 

it’s all tax-deductible!” Not to mention that for 

families with children under 15, who travel on 

the train for free when accompanied by a parent 

or grandparent, the savings can be astronomical. 

Sadly, savings or no savings, when it comes to 

visiting my family in the Antipodes, trains just 

aren’t an option. To offset my carbon footprint, 

I’ve planted countless trees in multiple countries. 

But that seems hypocritical for a Berlindwelling 

New Zealander with an elderly mother. 

Environmentalist George Monbiot recently 

wrote that he limited flying to once every three 

years. By example, he punctured the cabin of my 

well-meaning tree-planting. That flight fuel oil 

is always better left in the ground, plus there’s 

no guarantee those trees will reach maturity. 

I’ll keep planting, but future escapes from 

Berlin will be by train, flights limited to familial 

“love-miles” only. Naturally, I’m also investigating 

how to do that trip sustainably overland, 

because I’d like us all to live out our lives in a 

bio-diverse world that doesn’t resemble Blade 

Runner 2049’s lifeless dustbowl. And because 

basically, the cheapest thing about günstige 

Angebote is that flying sells us all short, while rail 

travel keeps us on track for a future. ■ 

JANUARY 2018 7

TRAINS 

INDIE RAIL 

Locomore’s 

bumpy ride 

It was the David to Deutsche 

Bahn’s Goliath: a vintage train 

that could get you from Berlin 

to Stuttgart for €22 with free 

wi-fi and organic food. But it 

went bankrupt in less than half 

a year. Now, Locomore has 

been resurrected. But who’s 

behind the wheel? By Jenny Browne 

As the 14:28 departs Lichtenberg, a 

voice rolls over the tannoy welcoming 

everyone onboard Wagen 1819. 

The passenger carriage is a Bmz Interregio 

number from the 1980s, with vintage feel 

still intact and a garish, Wes Anderson-esque 

orange-and-red interior. Kids play around 

with the wooden train set in the Familienabteil 

(family section) as their parents connect 

to the onboard wi-fi. At the bistro, a friendly 

employee proffers organic, vegan snacks and 

€2.30 fair-trade coffee, while posters in the 

hall proclaim this train is running on 100 percent 

renewable energy. If all goes well, Wagen 

1819 will pull into Stuttgart in seven hours, 

hitting 13 stops along the way including Hanover 

and Frankfurt. The price? Under €40. 

This feels like what German entrepreneur 

Derek Ladewig had in mind when he started 

Locomore, his long-in-the-making crowdfunded 

“green alternative” to Deutsche 

Bahn, in December 2016. But this isn’t his 

train. In fact, it’s run by Czech rail company 

Leo Express in conjunction with bus 

giant Flixbus. Ladewig is still on board as a 

manager, but the open-access operator (the 

term for a train company that purchases 

individual slots on a railway system, instead 

of franchising like the national companies) 

he founded just a year ago is no more. 

Deutsche Bahn controls over 99 percent 

of long distance rail travel in Germany; 

since the country’s rail system was liberalised 

in 1994, barely any companies have 

tried to disrupt that monopoly. Because 

rail infrastructure costs are so high (the 

Infrastrukturnutzungsentgelte, or “track access 

charge”, is around €5-7 per kilometre), 

it’s difficult for smaller companies to turn a 

profit, especially when long-distance buses 

are so inexpensive to run. The country’s 

first private rail company, Interconnex, 

was started by the Transdev corporation 

in 2002 and ran between Leipzig, Berlin 

and Rostock for 12 years, but folded in 2014 

after failing to rival bus prices. Another, 

the Vogtland-Express between Berlin and 

Plauen, ran between 2005 and 2012 before 

being replaced by a bus fleet. 

Ladewig, a former political scientist and 

transit consultant to the Bundestag, thought 

he had the answer when he founded Locomore 

GmbH in 2007: stick to one route, and 

choose it wisely. After initially being part of 

the founding team of the Hamburg-Cologne 

Express (HKX), an open-access train line 

between the two western cities that finally 

launched in 2012, he decided to focus on 

the Berlin-Stuttgart route exclusively. After 

applying for permission to use the tracks 

and receiving approval, his company signed 

the contract with DB Netz, Deutsche Bahn’s 

subsidiary in charge of managing infrastructure. 

The eight carriages, refurbished in Bucharest, 

were rented to Locomore by leasing 

company SRI Rail Invest GmbH. 

After raising over €460,000 in crowdfunding 

on Startnext, Locomore hit the 

“We don’t consider ourselves 

as rivals to Deutsche 

Bahn,” Flixbus says of 

their takeover. “We both 

have the same goals: 

reducing car traffic and 

increasing mobility.” 

Matthias Manske 

8 


TRAINS 

Glaube 

Liebe 

Hoffnung 


A young Locomore rider plays with the wooden train set in the “Familienabteil”. 

rails at the end of 2016. But despite transporting 

70,000 passengers in five months, the earned 

revenue didn’t hit Locomore’s targets. The crowdfunding 

capital dried up. Shortly after launching, 

Locomore’s original schedule of seven weekly 

roundtrips between Berlin and Stuttgart was cut 

down to just four, to address “infancy problems”. 

It didn’t help. Ladewig’s company filed for bankruptcy 

in May 2017. 

Today, Locomore seeks loftier heights. It relaunched 

last August after lengthy sales negotiations, 

mixing the railway muscle of Leo Express with the 

ticket sales expertise of Flixbus. The red-and-orange 

trains now ferry 420 passengers between Berlin 

and Stuttgart five days a week, Thursday through 

Monday. Customers who participated in Locomore’s 

crowdfunding campaign can still use the vouchers 

they received for the new service, and even a 

few employees remain from the early days – one of 

whom, a crew member named Christian, says his job 

feels “very much the same as before”. Ladewig is now 

employed by Leo Express, and insists that the Czech 

company and Flixbus field all press questions. 

“We don’t consider ourselves as rivals to Deutsche 

Bahn,” Flixbus spokesperson Martin Mangiapia 

says of their sales takeover. “We both have the same 

goals: reducing car traffic and increasing mobility.” 

Leo Express already had their eye on the German 

rails, and Flixbus can now add another train to its 

‘intermodal concept’, which already includes pairings 

with private rail company Westbahn in Austria, ferry 

partners GNV in Italy, and Scandlines in Scandinavia. 

Not everything is the same since the takeover. 

For one, those posters telling you “You’re riding 

with renewable energy” aren’t exactly telling the 

truth. Mangiapia explains that since Leo’s takeover, 

Locomore cut off the deal with Dusseldorf’s Naturstrom 

AG, and are now running on regular electricity 

again. According to their fact sheet, Flixbus’ big 

vision is “smart and green mobility for everyone to 

experience the world”, and Ladewig’s original goal 

was minimising pollution by taking people out of 

their cars; you feel a little cheated to say the least. 

Both Leo and Flixbus’ spokespeople make it clear 

that, of course, they would prefer renewable energy, 

but the question is when will it happen? “This 

could be a topic for the future, but it’s been pushed 

back as we wanted to take care of the smooth running 

of the trains first,” says a speculative Mangiapia. 

“But we’re planning to switch back soon...” In 

the meantime, those misleading Ökostrom posters 

need to be pulled down sharpish. 

Actually booking your trip is another issue: despite 

Flixbus’ huge online marketing presence and 

user-friendly app, there’s no way to search only for 

Locomore trips. Unless you already know the route, 

you’ll be trawling through lists of bus times for 

hours. “People look for a connection, not a means 

of transportation,” Mangiapia says, but this doesn’t 

make sense for a company looking to boost passenger 

numbers. The lack of Locomore branding 

anywhere online shows that they have a long way 

to go. Flixbus’ focus is so geared to their buses that 

their new train service feels like an afterthought. The 

same goes for the Hamburg-Cologne-Express, which 

stopped running in October until Flixbus swooped 

in to take over sales duties last Christmas. 

It’s a long way to go for Locomore, and it’s one 

mean feat to square up to a company that can easily 

run 40,000 trains per day, but they’ve got some things 

right. The toilets are immaculate (almost on par with 

the spaceship-feel gleam of the ICE), and there are 

two separate bike storage zones, no reserved seats, 

and no class divides. Passengers also seem content 

with moving at slower speeds (200kph) for a cheaper 

ticket. Short-distance prices start at €5, long-distance 

from €9.90. Booking around three weeks in advance, 

the same route with Deutsche Bahn would 

set you back €79.90 for a Sparpreis ticket (5.4 hours 

travel time), in comparison to Locomore’s €39 (7.02 

hours). A bargain, as long as you’re not travelling 

with kids. Unlike Deutsche Bahn, Locomore doesn’t 

provide children under 15 with a free ride. 

But for the company’s young, trendy target demographic, 

the extra hour and a half of travel time is 

worth the savings – point proven by the 70,000 tickets 

sold since the relaunch. Not bad for a four-and-ahalf 

month stint for a two-trip-a-day train. ■ 

BY ÖDÖN VON HORVÁTH 

DIRECTOR 

HAKAN SAVAŞ MİCAN 

PREMIERE 

13/JANUARY 

ADDITIONAL SHOWS 

14/17/JANUARY 

ALL PLAYS WITH 

ENGLISH SURTITLES 

MAXIM GORKI THEATER 

Am Festungsgraben 2, 10117 Berlin 

JANUARY 2018 9 

Box Office: 0049 30/ 20 221 115 

Tickets online: www.gorki.de

TRAINS 

OBSESSIONS 

Trains on 

the brain 

Cameron Cook enters the 

wide-eyed world of German 

trainspotters, steam train drivers 

and model train collectors. 

Like most people I know, I don’t think 

about trains that often. They’re a utilitarian 

public transport option, a way 

to get from here to there. I don’t get excited 

when boarding an ICE or stepping onto the 

S-Bahn during a morning commute. But there 

are thousands and thousands of people in this 

country who do. To Germany’s train enthusiasts, 

the Deutsche Bahn is not a source of 

maddening commuter delays – it’s a symbol 

of national pride, ingenuity and technical 

prowess. For them, merely glimpsing 

a certain type of train as it speeds 

by their station can be the highlight 

of their week. Some of them collect 

hundreds of model trains, some learn 

about European train history, some go 

on international trainspotting holidays, 

and some even enter the railway profession, 

if they can realise their passion 

early enough. And as it turns out, many 

of them are right here in Berlin. 

TRAIN-ING DAYS 

My clued-in friends told me that if 

I was looking for a train nerd, I had 

to meet Holger. A man in his early forties 

dressed casually in a blue hoodie and glasses, 

Holger Köhlert has worked for some iteration 

of the Deutsche Bahn for most of his career, 

and looks the part, with the quiet and studious 

air of someone who has spent a lifetime 

in the public sector. Born and raised in the 

East German region of Mecklenburg, he currently 

works as both a driver and teacher for 

the train company’s long-distance branch. I 

took the tram to our meeting from my station 

in Wedding, and when I mention this 

to Holger, he tells me that trams are how his 

obsession with public transport began. 

“I love old tram cars,” he says, trying 

to keep his bushy mustache out of the 

foam in his Milchkaffee. “When I was a kid 

I would take the tram to visit my dad at 

work. This particular line worked with very, 

very old tram cars, from the 1920s.” This, I 

later realise, is a common thread with train 

enthusiasts – it’s not just about the trains 

“If I ask them how many locomotives 

they own, even if 

they have thousands, they’ll 

say, ‘Oh, about 80.’ They 

don’t want to tell others how 

many they actually have.” 

themselves, but the eras they’re from, the 

nostalgia they provoke. “I loved the open 

doors, how the driver stood and worked. Today, 

you have one tram driver who sits with a 

small joystick, but the old drivers had brakes, 

controls, everything, and they really gave it 

their all.” From trams, young Holger soon 

graduated to trains, as his mother regularly 

took him on trips to Leipzig when his father 

was working there. “For a long time, Leipzig 

Hauptbahnhof was the biggest train station 

in Germany. For a little boy, this huge building 

with its giant locomotives were completely 

impressive.” Noticing that their son 

had been bitten by the train bug, the whole 

family got on board. “My father bought a 

lot of railway and train books for me, and 

my grandfather bought me model railways – 

three different sets.” 

But it’s not until he visited a steam locomotive 

exhibition in his tweens that Holger 

fell for trainspotting: the practice of waiting 

near tracks or at stations for certain types of 

trains to pass by, photographing them, and 

thus “collecting” all the different models. 

Berlin has an especially prominent trainspotting 

scene – these days, there are even Instagram 

accounts like @trainsberlin that scour 

the outskirts of the city for the best spots. 

Holger’s first time was decidedly more lo-fi. 

“My first pictures were horrible!”, he says, 

chuckling. “They were blurry shots of the train 

going by!” But he kept at it, and it was through 

this hobby that he eventually entered the professional 

railway industry. “Through trainspotting, 

I got involved with a tram enthusiast club 

where I could actually work on trams and train 

engines. By that time, I had decided I wanted 

to be a train driver, but my mom thought it 

was dangerous – that year, there had been a big 

accident near Berlin where a Soviet tank and 

a train collided. So the compromise was that I 

could go to the club’s workshop to learn to be 

a locomotive mechanic.” 

By the time he had passed the exams, the 

Wall had fallen. “So I’d started in the GDR, 

but became a driver in the new Germany.” 

Eventually he worked for the Bundesbahn, the 

federal German railway. 

If you’ve ever had an in-depth discussion 

with someone who has a favourite train 

model (Holger’s is the East German-manufactured 

Class 228 engine locomotive, by the 

way), the amount of historical, technical and 

colloquial knowledge they possess is truly as- 

10 


TRAINS 

Michas Bahnhof in Charlottenburg sells a wide range of 

modern and antique model locomotives and wagons. 

tounding. Even though he doesn’t trainspot 

anymore, his love of trains has never faded – 

and he’s about to impart his passion to a new 

generation of railway professionals. Next 

year, Holger is moving back to Mecklenburg 

to teach train driving full-time for the infrastructure 

branch of the DB. 

A MODEL CITIZEN 

Compared to actually driving a train, model 

trains may seem like child’s play. But when I 

enter Michas Bahnhof in Charlottenburg, that 

idea disappears. Around for over 30 years, 

Berlin’s number one model train shop is full 

of serious-looking middle-aged men perusing 

the store’s narrow aisles, reading statistics 

printed on the back of boxes. The store isn’t 

small, but it still seems cozy, given that most 

available space is taken over by stacks and 

stacks of miniature locomotives and wagons. 

The store’s owner, Michael Dümchen, is 

himself middle-aged, with salt-and-pepper 

hair, wearing a blue and white striped buttondown 

shirt that may or may not intentionally 

recall a conductor’s uniform. He’s tinkering 

behind the counter, but when I walk in and 

we find a tight corner to chat, his eyes are 

attentive and bright. I assume the shop’s 

bustle has to do with the holiday season, 

but Michael assures me they’re pretty much 

this busy all year round. “When I started 

this business, Christmas was big, but now 


the market has changed because children 

don’t play with trains as much anymore,” he 

explains. “These days, if someone starts collecting, 

they start when they’re 40 or 50. ” 

Surprisingly, Michael isn’t a hardcore model 

train fanatic himself. “Business-wise, it’s better 

if I have a little distance from the hobby. 

If you’re a collector, the best items go in your 

own collection, and the customers know that. 

And then they say, ‘Oh, I don’t go to Michael’s 

shop because I won’t get the best models, 

he collects them all.’” He gets his stock from 

a variety of places: “Sometimes a collector 

ends their hobby, or they die, or they know 

someone who wants to sell something, and I 

acquire trains that way. Otherwise I buy a lot 

of stock from bankrupt companies.” 

He began with a passion for antique toys, 

helping out in his older brother’s toy store 

in West Berlin while he was in school. Soon, 

he was scouring the city’s flea markets for 

pieces from the early 20th century, and while 

looking to start a business to put himself 

through university, he realised that model 

trains were a lucrative gap in the market. 

Along with antique models, Michas Bahnhof 

specialises in new models from German 

brands like Märklin and Wiking. A cult 

locomotive, like a 1950-era “Krokodil” from 

Austrian brand Roco, can top €300. But who 

buys a piece like that? When I ask about his 

customers, Michael answers slyly: “It’s not 

a very extroverted hobby. It’s not a Rolex on 

your wrist... If I ask them how many locomotives 

they own, even if they have thousands, 

they’ll say, ‘Oh, about 80.’ They don’t want to 

tell others how many they actually have.” 

From what I can gather, the profile of your 

average enthusiast is pretty constant: Male, 

between 40-60, likely born in the GDR in 

the 1960s or 1970s. A West German himself, 

Michael’s met enough Ossi customers 

to develop a theory: “Train culture was the 

only ‘modern’ hobby in the GDR. In West 

Germany there were slot cars in the 1970s, 

and the first personal computers and video 

games were already on the market. Another 

reason is that in Saxony around that time, 

they had a lot of old steam engines still running. 

And the only real way to get into trains 

as a hobby is through steam engines. They’re 

noisy, smelly, they affect your whole body if 

you stand next to them. It’s that power that 

fascinates people.” 

Meeting Jens Berger, a week later, proved 

Michael completely right. 

NEVER RUNNING OUT OF STEAM 

“Yes, those old steam trains were still 

around when I was growing up in Saxony,” 

confirms Jens. The stout man in his late forties 

is a member and former chairman of the 

antique locomotive enhusiast club Dampflokfreunde 

(“Steam Train Friends”) Berlin. 

Christian Vagt 

“There were train tracks right behind my 

kindergarten, and every day when I walked 

home with my parents we’d stop to watch 

them go by. I was just mystified by these 

huge machines.” Some of Dampflokfreunde’s 

130 volunteers are railway professionals, but 

not him. Jens is a lawyer by trade, a family 

man with two daughters. 

Like Holger, he is a veteran trainspotter. 

“I used to go to Poland with other fans, for 

about 30 days out of the year, just to take 

pictures of trains. So much so that I started 

learning Polish! In 10 years, those trains will 

be historical, but you’ll never see me photograph 

an ICE,” he says, speaking of the modern 

high-speed trains that have taken over 

many of DB’s regional lines. What about model 

trains? “I’m not a huge collector, only about 

45 locomotives and 300 wagons. I only collect 

models from 1970 – the year I was born – 

until 1985. I’m thinking of boxing them soon.” 

Does he let his two daughters play with his 

trains? “Absolutely not!” he exclaims, laughing. 

Interestingly, since I began researching 

train fans, I have not encountered one single 

woman – it seems to be an exclusively male 

hobby. Jens says that their club does have 

female volunteers who work in the dining car 

during their steam train excursions, which he 

admits is “not that progressive”. 

As we speak, we’re trudging across a 

muddy field on the outskirts of Treptow- 

Köpenick towards Dampflokfreunde’s 

headquarters, a well-preserved roundhouse 

off the Betriebsbahnhof Schöneweide S-Bahn 

station. “This whole field is going to be new 

buildings for companies, with a new road 

coming through,” Jens explains as we jump 

Jens Berger of Dampflokfreunde. 


11

TRAINS 

Meet Snowflake 

Graham Anderson rides Berlin 

macht Dampf’s flagship steam train 

from Berlin to the Polish border. 

Snowflake is 74 years old, smokes like Krakatoa, 

drinks like a whale, has undergone several facelifts, 

stands 4.5 metres tall, is almost 23 metres wide and 

tips the scales at 140 tonnes. Behind her, the old 

locomotive hauls 10 Deutsche Reichsbahn carriages 

packed with 400 German “steam fans” who’ve paid 

€79 for their three-hour, 112km ride east to the Uckermark 

village of Tantow. Once there, coach buses 

will take them the remaining 22km to the winter 

markets of Szczcecin. “Snowflake doesn’t live up to 

Polish railway’s safe-operating standards,” explains 

Berlin macht Dampf organiser Katrin Rohne. 

Snowflake’s real name is Kriegslok 52 8131-6. She’s 

one of 7000 Series 52 locomotives commissioned 

by Hitler to haul 1200-tonne war trains over long 

distances to the Eastern Front. “She’s a war locomotive 

built in times of acute metal shortages. Steel 

replaced copper fittings wherever possible. All handfired. 

Nothing fancy,” explains snowy-haired conductor 

Klaus Winter in his gold-buttoned, Prussian Blue 

uniform and peaked Deutsche Reichsbahn cap. 

Inside, first-class dog boxes rattle along next to 

cattle-class wooden seats. Clouds of steam hissing 

from leaking heating pipes reduce visibility to zero 

between carriages. “Raucher” and “Nichtraucher” 

carriages recall the good old days of cigarette haze 

stinging passengers’ eyes, while the dining car’s 

crisp, white tablecloths and gold-plated lamps 

come straight out of the 1930s. Steam connoisseurs 

flock to devour beef goulash, red cabbage 

and mashed potatoes for €12.90 as musicians in 

Santa Claus outfits knock back Schnapps. 

As Snowflake hisses, spits and chugs into Tantow, 

a six-truck fire brigade lines up to welcome the train 

into the 763-inhabitant border village. She’s thirsty 

and hungry. Tantow’s fire brigade refills her tank with 

15,000 litres of water as fireman Frank Rust helps 

heave two tonnes of coal into her 10-tonne tender 

with a metre-long scoop. During the day, he and 

driver Sven Hesse drive Deutsche Bahn freight trains. 

But for now, they’re helping “Berlin Makes Steam” 

live up to its name. With clouds and clouds of it. 

This historic express train experience will set 

you back €24-79 depending on route; book 

at www.berlin-macht-dampf.com or over the 

phone (030 6789 7340). After a winter break, 

their journeys continue from March 17. 

Wassen CC BY 3.0 

Dampflokfreunde’s depot in Schöneweide. 

over puddles and hike up our jackets. 

“We’re very lucky though, because 

we’ve been designated a historical 

landmark by the city, so we’re here 

to stay,” he says with a smile. “Newcomers 

won’t be able to say, ‘Hey, 

stop making all that steam with your 

trains!’” As we’re speaking a modern 

train is flying by, honking its horn. 

“That must be one of our guys,” Jens 

says nonchalantly. You currently have 

drivers out on the tracks, in real life? I 

ask. “Oh yeah, all the time.” 

When he opens the door to the 

roundhouse, I understand why the 

city of Berlin has decided to leave the 

Dampflokfreunde alone. It’s a giant, 

cavernous building, with tracks intersecting 

in the middle where the engines 

and wagons can enter and leave 

the roundhouse and connect with the 

normal railways we all use around 

Berlin. DampflokfreundeBerlin began 

in 1993, four years before Jens joined 

the club, with the purchase of their 

first steam locomotive from the 

German Rail Museum. Today, the 

club offers two main attractions: an 

open house they hold a few times a 

year at the roundhouse, and “Berlin 

macht Dampf” (Berlin Makes Steam), 

a travel programme that sees the club 

take paying passengers on antique 

train trips all around Germany (see 

sidebar). Those trips, while being a 

focal point of the club’s activities, also 

serve as fundraisers for the maintenance 

of their vintage engines. 

“Last Christmas, we had around 

1000 people on our steam locomotive 

journey, which was difficult to 

manage but extremely fun.” The train 

in question, the Dampflok Class 52 

model, is the club’s crown jewel, and 

they currently have three in circulation. 

Jens walks me over to one in the 

main shed of the roundhouse, and 

it’s absolutely gobsmacking: a shiny 

black and red monster that looks as 

dangerous as it is fascinating. I can 

only imagine what it must feel like to 

ride in one of these things, let alone 

drive them – which not everyone can 

do, since the train is from 1944 and 

takes real skill to maneuver. “There 

are very strict protocols to operating 

a steam train,” says Jens. “I have the 

certifications to tend to the boiler 

and maintain the engine’s heat, but 

not to stoke the engine or take her 

out on the tracks.” 

Every train Jens takes me to on our 

afternoon tour is like stepping out of a 

time machine: there’s a caboose from 

1899, a pre-WWII Deutsche Reichsbahn 

diesel engine and the impressive 

mid-century dining car they use on 

club journeys. Jens is so full of information 

I can barely keep up. By the 

time we leave, I’m so well-versed in 

train trivia, I find myself gazing at the 

passing carriages, wondering if I can 

differentiate the models and classes 

I’ve been hearing about all week. At 

the station, as Jens’ train pulls in, a 

bright red ICE blares past on the other 

track and Jens glares at it in bemused 

disdain. “So ugly!” he laughs as he 

boards his good ol’ trusty S-Bahn, 

leaving me on the platform with a sort 

of borrowed nostalgia, almost wishing 

that something as crazy and unusual 

as his steam engines would arrive to 

take me all the way home. n 

Christian Vagt 


TRAINS 

DATING 

Underground love 

The BVG wants to help you find your U-Bahn crush, but 

re-connecting with that sexy subway stranger isn’t as 

simple as it seems. By Alexander Durie. Illustration by Agata Sasiuk 

Nicole*, a 33-year-old Berliner, was 

riding the U6 on a Thursday night 

when she saw him. A man in a blue 

jacket, about 1.8 metres tall, brown hair and 

piercing blue eyes, sitting in the seat diagonal 

to hers. As the train hurtled toward her stop, 

their eyes locked, and Nicole felt an instant 

connection. Should she talk to him? She 

hesitated for just a second... but soon enough, 

the doors opened, and she tore her gaze away 

and headed out. She’d missed her chance. 

But maybe not! Arriving home, she 

headed to the BVG website and logged onto 

Meine Augenblicke. 

The “missed connection” conundrum 

has existed for as long as public transit has, 

and by now we have plenty of tools at our 

disposal for finding that cute fellow rider we 

were too shy to chat up in person. Americans 

use Craigslist, Parisians check out 

“Croisé dans le Métro” and Londoners can find 

their “Rush Hour Crush” in the Metro paper. 

But the first city in Europe to invent such a 

platform was Berlin, back in 2006. You can 

find the Meine Augenblicke page on the BVG’s 

website under “My BVG” and although you 

need to create an account and username to 

submit your own “moment”, you don’t need 

to log in to see if one of the thousands of 

Meine Augenblicke users is looking for you. 

Some of the “moments” are lustful, such 

as a post from a user called “boner” that 

begins with “We were both waiting for the 

subway at Eberswalder and creeping around 

each other like tigers.” Others verge on 

stalkerish, like one from August 2014 where 

a user called “Looking for blonde angels” 

obsesses over a woman he glimpsed in 2003. 

“Help, I cannot forget you despite the long 

time... Please just give me the chance to tell 

you what I saw in your eyes then.” 

Petra Reetz, the BVG’s head of press and 

Meine Augenblicke’s initiator, insists that “we 

are not a dating site.” Unlike Craigslist, Meine 

Augenblicke has a “red card” option that lets 

you block any messages or users that seem 

offensive. “Our idea was just to be nice,” says 

Reetz, who came up with the idea after a man 

called her around Christmas 2006 looking for 

the dream girl he’d spotted on the U6. Still, it’s 

difficult not to think of the (married) spokeswoman 

as a matchmaker as she asserts: “Write 

your name, write your station, and if you’re 

lucky, I will bring your moment back to you!” 

But does it actually work? Reetz has no idea. 

“We are not sneaking around in your lives. For 

that reason, we never ask if people ever meet 

up, so we have no statistics of success rates. 

It’s up to people to use it.” All she knows is 

that the site receives some 30,000 visitors 

per month, although only 20,000 people have 

posted “moments” in the 11 years since it was 

created. “There are more people looking than 

posting… perhaps waiting to be found.” 

For Martin, a 40-year-old man who’s been 

living in Berlin for 20 years, the wait for 

a reply on Meine Augenblicke can be long 

and lonely. On November 19, he spotted a 

“blonde French girl with a bike and pump on 

the luggage rack who was accompanied by 

a friend”. Martin acknowledges: “Since she 

was French I doubt she knows about Meine 

Augenblicke. But of course, hope should 

never die, so why not give it a shot?” 

Would it be easier to find her on Tinder? 

Reetz reflects: “Meine Augenblicke 

was a great idea 10 years ago, but now 

that young people are using all of these 

digital platforms, maybe you don’t need it 

anymore.” But Martin remains undaunted. 

“In comparison to all the swiping left-right 

apps, these moments are meaningful and 

come from a very personal and intimate 

experience in real life,” he tells us. “I 

gained much more from my moment with 

the French girl than I ever had with any 

dates from dating apps.” 

And sometimes, you might be better off 

sticking with the idealised version of an 

encounter. Take Nicole’s handsome brunette. 

She posted an ad on Meine Augenblicke 

shortly after their intense few seconds of eye 

contact, and to her surprise, just a few days 

later, she received an answer from a man 

named Peter. “He gave some details that 

only someone who has really seen me would 

know, and he knew at which stop I got out, 

which I hadn’t pointed out before.” 

After a week of email correspondence, they 

agreed to meet up. With butterflies in her 

stomach, she waited for Peter outside a Mitte 

coffee shop until finally, she was approached 

by a man who asked, “Hi, are you Nicole? I’m 

the guy from Meine Augenblicke.” 

There was just one problem. This ‘Peter’ 

was nearing his fifties, and grey hair 

had replaced any trace of brown. 

Seeing her visible confusion, the 

man backpedalled and told her 

he too was expecting a different 

woman... but hey, now that they 

were both here, did Nicole want 

to go out for a drink with him 

anyway? Still shocked, Nicole 

refused and went home. 

Despite her disappointment, Nicole 

remains positive – “At least I 

had half a moment!” – but advises 

future users not to exchange anything 

private. Would she ever use 

the platform again? She laughs. “If 

I have another moment, I hope I 

will be courageous enough to grab 

it when it happens.” n 

*Name changed 

EXBERLINER 167 

13

TRAINS 

“ 

When German trains 

saved Jewish kids 

While Germany’s Reichsbahn is most infamous for carrying 

Jews to their final destination, the national rail system was 

also used to transport 10,000 Jewish children to safe haven in 

the UK. We met one of them. By Emmanuelle François 

My mother had a choice. She could 

save me, or one of my brothers. Only 

one of us could go to England, and 

she thought it would be easier for a girl to be 

placed in a family. I was lucky.” That’s how 

the three-year-old Ruth Auerbach ended up at 

Berlin’s Friedrichstraße station on February 2, 

1939, separated from her parents and siblings, 

about to board a train that would take her far 

away to an uncertain future. 

Now 82 and living near Leicester, retired 

schoolteacher Ruth Schwiening has luck to 

thank for her long life – as well as the UK’s 

Kindertransport initiative, which shuttled 

some 10,000 unaccompanied German, 

Czech and Austrian Jewish children to 

safety in England in the 10 months leading 

up to World War II. 

Ruth was born in 1935 in the Silesian town 

of Breslau (today Wroclaw in Poland). Her 

family lived on a farm where her father, 

Lothar, trained young Jews in agriculture 

in preparation for emigrating to Palestine. 

In the wake of the Nazis’ rise to power, the 

family moved to a village in Austria. During 

the mass Kristallnacht pogroms of November 

9, 1938, Lothar was arrested; three days 

later, he was sent to the Dachau concentration 

camp. On December 3, he wrote to 

his wife from the camp: “Prepare to sell 

everything, even if the price is low. [...] Try 

urgently and as fast as possible by telegram 

confirmation to get English or Danish or 

other visa and tell me immediately...” 

The letter never arrived. Ruth’s mother 

Hilde, along with Ruth and her two brothers, 

had already left Austria for Berlin, where they 

had relatives. “My mother wanted to find a 

safe place to live. It was clear we couldn’t 

stay in Germany anymore, and the goal 

was to emigrate to the UK,” says Ruth. Her 

father joined them later in December on his 

release from Dachau. That’s when they heard, 

through the Jewish community, that Britain 

was taking Jewish refugee children. 

BRITAIN’S WILLKOMMEN POLICY 

The news of Kristallnacht had been met with 

shock outside 

Germany. 

Less than two 

weeks after 

HOLOCAUST HISTORY 

Ruth was one of around 10,000 Jewish children saved by the Kindertransport, including 

these Austrian refugees seen arriving at a London train station on February 2, 1939. 

“Adolf Eichmann himself 

made sure that 

the carriages would 

be on hand for the 

Kindertransport.” 

Österreichische Nationalbibliothek 

the pogroms, on November 21, 1938, the UK 

parliament decided to take in unaccompanied 

children from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia 

without visas. Various Jewish, Quaker 

and Protestant organisations made the promise 

to find host families, and that the refugees 

wouldn’t be a financial burden for the state. 

Thousands of families volunteered to take in 

one or two children. No limit on the time or 

number of children was set. 

“It was a spontaneous, emotional action, 

like the one Frau Merkel made with the refugees 

three years ago,” explains Holocaust historian 

Wolfgang Benz. “They took 10,000 in 

less than a year, but it could have been many 

more if it weren’t for the outbreak of the war.” 

No matter how generous the initiative 

was, the British government didn’t go as far 

as to pay for the trip, nor did they organise 

logistics. They even required a £50 bond per 

child for an eventual return ticket: they expected 

the children to go back to their home 

countries as soon as they were no longer in 

danger. And while the government thought 

that its movement could launch similar ones 

in other countries, very few followed suit. 

“The US was already taking a certain amount 

of people every year from Europe, and they 

didn’t enlarge the quota,” says Benz. Other 

countries like Sweden, Norway and Belgium 

took a few hundred each, putting the total 

number of rescued children at about 15,000. 

The Germans cooperated: pre-Final Solution, 

the Nazis were pushing the Jews out of 

the country, so they voiced no objection to 

sending the children to the UK, helping attach 

extra carriages to regular 

trains run by the Reichsbahn. 

“[SS officer] Adolf Eichmann 

himself made sure that the 

carriages would be on hand for 

the Kindertransport,” comments 

Lisa Bechner of Kindertransporte 

1938-1939, a Berlin-based 

organisation that helps gather 

Kindertransport documentation 

and reunite evacuees, who today 

refer to themselves as “Kinder”. 

The first Kindertransport left 

Berlin’s Anhalter Bahnhof by train on December 

1, 1938 with 196 children on board. In Germany, 

Austria and Czechoslovakia, the word 

spread quickly within Jewish communities 

that the UK was accepting young refugees. “It 

was often single mothers, whose husbands had 

been arrested during Kristallnacht. They were 

alone and desperate, and saw this as a chance 

to save their children,” explains Bechner. 

NUMBER 2568 

Lothar and Hilde Auerbach were still together, 

but they nonetheless saw the Kindertransport 

as a way to get at least one family 

member to safety. “The first step was to 

14 


TRAINS 

Refugees: From the 

Holocaust to today’s crisis 

The people who helped to organise the 

Kindertransport are now considered 

heroes. Sir Nicholas Winton, the “British 

Schindler” who aided in the rescue 

of 669 children from Czechoslovakia, 

was knighted by the Queen in 2003 for 

“services to humanity”. In a speech about 

Winton last summer, Theresa May said: 

“Let us all take inspiration from [his devotion 

to active goodness] and aim to do that 

too in our lives.” 

Alf Dubs, a former Kind rescued by Winton 

when he was six years old, is now a Labour 

peer. In 2016, he amended the British 

government’s immigration bill to allow 

3000 unaccompanied refugee children 

from the Calais “jungle” to come to Britain. 

But last February, the “Dubs scheme” 

ended after only 200 lone asylum-seeking 

children were hosted in the UK. Interior 

Secretary Amber Rudd argued that it was 

“encouraging human traffickers”. 

Ruth Schwiening may not remember 

her flight from Berlin, but she does know 

that she owes her life to it. And for her and 

her husband, the fight for refugees lives 

on: “From time to time we host refugees 

in our home, or paint with them. We try to 

make them feel welcome here.” 

place me in a Jewish orphanage,” Ruth says. 

To be included, the children first had to go to 

a doctor to get a health certificate, which was 

then sent with a picture to London, where 

the immigration authorisations were issued. 

“A child with a health problem, even a small 

one, was certain not to be admitted,” says 

Bechner. A number was assigned to every 

child – Ruth’s was 2568. She had to wear it 

on her chest and put it on her suitcase – the 

only belonging the Kindertransport children 

were allowed to bring with them. 

Parents were not allowed to accompany 

their children to the platform. “The Kindertransport 

didn’t use hidden stations, like the 

Ruth’s document from her journey, with her name and number. 

Emmanuelle François 

A monument at Berlin’s Friedrichstraße station (“Trains to life, Trains to death”) keeps the Kindertransport memory 

alive. Its artist Frank Meisler, a former Kind from Danzig now living in Tel Aviv, also created memorials in Danzig 

(“The departure”), Hamburg (“The final parting”), Rotterdam (“Channel crossing to life”) and London (“The arrival”). 

one the Nazis used for the deportations 

(see page 24). So, there was a special room 

belonging to the Jewish congregation, not 

far away from the station, where they could 

say goodbye,” explains Benz. “Of course the 

parting was pretty dramatic. Children would 

cry, parents faint... They didn’t want the 

public to witness that.” Ruth doesn’t recall 

her own traumatic farewell. “I don’t remember 

the departure, nor the journey. I was 

too young, and I feel lucky for it,” she says. 

“But for my parents it was awful. Can you 

imagine how painful it would be to let your 

beloved child be taken to an unknown future 

faraway from you, not knowing whether 

you’d see each other ever again?” 

From Berlin, the journey took 20 hours with 

no stop until the border between Germany and 

the Hook of Holland, where the children took 

a boat to the British port of Harwich. They 

then had to take another train to London’s 

Liverpool Street station. The children were 

accompanied by a single adult, often a member 

of the UK’s Refugee Children’s Movement, 

always a Jew, for the whole journey. Once in 

England, most of the children were integrated 

into families. Ruth was sent to a well-off Jewish 

family in London, the Harts, 

that she describes as “very loving”. 

“I had a sister, Geraldine, 

14 months older than me, and 

was considered a part of their 

family. I was very lucky.” Others 

were less so – some families 

used their Kindertransport adoptees 

as cleaners or helpers. 

A BRITISH LIFE 

“The Kinder could write letters 

home,” says Bechner. 

“But it took a long time for 

them to arrive, and if the parents were 

deported, the children often got no news at 

all. Most had to write after the end of war to 

find out what had happened.” 

In fact, nine out of 10 never saw their parents 

again, most of them having been sent to 

their deaths. Ruth was, once again, very lucky. 

“After just over a year in England, a woman 

appeared in our living room. It was my 

mother. I didn’t kiss her, as my new English 

mother always told me not to kiss strangers.” 

Her parents and brothers had miraculously 

managed to flee Berlin, but in her 13 months 

at the Harts’, young Ruth had forgotten both 

her family and her mother tongue. “I wanted 

to stay with my new family, but my real parents 

took me back.” They moved near Coventry. 

“I think my English family was disappointed, 

as they expected my parents to have 

died in a concentration camp. They wanted 

to keep me.” Ruth never saw the Harts again, 

but has gotten back in touch with Geraldine, 

who now lives in Australia. 

After the war, the whole family stayed in the 

UK. Hilde worked as a domestic helper and 

Lothar as an agricultural worker, his former 

job. “My parents never mentioned their time 

in Germany. It seemed to have been erased 

from their memory.” When Ruth speaks 

German now, it’s with a British accent. She 

became a German teacher in the UK, between 

Coventry and Leicester, and still lives there. 

She married a German citizen she met in 

Berlin, when she was studying German at the 

Free University. They speak English together. 

In fact, few Kinder decided to come back 

to Germany. “They had no reason to do 

that. Their families had been murdered, 

and the younger ones could not speak German 

anymore. They felt better in the UK,” 

explains Benz. ■ 


TRAINS 

ANONYMOUS 

BVG: THE FACTS 

Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe 

(BVG) was founded in 1928 by 

Berlin’s then-Social Democratic 

government to combine the 

city’s local transport (except 

for the Deutsche Bahn affiiliate 

S-Bahn) under one roof. 

Currently, it employs around 

14,400 people, making it the 

fourth largest employer in the 

city behind Deutsche Bahn 

and the Vivantes and Charité 

hospitals. Even more workers 

are used via subcontractors 

for cleaning, ticket checking 

and social media. 

The city provides the BVG with 

about €300 million per year in 

public funding. Wages at the 

BVG start around €1600/month 

for a full-time position of 39 

hours a week, meaning a takehome 

pay of around €1200. 

BVG CEO Sigrid Nikutta earns 

over €433,000 annually. 

The company currently has 

3000 vehicles and transported 

more than one billion 

passengers in 2017. 

Confessions of an U-Bahn driver 

BVG employee “Michael P.” challenges the transport company’s 

shiny-happy image with the day-to-day reality of his job. 

I’ve been working for the BVG as a driver 

for eight years. It was an obvious choice 

for me. As a born Berliner, I’ve been 

riding the U-Bahn every day for as long as I 

can remember. It’s meaningful work to bring 

people from A to B. I don’t have to wonder: 

Who am I doing this for? I see enough people 

who are benefiting from it. But when I started 

my three-year training period with the company, 

I was quickly confronted with the reality 

behind the curtain. There’s so much pressure 

to cut costs that conditions have gotten worse 

and worse over the years. 

THE DETERIORATING CONDITIONS 

The number of passengers is increasing, 

but there only about half as many workers 

as there were 30 years ago. As recently 

as last year, there were two people cleaning 

a train – now, one person needs to do 

the same job in the same time. And the 

vehicles are deteriorating. Three years 

ago, carriages were pulled out of service 

as soon as there was graffiti on them. Now 

that would be inconceivable – the trains 

would be missing somewhere else. On the 

U1, a train that is supposed to have eight 

cars will often only have six. Management 

hasn’t planned ahead. You can’t get subway 

trains at a used car lot. You need to order 

them years in advance. At the moment 

on the U55, they’re using trains they took 

out of a museum – the old “Dora” trains 

that were mostly sold to Pyongyang in the 

1990s. Last year, they put fruit baskets out 

for drivers in the break rooms a few times 

each week. But then they cancelled the 

practice – supposedly it was too expensive! 

THE ‘FLEXI’ SHIFTS 

A typical work routine means a six-day week 

on the subway. I’ll work four or five days, 

then get one or two days off. So you rarely 

get a full weekend off. Some of my colleagues 

do, but for that they have to work “split 

shifts”: four hours in the morning, then 

four or five hours off – which is supposedly 

their “free time” – and another four hours at 

night. As for me, I drive for about four hours, 

then I get 30 to 50 minutes of unpaid break, 

then I drive for another four hours. Our 

shifts are planned down to the second. So I’ll 

be waiting at a station when a train arrives, 

let’s say at 30 seconds past 8:01am. The previous 

driver will get out and I’ll get in – no 

time wasted! Every fifth week is a “stand-by 

shift”, which means I only find out four days 

in advance when I’ll be working. For workers 

with families, like me, it’s almost impossible 

to figure out when you can pick up your kid. 

THE LOW WAGES 

I earn €2150 a month before taxes – which 

means, including several bonuses, I take home 

16 


TRAINS 

“Last year, they put fruit baskets out for 

drivers in the break rooms a few times each 

week. But then they cancelled the practice 

– supposedly it was too expensive!” 


around €1700. But some of my coworkers who haven’t been with 

the company for as long don’t earn more than €1600 before taxes. 

The low wages started with the new Tarifvertrag [labour contract] 

in 2005 – it’s known informally as the Absenkungstarifvertrag because 

it reduced our wages significantly. We were split into a twoclass 

workforce: Workers who started here before 2005 have 36.5 

hours per week, and workers like me who started later have 39 

hours. The “old workers” get a bonus of several hundred euros a 

month, which “new workers” don’t. And there are lots of subcontractors 

working for the BVG who earn even less. Companies like 

WISAG (page 18) do security, SASSE cleans stations and TEREG 

cleans trains. The workers there have very few rights. A cleaner 

lost her job because she was in hospital for too long! 

THE LACK OF RESPECT 

Some older colleagues have said: “I wouldn’t do this job for 

so little money.” And they have a point. They have trouble 

finding new people who want to work here. They even have to 

employ retired drivers part-time on buses, trams and subways, 

paying them €450 a month. Lots of young people quit after 

a few years – some even switch to the S-Bahn, which, if you 

know about the conditions at the S-Bahn, is rather telling. 

That’s why they have all those hipster advertising campaigns: 

“Anyone can be a blogger. Become a bus driver!” 

BVG management is not very good at their core task – public 

transport – but they are very professional when it comes to marketing. 

They have lots of likes on Facebook for “Weil wir dich lieben.” 

There was one ad recently that went something like: “A bus 

The BVG’s viral video “Is’ mir egal” featured 

Berliner Kazim Akboga as a friendly employee. 

is like a classroom: The cool people sit in the back and the one in 

the front just nags.” I mean, bus drivers have a tough job – one of 

my colleagues has to deal with nausea and headaches caused by 

the fumes from the cheap new buses the BVG bought recently. 

Do they really need some highly paid marketing guy making fun 

of them? Apparently, someone went to the manager responsible 

for the ad and his response was more or less: “Is’ mir egal.” 

WHY THIS INTERVIEW? 

I’m a rank-and-file member of the union, and we’re negotiating 

a new labour contract next year. Two years ago, we protested 

against temporary contracts at the BVG – and management 

was at least forced to partially stop the practice until the end 

of this year. We need better pay and more regular shifts. Ultimately, 

this isn’t just a question of the BVG management. It’s a 

public company, so the Senat is responsible. And all of Berlin’s 

governments, whether 

red-black or red-redgreen, 

have been involved 

in outsourcing and cuts 

in the BVG. It’s a political 

question: Do we want the 

people transporting us to 

earn decent wages? n 

As told to Wladek Flakin 

under the condition of 

anonymity. 

THE BVG’S MARKETING COUP 

Since the beginning of 2015, the “Weil wir 

dich lieben” campaign (masterminded by 

the local ad agency GUD) has attempted 

to make Berlin’s transport system seem 

brash and cool – and mostly succeeded. 

With a social media budget of around 

€500,000 a year, they’ve garnered 

227,000 Facebook likes and 240,000 

Twitter followers. Here are a few of their 

most memorable moments: 

December 2015: Repurposing Neukölln 

rapper Kazim Akboga’s viral hit “Is’ mir 

egal” to feature Akboga (who committed 

suicide at the beginning of last year) as a 

carefree U-Bahn controller. 

September 2016: Poking fun at the BVG’s 

constant delays, surly bus drivers and 

mealy-mouthed controllers with a video 

ad saying “It’s all intentional”. 

January 2017: Facebooking an image of 

a snow-covered U-Bahn carriage with 

the caption, “It’s barely even Fashion 

Week, and there’s already white powder 

everywhere.” 

December 2017: Getting Bono and The 

Edge to play an acoustic mini-concert on 

the platform of, yes, the U2. 


TRAINS 

“ 

INVESTIGATION 

CONTROLLERS 

OUT OF CONTROL 

Scruffy-looking, gruff, even corrupt and violent... Right here 

at the heart of “ordentlich” Germany, plainclothes ticket inspectors 

enforce law and order with mobbish zeal on public 

transportation. Who are these people, and how do they get 

away with such impunity? By Thomas Wintle. Illustration by Agata Sasiuk 

Is’ mir egal…” Literally, “I don’t care.” It’s 

the slightly tired slogan that has come 

to define the attitude of Berlin’s ticket 

inspectors, as first featured in a 2015 viral 

video for the BVG (see page 16). The late 

comedian Kazim Akboga appears dressed 

as a smartly uniformed inspector, checking 

tickets and rapping about his indifference 

for the unorthodox passengers that frequent 

Berlin’s transport system. It’s an endearing 

scene, but for anyone who has spent time 

on the U-Bahn, the message doesn’t exactly 

ring true. Far from the rapping high-jinks 

and spotless uniforms in the ad, the reality 

of having your ticket checked generally 

involves several bruisers sliding into your 

wagon incognito, waiting for the doors to 

lock you in before brusquely demanding to 

see your ticket. And it’s not just the scruffy 

jeans and ubiquitous bomber jackets that 

make them stand out. The behaviour of 

the Hauptstadt’s “undercover” controllers 

has become a regular conversation piece 

among Berlin locals and its visitors alike. 

Tales of “discounted” fines, outright bribery, 

embezzlement, even assault abound 

from the city’s platforms. 

The conversation went viral on November 

17, when a BVG ticket inspector was caught 

on camera punching American musician 

Infidelix – real name Brian Rodecker – in 

the face. The Texan rapper, a veteran of 

the Berlin street music scene with several 

facial tattoos, entered into a scuffle with 

five controllers at Warschauer Straße station 

after helping his friend evade a fine for 

Schwarzfahren (ticket dodging). As a legally 

questionable punishment, the inspectors 

confiscated Rodecker’s monthly ticket. After 

trying to persuade the inspectors to return 

it, the rapper snapped, and slapped a ticket 

machine out of one an inspector’s hand. He 

was subsequently pinned to a bench, held in 

a headlock and punched at least twice in the 

head by one of the controllers. 

Several bystanders filmed the assault 

on their mobile phone, and after Rodecker 

posted the footage on Facebook, the 

video collected more than 70,000 hits in 

less than a week. With the street artist an 

internet sensation in his own right (one of 

his freestyle raps has over 5.2 million views 

on YouTube), the story blew up in the 

German media. The BVG, quick to nip bad 

press in the bud, summarily suspended 

the controller, and at a later date, he was 

formally dismissed. 

The incident could be seen as a testament 

to the BVG’s speedy response in disciplining 

their more wayward employees. But the 

question hangs in the air: Who are these 

plainclothes ticket inspectors? What do 

they get up to under the seemingly watchful 

eyes of Berlin’s main transport companies? 

And why, amidst a long list of alternative 

methods of ticket inspection to choose from, 

does Berlin still insist on using the so-called 

undercover controllers? 

HIRED MUSCLE 

If Rodecker’s story hints at a certain 

lawlessness among controllers, understanding 

who actually employs them gives 

you an idea of why many ticket inspectors 

aren’t concerned about protecting the 

company’s image. In spite of the fact that 

the BVG promotes their controllers as 

being in-house workers, the truth is that 

around two-thirds of their ticket inspectors 

(80 of 120) wear plain clothes, and 

all of those plainclothes inspectors are 

outsourced from private security firms. 

Those same firms also supply the S-Bahn, 

a separate company and a subsidiary of 

18 


TRAINS 

HANDS OFF? 

Despite the outrage expressed by 

many Berliners on witnessing physical 

abuse at the hands of the plainclothes 

inspectors, and contrary to 

the rumours that controllers cannot 

legally lay a hand on you, they are 

often perfectly within their rights 

to engage in a bit of “body bumping”, 

as the assulted Texan rapper 

Rodecker puts it. As is the case 

with the murky legality under which 

bouncers and security guards operate, 

the controllers, according to 

the BVG, can perform a Jedermann- 

Festnahme (“citizens’ arrest”). Under 

German law, controllers are allowed 

to physically apprehend anyone 

they like if they catch them in the 

process of breaking the law. This 

can include passengers without a 

ticket refusing to show ID, behaving 

aggressively or attempting to escape. 

The only condition required is that 

the security staff do not cause serious 

injury to the person being “arrested” 

– in other words, punching 

someone in the head is out. 

ON STARTING WORK AS AN 

S-BAHN CONTROLLER IN 2015, 

SVEN WAS STARTLED TO FIND 

OUT THAT “AROUND 80 TO 90 

PERCENT” OF HIS COLLEAGUES 

WERE EMBEZZLING MONEY. 

Deutsche Bahn, with all 72-80 of its inspectors. 

Uwe Hiksch – an initiator of the TicketTeilen 

campaign, which pushes for a more affordable 

public transit system in Berlin – has estimated 

that some 200 controllers are on the job over 

the whole network on any given day. According 

to him, they are often poorly trained and 

badly paid, with little motivation to identify 

with the public service they’re supposed to 

represent. The BVG confirmed that their 

contractors were only obliged to pay €8.84 per 

hour, the legal minimum wage in Germany, 

and that recruiting and managing contracted 

controllers was mostly left to the discretion 

of the individual companies. “Our contractors 

are in charge of hiring, disciplining and firing 

their employees,” explained BVG spokesperson 

Jannes Schwentuchowski. 

When asked why the company uses so few 

of their own uniformed inspectors, Schwentuchowski 

offered a characteristically evasive 

answer: “Having ticket inspectors in civilian 

clothes prevents passengers without a 

ticket from leaving the train and thus evading 

control.” It also points to the BVG’s arguable 

choice to rely more on punishment (collecting 

fines) than prevention (making travellers 

actually pay for their transportation). Catching 

dodgers seems to top their agenda. “The BVG 

alone loses about €20 million a year because 

of Schwarzfahren,” stresses Schwentuchowski. 

There was an attempt to move away from this 

repressive system when, in 2011, BVG CEO 

Sigrid Nikutta pushed to replace the plainclothes 

controllers with uniformed checkers. 

Some were BVG employees; others were contracted. 

Unsurprisingly the numbers of caught 

Schwarzfahrer sharply declined, dropping from 

around 325,000 in 2010 to some 156,000 within 

the space of two years. Perhaps there was a 

newfound sense of responsibility among Berliners 

deterred by the sight of controllers, or 

the uniformed inspectors weren’t as effective 

at catching offenders. Either way, the experiment 

was promptly deemed a failure and the 

company reverted to their good old ways, even 

bumping up the number of undercover controllers 

from 70 to between 120-140 in 2013. 

One of the companies to profit the most 

from the decision was WISAG. A major player 

in the German security industry, the Frankfurtbased 

company received their first contract 

with the BVG in 2012 and currently provides 

68 of the 80 subcontracted controllers (the 

others, sourced from smaller 

security firms, mostly work on 

the bus and tram system) as well 

as many of those working on the 

S-Bahn. They employed Rodecker’s 

attacker, and despite recent 

pressure on the company to tackle 

discipline issues among their staff, 

business is booming. WISAG made 

a turnover of €199 million in 2016. 

Part of this was due to their work in providing 

security during the height of the refugee crisis, 

but a percentage of this turnover comes from 

the €20-30 million the BVG is estimated to 

spend on controlling each year, in addition to 

the S-Bahn’s contract with the company. 

FINES: WHERE DOES 

THE MONEY GO? 

In 2016, the BVG checked almost five million 

tickets and recorded a total of 286,748 cases 

of ticket-dodgers who were caught and fined. 

Some 50 percent of Schwarzfahrer didn’t pay 

the penalty. On the S-Bahn, it’s even worse: 

the company disclosed that some 60 percent 

of fines went unpaid between 2014-16. Failing 

to recoup on over half of your outstanding 

fines is poor business by any standards. But 

why are there such low returns? According to 

Hiksch, many of those who don’t pay simply 

can’t afford to. After three unpaid fines, 

they’re brought to court. In Berlin alone, there 

are apparently 50,000 such cases; Hiksch estimates 

that between 200 and 300 are currently 

sitting in Berlin’s prisons. Tourists living 

abroad make up another chunk of the delinquent 

payers. A report from 2015, suggested 

that unpaid fines in the S-Bahn were mostly 

due to the fact that “a valid address could 

not be determined”. Either locals are giving 

fake address or, as testimony from a former 

controller suggests, there is a more damning 

reason: deliberately falsified addresses by inspectors 

who pocket the cash for themselves. 

CORRUPT CONTROLLERS 

“I saw it with my own eyes, and lots of people 

are still doing it,” says “Sven”, a 37-year-old 

former WISAG employee who agreed to speak 

under the condition of anonymity. On starting 

work as an S-Bahn controller in 2015, he says 

he was startled to find out that “around 80 to 

90 percent” of his colleagues were embezzling 

money during their collections. They would 

target “tourists, and people who couldn’t 

speak German so well”, demanding they pay 

the fine in cash right then and there. To avoid 

arousing suspicion, many would write up a 

false name and address and tick off the fine 

as ‘unpaid’ in the ticket machine. “And then it 

is over, you know, finished so to speak… they 

have no evidence.” 

In fact, tales of on-the-spot settlements in 

Berlin are many. “When I explained I didn’t have 

the money on me, they just asked me how much 

I had in my wallet – and took my last €15!” recalls 

Carina, a French expat who was caught without a 

ticket on the U2 at the Senefelderplatz station on 

a Friday evening last February. “For an explanation, 

they said it was Feierabend and that they 

were too tired to bother with such ‘crap’. To be 

honest, I didn’t complain. It was a lot cheaper 

than the €60 I was supposed to pay.” 


TRAINS 

“EVEN IF IT WAS POSSIBLE, 

INTRODUCING A BARRIER 

SYSTEM FOR THE BVG WOULD 

BE EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE... 

THERE ARE NO PLANS TO 

MOVE IN THAT DIRECTION 

IN THE NEAR FUTURE.” 

According to Sven, controllers could make 

up to €400 a day extra through such methods. 

This is on top of the monthly bonus 

that Sven could potentially receive at the 

time for apprehending a certain number 

of Schwarzfahrer per day. “Every day you 

would need to catch 20 people to look like 

you were doing a clean job... and then you 

got €450 a month extra.” 

The S-Bahn and WISAG would neither 

confirm nor deny the existence of such 

a quota system. Some of Sven’s observations, 

however, were affirmed by a federal 

police investigation in January 2017, when 

five S-Bahn ticket controllers, all WISAG 

employees, were accused of targeting tourists 

without writing up a proper ticket. Like 

Infedelix’s attacker, the controllers were 

quickly suspended and later dismissed. 

In a press release, S-Bahn Berlin press 

spokesperson Ingo Priegnitz stated that the 

company “does not tolerate any criminal 

machinations from our own employees or 

employees from contracted companies.” 

But what is WISAG doing to tackle corruption, 

and what sort of people are they 

hiring? According to WISAG spokesperson 

Tamara Schreiber, the security company 

observes a strict recruiting policy. Applicants 

need to present a police clearance 

certificate and pass an examination 

on security knowledge from the German 

Chamber of Industry and Commerce. 

Next, they must complete a four-week 

training course and an “in-depth interview”. 

Schreiber adds that controllers 

are “instructed and trained to respond 

in a de-escalating manner” when under 

duress. But she concludes: “Of course, we 

cannot see inside their heads.” Since the 

embezzlement case in January, and with 

their lucrative contract with the BVG and 

S-Bahn at stake, WISAG has apparently 

been clamping down with more “security 

checks” on their employees. Meanwhile, 

Berlin’s transport companies have said 

they are carrying out their own “anonymous 

quality control” inspections. 

PR WON’T CURE ALL 

With corruption and assault cases made 

public in the media, you’d expect the BVG 

and Deutsche Bahn to be under pressure 

to bring some Ordnung to the tracks. 

Several disciplinary measures are currently 

underway, including charging their 

subcontractors monetary penalties for 

controllers who show visible tattoos (€50) 

or operate without one of the two forms of 

identification they need to carry (€200). 

Perhaps with lingering worries surrounding 

embezzlement, the BVG can now reportedly 

fine security companies when controllers 

“intentionally” enter wrong data into 

their ticket machines. And contractors 

apparently now reward controllers not for 

numbers of Schwarzfahrer caught but for 

“good work”, including a low number of 

complaints or mistakes made over time. 

But the BVG’s main response has been 

to invest... in PR. The company reportedly 

pays out €3.5 million on marketing and advertising 

every year, with €500,000 going to 

social media alone. In the wake of “Is’ mir 

egal” and other stunts pulled by the Weil wir 

dich lieben campaign, the company gained 

an additional 18,500 ticket subscribers in 

2016, and their public image has significantly 

improved over the past two years. 

Meanwhile, though, BVG drivers are still 

subjected to austerity and stories of rogue 

controllers still abound. Clearly PR won’t 

cure all ills. What about a complete overhaul 

of the system? 

“Spend the damn €10 million one time to 

put in goddamn barriers like in every other 

country!” suggests Rodecker, who has gone 

from rapping outside Warschauer Straße to 

playing to thousands at Columbiahalle since 

he was assaulted. The bill might be slightly 

higher than that, but it’s a reasonable suggestion... 

quickly dismissed by BVG’s Schwentuchowski. 

“Even if it was possible from an 

engineering perspective, it would still be 

extremely expensive. Berlin’s underground 

system is over 115 years old. [The] introduction 

of a barrier system would be extremely 

challenging, considering such issues as safety 

in case of emergency, access for those with 

special mobility needs, buildings with historical 

protection status... There are no plans 

to move in that direction in the near future.” 

Financial concerns seem to be the main cynical 

calculation supporting the flawed system: 

by outsourcing to private security firms, 

Berlin’s transport companies are able to save 

a substantial amount of money, cutting back 

on the costs of providing medical benefits, 

retirement plans, and decent salaries to their 

employees. And they can pass the buck when 

it comes to potentially damaging lawsuits. 

A more radical solution would be to fulfil 

TicketTeilen’s ultimate campaign demand: to 

follow in the footsteps of Tallinn, Estonia by 

making transport free for all Berlin residents. 

This would be welcomed by many, especially 

since the cost of a single ticket in the Hauptstadt, 

currently €2.80, is surprisingly high 

given the city’s lingering reputation as inexpensive. 

But with the Association of German 

Transport Companies (VDV) claiming that 

free public transport would be too much of a 

finacial strain on the German taxpayer, and 

Berlin’s transport companies stuck in their 

ways, it will likely be a while before ticketless 

travelling becomes the norm. 

So for the time being, expect undercover 

controllers to remain with us, moving unobserved 

through Berlin’s train network, rubbing 

shoulders with unknowing passengers 

while patiently waiting for their next prey. If 

you’re lucky, they’ll give you a discount! n 

20 


TRAINS 

Railway romance never rusts 

It’s the most-watched show about trains in the world, with over 

a million Germans tuning in 12 times a week. And even two 

years after the retirement of its cult presenter Hagen von Ortloff, 

Eisenbahn-Romantik has continued right on track. By Graham Anderson 

The 99 class eight-wheeler steam 

locomotive hurtles full throttle on its 

750mm narrow gauge track into viewers’ 

living rooms. The nostalgic, jazzy tones of 

Wes Brown’s “Sentimental Journey” seduce 

German train lovers into another soothing 

episode of their favourite show, Eisenbahn- 

Romantik. Only one thing has changed in the 

format of “Railway Romantic” over its 26- 

year history – its founder and cult presenter 

Hagen von Ortloff hung up his conductor’s 

cap in 2015 upon turning 65. Eisenbahn- 

Romantik now runs on autopilot, without its 

guru’s polished Prussian dome and baritone 

High German nursing its million-plus train 

freaks through their daily iron horse “trips”. 

Forty years ago, Von Ortloff filmed his 

first railroad, as a TV journalist for the 

children’s programme Durchblick. “I made a 

90-second film about a model railway club 

in Winnenden. It’s still there today,” says 

the 68-year-old on a visit to Berlin from his 

home near Stuttgart. 

Encouraged by Mechthild Albus, producer 

at public broadcaster SDR (nowadays called 

SWR), the lifelong train enthusiast finally let 

his railway genie out of its bottle in 1991. “She 

challenged me to come up with a show that 

would bridge a dead spot between two popular 

afternoon programmes. The name Railway 

Romantic was already in my head, and so was 

TELEVISION 

‘Sentimental Journey’. Colleagues laughed. No 

one expected the show to survive. That’s something 

I am a tad proud of,” says Von Ortloff. 

In the first half-hour episode, Von Ortloff 

portrayed Das sauschwänzle Bähnle (“the sow’s 

lil’ tail railway”) on Germany’s Swiss border, 

famous for corkscrewing over itself six times 

via tunnels to gain altitude. And just like that 

train, Eisenbahn-Romantik’s viewer base of German 

train fanatics climbed higher and higher. 

“The show’s a product of outrageous fortune. 

We had no money. We used federal railway 

archive footage for early episodes. And we still 

outrated the programmes we were meant to 

link!” says Von Ortloff. In 1993, SDR gave him 

a regular weekly spot and a €200,000 budget. 

“We spent the money like it was our own,” Von 

Ortloff recalls. Today, the show’s budget is 

€250,000. Subsequent episodes have focused 

on railway repair depots, specific lines such as 

the “Wonder Train” from Nice to the Maritime 

Alps, locomotive types like the “Crocodile” 

and model railroads. Politics aren’t avoided: 

Von Ortloff made no secret of his fierce opposition 

to the controversial “Stuttgart 21” project, 

which converted the city’s terminus into a 

run-through underground station. The former 

presenter is particularly proud of the 1990s 

episodes about the GDR’s Deutsche Reichsbahn. 

“We focused on the closure of lines like the 

one from Velgast to Tribsees in Mecklenberg- 


Vorpommern. That’s history now. And without 

history, there’s no future. But it’s preserved in 

the annals of Eisenbahn-Romantik.” 

A whole industry has mushroomed around 

the show: a fan club complete with an online 

shop, a magazine and T-shirts; an Eisenbahn- 

Romantik-themed hotel in Brandenburg; 

copycat TV programmes like Arte’s Mit dem 

Zug durch (By train through...). How did Von 

Ortloff stop all this attention from going to his 

head? He thanks the steadying ballast of his 

early life in Dresden in the German Democratic 

Republic. “I’m a born loser. The noble 

‘von’ in my name went down like a lead balloon 

in the GDR. Thank God I left in 1960 when 

I was 11 years old. I quite like ‘von’ now,” he 

admits. He puts his success down to luck. “I 

was the right man in the right place at the right 

moment. I never believed the show would be 

such a success, not in my wildest dreams.” 

Still, Von Ortloff doesn’t underestimate 

his own appeal as a presenter. “I’m always 

myself. I speak in a language that a grandma 

with six years of schooling can understand. 

Nothing off-colour. Above all, respect. The 

show’s success is the viewers’ achievement. I 

am not arrogant. Well, a little bit. But there’s 

no reason to be,” Von Ortoff laughs. 

He had groomed no heir apparent by the 

time he retired in 2015. “I jog six times a 

week. I’m as fit as a fiddle. I never missed an 

episode! That’s why there’s no crown prince. 

Had my son been 22 he could have taken over, 

but he’s 11,” smiles Von Ortloff. And because 

“two different frontmen presenting the same 

programme would confuse viewers,” he was 

never replaced. Longtime Eisenbahn-Romantik 

narrator Joachim “Jo” Jung now gives railway 

junkies their iron horse hits tucked out 

of sight behind a microphone. “Jung’s a good 

speaker. Better than I am,” says Von Ortloff. 

In Jung’s hands, the show has continued 

without a hitch. “The show runs repeat episodes 

from Monday to Friday, at 8:20am and 

2:50pm. New episodes appear on Saturdays 

and are repeated on Sundays. That’s 12 shows 

a week with a million viewers per show,” says 

Von Ortloff. Who are these fans? “They’re 

mainly men. Their wives are backseat spectators. 

But many wives often tell me they would 

be ‘all aboard’ for any train tour I guided. They 

appreciate becoming part of the ‘big picture’ 

they would otherwise not understand.” 

Where to now for the cult programme 

with its guru in retirement? “It’s got 

themes for the next 50 years. Railway 

bridges alone could keep it going for 10 

years! The railway world is big, far too 

big,” Von Ortloff says. For his own part, the 

ex-presenter has “projects to keep me busy 

till death do us part.” He still organises the 

annual “International Railway Modelling 

Day” on December 2 of every year. And the 

odd Eisenbahn-Romantik special tour. n 

EXBERLINER 167 

21

TRAINS 

SURVEILLANCE 

In Berlin, surveillance in public transport might not 

rival the ubiquitous CCTV in cities like London 

and Paris, but don’t be fooled. With more cameras 

on the U-Bahn, an increased police presence and a 

new facial recognition pilot, we’re being watched 

now more than ever before. 

By Aske Hald Knudstrup 

I 

f you’ve visited the high-ceilinged glass-andsteel 

Südkreuz train station in recent months, 

you might have seen that something is different. 

At the bottom of the escalators at the 

northern entrance of the station you’ll easily 

spot two large signs sticking to the tiles, indicating 

a choice of where to go. Follow the white signs for 

“Keine Gesichtserkennung” (no facial recognition); 

follow the blue ones for a route that leads you right 

under the government’s face scanners. 

From last August until February, a quartet 

consisting of the Interior Ministry, the Deutsche 

Bahn, the Bundespolizei (federal police) and the 

Bundeskriminalamt (federal criminal police office) 

has been testing the use of “automated facial 

recognition” in a pilot project aimed at finding 

out how reliable cameras might be in detecting 

and identifying people from a database. First, 300 

regular Berlin commuters volunteered to have 

their pictures taken. Now, three different software 

operators are testing whether they can spot 

anyone from that group among the thousands that 

travel from Südkreuz every day. With 1150 cameras 

in Berlin’s regional train and S-Bahn stations 

and 2771 in the BVG’s U-Bahn stations, there’s a 

lot of potential for facial recognition, should it be 

implemented city wide. The goal, in the words of 

Bundespolizei representative Matthias Lehmann, is 

“to help recognise dangerous situations at an early 

stage” and test whether cameras at train stations 

can “immediately provide a safety benefit”. With 

the system still in its test phase, the Bundespolizei 

hasn’t specified which people might be included in 

the database. But the unspoken hope is that in the 

event of another terrorist attack like the one on 

the Breitscheidplatz Christmas market in December 

2016, their system would help them catch the 

perpetrator before he or she left the country – or, 

maybe, before he or she even committed the crime. 

The police, the BVG and politicians all hearken back 

to that truck attack as a watershed moment for how 

Germans view security. Berlin is not yet in the same 

league as Paris (around 10,000 cameras in the metro) 

or London (over 15,000 cameras in the tube), but the 

Bundespolizei and Deutsche Bahn aren’t the only ones 

stepping up their surveillance game these days. The 

BVG is investing €48.2 million to equip their stations 

with modern video technology, meaning a total of 

6500 cameras (one every 25 metres) that can pan, 

zoom and tilt while delivering high-resolution pictures 

to a central security office. Currently, BVG security 

can see into every nook and cranny of 45 stations, 

those deemed the busiest or most crime-ridden. By 

the end of 2018, that should be true for each of the 173 

stations on the network. 

SAFETY OR PRIVACY? 

Of course, the project has sparked concerns among 

civil liberty campaigners and a debate on where 

to draw the fine line between collective security 

and individual privacy. Maja Smoltczyk, head of 

the Berlin Commission for Data Protection and 

Freedom of Information (BlnBDI), has openly 

22 


TRAINS 

criticised both facial recognition as well as 

the BVG’s planned camera expansion. “The 

right to privacy and the freedom of action 

are fundamental human rights and a basis 

for democratic societies. They must not be 

undermined only to create a vague feeling of 

safety,” says BlnBDI press officer Dalia Kues. 

The fear that the BVG will soon start 

prying into travellers’ routines is dismissed 

by spokesperson Jannes Schwentuchowski. 

“Firstly, unless the police asks us to save 

certain footage, every recording is only 

kept for 48 hours before it’s overwritten. 

Secondly, of our 260 employees working in 

security, only a very limited group of those 

has actual access to our video feeds.” 

But Kues is not only worried about how 

it will affect citizens’ fundamental rights. 

She’s also sceptical of the actual efficiency 

of city-wide video surveillance: “At best, it 

may lead to a shift of crime to other spots. 

At worst, people who plan rampages and 

terrorist acts could even be encouraged by 

the public attention they gain,” she says. 

Hakan Taş, a member of the Berlin state 

parliament for Die Linke and spokesperson on 

interior politics, agrees. “It’s good for catching 

criminals, but for preventing crime, surveillance 

contributes to a false sense of security 

– the crime will just move. Something that’s 

of course in the BVG’s interests,” Taş says. He 

adds that he doesn’t understand why an idle 

station in Zehlendorf needs the same amount 

of camera coverage as Alexanderplatz. 

But for both Schwentuchowski and Berlin 

police spokesperson Wilfrid Wenzel, dwindling 

crime numbers are the best argument 

in favour of camera surveillance. According 

to the BVG’s most recent security report, 

the amount of assaults occurring on BVG 

premises has decreased 20 percent since 

2011, in a period where the number of passengers 

has risen by the same proportion. 

There were 3106 attacks in 2016, 2212 of 

which were in the U-Bahn. Statistically, this 

means passengers fall victim to a violent 

crime every 2500th ride. 

AN ESSENTIAL 

CRIME-FIGHTING TOOL? 

To what extent the decrease can be attributed 

to cameras is difficult to say. The case seems 

to be easier to make when it comes to surveillance 

as a useful tool for crime solving. In 

December 2016, seven youngsters tried to set 

a homeless man on fire in the Schönleinstraße 

station, but eventually turned themselves in 

when they learned that their deed had been 

caught on camera. And many Berliners still 

remember the shocking camera footage of a 

man violently kicking a 26-year-old woman 

down the stairs of the Hermannstraße U-Bahn 


Signs at S-Bahnhof Südkreuz give passengers a choice 

to pass through a “facial recognition area” or not. 

“The release of the tape 

made people feel less safe, 

while at the same time 

the camera did what it 

was supposed to do – the 

guy was actually found.” 

station in October 2016. Released by the German 

police in December, the video went viral 

and the suspected perpetrator was arrested 

soon after thanks to a tip-off from the public. 

In July last year, he was sentenced to two years 

and 11 months in prison. Schwentuchowski 

acknowledges the incident as the perfect 

example of the ambivalence surrounding video 

surveillance. “The release of the tape made 

people feel less safe, while at the same time 

the camera did what it was supposed to do – 

the guy was actually found,” he says. 

Neither Hakan Taş nor the BlnBDI are 

completely opposed to video cameras. “Video 

surveillance can be meaningful for specific 

purposes and at selected spots,” concedes 

Kues. Both she and Taş doubt the preventive 

effects, but believe it to be a good tool to catch 

perpetrators after a crime has been committed. 

Hakan Taş is instead appealing for a bigger, 

more visible police force, something Berlin’s 

“red-red-green” government has already put 

into action with a plan of training 630 new officers 

in 2018, up from 270 in 2016. The Berlin 

government also reintroduced the use of 

so-called Doppelstreifen on the BVG last year. 

Originally abolished in 2003, these patrols 

are made up of two BVG security guards and 

two police officers. Currently, five of these 

patrols are out each day, which might seem 

like a drop in the ocean, but BVG’s Schwentuchowski 

believes that “it has a psychological 

effect, actively making people think twice.” 

He’s expecting crime statistics for 2017 to 

show the positive, deterrent effect of closer 

cooperation between the BVG and police. 

More cameras, more police, improved 

technology. One thing that’s for sure is that 

Berlin’s train stations are set to be better 

surveilled and commuters’ whereabouts 

more monitored than ever before. Will it 

make us safer, especially in case of a terrorist 

attack? Hard to tell. But according to 

a 2017 Forsa survey, 80 percent of Berlin 

citizens see increased surveillance as a necessary 

evil and want more of it. n 

Number of cameras in BVG stations 

2016: 2300 | 2017: 2771 | 2018 (expected): 6500 


23

TRAINS 

SPOTLIGHT 

Endstation Grunewald 

This month marks the 20th anniversary of Gleis 17, one of 

Berlin’s least known but most powerful Holocaust memorials. 

By Amy Leonard. Photos by Pavel Mezihorák 

The platform at Grunewald station onto 

which you disembark is unremarkable. 

There’s a main road to one side, loud 

with traffic. The stark black-and-white signs 

pointing the way to “Gleis 17” (track 17) are unremarkable 

too; no description, no explanation, 

just those words. Were you only here for a hike, 

you could walk past them without a thought. 

You descend into the tunnel connecting 

the platforms to the outside world, but instead 

of heading off towards the forest, you 

re-ascend a staircase and emerge onto the 

platform for Gleis 17. Save for a few Israeli 

tourists, it’s completely empty, as is the 

track itself. As you can tell from the vegetation 

rising up from between the railroad ties, 

no train has been here for a long time. 

It was from this exact platform, on 

October 18, 1941, that the first deportation 

of Jews happened in Berlin; 1013 

people crammed onto a train bound for the 

Łódź ghetto in Poland. In total, over 50,000 

members of Berlin’s Jewish population were 

deported from Gleis 17 to Warsaw, Riga, 

Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, amongst 

other ghettos and concentration camps. 

At the time, Grunewald was a much larger 

rail station, with 17 tracks, and it was not 

by chance that this particular spot was the 

point of departure for the transports. “The 

platform was deliberately developed by the 

Reichsbahn solely for the deportation of 

people,” says Nigel Dunkley, a British historian 

and tour guide. The platform’s location 

on the outskirts of the city and its position 

on the edge of the rail complex were ideal 

because “deportation could be carried out 

without people seeing”. Every aspect of the 

platform’s location was carefully thought out. 

“It is on elevated ground, so it’s not easily 

visible from below by normal passengers. It’s 

a dead end, with the only exit for rail traffic 

facing east. And it’s immediately accessible to 

columns of deportees being marched to the 

station on foot.” This said, Grunewald was a 

densely populated area, and it is hardly conceivable 

that so many Jews could be marched 

to the station without residents noticing. 

Today, 186 large cast-iron plates line the 

platform on both sides, the edges nearest 

the track itself inscribed with the date, 

number of deportees and destination of 

every transport that left this place between 

1941 and 1945. Reading the words, you can 

follow the course of WWII, of the rise and 

fall of the Nazis; the change from ghettos to 

death camps as time went on, the swell in 

numbers of deportees to Auschwitz after the 

gas chambers were built in 1942, the change 

of destination when the Red Army advanced 

further west. It’s simple and stark, and in being 

both, quite devastating. 

Commemorative efforts date back from 

1953, when a plaque was installed but swiftly 

removed after it was suspected that the 

initiators were a communist group. A local 

women’s church group laid a small memorial 

24 


TRAINS 

“The gates of Auschwitz 

with the train tracks going 

in became a symbol of 

the Holocaust, and this is 

where the tracks began.” 

in front of the main entrance to 

the station in 1987; it still stands 

today. In 1991, an artwork by 

Polish artist Karol Broniatowski 

was installed along the freight 

ramp up to the platform. It is a 

large concrete wall with rough 

human shapes forced deep into 

its face as though they were 

headed toward the platform, 

hollow and shadowed. 

But it wasn’t until 1996 that Germany decided to turn 

Gleis 17 into a permanent memorial, as a way for the 

post-reunification Deutsche Bahn to acknowledge 

the collaboration of their predecessors, the Deutsche 

Reichsbahn, with the National Socialists. Together with 

Berlin’s Central Council of Jews, Deutsche Bahn CEO 

Heinz Dürr launched a design competition that was won 

by architects Hirsch, Lorch and Wandel. Their memorial 

was inaugurated on January 27, 1998, with the addition 

in 2011 of birch trees from around the area of Auschwitz- 

Birkenau, replanted by Polish artist Lukasz Surowiec. 

Unlike its younger, louder, attention-seeking cousin 

near the Brandenburg Gate, this Holocaust memorial 

has never called for any fanfare. “It’s been accepted 

very well and treated with the respect it deserves,” says 

Susanne Kill of Deutsche Bahn’s Historical Department. 

“Unlike the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, 

it has the big advantage that of course there’s no doubt 

those trains started there. It’s a historical site.” 

And it’s exactly that which sets it apart from Peter 

Eisenman’s work. This isn’t just something created and 

put somewhere it would fit. “I’ve had people cry when 

they suddenly realise they are looking at the very rails that 

carried these people to their deaths,” says Dunkley. The 

62-year-old self-dubbed “Scotsman, former soldier and 

diplomat” wants to turn the low building at the side of the 

platform, where some 50,000 Jews were herded like cattle 

and checked off transport lists, into a visitor’s centre. 

Yet despite its historical importance and emotional 

impact, Gleis 17 is relatively unknown. “I’d say the majority 

of tourists don’t know about it. It’s a bit off-track and 

there’s so much about the Holocaust in the city centre. 

As for Berlin residents, many can probably link Gleis 17 

to the deportations, but I doubt many have visited it,” 

says Friederike Pescheck of the Permanent Conference 

for Directors of National Socialist Memorial Sites in the 

Berlin Area, who co-organises the annual commemorative 

ceremony at Gleis 17 on October 18. 

“To me, its level of visibility is okay, because of 

its nature,” Kill reflects. “It’s symbolic, a thoughtful 

place. The gates of Auschwitz with the train tracks 

going in became a symbol of the Holocaust, and this 

is where the tracks began.” n 


25

WHAT’S ON — Transmediale/CTM 

TRANSMEDIALE 

JAN 31-FEB 4 

CTM 

JAN 26-FEB 4 

Preview 

Time to transcend 

A Becoming Resemblance 

Top 5 CTM shows 

Opening concert 

with Zorka Wollny and 

Andrzej Wasilweski Jan 

27, 19:00, HAU1 

Cevdet Erek, Okkyung 

Lee, Marcus Schmickler 

and more Jan 31, 21:00, 

Berghain 

Lotic & Roderick George, 

Rashaad Newsome Feb 1, 

19:30/22:00, HAU2 

James Ferraro Feb 2, 

21:00, HKW 

Holly Herndon Ensemble 

Feb 3, 20:00, 

Festsaal Kreuzberg 

From the conference hall to the galleries 

to the clubs, the Transmediale and 

CTM festivals present a genre-blurring, 

format-spanning reflection on our 

troubled times. By Sarrita Hunn and Michael Hoh 

Does anyone remember what Transmediale is anymore? 

What started in 1987 as an experimental video 

programme within the Berlinale has turned into 

an ever-expanding confluence of art, culture and technology 

encompassing exhibitions, conferences, screenings, 

performances and publications. Invitees are not just artists 

and filmmakers but thinkers and hacktivists the world over, 

drawn to HKW under the banner of characteristically vague 

themes like 2011’s “Response: Ability” and last year’s 30th 

anniversary edition, “ever elusive”. Meanwhile, its sister festival 

CTM, founded in 1999 as a one-off Transmediale side 

programme, has become its own beast, engulfing every hot 

performer, genre and format that could possibly constitute 

“adventurous music and art”. 

TRANSMEDIALE: AMERICAN FACES 

Amidst a Trump presidency and endless sexual harassment 

scandals, Transmediale’s Swedish curator Kristoffer 

Gansing describes this year’s theme, “face value”, as “more 

‘current affairs’ related than usual”, with a particular focus 

on race, class and gender identity issues and quite a few 

guests from across the pond. After a Vorspiel programme of 

exhibitions at project spaces across Berlin (opening Jan 19 

at ACUD), American artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg kicks 

off the Transmediale exhibition proper by literally puting 

the “face” in the title. She created 30 wildly differentlooking 

3D-printed portraits from whistleblower Chelsea 

Manning’s DNA, as mailed out from her Fort Leavenworth 

prison cell in the form of cheek swabs and hair clippings. 

The result, Probably Chelsea, forms the centrepiece of 

Dewey-Hagborg and Manning’s much-anticipated show 

A Becoming Resemblance. It opens January 31 at HKW 

alongside the experimental exhibition programme Territories 

of Complicity. The latter features Vilém Flusser 

resident artists Demystification Committee (Oliver Smith 

and Francesco Tacchini) with Offshore Investigation Vehicle, 

an ongoing research project examining offshore banking; 

and UK author and artist Nick Thurston’s Hate Library of 

language used by far-right political groups in online forums 

presented in physical texts and artworks. 

The conference (Feb 1-4, HKW), organised by Berlinbased 

Greek curator Daphne Dragona, uses “face value” 

as a point of departure to focus on the racial dimensions 

of capitalism. Keynote speaker Jonathan Beller (American 

media theorist and author of The Cinematic Mode of Production) 

will pit capitalism against communism and praise 

the promise of encryption, while French feminist author, 

political analyst and activist Françoise Vergès will add 

26 EXBERLINER 167

WHAT’S ON — Transmediale/CTM 

George E Lewis 

some environmental and colonial considerations 

to the discussion. Other hot topics to be 

touched upon: sexism and racism in the tech 

world (courtesy of gaming culture scholar Lisa 

Nakamura); countercultures in polarised times 

(a discussion between Irish Kill All Normies author 

Angela Nagle and German media theorist 

Florian Cramer); and “blaccelerationism”, or 

the intersection of accelerationist philosophy 

and black radical thought, as explored by Los 

Angeles-based writer and artist Aria Dean. 

Or maybe you’d rather just kick back with a 

movie? The film programme is no less heady, 

with highlights including the German premiere 

of Disseminate and Hold, a short by Rosa 

Barbra about Sao Paolo’s Minhocão highway; 

and Eric Baudelaire’s documentary Also Known 

as Jihadi, the story of a young French man’s 

incarceration for allegedly joining ISIS. 

Emily Peragine 

CTM: TOTAL ENTERTAINMENT FOREVER 

The former electronic music festival is broader 

than ever this year, taking on the social and political 

zeitgeist under the banner of “Turmoil” 

with a clash of all disciplines from art to music 

to science to dance. 

Of course, you’ll still hear plenty of bleeps 

and bloops – like when avant-garde jazz legends 

George E. Lewis and Roscoe Mitchell take the 

stage together with Voyager, an early interactive 

computer invented by Lewis 30 years ago. 

Also anticipating the rise of the machines is 

Berlin’s Holly Herndon, whose performance 

with her vocal ensemble promises to be a 

highlight of a special AI-focused series that 

culminates with a commissioned theatrical/ 

choral work by James Ferraro, the New York 

producer/ conceptual artist who puts the 

“scene” in “Anthropocene”. Over at Bethanien, 

an exhibition running through April 2 willl 

explore Uncanny Valleys of a Possible Future; 

at the CTM opening concert (Jan 27), partipating 

Polish artists Zorka Wollny and Andrzej 

Wasilewski expanding on Wollny’s existing 

artwork “Vox Populi” by triggering the highvoltage 

sounds of a Tesla coil (think Björk’s 

Biophilia) with two vocalists. Even more ambitious 

is Dutchman Philip Vermeulen’s Physical 

Rhythm Machine_Boem BOem, a massive 

programmable drum machine that makes noise 

by shooting balls into boxes. 

The concerts featuring “real” instruments 

tend to push their boundaries. If you think 

you’ve heard all the sounds a cello can make, 

check out Okkyung Lee; ditto with the percussion 

played by Ugandan-British collaboration 

Nihiloxica and Turkish artist Cevdet Erek. It’s 

all about noise for veterans like Atari Teenage 

Riot’s Hanin Elias and proto-techno punks DAF, 

whereas if you prefer a gentler strain of concert 

experience, Scott Kelly and John Judkins’ 

acoustic doom combo will suit you perfectly. 

Dance plays a bigger part this year than in 

the past. In a three-night programme at HAU2, 

choreographer Christoph Winkler will tackle 

the work of the late Ernest Berk with the help 

of musicians groupA, Rashad Becker and Pan 

Daijing. New York’s Rashaad Newsome turns 

vogueing into a multidisciplinary performance 

art piece in FIVE Berlin, while Berlin club fav 

Lotic re-teams up with choreographer Roderick 

George (following last year’s Fleshless 

Beast) to exploring dance genres’ racial implications 

in Embryogenesis. 

Sick of watching other people dance? 

Whether you want to get down to hometown 

EDM rebel Boys Noize or determine whether 

Jason Hou really is the Chinese equivalent of 

early Skrillex, Berghain/Panorama Bar is the 

place to be. Don’t miss February 2, which sees 

a history lesson in gabber and hardcore featuring 

Dutch turntable legend Darkraver while 

Berlin’s Perel spins her house-techno blend 

upstairs (see interview below). 

For complete immersion, Christopher 

Bauder and Kangding Ray’s light and sound 

installation Skalar (opening Jan 27 at Kraftwerk) 

looks to be one for the ‘grammers, 

while a separate “Transcend the Turmoil” 

programme at Funkhaus’ new surroundsound 

space Monom will take you into an 

auditory fourth dimension. Lastly, artist Teun 

Vonk’s installation The Physical Mind (part of 

the Bethanien exhibition) just wants to give 

you a giant hug between two inflatable pillows. 

After all that, you’ll need it. n 

“It’s about love and freedom” 

Part of CTM’s Panorama Bar lineup on February 2, Berlin-based 

DJ Perel tells us about utilising her own personal turmoil to create 

unity on the dance floor. 

I grew up in Saxony, in a small town in the Erzgebirge. My family was part of the 

Seventh-day Adventist Church. In East Germany, that alone was enough to feel different 

from the rest. I never fit in, really, so I looked for an escape in music. 

I actually didn’t know this year’s CTM motto. I was just surprised that it fit so 

well with my new album, Hermetica (Apr 20, DFA Records). One of the big themes 

throughout my album is overcoming fear; on a personal and a societal level. 

When I wrote the lyrics to my single “Die Dimension”, Trump was elected, and 

simultaneously right-wing populism rose in Germany with the AfD. I was so 

taken aback. To this day, I can’t really comprehend it. I feel paralysed from everything 

that’s going on, and music is a form of self-therapy, a need to let it all out 

and process it. That’s how the lyrics about a borderless world came about – not 

only physical borders, but mental ones, too. We can’t really express our emotions 

freely anymore for fear of them being misunderstood. 

In a club context, you can’t control how people will react, but the basic idea is definitely 

a political one: everyone’s the same, it doesn’t matter where you come from and 

who you are. As hippie-esque as it may sound, it’s above all about love and freedom. 


27

WHAT’S ON — Film 

REVIEWS 

Editor’s Choice 

Here come the contenders 

With Oscar season kicking into gear, this month’s big releases are 

dominated by grandstanding central performances. By Paul O’Callaghan 

L’Amant Double 

D: François Ozon 

(France 2017) 

HHH 

Ozon’s camp and 

frequently ridiculous 

erotic thriller, about 

a patient who has 

an affair with her 

therapist and his twin 

brother, is worth 

watching if only for 

the stunning bravura 

of its gynaecological 

opening shot. Starts 

Jan 18 

Beach Rats 

D: Eliza Hittman 

(USA 2017) 

HHHH 

This erotically 

charged, unsentimental, 

compellingly 

voyeuristic coming-of-age 

drama 

confirms sophomore 

director Hittman (see 

interview, page 30) 

as a major new voice 

in US indie cinema. 

Starts Jan 25 

Wonder 

D: Stephen Chbosky 

(USA 2017) 

HHH 

Based on the YA 

novel about the first 

school experience of 

a young boy with a 

genetic disorder, this 

inoffensive familyfriendly 

fare ends 

up, for the most 

part, on the right 

side of charming. 

Starts Jan 25 

At the time of writing, this 

year’s Oscar race is wide 

open, with around a dozen 

titles duking it out for 

consideration. The safest bet among 

the major categories appears to be 

Gary Oldman as Best Actor for his 

turn as Winston Churchill in Joe 

Wright’s Darkest Hour (photo). It’s 

the archetypal Oscar-bait performance 

– a seasoned thesp disappearing 

behind unflattering prosthetics to 

deliver an uncanny impersonation of 

a revered historical figure. The film 

chronicles the turbulent early days of 

World War II from the perspective of 

the British powers-that-be, with the 

newly-elected PM struggling to take 

the reins of a divided government 

as Hitler’s troops march ever closer. 

But while Oldman offers compelling 

glimpses of the haunted soul cowering 

behind the grandstanding orator, 

Wright over-eggs the pudding with 

ostentatious visual flourishes, whilst 

Ben Mendelsohn’s gently lisping King 

George VI pushes the whole thing perilously 

close to parody. What a shame 

it would be for Oldman to net his first 

little gold man for this prestige piffle. 

Frances McDormand is a serious 

Best Actress contender for her outstanding 

work in Martin McDonagh’s 

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, 

Missouri. She plays Mildred Hayes, a 

grieving mother enraged by the local 

authorities’ inability to solve the rape 

and murder of her teenage daughter. 

In a bid for closure, she rents the titular 

billboards to call out the ineptitude 

of police chief Willoughby (Woody 

Harrelson), sending shockwaves 

through the community. 

Some will embrace Mildred as a 

potent symbol of the #MeToo movement 

– she’s a boiler suit-clad badass 

who speaks uncomfortable truths 

about systemic misogyny in a manner 

that’s truly exhilarating to behold. 

But McDonagh delights in testing 

the limits of our sympathy, endowing 

the character with a malicious streak 

that becomes increasingly difficult to 

ignore. Similarly, the filmmaker sets 

himself the challenge of eliciting a degree 

of sympathy for cop Dixon (Sam 

Rockwell), a deadbeat racist with a 

track record in torture. This element 

has proven wildly divisive, with many 

finding Dixon’s redemptive arc hard 

to swallow. For me, this is rendered 

less problematic by the film’s heightened 

realism – this is a world in which 

every seemingly innocuous interaction 

feeds into a satisfyingly tricksy 

overarching narrative. But while he’s 

a prodigiously talented yarn-spinner, 

McDonagh’s childish penchant for 

button-pushing may ultimately scupper 

the film’s Oscar prospects. 

Despite a warm audience reception 

at its Venice world premiere, 

Paolo Virzì’s English-language debut 

The Leisure Seeker was dismissed by 

critics as an awards season also-ran, 

although that didn’t stop the Hollywood 

Foreign Press from doling out 

a 12th Golden Globe nomination to 

star Helen Mirren. She plays Ella, an 

ageing Southern belle dying of cancer 

who resolves to bow out on her own 

terms by embarking on a road trip 

from Boston to Key West with her 

Alzheimer’s-stricken husband John 

(Donald Sutherland). Needless to 

say this is an absolutely shameless 

tearjerker, but I can’t deny that it 

did the job for me. Mirren’s accent is 

ludicrous, but she and Sutherland vividly 

evoke the sense of a relationship 

that’s spanned decades and suffered 

countless setbacks. Meanwhile Virzì 

revels in the beauty of the open road, 

and serves up enough wry humour to 

offset all the schmaltz. n 

Starts Jan 4 The Leisure Seeker HHH D: Paolo Virzì (Italy, US 2017) with 

Donald Sutherland, Helen Mirren | Starts Jan 18 Darkest Hour HH D: 

Joe Wright (UK 2017) with Gary Oldman, Kristin Scott Thomas | Starts Jan 25 

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri HHHH D: Martin McDonagh 

(US, UK 2017) with Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson 

28 



Reviews 

The Untamed 

It Comes at Night 

Starts Jan 11 

The Untamed 

D: Amat Escalante (Mexico 2016) 

with Ruth Ramos, Jesus Meza 

HHHH 

Part oblique allegory, part out-there bodyhorror, 

Mexican auteur Escalante’s fourth 

feature is an unholy fusion of Lovecraftian 

sci-fi and social realist drama which centres 

on the entangled relationships of Alejandra 

(Ramos); her husband Angel (Meza), who is 

having an affair with his brother-in-law; and 

the mysterious Verónica (Simone Bucio). 

Don’t let the telenovela-style premise put 

you off, as the film gradually emerges as a 

potent critique of endemic homophobia and 

misogyny in working-class Mexico. It’s also a 

vivid, outlandish examination of repressed 

sexual desire, calling to mind both Andrzej 

Zulawski’s Possession and the unsettling eroticism 

of Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin. No 

matter how hard you try, you won’t be able 

to escape its constricting tendrils. — DM 

Starts Jan 18 

It Comes at Night 

D: Trey Edward Shults (US 2017) 

with Joel Edgerton, Carmen Ejogo 

HHHH 

2017 was a banner year for horror, with 

critical darling Get Out and bona-fide 

blockbuster It leading the charge. Germany 

rings in the new year with the belated 

release of another unsettling gem. It Comes 

at Night is a pared-down tale of survival 

which chronicles a fragile cohabitation between 

two families after an unidentified virus 

has seemingly ravaged the world. Rooted 

in psychological horror and eschewing 

easy scares, Shults makes up for a sparse 

narrative with bleak beats and a masterfully 

oppressive ratcheting of tension. Some will 

call it out as style over substance, but fans 

of moodily orchestrated scares will marvel 

at how the mounting paranoia and terror is 

handled without resorting to the obvious 

conjuring of monsters. — DM 

Starts Jan 18 

Downsizing 

D: Alexander Payne (US 2017) 

with Matt Damon, Hong Chau 

PRO: A pleasure! 

HHHH 

What if, in the future, we can combat 

overpopulation and live lavishly by getting 

shrunk down to five inches tall? The 

central conceit of this poignant comedydrama 

is as ludicrous as it is unexpectedly 

fertile. Alexander Payne digs past obvious 

visual gags to uncover abundant food for 

thought. In our obsession with technology 

as a source of infinite short-term 

solutions, have we lost sight of empathy, 

decency and basic kindness? Can the fight 

against resource scarcity ultimately be 

sustained by a mentality of greed and the 

pursuit of material excess? Through the 

quirky, frequently hilarious odyssey of our 

pint-sized protagonists, the movie asks 

numerous urgent questions. Meanwhile 

Hong Chau radiates strength and soulfulness 

as a Vietnamese freedom fighter, 

outshining her A-list co-stars despite – or 

perhaps because of – a performance 

based on stilted racial stereotypes. After 

duds like The Descendants and Nebraska, 

this is vintage Payne. — ZS 

CON: Payneful 

HH 

Payne reportedly began work on Downsizing 

over a decade ago, and the finished 

product has the distinct whiff of a long-ingestation 

passion project. You can’t fault 

the writer-director for ambition, but once 

the novelty of the neat premise wears off, 

the film swiftly reveals itself as a grab bag 

of half-baked ideas, with an aggravatingly 

flippant tone that leaves one reluctant 

to engage with its occasional sojourns 

into sincerity. Payne seems driven predominantly 

by a desire to wrong-foot the 

viewer, which pays off spectacularly in one 

early plot pivot, but soon proves exasperating. 

The most head-scratching element 

is Chau’s turn as Ngoc Lan. In a sense she’s 

the heart and soul of the film, but the New 

Orleans-raised actress delivers her lines 

in thickly accented broken English, making 

her every utterance feel like a cheap joke. 

Adding insult to injury is Christoph Waltz 

trotting out his same old larger-than-life 

schtick as an ageing playboy. Payne’s weakest 

film to date, by a country mile. — PO’C 

Don Giovanni 

Wolfgang Amadeus 

Mozart 

Buy your 

tickets 

now! 

6/12/19 JANUARY 2018 

ALL PERFORMANCES WITH ENGLISH SURTITLES! 

0049 030 47 99 74 00


“ Women are always 

attacked when they 

step out of their lane” 

Eliza Hittman on appropriating the male 

gaze in Beach Rats. By Zhuo-Ning Su 

DON’T MISS 

Daughters of Darkness 

Programming 

collective Prachtige 

Films presents a rare 

screening of the cult 

1970s lesbian vampire 

caper, with director 

Harry Kümel in 

attendance. Jan 12, 

Moviemento 

Hellas Filmbox 

This year, Berlin’s 

Greek film fest aims to 

build bridges between 

the Greek and German 

creative communities 

through panel events 

and discussions, with 

participants including 

filmmaker Zafeiris Haitidis 

and singer-songwriter 

Konstantin 

Wecker. Jan 24-28, 

Urban Spree 

The Long Summer of 

Theory 

This month at EX- 

Blicks, director Irene 

von Alberti introduces 

her Mitte-set 

study of creative 

chaos, contemporary 

feminism and the 

dread of gentrification. 

Jan 29, 20:30, 

Lichtblick 

The New York filmmaker won 

a directing award at Sundance 

last year for her intimate tale of 

teen Frankie (Harris Dickinson), who 

chases girls alongside his red-blooded 

bros by day and hooks up with older 

men by night. Shot on 16mm, it’s a visually 

evocative portrait of conflicted 

adolescence. It hits German screens 

on January 25 (see review, page 28). 

Both Beach Rats and your first 

feature It Felt Like Love revolve 

around teenage protagonists. 

For me, there’s something very 

exciting about watching young 

people act, something open and 

honest. As actors gets older, they 

often learn to act too well. Thematically, 

I’m interested in adolescence 

as a process, and in the pain that 

comes with realising something 

about yourself that may haunt you 

through your adulthood. 

How did the character of Frankie 

come to you? As part of the casting 

process for It Felt Like Love, I met 

kids from a neighbourhood in Brooklyn 

called Gerritsen Beach. Kids 

there are known as “beach rats”, 

which stuck with me as a potential title. 

It’s a very working-class borough, 

with meth and opiate problems. But 

the kids also have access to 

the water, and a lot of them 

have jet skis. There’s this 

lazy beach vibe, which you never really 

associate with New York City. 

And then you had the idea to 

make it about an identity crisis? 

That also comes from the reality of 

the neighbourhood. The beaches at 

night are cruising spots. So there’s 

this natural tension that exists 

between two worlds, embodied in 

transactional experiences with older 

guys who I picture driving from the 

city to the suburbs and stopping 

at this halfway point. This got me 

thinking about a character who gets 

caught between these two worlds. 

Last summer Kathryn Bigelow 

was criticised for telling an 

African-American story as a 

white woman in Detroit. Were 

you worried about making a 

film about masculinity? I was 

nervous because women are always 

attacked when they step out of their 

lane. There’s a tragic expectation 

that women’s work should always 

be a reflection of being a woman. As 

soon as a woman tries to tackle history, 

politics, or issues around men, 

there’s always a personal attack. Obviously 

there are issues within the 

system about letting marginalised 

voices have opportunities. But I 

don’t think that every time a woman 

makes a piece of art that’s slightly 

outside her own experiences, she 

should be torn apart in a witch hunt. 

Has your Sundance win brought 

new opportunities? Well, the 

TV world opened up to me, which 

has given me an opportunity to 

make money directing for the first 

time! Culturally I think Sundance 

is very much about finding the next 

‘it boy’. Even with a film like ours 

that plays well, you’re always in the 

shadow of some movie that sells 

to Fox Searchlight for $10 million 

because they think they’ve found a 

new ‘it boy’ director. 

What inspired the film’s hazy 

visuals? I worked with Hélène 

Louvart, a very experienced French 

cinematographer. I showed her photographs 

by Barbara Crane, who did 

a lot of Polaroid work in the 1980s. 

She did these close-up shots of 

people’s bodies touching each other 

in the summer heat. They capture 

sexual, private moments. Hélène 

really liked this style and we talked 

about bringing that to the beach, 

as if we were turning on a flashlight 

and catching animals creeping 

around in the darkness. 

Did you feel you were taking a 

risk casting British actor Harris 

Dickinson as Frankie? He 

was the best person we auditioned, 

but I was terrified that he wasn’t 

going to blend into this world. He’d 

never even been to Brooklyn! But 

he hung out with the other guys 

before the shoot, and played handball 

with them. We talked about his 

posture, but ultimately he found 

the character by himself. n 

30 



Preview 

Princess Cyd The Florida Project Tonsler Park 

The whole nine yards 

The ninth Unknown Pleasures 

film festival brings the best of 

the US to Berlin. 

This smartly programmed showcase of recent 

American indie cinematic highlights 

includes Oscar hopefuls, festival darlings 

and under-the-radar gems. It kicks off on 

January 12 with charming teen lesbian drama 

Princess Cyd, which sees writer-director 

Stephen Cone strike a deft balance between 

coming-of-age tale and coming-out 

story. Giving it a serious run for its money 

as the programme’s most empathetic film 

is Sean Baker’s unmissable The Florida 

Project, an exuberant and profoundly 

moving portrait of American poverty 

which proves that 2015’s Tangerine was no 

fluke. Having presented The Experimenter 

at Unknown Pleasures in 2016, Michael 

Almereyda returns this year with two 

films: Escapes, a documentary about the 

life of actor and Blade Runner screenwriter 

Hampton Fancher; and Marjorie Prime, 

a meditative, Black Mirror-esque sci-fi 

story based on Jordan Harrison’s Pulitzernominated 

play about an old woman (an 

excellent late-career turn by Lois Smith) 

who speaks to a holographic projection of 

her late husband (Jon Hamm). Almereyda 

imbues it with poignant musings on mortality, 

exploring how we dissolve and bend 

memories in order to better deal with the 

tragedies that befall us. Also making a 

repeat appearance is actor John Cho, who 

stars in both Aaron Katz’s mystery thriller 

Gemini and Kogonada’s formally striking 

feature debut Columbus. Set against 

the impressive architectural backdrop of 

Columbus, Indiana, the latter film takes 

a familiar, Garden State-like premise and 

steers it away from maudlin territory. The 

languorous pace may frustrate those looking 

for a wordier, more upbeat boy-meetsgirl 

encounter, but this artfully shot story 

of two souls caught between obligation 

and desire is well worth a look. Tonsler 

Park, a 16mm black-and-white doc filmed 

at Charlottesville polling stations on Nov 

8, 2016, sees filmmaker Kevin Jerome 

Everson observe the African American 

men and women working in the stations 

before Trump’s unexpected presidential 

victory, allowing viewers to project their 

bittersweet hindsight onto proceedings. 

And receiving its belated German premiere 

is Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey, 

Terrence Malick’s 2016 experimental doc 

which sets itself the lofty goal of recounting 

the history of the known universe 

in 90 minutes. Predictably for Malick, 

it’s both narratively baffling and visually 

sumptuous. — David Mouriquand 

Unknown Pleasures Jan 12-28 Arsenal 

and Wolf Kino, full programme at 

unknownpleasures.de 

ULYSSES 

based on the novel by James Joyce 

With his novel Ulysses, published in 1922, James Joyce pushed 

the art of storytelling to new limits. Taking Homer’s Odyssey as 

a framework, it follows the peripatetic wanderings of Leopold 

Bloom in the course of a normal day in Dublin on 16 June 1904. 

Joyce builds up layer upon layer, moves between different linguistic 

registers, styles and discourses, interweaves the hissing of 

frying kidneys with discussions on Shakespeare with the cemetery 

with the brothel. A momentous 20th-century text, which, 

by applying multiple perspectives, creates a fragmented picture 

of the characters, showing that language not only depicts and 

describes, it can also convey the manifold possibilities and conditions 

of modern subjectivity. 

Director: Sebastian Hartmann 

Premiere: January 19, 2018 

upcoming dates with English surtitles: January 28, February 18, 2018 

For tickets and more information visit deutschestheater.de/en

WHAT’S ON — Music 


Bowie’s back... again 

Two years after the Starman’s return to the celestial plane, Berlin 

hasn’t stopped commemorating its favourite adopted son. By Michael Hoh 

MUSIC NEWS 

Let’s get theoretical 

Contemporary music 

might lack a Harvey 

Weinstein type so 

far, but that doesn’t 

mean women in the 

field have it easy. 

Artists like Holly 

Herndon and Jennifer 

Walshe tackle 

the topic head-on 

during the Hanns 

Eisler music school’s 

Fem*_Music*_ 

series. Jan 12, 26 

A Byte of cake 

Video killed the radio 

star? Perhaps, but 

the medium is still 

alive and kicking. 

Hamburg-based 

ByteFM, which 

opened its Berlin 

branch in 2012, 

turns 10 this month. 

Congrats! 

If you’re a certain kind of Berlin 

music nerd, you’ll remember 

exactly where you were on 

January 11, 2016: on the pavement 

outside Hauptstraße 155 in Schöneberg, 

sobbing along to a mass a 

capella rendition of “Space Oddity” 

in front of a makeshift shrine of 

candles, flowers and old album covers. 

Two years later, the shrine has 

been replaced by a small plaque and 

the pilgrimages have dropped off in 

their frequency. But as this month’s 

concerts can attest, the Thin White 

Duke has been far from forgotten. 

Just ask longtime collaborator 

Tony Visconti. Last year, the Berlin 

Trilogy producer and adulterous 

“Heroes” inspiration joined with 

original Spiders from Mars drummer 

Mick “Woody” Woodmansey and 

a bunch of other musicians under 

the guise of Holy Holy (photo) to 

perform Bowie songs from the late 

1960s and early 70s. They’ll be bringing 

their Ziggy Stardust-heavy project 

to Tempodrom on January 9, one day 

after what would’ve been Bowie’s 

71st birthday. Not to be outdone, the 

tribute act Celebrating Bowie features 

his longtime piano player Mike 

Garson, as well as guitarists Adrian 

Belew (Lodger) and Gerry Leonard 

(Heathen and Reality), who’ll try to 

guess what Bowie’s setlist would 

have sounded like in 2018. Prior 

performances have seen cameo appearances 

from Sting, Seal and Ewan 

McGregor, but will any of them make 

it to Huxleys? You never know. 

Meanwhile, nobody at Lido’s Bowie 

Tribute Berlin ever actually performed 

with David, but if you play a little Six 

Degrees of Kevin Bacon you’ll get 

there: Before moving to Schöneberg 

in 1976, Bowie briefly lived with the 

late Edgar Froese of Tangerine Dream, 

whose current frontman, Thorsten 

Quaeschning, will be headlining the 

evening with his band Picture Palace 

Music. Surely Edgar must’ve told 

Thorsten some juicy stories about 

Bowie’s WG habits while passing time 

on the tour bus? If not, your own bus 

tour through Bowie’s Berlin (included 

in a €45 VIP ticket) ought to scratch 

that trivia itch. It’ll inevitably pass by 

Hansa Studios, which will be holding 

their own special-birthday-edition 

tours of the building from which 

Bowie once observed Visconti and his 

mistress “standing by the Wall”. 

But enough dwelling in the past. 

Just as David Bowie fantasised about 

“Life On Mars?” in 1971, Berlin’s 

prepared piano virtuoso Hauschka 

tries to imagine his descendents 

living on the Red Planet on his latest 

album What If. After enriching his 

solo performance with self-playing 

pianos at Funkhaus last year, he falls 

back on musicians made of flesh 

and blood, taking the stage with 

the Alma Quartet at Volksbühne on 

New Years Day. “What If” Bowie was 

Danish? Liima doesn’t really answer 

that question, but frontman Casper 

Clausen’s style of singing has been 

compared to the Stjernemand once 

or twice – and indeed, if you close 

your eyes hard and listen to “Amerika”, 

you can almost hear the rich 

sonorities of Bowie circa 1983. And 

yes, just to cram Alt-J in there as 

well, Britain’s former indie Next Big 

Thing made tabloid headlines back 

in 2013 when drummer Thom Green 

said he’d “be lying if I said I was 

excited” about Bowie’s return to the 

stage. One might say the same thing 

about Alt-J’s return to Berlin in 2017, 

but while this year’s album Relaxer 

might not hit the heights of “Life 

on Mars?”, they at least have their 

Mercury Prize to fall back on. n 

Hauschka & Alma Quartet Jan 1, 20:00 Volksbühne | Bowie Tribute Berlin 

2018 Jan 6, 20:00 Lido | Bowie 71. Birthday Special Jan 6-10 Hansa Studios | 

Tony Visconti & Woody Woodmansey’s Holy Holy Jan 9, 20:00 Tempodrom 

| Liima Jan 17, 20:00 Festsaal Kreuzberg | Alt-J Jan 18, 20:00 Max-Schmeling- 

Halle | Celebrating David Bowie Jan 19, 20:00 Huxleys Neue Welt 

32 



Tips 

Bordel Winter Spécial: Aquarius Heaven 

Clubbing 

Ratchet 

Caramel Mafia and Offbeatsupportah invited Lenki 

Balboa and Steve David to celebrate the first anniversary 

of their queer hip hop shindig behind the decks at St. 

Georg. Jan 6, 23:30 

Noisekölln 

Skilfully switching between A and B sides, the tapefocused 

Berlin label celebrates its resurrection from a 

two-year hiatus at Sameheads. Jan 11, 22:00 

Bordel Winter Spécial 

Wilde Renate’s Bordel des Arts techno debauchery once 

again ventures to snowy winter wonderlands with Aquarius 

Heaven, Schlepp Geist, Mimi Love and others in the DJ 

booth. Jan 18, 23:00 

Classical and Contemporary 

The Best of Ennio Morricone 

What do Uma Thurman, Clint Eastwood and Samuel L. 

Jackson have in common? All their badass onscreen action 

was enhanced by Morricone’s scores. At the Philharmonie, 

conductor Marco Seco and 100 performers will try 

to do them justice. Jan 9, 20:00 

TANZTAGE BERLIN 


Requiem pour L. 

At Haus der Berliner Festspiele, composer Fabrizio Cassol 

and choreographer Alain Platel rework Mozart’s requiem 

to incorporate African music and the real-life story of a 

woman who opted for euthanasia (see page 37). Jan 18-20 

Ultraschall Festival 

Catch up on the latest in contemporary classical with performances 

by Lux:nm, Trio Catch, the Ascolta ensemble 

and more at Pierre Boulez Saal, Radialsystem V and other 

venues. Jan 17-21 

JANUAR 

04 – 14 

Ultraschall Festival: Trio Catch 


SOPHIENSAELE.COM


DON’T MISS 

Mfa Kera & Black 

Heritage 

Blues goddess Mfa 

Kera takes the stage 

at Quasimodo. Her 

incredibly power-ful 

voice will be accompanied 

by her backing 

band Black Heritage 

as well as Mike Russell. 

Jan 12, 22:00 

Giorgio Poi 

Still hooked on 

Ricchi e Poveri, 

Germany? Try to stay 

a little more current 

with the next big 

thing from Italy playing 

his chilled-out 

tunes at Monarch. 

Jan 21, 20:30 

A. Savage 

Taking a break from 

Parquet Courts, 

frontman Andrew 

Savage decided to 

lower the BPM and 

aim for a little more 

country-esque melancholia. 

Catch him 

live playing songs off 

his solo album Thawing 

Dawn at Monarch. 

Jan 22, 20:00 

Lina Tullgren/ 

Adam Torres 

Tullgren’s laid-back, 

minimalist tunes 

meet Torres’ dreamy, 

falsetto-drenched arrangements 

at this in - 

die double booking at 

Kantine am Berghain. 

Jan 28, 20:00 

Interview 

“ People were walking 

around here wearing 

laboratory coats” 

Jenny Browne 

Genre-bending composer and pianist Nils Frahm 

on how his new studio at the Funkhaus inspired 

his latest album All Melody. By Jenny Browne 

Born in Hamburg but based 

in Berlin since 2006, Frahm 

has done everything from 

helping to build the world’s tallest 

piano to creating never-beforeheard 

sounds with toilet brushes. 

After releasing a string of solo piano 

and synth works, he crept into the 

spotlight with 2011’s Felt and 2013’s 

highly acclaimed Spaces before 

gaining nationwide fame with the 

score to Sebastian Schipper’s Berlin 

insta-classic Victoria. His new album 

will be released on London’s Erased 

Tapes on January 26, just after a 

string of four sold-out shows next 

to his self-built studio at Schöneweide’s 

Funkhaus. 

What were you up to during 

your touring hiatus in 2017? A 

combination of travelling, making 

the new album and sitting in 

the studio. I talk to my friends and 

they’re like, “What’s new?” and I’m 

like, “I don’t know.” Every day it’s 

just the same smells and sounds 

of the studio – it’s a time capsule. 

When can I apply for another job? I 

can’t wait to tour. 

How will this live setup differ 

from your last proper shows 

in 2015? The toilet brushes were 

one example of how I tried to use 

simple objects to create something 

completely new. This time round 

we’ve built an organ, a mixing 

desk and a new harmonium to 

tour with, so we’ll have more new 

sounds. The 2015 tour was just a 

test run to see whether we could 

move two tonnes of fragile equipment 

across Europe. What we’re 

planning for this tour would have 

seemed impossible back then. 

This album feels more electronic 

than your previous works. I 

tried to make the record which was 

missing from my own collection. 

For me, it’s all music, regardless of 

whether it’s acoustic or electronic. 

Songs with drum machines alongside 

piano solo tracks shouldn’t 

work on paper, but I thought if 

somebody was going to try it, it 

should be me. For more opinionated 

fans, it will be a tough one to swallow, 

but people who respect me as a 

musician will hopefully like it. This 

album is bridge-building for me. 

We know the rich history, but 

what makes the Funkhaus so 

special to your sound? The studio 

is an integral part of it. I’ve been 

here since September 2015, spending 

the first six months setting it 

up and building equipment, and the 

rest recording. Every room has different 

acoustics, and infinite unwritten 

songs within them. It rushes me 

to be faster, telling me gently, “Use 

me, do more!” I’m like, “Okay, I 

will!” I spent almost every day here, 

using every minute. 

How does it compare to your 

previous studio? The location 

changes the music, which you could 

hear already on Spaces. After 12 years 

in the studio at my Wedding flat, I 

began to feel like what I was creating 

there didn’t matter as much. It 

was low-key, I could do my laundry 

34 



whilst making a mix, and I should have celebrated it more, but I 

didn’t because it felt like washing my socks. It gave everything an 

understated quality. Here, everything feels overstated. 

Why do you feel so connected to Berlin? For the first eight 

years I was here I lived off €800 a month – where else could I 

have done that? That’s why I’ll never say a bad word about this 

city, but I’m just glad I came at the right time. It’s ever-evolving, 

and definitely going somewhere, I’m just not quite sure where. 

Yes it’s inspiring, but I’m not here for the culture, I’m here for 

the experts who understand my philosophy. 

And we all know that Germany has a solid reputation for 

delivering a quality product? I’m a recording geek, I love the 

history. The 1950s were about functionality and quality – one 

amp would have cost as much as a car, whereas now you can buy 

one for 10 cents. Music used to be for scientists; people were 

walking around here wearing laboratory coats. Germany wanted 

to set broadcasting standards. It makes me proud to be here. 

People who spend €100,000 on speakers… they don’t believe in 

God, they believe in music. 

Let’s talk about genre. Your name seems to come attached 

to the ‘neo-classical’ label. Yes, but you also have Chilly Gonzales, 

Hauschka (see page 32), Max Richter – they made some of the 

first records of this ‘new’ movement, playing the music I always 

wanted to make. Society was stuck in this cycle of turning music 

up, from glam rock to Eurotrash. Around 2006, these composers 

began to turn down the volume, playing quiet songs in venues 

where the fridge was louder than the music, and I thought, this is 

so cool. But the genre itself is old. Penguin Cafe, Roedelius… I was 

confused when Peter Broderick said, “Nils, this is new!” I didn’t 

invent anything, I stole from the artists before me. 

Jenny Browne 

nine inch nails 

02.07.18 · zitadelle 

greta 

van fleet 

25.03.18 · Kesselhaus 

walk off 

the earth 

12.04.18 · Huxleys 

limp bizkit 

12.06.18 · Max-Schmeling-Halle 

billy idol 


amy macdonald 


Is the younger generation getting more interested in 

classical music? Teenagers are going to philharmonics to see 

us play, they sit down during concerts again… I hope that we’ve 

opened the gates to these spaces. We miss our past and want to 

reconnect again. I’m trying to build a bridge between people who 

love Mozart, and those who think John Cage is a genius. Music 

allows me to do this. n 

Nils Frahm Jan 22-25 (sold out), Funkhaus, Schöneweide 


amparanoia 

25.01.18 · lido 

iron & wine 

+ half waif 

25.01.18 · Huxleys 

aviv geffen 

feat. blackfield 

30.01.18 · Frannz 

mgmt 

30.01.18 · Huxleys 

www.trinitymusic.de 

at the drive in 

& death from above 

26.02.18 · Columbiahalle 

franz ferdinand 

07.03.18 · tempodrom 

first aid kit 

08.03.18 · Columbiahalle 

rufus wainwright 

17.07.18 · apostel-Paulus-Kirche

GIG 

LISTINGS 

January 

YOUR GUIDE TO THIS 

MONTH’S BERLIN 

CONCERTS. 

präsentiert von 

THE EARLY DAYS, BRIT POP & BEYOND 1980-2010 

05.01.2018 | LIDO | British.Music.Club | King Kong Kicks | Karrera Klub DJs 

SHAMBOLICS+SERGE & THE BLUE RACOONS 

HENRY ROLLINS SPOKEN WORD - TRAVEL SLIDESHOW 

LEYYA 

19.01.2018 | LIDO | Karrera Klub DJs 

04.02.2018 | GROSSER SAAL DES RBB 

GLEN HANSARD 

20.02.2018 | 21.02.2018 | ADMIRALSPALAST 

NIC CESTER 

23.02.2018 | LIDO 23.02.2018 | KANTINE AM BERGHAIN 

THE RURAL ALBERTA ADVANTAGE 

28.02.2018 | LIDO 

BRIAN FALLON & THE HOWLING WEATHER 

01.03.2018 | ASTRA 

THE RURAL ALBERTA ADVANTAGE 

28.02.2018 | LIDO 

THE WOMBATS 

15.04.2018 | ASTRA 

K.FLAY 

21.04.2018 | GRETCHEN 

WEDNESDAY, I’M IN LOVE 

EVERY WEDNESDAY 23H FREE ENTRY | KARRERA KLUB DJ’S | BOHNENGOLD 

Indie, Brit Pop, Electro, Wave & Beyond from the early days until now 

Info & Tickets: www.karreraklub.de 

Deer Tick 

24.01.18 Bi Nuu 

Anderson East 

26.01.18 Musik & Frieden 

Girls in Hawaii 

14.02.18 Bi Nuu 

Shakey Graves 

21.02.18 Privatclub 

Pokey LaFarge 

21.02.18 Festsaal Kreuzberg 

Bahamas 


Courtney Marie Andrews 


The Barr Brothers 

22.01.18 Lido 

Calexico 

10.03.18 Tempodrom 

SO MANY 

GREAT 

GIGS BUT 

SO LITTLE 

CASH? 

Amusement Parks On Fire 


Yo La Tengo 

07.05.18 Heimathafen Neukölln 

Wallis Bird 

21.03.18 Passionskirche 

Joan As Police Woman 

09.04.18 Festsaal Kreuzberg 

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds 

16.04.18 Max-Schmeling-Halle 

TICKETS UND INFOS: SCHONEBERG.DE 

TICKETS UND INFOS: SCHONEBERG.DE 

Read the Exberliner Weekly and 

Exberliner Weekend newsletters 

for your chance to win free tix 

to the hottest gigs in town! 

Sign up at: exberliner.com 

36 EXBERLINER 167

WHAT’S ON — Stage 

Natalia Labake 

Wish they were here 

Should we bemoan the lack of showstopping guest productions in Berlin, 

or be grateful for the local talent we have? Why not both? By Daniel Mufson 


I 

admit it: Sometimes I get homesick 

for New York theatre. Or 

rather, for theatre in New York. 

There’s a difference. It’s not just acclaimed 

off-off-Broadway locals like 

the Elevator Repair Service, The Civilians 

and Radiohole who don’t seem 

to make it to Berlin – though even 

the renowned Wooster Group hasn’t 

played here since 2006. Prominent 

guests from Europe also find it easier 

to perform across the ocean than right 

here in their backyard. Two years ago, 

the Berliner Festspiele touted the first 

Berlin performance of the worldfamous 

Nederlands Dans Theater in 15 

years. Fifteen years! 

Last month, I again had a queasy 

feeling of missing out while my New 

York Facebook friends debated the 

merits of Ariane Mnouchkine’s A Room 

in India, on tour in Manhattan. From 

what I hear, it sounds like a sprawling, 

wondrous mess of theatrical styles and 

worldly themes from the 78-year-old 

French theatre titan. It premiered in 

Paris in 2016 but there are no plans 

to bring it to Berlin – and in fact, 

Mnouchkine’s company, Théâtre de 

Soleil, hasn’t been here since 2005. 

When I spoke about this with 

Aenne Quiñones, the theatre curator 

at HAU, she pointed out that it’s 

not her mission to present a crosssection 

of artists from New York or 

any other city; instead, she looks for 

locally relevant groups who tend to 

be part of the “off” or “free” scene. 

And HAU often tries to have an ongoing 

relationship as a producer of a 

particular group’s work. 

There is something to be said for 

developing a deeper relationship with 

artists, rather than presenting a survey 

of what’s out there. Boston-born Chris 

Kondek is one such repeat invitee to 

be grateful for. Now a Berlin local, he’s 

designed video for luminaries such as 

the Wooster Group, Laurie Anderson 

and Meg Stuart. For years, he’s also 

collaborated with Christiane Kühl 

under the name Doublelucky Productions; 

their new work about the “life 

tracking” fad, The Hairs of Your Head 

Are Numbered, is part of HAU’s January 

“Spy on Me” festival, as is a repeat 

of last year’s data-mining performance 

You Are Out There. 

Local artists are even more central 

to the Sophiensaele’s programming, 

and you’ll see plenty of them at their 

annual dance festival, Tanztage. In 

Arcadia (photo), for example, the 

Berlin- and Buenos Aires-based duo 

Ana Laura Lozza and Bárbara Hang 

choreograph both bodies and objects 

to explore the dynamics of physical 

order and disorder. Also at Sophiensaele 

this month, an English-language 

“unsettled cabaret” called Across the 

Middle, Past the East, starring nine 

female Middle Eastern Berliners, 

promises to bring music and humour 

to a serious subject. 

The Haus der Berliner Festspiele 

is the obvious venue for established 

names, though many of their guests 

from the past five years aren’t exactly 

unknown at other Berlin venues: 

Forced Entertainment, Rosas, Robert 

Wilson. Festspiele director Thomas 

Oberender cites budgetary constraints 

but also says he’s aware of “audience 

hunger” for large-format theatre and 

plans to satisfy it “in the near future.” 

For January, he’s offering Requiem 

pour L.: Alain Platel, choreographer 

for Les Ballets C de la B, will provide 

movement and visuals to complement 

composer Fabrizio Cassol’s reinterpretation 

of Mozart’s Requiem, played 

by 14 international musicians and 

incorporating styles such as jazz and 

Afropop. Not bad... but I still want to 

see that Mnouchkine play! n 

Tanztage 2018 Jan 5-15 Sophiensaele | Requiem pour L. Jan 18-20, 20:00 

Haus der Berliner Festspiele | Doublelucky Productions: The Hairs of 

Your Head Are Numbered Jan 18-21 You Are Out There Jan 24-25 HAU2, 

in German and English | Across the Middle, Past the East Jan 25-28, 20:00 

Sophiensaele Kantine 

DON’T MISS 

Expat Expo Info Night 

Every April, the 

English Theatre 

hosts a performance 

festival showcasing 

English-language 

artists based in 

Berlin. Come by to 

meet potential collaborators 

and find 

out what you need 

to do to take part. 

Jan 9, 19:00 

Nassim 

Nassim Soleimanpour, 

Berlin-based Iranian 

playwright and winner 

of last year’s Fringe 

First award in Edinburgh, 

will perform 

in this experiment 

in improvisational 

staged reading at the 

English Theatre. Jan 

12, 13, 15-17, 20:00 

Colonia Digital: The 

Empire Feeds Back 

Andcompany&Co.’s 

bilingual performance 

(English and German) 

premieres at 

HAU1, imagining the 

discovery of a ruined, 

antiquated data centre 

in the midst of a 

desert, a “communist 

machine” intended to 

help steer Salvador 

Allende’s socialist 

economy. Jan 19, 

20:00; Jan 20, 22, 

23, 19:00 



Interview 

“ Families are fucked up all over” 

American playwright and actor Tracy Letts on the 

universal appeal of his plays, now in German at 

the Berliner Ensemble. By Daniel Mufson 

DON’T MISS 

Ulysses 

Director Sebastian 

Hartmann is known 

for controversy as 

well as radically 

reinterpreting texts. 

Now, he’s directing 

the January premiere 

of this adaptation 

of James Joyce’s 

landmark text at the 

Deutsches Theater. 

Jan 19, 19:00; Jan 

20, 28, 18:00 (surtitles 

Jan 28) 

Medea 

When this (Germanonly) 

Schauspiel 

Frankfurt production 

was invited to Berlin’s 

2013 Theatertreffen, 

Constanze Becker 

won the award for 

best actress for her 

work in the title role. 

Now it’s part of the 

Berliner Ensemble’s 

repertory. Jan 26, 

19:30; Jan 27, 15:00 

Duato/Shechter 

British-Israeli choreographer 

Hofesh 

Shechter joins 

Staatsballett artistic 

director Nacho Duato 

at the Komische 

Oper, starting with 

Shechter’s acclaimed 

The Art of Not Looking 

Back and ending 

with Duato’s new 

sociopolitical work 

Erde, which deals 

with threats to the 

environment. Jan 

24, 19:30 

Julian Röder 

Letts might be most familiar 

at the moment as Nick from 

the HBO comedy Divorce, or 

from his two seasons as Senator 

Lockhart on Homeland, but his 

theatre credentials are just as, if 

not more, impressive: a 2013 Tony 

Award for his performance in the 

Broadway revival of Who’s Afraid of 

Virginia Woolf? and a 2008 Pulitzer 

Prize for writing the play August: 

Osage County, which later became a 

movie headlined by Meryl Streep. 

He’s also found an admirer in 

Oliver Reese, the Berliner Ensemble’s 

new artistic director, who’s 

added two translations of Letts’ 

works to the B.E. repertoire: Eine 

Familie (the German title for August: 

Osage County), which depicts 

a dysfunctional family in Oklahoma 

coming to terms with its many 

secrets, and Eine Frau: Mary Page 

Marlowe, which traces the life of 

its protagonist from birth to death. 

Letts spoke to us on his two-day 

visit to the city, just before seeing 

Reese’s staging of Eine Frau. 

Do you normally check on 

productions of your own plays? 

No, I learned my lesson a long 

time ago – not to go looking at 

other [stagings of my plays]. But 

yes, I’m seeing Mary Page tonight. I 

made an exception in this instance 

because I don’t know if Mary Page 

is going to get done a lot. It’s an 

unusual and opaque piece. I’m 

curious to see what somebody else 

does with it. 

And where did Mary Page Marlowe 

come from? It was inspired 

by the death of my mother – it is 

in no way, shape or form about my 

mom, but there’s something about 

identity, who we are at different 

times of our lives. Are we the same 

person we were 20 years ago? Are 

you the same person you were 

before you lived in Berlin? And I 

thought to myself: What 11 scenes 

would you take from your life to 

say, this is who I am? Most people 

would take the big events: the birth 

of their children, deaths of parents, 

marriages, funerals. But somebody 

else, if they were choosing for you, 

might choose some moments, say, 

when you weren’t at your best, or 

some very banal moments that you 

might not even remember. There’s 

also a formal exercise at work in 

Mary Page Marlowe – the scrambling 

of the chronology as well as multiple 

actors playing Mary Page – but 

at its core, it’s the story of a very 

ordinary life. I won’t say it’s not an 

interesting life. I suppose it makes 

the point that all lives are interesting 

when looked at in that way. 

Do you have a sense of how 

your works are received in different 

cultures? They describe 

such a specifically American 

milieu. How well does it translate? 

Well, August is done everywhere, 

right? It translated very 

well, I guess, because it turns out 

that families are fucked up all over 

the world, and people recognise 

that wherever we go. In terms of 

Mary Page, I have no idea how it 

will be received. Oliver tells me the 

audiences are liking it a lot, here. 

That’s all I care about. 

When you’re in Hollywood, 

do people ask why you’re still 

bothering with theatre? No, I 

think they’re too intimidated by 

my theatre past, frankly. There’s a 

sense you get with movie people: 

They know theatre’s the real deal, 

right? And that’s why they’re always 

wanting to prove themselves 

on stage, because they know. They 

know that theatre is better than 

movies and movies are better than 

TV. Think about the most profound 

experiences you’ve ever had 

watching a play, watching a film, 

watching a TV show, and I guarantee 

you, it’s going to be in that 

order every time: play, number 

one; movie, two; TV show, three. 

It’s a superior form, you can’t do 

anything about that! n 

Eine Frau: Mary Page Marlowe 

Jan 12, 19, 19:30 (in German), 

Berliner Ensemble | Eine Familie 

returns to the schedule in February 

38 


Reviews 


NASSIM 

Julian Röder 

Women in Trouble 

Kennedy versus Castorf 

The figureheads of the new and old Volksbühne square off with 

two new plays – and two very different aesthetics. By Daniel Mufson 

Les Misérables 

In a kind of dramaturgical face-off, 

Susanne Kennedy and Frank Castorf 

premiered their new productions 

within days of each other in late November 

and early December. Kennedy, the face of 

theatre at the new Volksbühne, introduced 

Women in Trouble, a collage of texts found 

on the internet and lip-synced by actors 

wearing latex masks. Castorf, meanwhile, 

took his old Volksbühne aesthetic to the 

Berliner Ensemble with an adaptation 

of the Victor Hugo novel Les Misérables, 

staged with a mix of veteran Castorf actors 

and Berliner Ensemble regulars. Kennedy’s 

production was mostly reviled by critics 

for being emotionless and pretentious, 

while Castorf’s elicited ambivalent 

frustration as a work whose virtuoso 

actors had great moments but were 

ultimately dragged down by the length of 

the evening – seven and a half hours for 

the premiere, miraculously slashed to a 

mere six-hour length by the time we saw it 

just two nights later. 

Let’s start with Les Misérables, Hugo’s 

epic about repentant ex-convict Jean 

Valjean ruthlessly pursued by police 

inspector Javert. Are there actors often 

shouting for no reason? Check. Repetitious 

exchanges of dialogue that sound 

improvised? Check. Interpolations of 

tenuously related texts? Check. Video images 

of actors beamed on a screen while 

the audience’s direct view of them is often 

obscured? Of course. Forgive a question, 

though: Why are these techniques appropriate 

here? They have no bearing on the 

themes or formal aspects of Hugo’s text. 

They’ve just been Castorf’s shtick for 18 

years, so here we go again. 

Despite its chilly reception, Women in 

Trouble constitutes a welcome assault on 

Castorf’s stagnant directorial habits. Kennedy’s 

production may require patience 

and altered expectations of what a theatrical 

event should be, but her staging 

techniques complement each other and 

form a cohesive vision that’s all her own. 

She collected texts from the internet, the 

Bible, films and other sources and divided 

them among various representations of a 

character named Angelina Dreem. Dreem 

would appear to be an actress suffering 

from cancer, but, as is usually the case with 

this kind of textual collage, the search for 

a clearly defined plot and characters will 

only result in frustration. In their place, 

Women in Trouble offers images and soundbites 

that touch on various contemporary 

phenomena: modernity’s technological 

sterility; the estrangement that humanity 

has inflicted upon itself through its 

fetishisation of technology; the frustrated 

longing for happiness and human connections; 

and the coexistence of discontinuity 

and repetition in the way we perceive 

ourselves through media. Given these 

themes, the use of text fragments, latex 

masks and lip-synced dialogue shouldn’t 

– and don’t – seem like gimmicks on the 

part of a director hoping to be acclaimed 

as an auteur; they’re just smart, apt, effective 

choices. And emotional ones, too: the 

subdued line delivery was often haunting. 

The figures felt like lobotomised patients 

with a flickering consciousness of their 

condition. Not dissimilar to us, perhaps, 

with our on-again-off-again awareness of 

the dysfunction around us and within us. n 

Women in Trouble HHHHH Jan 6, 

19:30; Jan 20, 18:00 (in English), Volksbühne 

| Les Misérables HH Jan 6, 

7, 18:00 (in German), Berliner Ensemble 

Matthias Horn 

From Berlin-based Iranian playwright Nassim 

Soleimanpour comes a theatrical experiment that 

explores the power of language to unite us in 

uncertain times. No rehearsals. No preparation. 

Just a sealed envelope and an actor reading a script 

for the first time. WINNER of the Fringe First 

Award at Edinburgh Fringe 2017 

etb 

January 2018 

International Performing Arts Center 

You are not alone! 

Call 030 787 5188 

or 01803-AA HELP 

Meetings in English 

Plus a reading by Holly-Jane 

Rahlens and much, much more! 

ETBERLIN.DE 

www.alcoholics-anonymous-berlin.de 

FBW Update.indd 1 06/10/16 13: 

JANUARY 2018

WHAT’S ON — Art 


A day in Dahlem 

The southwestern suburb still has a lot to offer a museum-going 

day tripper – but for how long? By Sarrita Hunn 

ART NEWS 

Steyerl is number one! 

Known as much 

for her writing (The 

Wretched of the 

Screen) as her artwork, 

Berlin-based 

UdK professor Hito 

Steyerl has nabbed 

not only a spot on 

the Transmediale 

advisory board (see 

page 26) but also 

the top ranking in 

ArtReview’s list of 

the most influential 

people in contemporary 

art. 

Defending Documenta 

More than 200 past 

Documenta participants 

(such as Johan 

Grimonprez and Hans 

Haacke) have signed 

a petition defending 

the long-running 

Kassel art expo 

against politicisation. 

The inciting event was 

a lawsuit against the 

exhibition organisers 

by the AfD faction of 

Kassel’s city council 

over alleged “misappropriation 

of funds 

and other offenses”, 

citing a €5.4 million 

deficit and the expansion 

to Athens. 

This dark winter month, take a 

mini stay-cay out in Dahlem 

and bear witness to the end 

of an era. This affluent neighbourhood 

is home to the Free University, 

the Max Planck Institute, and 

the Botanical Garden, but you don’t 

have to worry about crowds. Since 

reunification, Dahlem’s museums 

have lost many visitors (from over 

half a million in 1989 to around 

120,000 last year) and now, some 

of their prized collections are 

departing to Mitte and the grand 

vision of Museum Island. 

At the controversial centre of 

this transition is the Ethnological 

Museum, the largest of its kind in 

the world, which closed last year 

in preparation for a move into the 

still-under-construction Humboldt 

Forum. Director Viola König retired 

alongside her final exhibition, but 

not before defending her “non- 

European” collection from colonial 

critique (such as from the protest 

group “No Humboldt 21!”), while 

at the same time criticising the 

muddled planning of the transition 

by the Humboldt Forum’s British 

director Neil MacGregor. 

You can now see select Ethnological 

Museum highlights on Museum 

Island courtesy of the exhibition 

programme On the Way to the Humboldt 

Forum. But over in Dahlem, 

don’t miss your last chance to stroll 

through the foyer of the museum’s 

former home where Packing up and 

Repackaging (photo), a scaffoldinglike 

installation of videos and 

photographs by German media artists 

David Gaehtgens and Daniela Maria 

Hirsch, presents the last eight months 

of the relocation behind the scenes. 

It’s a bit depressing, but Dahlem is 

not without celebrations. Head next 

to the Museum of European Cultures 

to catch the last days of Anna Weaves 

Reformation, featuring a sprawling 

tapestry created on the 150th anniversary 

of the Reformation and dusted 

off on the occasion of last year’s 

500th Protestant jubilee. For kids, 

100 Percent Wool is a fun, interactive 

exhibition filled with wool-related 

historical artifacts, a giant sheep 

they can climb on and a back room 

with wool-related crafts. Also downstairs, 

Berlin-based Mila Teshaieva’s 

photographs made with flashlights 

in the dark provide a haunting view 

on the unique landscape, inhabitants 

and ancient culture of the 

North Sea island of Föhr. 

From there, it’s just a short bus ride 

and – if the weather cooperates – a 

pleasant walk to the the Brücke 

Museum, which turned 50 last year. 

Famously one of David Bowie’s 

favourite Berlin haunts, it’s dedicated 

to the work of the early 20th-century 

Expressionist group Die Brücke 

(The Bridge) and is still celebrating 

its golden anniversary with an 

exhibition of paintings, prints and 

drawings focused around the years 

1905-1913, including donations from 

museum founder and Brücke painter 

Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. 

Next door, end your day at 

Kunsthaus Dahlem. From January 

19, the museum’s small collection 

of post-war German artworks will 

be joined by paintings and sketches 

from the exiled Jewish painter 

Armin Stern (1883-1944), on view 

for the first time in Berlin. You just 

have to make it before the Kunsthaus 

closes at 5pm – and then you 

still have time to follow this full 

day in Dahlem with an evening 

glass of Glühwein. n 

Gaehtgens.hirsch: Packing up and Repackaging Through Jan 14 Ethnological 

Museum | Anna Weaves Reformation Through Jan 28 IslandBeing. 

IslandLife: Insights into Frisian Lives Through Apr 2 100 Percent Wool 

Through Jun 2019 Museum of European Cultures | Brücke Museum Anniversary 

Exhibition Through Apr 8 Brücke Museum | Armin Stern – Zionist, 

Border Crosser, Cosmopolitan Jan 19-Mar 12 Kunsthaus Dahlem 

40 



Highlight 

The Brecht-Benjamin 

bromance 

This month is your last chance to see Thinking in Extremes, 

the extensive exhibition at AdK that catalogues the 

relationship between philosopher Walter Benjamin 

and playwright Bertolt Brecht using manuscripts, photos and 

objects curated from their archives. Just as interesting as the 

historical documentation is the selection of contemporary 

works presented alongside it, in which artists give insight 

to these influential figures from present-day perspectives. 

While the main exhibition largely consists of texts and audio 

in Brecht and Benjamin’s native German, English-speaking 

viewers can gain access via a gem of a film by Scottish- 

American artist Zoe Beloff. Exile begins with Benjamin (played 

by Eric Berryman, a tall, thin African American) and Brecht 

(played by short, stout Iranian actor Afshin Hashemi) who 

introduce themselves on a boat arriving at Staten Island in 

New York City. With their own manuscripts in tote, Benjamin 

and Brecht transverse the city, visiting NYPD chokehold victim 

Eric Garner’s memorial and performing one of Brecht’s plays 

with tweeting bystanders under a bridge. They discuss their 

immigrant experiences while moving fluidly between selfquotes 

and current events, connecting the fascism of the 1930s 

with its manifestations in the Trump era today. — SH 

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Interview 

Welcome to the dollhouse 

Ahmet Öğüt on the seriousness of his miniature 

buildings in Hotel Résistance. By Sarrita Hunn 

United, you can see that a child and 

a teenager lost their lives. You see 

the moment of them being attacked, 

but you don’t see the moment of 

them being killed. The violence is 

there, but we complete it when we 

walk into the show. The violence is 

between us, and we are part of it. 

DON’T MISS 

Super 8 Trilogy 

To launch their 2018 

exhibition season, 

KW presents this 

landmark experimental 

film series 

made by New York 

filmmaker and artist 

Ericka Beckman between 

1978 and 1981. 

Jan 17-21 

Into Worlds 

For one weekend, the 

Martin-Gropius-Bau‘s 

central atrium will 

host a conference on 

“immersive phenomena” 

including talks, 

special installations 

and virtual reality by 

Björk. Jan 19-21 

Non-Binary 

Just as German 

courts have ruled 

that a “third 

gender”must be recognised 

from birth, 

young photographer 

Parker Rebecca 

Hirschmüller presents 

portraits of 

people who do not 

fit into the malefemale 

binary at the 

Jugend Museum. 

Through Mar 25 

Ladislav Zajac 

The Turkish-born, Berlin- and 

Amsterdam-based artist is best 

known for initiating The Silent 

University, an international alternative 

academic programme that allows 

refugees, asylum seekers and migrants 

to share professional and academic 

knowledge they otherwise could not. 

On view at KOW, his first solo gallery 

exhibition pays tribute to victims of 

war, police violence and gentrification, 

using sculpture, animation and a series 

of 1/100 scale architectural models. 

The works in Hotel Résistance 

include sculptures, video, printed 

posters... how would you describe 

your very multifaceted art 

practice? I studied painting and got 

my master’s degree in art theory, but 

then when I started making my own 

works, they were small, self-initiated 

interventions in the street. These 

evolved into short research-based 

projects, and then long-term projects, 

and then lifetime projects... I still try 

to make time for those smaller projects 

and protect that kind of humour 

in the work, but some subjects you 

cannot approach with fragmented, 

quick gestures. They require research, 

commitment, time. So, my practice 

starts with an idea and then uses any 

medium that idea requires, but the 

‘medium’ includes the time, commitment, 

and my position – whether or 

not I am anonymous, collaborative or 

keep my authorship as an artist. 

It’s interesting that you bring up 

humour, because compared to 

some of your earlier works – like 

2010’s Punch this Painting or 

2013’s Intern VIP Lounge – this 

exhibition is quite serious. Humour 

comes in different ways. In this 

show, the topics are very serious and 

maybe the humour is not direct, but 

there is another access point – the 

scale and the medium. At first it 

might look like a very child-friendly 

exhibition, with scaled-down figures 

and scaled-down houses, but if you 

pay attention to what is going on in 

each piece, they become really serious 

– something that would normally 

be disturbing to look at or even 

think about. Susan Sontag described 

war photography as capturing those 

moments we cannot look at. Those 

moments are in the show, but they 

are not captured. In the animation 

Thinking about scale, what 

about your series of “nail house” 

architectural models, Pleasure 

Places of All Kinds? The newest 

one of those sculptures – and the 

title of the exhibition – is Hotel Résistance. 

It was a building in Zurich 

that anarchists and activists tried 

to keep, along with the owner – and 

they used humour. They put “Hotel 

Résistance” on the building because 

it was next to Hotel Renaissance. 

You normally have architectural 

models to demonstrate the future 

of a location; in this case, it’s the 

reverse process. It is the capture 

of a refusal. These buildings are 

often destroyed, but not before 

their holdouts bring an enormous 

delay to the construction. I think 

it’s important that they remain archived 

in their state of ruin, in that 

moment of negotiation. 

So here, delay is a form of protest? 

You can see so many examples 

of the ways people, even unintentionally, 

can disrupt power. When 

people go to demonstrations in the 

street for a few hours and then go 

home, the next day it might seem 

like everything is the same – but in 

some examples I have witnessed, 

the legitimacy, the credibility of 

power structures is weakened. They 

lose their economic power, or they 

lose value in their “brand”. Brands 

are very fragile, for companies as 

well as states. When they are not 

recognised anymore, they are no 

longer a state, no matter how much 

money or power they have. This 

recognition process also comes 

from the bottom. Usually an occupation 

takes a couple of months, 

or protests happen right before an 

election. But like in my work, some 

ideas really require a long-term 

commitment and have to be done in 

a slow – but persistent – manner. n 

Ahmet Öğüt: Hotel Résistance 

Through Jan 28 KOW, Mitte 

42 



Andrea Rossetti 

Courtesy of the artist, Charlie James Gallery 

Reviews 

Through Jan 21 

Eliza Douglas: 

Old Tissues Filled with Tears 

Schinkel Klause (Pavillon), Mitte 

HHHHI 

Eliza Douglas might be recognised most from 

her performances in her fiancée Anne Imhof’s 

award-winning works (including Faust, the 

winner of the prestigious Golden Lion at last 

year’s Venice Biennale), or from the catwalk 

modelling for Balenciaga, but she is also a 

painter garnering increasing attention for her 

own work. Hot off a recent dual exhibition with 

Imhof at Galerie Buchholz in New York, Douglas’ 

first solo exhibition in Berlin fills Schinkel 

Pavillon’s Klause space wall-to-wall and 

floor-to-ceiling with large scale canvases, each 

representing a disembodied figure with delicately 

rendered hands, feet, and, in one case, 

a can of Monster energy drink. The references 

vary from Cookie Monster to gaudy abstract 

expressionist brush strokes, but the uncanny 

combinations executed with impeccable craft 

give the paintings wide ranging appeal – not to 

mention a delightful play between presence 

and absence in every performance. — SH 

Through Feb 17 

Evidentiary Realism 

NOME, Kreuzberg 

HHHHI 

Like the offspring of Edward Snowden 

and Banksy, Italian artist Paolo Cirio’s own 

“performative hacks” mine Internet data to 

create critical works at the intersection of 

privacy, copyright, democracy and finance. In 

2016, for example, he blurred the mugshots 

of over 15 million people arrested in the US 

and reshuffled their data on cloned websites 

while drafting the Internet privacy policy 

“Right to Remove”. Now, Cirio has curated 

a group exhibition featuring an incredible 

array of artists (from Hans Haacke to Jenny 

Holzer) who engage complex social systems 

through data-driven evidence. Here, veteran 

artists such as Mark Lombardi – represented 

by a signature flowchart mapping the financial 

transactions and political connections 

between former US President Bush, Osama 

Bin Laden and global banks – are in frank 

discussion with younger artists, such as Ingrid 

Burrington (whose large-scale lenticular print 

combines two satellite photos of Google’s 

data centre in South Carolina), for a conversation 

that does not end with net neutrality. 

See it for yourself, while you still can. — SH 

Through Feb 10 

Jaroslaw Kozlowski: 

Words and Colors 

Zak | Branicka, Mitte 

HHHII 

In 1971, Kozłowski sent letters to over 350 

artists and critics around the world in the 

hope of creating NET, an open network of 

communication on art ideas without central 

authority – a gesture so radical in Poland at 

the time that the first gathering he organised 

to present the materials he received 

back was shut down by police. Now, for this 

exhibition at Berlin’s premier space for Polish 

art, the 72-year-old conceptual artist presents 

a thoughtful selection of works from 

the last five decades including Wall Painting, 

a gridded set of colour samples from walls 

that the artist personally painted in various 

apartments across Europe around 1979. 

In his newest work, News Games, international 

newspapers painted in a spectrum of 

colours are tucked into white paper bags. For 

Kozłowski, autonomous artistic gestures are 

“the prerequisite to keeping a critical distance 

from political conditions” – but in this 

case, the gesture might be too distant to have 

the subversive impact of earlier ones. — SH 

Courtesy of the artist, ZAK 

I have to go 

Unconventional bilingual (English/German) event about 

expressing, feeling and growing. Paintings by: Stephanie 

Barnes (Canadian artist) and poems by Hermann Häfele. 

Sunday, Jan 21st 2018, 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Location: Berlin- 

Schöneberg. Akazienstr. 28 “HvH Coaching-Etage”. 

A wonderful all day art-experience, incl. music & catering! 

Book now, we’re looking forward to see you! 

More info & tickets: www.paintings-and-poems.de 

Fast, easy ... and in English! 

Rooms and flats, all districts, 

price ranges and styles. 

Friendly, reliable service 

Register at to receive suggestions 

for apartments and rooms, tailored 

especially to you. 


WHAT’S ON 

Calendar 

January 2018 

Picks, highlights and can’t-miss events for this month in Berlin. 

Left: Pussy Riot Theatre: Riot Days, Jan 14. Above: The King Khan & 

BBQ Show, Jan 20. Right: Lubitsch Conference, Jan 26. 

Dark Mofo 

MON 

1 

Hauschka — Music Ease 

into the New Year with 

a sit-down concert at 

the Volksbühne, featuring the 

not-too-harsh experimental 

piano stylings of composer 

Volker Bertelmann backed up by 

Amsterdam’s Alma Quartet. 

Starts 20:00. (See page 32) 

THU 

4 

Tanztage — Dance A 

performance featuring 

disabled dancers, a 

“collage of identities” from 

up-and-comer Joy Alpuerto 

Ritter and a Polish “emotional 

boot camp” set the tone for 10 

days of wildly diverse premieres 

and guest productions at 

Sophiensaele. Through Jan 14. 

(See page 37) 

SAT 

6 

David Bowie Tribute 

— Music Two years after 

the Starman’s departure 

from this earthly plane, the 

tributes keep on coming. The 

first of three this month hits 

Lido tonight, with Tangerine 

Dream’s Thorsten Quaeschning 

headlining. Starts 20:00. (See 

page 32) 

THU 

11 

British Shorts Film Festival 

— Film Showcasing 

around 200 short films 

from the UK and Ireland, this 

11th edition celebrates pioneers 

of black British cinema and 

continues the popular tradition of 

its Saturday Midnight Movies 

screening. Through Jan 17. 

Noisekölln — Clubbing Party like 

it’s 2012 and you’re partying like 

it’s 1988: Neukölln’s experimental 

cassette label is back! 

Celebrate its as-yet-unnamed 

new releases at Sameheads. 

Starts 22:00. 

FRI 

12 

Unknown Pleasures 

— Film The American 

indie fest kicks off with 

the German premiere of teen 

lesbian drama Princess Cyd, and 

offers a rare chance to catch 

Terrence Malick’s mind-bending 

Voyage of Time on the big 

screen. Through Jan 28. Arsenal 

and Wolf Kino. (See page 31) 

SUN 

14 

Pussy Riot Theatre: Riot 

Days — Music/Theatre 

Pussy Riot’s Maria 

Alyokhina revisits the music of 

her notorious agit-punk 

collective (and her imprisonment 

in Siberia) in a new performance 

piece. Dig out your balaclava and 

head to SO36. Starts 20:00. 

TUE 

16 

Fashion Week — Fashion 

Berlin’s been trying to 

establish itself as a 

fashion capital for over a 

decade, without much success. 

But hey, that means it’s easier to 

blag your way into Premium, 

Panorama, Green Showroom 

and more. Through Jan 19. 

Various venues. 

WED 

17 

Ultraschall — Music RBB 

and Deutschlandfunk 

Kultur honour the past 

and future of “new” music at 

their annual festival, starting 

with pieces by Bernd Alois 

Zimmermann at Haus des 

Rundfunks and Thomas 

Ankersmit at Berghain Kantine. 

Through Jan 21. Starts 20:00. 

Depeche Mode — Music The 

band that inspired a thousand 

Germans to buy synthesisers 

continues its nearly 40-year run 

with two dates at the Mercedes 

Benz Arena. Just can’t get 

enough? They’ll be finishing up 

their Spirit tour back here in 

July. Also Jan 19. Starts 19:30. 

THU 

18 

Ericka Beckman: Pause 

— Art Opening The next 

instalment of KW’s 

“Pause” – short exhibitions 

couched between the main ones 

– features the experimental 

filmmaker and artist’s Super 8 

Trilogy, three surreal films she 

made from 1978-81. Through Jan 

21. Starts 19:00. 

Alt-J– Music The indie-rock lads 

from Leeds return with third 

album Relaxer, promising a 

show that’s anything but. Max- 

Schmeling-Halle. Starts 20:00. 

(See page 32) 

FRI 

19 

Into Worlds – Art/ 

Conference The 

Festspiele’s Immersion 

programme continues with a 

weekend of talks, performances 

and installations at Martin- 

Gropius-Bau, including a 

“virtual reality experience” 

from Björk. Should be, well, 

immersive. Through Jan 21. 

Starts 19:00. 

SAT 

20 

The King Khan & BBQ 

Show – Music Like peanut 

butter and chocolate, 

the members of Berlin’s down 

‘n’ dirty expat garage duo are 

tasty enough on their own but 

even better together. Catch 

Khan and Mark Sultan in 

original recipe form at Quasimodo. 

Starts 22:00. 

Carmen — Opera Bizet’s classic 

premieres at the Deutsche Oper, 

directed by Norwegian Ole 

Anders Tandberg and starring 

veteran Clémentine Margaine. 

Sing it with us: “L’amour est un 

oiseau rebelle...” Also Jan 24, 27. 

Starts 19:30. 

44 


WHAT’S ON 

Wir haben es satt! — Demo The antiindustrial-agriculture 

demonstration 

gets bigger and bigger each year 

– bring a cooking pot to make some 

noise with and join the crowds 

marching from Hauptbahnhof to 

the Brandenburg Gate. Come early 

for the tractor parade! Starts 11:00. 

SUN 

21 

Green Week — Fair Did 

yesterday’s demo get you 

hungry for sustainable 

farming? Head to Messe Berlin to 

check out the latest advances in the 

field, or just wander around scoring 

free samples of organic vegan 

snacks. Jan 19-28. 

WED 

24 

Hellas Filmbox — Film 

Championing the best of 

New Greek film, this year’s 

edition includes a focus on Cypriot 

cinema, a celebration of Greek 

erotica and a series of filmmakerled 

workshops and discussions. 

Through Jan 28. Urban Spree. 

THU 

25 

Stories in Yurts — Books Take 

the kids to Potsdamer Platz 

for nearly 100 half-hour 

readings (including some in English) 

in cosy Mongolian-style tents. They’ll 

be taken down on January 28, so 

forget about camping out early for 

Berlinale tickets. Starts 9:00. 

Six-Day Race — Sports Professional 

and amateur cyclists from all over 

the world roll around (and around, 

and around, and around) the Velodrom 

in a series of competitions 

interspersed with DJ performances. 


FRI 

26 

CTM — Festival Voguing, 

metal, gabber... didn’t this 

festival used to be for 

electronic music nerds? It kicks 

off with an exhibition opening at 

Bethanien and a long night headed 

by Boys Noize at Berghain/ 

Panorama, and won’t let up till 

Feb 4. Starts 19:00. (See page 26) 

Lubitsch Conference — Film Slavoj 

Žižek and Volker Schlöndorff are 

among the luminaries to discuss 

the subversive appeal of Ernst 

Lubitsch’s comedies during a 

three-day conference. Daughter 

and granddaughter of the Berlinborn 

legend join the celebration 

on Jan 29. Babylon Mitte. 

SAT 

27 

Japan Festival — Fair 

Calling all otaku (nerds)! 

Hipster Japanese markets 

may be hot right now, but this 

annual fest at Urania is still the 

only place you can see a Gothic 

Lolita fashion show or a concert 

by German J-pop singer Shiroku. 


SUN 

28 

Titanic 20th Anniversary 

Screening — Film 

Celebrate 20 years of 

James Cameron’s Oscar-sweeping 

box office juggernaut by 

watching it as it was meant to be 

seen, in 35mm on the big screen. 

Filmrauschpalast Moabit. Also 

Jan 14, 21. Starts 20:30. 

MON 

29 

EXBlicks: The Long 

Summer of Theory 

— Film Irene von 

Alberti introduces her playfully 

experimental study of contemporary 

feminism and gentrification 

in Berlin. Join us for a 

My Perfect Berlin Weekend 

UK-born, Berlin-based Lizz Lunney is Exberliner’s 

new resident cartoonist (see page 53), 

purveying philosophical humour for your heart 

and brain. Catch “Instabunnies” here every 

month and read more online at lizzlunney.com. 

FRIDAY 

12:00 A whistle-stop tour of 

my favourite comic shops, 

Grober Unfug (Torstr. 

75, Mitte) and Modern 

Graphics (Kastanienallee 

79, Prenzlauer Berg). 13:30 

Lunch at Gong Gan Cafe 

(Schwedter Str. 2). 15:00 Head 

on to Comicbibliothek Renate 

(Tucholskystr. 32, Mitte) and 

Neurotitan (Rosenthaler 

Str. 39); usually they have a 

cool exhibition on! 16:00 The 

Berlin Magic Museum (Große 

Hamburger Str. 17) for some 

casual fortune telling. 18:30 

Shiso Burger (Auguststr. 29C) 

to eat a salmon burger. 20:30 

Home for a wild night in 

with Michael Jackson: The 

Experience on Wii. 

SATURDAY 

11:00 Bibliothek am Luisenbad 

(Badstr. 39, Wedding) – I 

love this library. 13:00 Brunch 

and coffee at Miss Ploff Café 

(Eulerstr. 9A). 16:00 Draw flattering 

portraits of the woolly 

pigs at Pinke-Panke (Am 

Bürgerpark 15-18, Pankow). 

18:30 El Pepe (Prinzenallee 

screening and Q&A, all in English! 

Lichtblick Kino. Starts 20:30. 

TUE 

30 

25, Wedding) for tapas. 20:00 

Wilma Bar (Badstr. 38) then 

Kugelbahn (Grüntaler Str. 51) 

for drinks. 

SUNDAY 

Gianni Versace — Exhibition 

Opening Berlin marks 40 

years of the luxe fashion 

brand with a massive retrospective 

of the late designer’s works, 

including outfits worn by Prince 

and Madonna and an entire 

replica of his bedroom. Kronprinzenpalais. 

Through Apr 14. 

Opens 19:00. 

WED 

31 

Transmediale — Festival 

The 31st edition of the 

digital art and media fest 

opens with works about 

migration, the alt-right and AI, 

plus a series of 3D printed 

Chelsea Mannings. Through Feb 

4. (See page 26) 

11:00 Look for weird Disney 

figures, vintage clothes and 

old comics at Flohmarkt 

Arkonaplatz (Prenzlauer 

Berg). 15:00 Sketch and eat 

great biscuits at the Ramones 

Museum Café (Oberbaumstr. 5, 

Kreuzberg). 17:00 Swimming at 

Wellenbad am Spreewaldplatz 

(Wiener Str. 59H). 19:30 Baraka 

Restaurant (Lausitzer Pl. 6). 

21:00 Another crazy evening in 

my PJs doing a jigsaw puzzle. 

HAU programme in English / Jan 2018 

5.+6.1. / HAU2 

Showcase Beat Le Mot 

Nazisupermenschen sind euch allen überlegen 

The Horror of the Ordinary! 

6.+7.1. / HAU1 

Ariel Efraim Ashbel & friends 

feat. The Wedding Orchestra 

for Middle Eastern Music 

Diva: Celebrating Oum Kalthoum 

11.–13.1. / HAU1 

Jefta van Dinther / 

Cullbergbaletten 

Protagonist 

17.–25.1. / HAU1, HAU2, HAU3 

Focus: Spy on Me 

andcompany&Co.,doubleluckyproductions,Houseclub 

& Friends, Peng! Collective, Timo Daum / Felix 

Maschewski / Anna-Verena Nosthoff a.o. 

25.1. / HAU1 

Thomas Meinecke & Lydia Lunch 

Plattenspieler 

27.1.–4.2. / HAU1, HAU2 

CTM 2018 – Turmoil 

Festival for Adventurous Music and Art 

Medusa’s Bed – Lydia Lunch; Zahra Mani & Mia 

Zabelka; George E. Lewis & Roscoe Mitchell; 

Jace Clayton presents Julius Eastman Memorial 

Dinner; “Ernest Berk – The Complete Expressionist” 

by Company Christoph Winkler featuring 

group A, Rashad Becker & Pan Daijing; Rashaad 

New some “FIVE Berlin”; Nadah El Shazly; Zorka 

Wollny & Andrzej Wasilewski; MusicMakers 

Hacklab with Peter Kirn & Ioann Maria a.o. 

30.1.–2.2. / HAU3 / Premiere 

Angela Schubot & Jared Gradinger 

YEW 

11.–17.1. / Berlin 

British Shorts 

Film Festival 

11.1. / HAU2 

Festival Opening and 

Short Film Screenings 

Concert: White Wine 

DJ-Set: Betti Bo Bikepunk 

The entire festival programme feat. screen - 

ings, concerts, party, free film workshop, exhibition 

and talks at HAU Hebbel am Ufer, 

Sputnik Kino, Acud kino, City Kino Wedding 

and Kino Zu kunft on www.britishshorts.de 

www.hebbel-am-ufer.de 


ADVERTORIAL — The Berlin Guide 

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way around Berlin. To advertise, contact 

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will make you feel welcome, inspired 

and relaxed. The perfect hangout right 

at Kotti, all day long! Adalbertstr. 

96, U-Bhf Kottbusser Tor, Mon-Thu 

8.30-23, Fri 8.30-2, Sat 12-2, Sun 12-23, 

www.kremanski.de 

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 

CAFÉS 

GODSHOT — Prenzlauer Berg 

Godshot 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 

BARETTINO — Neukölln 

Barettino means “small bar” and in 

our case is a unique combination of 

everything which makes you happy 

between dawn and dusk. A huge breakfast 

choice & fine coffee, lunch & dinner 

made fresh and with love, plenty 

of delicacies, toasted paninis and 

homemade cakes, Italian aperitivo and 

holy spirits. Join the Barettino family! 

Reuterstr. 59, Tel 030 2556 3034, 

Mon-Sun 9-22, www.barettino.com 

TO PLACE YOUR 

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ADS@EXBERLINER.COM 

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 

ATAYA CAFFE — Prenzlauer Berg 

With its comfortable sofas and colourful, 

gemütlich decor, this vegan/ 

vegetarian Italian-African fusion cafe 

specialises in 100 percent homemade 

cuisine, ranging from fresh 

pastas to avocado salads and exotic 

paninis, rounded off with cakes, 

smoothies and bio fair-trade Italian 

coffee. Come for business lunch on 

weekdays, Saturday buffet breakfast 

or Afro-Italian vegan brunch every 

Sunday! Bring the kids and dogs. 

Zelterstr. 6, S-Bhf Prenzlauer Allee, 

Tel. 030 3302 1041, Tue-Fri 10-19, 

Sat-Sun 10-19, Mon closed, www. 

atayacaffe.de 

RESTAURANTS 

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 fun-loving 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 

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 

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-Fri from 12, Sat-Sun 

from 11, www.3schwestern.com 

NAPOLJONSKA — Mitte 

Located just off Zionskirchplatz, 

this vegetarian café offers organic 

and homemade delicacies. Enjoy a 

KREMANSKI — Kreuzberg 

Kremanski offers tasty breakfast, 

high-quality coffee, lunch (Mon to Fri), 

homemade cakes and ice-cream, special 

beers, drinks, good music and cultural 

events. The friendly and talented staff 

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 

PUNE — Prenzlauer Berg The place 

to go to especially on Sundays for a 

great Indian buffet after a stroll on 

the nearby Mauerpark flea market. 

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 

46 



LA BUVETTE — Prenzlauer Berg 

For a good glass of wine, a romantic 

or business dinner, a wine tasting or 

a birthday party... come to La Buvette 

Weinbar. A cosy French bistrot 

where all wines come directly from 

France and the food is like mama’s 

cooking. Try the famous ‘steakfrites’ 

with a glass of Bordeaux, or 

come on Sundays for ‘moules-frites’! 

Gleim Str. 41, S+U-Bhf. Schönhauser 

Allee, Tel 030 8806 2870 Mon-Sun 

from 18, www.labuvette.berlin 

DATSCHA — Kreuzberg 

The newly opened second location of 

the Russian-style Friedrichshain cafe 

brings its legendary Sunday buffet 

brunch to Kreuzberg’s Graefekiez featuring 

a vast selection of vegetarian 

dishes, fish specialities like a whole 

marinated baked salmon, eggs filled 

with caviar and homemade Russian 

desserts. Graefestr. 83, Kreuzberg, 

U-Bhf Schönleinstr., Tel 030 556 11 

216, daily 9am-1am, www.datscha.de 

Str. 6, S+U-Bhf Bundesplatz, Tel 030 

2358 4998, Wed-Fri 18-23, Sat 12-1, Sun 

10-22, www.kafana-berlin.de 

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, 

Sun-Mon 9-17, Thu-Sat 9-22, closed 

Tue-Wed www.bastard-berlin.de 

BARS & NIGHTLIFE 

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 

SHOPS & SERVICES 

9, S+U-Bhf Potsdamer Platz, Tel 030 39 

8200 450, Mon-Sun 10-20, 

www.deutsches-spionagemuseum.de 

MONSTERKABINETT — Mitte 

Join us on a trip to Berlin’s underground 

art scene! A unique theme 

park inhabited by automatic, singing, 

dancing monsters. Your guides: our 

performance artists from Transylvania. 

Visitors of all ages are invited to 

enjoy an invaluable art event where 

technology comes to life! Expect the 

unexpected! Rosenthaler Str. 39, 

S-Bhf Hackescher Markt, Wed-Thu 

18.30-21.30, Fri-Sat 16.30-21.30, www. 

monsterkabinett.de 

L a w y e r s 

MONSTER RONSON’S ICHIBAN 

KARAOKE — Friedrichshain 

Monster Ronson’s 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 

BGKW LAWYERS — Mitte 

This firm specialises in labour, family, 

private building and insolvency 

law. The legitimacy of dismissal is 

the main subject of labour disputes. 

In divorce proceedings, legal representation 

is mandatory. We give 

legal advice in cases of construction 

defects and to all parties concerned 

in insolvency proceedings. Prior contract 

consulting is often appropriate: 

Arbeits-, Ehe-, Lebenspartnerschafts-, 

Bauträgervertrag. Markgrafenstr. 57, 

U-Bhf Kochstr., Tel. 030 2062 4890, 

www.bgkw-law.de 

DOLORES — Mitte & Schöneberg 

Founded 10 years ago as a street food pioneer in the German capital, 

Dolores serves excellent California-style burritos, tacos 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 

THE GERMAN SPY MUSEUM 

— Mitte Immerse yourself in the fascinating 

cloak-and-dagger world of Berlin’s 

high-tech museum: crack secret codes, 

complete the laser obstacle course and 

gasp at what the NSA and Facebook 

knows about you. The German Spy 

Museum charts the history of espionage 

in its interactive exhibition with a floor 

space of 3,000m 2 . Unique exhibits such 

as the famous Enigma machine are 

waiting to be explored. Leipziger Platz 

TIB-SPORTZENTRUM — Neükolln 

At Berlin’s oldest sport club you’ll find 

sports for young and old. Baseball, 

softball, ultimate frisbee, tennis, dance 

and more. Their sport centre has a 

gym, sport courses, 8 badminton and 2 

tennis indoor courts, and a sauna. 

Columbiadamm 111, U-Bhf Südstern, 

Mon-Fri 7:30-23:30, Sat 8:30-20:30, 

Sun 8:30-23:30, www.tib1848ev.de 


PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER 



HUMBOLDT-INSTITUT — Mitte 

Total beginner or advanced learner: the 

Humboldt-Institut has the right German 

course for everyone. Small classes 

with intensive tuition ensure swift 

and effective learning. Intensive courses 

are also available with accommodation 

on campus. Or simply choose a parttime 

course in the morning, evening or 

on Saturdays. Invalidenstr. 19, S-Bhf 

Nordbahnhof, Tel 030 5551 3221, www. 

humboldt-institut.org 

RABBI DR. WALTER ROTHSCHILD 

— Schöneberg Do you need a rabbi? 

Sometimes one might. For private 

counselling, for family and religious 

rituals, for teaching, for advice - 

rabbinic advice, not psychotherapy. 

From someone with insights and a 

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experience. Rabbi Walter Rothschild 

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contact@rabbiwalterrothschild.de, 

www.rabbiwalterrothschild.de 

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Round-up 

The next wurst thing 

REGULARS 

Food 

By François Poilâne 

Vegan and vegetarian “butcher” shops are all the 

rage in Berlin, but whose fake meat reigns supreme? 

We put three to the test. By Jane Silver 

L’HERBIVORE 

Flavour HHH Meatiness HH 

Vegan/Organic? Yes 

Opened in Friedrichshain two years ago by 

locals Johnny Theuerl and Eric Koschitza, this 

was Berlin’s first shop to hit upon the idea of 

displaying plant-based meat behind a “butcher 

counter”, and the look is quite convincing. Only 

when you get close do you realise the sausages, 

burger patties and roasts on offer are vacuumsealed 

substitutes made from a wheat gluten/ 

lupine mixture. Produced in-house, the vegan, 

organic goodies are available to take away or eat 

on the spot in burger or sandwich form (€4-6). 

You can also find them at bio markets if you 

don’t want to make the trek to Petersburger 

Straße. Despite the familiar shapes, Theuerl is 

adamant that “we’re not trying to be like meat” 

– thus inventive add-ins like pumpkin, dried 

fruit and kidney beans. Though the taste isn’t 

bad (the chilli-malt burger and smoky, boil-inthe-bag 

Frankfurter were our favourites), the 

rubbery texture of the seitan leaves something 

to be desired (amplified in the veggie-stuffed 

“Christmas roast”, €25). You’ll definitely want 

to crisp up the burger patties (€3-3.50/2) in 

some oil, and add sauces for lubrication. 

Petersburger Str. 38, Friedrichshain, Tue-Wed 

11:30-20, Thu-Sat 11:30-21 

L’Herbivore 

DIE VETZGEREI 

Flavour HHH Meatiness HH 

Vegan/Organic? Yes/Mostly 

Die Vetzgerei’s “sushi” sausage 

Der Vegetarische Metzger’s frozen fare 

After a successful crowdfunding campaign 

last summer, Sarah and Paul Pollinger 

reopened the former Prenzlauer 

Berg branch of English bookstore Shakespeare 

and Sons as a chic tiled showroom for their 

seitan-, tofu- and vegetable-based sausages, 

patties and spreads. The space, split between 

an eat-in area and a glass butcher counter, 

seems far too large for the limited selection of 

products on offer. But the vegan couple, whose 

last venture was a leather-free shoe company 

called Freivon, say they’re only just beginning. 

Here, they and chef Hendrik Madeja experiment 

with sausage flavours like the rather 

polarising “sushi” with curry, seaweed and 

wasabi (€1.90/100g) and picnic-ready dishes 

like a Hungarian-style Wurstsalat made with 

their paprika “Beißer” (€2.30/100g). Nothing 

here will fool you into thinking you’re eating 

meat, but if you’re looking for a mostly organic, 

additive-free Brotzeit alternative, you could 

do worse than the salami-like Aufschnitt with 

seitan, oat, smoked tofu and tomato paste. Try 

a selection in-store with bread for €4.50 before 

you commit. Raumerstr. 36, Prenzlauer Berg, 

Mon-Sat 10-18 

DER VEGETARISCHE METZGER 

Flavour HHHH Meatiness HHHHH 

Vegan/Organic? Mostly not 

It’s a little unfair to throw this one in the 

mix. Far from a small local producer, this is 

the Berlin branch of a Dutch fake meat titan 

whose products are developed in conjunction 

with scientists at Utrecht University and 

sold in 15 countries, from the UK to South 

Korea. But co-founder David Meyer is a native 

Berliner and, honestly, any vegetarian with 

fast food cravings should stop by his Bergmannstraße 

storefront at least once. Whether 

taken away in a freezer box or eaten right 

there, Vegetarische Metzger’s soy, wheat and 

lupine burger patties (€2.90/2), chicken nuggets 

(€3.90), schwarma (€3.90) and bratwurst 

(€3.20/2) are virtually indistinguishable from 

their animal-based counterparts. (Which is 

both a compliment to Meyer and co. and a 

testament to the sad state of industrial meat; 

don’t expect these guys to replicate a Wagyu 

steak anytime soon.) Vegans, tread carefully. 

The burgers, brats and quite a few other products 

owe their considerable meatiness to whey 

protein and “free-range” egg whites, whatever 

that means in Holland these days. But their 

flagship chicken, made with pressed soy protein, 

is completely animal-free and shockingly 

toothsome. Bergmannstr. 1, Kreuzberg, Mon- 

Sat 11-22, Sun 13-21 (new restaurant opening 

this month, Revaler Str. 8, Friedrichshain) 

50 EXBERLINER 150 167

REGULARS 

Review 

Italiansky in the West 

Francoise Poilane investigated Italian dining 

as conceived by Russians, and found sensational 

open wines and the best sourdough in town. 

The opening of Mine/Wine one year 

ago (Jan 10) was hailed in the German 

press as “Russia’s Jamie Oliver” 

coming to Berlin. They meant Aram 

Mnatsakanov, an Armenian wine enthusiast 

turned celebrity chef. After opening his first 

wine bar, Probka (“cork”), in St. Petersburg 

in 2001, he built up a full-fledged food and 

drink empire through clever self-branding. 

He’s now as famous for his love of luxury 

cars, his travel memoir and his appearance 

on Ukraine’s version of Hell’s Kitchen as he 

is for his six restaurants, all of which flaunt 

his signature “classic Italian” flair. Mine/ 

Wine, the latest offspring of the Probka 

family, is his first restaurant in Germany. 

“Fine Italian dining from Russia” isn’t 

an easy sell in the German capital, where 

real-deal trattorias are now as common as 

currywurst. And predictably, Mnatsakanov’s 

classy yet cosy brasserie near KaDeWe is less 

popular with hipster foodies than it is with 

City West types: older ladies with expensive 

scarves and visiting girlfriends from Baden 

Baden in tow, businessmen staying in surrounding 

hotels and, of course, Russians, attracted 

by the owner’s domestic fame or just 

on a detour from their beloved Ku’Damm. 

Not exactly promising, but as it turned out, 

the quality of the food and wine and, above 

all, the unpretentious professionalism and 

cheerfulness of the staff won us over. 

It started with Natalya, discreetly sipping 

tea alone at the table next to ours. It 

was 8pm, a little late for an elegant lady to 

tea-party on her own, and it soon became 

apparent she was far from a normal customer. 

As we marvelled over the wondrous 

crusty slices brought to our our table, she 

took the chance to chime in. “The bread’s 

baked in-house. Did you know the sourdough 

starter originated in Georgia 70 years 

ago?” She also informed us that the creamy, 

perfectly salty butter was from a small farm 

near the Danish border, the fleur de sel was 

the finest natural sea salt from Maldon and 

the luscious olive oil came straight from 

Sicily. They’d all been sourced with the 

utmost care. And then Natalya introduced 

herself: Mnatsakanov’s wife, the stepmother 

of Mine/Wine chef and manager Mikhail and 

an associate in the business, here on a short 

stopover between Hamburg 

and St. Petersburg. When 

they’re not there or at their 

other two homes in Moscow 

and Cap d’Antibes, the jetsetting 

couple is scouting out 

vineyards in France and Italy, 

where Mnatsakanov knows 

every noteworthy producer 

on a first-name basis. This explains 

the lavish wine menu: 

150 bottles listed, mostly organic 

and many biodynamic. 

But where you could expect 

snobbery, you’ll be met with 

the kind of generosity collectors relish upon 

sharing their best finds. Spotting a great 

bottle on a Berlin wine list is no longer 

uncommon, but you’d be hard-pressed to 

find a better selection of wines by the glass 

than Mine/Wine’s. They deserve kudos for 

the house prosecco (€5.50/glass) as well as 

for the French whites – a modest but bright 

Chablis (€9.50), and an unusual Sauvignon 

with unexpected yellow notes and the flinty 

mineral flavour of the Loire Valley (€8). For 

the red, it’s in Italy Mnatsakanov has found 

his gems: a bright Nero d’Avola from Sicily 

(€8) and a beautiful Chianti classico from 

Tuscany that lets the Sangiovese grape shine 

through (€9). And if you love a good brandy 

or vintage grappa, be sure to take advantage 

of the extensive selection of spirits on offer. 

Young Mikhail Mnatsakanov, a congenial 

thirtysomething who trained as a chef in 

France, spearheaded the Berlin launch after 

electing Germany as the place to raise his 

children (the second of whom was born at 

time of print). His kitchen obviously knows 

how to make the best of its impeccable 

bounty. Each ingredient stands out, from the 

creamy Gorgonzola to the wild oregano to 

the Texan Angus beef and 14-hour housedried 

tomatoes, all dished out on custom 

clayware from a potter in Petersburg. On the 

evening we visited, it was truffle season, and 

their signature truffle ravioli (€18) were in 

high demand. You could tell why: the burrata-filled 

morsels were luscious and buttery, 

with the love-it-or-leave it flavour of black 

truffle flakes. Starters run the gamut from 

classic to modern favourites, with a twist: 

Michel Le Voguer 

the vitello tonnato has delicate slices of raw 

tuna in it, the red shrimp ceviche has been 

punched up with spicy marinated daikon radish 

and ginger ice cream; the house-smoked 

salmon is served with a mango granité. In 

proper Italian fashion, pasta is suggested as a 

second dish – here options include puttanesca 

with top-notch tuna (€22) and spaghetti con 

vongole with no less than 350g of actual clams 

(€26). You may want to end your meal there 

or move on to the impeccably pink and juicy 

New Zealand lamb chops (€29). Inexplicably, 

they paired the succulent meat with panfried 

sweet corn, the tart-sweetness of which 

threatened to make the whole dish taste 

like breakfast. We also enjoyed the octopus 

(€26), so tender it was slightly falling apart 

in places, possibly blanched for just a little 

too long. Desserts, meanwhile, were mostly 

notable for the experience, like the spectacular 

eggshell-like meringue dome that reveals 

an ice cream filling once broken. 

All in all, Mine/Wine shines for the genuine 

care it puts into its food and service alike. After 

a serious meal and a superior boozing, Mnatsakanov 

junior will personally help you put on 

your coat, and you might even end up departing 

with a convivial hug from the man you’ve 

by now come to know as “Mischa”. We’ll be 

back for the outstanding bread, the wonderful 

wines, and the warm, congenial team. n 

Mine/Wine Food HHH (Wine/bread 

HHHHH) Vibe HHHH Meinekestr., 10, 

Charlottenburg, daily 17:30-24 


REGULARS 

Save Berlin 

By Dan Borden 

Polar express 

At Hauptbahnhof, train travellers get a chilly reception 

– and it’s about to get colder. Dan Borden explains. 

Forget Potsdamer Platz or the Reichstag 

dome – Berlin’s most ambitious 

piece of post-Wall architecture is 

its main train station, aka Hauptbahnhof. 

German rail company Deutsche Bahn took 

a billion-euro gamble when they proposed 

the city’s first central station, binding 

together tracks from east, west, north and 

south. The station opened in May 2006 

but it’s far from complete: Deutsche Bahn 

is still digging away, expanding its network 

of tunnels. The 300,000 passengers who 

flow through Hauptbahnhof every day 

confirm Berliners’ commitment to lowcarbon 

transport and the station as the 

city’s beating transit heart. 

In 1993, Hamburg-based architects Gerkan, 

Marg & Partners won the design competition 

for the station, Europe’s largest. 

Their scheme was inspired by the Eurostar 

terminal at London’s Waterloo station 

with its sleek, snake-like glass barrel vault. 

Budget cuts famously chopped the east end 

off Hauptbahnhof’s curving glass canopy. 

Trapped beneath its black office towers, our 

shortened station is less an elegant snake 

and more a handcuffed caterpillar. 

Still, Hauptbahnhof is an efficient 

machine channelling passengers between 

Deutsche Bahn trains and local transit with 

a little shopping along the way. Just don’t 

walk out of the building. The area surrounding 

Berlin’s main train station is a bleak 

wasteland – and it’s about to get worse. 

Around the globe, travellers stepping out of 

central stations are greeted by grand squares 

offering hotels and cafes with clearly marked 

taxi and bus stands. Hauptbahnhof’s north 

portal dumps new arrivals onto a cramped, 

chaotic limbo – grandly titled Europaplatz 

– where they drag their luggage uphill while 

dodging taxis in the shadow of a giant, robotic 

rocking horse. It’s as if the designers never 

meant for their building to touch the ground. 

Right across Invalidenstraße from the 

station is a vast stretch of abandoned railyards 

that’s slowly being transformed into 

Europacity, 40 hectares of new offices and 

flats. It’s a blank slate, a place where planners 

could have acknowledged the station’s 

importance by creating the grand central 

square that Berlin deserves. Instead, plans 

call for a half-hearted extension of Europaplatz 

on a triangular patch of leftover space, 

bordered by a tunnel entrance on one side 

and office buildings on the other. No welcoming 

piazza. No sidewalk cafés. 

The design bears the stamp of Regula 

Lüscher, Berlin’s Senate Building Director. 

She describes herself as Europacity’s “design 

curator”, and the buildings she’s handselected, 

like the planned 84m-high tower 

on Europaplatz by architect Allmann Sattler 

Wappner, have gridded stone facades reflecting 

her penchant for corporate minimalism. 

Instead of the lively, decadent Berlin of lore, 

Hauptbahnhof arrivals will step out into this 

new district defined by Swiss-born Lüscher’s 

good taste: uniform, rigid and coldly sterile. 

Hauptbahnhof does in fact have a large public 

square, though you probably haven’t seen it 

unless you arrived by boat. Dubbed Washingtonplatz, 

it’s a windswept terrace stretching 

from the south entrance to the Spree River. 

Half the plaza is currently walled off as 

construction workers prepare for the arrival 

of Cube Berlin, a building by Copenhagenbased 

designers 3XN (photo). If the idea of 

this 72m-tall block of ice landing in the heart 

of the city provokes dread, you might be 

3XN 

Hauptbahnhof’s north 

portal dumps new 

arrivals onto a chaotic 

limbo – grandly titled 

Europaplatz – where they 

drag their luggage uphill 

while dodging taxis. 

a Star Trek fan: the evil Borg species travels 

in cube-shaped starships. The facade’s 

fractured-glass motif is equally troubling, 

referencing either the shattered windows of 

perception or a dropped smartphone screen. 

But even more disturbing is what’s inside 

this Cube: office space geared toward the 

city’s growing army of high-tech drones. 

There was a time when Berlin seduced 

the world’s youth to come and squander 

their best years in a smokey, drunken haze. 

Now Europe’s young arrive at Berlin’s 

Hauptbahnhof eager to spend long days 

at computers in climate-controlled boxes, 

devoting their best years to speeding the 

wheels of mass consumption. Is it too late 

to save Berlin’s cold, cold heart? n 

52 


COLUMN— The Gay Berliner 

Meet me in 

the bathroom 

A new exhibition makes Walter Crasshole 

wonder: whatever happened to gay sex 

in public toilets? 

My most recent toilet hookup was a failure. Sort of. It was 

Schwuz’s final London Calling party and the last thing I was 

looking for was anonymous sex. The club’s bright, unisex 

(and hygienic) toilets aren’t really conducive to doing much more than 

drugs. But that night, as I saddled up to the urinal to relieve myself, a 

cute, young Mediterranean-looking guy saddled right up next to me and 

pulled out a member that was ready for far more than just a leak. So I 

dragged him into a cubicle and got ready for a little fun. This was how 

they did it in the olden days, right? But that’s when the failure set in. My 

young companion wasn’t as ready in his head as he was below the belt. 

After 30 seconds of fumbling around with each other, he left in flushed 

panic. But no matter. I was continuing a gay legacy. 

Yes, before the days of darkrooms and Grindr, Berlin gays got their 

anonymous jollies in public johns. It’s currently the topic of a brilliant 

exhibition at the Schwules Museum called Fenster zum Klo (a nod to Frank 

Ripploh’s West Berlin gay film Taxi zum Klo). In a mix of photos and artefacts, 

French photographer Marc Martin describes the history of public toilets as 

cruising hotspots, as well as their significance. “Within these atypical places 

of transience and sociability, social differences were blurred and otherwise 

separated cultures briefly mixed,” he writes in his introduction. 

But this is not only a sociological study. There are plenty of facts to 

take home, the kind you won’t be sharing with Oma. For example, here 

in Berlin, public toilets used to be nicknamed “Café Achteck” for their 

original octagonal shape. And even I was surprised by some of the 

things my gay forefathers got up to in there (I’ll leave what the French 

“Soupeurs” did with baguettes to your imagination). 

But now that public sex has made it to museums, does that mean 

it’s over? The answer is a resounding jein. There’s certainly less toilet 

sex out there. Berlin’s historic pissoirs have mostly been demolished 

or turned into burger joints, and those robotic self-cleaning 50-cent 

City Toilettes just don’t have the same appeal as ye olde Café Achteck. 

The johns in Tiergarten’s Victory Column used to be the hotspot 

for punters in Berlin, but the only excitement I ever witnessed there 

was three junkies crowded into a tiny stall, moaning from something 

other than sexual gratification. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean we gays are having less anonymous sex. 

Berlin’s darkrooms and sex clubs offer plenty of that, for a price. The 

atmosphere of cruising still exists in every exchanged glance between 

men in Ficken3000 or Connection Club in Schöneberg – and yes, sometimes 

the smell of piss comes with it. And of course, there’s Grindr. 

Anonymous sex delivery. The frisson of public encounters may have 

been replaced by the convenience of clicking, but it’s still a subversive 

way to get your rocks off while “blurring social differences”. 

I may never have the kind of anonymous public toilet sex that my gay 

granddaddies did in the 20th century, but I can still continue the tradition 

by slutting it up against the grain. And thanks to the exhibition at 

the Schwules Museum, I will think of them every time I take a piss. I’ll 

also stop eating baguettes for a while. ■ 

Fenster zum Klo runs at the Schwules Museum through Feb 5.

Exberliner Issue 167, January 2018

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