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Photo of “George Smiley” shot from the hip while travelling on an escalator at U-Bhf “Rotes Rathaus”, which – with 10 minutes to spare – I decided to explore a bit. The gentleman, who looked like a time-traveller among groups of Funktionswäsche1-clad tourists from Nordrhein-Westfalen or Baden-Württemberg and confused-looking guests from the Far East, headed briskly for the exit, with myself trailing him in the hope of catching him “on film”. Stood on the escalator behind the man, I discreetly pointed my smartphone up and hoped for the best – this was a “blind” picture. The stars aligned:-)

(Berlin, the plaza before Rotes Rathaus – Berlin City Hall – facing Alexanderplatz, with Fernsehturm on the left)

  1. Funktionswäsche: lit. activity underwear; in Germany it often stands for very a very practical, no-frills attitude to life, which might be considered a tad boring and a bit too streamlined for perfection by others. ↩︎

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A small Jewish shop in Grenadierstraße (now Almstadtstraße) in the historic Scheunenviertel, 1933. Photo by P. Buch; Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1987-0413-508 / P. Buch / CC-BY-SA 3.0
“Some hundred and twenty Jewish refugees from the East lived in that lodging house. Many of the men were soldiers who’d just returned from Russian captivity. Their clothes were a grotesque melange of Rag-Internationale. In their eyes thousand years of suffering. There were women in that house, too. Carrying their children on their backs like bundles of dirty linen. And the children, crawling through the rickety world on bowed legs, sucked on pieces of dry bread-crust.”

Joseph Roth about the Lodging House “Center” in Grenadierstraße 40 corner Hirtenstraße 11 in October 1920. The lodging house stood in what used to be Berlin’s old Jewish district, Schuenenviertel (Barn District), partly demolished in 1905-1907 and further refurbished int he 1920s.

Until 1951 Almstadtstraße in Berlin-Mitte used to be called Grenadierstraße and belonged to one of Berlin’s poorest, by now vanished, districts called Scheunenviertel (the Barn District). The district – interwoven into many classics of Berlin film and literature – was traditionally inhabited by East-Europeans Jews fleeing both pogroms and the bitter poverty of the shtetls of today’s central and eastern Poland, western Ukraine, Russia, Hungary and parts of Romania which belonged to a region known as the Bukovina.

Georg Bartels’s photo of the Lodging House “Center”, the first address for many East-European Jews arriving in Berlin at the end end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

To most of them Berlin was a promise of a temporary home before they set off to the much more promising yet distant destination, the USA. Still, many chose or were forced to grow their new roots in the heart of the German capital. This is where the streets spoke, sang and whispered in Yiddish – the language they brought with them from home and one which made them feel part of a community. The community, made up chiefly of Polish Jews, centred around Grenadierstraße with its many stibbeleks (small houses of prayer, a Yiddish word from German Stube – a room), a ritual bath-house, schools and small shops offering products the inhabitants knew so well from home. “The ghetto with open doors” is how the Scheunenviertel and Grenadierstraße were often described. It was a world of its own.

Father with children on a street in Scheunenviertel in 1925; photo by Walter Giercke (scan of the cover of Eike Geisel’s book “Im Scheunenviertel”)

The street’s name, Grenadierstraße – as well as that of the parallel road, Dragonerstraße (now Max-Beer-Straße) – referred to the old military barracks which used to stretch nearby before the area became a mostly residential one.

But did you know that was not its original name? Before 1817 today’s Almstadtstraße was known as Verlorene Straße (Lost Street) or Verlorene Gasse (Lost Lane). The reason for it was the fact that in the eighteenth century when it was built, its northern end reached outside the populated area and beyond the city wall. Such “open-ended” streets, disappearing beyond the city gates in what was felt to have been a rather undecided, unruly manner, were often described as verloren, or “lost”. Another example would be today’s streets Am Friedrichshain and Kniprodestraße – before the Park Am Friedrichshain was created in the 1840s and gave the former its name, the road marked on Berlin maps as Verlohrener Weg, the Lost Road.

Almstadtstraße as “Verlorne Straße” in 1816.

Like Grenadierstraße once, it passed one of the old city gates, the Bernauer Tor, and carried on beyond the city limits. In the 1840s it became the only access road to the then new park. In 1880, when Berlin’s Jewish Community bought land in Weißensee, on the border to Berlin, to build a large Jewish cemetery, the road – whose extension to the north to Lichtenberger Weg (now Indira-Ghandi-Straße) had been planned but not yet realised – cut right through the Jewish cemetery. It, too, had an open end.

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Berlin street with a fruit stand, 1937. By Thomas Neumann; collection of the National Archive of Norway. Image PD.

Wherever he went during his 1937 trip through Germany – and Berlin in particular- the Norwegian engineer Thomas Neumann always kept his Leica camera ready. He knew the city quite well: he lived and worked here from 1928 until 1933. Now, happy to be back, he sauntered through central Berlin, taking photos of the swastika-filled cityscape.

Only few of his photographs are free from visible Nazi symbols – which in itself reflects the atmosphere in the city pretty accurately. This is one of them. The scene captured by Neumann at the Zeughaus (today the seat of the German Historic Museum) on the corner of Unter den Linden and the street Hinter dem Gießhaus, is stunningly peaceful and dynamic at the same time. The colours are beautifully understated but clear. And the fruit vendor’s cart loaded with bananas and oranges invites the passers-by to “Eat more fruit” to “stay healthy”. Ironically Germany had already entered the most unhealthy period in its own and the world’s history, but the people in this picture as well as nearly everyone around them were still happily unaware of the approaching end of their world.

For his Leica Thomas Neumann chose a fairly new product offered by a German manufacturer, the Agfacolor Neu film first released one the market a year before. Until 1932 Agfacolor products were sold under the name Agfa, a company established – you guessed it – in Berlin. But that is not the only “small revelation” concerning Agfa (between 1873 and 1897 it was still known under its original name, Aktien-Gesellschaft für Anilin-Fabrikation – later replaced by its acronym). Established by two entrepreneurs whose paths crossed in the Berlin university chemistry lab, Carl Martius and Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. From the Mendelssohn-Bartholdys – the descendants of the philosopher and great promotor of the Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment), Moses Mendelssohn, who arrived in Berlin as an impoverished teenager on foot and was refused entry at the southernmost city gate known as Hallesches Tor (at the time Jews were banned from using any other city gates but the northern Rosenthaler Tor).

Agfacolor Neu 35-mm film and roll film, 1937. Image via Chemiepark Bitterfeld-Wolfen GmbH, CC 3.0 Licence

Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was not only Moses’ great-grandson. His father was none other than Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, musician and composer enjoying world fame and undying devotion of many fans until this day. After Felix’s early death at 38, followed by that of his beloved wife, Cécile Sophie Jeanrenaud (she sadly died of tuberculosis at 35), Paul – born and bred Leipziger – lived in Berlin at his uncle’s house in Französische Straße. His passion for chemistry was at the root of the future world-famous brand.

That passion also helped Thomas Neumann capture this incredible, cinematic moment in Berlin’s life in the spring of 1937. Without Agfacolor neu film (soon to become the favourite for big Hollywood productions such as Gone With The Wind – many of you might have noticed the resemblance already), the photos made by the Norwegian engineer might have lacked that gentle breath of life.

You can learn more about the history of Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, of Agfa and their breakthrough products (one of which is the longest used photography material in history) reading my Tagesspiegel column “Aus der Zeit” – as always, about everything you never even knew you wanted to know about Berlin. The text about Agfa (in German) is available here: Farbfilm ab 1893: Mit der Berliner Agfa zum scharfen Bild (tagesspiegel.de)

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Berliner Weihnachtsmarkt by Franz Skarbina, 1892.

In 1892 Franz Skarbina, one of Berlin’s leading nineteenth-century painters, captured a scene close to every Berliner’s heart: the city’s annual Christmas Market – an event as eagerly awaited and as important to the city’s tradition then as it is today when despite COVID-related restrictions duly vaccinated and carefully masked crowds flock to the few still open locations.

The Christmas Market painted by the artist eight years before the end of the nineteenth century was located in Berlin’s Lustgarten: in the background on the left you can see the western edge of the old Stadtschloß, the Royal City Palace, while the buildings on the right form the line of the soon-to-be-demolished Schloßfreiheit.

Schloßfreiheit was a small street which used to run along the city palace’s western front facade, separating it from the Cöllnischer Stadtgraben (now the Spreekanal). Built in 1672, it comprised ten buildings whose owners, having carried the exorbitant costs of constructing houses on very unstable, marshy grounds, enjoyed a series of financial privileges such as freedom from many forms of taxation practised in Berlin at the time. They were also free from obligation to put up royal troops at own costs -until first proper Kasernen (barracks) were built in the Prussian capital, providing accommodation to soldiers was one of the most hated, burdensome duties faced by Berliners. The very name of the street indicated its special status: Freiheit stands in German for “freedom”.

Schlossfreiheit and Berliner Stadtschloß after 1853: seen from Schloßbrücke (image via Stadtschloss-Berlin).

By the end of the nineteenth century this small but very central street, built by the order of the Great Elector who wished to see more life around the palace, became a permanent thorn in his distant Hohenzollern successor’s, Wilhelm’s II, side. The last Kaiser often complained about its unsightliness and its unfortunate location blocking the view from the palace towards Schinkel’s Bauakademie on the other side of the canal. Eventually and rather unsurprisingly, despite protests the tenacious emperor got his way. Demolished in 1892-1894 the street had to make room for Wilhelm’s tribute to his Grandpapa: to Kaiser-Wilhelm-Denkmal, a humongous memorial installed in honour of Wilhelm I.

As a side-note: the fact that this oversized melange of stone and bronze giants and endless collection of animal figures (Berliners referred to it as the Kleine Zoo von Wilhelm Zwo) obstructed the view just as much as the Schloßfreiheit did, did not seem to bother His Imperial Majesty much.

Christmas Market in Breite Straße, 1796 (by Schubert & Halle, from the digital collection of Stadtmuseum Berlin).

Lustgarten, a large plaza between the Royal Palace, the Berliner Dom and Altes Museum (flanking it from the north), was the site of Berlin’s largest Christmas Markets since 1873. Before that they traditionally took place in Breite Straße – a location used since approximately 1750 until Rudolph Hertzog, the owner of the vast department store in Breite Straße, complained about the market’s negative impact on his pre-Christmas profits. The very first ever recorded Christmas Market in Berlin opened, by the way, in 1530: it stretched between Petriplatz, Mühlendamm and today no longer existing Heilige-Geist-Straße. But mentions of Weynachts-Marckt (historic spelling) could be found in the city records of Cölln – one of the sister-cities that formed today’s Berlin – already in mid-fifteenth century.

Lustgarten in 1945 (image by Roy Skelly via Flickr Collection of Mr Patrick Skelly).

Lustgarten Christmas Markets were a Berlin institution and a highlight of every winter. Until the end of 1893 when the construction of the new Berliner Dom brought a temporary end to the annual fair on this spot. Luckily, the idea to do away with the tradition for good – presented by the Polizeipräsidium in 1891 – found enough prominent opponents.

The Weihnachtsmarkt did not return to its central location until 1934 – a change enthusiastically welcomed by Berliners who missed the Lustgarten event. No wonder then than as soon as the Second World War ended, the first post-war Christmas Market opened right there, too.

A short text about the 1945 event in one of the local newspapers.

Despite ice-cold wind, ruins, hunger and luck of nearly every thinkable facilities, it began on December 9, 1945. For many survivors, especially for children, it was the first opportunity to have a cup of hot barley-malt-coffee and a warm sausage in a a very long time. Despite Berlin’s division into East and West, the Lustgarten remained the market’s venue for the next thirty years, albeit only for East Berliners (West Berlin’s main Christmas Market occupied – and still does – today’s Breitscheidplatz). The last one closed in January 1974.

Christmas Market in Lustgarten with the ruins of Berliner Dom in the background, in 1948 (image by Rudolph Bratke, via Budensarchiv).