Southern Tiergarten District

A few meters further on, a completely different world. Here they stood, the elegant villas where art-loving people talked shop, debated, danced, and drank. Most were free spirits, many artists themselves: fashion designers, writers, interior designers. Yes, this was also where the money was. The upper middle class, millionaires, industrialists—a patronage sorely missed today. Many were Jewish. From January 1933 on, everything changed. Exile, suicide, deportations, extermination. What became of these people? The neighborhood was destroyed too—no, not all by bombs. Many buildings had already been systematically torn down beforehand to make way for Albert Speer’s visions of “Germania.”

And then there was peace for a while, here at the end of the world, right in the middle of the city, actually. It was pretty quiet. But then something did happen. Excavators rolled in, and music, literature, and art returned. But only as institutions. And suddenly we’re right back in the thick of it, in the city, in the capital! They’re digging again, and it’s going international. Done?! No! We’re in Berlin, after all. The digging continues. A new museum building is going up and tempers are running high! There are still a few vacant lots left…and when everything is built up, we’ll leave again and start all over. And on the side, there’s also an illegal moonshine distillery, a marital drama with a fatal outcome, a big thank you to the concrete guys and steel guys, an Indonesian with a green thumb, and last but not least, the neighbor Wolfgang.

IN GERMAN