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EXBERLINER MAGAZINE

CULTURE

The Best of Berlin in July

Exberliner, Berlin's leading English-language magazine, in July finds Elysian airfields, explores laundrette culture, and scrutinises a corporate shantytown.

Published: 20 July 2010 14:18 CEST
The Best of Berlin in July
Photo: DPA

Elysian (air)field

Only recently opened to the public as the city’s largest park, the abandoned Tempelhof airfield offers more than Nazi bullies in Hitler t-shirts and Kaiser’s A&P Summer Rave. Go for a run around the field and see for yourself… The vast emptiness of the expanse and its open skies (a stunning canvas for fluffy-clouded sunsets) may seem overwhelming at first, especially with the ghostly Tempelhof Airport – one part of Albert Speer’s Germania blueprints – lurking at the far end. But then you notice the signs: here there’s a “Dog Run”; a minute further on, a “German Weather Station” next to a “Bird-Breeding Habitat”; and, finally, the designated “BBQ Area”. All neatly explained in English, on bright-red signposts – a nod to the airport’s American past as the site of Berlin’s historic airlift? Even more impressive is the range of autonomous recreational use, even on mellow weekdays: joggers, rollerbladers, skateboarders and bikers spread out across the asphalt, but there’s still plenty of space for a game of inline hockey. Nearby, families are flying kites and some middle-aged geeks their model planes. By the time you reach the Biergarten, you’ll be sucking wind – circling the field requires advanced jogging skills – so take a break for a beer. This place has potential!/TJ

TEMPELHOFER FELD | Columbiadamm/Tempelhofer Damm, Neukölln, U-Bhf Boddinstr./U-Bhf Paradestr., 6–21:30

My beautiful laundrette

In a city in which everyone figuratively airs their dirty laundry, Berliners rarely wish to do so literally. Almost everyone owns a washing machine; those who don’t are treated to what feels like a poll tax to get our clothes cleaned (or, God forbid, dried) with prices that often appear to approach the cost of the garments themselves. Still, with a regular laundromat one can at least be left alone with one’s undergarments: a laundry café promises that most frightening encounter – a run-in with a German small-business owner. And the laundry café Mangelwirtschaft offers an experience considerably more crapulent than that. It sees no need to offer coherence or, for that matter, change for its machines. But this pales next to its insane insistence that it is not a laundromat but, as was explained to me in condescending English, a “private washing center”. Meaning that one is not allowed to do one’s laundry if one does NOT buy beer or cake or such… and you will be informed of this only after you’ve loaded your possessions into several of their small washers at €3 a pop. Because of the paucity of laundering options in my neighbourhood, I used to frequent Mangelwirtschaft on occasion. My final time there, while being reprimanded for not purchasing a cookie, I inquired of the proprietress – a woman whose defeated eyes appeared to reflect battered woman syndrome – whether she might reasonably wish for the commerce I was so willing to offer her. To which she replied, “You don’t even use us anyway! You use the laundromat down the street!” I don’t know if the stale pastries that surrounded her could ever soothe the broken heart of this failed capitalist – yet another example of the German inability to vaguely understand even the most elementary forms of customer service./DS

MANGELWIRTSCHAFT | Paul-Robeson-Str. 42, Prenzlauer Berg, S+U-Bhf Schönhauser Allee, Tel 030 6040 5767, Mon-Sat from 10:00 (last wash: 21:00), Sun from 12:00 (last wash: 19:00), www.mangelwirtschaft.com

Corporate slumworld

What does Africa stand for? Let’s think: wild animals, naked savages dancing to tribal bongos and, yes, of course, let’s not forget – shantytowns! So, to get as close to the 2010 World Cup as 10,000 km permits, why not build a slum-look-alike fun park? And since we’re too cool to really bother about intellectual integrity – and remember that we’ve been fighting loud and hard against Big Capital embodied by Mediaspree – let’s get our slum sponsored by… ADIDAS! That’s arguably what went through the übercreative brains of the unterprincipled Bar 25 people when they sat together with their sporty mega-corp partner: Johannesburg 24 was born (and such a smart name!). They traipsed around the city’s junkyards to scavenge the usual slum ingredients (cardboard, rusty containers, old car wheels and lots of corrugated iron) and deposited them on the Spree riverbank right next to Bar 25’s HQ, banged it all together as a rickety shantytown-style building complete with cool paintings of black people, and topped it off with a huge Adidas sign. And since no one really wants to sit in a real slum to watch soccer, the rest of Johannesburg 24 offers pretty much everything its mother business does: Sekt on the rocks for €5, long queues and, when Germany scores, lots of Bar 25’s signature confetti in the air. If you can stomach the €3 entrance fee in a city where most football public viewing spots are free, and get over the irritating marriage of the alternative “Spreeufer für Alle” claim and total sell-out to a multinational company, the atmosphere here is great during games, Deutschlandflaggen density pleasantly low, and, well, the setting on the sunny banks of the Spree is priceless. So go play in Berlin’s one and only township amusement park. It’s not gonna stay forever. What’s planned next? Spa 25 – for off-duty executives…/ALM

JOHANNESBURG 24 | Holzmarktstr. 24, Friedrichshain, S+U-Bhf Jannowitzbrücke, Mon-Sun 12-24, www.bar25.de/johannesburg

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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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