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EXBERLINER MAGAZINE

CULTURE

The Best of Berlin in September

Exberliner, Berlin's leading English-language magazine, in September goes the distance at the Marathon, finds creative wood furniture, and joins the cult of multiculti broadcasting.

Published: 10 September 2010 10:01 CEST
The Best of Berlin in September

Born to run

The Persians are lucky that Haile Gebrselassie wasn’t Greek (or alive at a probably fictitious historical event, for that matter) because they wouldn’t have even had a chance to start counting their losses by the time the news would have arrived in Athens. Gebrselassie’s world record for the 26-odd miles of the marathon – set, naturally, in Berlin (in 2008) – stands at a touch over two hours. To be exact: two hours, three minutes and 59 seconds! Berlin, you see, is perfect for athletics’ most gruelling event – a runner’s dream being a flat city with reasonable autumn temperatures. Its ideal conditions make the city the world’s fastest marathon course; for its 37th edition on September 26, the million or so attendees that will line Berlin’s streets will be expecting pace, and a lot of it… from wheels as well as (some 40,000) legs, since both wheelchair users and inline skaters can participate in the two-day (Sep 25-26) programme of events. On the day of the main event, the vociferous morning crowds will also be participating in some partisan cheering as Germany’s Irina Mikitenko attempts to defend last year’s women’s title. Gebrselassie will be merely trying for his fifth in a row. But really, it’s not just the pace that matters. In 1990 – 20 years ago this year – the runners streamed through the Brandenburg Gate like the tears streaming down their faces, as they finished the marathon for the first time in a reunified Germany: this history is yet another reason why the Berlin Marathon is one of the most beloved in the world./JS

BERLIN MARATHON, Sep 26 | The race begins at 9:00 on Straße des 17. Juni at Kleiner Stern (Tiergarten, S-Bhf Bellevue) and ends on the same street, near the Soviet Memorial (Mitte, U-Bhf Brandenburger Tor). The awards ceremony takes place at 14:00, at the Brandenburg Gate. For a map and a complete schedule of events, visit www.real-berlin-marathon.com

Wood works…

The sound of sawing draws you into Not A Wooden Spoon, whose calm white shop front’s simplicity reflects that of the work done inside. When owner Michael Ferguson steps out of his sawdust-strewn workshop at the back to greet his frequent customers, he stands alongside giant floorboards stacked ceiling-high: the ingredients of his impending masterpieces. Consciously or not, the London-born carpenter, who lived for 10 years in Sydney before coming to Berlin, is a pioneer in eco-furnishings. Using raw materials from a variety of sources – rubbish skips, renovated houses and specialist salvage yards – he creates utterly unique pieces of furniture, from mirrors and lamps to drawers, chairs and beds. There is something wonderfully solid and charismatic about his furniture. You learn its origins from the price tags: the blue-and-red painted wood of one chair was taken from a flat down the road, on Prenzlauer Allee. Due to the high demand for Not A Wooden Spoon’s wares, there are often only a few items on display, but you can walk into the shop at any time and place an order for a piece made from scratch. The furniture is not cheap – a large chair costs about €200 – but, when faced with the soulful yet solid grace of the final product, you will think every cent is worth it. A charming café next to the shop, itself a former furniture shop and thus rather confusingly entitled “Möbel”, contributes to a nice afternoon’s pottering./PRC

NOT A WOODEN SPOON | Oderberger Str. 2, Prenzlauer Berg, U-Bhf Eberswalder Str., Mon-Sat 11-18 (except when Michael’s off making a delivery), [email protected]

Return of the Kult

At one time, had you removed the international music section from any given record store (for those of you who still visit those old museums), a small horde of concerned fans would have decried the loss of an important slice of musical culture. This is what happened when Radio Multikulti disappeared in 2008. And now Berlin’s one and only authentic forum for “world music” – by now an expletive that doesn’t do justice to a vibrant, internationally minded local music scene that thrives off small clubs, alternative DJs and underground bands – is back in the form of the privately funded “Radio Multicult”. For 14 years Multikulti, which was run by public broadcaster RBB, provided an essential service in that it supported myriad subcultures ignored by mainstream Berlin stations. Still, despite widespread protest and petitions from the likes of CDU MP Rita Süssmuth and famed Russendisko DJ/author Wladimir Kaminer, the plug was pulled on the station, whose market share had dropped to a mere 0.8 percent and 38,000 listeners a day: the cash-strapped RBB had decided Radio Multikulti didn’t have a big enough audience base. Multikulti’s Berlin frequency was taken over by Funkhaus Europa, a quality world music station from Cologne – with great programming, but entirely lacking a connection to the Berlin scene. Why revive Multikulti as Multicult now, after ‘failure’ in 2008? Clemens Grün, music director of the new station, just feels that Berlin needs something like this: an arbiter of Balkan wave, Cuban, Latino, afrobeat and other international sounds to make the city’s multikulti claims truly valid./RR, WC

Radio Multicult starts broadcasting on September 1 over 88.4 and 90.7 FM – together, these two frequencies cover all of Berlin. For more info and to listen online, visit www.multicult20.de

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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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