IMAGE: ALAMY
C I TY LI F E BERLIN
Following decades of turmoil during the 20th century, the German capital blazes with colour and invention, busy forging monuments to its new artistic movement from the ruins of its past
WORDS: SE AN NEWSOM. PHOTOGR APHS: VERENA BRU ENING
If you’re looking for a symbol of Berlin’s 20th-century history, you could do a lot worse than the Teufelsberg. Rising out of the Grunewald forest, at the western edge of the city, this 375ft hill is made almost entirely out of the wreckage of the Second World War. Bricks mainly, but also broken lintels, smashed tiles and pock-marked stone: in the end, 26 million cubic metres of the stuff, cleared from Berlin’s streets, was dumped here over the half-finished shell of a military academy. The Nazis had been building it when, in 1945, Stalin’s tanks rolled in. Then, the British and Americans placed a listening
post on top, crowned with a handful of antennas encased in domes like great, white golf balls. Once staffed by 1,500 Cold War spies, it didn’t just monitor Communist conversations; West German journalists suspected their telephone calls were being bugged, too. No wonder they called it the Teufelsberg — teufel is German for ‘devil’. Now, the scene is rather different. The Allies shipped out
in 1991, and before anyone could agree what to do with the site, locals were cutting holes in its perimeter fence and wriggling through. Some just wanted to see what all the fuss had been about; others brought cans of spray paint. “How could it have been otherwise?” says Berlin artist
and Teufelsberg guide Richard Rabensaat, when he takes me up there one midweek morning. “It was a wonderful, adventurous place, full of secrets,” he says. “And you could paint there without fear of being stopped by the police.” Pretty soon, the Teufelsberg became an unofficial
open-air gallery of street art — and that status was officially confirmed in 2014. When it first opened, full time, to the public, 5,000 people a day were crowding in. It’s much quieter now, and at first the overwhelming
impression is of dilapidation. Only Mother Nature seems purposeful, coiling ivy around drainpipes and sending silver birches shimmering through gaps in the tarmac.
The Teufelsberg’s vaunted artwork seems secondary to the sense of decay. Then we round a corner, and lay eyes on the back of the building. What a sight greets me there. This is where its biggest
walls are — and across them three different artists have let loose. One of the works is pure Roy Lichtenstein: a pop art melodrama of comic-book emotions. Another is an album-cover-worthy dreamscape of purples, blues and browns. But it’s the largest of the three — painted by Berlin street artist Akut in 2022 — that really holds your gaze. Here, a black-haired woman, five storeys high, squats
against a dark and troubled sky. The mottled paintwork of her skinny arms contrasts delicately with the faultless sheen of her boxing gloves, and in spite of her obvious frailty her look is one of pure defiance. ‘When David turned into Goliath’, the caption reads, alongside the names of a galaxy of era-defining high-achievers — all of them female. Even the resurgent vegetation looks wilted beside the strength of its conviction. And it’s clear that Berlin still blazes with colour and invention. For years, I’ve been reading about how — after its great
dividing wall came down — Berlin was flooded with artists, nightclubbers and refugees. The politicians may have been talking about how best to rebuild their broken capital, but this twentysomething horde loved its neglect and dirt- cheap rents — and for nearly two decades, they defined the remaking of the city just as powerfully as the refurbished Reichstag. Problem is, over 30 years have passed since reunification. Would the grassroots renaissance that followed now be a spent force? I needn’t have worried. It’s not just the Teufelsberg that’s
creative. Here, street art is so assertive and ubiquitous that it’s become mainstream. Take Fotografiska, for example. Newly opened in the central district of Mitte, it’s the Berlin branch of a global chain of photography galleries and at
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