Kreuzberged: Berlin Companion

BERLIN CALENDAR: BUILDING THE HEADLINE - FIRST POST-WW2 EDITION OF THE "BERLINER ZEITUNG"

Berlin Companion — Thu, 21 May 2026 11:55:13 GMT

Berliners with the first edition of the “Berliner Zeitung” photographed by Eva Kemlein on May 21, 1945. Image via Stadtmuseum Berlin.

What do you need most once the cannons go silent and life as it was can begin to recommence? Next to the obvious staples? Information. News about what is happening, whom to contact and what is even there. That is why in 1945 one of the paramount tasks of the new Berlin administration was to launch newspapers again. Their less overt aim? To spread new ideology: this time Communism.

On this day in 1945 Berliners, who had just emerged from the hell of the last battle for the city, could buy the first edition of a soon-to-be popular daily published in Berlin after the end of the Second World War…

GERMAN WORD OF THE DAY: AUßEINANDERPOSAMENTIEREN

Berlin Companion — Wed, 20 May 2026 13:45:03 GMT

Two Berliner Jungen by reading and/or außposamentieren. Photo by Willy Römer via Kunstbibliothek Berlin.

Außeinanderposamentieren means to take something (often an idea) apart to study it in detail or…

BERLIN CALENDAR: HEADING FOR A FALL - BERLIN STOCK EXCHANGE CRASH OF 1927

Berlin Companion — Wed, 13 May 2026 11:57:24 GMT

Famous thinker once said: “Everyone has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth”. You might know Mike Tyson through his other career - as a boxer - but when the man was right, he was right. His boisterous statement can be applied to a great number of situations - including to what happened on this day in 1927 in Berlin.

On May 13, 1927 Berlin Stock Exchange saw the value of its shares and stocks plummet from 204 to 136 points - a drop of 31.9%. The crash which happened on, nomen is omen, Friday the 13th, went down in history as Black Friday…

BERLIN QUOTES: WILHELM SAID IT

Berlin Companion — Wed, 13 May 2026 11:31:20 GMT

Bustling Brüderstraße in 1808; copper engraving by Catel. Image in public domain.

“Do greet from me all the streets and all the lanes in the City of Seven Hills! I know, I believe, them all. Just as n…

BERLIN CALENDAR: THE PIOUS AND THE RUBBER GOODS

Berlin Companion — Tue, 12 May 2026 07:28:15 GMT

On 12 May, 1945 Julius Fromm (born as Israel From), inventor of the first seamless rubber condom, died in exile in London at 62. "Fromms Act" or "Frommsen" were produced in Berlin from 1916 and would be included in every German First World War soldier's pack. By 1919 some 150,000 Frommsen were manufactured per day. Here’s Herr Fromm’s seamless road to success…

BERLIN CALENDAR: BIG SPLASH AT BERLIN'S FIRST AQUARIUM

Berlin Companion — Mon, 11 May 2026 10:00:39 GMT

On 11 May 1896 the original Berlin Aquarium – a grotto-style affair - opened in a building on the corner of Unter den Linden and Schadowstraße. It was the largest such venue worldwide…

The official opening ceremony was attended by King Wilhelm I (future Kaiser Wilhelm I), Royal Princes and other court bigwigs. The aquarium, a crowd magnet from the start, was henceforth recommended by every respectable Berlin guidebook…

BERLIN CALENDAR: MOTHER RUSSIA REMEMBERS

Berlin Companion — Fri, 08 May 2026 10:54:51 GMT

On 8 May 1949 in Berlin, the colossal Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park was unveiled on the site of the former artificial lake created in 1896 for the Great Berlin Industrial Exposition. Although “unveiled” might be a bit of a stretch: the site covers 10 hectares of land.

The memorial’s central element is an over 30-metre-tall (counting the base) statue of Der Befreier (The Liberator) by a Soviet artist, Yevgeny Vuchetich. Vutchetich was a member of the creative team led by architect Yakov S. Belopolski. Together with painter Alexander A. Gorpenko and art historian, critic and engineer Sarra Samuilovna Valerius (she and Vuchetich would marry afterwards), the team was responsible for designing and overseeing the building of the memorial.

The whole site of the Soviet Memorial in Treptower Park seen from above (view E-W, Berliner Fernsehturm in top left corner ). Photo by Toni Klemm, via Wikipedia C.C. 4.0

They created what was the largest monument to fallen Soviet soldiers (at least until two decades later the “Mother Russia” statue rose above Stalingrad, now Volgograd)…

BERLIN CALENDAR: MARLENE TAKES A BOW

Berlin Companion — Wed, 06 May 2026 15:50:08 GMT

Marlene Dietrich and Milton Berle at the recording studio for his show “Let Yourself Go” in June 1944 in LA. Dietrich learnt to play the signing saw from her screen colleague, Polish-Austrian actor and future Nazi-collaborator (assassinated by an execution squad in Warsaw), Igo Syn. Image from the Marlene Dietrich Collection Berlin, Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

On this day in 1992 Berlin and the world lost one of the last great cinema divas, the one and only, unforgettable, unsurpassed, and absolutely unabashed Marlene Dietrich. The actress and chanteuse died in Paris where she spent the last years of her life.

The grave of Marlene Dietrich in Stubenrauchstraße, Berlin-Friedenau (photo own).

Marlene Dietrich (actually Marie Magdalena Dietrich) was born in December 1901 in Berlin-Schöneberg’s neighbourhood of Rote Insel. Even though she lost her father at a very your age, her mother made sure that their girls received proper education and put a lot of effort into her and her older sister’s upbringing (the fact that the family was comfortable financially certainly made that task easier).

Marie displayed quite a musical talent and even planned a career as a violinist. A hand injury crossed those plans and sent the girl in a different direction: theatre. And it being the 1920s, soon a new medium - film - beckoned.

Marie Magdalene - now “Marlene” - as always, followed her instinct…

ALPS IN TREPTOWER PARK

Berlin Companion — Wed, 06 May 2026 10:20:56 GMT

The Alpine Panorama from the outside (from the main catalogue of the 1896 Berlin Trade Exhibition; via ZLB, image in the public domain.

Is this Zerrmat? Is it Zillertal? No, this is Berlin. Berlin-Treptow, to be exact: we are in Treptower Park.

It was there that on 1 May, 1896 Berlin celebrated the opening of its Trade and Industrial Exhibition – an event which went down in history as “The World Fair That Never Was”…

THE KAISER AND THE MAN WITH THE CAMERA: OSKAR MESSTER FILMS WILHELM ZWO

Berlin Companion — Mon, 04 May 2026 08:38:08 GMT

On this day in 1897 in Stettin (now Szczecin in Poland) a Berlin filmmaker, inventor and, for many, the legitimate father of German cinema industry, Oskar Messter, became the first person ever to have captured Kaiser Wilhelm II on film. It would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship…

Still from Oskar Messter’s film. Via Europeana.eu.

YOU ARE HERE: DIPPING AT THE REICHSTAG

Berlin Companion — Mon, 04 May 2026 07:51:27 GMT

Kids bathing near the Reichstag by Boris Pushkin, via Deutscher Bundestag and German History Museum, Berlin.

Online and in the press, this great photo has never lost its great popularity. Now, with the 81th anniversary of the end of the Second World War nigh, it re-appears again.

However, the caption you often see underneath - “Children bathing in the Spree at the Reichstag in 1945” - contains four facts and one misconception. Here is why.

When in 1945 Boris Pushkin, Soviet photographer, took this picture, it was not the Spree that his camera captured. Those girls and boys were swimming not in the river but in a massive basin that was created between the river and Königsplatz (now Platz der Republik) before the Reichstag building. It served as a tank barrier and was in fact, partly a flooded U-Bahn (Berlin Tube or Subway) tunnel of line which had been planned still before the war but was never built, and partly (and luckily!) another never realised project: changing the course of the river Spree in preparation for, among others, the construction of the giant new “People’s Hall”, the Volkshalle (thank you, , for kindly reminding it about the fact!).

Here you can see in Hein Gorny's photo (Gorny was a brilliant self-taught German photographer, by the way, whose Neue Sachlichkeit - New Subjectivity - images are worth looking up online).

In this photo the arrow is pointing at the Reichstag building. South of the basin you can exactly see the flooded line of the never-built underground railway line.

Tank-barrier at the Reichstag and the flooded never-completed U-Bahn tunnel. Image via Historical Imagery Google Earth.

It pays to be critical of photo captions, especially with time working against us - with the Internet spreading information at the current speed and with fewer and fewer people will be able to recognise inaccurate descriptions, it is not unlikely that one day history will be partly re-written by a simple act of persistent repetition. Which does not imply any willing disinformation - just our battered but still very much alive instinct to believe what we read.

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STEEL JACKET BEAR BLEEDING

Berlin Companion — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 12:37:12 GMT

On this day in 1945, the Red Army units arriving from the south reached Hallesches Tor and what used to Belle-Alliance-Platz in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Steadily nearing Berlin’s “Heart of Darkness” - the government district around Wilhelmstraße and the New Chancellery - they almost immediately began moving north towards the legendary railway station, Anhalter Bahnhof. Berlin clocks were about to strike Zero Hour...

Aerial photo of Belle-Alliance-Platz (the round plaza replaced by today’s Mehringplatz), Belle-Alliance-Brücke (replaced by Hallesche Brücke) and Hallesches Tor area just north of the bridge where the historic city gate once was, with the elevated U-Bahn station between them. Photo by Walter Mittelholzer via ETH Library Zurich, Image Archive / LBS_MH02-15-0013

BAA BAA EAST BERLIN: FLOCKING TO THE WEST

Berlin Companion — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 09:12:06 GMT

On this day in 1961 one man and 600 sheep illicitly yet in broad daylight crossed the border between East Berlin / East Germany and the Western-Allies controlled West Berlin. At the same time, the shepard’s pregnant wife and his apprentice undertook a separate flight attempt, which - to save you the suspense - was successful, too…

LITTLE LOVELY INGE SWIMS

Berlin Companion — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 11:06:47 GMT

Danish Olympic winner, Inge Soerensen, with her medal in its case and the most charming smile on her 12-year-old face - photo taken at Olympiastadion on 11 August 1936 right after the medal ceremony. Photo by Tage Christensen via Wikimedia, image in public domain.

BERLIN QUOTES: HANS BALUSCHEK

Berlin Companion — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 12:33:48 GMT

Hans Baluschek’s “Alte-Hasenheide”, 1892

“When I was ten years old, our maid - who was supposed to go for a walk with me on Sunday afternoons - would take me to the Hasenheide instead.

Then she would g…

YOU ARE HERE: BETWEEN WEDDING AND REINICKENDORF

Berlin Companion — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 12:02:50 GMT

Photo taken by Albin Schmidt in 1913, here via Fortepan.

This part of the vanished Berlin is further north than our time-travelling hunting grounds so far.

You are standing at the northern end of the t…

YOU ARE HERE: GRAND HOTEL ALEXANDERPLATZ

Berlin Companion — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 10:18:09 GMT

What forty years, one world war, fall of the monarchy and massive financial crisis triggered by raging hyperinflation can do: behold Berlin's “Grand Hotel Alexanderplatz”, designed by Martens, von Ho…

GOOD BYE MEISTER: HEINRICH VON STEPHAN IS DEAD

Berlin Companion — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:53:52 GMT

On this day in 1897 Germany lost one of its most prominent reformers: Imperial Postmaster General, Heinrich von Stephan.

Portrait of Heinrich von Stephan by Georg Barlösius. Via Museumsstiftung Post und Telekommunikation.

Von Stephan’s name might not ring many bells today, but the man was a household brand in the second half of the nineteenth century. And not without a reason…

He was actively involved in the development of pneumatic post, almost singlehandedly pioneered the introduction of the postcard (he is often called its inventor but one should always remember that no invention has just one father/morher); he was the main power behind the establishing of Berlin’s first telephone network as well as the standardisation of postage prices, also worldwide.

GRENOUILLE A LA BERLINOISE or BERLIN HUNGER GAMES

Berlin Companion — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 15:14:43 GMT

On this day in 1945 the Berlin NSDAP Office for Public Nutrition launched new emergency guidelines - necessary in the view of the catastrophic supply situation of the Berlin population.

On top of everything else (meaning the city in ruins, the Red Army practically ante portas and the Nazi-in-Chief, Adolf Hitler, hiding in his bunker since January that year together with many of his closest helpers and supporters), Berlin was witnessing recurring bouts of both foot and mouth disease among its remaining cattle, hog cholera among its pigs and various unpleasant viral infections of its remaining horses.

The frightening prospect of famine could no longer be ignored…

THE FLYING BEAUTY TAKES A BOW

Berlin Companion — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 12:55:54 GMT

On this day, April 2, 1935 the LZ 127 “Graf Zeppelin” - one of the most remarkable airships ever built - arrived in Berlin from Friedrichshafen, reaching the capital at 3 PM. It was not the first visit of the giant (236 metres long and 30.5 metres in diameter) in the city: its long-distance maiden flight in 1928 took it to Berlin as well.

LZ 127 after landing in Berlin-Staaken in 1930, with the Haltemanschaften holding its tow lines.

In fact, the flight nearly ended even before it began: the start of the LZ 127 was planned for 9 AM, but shortly before that a massive storm and rainfall hit the area of the Bodensee (“Lake Constance” for our British readers). Capitan Lehmann, in charge of the airship, decided to dare the elements…