Krolloper’s management did not choose to close the curtain forever - Otto Klemperer, who ran the house from 1927, was forced to do so. Officially, the city - at that point in time blessed with not one but three opera houses - had to reduce the offer. With the world in the thrall of a soul-drenching financial crisis, maintaining three such establishments was simply not viable.

Unofficially, a conflict between Krolls’ management and several other chief players who never made any secret for their dislike for the modern and progressive style of the Tiergarten house, had the latter pull some important strings.

All attempts to save the stage were in vain. The alleged Kulturbolschwismus practiced by the bold and progressive opera house management served as a perfect excuse to nail their coffin. Once again, being progressive and venturing into new exciting territories would turn against Berlin’s art world. Despite the promising start and in spite of the fact that Otto Klemperer managed to established one of the most harmonious opera ensembles in Europe and perhaps even worldwide. An ensemble which performed on stage within Bauhaus-designed scenography: Bauhaus artists regularly co-operated with Klemperer’s opera house.

This would not be the first time that this historic building would be facing the end.

Berlin’s Staatsoper am Königplatz (since 1926 "am Platz der Republik") opened in what once used to be the city’s most popular entertainment venue - the 1844 Krolls Etablissement. Less than a decade later, in February 1951, the favoured location would burn down completely, leaving especially wealthy Berliners in mourning.

Seven months later it re-opened again.

After decades of constant ups and downs, including problems with leasing the space, Kaiser Wilhelm II spoke the final word: Krolloper was to be torn down. The emperor wished a new opera house for Berlin, so both Krolls and the eighteenth-century Staatsoper Unter den Linden would have had to go. Ironically, both would be saved by the same Kaiser, albeit indirectly.

Wilhelm’s political carelessness and arrogance would pull Germany into the void of the First World War, forcing his attention to shift to other matters instead.

However, by July 1931 the final verdict stood. Krolls would no longer operate as a temple of opera music.

Otto Klemperer - brilliant German composer and conductor who would soon leave Germany to escape Nazi persecution and go to lead renown US orchestras in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco - was in charge of the house at the time. And he would absolutely refuse to take that verdict without making big noise.

Klemperer sued against the government's decision but lost. The argument that Krolloper "cost too much" won.

In 1933 new masters would move into the building: after the Reichstag burnt in February 1933, the old Krollsoper would become the main seat of the Third Reich “Parliament”. From that moment everyone would be dancing to a completely different tune.

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With the weather in Berlin finally picking up again to be worthy of the title “summer weather”,…

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Today, Berlin has some 400 church buildings, albeit not all of them are still used as religious centres.

One of the best-known still-active temples is the Sophienkirche, consecrated on this day in 1713. Berlin’s oldest still existing Baroque church opened in the historic district of Spandauer Vorstadt (fun fact: actually Spandower Vorstadt as until 1878 Spandau, like Pankow, was officially spelled “Spandow”).

Its first name “Spandauische Kirche” was correct as far geography went - it was built to serve the growing number of Spandauer Vorstadt’s residents. However, there was another, far less benevolent reason, for that first official label. A family feud as old as the hills.

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In well over two decades spent in Vienna, Robert Musil did a lot of walking. Strolling through the city - keen observer of its goings-on that he was - and passing one immortalised, stone-cold hero after another, he came to a simple but profound conclusion: "The remarkable thing about monuments is that one does not notice them. There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument."1

The pre-war Berlin was very much like Musil’s Vienna: with its roughly 300 major monuments (96 of them in the Tiergarten alone!), you could mark your itinerary from one statue to another. As people, indeed, did. Children were taught the name of the nearest marble or bronze heroic effigy to help them find the way back home in case they should be lost.

But otherwise the streetscape Puppen (German for dolls) were passed by with the same indifference as water pumps and benches.

Until they vanished and their loss would be mourned as crushing. As robbing the city of its original “self”. Something that happened in Berlin a lot. Here’s one such bronze hero who, however, returned, but - as the city around him - could never become what he was.

On this day in 1895 the Lutherdenkmal (Luther Memorial) was unveiled on Berlin's Neuer Markt.

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“I miss the old Berlin of the …

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It did not leave anyone out, rich or poor: including Austrian emperor, king of Spain, Russian tsar, Swedish queen and a French monarch. At best it left its victims scarred for life (like Stalin, who contracted smallpox at the age of 7), or blind and/or deaf: Beethoven’s deafness is contributed to his contact with the disease.

Johannes Kepler’s vision was quite limited after at the age of four he suffered bout of smallpox himself - later he would lose his wife and one of three children to the disease.

For at its worst, the disease killed its victims after many days of vile suffering.

That’s why after in 1801 nearly 1,700 people died of Blattern (German name for Smallpox) in Berlin, on 7 June 1802, successful trial smallpox inoculations (carried out mostly on Berlin orphans) began…

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It took nearly a decade to complete Berlin’s Reichstag building, the seat …

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No other era in the city’s history was as tragic, yet as bright. The latter not only because of the incredible rise of commercial illumination (neon lights) and the abundance of entertainment.

Its brightness lay also in the pace at which social projects were voted for and actually realised. It was the time of new modern residential estates, of unheard of levels of investment in affordable housing, of new schools, new hospitals and new sports venues. It was also the time when some Berlin’s favourite public parks were created.

One of them, Volkspark Jungfernheide, opened on this day in 1923 - the year of the hyperinflation nadir.

Designed by the unsurpassed, ingenious garden architect and park designer, Erwin Barth, it was created within the old royal hunting grounds in the Jungfernheide woods. Today, at nearly 150 ha it is the second largest designed park in Berlin.

For us, living over a century later, it might be hard to imagine what wonders it offered to grown-ups and, first and foremost, children who lived in its vicinity. The park, stretching along a straight East-West axis, had not only green meadows and comfy benches in the shade of ancient trees (Barth’s design incorporated the already existing Jungfernheide woods).

Following the main principle of Gestaltung in the 1920s German social and public architecture - Licht, Luft und Sonne (Light, Fresh Air and Sunshine) - it also had several sports fields, playgrounds, an open-air “nature theatre” where the stage was a circular piece of lawn surrounded by seats and a tall lush hedge separating it form the comings and goings around it. You could circumvent the park following a four-kilometre-long circular path (next to dozens of smaller ones).

But first and foremost, it had a lido. The Jungfernheide Lido with a gorgeous sandy beach, marked bathing areas for the small and the older guests, with changing rooms, hygiene facilities and a restaurant.

A place which exists until today and can be easily reached from the city centre - with the U-Bahn.

Take any train on the line U7 (direction: Rathaus Spandau), leave the train at the station “Siemensdamm”, turn into Jungfernheideweg, walk past one of the most impressive 1920s Berlin residential estates, Siemensstadt, and you are there.

If you walk along the main axis of the park, at the other end of the small lake where the lido is located, you will find another, wild bathing spot (which is also free of charge).

On top of that today’s Jungfernheide offers a climbing park within the park, a beer garden, a café at the foot of the graceful 38-metre-tall water tower, and a petting zoo.

Berlin is full of enchanted places but its public parks must be its greatest treasure. Here is definitely one. And Erwin Barth, who - blind at the age of 53 - tragically, took his own life in July 1933, would have rejoiced knowing how popular and how frequented they still are in 2026.

By the way, if you ever wondered, why Jungfernheide is called “Maidens’ or Nuns’ Heath” (the heaths interspersed the spreading woods): this 1835 map of Jungfernheide with Nonnen Damm (now Nonnendamm) and Nonnen Wiesen - Nun Causeway and Nun Meadows - shows places whose names referred to the Benedictine convent from Spandow (original spelling of Spandau) and nuns who owned that land. Nonnendamm was a road from the said Spandow to Berlin-Cölln built with convent's money.

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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…

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

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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…

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“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…

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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…

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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.

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)…

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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.

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…

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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”…

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