Lost In Prenzlauer Berg

What's the meaning of a neighbourhood? When I first moved to Berlin I wasn't concerning myself with this much, desperate only to find an apartment that would tolerate my rescue dog and allow me to register as a tax resident. With little German and no SCHUFA, I was funnelled into the expat pipeline, eventually finding an apartment online in Prenzlauer Berg. The research that followed suggested I'd made a contentious choice, with Prenzlauer Berg being seemingly most famous for gentrification — the term coined by Berlin-born British sociologist Ruth Glass when she was describing the heavily changed neighbourhoods of London that I was happy to be leaving behind.

Yet as I arrived in the area, I was first struck by how ordinary everything looked. Navigating through the streets trying to figure out if my internet-shopped apartment really existed, I passed a cobblers, a cheap barbers, a shop selling second hand DVDs. Coming from London, I was expecting more of the hallmarks of its most heavily gentrified areas, where you can't move for expensive streetwear stores or Michelin-starred small plates.

Moving further in, the evidence of change slowly revealed itself. Attractive couples sipped flat whites outside coffee shops discreetly embedded into well-preserved pastel-coloured Altbau buildings. A well-weathered Kneipe stood squeezed between a florist and an organic grocers. Parents chatted cheerily in front of a pretty kindergarten, the faded graffiti on its facade enrobed in Virginia creepers. Everywhere I looked there was a subdued sense of flux and transition, but it was hard to fully discern the scale of transformation.

To better achieve this, I met with Friederike “Freddy” Seidel, a cultural theory graduate student at Humboldt University. Most notably, she was born and raised in the Helmholtzkiez neighbourhood of Prenzlauer Berg, specifically within the now-highly desirable ‘LSD-Viertel’. Her parents moved there in the late 1980s through a form of squatting called Instandbesetzung, or “repair-occupation,” the Berlin practice of occupying neglected housing and making it habitable through residents' own labour.

“The change really began after reunification in 1990,” Freddy explains. Once the GDR fell, the German federal government began providing restitution to those whose property had been seized under earlier regimes. This meant that many occupants of Instandbesetzung squats were suddenly told that the building of which they had been careful guardians had been handed over to whoever was heir to the old title, often West Germans whose family had long since left Berlin. In some ways though, Freddy's parents were lucky: “the new property owner showed up one day and asked them which apartment they were going to live in — so they just pointed to one of the nicer units in the building and the owner wrote them a contract”. They still live there today.

This luck has not extended to everyone however. Freddy has invited me to Baiz for this interview, a left-leaning bar and cultural centre that she and her family have been regulars at since its founding in 2003. It's faced a battle to survive, having to move from its original location when property developers pushed it out in 2014. “There's a dominant feeling of insecurity,” says Freddy, “community spaces like this and Cafe Morgenrot are always under attack”. Baiz still has its original awning, emblazoned with a slogan which translates to: “No Beck's, no lattes, no bullshit, no table service” — a defiant response to the way that local businesses began to change as the area gentrified.

“So much has been erased around here,” says Freddy. I share my experience with her of first arriving and feeling that the scale of change was relatively restrained. “Maybe,” she says, “but the people have changed.” When Freddy was growing up in the area just over a decade after reunification, she was already in the minority as a child with East German parents. Once the wall fell, many West Germans — particularly from the prosperous south-west — bought up property in the area after benefiting from US-backed postwar reconstruction and the so-called “Economic Miracle” that followed.

Across the 90s, many artists and students had managed to carry on living there in cheap but dilapidated housing — “apartments still in original condition had no bathroom, just a communal toilet,” explains Freddy. Meanwhile other buildings were being heavily modernised from within by new, wealthy owners. Eventually East Berliners were outbid for housing and most left the area by the ‘00s. As a result, more local businesses emerged with the kind of sensibility that Baiz and Freddy stand in opposition to: “they don't look that gentrified from the outside. But on the inside it's super fancy. You have the specialist coffee stores and expensive restaurants. They're too clean and they all look the same.”

I ask Freddy what's most visually different for her now when she's in the area. She particularly laments the loss of the Brachflächen — the voids between buildings where bombs had struck or GDR neglect had led to collapse. “There were these high walls with graffiti, sometimes political and sometimes art. In the space itself, there was just dirt, weeds and piles of random stuff like old furniture. There was no function to it at all.” I ask why these spaces were important to her. “Back then, there was suddenly more control everywhere — the people with money had the power. These spaces were a little bit of anarchy in between that, where you could still see the sky.” Most of these gaps have since been subtly filled with new-build apartment blocks.

These days Freddy is living in a different part of Berlin. “The left scene is much more visible where I am now,” she notes. I sheepishly ask whether she feels pushed out by people like me moving to her home neighbourhood. “Internationals aren't so bad, it's actually the West Germans that came first and started implementing their own rules.” I wonder if she's just saying this to be polite and I probe a little deeper. “Sometime it feels like internationals are more interested in what Berlin is,” she continues, “while some Wessis think that because they're German they're already part of it. They don't realise East Berlin was in a different country to theirs, with a different development.”

I detect some emotion in her voice and I ask if she feels sad about the way things have changed. “I'm sad and angry about the capitalistic changes that have occurred. But I can't be around forever to fight them.” There are other changes she feels more conflicted about, like the football stadium floodlights in the Mauerpark recently being demolished. “At first I was sad because I've been looking at them for 25 years… but actually they were quite ugly.” She nevertheless wishes the local residents had been consulted. “It would have been a great opportunity for direct democracy. There are some things that should stay because many local people have a lot of memories associated with them.”

I wonder aloud if some change is worth it if it makes the environment more beautiful. “That's not why so many people want to live here though,” she replies, “it's not the beauty of the city — it's the opportunity to be free. Maybe the anarchy of the Brachflächen is gone now. But there is still the opportunity to be in spaces where you're not performing, not being watched or controlled. It's like Tempelhofer Feld — people say it's super ugly. But it's not important because it's beautiful. It's important because there are so many people doing and creating things there.”

We start wrapping up as Baiz slowly fills with customers ahead of that evening's cultural event — an anti-fascist folk music recital. Everyone is animated, ordering €2.90 bottles of Berliner Pilsner at the bar and engaging each other in fervent discussion. Freddy looks a little more wistful. “I feel like I'm already saying goodbye to many things here,” she confesses, “although, talking with you, I think maybe I should appreciate the things that are still here.” I'm curious what she thinks the right attitude is for people who've moved to the area. “Just have respect for the people who grew up here and what this Kiez means to them. I just want our way of life to be respected, then we can all find new ways forward together.”

As I wend my way home in the low evening sun, the area feels different somehow. I'm momentarily drawn to a handsome pastel-pink apartment block that stands beaming, bathed in the golden light. I turn around to see a void between two buildings, still unfilled, where the light is streaming through. I look at the dirt, and the sky, and then carry on home.