A Walk into the Past - Fichtenberg Part I

"..being curious...it's one of the best things about life, don't you think?" comments my dear friend from Silver City, who is a curious person herself. I owe her a curiosity trip to find her roots in Sicily one of these days. Meanwhile, I am rediscovering my own old stomping grounds.

I went to high school on the Fichtenberg, Spruce Hill, walking or biking up from "regular" Steglitz where I lived age 15-18.  Regular Steglitz, as in, the other side of the main street, aka Schlosstrasse, where it's more densely settled. Here at the foot of the Fichtenberg, the village of Steglitz grew into the largest community in Prussia before it was incorporated as a district into Berlin in 1920. In the 1980s, I biked to school here every day, hung out at the park, and breathed the clean air of the hill. And never wasted a single thought on how and why this hood was so different from the rest of the area. I guess I wasn't curious (about local history that is, I was sure curious about other things then....)

I am curious now. And so appreciative of our little garden, the quiet neighborhood, the tall trees, the hedgehogs and the fresh forest air. So after moving back, for a few months now I have been walking, taking pictures, and reading about the Fichtenberg. This is definitely a place with lots to discover for the local history nerd. I'll share a little bit of what I found.

Steglitz has been around since the 1300s. Located on the highway between Potsdam and Berlin it quickly grew in importance during the years of the Prussian empire. They didn't start intentionally settling the hill above it until the early 1870ies. Before that, the hill was a park, with intentionally planted pine trees (not spruce = Fichte. So first, it was know as Kieferberg, rather than Fichtenberg), part of the Schloss property (not really a castle, more like a nice country hangout) built by Count Carl-Friedrich Beyme, and later owned by Marshall Friedrich Wrangel, today known as the Wrangel-Schlösschen.  The owners also tried to grow wine here, fruit trees and later mulberry trees for silk production.

Since this is the only elevation for miles around, you had a breathtaking far and wide view across the fields of Dahlem from the hill. As if that wasn't enough, at the top of the hill, right outside where our house is today, somebody in the late 1700s had built one of those fake ruins, a Belvedere with a tower. When things started to get serious, it was dismantled in 1865 and the bricks given to local developers.

So in 1872 the Domänenfiskus (this was sort of the property management department of the Prussian State) subdivided the hill into 89 lots and started selling. The lots were small, so the buyers, since they could afford it, bought several adjoining lots at once and erected representative villas. 13 years later, there were 24 villas surrounded by huge parks. Yes, parks... with fountains, ponds, stables, green houses, and additional buildings housing carriages, cars and staff. The first big, impressive villas were built for scientists, educators, high ranking public employees, artists, military men, and a little later, up-and coming industrial tycoons. They were truly the "High Society", not just of Steglitz, but of nearby Berlin, creating their little high-end suburbia here. Berlin was only a short train ride away since Steglitz had become a stop on the Potsdam-Berlin route in 1839. More about a few of the interesting characters who lived here later.

a view of the hill in 1903

First, the streets had the same names as in Prussian villages everywhere. Wilhelmplatz, Schillerstrasse, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse, Friedrichstrasse. When Steglitz was swallowed by Berlin, along with Lichterfelde, Lankwitz and Südende, people had to come up with new names, so there wouldn't be 20 Wilhelmstrassen. So today many of the streets here and in other parts of Steglitz are named after important local residents - Friedrich Schmidt-Ott, Carl-Heinrich Becker, Paul Henckels.

Let's take a little walk. This map section was created by using OpenStreetMap, © OpenStreetMap contributors.

The map shows the hill, bordered by Grunewaldstrasse on the northeast, Schlosstrasse on the south and the botanical gardens on the southeast sides . Our house is right by Paul-Henckels Platz, on Schmidt-Ott-Str. 5a, where I put the arrow. That spot is very close to the top if the hill, marked by the number 68 (meters, that is). If you increase the zoom on your browser, you can see the details better.

We'll walk down Carl-Heinrich-Becker Weg, across Henckels-Platz.

Paul Henckels was an actor and director, as well as a co-founder of the post-war version of the Schlosspark-Theater, on Wrangelstrasse. It's located in the buildings of the old Wrangelschlösschen. It is still one of the most active little theaters in Berlin, providing lighter entertainment these days. Henckels didn't live on the hill. Carl Heinrich Becker, the Prussian Minister of Culture did, but not on the street named after him (go figure), so 'll tell you more about him when we come by his place later.

A big eyecatcher on our right is this beauty:

The Villa Anna was built by Architekt Otto Techow for himself and his family in 1884. Techow is also famous for the Water Tower (around the corner on Schmidt-Ott-Strasse) he built a few years later.

It was later refurbished to house the offices of the Institute of Meteorology, where today students maintain the Free University's weather monitoring sequence day and night.

The Henckels square is somewhat unkempt these days, apparently public park funds and personnel are not sufficient.

And also the Tree of Heaven on our property is sending shoots everywhere. I hated those stinky invasive trees in New Mexico and I hate them here.

Walking down further, we notice a spacey-looking building on the right. It was built by the Free University and houses more of the Meteorological Institute and the Institute for Space Science. There were protests from residents when this was built, because it does not fit in architecturally. I don't mind the mix of architecture, that's what Berlin is like everywhere - heterogenous and messy.

The rest of Carl-Heinrich-Becker-Weg illustrates architectural messiness perfectly. We see everything in between the fairy tale Villa Anna and the space building: 19th century high end rentals, classic, clean Bauhaus style, 50ies atrocities and a few hints at romantic 1800s Villas which are no longer there, or have been altered to a point of being unrecognizable in their grand old beauty.

Erich Pommer lived here, on C-H Becker Weg 16-18. The house is long gone, replaced by 1970s little boxes. He was a film producer, responsible for many of the expressionist silent movies of the 1920s, such as "Metropolis" and "Faust". He produced "Der Blaue Engel" with Marlene Dietrich in 1930. After 1933 he got the hell out of here and continued his career in Hollywood. He is credited with rebuilding the German film industry from ashes after 1946.

As you walk, guide your eyes to the ground: the typical Berlin pave stones actually have a mosaic pattern here, with a dark stripe and curved openings where each driveway used to be. Today, we can see that after the pavement was torn up for pipe work or such, the city crews didn't make the effort of recreating the stripe, but instead scattered the black stones about. Bummer.

Dietrich Schäfer was a tenant, along with his partner and six kids, in Nr. 27-29, the last house on the left before the street dead-ends into the park. The 1896 villa has been drastically altered and built onto. Today it houses a residential facility for people with severe mental illness. I didn't dare take a picture, because the residents alway hang out on the front porch. Schäfer was a historian with strong anti-semitic views and in favor of total war. He died in 1929, but the Nazis loved his writings, and because of this he is a controversial figure. Becker-Weg actually used to be Schäfer-Weg when I went to school here. A group of students from my high school back then started to advocate for changing the name of the street, and the initiative finally succeeded in 1992.

Becker-Weg leads to what we used to call the Fichtenberg as kids - which is the park.

At the entrance of the park, if you move the weeds and autumn leaves a bit with your foot, you'll see a weird square stone plate.

It covers the opening to a bunker system, which the Nazis, or actually I should say, Nazi prisoners, built into the mountain in 1944. In the late 1970ies, several sections of the tunnels caved in and had to be filled up and covered.  The bunker was built for the employees of a large administrative SS office on Schlosstrasse. I don't think it was ever used.

Next you enter a large flat area bordered by a curved wall, with benches to sit and enjoy the view. Except there is no view anymore. The trees are too tall today. This is what it used to look like.

And today:

If the trees weren't there at the other side of the lawn, you would look across the same area, then the wheat fields of Dahlem, today the Botanical Gardens.

The rest of the park covers the south slope of the hill - softly descending lawns surrounded by paths slowly overgrowing with blackberries and weeds. On the way down we meet this gentleman:

Friedrich Paulsen

Paulsen was an influential educator, philosopher and pedagogue. He is considered the inventor of the modern German high school, the gymnasium, at which modern languages and the natural sciences are given the same importance as the ancient languages.  He lived on Lepsiusstrasse, half way down the hill until his death in 1908. Streets and schools in Berlin and elsewhere are named after him. His philosophical works were translated into many languages and were widely read in the US. He is buried at the St. Matthäus Cemetery over in Schöneberg, along with the Brothers Grimm, and a few, dear, recently passed members of my family.

Two playgrounds flank the park, and next to one of them in the bushes, I found what I think might be the original Bäkequelle, the spring of the now buried river Bäke,  discussed here, housed in by a brick enclosure.

Circling around the park and back up the hill, we find the memorial stone of prolific writer and journalist Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, after who the park was named.

Ruth and her partner, the conductor Leo Borchard, were important figures in the anti-Nazi resistance movement. Their group, called Onkel Emil, helped many persecuted people get out of the country. They operated it out of their home in Steglitz. The district of Steglitz, by the way, was an early and solid bullwark of the Nazi movement. Ruth Andreas-Friedrich later published her diaries from these years, which today are considered one of the most important time witness reports of the period. I have been waiting for  a copy to become available at the library for two months now....


We'll walk back up to the platform and turn to our right onto Zeunepromenade. This little foot path is the border between Steglitz and Dahlem (you can see the red dotted line on our map). On the left is the fence to the Botanical Gardens, and we see the back side of the big green house.

On the right, and in both directions around the corner, we can still see the remains of the original 1890 iron and brick fence of the Carl Schlickeysen property.

I love that name - it's like someone made it up to fit a Gründerzeit German industrial tycoon. Which is what Schlickeysen was.  He worked his way up from modest circumstances, and later perfected and successfully marketed the steam brick press, taking brick making from a hand craft to an industry.  I can only imagine how the old elite of professors and government officials on the hill felt about this rough new kid in the hood, and about his parties and the braggy property. His big villa and park, as the one of his next door neighbor Weber, are long gone though, replaced by dense 1950's condos. Only the fence and its base of stamped bricks, probably from his factory, remind us of the glorious 1890s, when Berlin, the capital of the new German empire was growing exponentially, and you could make millions with bricks. Today they are covered in graffiti.

At the end of the promenade, in a minute we will turn right onto Arno-Holz-Str. This street is not as architecturally messy - it still features more of the old turn of the century grandeur than Carl-Heinrich Becker-Weg, as well as some surprises...

You'll find out about the people who lived here, among them Carl-Heinrich Becker and Friedrich Schmidt-Ott. We'll walk down Schmidt-Ott-Strasse towards Lepsiusstrasse, and you'll hear about a present-day actor who saved his historic home, a 1930s actress who died very young, and of course the dying Franz Kafka, and a bunch of early anthropologists, and why one always runs into blind people on the hill - for the last 100 years, and, and..... All of this in Part II of our walk, which will appear here in October. Thanks for sticking with us!

Depth

Since I disconnected from facebook, I got lots of nice emails, and a postcard, and I am answering each email, as well as a few skype and phone calls. I don’t miss FB – and I am feeling my digital self slowly fading away, putting up the occasional little fight - like a stubborn ghost who hasn’t quite realized that she is dead.

So according to Thees Winkler, blogging is the future (at least for this week), and facebook is so 2008. The blog is indeed a better, deeper medium for me – I am interested in putting out meaningful, high quality content that will entertain but also will make people think. Or even act. And I am not interested in putting it out every single day. Gotta have some time for thinking, seeing, listening, talking and walking around. You won’t find digests or links to many other blogs here, because I do not spend all that much time reading them. Blogging is not my life. Otherwise I wouldn’t have a life to blog about.

After quitting facebook the blog did not take too big of a hit in terms of visits. Actually, the “Goodbye facebook” post was the second most visited in the short life of the blog. Many people subscribed, and those on google+ get a share. But I imagine I won’t be able to keep the numbers growing without sending emails – which I don’t want to do. So when I get around to it, I will set up a facebook page for this blog, for marketing purposes. Enough social media talk now. One of the annoying things about the internet is how much it talks about itself.

Meanwhile, the real self in Berlin: 

I continue to smile pretty much at everyone who makes eye contact on the street. Most smile recipients obviously think I am demented. But yesterday, an old man sitting in the park on the way to the U-Bahn thanked me for smiling at him. Making a dent!

I have been reading local history books I checked out at the library, mostly about the history of Steglitz, the district we live in, and its people. A good friend astutely noted that this is my way of making this my home. My big discovery this week is a slim volume published in 2000 about the houses and people of our specific neighborhood, the Fichtenberg. The author, an actor by the name of Andreas Grothusen, grew up and still lives on Schmidt-Ott-Str. 6, right next door. The book accompanies you on a walk through the small hood, telling the history of each villa, and the people who built them and lived here. And it tells the how the neighborhood was forever changed - first by war, then by profit-oriented development and today by neglect.

Schmidt-Ott- Str. 5a, the house we live in, today is a fairly faceless big box, housing ten parties, with a back yard shrunk by the later addition of an even uglier second house, 5b. Looking at the main house, you’d have no idea about its age or architectural period. Grothusen’s book reproduces a painting of what it looked like in 1882 – a dreamy, small Neo-Renaissance villa with a little tower, situated in a park-like garden with tall trees, nestled in a neighborhood of the rich, educated and cultured. My neighbor is furious about what was done to our house 100 years later- a floor was added, swallowing the tower, the house was built onto at the back (that's were our apartment is), a big pine was felled, and 5b was built.

The vestibule of the Villa in the 1880s featured the first big commission work of young artist Max Klinger, who was later considered a very influential trailblazer of Surrealism, Naturalism, Symbolism, Jugendstil- in other words, modern art. His work done for our house was reassembled in a 2007 exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Some of it can be seen today at the Altes Museum in Berlin. Here are some links to the paintings. They feature awesome naked people and gods and horses playing in water.

Max Klinger, Meerfries der Albers Villa, Berlin Nationalgalerie

I wouldn’t know any of this without my neighbor’s book! I might ask my him if I can post a picture of the picture of the painting of the house from his book here. Shortly I will dedicate a separate post (with my original pictures) to the amazing history of this very special neighborhood, after I stumble around some more, book in hand. My history research reminded me that books give so much more depth of information than the internet (although I do have to thank the Wikipedia entry on the Fichtenberg for the reference my neighbor’s book. )

If you had adventures in local history,  or are inspired to venture out for depth now - please share in the comments.

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Benny: Do we get NPR here? I miss NPR. (There is actually an NPR station in Berlin. It has a bunch more programs than KRWG –as I write this I am listening to On Point, NPR's great talk show hosted by Tom Ashbrook, covering how the US tries to still look good after the Russians, of all people, saved us from “having to” go to war right away.)

Benny: I shiver whenever Germans speak English. (Thankfully, his school released him from participating in English lessons.)

Goodbye facebook.

I deactivated my facebook account. I don’t want the shallowness of social media to define my relationships with people.

In conversations over the last few days, people have pointed out to me how it’s nice to “stay in touch” and see photos people post – I do not disagree. Maybe I’ll look for a photo sharing platform to post our images.

Staying in touch is not a bad thing either, but is it all that valuable or important? Do I really need to know what each of 372 people think, feel or do every day? That someone watched a TV episode, or baked a cake, loves her husband, found a good quote (that most likely the referenced person never said) or a cute photo and hates racists/stupid people/Miley Cyrus/Obama/take-your-pick? I really do NOT need to know all this. And reading your posts does not further my well-being, intelligence or who I am in the world. Nor does it connect me with the real you.

Before I disconnected, I had this really creepy sensation that we are all creating this pseudo-reality (and I was doing it, too), this image of ourselves that we present on facebook. We walk through our real life and think stuff like: Should I post a picture of our beautiful new trash cans (four different colors to distinguish the recycling categories) on FB so my American friends can see how real recycling works? Yuck. I didn’t want to think this way any more. The creepy feeling was that we are all involved in some collective mass hysteria, with pseudo emotions and pseudo political opinions, and we are all buying this bullshit from each other, by clicking ‘like’. Sounds crazy? Maybe, but I felt such deep discomfort, that I immediately disconnected, without thinking about it further.

Many people were surprised….but don’t be personally offended. I appreciate (note I did not say ‘like’ - the meaning of that word has been forever altered) each of the individual people I was connected with (the word ‘friend’ has been hi-jacked, too). No one in particular offended me… however I gotta tell those of you who change their profile pictures more than a couple times a year – you have a problem, and your narcissism annoys people. I hid your posts a long time ago.

So those of my real world friends who want to stay in touch can do that - and more (as in, actually have a conversation with me) through email and phone and skype. Those here in Berlin can come see me, too. I will build and mindfully nurture real relationships. I will continue this blog, because writing longer pieces provides the opportunity for depth of thought and good writing – something lacking largely from facebook.

I’d like to get some opinions on this from my readers and friends – not on facebook but in the comment function of this blog!

Stop Monolingualism!

I find this ironic: I left the mono-cultural, homogenic little Germany twenty years ago, to move to the melting pot, heterogenic, multicultural US. Now I moved back here, to find a true, buzzling global city. 

On a regular subway ride in Berlin these days you are guaranteed to hear conversations at a minimum in English, French, Arabic, Turkish, and Spanish. Often Russian and Polish, and very often one or two additional mystery languages you can’t identify. German? Not so much. Germans tend to be quiet and grumpy on the subway.

Ruby and Rory now go to Nelson Mandela International School in the center of the old Westberlin. This year, students from 54 countries are attending, speaking I don’t know how many languages, the common one of course being English. But ALL these kids are multilingual. I am really happy that my kids get to be in this environment. Ben attends the neighborhood elementary school, and at the parent night this week I spotted two African families, one Polish mom, a Brazilian-German family and another one from Spain. (In addition to a double-dad family, which is cool, but off-topic here…but anyway, congratulations to all my same sex friends finally getting married this week in New Mexico!) Ben’s buddies are starting to study English this year, in third grade. During the English classes, the principal has agreed to work with Ben on his German writing skills.

When I first heard the term “bilingual” in the US I didn’t understand or use it correctly, because in German “zweisprachig” means that someone grows up speaking two languages and masters both equally well. It doesn’t apply to someone learning a second language in school or later in life. Zweisprachig is a higher standard than bilingual. Which may be symptomatic with what is going on in language education and the culture of monolingualism.

I don’t get why there is not an expectation in (many parts of) the US that children learn a second and third foreign language.

When Charlie grew up in an Italian neighborhood in New York, speaking one’s native language was considered a bad thing. It was a sign of failing to assimilate. He was 12 years old until he realized that his dad spoke Italian. The family had to hide the fact that they spoke German at home, this being less than ten years after the end of WWII.

Native American youth in state boarding schools for decades were prohibited from speaking their native languages. We can’t even begin to assess the damage done to the cultural identities and oral traditions of those people and their entire tribes. They are just lost forever.

I heard many Hispanic people in southwest NM communicate in Spanglish. I find no beauty in that tongue, which mangles both languages, much like the Türkendeutsch (Turkish-German) I heard immigrant kids speak when I was growing up in Berlin. There are no consistent Spanish classes offered in public schools, no way for youth to learn the beautiful language of their heritage, and to read Fuentes, Borges, Rulfo, de la Cruz and Paz.

So why is it that immigrants and their descendants in the US try so hard, and/or are coerced so hard to lose their mother tongue? There is not much social, cultural and educational value placed on speaking more than English.

In Northern Europe, on the other hand, you don’t even get admitted to any educational institution above 7th grade without speaking 1-2 foreign languages. It is just considered part of a well-rounded, basic education. There is no choice about it. It made it a challenge to find schools for Rory and Ruby in Berlin that could accommodate their lack of a 2nd foreign language. Now they are at the International School, and Ruby is finally learning French.

Many people in the US have asked me with awe how many languages I speak, and when they hear the answer (four, through no specific effort of my own), they respond with sighs of envy and resignation. My kids, who all speak passable German, again just because they heard it spoken at home, are almost considered little geniuses. Come on. Why not up the ante for your own kids?

If it is true that the language we speak both reflects and affects our view of the world, then this leads to the hypotheses that if we add one language or more, our view of the world broadens and gets enriched. As will our life. Let’s break this down.

Benefits of Bilingualism

Enhanced brain development - early learning of a language makes it easier to learn all your life. Bilingual kids have an easier time to learn math, for example, which from a learning brain’s perspective, is just another language.

Widening of the perceptive horizon - being bilingual helps you better understand concepts from differently thinking cultures and be more open to step out of your own thinking box. For example, Spanish and Italian both have a remote past tense, so English and German speakers’ brains are challenged with distinguishing not so far away past from remote past. Most languages other than English have genders (male, female, neutral) for each noun. In her intensive German course Maddy learned about the German cases (Dativ, Accusativ, etc.) which determine how you declinate verbs and personal pronouns. It’s like the colors that the butterfly sees, that we don’t even have words for.

Better chances in employment in a global economy - Good luck trying to land a job in international commerce, development, or government with just English.

And btw you’ll come off less as a full-of-yourself American who assumes everyone speaks English when traveling abroad. Bilingualism opens up people, as well as their art, culture, history in countries ten times as old as ours. My friend Ed Ward,  part of a new tribe he named American-Europeans,  has now lived in Europe for a third of his life. He will attest to the fact that you can't truly immerse without at least passably mastering the native language. Ed writes about his version of daily intercultural shock (and his 20th anniversary of moving to Berlin) very aptly in this post, and anyway, you should totally follow his blog, which complements this one well.

Continuing on to the.....

Effects of Monolingualism

We (or your kids, for that matter) remain stuck in our own limited culture box, don’t look past the US border, or even over into the next ethnic neighborhood. We can’t communicate with non-English speakers when traveling abroad. We’ll never go to school outside the US and will never be employed at a global company working in other countries. And: Monolingualism breeds monolingualism. If the value of bilingualism is not experienced by the parents, they’ll be less likely to support their offspring in achieving it.

Of course, you, the estimated reader, and all your progressive friends really do know all this. Many otherwise educated US citizens have a sense of national inferiority because of the culture of monolingualism. What I don’t get is why nobody does anything about it. Why don’t tax and tuition paying parents demand language education? Why is this particular issue met with such self-defeating resignation?

Boomtown Berlin

The German economy is growing at a slow and steady pace, expected to speed up in 2014. But Berlin is clearly happening right now: During the first six months of 2013, almost 6 million people came to visit the capital, 9 % more than a year ago. This increase is putting Berlin right after Paris and London, and before Rome as a tourist destination. And tourism is expected to continue to grow at this pace. Currently, 280,000 people are employed in the tourism industry.

The downside: Too many people invest in apartments and turn them into vacation rentals, contributing to the squeeze on available and affordable housing. The Berlin parliament is currently discussing a new law to curtail the use of rentals for tourists. Whole neighborhoods have fallen into the tourist trap. A few weeks ago we walked around Friedrichshain, formerly a sweet, organically grown middle class quarter, now a row of restaurants, tchotchke shops and bars, populated by drunken bachelor parties from the UK. Many residents of Kreuzberg also feel they have lost their hood over the last 10 years, to 24/7 clubbing and drinking visitors. Rent per square meter in Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain is now higher than the upper class high end western and southern districts Charlottenburg and Zehlendorf. Which is why we get to live in a leafy green, yet central part of town, and pay less than the hipsters.

Berlin is also the capital of fastest growth in start-ups, 10,000 new businesses incorporate here every quarter. Many of them occupy lofts in Mitte, Friedrichshain und Kreuzberg.  Many of these are internet start-ups, some with names that are now familiar outside of Berlin: Babbel, Ableton, and SoundCloud. When Rory had a problem with Ableton (a music production software), he could call the guys right here in town. Airbnb uses Berlin as its European hub. The startup-map looks crowded. Now Berlin is called Silicon Valley of Europe, or Silicon Allee.

Two large incubators support the growth of new start ups, and connect them with venture capital. One of them, springstar, talks to a dozen startup teams every week. Those that become part of the family receive support through capital and technical assistance.

My cousin Christian works for three-year old start-up that sells a search engine optimization (SEO) subscription. They are doing well, expect that all their staff is constantly being harassed by recruiters, often successfully, making it hard to run a consistent business with ever changing staff.

All new small businesses in Berlin can take advantage of a large array of funding incentives, tax breaks and educational opportunities for new business owners. You can learn accounting, writing a business plan, marketing and latte art, all free or very affordable. Maybe we’ll do that coffee shop here after all. But not in Friedrichshain.

In Search of Water Closets and a Forgotten River

Weird manifestations of expat-ism: How many more times are we going to step in a dark bathroom and blindly grope around the wall for the light switch? It really does make more sense to have the switch outside – if you are used to it. Its sort of the whole German thing of planning ahead. Downside: you sit on the pot and someone turns the light off on you from the hallway.

Berlin is located in an Urstromtal (I loved that earthy word in elementary school!), an ancient gigantic stream valley, created by draining glacier water at the end of the last ice age. Today it's a vast area of rivers, lakes and swamps; the soil is mostly sand. Not until the Prussians got their act together in the late 1700s, was much of it turned into dry land that could be settled and used for agriculture.

But the city’s wet past is still very close to the surface, as it turns out. The groundwater level is only a few meters under ground level. When Potsdamer Platz was re-built in the 1990s, divers had to do much of the foundation work. Now recently, whole neighborhoods in and around Berlin have been experiencing increasingly wet cellars. This year, many basements are just under water – and not just after a big rain. This includes around 50 public buildings, among them the Berlin Rathhaus, the city hall, causing millions of Euros in damage. What’s going on? The ground water level is rising, and dramatically, for two reasons: One, after reunification, all of the state-owned industry around Berlin was closed down, reducing water use. Two, efficient home appliances have reduced residential water use to pre 1989 levels. Berlin is faced with an interesting dilemma. Use more water to lower the groundwater level? Close whole neighborhoods? Pump groundwater out? (This is already done.) Help homeowners build up their basement walls to withstand the water? Build a pipeline to New Mexico?

Berlin is a watery place, with 52 square km of water surface, 180 km of water ways and more bridges than Venice. As part of “managing water” and creating water ways to accommodate the industrial revolution, the 38 km Teltowkanal was completed in 1906. It connects the main two watersheds, Havel and Spree with each other to the south of Berlin. The canal builders re-used some of the natural stream beds of existing rivers and creeks, including the Telte. The Telte was later known as the Bäke, and the Bäke happens to originate under the Fichtenberg, which is the “mountain” (68 m) we live on. Across the street from our house, the historic water tower (now used as a meteorological station by the Free University) probably drew its water right from the spring. 

The Bäke, before it was swallowed by the Teltowkanal was the main river in the south of Berlin, flowing all the way to Potsdam, where it joined the Havel waters, creating wetlands, swamps and providing water for agriculture of the early settlers of the villages (including our own Steglitz) which are now part of southern Berlin.

I know its water still bubbles out of the earth right under our house. So I took a little bike ride in search of this forgotten river. Riding south, across downtown Steglitz, where the river has been channeled underground, I followed its path through green spaces and weekend garden colonies.  Then I found a short piece of Bäke still at the surface, before it joins the canal. It goes on for about 1 km, through a beautiful large park. Found my San Vicente Creek Ersatz!

what's left of the creek

Bäkepark

where the Bäke joins the Teltowkanal

Next we are going to explore the southern Bäke Valley, 8 km down the canal, where the river once more flows its natural course for a short distance, through a little nature preserve, alongside a vineyard, the Machnower Lake, a historic mill and a little castle. Stay tuned.

I'll close this with another potty related observation: In Berlin restaurants, going to the bathroom becomes a test of endurance: You go down the stairs to the basement. You go through the door that says WC, and enter a small hallway. You choose your gender and go through the respective door, to enter another small hallway with no apparent purpose. You go through another door, entering the room with the hand washing facilities. Your bladder really wants it now. After looking around you find another door, leading to the room with the stalls. Exhausted you stumble into a stall. That’s five doors. Add to that finding the light switch every time…..

Working for Free

There is a recent, quickly growing movement among freelancers to withdraw unpaid labor. Others have well and extensively written about this, including Ed Ward and Suzanne Moore. Barney Hoskyns facebook group called Stop Working for Free is quickly gaining membership. This is mostly driven by freelance journalists, musicians and other “creatives” (sorry, Ed) who have had to watch helplessly over the last decade as the products of their labor became freely available online content, with no accountable monetary value attached.

Working for free - nothing new to those of us in the nonprofit sector, where for a long time now the nonprofit poverty mentality has condoned exploiting and glorifying free labor. We call it volunteerism.

For example, my favorite nonprofit news source, the Nonprofit Quarterly, (itself a nonprofit organization) recently proudly announced additional writers who are volunteers. Sure, more writers add to the diversity and interest of the publication, but should NPQ be all that proud? To me, volunteer writers, along with the annual NPQ fundraising panic, show that NPQ, formerly a paper subscription magazine, still has not found a sustainable business model in the internet economy.

But the worst system of exploitation might be the much lauded AmeriCorps, and its related programs administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Disclaimer: I am a known perpetuator of volunteerism. I started the AmeriCorps Program for Southwest New Mexico. In 2011/12 we “utilized” a VISTA volunteer at the Nonprofit Resource Center I directed. I have contracted with the New Mexico Commission on Community Volunteerism (that’s the state entity administering the federal AmeriCorps Programs), helping the Commission to get the word out to rural communities about its mission. In 2013 I did the presentation on the history of national service to hundreds of new “Members” at the statewide AmeriCorps launch conference. I helped found the Volunteer Center in Grant County. I was a member of the Silver City Rotary Club, with the motto ‘Service Above All”. Most people congratulate me on all those things. I am not so sure right now.

I see the merits of AmeriCorps: AmeriCorps graduates are believed to be on a straight pathway to employment or more education. They gain workplace skills and confidence. Civic engagement is a great thing, developing young people into empowered, engaged participants in their community. (Except….they can’t really participate in the political process, since AmeriCorps programs have very strong limitations on “lobbying”). Many members address real needs and get things done (Although there is no good impact data on the program, just outputs and a lot of feel good anecdotes).The education award is a nice little carrot, but it hasn’t kept up with exploding cost of college education. It’s a drop in the bucket.

VISTA, specifically, was created in the 60ies as part of the War on Poverty. But by sustaining an economy of cheap/free labor, aren’t we creating more poverty? VISTAs are not allowed to have any employment income during their year of service. They subsist on about $900/month. Which is why I always, happily, paid for every coffee and lunch of our VISTAs, because there was no way they could afford it. Likewise, AmeriCorps member living stipends are just above poverty level.

Really what we are doing by promoting instead-of-work-volunteerism and encouraging unpaid labor of all kinds is creating precarious employment situations for more people. We sustain a labor market, in which it is ok not to pay workers, or pay them very little.

This is especially prevalent, ironically, in the social sector. For example, nonprofits that engage AmeriCorps members are not supposed to supplant their employed positions with members. Everyone who has ever worked with or for National Service programs knows that that’s bullshit. Members are cheap labor, and a way for nonprofits to save scarce budget dollars. And often, unfortunately, an excuse for nonprofit leadership to justify low quality, fragmented services, lackluster resource development and shaky sustainability of programs. Members turn over after a year, when the organization could have gotten 3-5 years out of the professional who really should have performed the job. And I have seen many a member who, lacking the supervision and support needed to do a good job, just spent their hours playing pool or who quit early. Strangely, I couldn’t find any aggregate data on the National Service website on member retention rates. They probably suck.

Being a postwar West-German, I have always had a hard time with the military flavor of AmeriCorps. Swearing in ceremonies, uniform clothing, creating a group identity, getting things done! All the shirts and spirited slogans do not change the fact that we are creating more people in poverty.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the fence: In post-war western Germany, civic service (Zivildienst) was the alternative to getting drafted into the military. In 2009 for example, over 90,000 young men conscientiously objected to military service and instead spent 12 -15 months changing bedpans in nursing homes, or working with young children, disabled people and at-risk youth. Then in 2011, military draft ended, and so did Zivildienst. Now young people can participate in Soziales oder kologisches Freiwilliges Jahr, (a volunteer year working on a social or ecological project) and people of all ages can join the new Bundesfreiwilligendienst (Federal Volunteer Service, known as Bufdi). The latter was created to keep the cheap labor flowing to the social sector. 35,000 people joined in 2011, the first year. Service pays 200 E/month. AmeriCorps members are wealthy compared to that!

In German, Volunteer translates to “Freiwilliger”, but another term, “Ehrenamtliche” is used as well – that means something like honorary officer. It changes the meaning somewhat – and I think here lies the crux of the issue. If you are a volunteer these days, here or in the US, the term seems to imply a voluntary choice to engage in service. But what if you live in an impoverished community and there are no alternatives?

An honorary officer, on the other hand, may be understood as more of a donor – I am thinking of Rotary Club members – someone who donates their time, in addition to, or instead of money. Maybe when we talk about volunteers it would be helpful to start distinguishing between donors and precarious employees.

Bringing this argument home: after 20 years, I am coming back to a drastically changed labor economy in Germany, and I need work. But many paid jobs have been replaced with internships and other fancily titled but unpaid employment relationships. There is the 400 Euro job, the Praktikum, paid and unpaid internships, Bufdi etc. Before any degreed person can land a real job, apparently she/he is expected to go through several unpaid gigs, gaining experience and building a resume. I am approaching 50, but have a blank employment history here. Should I participate in this precarious economy? A recent article in the Atlantic rebuffs the notion that internships are worth the while for college graduates in the US. Unpaid internships do not help when it comes to getting job offers.

The AmeriCorps program we started in southwest NM is now shrinking, due to sequestered funding. The Grant County Volunteer Center leadership has realized some years ago that matching volunteers with needs is an activity, but not a mission, and has moved on to the important mission of eradicating poverty and hunger. I expect to see the organization’s name change shortly. Meanwhile, I am looking for work in Germany, and pondering whether I should offer to work for free for a while, in order to get my foot in door. But what if the foot remains all I ever get in the door?

Berlin on the Move

P.’s girlfriend is excited. She just got the acceptance letter from the university in the U.K. She will get her Master’s degree in London! “You are going with me, right?” she asks her boyfriend P., and it’s all decided. P. is not so sure about this. On her way to work, she waves around their little 4th floor Tempelhof apartment, where for each room she had created a theme color, theme name and a mural: “Put all this stuff on ebay.”, she tells P.

Berlin currently has the highest online start-up company growth rate in Germany. All of these happen in low-rent apartments around town. Babbel, a language learning website and app created by a company called Lesson Nine, for example, was started in '07 by four guys in a little apartment on Bergmannstrasse. Today, Lesson Nine has nine employees, and their app just hit the 10 million downloads mark. L. is part of the same wave: She came to Berlin from Bulgaria and is now helping to start another web-based company: Footstep Ventures. In her mid-twenties, she speaks perfect German and English. Among other apps for visitors of Berlin, Footstep is creating an online concierge app for hotels, that shows guests events in town, including flash mobs and rallies. Another app can be tailored to events and conferences. To do all this, together with three other young entrepreneurs, L. rents a beautiful roof apartment on the Kreuzberg banks of the Spree River. L. sleeps and works at the office for nine months. Then, as things start to gel at the company, she gets really sick of sleeping at the office, and finds her own place. She puts all her furniture on ebay.

C. lives with her husband and 12-year old son in a small fourth floor Seitenfluegel apartment on a side street in Neukoelln. Seitenfluegel - that's the backyard side building of turn of the century Berlin apartment complexes - stairways distinguished from the spiffier front buildings by smaller size, basic colors, no carpet on the stairs, leading to crammed apartments for the working class, originally without bathrooms. C.'s apartment gets some good light thanks to its elevation, and she tries to make it cheerier by painting the wood floors and all furniture white. C., a first generation German from a Turkish family, carries a lot of weight on her small frame, and the four sets of stairs are hard on her, carrying up groceries and trying to make the place look nice. The men in her family are no help, spending most of their time watching TV and playing videogames. Then, a few months ago, she suffers a miscarriage. She decides that she needs to find a better place, and that she needs to move on. She puts all her stuff on ebay. As Maddy and I carry off her couch, the men don't look up from their screens.

Y. is from China, and is working hard on her degree and her job in Berlin. She moves into a small apartment in Schmargendorf and furnishes it with bright, happy and clean Ikea furniture. As soon as her place is all pretty and equipped, she meets the love of her life, L. He is gentle, respectful, helpful and dedicated. Now she spends all her time at his place, and her pretty apartment stays empty. Finally, they decide to get a place together, with room for the kids they know they will have soon. They find an affordable three-bedroom close to the Botanical Gardens. Y. asks L. to put all her stuff on ebay. He stays home from work and helps us carry the washer and dining room set.

The Z-A family’s Berlin apartment is on the ground floor of an old house on the other side of the Botanical Gardens from Y. and L.’s new place, on a hill called Fichtenberg (elev.68!). It has a little back deck and yard, four bedrooms and a little park down the street for Lucy the dog to run around. The house is now furnished with four beds, four shelves, a washer, a couch, a dining room set, a kitchen sideboard, nightstands, tables and numerous household items - all purchased on ebay for less than 700 Euro.