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.)

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…..

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.

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