"In hindsight, it’s often seen as inevitable that the two Germanys would reunite. But this, too, is a somewhat revisionist view. " Tim Mohr writes about the "awkward twist" about the fall of the wall, many of the protestors did not seek unification.
posted by The Whelk on Nov 12, 2009 - 17 comments

Architect Jakob Tigges plans to erect a 1,000 meter tall artificial mountain in the middle of Berlin. [more inside]
posted by quoquo on Nov 11, 2009 - 36 comments

Twenty years ago in Berlin a wall came down. But at a free concert last night given by U2 in front of the Brandenburg Gate, MTV Europe decided to put a wall back up.
posted by jefficator on Nov 6, 2009 - 66 comments

the videos of datdatdat.org, Andreas Fischer, artist, designer and director from Berlin:
Palatine
Drone
The Tourist
The Omega Code

datdatdat is part of the We Are Chopchop collective.
posted by boo_radley on Oct 11, 2009 - 4 comments

1000 Melting Men in Berlin. (1 2 3 4) [more inside]
posted by cristinacristinacristina on Oct 2, 2009 - 20 comments

Moments in Time 1989/1990 - The Fall of the Wall and reunification. Films and photos from private collections. With woodpeckers.
posted by tellurian on May 26, 2009 - 8 comments

On Sunday, Karmanoia, one of Berlin's most interesting underground clubs, closed its doors for the last time. Although not as storied or well-known as Tacheles - also facing tough times - and easy to pass without noticing, Karmanoia had a loyal crowd of oddballs frequenting it, and was notable not just for its pirate-ship-like interior, but also for the full Labyrinth built into its upper portions. The club's funeral took place directly after locking the doors at midnight on Sunday, with an orchestra dressed like skeletons leading a parade to a nearby canal to bury the key in a watery grave. [more inside]
posted by mannequito on Apr 1, 2009 - 23 comments

We are in the midst of a Ferris wheel craze. In 2009. "This year, Germany will unveil the Great Berlin Wheel. Upon its completion, the wheel will be 606 feet high — as high as two football fields are long, as high as three Niagara Falls. It will be taller than what’s currently the tallest Ferris wheel in the world, the Singapore Flyer, a soon-to-be-disappointing 541 feet high. This year, China also plans to unveil the Beijing Great Wheel. At an awesome 682 feet high, it will be taller than both the Great Berlin Wheel and the Singapore Flyer (which only debuted as the world’s tallest Ferris wheel last year) ... China has, in fact, built wheels in six cities since the start of the new millennium."
posted by geoff. on Feb 12, 2009 - 52 comments

Inspired by NYC's Poster Boy and the hilarity of online celebrity photoshop disasters, Berlin's culture jamming F.T.W. crew recently organized a hit on Britney, Christina and Leona in an underground U-Bahn station. Note from the group's flickr sets that they were also recently responsible for a project based on John Carpenter's They Live.
posted by mannequito on Jan 20, 2009 - 31 comments

Food Fight! For reasons unknown to mankind the people of Kreuzberg fight the people of Friedrichshain (two Berlin precincts) on the Brigde that connects them. Their ammunition is rotten vegetables, diapers, rotten fruit and everything else you'd find in your bio-trashcan. More (sorry only a Trailer), more and still more (in german only).
posted by namagomi on Jul 31, 2008 - 24 comments

The Historic American Sheet Music archive at the Duke University Library has over 3000 pieces published in the United States available online, from the 1850s up to 1920. Composers represented include well-known names such as Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin, and John Philip Sousa. All the music is now in the public domain, and may be printed and performed freely. [Note: Language or stereotypes may occasionally be NSFW.]
posted by Upton O'Good on Jul 22, 2008 - 7 comments

Displaying Hitler alongside celebrities, pop stars, world statesmen and sporting heroes at the new Madame Tussauds in Berlin was a bit controversial to begin with. And it didn't last long before one of the first visitors literally tore off the Fuehrer's head.
posted by sour cream on Jul 5, 2008 - 71 comments

Twenty years ago this week, the biggest escape ever over the Berlin Wall took place, but the event went nearly unreported outside of the two Germanies. The 182 persons who jumped over the Wall in the early morning hours of 1 July 1988, instead of leaving East Germany, fled in the opposite direction (scroll down to "Wolfgang Ritter") to escape the West Berlin police. East German border guards waited with trucks on the other side of the Wall in the middle of the death strip to pick up the wall-hopping protesters; they were driven to another location, served breakfast, and then taken to the Friedrichsstrasse crossing to West Berlin with the admonition to "use the usual border crossing next time." [more inside]
posted by sister nunchaku of love and mercy on Jul 3, 2008 - 16 comments

Forgotten Architects: In the 1920s and early 1930s, German Jewish architects created some of the greatest modern buildings in Germany, mainly in the capital Berlin. A law issued by the newly elected German National Socialist Government in 1933 banned all of them from practicing architecture in Germany. In the years after 1933, many of them managed to emigrate, while many others were deported or killed under Hitler’s regime. Pentagram Papers 37: Forgotten Architects is a survey of 43 of these architects and their groundbreaking work. [more inside]
posted by sveskemus on Jun 16, 2008 - 10 comments

Do you like Berlin? The hippest city on the planet has some interesting video blogs. My personal favorite is First We Take Berlin which is pretty off-beat and covers a lot of not so hip areas of the city. In their current episode they go to the annual may riots in Kreuzberg (after a weird little mouse story). Then there is Mayda3000 which is the longest running video blog about Berlin. Watch Berlin is a sort of compilation of many different video blogs most of which are in german but there are some are in english as well. And last but not least there's Verbundstoff which is in german only and takes a look at the very underground Berlin electronic music scene.
posted by namagomi on May 20, 2008 - 47 comments

With the grounds it was built on having hosted the first demonstration of airplane flight in 1909, Tempelhof International Airport, the world's second-oldest working commercial airport, was officially opened in 1923. Also known as City Airport, it takes its official name from the Tempelhof neighborhood of Berlin, itself named for the Knights Templar who owned its land in the Middle Ages. [more inside]
posted by Your Time Machine Sucks on Apr 25, 2008 - 36 comments

David Lynch talks about invincible Germany in Berlin. Why Mr. Lynch should learn german.
posted by namagomi on Nov 21, 2007 - 34 comments

Brigid Berlin makes today's hollywood train wrecks look lame. "In the early 70s, I went to Woolworth's and bought a jigger so I could have just one getting-dressed drink. By the time I left the house, I'd had 20. One time, I was in a hairdresser under the dryer getting bored. I went to the bar across the street in my rollers and had a glass of white wine. Then another glass of wine and another. I can't remember anything else until I woke up in a Howard Johnson near La Guardia Airport. And there were pancakes and maple syrup. There was a cute boy in the room watching Kids Are People Too. I think I thought that Andy would put him on the cover of Interview. He didn't."
posted by bustmakeupleave on Sep 10, 2007 - 14 comments

Ruttmann vs. Milant
Alexis Milant has composed scores for three experimental animations realised by Walter Ruttmann. The pleasure in watching and [listening to] this come from the reactivity in the same temporality between sound and picture. [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Sep 9, 2007 - 8 comments

Bilderbook.
posted by hama7 on Aug 16, 2007 - 26 comments

The Soviet Army fights its way into Berlin and then, in a Very Special Episode, Uncle Joe drops in for a visit.

warnings: YouTube; violence followed by extreme melodrama
posted by Mayor Curley on May 14, 2007 - 30 comments

Berliner Trance. A 1993 documentary tracing the origins of modern trance music in East Berlin. Featuring interviews with many of the biggest names in trance, including a very young Paul Van Dyk, now currently ranked as the #1 DJ in the world.
posted by empath on Apr 7, 2007 - 49 comments

After twelve years of not getting laid, Yan Yan the Chinese panda finally kicked the bucket late Monday at the Berlin Zoo. Officials admits she died alone and nobody immediately noticed. Now the media is running with the story that the popularity of Knut the polar bear cub may be the reason behind the death of his neighbor. In other news, the European Union celebrated its 50th birthday in Berlin. Nobody noticed.
posted by phaedon on Mar 27, 2007 - 31 comments

In 1973, Berlin, Lou Reed’s somber follow-up to his upbeat, glam-rock Transformer, was described by Rolling Stone as “a disaster,” by others as “horseshit,” and was never performed live — until now.
posted by ijoshua on Dec 15, 2006 - 23 comments

The Berlin District Court has ruled that Deutsche Bahn must rebuild whole sections of the new Hauptbahnhof according to the architect's plans, setting a spectacular precedent. Berlin's new main train station, the Hauptbahnhof, cuts a solitary figure in the surrounding wasteland as it awaits an urban development that will complement its ambition, aesthetics and vast dimensions. But the verdict pronounced by the Berlin District Court on Tuesday November 28 has brutally nipped this development process in the bud. The judges ruled that the German rail company Deutsche Bahn has unlawfully violated the intellectual property rights of the station's architect, Meinhard von Gerkan. The rail company must rebuild the station according to the architect's plans. The station opened in May this year after a 13-year construction period.
posted by parmanparman on Dec 4, 2006 - 41 comments

On September 9th 2006, 112 of the world's writers, artists, activists, and social entrepeneurs (nominees here) will gather for a Table of Free Voices in Berlin, Germany, discussing questions about the important issues of today. Who provides those questions? You.
posted by divabat on Jul 24, 2006 - 6 comments

Please, do mention the war. Really, it's hard not to. After all, in a sense football is war, as the General famously joked. Sometimes it's peace. Same goes for that other football, by the way.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Jun 3, 2006 - 11 comments

Postwar architecture of Berlin. Photographing architectural icons before they disappear. Some I kind of like. Some I don't. Others, I just don't know what they were thinking.
posted by tellurian on Apr 3, 2006 - 27 comments

Everybody knows that gangsta rap promotes sexism, homophobia... and fascism. Take Bushido, for instance - the Berlin rapper of Tunisian descent that all the neo-Nazis love. Confused? (nyt) Well, so are the Germans. And then we're not even talking about Fler, whose "This is black-red-gold, hard and proud!" nationalist lyrics never fail to piss off the German papers (in German), and who likes to pose in his videos with a nice symbolic eagle. (Then again, Helmut Kohl didn't mind.) Still, Fler's flag-waving, eagle-loving rhymes are no match for Bushido's "Salute, stand to attention, I am the leader like 'A'". The A stands for Adolf, you know.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Jan 12, 2006 - 28 comments

‘No one should be imprisoned – not even for a second – for expressing an opinion’ Akbar Ganji announced his hunger strike on May 20 with these words.

Ganji, an Iranian journalist and writer, was arrested on April 22, 2000 following his participation in an academic and cultural conference held at the Heinrich Böll Institute in Berlin on April 7-9 entitled "Iran after the elections," at which political and social reform in Iran were publicly debated. He was sentenced on January 13, 2001 to 10 years imprisonment plus five years internal exile. He is now on 50th day of hunger-strike, weighs 52kg, is unconscious much of the day, and may die soon. [more inside]
posted by lenny70 on Jul 31, 2005 - 12 comments

Wladimir Kaminer represents an emerging Russo-German culture. He is a DJ spinning Russian wild ska-punk club music, he is a radio talk-show host, the author of several best-selling books depicting the life of Russian immigrants in Germany, and a sort of good-humored emblem of the emerging hybrid culture of Berlin. In a fascinating interview, he reveals post Soviet Russia, and Russian lives and literature in the West; you can read his stories, Paris Lost, and Animal Transport, and the usual overview of his works and of his significance, in the NYT Books section.
posted by semmi on Dec 24, 2004 - 5 comments

What do you do if it's 1979 and you are a sixteen year old in East Germany? Your Mom and her boyfriend, an officer in the intelligence service, have decided to defect. If you are Thomas Wagner, you wait twenty-odd years, and then you post the whole experience to your blog.
posted by mwhybark on Jul 25, 2004 - 14 comments

Superman born in Germany? It appears that "the boy's mutant DNA segment was found to block production of a protein called myostatin that limits muscle growth."

"Now we can say that myostatin acts the same way in humans as in animals," said the boy's physician, Dr. Markus Schuelke, a professor in the child neurology department at Charite/University Medical Center Berlin. "We can apply that knowledge to humans, including trial therapies for muscular dystrophy."

Or other things...
posted by andreaazure on Jun 24, 2004 - 17 comments

Urban Haute Couture "is about street art and street art only. Since a couple of years ago there's a boom in street art. To be clear we're not talking about graffiti. We're talking about street art that is spraypaint/marker template based, stickers, posters and combinations of those. This new breed of street art, except for using the urban landscape as a medium, has actually nothing to do with graffiti." Cities include Berlin, Amsterdam and the Romanian Stencil Archive.
posted by vacapinta on Apr 4, 2004 - 16 comments

Propeller Island City Lodge "Universal Art Objects & Hotel"
posted by Feisty on Apr 1, 2004 - 4 comments

Now's your chance to get with Jenna Jameson... Okay, not really. Apparently, the new gig in Berlin, Germany as of last month is pr0n Karaoke - you and a partner (or two, or three?) get together on stage, with a movie up on the screen, and "act out" the parts being played out graphically. So.... practice your faking and get ready to go!
posted by djspicerack on Oct 22, 2003 - 26 comments

German man arrested for teaching pet dog Nazi salute
And he had a moustache too.
(No, not the dog.)
posted by Mwongozi on Oct 15, 2003 - 23 comments

Berlin Love Parade - July 13, 2002 "A million and half techno fans brought together for a day is something you just don’t see in America.... It’s something every American dancer should experience." Can be seen live on VIVA.tv
posted by Voyageman on Jul 13, 2002 - 7 comments

Blinken Lights the world's biggest interactive computer display, a special 20th anniversary present to itself and the city of Berlin by the Chaos Computer Club. Since Sept 12, 2001, the upper eight floors of the famous "Haus des Lehrers" (house of the teacher) have been transformed in to a huge display by arranging 144 lamps behind each of the windows. A computer controls each of the lamps independently to produce a monochrome matrix of 18 times 8 pixels. The icing on the cake, you can play pong on it via your mobile phone!
posted by riffola on Dec 10, 2001 - 9 comments

Berlin held mayoral elections on Sunday. The winner, Klaus Wowereit, is the town’s first openly gay politician. “I'm gay and it's good that way,” became a campaign slogan, website and catch phrase. Hints of Paris and Bertrand Delanoe.
posted by raaka on Oct 23, 2001 - 4 comments

Berlin Teen Fails to Stop Flying Cow Spectacle. I tried and tried to come up with an appropriate smart aleck comment for this one... but to no avail. I did learn that it is legal to have a food fight in Berlin however.
posted by fluxcreative on Jul 20, 2001 - 27 comments