Kollwitzkiez is for the most part a rather sedate corner of
Berlin, only approaching anything like liveliness on a Saturday when the
weekly street market is in full swing. The
area, with its pretty cobbled streets, is often dismissed as over-gentrified,
populated by middle-class bohemians and smug parents, but it’s a neighbourhood
that I’ve developed a genuine affection for over the years. In the past I would often begin a visit to
the city with a Saturday morning wander around the market and breakfast in one
of the area’s many cafes.
In those days the market occupied the sections of Knaackstrasse
and Wörther Strasse that embrace Kollwitzplatz, the triangular ‘square’ at the
heart of the kiez, until a resident’s complaint about noise forced the move to Kollwitzstrasse
where it now runs from the junction with Knaackstrasse to about halfway between
Wörther Strasse and Sredzkistrasse.
There is some quality produce on offer here: fruit and veg,
bread and cakes, meat and cheese, as well as flowers, handmade clothing,
jewellery and gifts. There is usually a
busker or two to be found along the way and the air is filled with aromas from
the various food trucks. Market-goers
stand around high tables feasting on their tasty treats or gossiping over glasses
of wine. If it’s a sunny day they might
repair to the long curving bench on the corner of Wörther Strasse to picnic on
their spoils, sometimes even bringing along collapsible tables for the
purpose.
In the square, the Käthe Kollwitz statue keeps watch over
the proceedings while kids run around in the play areas and parents gather in
groups to chat. One can only wonder what
Kollwitz, a committed socialist whose art depicted the living conditions of the
working-class poor, would have made of such bourgeois goings-on in the street
that bears her name.
The lady herself: Kollwitz's works are powerful and at times heartbreaking.
For this little pocket of Prenzlauer Berg epitomises the
gentrification phenomenon about which it seems that almost everyone has
something to say (even though the facades of the buildings on Husemannstrasse were
refurbished before the Wall fell).
It is a common complaint, and one with which I utterly concur, that
‘upward’ shifts in a given area are caused by the incursions of those with the wherewithal
to buy themselves a slice of the action in the ‘cool’ and ‘edgy’ neighbourhoods
(I must add, however, that it seems to me that sometimes these grievances come
from those who are every bit to blame. Having
gotten wind of where the supposedly hip and happening quarters are and taken
themselves there in order to be part of the scene, they then resent anyone who
does likewise. In reality, the
‘struggling artists’, students and creatives who were driven there in the first
place by economic necessity and ended up inadvertently putting the
neighbourhood on the map have probably already decamped to other obscure
corners of the city as rapacious landlords cash in on the area’s new-found hype. They leave in their wake an homogeneous
hipster population which has already set about creating an urban environment in
its own image whilst bemoaning the slide into gentility).
Gentrification is a critical issue in Berlin. Sadly, it seems
inevitable that one neighbourhood after another will be ‘discovered’ and
refashioned to cater for the demands of the bland. As ever, money wins and no amount of ‘Fuck
off yuppies’ graffiti seems capable of changing that (yuppies not only fail to
recognise themselves, they are also stupendously thick-skinned).
And cities are organic; fluid and ever-evolving. In Berlin the process has often been
accelerated by human agency;
changes have been both evolutionary and revolutionary and the city has worn many different faces in
its remarkable history.
Which brings me back to Kollwitzkiez. Like the rest of Prenzlauer Berg, it was
originally a solidly working-class neighbourhood, its tenements little more
than charmless slums. It became home to
the artists, intellectuals and ‘subversives’ of the DDR and continued to
attract a similar demographic after reunification. Although the predictable drift towards mainstream
respectability followed, this was in no small part down to those early settlers
themselves maturing and prospering but staying put in the environment they’d grown
to love.
It may have long since settled into a middle-class
contentment that many find dull and mediocre but it has remained a
neighbourhood with a distinct community feel.
It has never degenerated into a tourist trap with a McDonalds on one
corner, a Starbucks on the other and a succession of dismal chain stores in
between. Independent shops and cafes
abound and although one can find the odd hipster mainstay in the shape of a
‘third wave’ coffee shop or ‘street food’ kitchen, many are established and
beloved local institutions.
Coledampf's kitchen shop with its pots and pans sculpture looking suitably festive
In addition to the Saturday market, Kollwitzplatz also
boasts a smaller organic market on a Thursday and, at this time of year, a
Sunday Adventsmarkt.
