Kollwitzkiez: a much-maligned favourite corner and the issue of gentrification

 

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.