Unscene Berlin

The 25th anniversary of the 'Mauerfall' (fall of the Berlin Wall) last Sunday was in some ways similar to the original fall of the wall.  Throngs of people gathered at the old checkpoints, and all along the path of the old political barrier between east and west. It was cold and everyone was tense. But instead of release from the GDR, they were waiting for the release of a  f*** ton of glowing balloons that lined the Wall perimeter.  The release had been meant to happen at 7 p.m. sharp. It was meant to be one of those magical, cathartic moments where everyone would tear up as they looked into the night skies and watched the balloons (which symbolised bricks, apparently) drift away on clouds of helium, dissolving like the Wall itself was meant to do. But as was usual for any Fall in Berlin, it was drizzly, dark, foggy, and people were lucky if they could see from one side of the Spree to the other.   The tourists throngs seemed  enrapt by the displa...

“I think Frank Henkel should come here and see what he is doing,” says Anja, a German activist at a refugee protest in Friedrichshain. “Instead he stays inside his house, in his warm bed.” Anja wants the senator to explain why he ordered the eviction of 108 refugees that the Senate was housing in Berlin hostels. The fact that the refugees were all members of Lampedusa, an activist group that has been fighting for asylum reform, probably played a role in Henkel’s decision… but he isn’t about to admit it. Senator Henkel has almost entirely walled himself off from the refugees, going about his life as if they don’t even exist. This past September, his stonewalling forced Anja and her friends to take the battle to his doorstep. “We went to his office and sat on the floor,” she says. “We refused to leave until he came out.” But instead of answering their questions, Henkel’s staff called the police, who lifted the activists up and dropped them outside on a kerb, like bin ba...