May 2021.
Now this is more like it. The infection numbers start going down, albeit slowly. The blossom comes in abundance and the sun shines more frequently. Spring is startlingly brief in Berlin but always spectacular.
Too late for the poor woman who died in March and in a different location in the neighbourhood, but we get our own bicycle street. Herrfurthstraße, which leads from the busy Hermannstraße thoroughfare, up past popular shops and cafes, past a church on a platz and straight to Tempelhofer Feld, has always been overly busy and bikes took their chances with delivery vehicles, taxis and cars. But now, it is especially reserved for those on two wheels. A good sign and hopefully the first of many.
The mystery sign-holders on Tempelhofer Feld are filled and, encouragingly, with information panels displaying pictures and diagrams about the range of trees planted last year, the ones I dubbed the corona trees in Berlin Corona Diary #4. The descriptions are in German and English. Many of the trees are fruit varieties but this one was an oak. The planting of these trees and the marking of them in this way seems another sign of the city’s acceptance of the value of the Feld as a place with unique value that deserves conservation not offering up to real estate developers.
Following the decision to overturn the “rent-lid” law, there was another big demonstration against gentrification and unaffordable rents. Everyone gathered in Potsdamer Platz before setting off west. A big contigent from Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen stood out with their yellow and purple flags and banners.
Slogans varied from the straightforwardly argued: “Housing is not a commodity, stop rent madness” to the speech-bubble from the mouth of a cartoon bear “Property sharks into fish-fingers”, a nicely colourful description of expropriation.
Some protestors bore slogans on T-Shirts like Gier ist nicht geil, greed is not cool, referring to a nauseatingly consumerist ad campaign around 2006 from a German technology retail chain but also depicting accumulated properties above an Eye of Sauron image from The Lord of the Rings
Masks were worn throughout the march, despite the higher temperatures making that a hot and stickier experience than was comfortable and we shared stories of what our respective landlords had done in the wake of the law being revoked.
Another collective experience was the recording of a sound-art, spoken-word, radio piece called Heimatgefühle composed by Ira Hadžić and performed by me and several other non-native German speakers, from countries such as Japan, Brazil and Italy. We recorded at the Deutschland Radio studios for Deutschlandfunk Kultur and the piece can be first heard on 27th August this year at five minutes past midnight and thereafter on their website. Access into the buildings was on condition of negative test results and wearing a mask when moving outside our designated recording places. Hearing my own voice and that of others through the very good headphones while standing alone, unseen by and apart from each other was an interesting experiential mixture of mysterious distance and intimacy.
After such enclosed separation, I sought open spaces and found a nearby park with an intriguing low rise building bordering some water. On nearing it, I discovered it wasn’t a landscaped folly but the highly functional bridge and tunnel housing the underground station Rathaus Schoeneberg. Even though I’ve spent almost ten years here, I’m still discovering new things.
So in May, masks were still very much required, as was an ongoing commitment to anti-racist diversity as this poster declares on a local community centre door: solidarity against Corona and far-right agitation – Masks on! – Nazis out – stop the AfD. Stand up against racism.
On the way 