The Future of Nostalgia by Svetlana Boym

Author:Svetlana Boym [SVETLANA BOYM]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2011-12-30T16:00:00+00:00

Bohemian Ruins:Tacheles

In the good and bad old days of the GDR, Oranienburger Strasse was a street of ruins. The ruin of the New Synagogue stood not far from another ruin, that of Tacheles, which was used as a warehouse for Friedrichstadt Palace. In 1990, the ruin was occupied by artists from East and West Berlin who had saved it from demolition and formed one of the first joint artistic squats here. The place embodied a dream of an alternative lifestyle on the border between former East and West Berlin as well as the memory of the years 1989 and 1990. At that time, East German police no longer had power over the city and West German police had not yet taken control, so Berlin’s abandoned center became a kind of utopian commonwealth of alternative culture with Oranienburger Strasse at its core. While squatter culture flourished in West Berlin since the 1960s, becoming almost a hallmark of its alternative identity as an “island-city” that was even protected by cultural funds, in the East there was not much tolerance of bohemian fantasies. (A few squatters here that emerged in Prenzlauberg in the late 1980s were much more law abiding: they occupied unused buildings, then found out the account number and paid the rent together with a government fine.)

Tacheles, 1999.

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