Part 2 will be available soon.
Part 2 will be available soon.
Being 20 in West Berlin
6 Parts
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Part 2 will be available soon.
'Half the city lay in ruins': Hanns Zischler, the cultural memory of West Berlin
Profile'Being 20 in West Berlin' (1/6). The actor, writer, translator, and photographer, a figure of Germany's artistic and intellectual scene, arrived in the walled-in city in the early 1970s. He never left, drawn by a vibrancy that set West Berlin apart from the rest of the Federal Republic of Germany at the time.
Khrushchev was wrong. After the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, the leader of the Soviet Union believed he did not need to worry about West Berlin, assuming that only old people would remain. The opposite happened. West Berlin became a city of two million people, unlike any other.
It was a city that drew young West Germans seeking to avoid compulsory military service: They were exempt there. A city where people got by with little money and anything seemed possible: doing nothing or living differently. A city where daily life had no limits, from drugs at the Berlin Zoologischer Garten station (known as Bahnhof Zoo) to squats in Kreuzberg. A city where bars and restaurants could stay open all night. It was transformed into a unique playground for art and creators, from music to theater, attracting the likes of singer David Bowie and theater director Peter Stein.
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