Berlin: After the Fall

“Berlin is a perfect place for my body and mind to feel settled, but there are enough changes to feel ‘new’ and inspired every day,”
 says Silke Spitzer, a jeweler and native of the former West Germany who moved to the city five years ago. “Berlin can feel almost a bit provincial, but the people who have continued to move here since the fall of the wall make for a lively mix.”

Spitzer is, of course, referring to the Berlin Wall, which separated East and West Berlin since the early 1960s and served as a stark reminder of the cold war and its division of Europe. This year the city of Berlin is marking an important anniversary: 20 years ago, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down by peaceful revolution.

Much has happened in Berlin since then. The big swath of barren land opened up by the removal of the wall has slowly become filled with new offices, embassies and commercial developments like Potsdamer Platz. The Brandenburg Gate is fully restored, the old Reichstag proudly dons its glass hat and houses the government since its move from Bonn to the new (and former) German capital. The Mauer (Wall) Museum was inaugurated in 1998 and the East Side Gallery—one of the only significant remaining sections of the wall, which was painted on the side facing the former East Berlin after the Wende (transition) by artists from all over the world—is already undergoing a major restoration.

Many craftspeople have flocked to the city since the fall of the wall, especially ceramists and jewelry and clothing designers. The city is comparable to New York when it comes to number of artists living and working within its bounds. Studios are still affordable in Berlin; the apartments are plentiful and very reasonably priced compared to any other German city. This is what drew jeweler Karla Schabert there. Schabert, who crochets delicate earrings, brooches, necklaces and the like in colorful thin French cotton thread around glass beads, shares a studio/store in the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood with another jeweler, Ruth Temur. Schabert was trained as a goldsmith in Munich and studied painting in London before she made the move to Berlin in 2002. It was exactly what she was looking for: the opportunity to pursue her art while enjoying a reasonable cost of living.

Iris Hamelberg, who set up her ceramics studio in a small storefront on a side street off Rosa Luxemburg Street, a busy commercial corridor in Berlin Mitte, the city center where art thrives, has experienced the same advantages. “Even a storefront like this with my studio right here is affordable,” she explains. There is a small showroom, but most of the space is taken over by Hamelberg’s studio, where she creates her thin and elegant, hand-thrown white porcelain vessels and bowls, decorated with simple colored lines that emphasize their shape. “I think this is the reason why craft artists in Berlin often set up studios in small retail locations,” Hamelburg says. “We can still afford to be visible at street level.”

Nearby, Christine Birkle, a fashion designer originally from Bavaria, who is well known for her handmade felted women’s clothing, opened a store called Hut Up in the HeckmannHöfe—a small courtyard connecting two streets. Here she sells her signature line of wool and organza dresses, skirts and tops, which are all shaped through the felting process. They do not have any seams, which makes them reversible—even the beautiful wedding dress collection can be inverted to show a color other than white.

Other artisans have created combined live/work spaces in Berlin’s former Ladenwohnungen, or store apartments. The residential areas of the city all previously had small grocers, bakeries and hardware stores that came with attached apartments, providing living spaces for the storeowner’s family. In the age of supermarkets these artists have found a way to put these spaces to new use.

Anna Sykora has just this kind of setup—a retail space/studio located in a former grocery store apartment in Kreuzberg, a bohemian neighborhood neglected during the years of the wall. Originally trained as a model maker working for the ceramics industry in the former East Germany, she has been producing hand-thrown porcelain vases, bowls, cups and platters, sold in galleries throughout Europe and beyond, for almost 20 years. Clear shapes and clean lines adorned with abstract patterns in subtle, muted glazes dominate the display window and a makeshift counter, but most of the space in the store is dedicated to production; wheels for throwing, shelving for works in process and a large kiln dominate the space. Sykora loves the advantages of having a combination of the shop and studio. “I like having a presence in the neighborhood,” she says, “a place where people from the neighborhood stop in and pick out a gift.”

With so many artists selling their own wares directly from their studios, visitors to Berlin cannot expect to find an abundance of craft galleries. There are, however, several notable exceptions—such as oona, an über-cool jewelry gallery exhibiting an avant-garde collection representing about 20 artists currently on the forefront of the international jewelry scene. The gallery, which was opened in 2000 in Berlin Mitte by Anna Schetelich, puts on six shows a year with a strong focus on work by graduates from the Munich Akademie—such as Volker Atrops’s casual pieces incorporating sheets of commercial crystals—and a group of noted Japanese designers including Jiro Kamata, who creates jewelry through the combination of sunglass lenses with highly polished metal surfaces.

Fascinating jewelry can also be found at Schmuck Fritz, located in Kreuzberg. Owned by Manuel Fritz, a jeweler himself, the shop offers an eclectic selection of jewelry such as earrings made from printed parchment by Ulrike Hamm, the chunky cast glass pendants of Petra Brenner and Silke Spitzer’s bold linoleum pieces.

Another artist represented at the shop is Bernd Kühn, a ceramist who also owns his own store, where he makes and sells an over-the-top collection of porcelain. Large vessels covered with strawberries and tall, lidded vases with dog-shaped handles and skull paintings make up this collection of what he describes as “polished punk.” The antithesis to this work can be found at the studio of Paul Reimert, a Dutch artist who has lived in Berlin for over 30 years. His ceramic collages include life-size male figures, as well as pigs or trees made entirely from ceramic bunny heads covered in glue and paint. “I frequent the local flea markets,” he explains. “I’m saddened to see how many people enjoy kitschy ceramic figurines.” He recycles these mass-produced objects by destroying them and using the shards to assemble detailed one-of-a-kind pieces— a personal one-man crusade to transform the everyday into art.

Work like Reimert’s is a testament to the mindset in Berlin since the fall of the wall and explains to some extent why artists have thrived there. A progressive attitude permeates the city. Claudia Skoda, a knitwear designer, observes that Berlin has never been a place for high fashion but rather has embraced an edgy street wear that has gone mainstream here since reunification. “I am glad we did not get the extreme consumerism found in other communist countries after the opening to the West,” she says. “People in Berlin are not craving material possessions. They are doing well and are content, enjoying life