Berlin Winter 1980 / 1981 - Der Kalte Krieg
Anhalter Bahnhof - Kreuzberg - 10 February 1981
Drachenzähne / Dragon teeth / Anti tank block - East-Berlin - 15 January 1981
The endless wall of hatred - Bernauer Straße, 13 December 1980.
With a melancholy sense of wonder, I watch the heavy snowfall from my kitchen, five floors up in Kreuzberg - Midwinter - 1980
Olympiastadion -Rosseführer by sculptor Josef Wackerle 1936 - December 1980
Night view of Boyerstraße - Berlin Mitte - 17 November 1980
Dr. Jim FleishKrieg graffiti - Pedestrian tunnel beneath the Großer Stern, 10 December 1980.
The iconic 1968 Mercedes-Benz 200D - November 1980
Der Reichstag am neblig-kalten Morgen - Platz der Republik - December 1980
Deutscher Fernsehfunk,
the official television broadcasts from the DDR between 1952 and 1991.
Even free West Berlin was divided into sectors. Here, we leave the American sector — January 1981.
Vopos on guard on the ice-cold day.
We catch their breath before it turns to frost, Two lonely souls, by history crossed.
Banhof Zoo, in the background the ruins of the Gedächtniskirche - January 1981
Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten, the setting of Christiane F.’s Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo — January 1981.
Saturday night at the U-Bahn -
We're gonna rock this town -17 January 1981
U-Bahn station Wittenbergplatz -
A well-dressed couple, wrapped in the old-fashioned glamour of fur seemingly lost in time near KaDeWe (Kaufhauas des Westens) - 10 January 1981.
What remains in silence.
Berlin West: The kiosk saleswoman quietly leaning over her counter amidst hundreds of printed media.
To the left, towards the Fernbahnhof; to the right, towards the Gedächtniskirche.
And don’t lose yourself along the journey!
U-Bahn-Station Mehringdamm at Linie 7 -
This photo exudes the raw atmosphere of the city during the Cold War.
The waiting game at Bahnhof Zoo was already played back then a game of poverty, migration, and exclusion.
Policeman observing the house squatters riots with the latest technologies - Kreuzberg - 16 December 1981
Anarchists waiting for the riot to start -
Kreuzberg - 17 January 1981
Berliner Morgenpost the day after the riot - Kreuzberg - Januari 1981
Watchtower West Berlin provides a view of the Fernsehturm in East Berlin - 15 January 1981
Ost-Berlin, taken from the watchtower west side of the wall - January 1981
The raw, everyday reality of urban public transport during the Cold War.
Wir Kinder von Bahnhof Zoo - 13 January 1981
Live on air at sunset. Metal structures fading into grainy melancholy.
Elena! you run like an open razorblade through the world, they cut themselves on you - 17 November 1980
The future is female - Von Frauen Bezetst -
Pere Ubu - KZ36 -Kreuzberg - February 1981
And one day a wall stands right down the middle of your street.
That zigzag feeling!
Turkish imigrant children pose for me in their halved street.
Billboard of the movie Asphaltnacht at a U-Bahn entrance, 1980 a film by Peter Fratzscher, About a 30 year-old guitarist/song-writer down on his luck, cruises the streets of West-Berlin in his drag-racer, and meets and befriends a 17 year-old punk guitarist who has left home -
Day and night available at number 89.
Night Cityscape at full moon - Corner Chaussee- and Boyerstrasse - Berlin Mitte - 17 November 1980
Memorial cross for an unknown victim of the Berlin Wall -
Unknown person shot on June 2, 1965 - Gartenstraße in Berlin.
Kreuzberg
Siemens War Memorial Berlin - Imperial Eagle by Joseph Wackerle (1934) - Nonnendammallee 101 in Siemensstadt.
Old man, how did you survive the war?
Graffiti anarchy as a solution.
Sowjetisches Ehrenmal - Treptower Park - Ost-Berlin - 11 November 1980
Former abandoned and inaccessible Nazi party building.
Day-to-day struggles.
Wings of Desire - Der Himmel über Berlin
November 11, 1980. The state-run pages of Izvestia bleed into a quiet conspiracy. Beside the sharp glint of West German marks and a glossy Western magazine, the unblinking face of a Casio F-91W digital watch counts down the seconds in the dark. A frame stained with the cold air of espionage, midnight smuggling, and a forgotten frontier.
Through the open subway doors, the boy looks at me, caught off guard with a revolver gripped in his hand. But I`m fast, clic, I shoot first.
A large-scale, modernist housing estate and locality in the Berlin borough of Neukölln. It was designed by the Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius and built between 1962 and 1975 to alleviate an acute housing shortage in West Berlin.
To the left, you can see the former border of the DDR (East Germany).
We're gonna rock this town, rock it inside out
We're gonna rock this town, make 'em scream and shout
Let's rock, rock, rock, man, rock
But that's all right, 'cause we're looking as cool as can beI had my hair piled tight, my baby just looked so right.
I had my hair piled tight, my baby just looked so right.
Yes...wo soll das alles enden?
Kreuzberg apartment selfie, five floors up the stairs - 10 January 1981
In between the summers of 1980 and 1981, I spent five months wandering the streets of West-Berlin, Kreuzberg. My home at the time.
Balancing the planet on its shaky shoulders, the Cold War was an everyday fact of life back then. Especially in Berlin, the isolated centre of the DDR, the war left a grimy taste on people's tongues.
In that ice cold winter, I followed the wall staggering its way through the streets of the free West-Berlin, my only companion being my analogue camera. I spent my days capturing the shameful eyesore in hundreds of grainy, grey images.
I haven't been to Berlin since.
As a result, I've never been able to shake the monochrome appearance of a city enclosed in an invisible war.
Of the many graffiti texts the Berlin wall spewed back at the West-Berliners, I remember one that couldn't have reflected the hurt of its citizens more fittingly:
Ich bin allein, wir sind allein, Berlin ist allein.
It's about time I go back.