Exberliner - June 2022

148 Pages·2022·129.8 MB·English

Berlin in English 2002 ~ 2022

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EXBERLINER

2002 - 2022
The collector’s issue

Cover: “20 Years EXB”
by Catherine Franck
(Exberliner magazine cut-outs collage)

Editor-in-chief
Nadja Vancauwenberghe
(Verantwortliche im Sinne des Pressegesetzes
§7 LPG Berlin)
Deputy editor
Helen Whittle
Art director
Gustavo del Castillo M.
Graphic designer
Paula Ragucci
Copy editing
Eve Lucas, Alexander Wells
Photography

linaroosa Viitanen, Gianluca Quaranta,
Luka Godec, Paula Ragucci

Junior reporters
Alex Bidstrup, Emma de Ruiter, Wanda Sachs

Advertising
Michelle Thiede ([email protected])
Tel: +49 (©) 30 - 233 269 610
Email: [email protected]

Distribution
Stefan Sauerbrey

Tel: [phone]

Subscriptions
Tel: [phone]
Email: [email protected]
lomauna Media GmbH
Miillerstrafe 12, 13353 Berlin-Wedding

Tel: [phone]
www.exberliner.com, Issn 1610-9015
Exberliner was founded in 2002
by Maurice Frank, Ioana Veleanu
and Nadja Vancauwenberghe.
It is a publication of
Tip Berlin Media Group GmbH.
Managing director: Robert Rischke

tipBerlin

MEni a GanlP

FACES

04 Nadja Vancauwenberghe
“Pm not interested in doing
something mediocre.”

38 Christoph Niemann
“Berlin meant the end of
excuses.”

350 Helen DeWitt
“IT wanted to go somewhere
to live the life of the mind.”

54 Sergei Loznitsa
“Greetings from the Middle

Ages.”

22 Hetty Berg
“T would never want to be
the head of a Holocaust
museum.”

26 The Duc Ngo
“T didn’t care if Berlin was
ready or not.”

14 Ai Weiwei
“Home is the place to share.”

18 Peaches
“Find a way to exist and
enjoy it.”

10 Jim Avignon
“Nothing I paint is meant to
create value.”

EX-EXBERLINERS

112 Best of Dr. Dot
We look back on the best (or
worst?) advice of Exberliner’s
most (in)famous sex colum-
nist.

113 20 years in politics
Exberliner’s former politics
columnist Robin Alexander
pays us a visit to find nothing
has changed.

57 Import/Export
Robert Rigney’s monthly de-
scent into Berlin’s Auslander
underworld revisited.

68 The simple stroll
Cartoonist Ulli Lust takes
an illustrated turn around
Tegel’s forest.

66 The Gay Berliner
One of our favourite columns

from Exberliner’s OG Maurice
92

von Ritz.

114 The Party-Birgermeister
Exberliner co-founder Mau-
rice Frank on the legacy of
Berlin’s former mayor Klaus
Wowereit.

46

43
90

88

“60
a
64
n
cE

(78

| 80

“MY BERLIN

83

Taking the rough with the
smooth

Eve Lucas on Viktoria-Luise-
Platz, one of old Berlin’s
most picturesque squares.

A field for das Volk
Nathaniel Flakin on Europe’s
greatest, strangest park.

Nostalgic, not ostalgic
Jacinta Nandi’s memories-
and-alcohol-fuelled tales of
the fabled Kaffee Burger.

Break a leg!

Ben Knight on his thwarted
acting career and 20 years of
Berlin theatre.

Soaking it all up

Anne Troester on the Bier-
garten that’s a microcosm of
21st-century Prenzlberg.

Fever pitch

Jacob Sweetman on
K6penick’s Stadion An der
Alten Férsterei.

Parking lot palace
Stefanie Dérre on the forgot-
ten luxury of Kant-Garagen.

Reeling in the good stuff
Rachel Glassberg on her soft
spot for famed Charlotten-
burg Schlemmerecke.

Rockin’ the underbelly
Damien Cummings on the
bar that has become a stand-
alone Berlin institution.

A river runs through it
Paul Scraton on the Panke,
waterway that has become
his constant companion.

Angels over Neuk6lln Maria
Kossak revisits Karl-Marx-
Strafe and spreads her
creative wings once more.

The party goes on

Anne Lena Mésken aka Ger-
aldine proves she still knows
how to get into Berghain.

Electropolis revisited

Yozy Zhang takes her camera
inside the vast expanses of
Mahalla.

Mariannenplatz
Walter Crasshole on Kreuz-
berg’s the place to be.

The smartest man on Face-
book

Indie publisher Nikola Rich-
ter on bringing Aboud Saeed
from Syria to Germany’s
printed world.

FEATS

09 Berlin: 20 years in numbers

67 Chez Michel

Stu Mead sketches his favou-
rite Kreuzberg bistro.

74 Sin city

Photographer Miron Zownir’s
last 20 years in photographs.

| 48 The past is another country

Jacinta Nandi on a bookshop
full of mystery and intrigue
where they always did things
differently.

The hard facts on everything
from the cost of living to the

gender pay gap.

| 84 The great Berlin sea-change

The Berliners who swapped
the Hauptstadt for the sun-
nier climes of Portugal.

50 Meet the EXB Gen

The next generation of expat
Berliners who have watched
the city change as they grew

up.

96 Berlin’s failed rental revo-

lution
What remains of the Berlin
dream of low-cost living?

100 20 years in 20 dishes

Food editor Jane Silver pays
tribute to the plates that
changed the way Berlin eats.

| 104 Not so grand designs

Dan Borden takes us on a
tour through Berlin’s last 20
years of built projects.

108 20 years in 20 books

Our books editor selects the
20 books that have defined
Berlin over two decades.

110 Grace’s real Berlin

Travel editor Grace Henes on
the alternative class of desti-
nations worthy of attention.
| FACES |

NADJA

MEDIOCRE”

Exberliner’s co-founder and
editor-in-chief tells the story
of how tHE MAGAzine was born
in 2002, how it weathered two
decades’ worth of storms, and
how international Berlin has
changed around it. sy Helen wnittte

You said that if it wasn’t for Vladimir Putin, Exber-
liner would never have come into being. What’s the
story? That’s a bit of a joke, of course, but it’s kind of a true
joke, you know? A whole lot of people came to Berlin because
they really chose Berlin. I’ve been hearing that for 20 years:
people come here, fall in love with the city, start some kind
of wonderful project and it works or it doesn’t work - but

it’s been their plan all along, it’s been a choice. I never went
through this “falling in love with Berlin” stage. For me, Berlin
was exile. It was coming here and not knowing what to do
because my city of predilection was Moscow and my language
of interest was Russian. I worked as a journalist for a news
agency there for many years, but I was doing my own inves-
tigations and having the time of my life - until Putin came

to power. The first few years of Putin were kind of okay. But
then after doing some crazy investigation stories, including an

EXBERLINER

f

undercover stint in Chechnya, I ended up being blacklisted.

It happened very, very suddenly. And it was a huge trauma. I
literally lost my job, my life and my flat pretty much overnight.
I don’t want to compare it to what refugees go through, but in
many ways it did happen to me like that. I had no other place
to go, and no idea what I would do. My boyfriend at the time
was living in Berlin and it took me a good six months to make
the decision to actually move here. So the joke is definitely
that if it hadn’t been for Putin and the Russian secret service, I
would have never ended up in Berlin!

What happened after you arrived? I didn’t speak a word
of German when I came, and it was like, what am I going

to be doing here? I had no idea. I was here for a good three
to four months, and instead of enjoying the great Berlin
lifestyle, I would just lament the fact that I couldn’t even get
hold of a single magazine in English. In Moscow at that time
we had so much English-language media. At first I thought
oh, great, so many things in English — but no, that’s just

the German habit of using cool English words on magazine
covers! One beautiful night, I was complaining about this to
a friend of a friend, a businessman. And he looked at me and
he said, “Well, instead of complaining, just do it!”. It’s one
of those weird things in life when you think that maybe you
can actually do it, but most of the time you end up never de-
livering with yourself - in French we have a very good word
for it: “velléitaire”. You can’t translate it. My boyfriend at

the time lived here and he hated his Deutsche Welle job. And
then my other friend, who was French-Romanian-American
i

When yow’re buying these in-
dividual little “Exberliners”
each month, it’s the result of so
much work, from so many Ber-
lin people who put a lot of love
and passion into it.

and had been working for the Village Voice, started to say she
wanted to come back to Europe - and her big thing was to
start a magazine. So I said, “What about starting something
together?”

So there weren’t any English-language city magazines
in Berlin at that time? There had been two English-lan-
guage magazines in the past, probably in the 1990s, but I
wasn’t there then and they had never really taken off. You
would keep hearing people, especially journalists stuck in their
well paid jobs at Deutsche Welle or wherever, who thought that
maybe they could do something more creative. The fact is a lot
of people had at some point said, “I’m gonna start that Berlin
English-language magazine.” And I think just being totally
foreign to the whole thing, being outsiders, as we were, was
somehow very liberating, We had no idea, We had no expecta-

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re)
=]
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tions. We had no connection to any English-language jour-
nalists here. The only journalist I knew in Berlin was Robin
Alexander. He’d stayed at my flat in Moscow and became our
first political columnist. Now he’s one of those big talk show
stars and a big wig at conservative Die Welt. Funny!

You studied politics and Russian. How did that transi-
tion into journalism? It’s complicated in France. I stud-

ied public law, then politics, then political sociology. Then I
wanted to do my PhD about Russia, and I got a generous grant
to research and live there. Meanwhile I was teaching at the Lo-
monosov State university, it was a great setup! At some point

I started freelance writing. Ultimately, I ended up taking a
Master’s in International Journalism at City University in Lon-
don. My plan was clear: after that, I would go back to Moscow
and start from scratch, and I would become a
‘Russian journalist’. In the early 1990s, there
was almost no foreign correspondent speaking

20 YEARS BERLIN

NADJA VANCAUWEN-
BERGHE was born in

any Russian there. Then I was hired by AFP Paris and studied politics
as a local journalist. It was not as glamorous and journalism at the

as people think. It’s actually quite unexciting. Sorbonne and City
You’d spend your days sitting there on the University in London.
wires and just translating from the Russian She moved to Moscow
news agency TASS - and if you’re lucky,inthe § onaPhD grant and
middle of the night, a Chechen warlord would — taught at the Lomono-
call you up - because they had a direct line to sov State University,

our bureau at the time! - and tell you that they before working full-time
had ambushed the Russians. In the morning as journalist. Following

you’d wait for the Kremlin to send a counter-
statement.

For me, journalism was a late choice. So I Chechnya

was pretty clear about what it meant for me, on German
and it was about really understanding what
was going on. During the time I was in Russia,
what was going on was a war. I found out that
things are always much more complicated
than what the media, including Western me-
dia, reports. Chechnya was totally off limits,
it was impossible to go there - no one would
send me there because it was illegal. This
brings up the question of how to investigate
and how to do good journalism. I guess I’m
from that old guard of reporters who believe
in journalism, not as just putting two state-
ments side by side, and feel “oh great I’m
being impartial”, but as wanting to find out the truth. I see
journalism as investigative in its essence. That’s what pushed
me to smuggle myself into Chechnya dressed up as a Russian
soldier from the Special OMON forces. Because I wanted to
find out what was going on there. So sometimes it requires
some guts, but you don’t need to risk your life in a war zone
to be an investigative journalist. Even if you want to write a
report about a new matcha café in Berlin, you should go there,
you should find out for yourself. I guess that’s what helped
me make the transition to starting a local magazine. And I
must say that local journalism is less boring than news agency
journalism.

Berlin Grou
of 2020. Sh

What’s so attractive about local journalism? I think
it’s the only chance we journalists still get to do first-hand
journalism. When working for local papers, there’s no excuse

2002 - 2022 THE COLLECTOR'S ISSUE

TV, she becam
non grata in Russia and
moved to Berli
She co-founded Exber-
liner as Editor-
2002 and was
publisher from
untila merger with tip-

investigative articles and
undercover reportage in

ha
an

was aired
d French
e persona

nin 2001.
in-Chief in

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2018

p at the end
e still lives in

Prenzlauer Berg with her
daughter and two cats.
20 YEARS BERLIN

Two of EXB's iconic covers.
David Bowie by Agata Sasiuk
(May 2014); Jim Avignon
(December 2003)

stories. We wanted to cover whatever we thought was inter-
esting in Berlin, but in English. Actually, that kind of got us
into trouble with the community. As soon as we started the
magazine, people would call up and say, “I have a story, ’m
American, and you have to write about me”. And that’s not

lish SINC?

ca

“BXBERLINER » 23z

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100 ee

not to really go there, we can really find out for ourselves, and
we can do something solid and good. And when it comes to

an English-language magazine in Berlin, then you really feel
that you have a mission: that you can help out people who
don’t speak German - and there’s more and more of them - to
understand the city, you can show them what they might not
find in the tourist guides.

Was that the idea when you set up Exberliner? Did
you have a mission statement? You need to consider that
this magazine was the brainchild of three journalists - which
sounds very incredible and a little vintage in a way. None of us
really had a clue about business or marketing. When we first
started, we called ourselves The Berliner because, you know,
The New Yorker (laughs), and it was like, “Let’s do good local
journalism, since we can’t do anything else”. The angle was

to cover all kinds of culture, social affairs and human interest

re

Spotted on the
streets of Pren-
zlauer Berg! Nadja
rocking our iconic
EXB tote in style...

EXBERLINER

what we wanted to do. We had to tell a lot of people, “Well, it’s
great that you’re an expat, but it doesn’t mean you’re interest-
ing!”. To be entirely honest, we had no idea what we were do-
ing. It was initially a bimonthly on newsprint, and it was free.
We had these very old PCs, and a pretty dingy office in a pretty
untrendy part of Prenzlauer Berg. And it started very badly
when we almost got sued for using a name that was actually
already owned by someone else. That’s how the magazine got
renamed “Exberliner” (for “no more Berliner”!). Even some-
thing as simple as that, we didn’t even think of checking! But
it’s empowering when you don’t know too much. And making
up for blunders may be the path to true creativity: “Exberliner
“is such a better title after all!

What was the reception like when you first launched
the magazine? When did you realise that it was actual-
ly something that you could make successful? When we
started, I felt that we had thrown ourselves into the wild sea

— and now we had to swim. I mean, there was no other way.
We were on the verge of bankruptcy on an almost daily basis
in the first few years. I think our saving grace was we had no
choice - we got ourselves into debt, all of us —- we’d actually
borrowed the money to be able to have a share in our own
magazine. Then, of course, the stakes are a bit different and
you put 100 percent into it. We literally spent our days and
nights working. It’s hard to remember how we survived. The
moment we really felt we had something was when we started
getting the attention of museums and clubs and theatres, and
then all of those people started to advertise with us, because it
was interesting to them that we were in English and this was
their window onto the international community. The cul-

ture sector understood our potential very early on. We were
credible enough, and they gave us more credibility, which was

Paula Ragucci
the most important thing. Back when we started the magazine
in 2002, our team was out trying to sell ads, and some café or
restaurant owners would literally tell us they don’t believe in
capitalism. That was Berlin back then. People would buy an ad
in exchange for €500 worth of chocolate slabs!

Do you think it would be possible to start a magazine
in Berlin now, the way you did it back then? Definitely
not. We started with €50,000. You would need a lot more
money now, just considering the rent you’d have to pay for an
office. I guess people could do it in their flat, but it was so im-
portant that we had a place to start our magazine. It was our
mini headquarters, even if it was a really dingy little shopfront
on Jablonskistrafe! It really symbolised something. Why did
Exberliner work out? There are probably so many reasons — but
one is that at that time we had no competition. Over the years,
we kept hearing about new competitors starting up and we
would think, “Oh, shit!”

Do you have nostalgia for the early
days of Exberliner? I think it has
always been evolving, getting a bit bigger,
a bit more serious and more profession-
al. Maybe because we were all growing

When Isee that

are never quite as simple as you’d like them to be; It never is,
which relates to my quasi visceral need to experience things
first-hand; that’s my approach to life and politics at large - not
just to journalism! (Laughs).

Are there any particular events that marked you over
the years? One seminal moment for me was the very last
day of the last exhibition at the Palast der Republik in 2005
before it was closed down forever. It was December, and there
was snow everywhere on the Schlossplatz, and it was very
dark. There was a very long queue - I was there with my baby
daughter and my mother, and we pretended we had to deliver
magazines so they let us in. I remember it all so vividly. That
felt like one of those turning points - a point of no return for
Germany, maybe. I was a very pro-Palast der Republik person.
Ihad avery special relationship with this behemoth that

was being taken to pieces. It was like this huge dying whale.
First they took away the asbestos, and then it was sentenced
to death. And then there was that Zwis-
chennutzung phase with the ‘Volkspalast’
takeover by artists and performers. It

was amazing and such a perfect aesthetic
contrast with the Palast’s all-Prussian
surroundings. Berlin had missed an oppor-

up. The other day, I was looking back generation of ex- tunity to own its past and it felt ominous
at some early material and I thought it pat brats we gave with regard to the city at large, and its

was more edgy, a bit more biting, and . politics. By which I mean its very blanket
definitely alternative looking. But then, if birth to-— they are treatment of DDR history, doing away
you’re too alternative, it gets complicated e with it all in a tabula rasa way - and they
when you want to have credibility and the echte Berliners did destroy some East German buildings,
make money. I have good nostalgia for all of tomorrow, SO even protected buildings. Another seminal
those contributors we had over the years, . moment when I felt something was very
those past columns. It feels like people representative ot wrong was when Thilo Sarrazin published
you shared a home with, I guess - like e ° e his anti-immigration book Deutschland
how in a family, you had brothers and this amazing inter- schafft sich ab (Germany Is Doing Away With
sisters and then they grew up and they nationalisation of Itself) in 2010. That a major politician from

moved on to have a different life. But we
still stay in touch. I was happy when I
started reaching out to past contributors
about this anniversary issue and every-
one was so eager to take part. I’m still in touch with most of
the people who worked with us, even from the first five years.
A lot of people became friends through Exberliner. I know of
at least one Exberliner baby, maybe there are more. Yes, there
are more!

the city.

After so many years don’t you feel jaded, burning out
on the job? Sometimes I do feel a little saturated having
seen so many things happen in Berlin - after this many years,
you know so much! And maybe you no longer have this kind
of invigorating, spontaneous attraction to everything. I don’t
have the fear of missing out on stuff anymore (laughs). But
then stuff happens, and I get involved. A lot of major Berlin
events, I’ve experienced in a very personal way. The Ukraine
war became a cover story and the topic of a whole issue of
the magazine in April, but it also materialised in my life when
one little Ilyusha from Odesa and his mum started living with
me. In 2015, I experienced the Willkommen wave first hand
through Rasha, a young pregnant Syrian woman who lived
with my daughter and me for over seven months - she actually
was a big Assad fan and hated my cats! (laugh) So, this was a
refreshing experience, and a healthy reminder of how things

the SPD could write something ultimately

racist and that it was such a bestseller,

that people were buying it for Christmas

as a gift to their wives and dads and moth-
ers-in-law. It was very shocking to me.

People always say that Berlin is “over”. After two dec-
ades, how do you feel about how the city has changed?
When we compiled the stats for this issue I was reminded of
the good old days when you’d get yourself a scoop of fresh
Berlin homemade ice cream for 60 cents. And we got so mad
when the price went up to 70 cents! Now it’s over €2! But
that’s life. There’ll always be that generation of Berliners that’s
been there before you and will try to make you feel sorry for
having missed that golden age, when everything was more fun,
cheaper and better. So, sure, I’ve experienced the days when
you could start pretty much anything you wanted, because
rents were so cheap and you could open a café or a fashion
boutique or what not. It was all possible, but already not as
great as the decade before! And coffee was shit - you know
watery Milchkaffee in a bowl (laughs). Then we went through
the Latte Macchiato-Mama/Capuccino-Schlampe phase — yes

it’s sexist!, and now it’s third wave coffee - you know, sus-
tainable, great roast, hand pressed and what not for €4 a cup.

I personally stood by espresso and went through it all pretty
unaffected, Also the experience of being a mum here helped

2002 - 2022 THE COLLECTOR'S ISSUE

20 YEARS BERLIN
20 YEARS BERLIN

me reconsider and engage with Berlin in a totally
different way. When I see that generation of expat
brats we gave birth to - they are the echte Berlin-
ers of tomorrow, so representative of this amazing
internationalisation of the city: one out of three
Berliners have foreign roots. It’s amazing!

The magazine’s survived through all these
changes. And then in 2020 along came coro-
na... It was a disaster for us, because of course we
were reliant on culture. Our bread and butter was
around 80 percent culture advertisements - which
was always good, because that’s the advertisement
you want to have, since it’s not something where
you feel you’re selling your soul every time you
have an ad. But then suddenly there

was no culture anymore. Then two

amazing things happened. One was f é
that, even when a lot of those cultural

ish since 2002

FXBERLINER

thermany faces of,

BERLIN ity EXBERLINER®

Muslim Berlin by Agata Sasiuk (De-
cember 2014); Palast der Republik
by Konradin Resa (January 2006)

| THE SH INGE PAPER FOR BERUN wan ‘exberiiner com

institutions stopped advertising, they Thereis so much
tried to still continue paying us as . Jim Avignon on our first cover and again
long as they could, because they knew potential foran Eng- after; Miron Zownir’s photographs with

that we needed them. That was really
heartwarming. The other amazing
thing is that I had a lot of editors and
writers who offered to work for free,

lish-language publi-
cation in Berlin, and

us over the years. Most of our covers are
original artworks by Berliners, or ‘ex-Ber-
liners’ like Agata Sasiuk, who’s come to
be one of our signature illustrators in

and that’s pretty much unheard of for We have to take that many ways. When you’re buying these in-
freelancers! (laughs) We had to move e I dividual little “Exberliners” each month,
everything online - then one of us had very seriously. it’s the result of so much work, from so

a burnout. And then we decided to do

this crowdfunding - and every member of the small staff
chipped in - our office manager offered massages against a
€s50 donation, our art director in-design classes - we outdid
our target!

But I felt it was about time we found a bigger roof. In terms
of publishing, being entirely independent and running
everything by myself had become unsustainable. At that
time, I knew that tipBerlin were interested in doing some-
thing in English. Over the years, so many magazines and
newspapers in Berlin have tried something in English then
stopped, I think they never realise how difficult it is. How
much work, determination, time and money you need to
make it work. We had the credibility of 18 years and, for me,
our happy marriage with tipBerlin was the guarantee that I
could fold my little baby into a bigger home, a place where it
can really blossom and grow in the future.

Do you still have a particular attachment to print?
It goes without saying that digital is very important, and
it’s a definite priority for us. I think there are things you
can do so much better online: that includes tips, news,
what we now in the tipBerlin group call “How To Berlin”.
And I think you need that. Still, for me, print is of course
something a little special. I think that there are things you
can do in print that you will never do as well online. And

I think print has to be more carefully crafted: the flow of
things, the visual versus textual elements. It’s what you do
as a publisher, and it is very unique and special. Another
thing I’m very proud of about the magazine is how we try,
as much as possible, to give a platform to the many very tal-
ented illustrators and photographers who live here. We had

EXBERLINER

many Berlin people who put a lot of love
and passion into it. And when we do feature articles, we’re
not one of those magazines where someone is assigned a
story and then we just publish it. My deputy and I spend a
lot of time giving feedback, sending it back and forth, really
striving to have what we think is the best possible article -
and that, for me, is meaningful, because I’m not interested
in doing something mediocre. I want people to read it and
say, “Well, that’s interesting!”. What makes me very happy
is when I meet people and they say, “Oh, I read a really
good story in Exberliner”. ’m not humble about that, and I
believe we can keep on doing it.

What’s next for Exberliner? There’s so much we can
still develop with the Exberliner brand, especially online.

I’m really interested in exploring the various ways you

can articulate all kind of platforms, make them interact

or complete each other. There is so much potential for an
English-language publication in Berlin, and we have to take
that very seriously. Berlin’s foreign-born population grew
by almost 70 percent between when we started in 2002 and
2020. Germans used to ask me about the international Blase
(bubble) here, but there’s no bubble: What is the bubble in

a city where you have so many internationals? The interna-
tional people who come to Berlin, they come to be Berliners.
They’re not your usual expats. They often very creative and
entrepreneurial, and they do things that are really contribut-
ing to the city they live in. That’s something very particular
for me about Berlin - that Berlin has given space to foreign-
ers to live and breathe, but more than that, to create and
make the city their own. By doing that every day, they have
helped to feed the city in a unique way - and I think this is
what Exberliner does, as well.
20 YEARS BERLIN

BERLIN 20 YEARS IN NUMBERS

THE BERLIN WELTSTADT

Foreign residents
Between 2002 and 2019

8.2%

Increase
ata 0 of the
0 population
a in Berlin

Increase of non-
German Berliners

Bi foreigners

® population
overall

3.4 million

2002

6102

75.5% A

824
Expat top 5
Nationalities representative of the 75.5% increase.
2002 2019
1. Italy 13,003 31,573 +142%
2. France 9,830 20,023 +104%
3.USA 11,201 22,694 +103%
4.Vietnam 9,914 19,072 +92%
5.UK 8,705 16,251 +87%
Source: Statistisches Amt Berlin
1in3 Berliners
has foreign roots
76% B® population
overall
Mi foreign roots
(Migrations-
hintergrund)

24%

423,000 have a German passport, 777,000 are
foreigners.

Source: Statistisches Amt Berlin

" Between 2002 and 2022

: Source: Investitionsbank Berlin

2 THE COST OF LIVING

atis

2002 2021

Average price for new rental offers in Berlin in
; 2002 and 2021. Existing contracts have climbed
: from €4.24 to €6.72/m?.

: Source: Investitionsbank Berlin

_ THE RENT/ PAY GAP

Average real income
in Berlin in 2022. In 2002,
Berliners earned €1,901 0n

| average per month.

+13.3%

Increase of rent/m?

14.4%

Increase
of income
€/month

: THE GENDER PAY GAP

e 10%

: @ Current gender pay

: gap in Berlin. Sounds

: like a lot? It's well under
: Germany's average
(18%) and still better

: than the EU's (15%).

Women Men Overall Gap

Icecream €0.60
: Beer
; Déner

Germany 2,979.20 3,644.80 3,312.00 665.60
Berlin 3,249.20 3,616.00 343260 366.80

Average wage in Euros (2020)

Source: Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg

2002 - 2022 THE COLLECTOR'S ISSUE

THE COST OF
COMMUTING

alan

2002 2022

: Price fora single trip with the

: BVG/DB since 2002. The price
: foraday ticket anda monthly
pass went up by a whopping

: 57% and 47% respectively.

: Source: Berliner Verkehrsseiten, berlin.de

_THECOST
_ OF EATING

fe 0 Price increase
i 0 of ascoop of
: icecream

: Source: Statistisches Amt Berlin

2002 2022
€2.00 +233%
€4.00 +198%

€5.00 +150%

€1.34
€2.00

_ MORE FOREIGN
_ VISITORS

13.9 million

Tourists in 2019

: That's a three-fold increase since
: 2002, when Berlin welcomed
: 4.75 million visitors.

2002

: 2 out of 8 tourists were foreign
: (25%)

2019

2 out of 5 tourists were foreign
: (39%)

} Source: Statistisches Amt Berlin
20 YEARS BERLIN

| FACES |

JIM AVIGNON “NOTHING
| PAINT IS MEANT
TO CREATE VALUE"

LETS eee it A SECRET
ney AVIGNON The iconic Berlin multitalent and EXB cover artist — best
has been.a fain known for his bold, colourful, cartoon-style murals, and

protagonist of the

postWallartscene electro dada parties — talks to us about his tumultuous

since 1986, when the

ilustrator, painterand relationships with the city whose creative spirit he’s come e
musician of the one- : : : . . og
man band Neoangin tO epitomise, making art for fun, not fame, and his enduring u
became known for ‘us :

nis bold, cartoon. mission to gently disrupt the art market. py wandasacks
style murals across a

he city — including On June 5, 2002, the first issue of Exber- there for free. No one had to earn money and everyone could ~~
one he painted on liner hit the newsstands with a signature _go out all the time; there was no pressure on the weekends

he East Side Gallery Jim Avignon cover - the first of many to because every day of the week was equally exciting. Everyone
in 1991. Avignon lived come. It showed three odd characters was making art, playing in a band, DJing, making films or just “%
in New York between plotting Berlin’s future. What looks like developing something new. It was like a creative frenzy. 3
2005 and 2012 before it could have been EXB’s three hopeful BERLIN IN The NiINeTeS — | Stitt Love Lee

eturning to Berlin, founders, was actually a sharp criticism And then came the new millennium. What did “The “
where he has been of the changes happening at the time. new Berlin” look like for you? Between 2001 and 2005, I =
based ever since. He Can you tell us more? The illustration, titled | could watch myself becoming a living anachronism, arelicof
has worked with a ‘The New Berlin’ is the most concrete artwork the 1990s. One that was appreciated for reminding everyone
number of galleries, I have made dealing with the changes in Berlin of the good times but that wasn’t expected to produce any- >~
including Neurotitan, towards the end of the 1990s. At this time, thing relevant anymore. My reaction to this was to make a lot ms
Koppe Gallery and Ur- Berlin shifted from being a playground for all of music; I did only concerts for a year or two and no exhi- «
ban Spree in Berlin, as kinds of subcultures to a pure marketing tool. bitions at all. I also noticed that the off-galleries [liked were =
well as Heitsch Gallery Many realised they could use the city and its disappearing and that Berlin was turning into a springboard = \=
in Munich and Galerie subcultures to benefit their own careers. It felt for a really good art career — but there was no place for me Y
Nomade in Montreuil, like everyone just wanted to do big business as in those galleries. They knew what I represented, and they =<
France. quickly as possible. The three people depicted didn’t want that. I felt myself drifting into insignificance. I

are Klaus Biesenbach [founder of the KW Insti- _ had an identity crisis.

tute for Contemporary Art], Ralf Regitz — who at
the time ran E-Werk, basically the Berghain of the 1990s- and How was that identity crisis reflected in your work?

MG = Marc Wohlrabe, who published Flyer, a biweekly pocket-sized In 2005, I released a song called ‘It’s Not Easy Being Easy’
[= fons zine for parties. The three of them had an investor’s view of and the lyrics went “Berlintown is going down” - so naff
J 4 Berlin’s potential, but they also represented the end of an era. (laughs). I came up with that song when the first Popkomm [a
at yearly conference for the music and entertainment industry]
te pal Are you nostalgic for the Great 1990s? Yes. Looking was on and all the big record companies were hyping up Ber-
aS) — __ back, the 1990s were a golden age. The Wall had come down lin as the new place-to-be, with a lively underground culture.
4 B = and suddenly there were new opportunities everywhere inthe That’s when it became clear to me - even clearer than when I
East, where you could just occupy abandoned flats and live painted ‘The New Berlin’ - that the final step had been taken,

10 EXBERLINER