9 November/10 November 2019 ★ FT Weekend 9
Hans Hemmert’s sons John and Jim play football on the former sentry patrol road within No Man’s Land— Photographs by Robert Rieger for the FT
here, then someone came up with the
idea of showing where the wall had been
with a memorial.
“I think about the wall, the victims,
but it does not feel like bad karma. His-
tory goes on, children play there now.
And the tourists. That is good.
“The house has no curtains, we are
totally open. Tourists can look in, but
that is totally OK; they come here one
time in their life. Mostly they are very
respectful. Sometimes I wonder why the
tourists still come. I am not sure I real-
ised back in 1989 people would still be
coming 30 years later. Today, I do not
really feel an east-west divide in daily
life. Here in central Berlin, the districts
are not that different.”
Bernauer Strasse
Hans Hemmert, 59, is an artist from
Bavaria in former West Germany,
Kristin Loschert —Robert Rieger“It was the lawyer of an old Jewish guy
living in New York. His house and land
had been taken away from him, pre-
sumably by the Nazis, and he was the
owner of the plot. He asked, ‘What do
you want to do with the land?’ And she
said ‘Build homes for 11 families’. He
liked the idea very much; he said ‘You
can have the land, I will never come
back to Berlin.’
“Bernauer Strasse was famous
because it was the most spectacular
stretch of the wall, where houses were
knocked down to create the new border.
This is where the famous black-and-
white photos were taken of people
jumping out of windows to get across
thisstrip, with white sheets and towels.
Exactly here.
“We have lived in this block since- We built it together with 10
other families, from eight different
nations. Everyone has children, we
have a communal garden, a communal
rooftop nda we are building a commu-
nal sauna. There was only one problem
with the site: the soil was contaminated
with mines, and we had to payto get
rid of them.
“I think very often about the wall.
Especiallyas my partner and I are both
German, but I am West German, and my
partner Angelika came from Dresden in
the east.Hers was the last generation to
finish high school before the wall came
down. And now we live here together.
She has her experience and I have mine.
“I met my partner here; we have
two children — two boys, aged seven
and 13, they go to the school around
the corner. People ask about bad karma,
but there’s none at all. As the old guy in
New York said, it’s so fantastic that there
will be life again here. There are no
ghosts. We bring life back. It is the best
you can do.”
Strelitzer Strasse
Kristin Loschert is a 40-year-old
photographer from lower Franconia
in the former West Germany, living(Left) Joerg Malchow; (above) tracks
in front of Malchow’s homewho lives with his partner, an East
German from Dresden, and their two
sons in a self-build communal apart-
ment block built on No Man’s Land in
Bernauer Strasse. His apartment, on
the former eastern side, overlooks
the former border patrol road to the
rear nd No Man’s Land to the front.a“We are exactly where the mines were,
and the death strip and the shooting
zone was. ur neighbour found a noticeO
on a lamppost with a phone number,
with the land for sale in the early 2000s.House Home
in the last house on the eastern
side of the wall at Strelitzer Strasse.
From her window, she can see No
Man’s Land.“I found this apartment through a
friend and I moved in 2008. They didn’t
tell me it was on the wall, and I didn’t
know anything about the area. I remem-
ber walking up the hill past the memo-
rial. There wasn’t as much stuff here
then as now. It was sort of abandoned:
the grass was high, and it felt somehow
like a leftover zone.
“The memorial and open-air exhibi-
tion are very successful because there
are always a lot of people. But when you
live here and are part of an historic site
— a tourist site — it changes your feel-
ings. It’s good that people are aware that
there was a divided country and a
divided city, to see the tunnels dug by
people fleeing to the west. History is
underneath you as well as front of you.
“But I am really divided about how
much an historical site should be made
into an attraction. I can feel observed
when I step out of the front door. Empty
spaces can tell a lot. You don’t always
need a full-scale replica.
“Along the wall here used to bet
spaces that had not been rebuilt nda
these empty gaps felthistoric. It was
interesting to see how nature took over
the spaces. I found that very touching.
“In Berlin, with more and more lux-
ury housing being built just for rich peo-
pleand rents going higher, it is very diffi-
cult. Berlin has its history, but when I
came here I still had the feeling a lot of
things were possible. Now, I feel this is
disappearing very quickly.”‘There was only one
problem with the site:
the soil was contaminatedwith mines’
NOVEMBER 9 2019 Section:Weekend Time: 11/20196/ - 17:32 User:elizabeth.robinson Page Name:RES9, Part,Page,Edition:RES, 9, 1