xhiller   |    Friday, der 15. April 2011

I visited the Kreuzberg Museum at Kottbusser Tor this week to see this exhibition.  At galleries, I always make a beeline straight to the guestbook to enjoy the immediacy of the signatures and scribbles. The Kreuzberg Museum guestbook was a gold mine!

When I went inside the Kreuzberg Museum I met the operators and we chatted a bit. I admitted that it was my first visit. The organizer was not amused. He said that if you haven’t been inside the Kreuzberg Museum, you aren’t a real Kreuzberger. So I became a Kreuzberger on Wednesday! To celebrate, I am publishing a few the pictures of the guestbook that I was graciously allowed to take.

guest books scribbles

Now on to the exhibition: “Me and My Neighborhood”  (”Mein Kiez und ich”) grew out of a senior’s project which was organized by the nearby HeileHaus. The show is about women from different countries and other parts of Germany who moved to Kreuzberg a long time ago. In photographs and words they offer their memories of what it was like growing up here. The show ties in perfectly with the semi-permanent exhibition at the museum – an extensive recreation in 3D of all the buildings around Kottbusser Tor. Through slide and photographs and other memorabilia, you can see how Kreuzberg has changed over the years. It becomes evident that Kreuzberg has been a political hotspot and a hotbed for radicals for decades. The exhibition was absolutely jammed packed with visitors.

A film about Berlin city planning:

A film about Berlin city planning:

DENK MAL BERLIN – WER BAUT DIE STADT – A film that follows the chief urban planner of Berlin and how she juggles the power play between investors, politicians, architects and citizens.

Films about Kreuzberg culture:

TOTALLY WIRED – a synthesizer store now tucked away above the Kaiser’s supermarket after moving to Kreuzberg from Alexanderplatz

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCREEN – history of Germany’s oldest cinema, the Moviemento on nearby Kottbusser Damm
Related Films:

* TOTALLY WIRED