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Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, Berlin’s Eckkneipen – traditional pubs that could be found on many a street corner – were in crisis. They were once meeting places where all social classes mixed, an extension of people’s living rooms, but times have changed.

FABIAN FEDERL Translated by Claudio Cambon

Left: A customer at Zur Molle, an Eckkneipe in the Neukölln district.

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04-Mar-2021 21-3029 RIVISTA PASSENGER TP - Fg: -- - Pgfile: TP_Berlin_interior.p175.pdf - Pgpos: 175 - -- - vs: -- - Lato: Front 14:46 y grandmother used to The 85-year-old recalls the times he spent run a bistro in the east of with Jean-Paul Sartre in the bistros of the France, in a small mining Latin Quarter. He recounts the evenings he town south of Lyon. For whiled away in them as a student talking Mmuch of the day there would be a handful with professors and later, as a professor of customers, either those left over from himself, with students. He describes the breakfast or those who were there for an waitress in the bistro below his apart- aperitif, depending on the time of day. ment, dissecting the dance around the Some would play table football in the back bar, the ‘nerve centre’, which, as Augé room, while others sat at the bar drinking says, belonged to no one but which offered coffee or wine, perhaps listening to one of everyone a seat. You don’t have to go into the local politicians who would keep office a bistro to know ‘the bistro’, he writes. It hours at the bistro. At five o’clock, when the is a kind of intangible cultural locus that shift ended at the mine, the place would fill clearly evokes certain ideas, even outside up. Long after the mine had closed down, France. five o’clock was still peak rush hour. The Since I moved to Berlin I have often bistro was the social centre of this small asked myself whether such a place exists town, a place for fellowship, socialising, here. And if so, where? A place for the news, free time and celebrations. young and the old, early and late, above Later, when I lived for a short while in and below. I have ordered books and Paris, my days were structured by bistros. I illustrated volumes published in the last ate breakfast in a bistro, spent my evenings three decades about Berlin’s food-service in one reading a book and met colleagues industry, and especially about the Berlin and friends there. I often went to a bistro Eckkneipe, the corner pub, because that’s to write. Whenever I entered a bistro, I where I suspected I would find it. The instantly felt I belonged. first thing I learned is that the corner In his work Éloge du bistrot parisien (‘In pub doesn’t have to be on a corner; the Praise of the Parisian Bistro’; Payot, 2015) second was that maybe it wasn’t what I the anthropologist Marc Augé described was looking for after all. the bistro as ‘the site of the mingling of the species, of tragedy and comedy, of the kneipe often opens a window the words that say nothing and the silences into the stairwell for ventilation that speak volumes, of loud laughter, The Kneipe was originally a place for stifled moans and a diffuse melancholy’. students to meet and drink. Since the 18th

FABIAN FEDERL is a freelance journalist originally from France who lives and works between Berlin, Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro. He writes for the newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Der Tagesspiegel as well as the weekly magazine Die Zeit. His investigations have been published by titles such as Elle, Brand Eins, Reportagen, Internazionale and Libération.

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04-Mar-2021 21-3029 RIVISTA PASSENGER TP - Fg: -- - Pgfile: TP_Berlin_interior.p176.pdf - Pgpos: 176 - -- - vs: -- - Lato: Front 14:46 century the word has been used to describe notepad, a newspaper and a pocket calcu- a place that serves beer, and later wine, for lator. He entered figures into the device, places with or without a kitchen, big or murmured, tapped, noted and muttered small. In 1831 C.B. von Ragotzsky wrote ‘OK’. Every now and then he took a sip from in his student dictionary Der flotte Bursch his water glass. To my left sat some older (‘The Lively Lad’) that ‘Kneipe generally men with half-drunk beers. One of them refers to any public house.’ What these would periodically press his lips together, varied places all shared was their purpose: mumble something and nod a lot. Another knipen in Middle High German means rested on his arms clasped over his round something along the lines of ‘being close belly. Behind them were a few men with together’. bald spots and women with perms and Der Spiegel magazine wrote in 1975 that dark rings under their eyes. Time after ‘people in public houses do not live on time a wave of throaty, rattling laughter beer alone’, and a study by the Gesellschaft would course through the room, and, when für Marktforschung (Market Research the laughter subsided, the coughing would Association) revealed that people went to begin. public houses ‘for social reasons’ almost 70 Whenever the heavy brown door per cent of the time, especially ‘because I slammed shut, it would go quiet for a want a change of scene’, ‘to meet friends few moments as the people in the room and acquaintances’ and, last but not least, surveyed the new arrivals and vice versa. ‘because that’s where I have my regular And then everyone went back to doing their table’. A public living room where all are own thing. equal before the landlord. The shift changeover began at 9 p.m. On the ground floor of the building The door opened at more frequent inter- where I live in Berlin there’s an Eckkneipe. vals. The men entering the room became If I lie on the floor of my bedroom with my younger and stood taller; the men who ear to the boards I can easily eavesdrop on left were old. When young women walked conversations. Wednesdays has live music, through the door, the older men sat up and I can hear the Kneipe, whether I want straighter on their barstools and adjusted to or not. The Kneipe often opens a window their shirt collars. When young men with into the stairwell for ventilation, and then stylish haircuts walked in, the older gener- I can smell it, too. And often, when on ation sneered a little and went back to their my way out in the morning and I step on drinks. broken glass, I curse it. Service shifted from one end of the bar I rarely go in, and, when I do, I usually to the other as the older people drank less don’t stay for long. One day I did go in early and less. And when an older person gave and leave late, though ... long enough to up their stool, younger people laid their witness the changeover from the day shift jackets on it and stood around it. The room (those who had been here for many hours) became louder, more crowded – stifling. to the night crew. And livelier. I left shortly after midnight. The oldest the shift changeover began at 9 p.m. person in the room by that point was the To my right at the bar sat a man in his late woman in her late thirties behind the bar. forties with light-coloured hair wearing a Perhaps I seldom go into the Kneipe in beige jacket. In front of him was a spiral my building because it is too close. But I

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04-Mar-2021 21-3029 RIVISTA PASSENGER TP - Fg: -- - Pgfile: TP_Berlin_interior.p179.pdf - Pgpos: 179 - -- - vs: -- - Lato: Front 14:46 do regularly go to other places like it, to during his research he found just one old Kneipen that have this same structure Eckkneipe in the Mitte neighbourhood and of wooden counters, wall decorations only two or three in Prenzlauer Berg. depicting hills somewhere in Germany A hundred and fifty years ago Berlin with roaring stags and wagon wheels, had the highest density of public houses enamelled placards of historical adver- of any city in Europe. The 1806 Berlin tisements for beer that is ‘fresh and Lexicon recorded 155,000 inhabitants and aromatic’ or ‘substantial and wholesome’, seven hundred inn-keepers (running food hand-carved beer mugs resting on the bar’s businesses whose revenues came mostly wooden panelling, humorous slogans like from their bars), which meant 221 inhab- ‘Hops and malt are good for the rut’, the itants per establishment. In 1905 there old gentlemen and waiting staff with their were just 157 inhabitants per establish- hair dyed blonde. ment. According to the catalogue for an Is this Berlin’s equivalent of the place of exhibition about Berlin’s Kneipen, there fellowship that Augé finds in the Parisian were 364 inhabitants per establishment in bistro? Whichever way, as an umbrella 1980, and the visitBerlin site states there term for a place that everyone knows, a are currently about nine hundred tradi- Kneipe seems as good as a bistro. tional Kneipen for 3.77 million Berliners, which means just one for every four thou- barely found, already threatened sand inhabitants. The downward trend Also, thinking of how all of life can be is irrefutable: according to Germany’s seen in one place and a single place hotel-industry associations, since 2008 the can take centre stage in your life, the number of Kneipen in Germany has fallen Kneipe, according to its apologists, seems from 38,549 to 31,650; a drop of 18 per cent; compar able to the bistro. The Eckkneipe is 6,899 dead Kneipen. charac terised by ‘solitude and socialising, Big cities in many countries have for belonging and not belonging and calm some time acknowledged the disappear- and restlessness’, according to the writer ance of their pubs and bars as a cultural Clemens Füsers. In his book Berliner phenomenon, as has the literature that Jahrhundertkneipen (‘Century-old Kneipen deals with the subject. In Germany the in Berlin’; Lehmstedt-Verlag, 2011), Füsers, media publish obituaries, the Wikipedia together with the photographer Gudrun entry for Kneipe has a whole section on Olthoff, visited some of Berlin’s oldest the subject and local breweries vie with Kneipen, including the Diener Tattersall in one another in their strategies to save Charlottenburg, the Alte Kolkschenke in these institutions. For example, in Berlin Spandau and the Leydicke in Schöneberg. the Schultheiss brewery publishes a guide In another work, Letzte Runde? (‘Last to neighbourhood Kneipen, organises the Orders?’; Wasmuth & Zohlen, 2009), they All-Night Neighbourhood Kneipe Festival, compiled a ‘municipal historical inventory’ selects the ‘best neighbourhood Kneipe’ of Berlin’s traditional Eckkneipen. Given and escorts German singer and actor Frank that they are so concerned with heritage, Zander around the city on a horse-drawn understandably they drew attention to its brewer’s dray. destruction. This occurred more frequently Any number of illustrated books, guide- in areas where the city was undergoing books and even novels have been published rapid transformation. Füsers wrote that that chart the decline of the Kneipe, and

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04-Mar-2021 21-3029 RIVISTA PASSENGER TP - Fg: -- - Pgfile: TP_Berlin_interior.p180.pdf - Pgpos: 180 - -- - vs: -- - Lato: Front 14:46 ‘Big cities in many countries have for some time acknowledged the disappearance of their pubs and bars as a cultural phenomenon, as has the literature that deals with the subject.’

they all convey the same message: let’s give the workings of a democracy because it them one last hurrah before they disappear provides a public space where below and completely! And why should this be of above, left and right, outer and inner all interest? Kneipen can no longer draw in the mingle. And through encounters and customers – or not enough of them – to pay contact with others it reminds us that the rent, so they are forced to close. That’s none of us is the norm, whether we’re how it works in other areas. People just go rich or poor, a secondary-school teacher elsewhere or they drink at home or – better or a foreman, a regular or someone who’s yet – not at all. just wandered in. The hardening towards All the literature makes it clear that people who live or think differently that a Kneipe is more than just a pub, by we find in online filter bubbles and echo emphasising its social function: the idea chambers can be ironed out here. Every city of ‘being close together’ in the word’s and every country has their own version original meaning, to people searching for of this; think of the Vienna coffee house a place for ‘social reasons’, as Der Spiegel (recognised by UNESCO as having ‘intan- noted, to notions associated with the gible cultural heritage’) or the British pub sense of ‘belonging and not belonging’, as or free house, which expresses its function Füsers has written. A place where society’s in its very name. members can meet casually or by chance. An agora with beer. What the sociologist why should we mourn the kneipe? Ray Oldenburg calls a ‘third place’ and The question is simply, does the Berlin which, as such, can be compared with the Kneipe still embody the ideals of the third bistro as Augé describes it and as I experi- place? Before me lies an exhibition cata- enced it: a place that stands between one’s logue that hails the Kneipe as the ‘place home and workplace. A meeting place, where members of political parties meet, like a park, café, library, museum, church the favourite hangout of sport clubs, social or bookshop. Oldenburg characterises clubs, provident societies, a place for big this space as beneficial or free. It does not family gatherings, a refuge for the solitary draw any distinctions based on status or and the lonely, an oasis for the thirsty capital; it sets no conditions, is open to all and a regular meeting point for the petit and makes no demands. The third place is bourgeoisie and army and navy veterans’ essentially open to everyone in society. It groups’. But the catalogue in which these is a place of contact. It’s not necessarily a words – by former Berlin housing minister place in which friendships are formed; it’s Peter Ulrich – appear dates back to 1980, a more like the metro, where people stand year in which Der Spiegel proclaimed that next to one another wearing earbuds. ‘People are drinking more than ever before Oldenburg writes that it is essential to ... It appears that the German Kneipe has

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04-Mar-2021 21-3029 RIVISTA PASSENGER TP - Fg: -- - Pgfile: TP_Berlin_interior.p181.pdf - Pgpos: 181 - -- - vs: -- - Lato: Front 14:46 withstood the test of time, competition official control. Anyone present is free to from television and beer in a bottle, the speak their mind. weight-loss movement, Coca-Cola ideology But who is still there? and legislation on maximum blood-alcohol levels.’ kneipe customers today are actually In Berlin and other major cities inter- people seeking out hip pubs nationally a certain glamour factor has The Kneipe on the ground floor of my contributed to the celebration of the build ing, in a former working-class neigh- everyman’s pub. Media personalities drag bourhood of West Berlin, has been there the Eckkneipe into the tabloid press and since the early 1970s. In the building there so into the hands of women at the hair- are doctors’ surgeries, shared flats, young dresser’s and of men in – yes, you guessed families and a few long-term residents. it – Kneipen. One well-known German Above, on the fourth floor, the majestic actress, Brigitte Mira, who was famous for figure of an angel rises over a large late- her portrayals of an everywoman and who 19th-century balcony. The apartment block was associated in the German national has been repaired but not refurbished; as consciousness with Kneipen culture, once a result, it probably still expresses some of wrote: ‘What is so seductive about the the typical diversity that was once the goal Berlin Eckkneipe is that you can approach of urban planning here. it from two directions.’ Although she ‘In the apartment block, children come meant this in a spatial sense – i.e. the two out of the basement residences to go to the roads that lead to the corner at which it is free school using the same hallway as the situated – we can also read it as a descrip- children of the teacher or the salesman tion of the Kneipe as a social space: it is the who are on their way to the Gymnasium midpoint where people from every rung of high school,’ wrote James Hobrecht, the the social ladder come together. 19th-century architect and planner who The connection between a watering hole shaped Berlin more than anyone else: a and culture, high or popular, didn’t start city of apartment blocks in which social with Mira. Max Stirner’s Radical Doctor’s mixing was encouraged so that those who Club used to meet in the red salon of the were better off could see the needs of the Café Stehely on the Jägerstrasse. Regularly poor first hand and people such as ‘civil in attendance was a young Karl Marx. servants, artists, scholars, teachers, etc.’ Earlier, in the late 18th century, Heinrich would prove inspiring models to unedu- Heine and Joseph von Eichendorff used cated families, ‘even just by being there to meet at the Café Josty on the Joachims- and through their silent example’, a mixing thaler Strasse, and, a hundred years later, that could be conducted below, above or at Theodor Fontane and Adolph Menzel also the next street corner in the Kneipe. went there to argue over who the most Today the children of the ‘teacher or the important German realist was. And even salesman’ rarely live alongside the children if such establishments hardly qualified as of seamstresses or cleaning ladies in the simple beer parlours, they were neverthe- same house or even on the same block. The less pioneers in the spread of literacy and segregation in residential neighbourhoods politicisation of the masses. Today Kneipen also segregates the potential customers remain perfect venues for public debate, for the local Kneipe. In the city centre they for wider-ranging dialogues outside also have to contend with the fact that

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The Späti, a contraction of Spätkauf or Spätverkaufstelle, the all-night convenience store, stays open late and sells everything from everyday stuff to fripperies, from toilet paper to Rotkäppchen (a fairly unpretentious sparkling wine from the former GDR), milk, pasta, rice, alcohol, ice cream, detergent, cookies and the like. It’s also a café and bar that sells basics such as newspapers and cigarettes and off ers postal services. The Späti is a unique institution highly prized by night owls and the disorganised, of which the city is full. Some years ago shops were ordered to close on Sundays (although this was put on hold during the Covid-19 lockdowns; they’re obviously ‘essential’), and, while Spätis are supposed to observe this ordinance, they often ignore it, which has given rise to some debate about this iconic and apparently indispensable component of Berlin’s identity. They began in the 1970s in the GDR to meet the needs of factory workers on night shifts who had to shop at unusual hours. Spätis have become important local reference points, even if they do depend on tourism to get by and the pandemic has threatened the survival of many.

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04-Mar-2021 21-3029 RIVISTA PASSENGER TP - Fg: -- - Pgfile: TP_Berlin_interior.p183.pdf - Pgpos: 183 - -- - vs: -- - Lato: Front 14:46 their business model, the sale of standard THE HOBRECHT PLAN alcohol at moderate prices, even in the presence of relatively brisk demand, is As in many 19th-century European barely competitive. Bars and boutiques are cities, Berlin had its own urban driving up rents, and this or that landlord development plan. Named after its hopes for something more prestigious and creator, James Hobrecht, it sought to lower in emissions in their building than a reorganise the city in a more modern smokers’ local. There may well have been manner. Significant demographic reasons other than purely financial that growth had created untenable hygiene the former owners of the famous Kneipe conditions, and the arrival of new Wilhelm Hoeck in Charlottenburg found workers from the countryside prompted themselves in trouble after they sold it to the city to reconsider the viability of its be turned into a pharmacy in 2017, but it residential policies. Hobrecht created is clear that such a landmark pub’s closing an urban development plan based after 125 years suggests that the long-term on three fundamental principles: the survival of the traditional neighbourhood mixing of the classes, the balance Kneipe is anything but secure. between work and free time and Added to this is the fact that people’s the introduction of the concept of going-out habits have changed markedly the square. This gave rise to the in recent years. ‘Kneipe customers today Mietskaserne – the large tenement are actually people seeking out hip pubs. buildings that today still define the Unlike in the past, they don’t automat- city’s urban fabric – in which the various ically go to their neighbourhood Kneipe social classes were supposed to meet for every occasion; they instead look for and mingle. The workers would live on places that match their mood,’ wrote trend the lower floors, and their richer, better- researcher Peter Wippermann in 2012 in educated neighbours would live on the Die Welt. When there is no choice, in rural upper storeys. The Hobrecht Plan also or suburban areas, the Kneipe can at times introduced a new sewer system (until still function as a place for fellowship, but then, effluent still ran along open street in big cities, where Eckkneipen still occupy gullies) and a new roadmap. This new many street corners, if there’s a fashion- street layout was developed using a able, hipster Kneipe further down the road radial system to avoid there being only from your nearest, the scenes diverge one centre and to encourage the city to considerably. develop several focal points. Despite Todd Kliman, restaurant critic for two world wars and radical, post-war The New Yorker and The Washingtonian urban development plans in both described this change in people’s going-out Berlins, East and the West, the 19th- habits in the Oxford American in 2015. In century imprint on the city remains his essay ‘Coding and Decoding Dinner’ visible, for example, in its squares he describes the tacit cues that explain and its circular roadway network. for whom an establishment is intended. Charlottenburg, Reinickendorf, ‘A restaurant is a network of codes,’ he Weissensee, Lichtenberg, Rixdorf writes, from the waiter in the tailcoat and Wilmersdorf were still open to service with a low-cut neckline and countryside then, and the plan a tattoo, from the logo of a new, organic included them within the urban area.

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04-Mar-2021 21-3029 RIVISTA PASSENGER TP - Fg: -- - Pgfile: TP_Berlin_interior.p184.pdf - Pgpos: 184 - -- - vs: -- - Lato: Front 14:46 beer brand to the Schultheiss sign. Anyone a woman sticks stamps who doesn’t fit in is welcome in theory, but on a handful of letters they will probably look for a place where I spent Christmas away from Berlin. When they’ll feel more of an insider and less of I returned on 28 December the city was an outsider, making the hip Kneipe the empty and abandoned, as it always is at logical choice for some. When we look at this time of year. The light was on in the other places – such as shisha cafés, gay Kneipe below my apartment, as it always bars and Turkish tearooms – from this is. Over the course of the day the regulars perspective, we see how much the notion came, but fewer people wandered in at of the subculture-specific establishment night. People were drinking, as always. The is shaping Berlin. Such spaces enrich the gentleman with the pocket calculator was city and make it more interesting, but they surely sitting alone at the bar, as perhaps do not encourage mixing and equality; they were the coughing ladies. Unexpectedly, are not ‘unconditional’ spaces, as per Ray nothing was happening. The newcomers Oldenburg’s third spaces, and they are not were at home with their families, and so spaces for the ‘mingling of the species’, as the people who stayed had room. No shift in Marc Augé’s descriptions of bistros. changeover tonight, for sure. For the Eckkneipe, all these competing As I walked by the Kneipe in the late after- places mean the loss of potential customers, noon, I saw that a poster had been stuck which lifestyle changes in society are only up advertising the New Year’s Eve party. I exacer bating. Sunday morning is now walked along, turned right and came upon more about jogging than the morning a brightly lit convenience store. The sales- pint, because health is social capital. person in the store was blasting out Turkish Celeb rities have become a rarity in the music, as he always does. A woman was Eckkneipe. Smoking? Only outside, if at all. sticking stamps on a handful of letters. A And unions’ savings associations or navy man bought cigarettes and Chantré brandy veterans’ groups either no longer meet in and an older woman waited in line with a the Kneipe or they don’t exist any more. bunch of flowers. Behind her was a suit with In this way the Eckkneipe has itself over earbuds in leafing through the Handelsblatt the years become a kind of cool place in its business newspaper. I bought milk, a news- own right, one of the reasons why I did not paper and a small beer, and then I sat down instantly recognise it as a third place when I on the bench in front of the entrance and first came to Berlin. It has its own unstated smoked a cigarette. codes: ‘drinkers only’, ‘fifty and over’ or The customers paid one after the other. ‘no non-smokers’ perhaps, or – the further The salesperson stood in the doorway, lit a one moves out from the centre of the city cigarette and, pointing to the car parked in – ‘Germans only’. And although young front of us, said, ‘Cool car, don’t you think?’ Berliners have in recent years started to We chatted for a long time, and then I went step into the few remaining Eckkneipen in home, grabbed my things and walked to the centre, they haven’t become a part of the bus stop so that I could go a few streets the whole; they remain alien, a group unto over to meet up with people more like me. themselves, ironic observers. The divide Shortly before midnight the light was still between the old drinkers and this group is on in the Kneipe on the ground floor. Five too wide, and the shifts, too, are different. or six people were sitting inside, the people Changeover indeed. who are always there.

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