04-Mar-2021 21-3029 RIVISTA PASSENGER TP - Fg: -- - Pgfile: TP_Berlin_interior.p174.pdf - Pgpos: 174 - -- - vs: -- - Lato: Front 14:46 Last Orders 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. 175 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. 176 THE PASSENGER Fabian Federl 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 Last Orders 177 04-Mar-2021 21-3029 RIVISTA PASSENGER TP - Fg: -- - Pgfile: TP_Berlin_interior.p177.pdf - Pgpos: 177 - -- - vs: -- - Lato: Front 14:46 Above: A customer at Zur Molle. Below: Zur Molle’s landlord and landlady, Jens and Melanie. 178 THE PASSENGER Fabian Federl 04-Mar-2021 21-3029 RIVISTA PASSENGER TP - Fg: -- - Pgfile: TP_Berlin_interior.p178.pdf - Pgpos: 178 - -- - vs: -- - Lato: Front 14:46 Above: A bottle of Berliner Kindl on the bar of Zur Molle. Below: Landlord Jens gives his mother a kiss. Last Orders 179 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.