Berlin 24-30 September 2025

24 September. Wednesday.

Today we spent the morning writing invitations and blogs. We emptied bins and sorted washing - a housekeeping day. In the afternoon we took the bus to to the Humboldt Forum, a recent appearance in the city's landscape as it was externally a rebuild of the palace of the Hohenzollen rulers, its history described briefly in my previous Berlin blog. We arrived to find it closed earlier than expected, so contented ourselves with a coffee in the Alexander Cafe in one of the courtyards. 

25 September. Thursday.

Today was the 65th birthday of Sabine, Sieglinde’s friend of 35 years since they studied together. Celebrations started at her home near the Wannsee in Steglitz at 10:00 with a women’s breakfast to which I was invited as word had spread about my arrival. So there were 25 women with me next to Sieglinde at the head of a long table. Sabine’s son Luca was labouring in the kitchen with her daughter Alexa. There was champagne and a rich spread of all the good things that garnish German breakfast tables and a hubbub of talk. One woman who had just lost her husband was there and we were able to comfort her and show how things could move on after grieving. She was determined to be at the evening event. We were among the last to leave and on the way back home dropped off at the Turkish street market in Steglitz to buy goodies for the next few breakfasts.

Sabine (third from left) with friends in the Wannsee Sailing Club 

At 19:00 we were picked up from home by taxi to be taken to the restaurant Am Grossen Wannsee in the Sailing Club on the shores of the Wannsee. There were about 50 people there and I was introduced to Sabine’s parents who were in their 90s but joining in the fun. We were taken home by Yannek Sabine’s eldest son.

26 September, Friday.

A day pottering locally with coffee in Aperitivo Italian restaurant on the Schillerplatz and a shopping expedition to Edeke, the nearest supermarket where Sieglinde was disappointed to find only white eggs instead of the brown ones we had enjoyed for breakfast - she is very fussy that we only get the best. The tree-lined streets of the Friedenau district are turning a range of bright colours, and drifts of leaves obscure uneven paving slabs and other trip hazards. There are now cloudier days and a distinct drop in temperatures. 

27 September, Saturday

One of Sieglinde's sumptuous breakfasts with brown eggs

We had a colourful breakfast followed by morning of housework. We discovered that there was a street fair around the Kirche zum Guten Hirten (Church of the Good Shepherd) with the usual stalls of bric-a-brac, knitted fruit, cheap jewellery, sticky, gaudy sweets and the sort of stuff to be found at all such fairs, but Sieglinde discovered stands for a couple of local groups in Friedenau: the Supercoop, a community supplier of locally grown organic produce, and a League for Democracy, a campaigning group unaffiliated to any party. There was also a stand with well-produced books charting the history of this attractive and lively quarter. We entered the Church of the Good Shepherd where Sieglinde complained to the pastor that she thought the low-hanging lights obscuring the stained glass were dreadful. He agreed and said they had tried to get them replaced for several years. Traffic was delayed by demonstrations in the city centre when we took the U-Bahn und Bus onward to the cultural quarter near the Philharmonie. It was very quiet with only a few skateboarders filling the vast empty spaces.

There we looked in on the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Arts and Crafts) only to be told that it closed in an hour. Desperate for a coffee, we entered the nearby Matthiaskirche and found we had gate-crashed a wedding anniversary party. As all the guests wore gaudy necklaces decorated with hearts, we were sure we would stand out as interlopers and be refused a coffee.

In the Neue Nationalgalerie nearby we found a canteen-like place for a coffee and were delighted to discover at last "Hermès (Bag)" an iconic work of art in felt by Mombasa-born Cosima von Bonin that in 2000 had been inspired by my carrying case. Unfortunately this gallery too was about to close, so the remaining collections of twentieth-century art in a divided Germany will have to wait for another visit.

                                        

So we decided to go to the cinema and caught a bus and U-Bahn to Kant Kino in the Charlottenburg district to see  "Die Farben der Zeit" (Colours of time / La venue de l’avenir) a recent French film which interested us us at was a period drama set in Normandy and Paris. We arrived to find that, unusually, it was fully booked and were offered the chance to view one hour later the final part of Downton Abbey, a series which neither of us had followed. We decided that the last hour of sunlight on a mild autumn evening was better spent behind an Aperolspritz outside an Italian restaurant we discovered in the Goethestrasse. Hardly had we sat down than a woman approached our table and said to Sieglinde “Ich finde Sie wirklich toll” (I think you look really great). Once she had left and Sieglinde was still glowing from the well-deserved compliment I felt I had to restore a sense of proportion and said that what what she had meant to say was not “toll” but “tolerabel”. She is still talking to me and we took the U-Bahn home to another of her wonderful suppers. I am very well looked after.

28 September, Sunday.

Yesterday had been a day of disasters, but none of it really mattered and we took it in good humour and had several interesting experiences. We thought a less ambitious day was called for. Sieglinde had discovered that there was a service at 11:00 in the Jesus-Christus-Kirche in the neighbouring district of Dahlem which is reputed to have one of the best acoustics in Berlin and that the Dahlem Bach Choir would be performing choruses from Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. Although the church was modern, it was more traditional in style, as was the service, with hymn books instead of the projected words, and the hymn numbers and the numbers of verses to be sung in each posted on traditional boards.

Our walks around the tree-lined streets of Berlin reveal numerous items of interesting street furniture. Just before I left Exeter I had become interested in fire insurance plaques so was delighted to discover that such objects were to be found in Berlin too, and from much more recent times. The apartment block on which the example below was found was erected in the first years of the 20th century. 

 

Left: Hand in Hand fire insurance plaque, Little Silver Exeter. 

Right: Feuersozietaet Berlin fire insurance plaque, Stubenrauchstrasse

More sombre street furniture can be seen in the small brass monumental plaques fitted into the cobbles on many Berlin pavements. These commemorate Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. In this house Paul Gronfeld (1881-1941) lived with his wife Minna (1887-1941). They were both deported and died in Łódź, now in Poland. 

29 September, Monday.

Most museums in central Berlin closed on Mondays. The Brücke-Museum and Kunsthaus Dahlem were however open, so we made our way there. The Brücke-Museum was opened in the grounds of Kunsthaus Dahlem in 1967 to celebrate the work of German expressionist artists, many of whom were associated with the Brücke movement from 1905 to 1913. When we visited there was a fascinating and colourful exhibition on the life and works of Irma Stern (1894-1966).

 

Born into a emigree Jewish family in South Africa, she moved with her family to Berlin in 1901, and from 1909 until the arrival of the Nazis moved between Berlin and Cape Town. She studied painting in Berlin and Weimar in the 1920s and fell under the heavy weight of being both Jewish and a proponent of what became regarded by the Nazis as degenerate art. She moved to Cape Town, was for a short time married to Johannes Prinz, professor of German studies at Cape Town University and became known for her South African landscapes and above all for her portraits of black and coloured sitters which were produced mainly for a white clientele. In Africa she encountered a new form racism in apartheid and as a Jew she was at the lower end of white society. But she is today well-regarded in South Africa, partly from the sympathy and individuality that is manifest in her portraits. 

The exhibition was well-attended and we left for a coffee in the café that the Brücke-Museum shares with Kunsthaus Dahlem. This was housed in the former state studio of the sculptor Arno Breker and was constructed between 1939 and 1942. Breker was one of the busiest sculptors for the Third Reich, producing ornamental sculptures for Albert Speer's monumental constructions. An area of forest was acquired and cleared on the orders of Adolf Hitler and the studio was equipped with the latest technology and was shown to a group of visiting French artists in November 1941 but it was rarely used, as Breker preferred to work outside Berlin, safe from the bombings. After the War it was used by the Central Division of the American occupying powers and was later given to the West Berlin Museum and Free University authorities. In 1949 the sculptor Bernhard Hillinger (1915-1995) moved into the buildings and the Bernhard Hillinger Foundation was formed a year after his death. Twenty of his monumental modernist works are on display in the sculpture park attached to the Kunsthaus.

Bernhard Hillinger Stiftung sculpture park, Kunsthaus Dahlem, Berlin

We strolled round the sculpture park and left to get to the rehearsal of Sieglinde's Lekulam Jewish Choir only to find the exit gate locked. There followed a scramble round the entire circuit of the grounds of the two museums, edging between the bushes and the buildings past rows of bins and assorted junk that hides behind such structures, to find that the last possible gate, just the other side of the fence of the sculpture garden was open, so we were able to reach the choir and end the day on a happier note.

Lekulem Jewish choir rehearsal, Berlin

30 September, Tuesday.

Our lack of success in gaining access to museums and galleries continued today. With the museums on the Museumsinsel now open, we turned up once more to visit the Humboldt Forum only to find that Tuesday was its Ruhetag. Nothing daunted we proceeded next door on Unter den Linden to the Palais Populaire hoping for at least a coffee in the art café there. That too was closed on Tuesdays so we proceeded a little further along Berlin's main street to the Staatsoper. There was no café there either, at the time of day when people might be gathering for performances. So we crossed the road to the reliable Café Einstein where we had a warm welcome and an excellent coffee. It did mean that we ended the month a little disappointed at what Berlin had to offer visitors, but there was a wonderful view of the Brandenburg Gate silhouetted in front of a fiery sunset as we turned the corner in the bus home.