Berlin Companion Podcast

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Love it or hate it - Berlin can and will keep surprising you. Sometimes those surprises will be less welcome but sometimes they will make your day, your week or even your next 20 years.

Like this story did for me. In the last episode of Season 2 of the podcast, let me take you to a place I fell in love with from the go. Not a palace or a fancy apartment house - a factory site in Kreuzberg. Few of the former could put you on the trail that leads to history of espionage, history of small Berlin industries growing very big indeed and of machines battling each other first in war and then decades later for the pleasure of it.

Enjoy !

Music and sounds used for this episode:

Main themes (Mystery for The Witty and Assembly Line Frustration by Ionics (licensed via Soundtaxi)

"Alte Leierkasten" by Lobo Loco via freesoundarchive.org  | License: Attribution 4.0

"Mystery Keys" by https://freesound.org/people/quetzalcontla/  | License: Attribution 4.0

"Enigma machine cipher device 2" by o_ultimo | License: Attribution 4.0

"Enigma machine cipher device" by o_ultimo | License: Attribution 4.0

Support the show

Read fascinating stories from Berlin's past and present, and listen to all the episodes from Season 1 and 2 of the podcast on Substack: theberlincompanion.com

Enjoy Berlin audio-tours created by yours truly: download Berlin Companion Audio-Walks App (free access code for all annual Substack blog supporters).

You can also find me at:
Bluesky: @berlincompanion.bsky.social

Twitter: @kreuzberged
Instagram: The Berlin Companion
Threads: theberlincompanion

And if you would like to become a regular subscriber to this show and help me spend more time digging in my vast archives, chasing new stories and turning these into shiny new episodes - support the podcast by buying me a coffee or by subscribing to Berlin Companion at Substack (both links below):

Buy Me a Coffee (or a Beer)

Berlin Companion at Substack


Music for the show by ...

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An old Yididish proverb says: "If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans". The author heard booming laughter from above and thus planning to launch the last episode in the series had to be postponed.

In the meantime you can enjoy a repetition of one of my favourite stories from and around Potsdamer Bahnhof: the story of a cemetery that was the first Berlin place for many arrivals to see and the last (the very last) one for a few to set their very metaphorical foot on.

I hope you will enjoy it!

Support the show

Read fascinating stories from Berlin's past and present, and listen to all the episodes from Season 1 and 2 of the podcast on Substack: theberlincompanion.com

Enjoy Berlin audio-tours created by yours truly: download Berlin Companion Audio-Walks App (free access code for all annual Substack blog supporters).

You can also find me at:
Bluesky: @berlincompanion.bsky.social

Twitter: @kreuzberged
Instagram: The Berlin Companion
Threads: theberlincompanion

And if you would like to become a regular subscriber to this show and help me spend more time digging in my vast archives, chasing new stories and turning these into shiny new episodes - support the podcast by buying me a coffee or by subscribing to Berlin Companion at Substack (both links below):

Buy Me a Coffee (or a Beer)

Berlin Companion at Substack


Music for the show by ...

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In this episode of "Berlin Companion Podcast" we are travelling back in time to the second half of the 17th century to witness some royal shenanigans (including several weddings, an extramarital affair, a couple of deaths and a crowning) and follow the fate of a lovely royal palace, whose ghostly outline might or might not be still visible there on quiet moonlit Berlin nights... And whose gardens were the birthplace of Prussia's favourite veg.

You will find Berlin's 1748 city plan (Plan de la ville et des fauxbourgs de Berlin) here - to locate Spandauer Tor and Spandauer Brücke look for St Marien Kirche und look right above it. Map via ZLB Digital.

Support the show

Read fascinating stories from Berlin's past and present, and listen to all the episodes from Season 1 and 2 of the podcast on Substack: theberlincompanion.com

Enjoy Berlin audio-tours created by yours truly: download Berlin Companion Audio-Walks App (free access code for all annual Substack blog supporters).

You can also find me at:
Bluesky: @berlincompanion.bsky.social

Twitter: @kreuzberged
Instagram: The Berlin Companion
Threads: theberlincompanion

And if you would like to become a regular subscriber to this show and help me spend more time digging in my vast archives, chasing new stories and turning these into shiny new episodes - support the podcast by buying me a coffee or by subscribing to Berlin Companion at Substack (both links below):

Buy Me a Coffee (or a Beer)

Berlin Companion at Substack


Music for the show by ...

Send us Fan Mail

Those of us living in the city centre, close to industry sites or a very busy street junction know the smell only too well: fuel, burnt rubber, melting plastic and unspecified chemical stench that might or might not make your skin crawl (sometimes literally). Luckily for most, the days of potentially lethal air pollution in big cities like Berlin seem to be over.

But in February 1987 West Berlin and West Germany were in the thick of it. Why this was not the case for the DDR is explained in this episode... You will also find out something about Thor and a very useful Berlin flower.

Enjoy the episode! 

(Link to Berlin's page where you can control air quality in the city on per-hour basis: https://luftdaten.berlin.de/lqi)

Support the show

Read fascinating stories from Berlin's past and present, and listen to all the episodes from Season 1 and 2 of the podcast on Substack: theberlincompanion.com

Enjoy Berlin audio-tours created by yours truly: download Berlin Companion Audio-Walks App (free access code for all annual Substack blog supporters).

You can also find me at:
Bluesky: @berlincompanion.bsky.social

Twitter: @kreuzberged
Instagram: The Berlin Companion
Threads: theberlincompanion

And if you would like to become a regular subscriber to this show and help me spend more time digging in my vast archives, chasing new stories and turning these into shiny new episodes - support the podcast by buying me a coffee or by subscribing to Berlin Companion at Substack (both links below):

Buy Me a Coffee (or a Beer)

Berlin Companion at Substack


Music for the show by ...

Send us Fan Mail

Are you afraid of the dark? 

The answer is is most probably yes. Few people are comfortable not seeing where they are going, or what might be lurking ahead. An extreme form of that fear is known as noctophobia. 

When in the 1930s Nazi authorities introduced blackout regulations in Germany - strict orders forbidding using any sources of light that could potentially reveal the size or the position, or even individual locations in a city - three things were clear: that a war was coming, that crime and accidents in Berlin would soar, and that people had to learn how to live their daily lives in one of the largest cities in Europe without any outdoor illumination.

In today's episode of the podcast it all begins in 1935.

Support the show

Read fascinating stories from Berlin's past and present, and listen to all the episodes from Season 1 and 2 of the podcast on Substack: theberlincompanion.com

Enjoy Berlin audio-tours created by yours truly: download Berlin Companion Audio-Walks App (free access code for all annual Substack blog supporters).

You can also find me at:
Bluesky: @berlincompanion.bsky.social

Twitter: @kreuzberged
Instagram: The Berlin Companion
Threads: theberlincompanion

And if you would like to become a regular subscriber to this show and help me spend more time digging in my vast archives, chasing new stories and turning these into shiny new episodes - support the podcast by buying me a coffee or by subscribing to Berlin Companion at Substack (both links below):

Buy Me a Coffee (or a Beer)

Berlin Companion at Substack


Music for the show by ...

Send us Fan Mail

In December 1989 US department stores expanded their pre-Christmas offer by a very attractive item for late or for undecided Christmas-present buyers.

It was small yet profound - filled with more deep meaning than it modest size or weight could suggest. It was well-known to and caused a certain frisson among all Americans, yet it came straight from Europe. It was being sold in the US stores, yet back at home it was - in fact - still standing.

This is the story of the most concrete trade in human history: that with the Berliner Mauer.

Support the show

Read fascinating stories from Berlin's past and present, and listen to all the episodes from Season 1 and 2 of the podcast on Substack: theberlincompanion.com

Enjoy Berlin audio-tours created by yours truly: download Berlin Companion Audio-Walks App (free access code for all annual Substack blog supporters).

You can also find me at:
Bluesky: @berlincompanion.bsky.social

Twitter: @kreuzberged
Instagram: The Berlin Companion
Threads: theberlincompanion

And if you would like to become a regular subscriber to this show and help me spend more time digging in my vast archives, chasing new stories and turning these into shiny new episodes - support the podcast by buying me a coffee or by subscribing to Berlin Companion at Substack (both links below):

Buy Me a Coffee (or a Beer)

Berlin Companion at Substack


Music for the show by ...

Send us Fan Mail

Hello Berlin and Beyond!

This is a repetition of a Series 1 episode - my family and I are about to say goodbye to a very dear person, and my mind is understandably elsewhere. It turned out to be impossible to get the planned episode ready. It will be launched next week. Today, those of you who have not listened to Berlin Companion's 2022 series and do not know the stories yet, might enjoy this particular one. It has it all: a daredevil female pilot (albeit on the wrong side of History), World War Two, Berlin inferno and the collapse of the Third Reich.

Thank you for your understanding and you will hear from me again next week!


In April 1945, as the Red Army was closing its grip on Berlin, coming closer and closer to Hitler's last refuge under the Chancellery gardens, one of his favourite pilots managed to fly a small aeroplane into the burning capital and land it near Brandenburg Gate. On board she carried a wounded future head of the Nazi Luftwaffe.

Aircraft Capitan Hanna Reitsch.  Here is the story of her remarkable Berlin coup. And of her post-war denial.



Music theme:  “Assembly Line Frustration" © Ionics Music | TerraSound.de

Sound effects:
BBC Sounds (artillery barrage, Junkers Ju-88, Stukas, Messerschmitt, air-raid sirens, park ambience)
Search Results | BBC Sound Effects (bbcrewind.co.uk)

Freesounds.org (Junker Ju-52 by Reinsamba, Creative Commons Licence 4.0
https://freesound.org/s/128542/

Frog in the throat: private

Support the show

Read fascinating stories from Berlin's past and present, and listen to all the episodes from Season 1 and 2 of the podcast on Substack: theberlincompanion.com

Enjoy Berlin audio-tours created by yours truly: download Berlin Companion Audio-Walks App (free access code for all annual Substack blog supporters).

You can also find me at:
Bluesky: @berlincompanion.bsky.social

Twitter: @kreuzberged
Instagram: The Berlin Companion
Threads: theberlincompanion

And if you would like to become a regular subscriber to this show and help me spend more time digging in my vast archives, chasing new stories and turning these into shiny new episodes - support the podcast by buying me a coffee or by subscribing to Berlin Companion at Substack (both links below):

Buy Me a Coffee (or a Beer)

Berlin Companion at Substack


Music for the show by ...

Send us Fan Mail

The sky over Berlin is never dark. Even at night. The main cause is the city's heavy light pollution. Berlin's streetlights, its signs, its permanently illuminated buildings - all they contribute to the problem. So much so that for the past two decades the city's observatories, like the Planetarium am Insulaner, have not been able to see the Milky Road. Light spreads over Berlin like a massive dome.

One of the main contributors to light pollution in big cities like Berlin are light advertisements - former neon signs have been almost entirely replaced by environmentally friendlier but otherwise much more unforgiving LED lights. The first illuminated ad sign installed in the German capital was the 1896 "Molton-Wein" ad on Spittelmarkt. A year later a red-and-white illuminated sign appeared on Leipziger Straße.

But it was the 1898 debut that made history: the first moving light ad in Berlin. Here's how it found its way onto Berlin's theatre stage and into the local lingo. And what it had to do with Berlin's most famous enfant terrible.


Links and Recommendations:

• Christopher Isherwood Walking Tour "Isherwood's Neighbourhood" with Brendan Nash 
• Jonny Whitlam's Waking Tours of Berlin "Whitlam's Berlin Tours"
• Photo of the Manoli-Rad on Berlin's Alexanderplatz 
• Wilhelm-Foerster-Sternwarte at Planetarium am Insulaner
• More about Manoli Cigarette Factory in Berlin at Jewish Places.

Support the show

Read fascinating stories from Berlin's past and present, and listen to all the episodes from Season 1 and 2 of the podcast on Substack: theberlincompanion.com

Enjoy Berlin audio-tours created by yours truly: download Berlin Companion Audio-Walks App (free access code for all annual Substack blog supporters).

You can also find me at:
Bluesky: @berlincompanion.bsky.social

Twitter: @kreuzberged
Instagram: The Berlin Companion
Threads: theberlincompanion

And if you would like to become a regular subscriber to this show and help me spend more time digging in my vast archives, chasing new stories and turning these into shiny new episodes - support the podcast by buying me a coffee or by subscribing to Berlin Companion at Substack (both links below):

Buy Me a Coffee (or a Beer)

Berlin Companion at Substack


Music for the show by ...

Send us Fan Mail

During 2022 excavations in the area of Berlin's Molkenmarkt - a historic plaza and the city's oldest market place - archaeologists discovered Berlin's oldest street, a Bohlendamm (corduroy road or log road). Two years later they made another great discovery - this time a series of small white clay figurines of Christian saints. What would they find, though, should they start digging under what is now Berlin's largest public park, Tempelhofer Feld?

Well, apart from the unexploded World War Two ordnance which is almost certain  still to be lurking somewhere under the asphalt roads and spreading wide meadows, they'd probably come up with a lot of old rubbish. Literally so. To built Berlin's most famous inner-city airport, Flughafen Tempelhof (later known as Zentralflughafen Tempelhof) tens of thousands of large cartloads of Berlin's garbage helped level the ground. Something far more natural, yet even more unappetising enabled the airport builders to prevent dust clouds from building on the site.

To find out who, why and using what ingenious methods built Berlin's favourite - even if former - airport; and what the Crusaders had to do with it, listen to this episode of your "Berlin Companion Podcast". A podcast about everything you never even knew you wanted to know about Berlin:-)

Support the show

Read fascinating stories from Berlin's past and present, and listen to all the episodes from Season 1 and 2 of the podcast on Substack: theberlincompanion.com

Enjoy Berlin audio-tours created by yours truly: download Berlin Companion Audio-Walks App (free access code for all annual Substack blog supporters).

You can also find me at:
Bluesky: @berlincompanion.bsky.social

Twitter: @kreuzberged
Instagram: The Berlin Companion
Threads: theberlincompanion

And if you would like to become a regular subscriber to this show and help me spend more time digging in my vast archives, chasing new stories and turning these into shiny new episodes - support the podcast by buying me a coffee or by subscribing to Berlin Companion at Substack (both links below):

Buy Me a Coffee (or a Beer)

Berlin Companion at Substack


Music for the show by ...

Send us Fan Mail

Eight out of ten people in our (scientifically absolutely unreliable) survey with only one question "What is it that you could never imagine Christmas without?", named it.

You can live with less or different Christmas dishes, fewer present are not a issue if the company is a match. And even spending the festive time away from your family can have its hidden charm (and be a blessing in disguise for both sides).

But no Christmas tree? However symbolic (a twig, a paper cut-out or a medley of dry sticks would do), the Weihnachtsbaum is as much as part of our "collective Christmas psyche" as Weihnachtsmann and festive illumination.

But when did that tradition reach Berlin? And what happened when, once hooked on the new symbolic, the city (or at least half of it) faced a Christmas-tree shortage? Today we are travelling back in time to 1959/1960. To West Berlin. Via Thuringia.


Recommended links:

Stadtmuseum Berlin Knoblauch-Haus 360° experience

History Flakes Podcast Episode about Friedrich the Great

Berliner Pyramide photo by Michael Setzpfand on Knoblauchhaus - Stadtmuseum Berlin page.

Support the show

Read fascinating stories from Berlin's past and present, and listen to all the episodes from Season 1 and 2 of the podcast on Substack: theberlincompanion.com

Enjoy Berlin audio-tours created by yours truly: download Berlin Companion Audio-Walks App (free access code for all annual Substack blog supporters).

You can also find me at:
Bluesky: @berlincompanion.bsky.social

Twitter: @kreuzberged
Instagram: The Berlin Companion
Threads: theberlincompanion

And if you would like to become a regular subscriber to this show and help me spend more time digging in my vast archives, chasing new stories and turning these into shiny new episodes - support the podcast by buying me a coffee or by subscribing to Berlin Companion at Substack (both links below):

Buy Me a Coffee (or a Beer)

Berlin Companion at Substack


Music for the show by ...