Everything you never even knew you wanted to know about Berlin by the author Berlin history blog, theberlincompanion.com, Berlin Companion Audio Walks App and the Berlin Companion book series.
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...
19 Feb 2025
REPEATED: DEATH AND RAILWAYS - THE CEMETERY AT POSTDAMER BAHNHOF
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 yo...
10 Feb 2025
OF SPUDS AND GEMS: BERLIN'S PALACE MONBIJOU
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 ...
4 Feb 2025
SMOG IN THE CITY: "DICKE LUFT" IN WEST BERLIN
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 th...
29 Jan 2025
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT: BLACKOUT YEARS IN BERLIN
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, ...
22 Jan 2025
BERLIN WALL UNDER THE CHRISTMAS TREE: HOW TO SELL AN ANTI-FASCIST PROTECTION BARRIER
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 huma...
8 Jan 2025
THE WHEELS KEEP ON TURNING: BERLIN AND "MANOLI LINKSRUM"
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 advertiseme...
1 Jan 2025
CRUSADERS, BLIMPS AND WHOLE LOTTA RUBBISH: HOW BERLIN'S LEGENDARY AIRPORT, FLUGHAFEN TEMPELHOF, WAS BUILT
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 ...
24 Dec 2024
Berlin and The Christmas Tree Conundrum
Send us a textEight 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 m...
18 Dec 2024
ALL ABOUT WURST: THE STORY OF BERLIN'S PEA SAUSAGE
Send us a textThe first episode in the new series is both a starter and the main dish. It's a story of soup. Of instant soup that from the late 1860s on fed Prussian, German and even foreign armies, filled stomachs both on and off the battlefields, and was tested for its combat suitability not by one but by two "Soup Commandos".Until less than a decade ago it was a staple in most German households. Today's episode is about one of great Berlin inventions: about Erbswurst.Main theme for the pod...
4 Jun 2022
EPISODE 8 DEATH AND RAILWAYS: THE CEMETERY AT POTSDAMER BAHNHOF
Send us a textLast week we talked about the long-vanished cemetery railway line which connected Berlin-Wannsee with Germany's second largest burial site, Berlin's Südwestfriedhof Stahnsdorf. This episode remains in the realm of both the dead and the railways but with a serious shift towards Berlin's centre. This time we are travelling to the first half of the eighteenth century and will take it from there until we have reached (and left) one of Berlin's best-known railway termini, Potsd...
28 May 2022
EPISODE 7 COFFINS ON WHEELS: THE CORPSE TRAIN OF BERLIN
Send us a textWhat do large cities do when they run out of space to bury their dead? They go beyond their limits. Traditionally all large European cities like Paris, Vienna or London eventually established new burial sites further and further from their centre. Vienna even considered using the pneumatic tube system to transport their deceased to the Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery).By the end of the nineteenth century Berlin faced a similar problem and dealt with it the same way: by opening...
21 May 2022
EP 6 SLEEPING IN BERLIN: LIVING IN A BOX
Send us a textMany old Berlin flats in the typical 19th century apartment buildings are equipped with a curious feature: a small storage space under the ceiling, usually installed in the bathroom, the kitchen or the corridor. What makes these so curious is not their function today - a storeroom for suitcases, skis and snorkels or that gear you wore for your first Love Parade in the mid-1990s - but the original purpose for which they were built. In this episode you will find out why they...
9 May 2022
Ep 5 SOUND IN BERLIN. WHEN HITCHOCK COMES TO TOWN
Send us a textThe 1920s in Berlin were an incredible time, full both of misery and wonder. It was the time which brought both the worst and the best in people who lived there. And sometimes it helped pave way for genius. Or future classics.Episode 5 of Berlin Companion Podcast tells the story of one such classic made in Berlin.Sound effects:BBC Sound Effects Archive bbc_animals---_07037493 piegeons cooingbbc_animals fighting for food Freesound "Suspense Comedy" by Tyops " Ambient Traut" by Va...
7 May 2022
Ep. 4 LANDING IN BERLIN
Send us a textWe all know how annoying air traffic can be these days for those who experience it from the ground - not only is it a time-bomb just waiting to make our environment go belly-up but it can also bring any conversation to a halt, if said conversation takes place under what is known as a flight corridor. But whenever if you think this is bad, here is a little story from the days where Berlin's first inner-city airport - the original Flughafen Tempelhof - became, at least for s...
30 Apr 2022
EP. 3 HANNA FLIES TO HELL - THE LAST DAYS OF THE THIRD REICH IN BERLIN
Send us a textIn 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 Frust...
23 Apr 2022
EP.2 TREFFPUNKT 8 UHR: BERLIN CLOCKS
Send us a textIn the 1920s elegant Berliners fell in love with a scent called "Treffpunkt 8 Uhr" (Rendezvous at 8PM). Made by a legendary local manufacture Schwarzlose - which still exists today - it stood for the Exciting and the Romantic but also for what Berlin seemed never to have enough of: time.From 1787 when the first public clock appeared in Unter den Linden, clocks dictated the pace of the city. Many appointments were scheduled under the chronometer. Later, the areas around pub...
Send us a textFor anyone interested in history, Berlin is your playground. From old Slavic and Germanic tribes through Crusaders, alchemists and feuding houses to Prussian expansion, Emperors and world wars, including the Cold one. But next to big events, which often changed the world - and not always for the better - myriads of smaller things happened here daily, turning the city into what it is today: a melting pot of cultures, languages and stories. And a treasure trove of trivia.Thi...
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