Berlin’s ‘Jewish Switzerland’

The story of Jewish Berlin will be forever tragically linked to the Holocaust. Nothing can change this statement, but today’s Berliners are still making efforts to ensure that the fate of their persecuted predecessors will never be forgotten. Recently, I discovered another neighbourhood initiative to keep alive the memory of their Jewish community in Berlin before the war: Café Haberland above the U-Bahn Station Bayerischer Platz in the borough of Schöneberg. 

Café Haberland above the U-Bahn station

This café-museum opened in 2014 and is named after father and son, Salomon and Georg Haberland, founders of the local district called ‘Das Bayerische Viertel’ (The Bavarian Quarter), where many of the streets are named after towns in Bayern (Bavaria). A central point for Jewish intellectual life in pre-Nazi Berlin, it is also referred to as ‘Jewish Switzerland’ because of the many influential Jews who came to live there, including Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin.

Einstein at home in Berlin

The well-known Berlin coffee-house chain ‘Café Einstein’ now runs the gastronomic side of Café Haberland and local volunteers man the museum side of things. I enjoyed a good breakfast there, then read through some of the documentation about the history of the Bayerisches Viertel and what happened to its Jewish inhabitants during the Nazi period. I watched film material and listened to interviews at the video and audio stations. The literature and reports are available in English as well as German and make an emotional impact with their very personal stories. The stated aim of the exhibition, to build a bridge between the past and the present, succeeds perfectly.

Volunteers with the Mayor of Schöneberg

Inside the café-museum

You can also get a feel for the neighbourhood by looking around the wall displays in the entrance hall of the Bayerischer Platz U-Bahn station. They feature large photographs and information boards tracing the origins of the Bayerisches Viertel and give brief details of some of the illustrious Germans who lived there. Carl Zuckmayer, author of ‘Der Hauptmann von Köpenick’ is pictured below.

Pictures at the underground exhibition

Outside the station, the main square of Bayerischer Platz was originally landscaped in 1908, comprising a green area, benches, a fountain and promenades. It soon became the central meeting place for the area, surrounded by prestigious shops, cafés, medical practices and banks. It is still a pleasant open space, reflecting the calm atmosphere of this residential district where the buildings are set back from the street with pretty gardens and wide pavements.

Bayersicher Platz – then and now

Having remained a village since the 13th century, Schöneberg boomed at the end of the 19th century when Berlin’s population exploded and villagers sold off their agricultural land to developers. The most prominent developer was Georg Haberland, son of textile manufacturer Salomon Haberland. The Bayerisches Viertel, which he built between 1900 and 1914, was an area of quiet residential streets, lined with grand buildings containing large apartments decorated with stucco work and marble.  One is called Haberlandstraße, where Albert Einstein lived at number 5 from 1917 until 1932.  The Nazis, who hated wealthy Jews like Haberland, changed the street’s name in 1938, although it was eventually restored in 1996.

Information board outside the site of Einstein’s home

Before the war, Schöneberg attracted the wealthy middle and upper classes, such as lawyers, doctors, businessmen and intellectuals, many of them Jewish. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, there were over 16,000 Jews in the Bayerisches Viertel. The Nazis soon began their persecution of the Jews and their rights were cruelly eroded. At the end of February 1943, the roundups, arrests and deportations started and by June that year, the whole borough of Schöneberg was declared “free of Jews’. In the allied bombing that followed, 75% of the buildings in the Bayerisches Viertel were destroyed.

Haberland Strasse in 1925

The ‘Orte des Erinnerns’ (Places of Remembrance), a memorial concept in the Bayersiches Viertel, makes a powerful statement. It’s a network of eighty signs hanging from street lamps inscribed with the laws introduced by the Nazis to discriminate against the Jewish population; some strategically located to link them to present-day reality. For example, a sign in front of a playground states, “Aryan and non-Aryan children are forbidden to play together”. The eighty scattered signs are gathered together on three large billboards at Rathaus Schöneberg Town Hall, Bayerischer Platz and in front of the Münchener Straβe Gymnasium (Grammar School). Each billboard shows pre- and post-war maps of the area, one from1933 and the other from 1993. For an English translation of the signs follow this link.  They defy belief. The sign below, depicting a loaf of bread on one side, states that “Jews are only allowed to buy food between 4pm and 5pm”.

After walking around the Bayerisches Viertel, you might want to return to Café Haberland for a restorative cup of tea or coffee. Finding and reading the signs is a sobering experience. In warmer weather you can sit outside on the balcony and once a month there are ‘Jazz on the Roof’ evenings. It’s a great meeting place with an eclectic modern feel combined with echoes of a past era. Follow this link to the Café’s website to find full details of opening times and events.

Breakfast at Café Haberland

[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]