Our Own Private Germany

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, a group of squatters from East and West set out to build their own unified Germany. And, despite endless parties, questionable hygiene, and neo-Nazi turf wars, they pulled it off.

By Kati Krause and Ole Schulz
Portraits by Ana Lessing Menjibar

On a Saturday last March, my Berlin neighbors had a plant funeral. They set up three-meter-high wood crosses on our street corner and placed funeral candles all along the street, and the children drew posters of crying trees and flowers. There was live music, and everyone got quite drunk. Other longtime residents of our neighborhood pitched in with donations, and a week later, many of the plants that the city had dared to remove from in front of our building had been replaced. One of the crosses remains by our entrance, a reminder not to mess with Tucholskystrasse 30 and 32.

My neighbors don’t take kindly to authority. They are used to running their own affairs. After all, they have been doing so since early 1990, when they spearheaded the third…