B EAST Magazine website

By Joel Alas

Once upon a time, there stood a castle in the center of Berlin. A huge and hulking Baroque monolith, it was built by the Prussian kings to display their power and wealth. But the castle wasn’t powerful enough to survive World War II. It was damaged by bombing, and was later destroyed entirely by the occupying Soviets.

In the 1970s the DDR built the headquarters for its government, the Palast Der Republik, on the same site. But after German reunification, it too was destroyed under the guise of asbestos concerns (though many believe the building’s removal was a symbolic act against the former Soviet East German state).

Now it sits empty. A beautiful green park with boardwalks reaching down to the River Spree has been installed there, enjoyed all summer long by tourists and locals alike.

Over the past decade, a group of powerful and rich (mostly) west Germans have lobbied the government to reconstruct the old Prussian castle (known as the Stadtschloss) on the site. With their good ties with the ruling political parties, they were able to persuade parliament to agree to the plan. The project was budgeted at over half a billion euros, although the cost is expected to skyrocket beyond that. An architectural competition was called, and a boring design by an Italian architect was selected.

Over the past few months, the wheels have been falling off the project. The architectural competition was found to be improperly conducted, and a financial crisis has drained the treasury. Berliners are slowly waking up to the realization that the idea of building a fake castle was stupid to begin with, and makes even less sense in the current economic climate.

Today B EAST magazine announces the first public demonstration against the Stadtschloss. Called “Schloss Mit Lustig! Cancel The Castle!”, the demonstration will take place on Saturday October 17 at 15.00 on the site of the proposed castle. A jumping castle will be on site, and participants are requested to come dressed as royalty to help ridicule this indefensible waste of money.

Later that night, B EAST will host an afterparty for the demonstration at Betahaus in Kreuzberg called “The Only Good Castle is a Jumping Castle.” Our favourite DJs Shameless Limitless will spin some electro-techno-laptoprock, and Linards the Latvian DJ, formerly of Riga’s Space:Garage, will provide visuals.

Get all the details at www.stopstadtschloss.com

Sep 18, 2009

Never believe the hype? Or, in this case, the hyped-up diss. With the jaw-dropping GDP contraction in the Baltic States making the rest of the world feel better about their economic woes, the global press has been rife with depressing stories from that part of the world, especially Latvia, which is doing even worse than its neighbors. Newspapers talk about stores closing, glum residents, doom and gloom, and a general party pooper vibe. Few mention that Latvia’s capital Riga hosted a flamboyant Blond Parade this May to cheer up the city’s residents. Seems that others are busy lifting the Baltic spirit. The dynamic editors of Jaffa Mag, Latvia’s cool countercultural rag (which comes out even less frequently than B.East!) organised the country’s first Folk Dance Flash Mob in the center of the Old City. As my mate from Amsterdam said when watching the video, ‘Quite a few cuties there.’ Cuties or not, check it out here.

Over a year ago, we told you about Iraq’s abandoned embassy in East Berlin. The embassy was deserted by Iraqi diplomats shortly after the fall of the wall, and was promptly forgotten.

We at B EAST decided it was time the deteriorating building was handed back to the public. One sunny weekend in August, we – along with our Berlin friends (the Shameless Limitless DJ team, plus the Berlin Loves You t-shirt crew) – took over the embassy, armed with a generator and a sound system.

Here’s two videos that show what went down:

“The green Zone” from Knut Knutson on Vimeo.