Since the late 1990s, the area around Checkpoint Charlie has been one of Berlin’s important gallery districts. In the historical grounds of Zimmerstraße 90-91, near Martin-Gropius-Bau and galleries such as the DAAD Galerie, Barbara Weiss and Wilma Tolskdorf, the Burger Collection will for the first time present parts of the collection to the public from September 5 to December 13, 2009.

Like hardly any other building, Zimmerstraße 90-91 symbolizes the vicissitudes of Berlin’s changing history. Originally the front building for Markthalle III, built in the style of the Schinkel School by Hermann Blankenstein from 1884 to 1886, the terracotta brick building first of all recalls the efforts needed to secure a food supply for the constantly growing Berlin population in the nineteenth century. When Friederichstraße changed from a residential to a business district, the market hall was closed in 1910 and rebuilt as Konzerthaus Clou. With 4000 seats, it was then the largest commercial entertainment location in the city, and a symbol for the entertainment and nightlife of the “Roaring Twenties.”

The remaining building of the ensemble also recalls the dark chapter of German history in Nazism, and Berlin’s period as a divided city. Already in 1927, the Clou was used not just for concerts and tea dances, but also for Nazi rallies, and Adolf Hitler held his first Berlin speech there on May 1, 1927. In 1930, the offices of various Nazi propaganda journals moved into the front building. In 1943, the establishment, now closed due to the war, was used in the so-called “Factory Action” to hold Jews arrested before their deportation. The ensemble was largely destroyed at the end of the Second World War. The Berlin Wall was located directly in front of the building from 1961 to 1990, making it part of the inaccessible border area until it became a vital location Berlin’s art and cultural life after the fall of the Wall.

Tanja Vonseelen