Hostel Berlin Backpacker

The "Anhalter Bahnhof" and its neigbourhood during the past years

By the end of the 19th Century the city life took place at the “Askanischer Platz”. The monumental construction of the railway station, also called “gate to the South”, used to be Berlin’s main road and rail junction for a long time. Once it served as the representation spot for the German Empire and also used to be the backdrop for the Nazi propaganda. From here long-distance trains took off to Vienna, Rome and Athens – from here 9600 Jewish citizens were deported to the entrepot “Theresienstadt” and the concentration camps in Eastern Europe by Hilter’s eager excutors. Today only the ruine of portico which is made out of brick and a park with an accessible “rail track wilderness” recalls the Anhalter Bahnhof which was partially bombed during the Second World War. Nowadays there is a soccer ground and the venue “Tempodrom” situated in the former “mother cave of the railways” (Walter Benjamin). The tent-shaped architecutre hosts an arena for concerts and the Liquidrom, which promises urban bathing fun in a brine basin. Parts of the depot are converted to the Science Center and the Museum of Technology, widely visible because of a candy bomber rising up to the sky.

  From 1913 until 1954 there was the “Excelsior” located opposite to the Anhalter Bahnhof. With its 600 rooms, a subterranean health spa, a library and a tunnel conjunction to the railway plattforms it justifiably was one of the most splendid hotels in the continent. Today only the high-rise building with its 7 floors reminds of the big hotel which was bombed-out during Second World War. Between Prinz-Albrecht-Street (nowadays called Niederkirchnerstraße), Wilhelmstreet and Anhalter Street the central institutions responsible for the repressive and criminal policies of National Socialism were located from 1933 until 1945. At this historic site the headquarter of the Secret State Police (Gestapo), the center of the SS security force and starting in 1939 also the Reich Security Head Office was situated. Here, the terror of the Nazi regime created its own rules. Since 1987 the permament exhibition “Topography of Terror” documents and informs about the dimension of the homicidal NS-appliance. Nowadays it is possible to visit the huge German Reich railway-bunker featured with two meter thick walls, which currently acts as a “camber of horrors”.

 At that place, not only the history of Germany has left her traces. Directly in front of the Clemens-yards, where the hostel is located, is a piece of the Berlin tariff- and excise wall, which replaced the medieval city wall and from the 18th Century was used for trade monitoring. At the 18 tariff gates excise duties were levied. Furthermore they tried to avoid the smuggling of goods as well as to prevent soldiers of the Berlin Garrison to

escape. The former Berlin Wall which separated East from West Berlin for 28 years, ran 200 meters north of the hostel. In the GDR it was called the "fortified border"and primarily prevented the escape of the inhabitants out of the Republic. Diagonally across from the Berlin House of Representatives (former Prussian Parliament) visitors can see remnants of the "anti-fascist protective wall”. Not far from here, David Bowie was singing in the master room of the Hansa Studios, "the big hall by the wall”, his hit “Heroes”.   

The environment of the Three Little Pigs hostel is a place for cultural refreshment. The Hebbel Theater in the “Stresemannstraße” opens its curtains for already 100 years, currently this theater is one of the most important venue of contemporary theater in Berlin. The unique zig-zag building of the Jewish Museum, which was designed by architect Daniel Libeskind in the style of deconstructionism, hosts two millennia of German-Jewish history and changing exhibitions on art and everyday culture.
The Berlin Gallery as the "Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture” is located in a residential area. The museum always tries to combine significant historical artifacts with the creative contemporary scene: This way the visitor come upon "Dada and Fluxus, New Objectivity and Expressionism, the Russians in Berlin, the avant-garde in architecture and photography, Berlin during the Nazi regime, the city in ruins, East Berlin and West Berlin and the metropolis after the unification.

The worldwide-known myth of the city district “Kreuzberg” is based not only on the alternative projects, which arose in the shadow of the wall, but above all it is founded by the the legendary house fightings 30 years ago and the street battles between autonomous, riot tourists and the police on 1^st of May, since 1987. Across the Willy-Brandt-Haus (Federal Center of the Socialist Party of Germany) there is still a last relic of the self-governing liberal projects of the non-parliamentary opposition movement: Since March 1973, the Tommy-Weisbecker-Haus is a self-governing residental collective, which was illegally occupied as a protest against Berlin’s housing - and rehabilitation policy. Today it is reminiscent of the nearly 100 occupied houses in Kreuzberg during the 80s.

a part of the Anhalter Bahnhof 2010