The Mietskasernen around Arnimplatz. Notice the block on the right-hand side of the photo: I count 24 distinct courtyards. Source: BerlinHistory
Berlin in 2020 is a paradox: it’s a large city, but often feels like a small town. It wasn’t always that way.
From the 1860s through the Second World War, Berlin was notoriously crowded, with many of its working-class residents packed into suffocating Mietskasernen (“Rental Barracks”).
The image above is of Arnimplatz in Prenzlauer Berg from 1928. Each block is packed with buildings, with dozens of airless courtyards separating them.
The Mietskasernen weren’t built overnight. Rather, the street-facing buildings were constructed first, with the off-street areas gradually being filled over years and decades. I created a graphic to help explain how this process might have looked:
A time-lapsed view of a Mietskaserne being constructed, divided into three phases. Phase 1 is the street-facing buildings, Phase 2 is the construction of buildings in the courtyard, with Phase 3 filling in the last bits of extra space.
Life in the Mietskasernen wasn’t good. The buildings were packed with poor families, while absentee landlords collected rent and performed little maintenance. Crime and disease were common.
Around the turn of the 20th century, some of the building complexes served as havens for Berlin’s social democrats and communists. Lookouts could be posted at entrances, giving clandestine meetings plenty of warning in the event that police arrived.
The end of the Mietskaserne
World War II marked a turning point for the Mietskasernen. After the fighting ended, the city was not built back exactly how it was. For one thing, there had been a massive depopulation; for another, Berlin was now a divided city, subject to the whims of the occupying powers.
As Berliners rebuilt their city, street-facing buildings were the priority. Many of the off-street buildings were simply never rebuilt.
The next several images show before-after images from around the city. They are far from the only examples.
Kottbusser Tor - Kreuzberg
Kottubsser Tor/Kottbusser Damm in 1928 (left). An image of the same block from 2020 on the right.
The western side of Kottbusser Damm in 1928 has so many side-buildings that it almost appears as a single structure. On the right, the block structure remains the same, but with vastly fewer buildings.
A new neighborhood at Ostbahnhof
The images above are taken just to the west of today’s Ostbahnhof train station. In the image from 1928, the streets are densely packed with buildings. Today, the same area is unrecognizable. Instead of tightly packed 5 or 6 story buildings, there are wide open green areas with housing towers with as many as 15-20 stories.
I happen to think that the new neighborhood is uninviting, kind of a sterile desert. But one thing’s for sure: it’s no longer a Berlin Mietskaserne.
Mariannenplatz in Kreuzberg
One final example from Kreuzberg. The courtyards from the older image have been nearly completely demolished.
Traces of the Mietskaserne remain, as anyone who’s visited Berlin’s many Hinterhöfe can confirm. But the large, cramped complexes of the early 20th century have for the most part vanished. Which of course is mostly a good thing, given the low living standards that was common.
It does raise some interesting questions about contemporary housing policy, though. Given that Berlin now uses the same geographical space to house fewer people than it did 100 years ago, how will we be able to house a population that continues to grow? If we want to build new housing, what should the buildings look like, and where should we build them?