'Ossi cool': Saving socialist landmarks in Berlin
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Kaffee Burger: "A strange mixture of design"
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From Chris Burns
CNN Berlin bureau chief
BERLIN, Germany (CNN) -- With its clashing decor and drab wallpaper, the Kaffee Burger in eastern Berlin has become a meeting place for easterners -- ossis -- nostalgic for the days before the Wall fell.
It's also an example of a kind of kitschy "ossi cool" that's become recently fashionable in the nation's capital.
"This place is a strange mixture of design from the '30s, '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s," says Bert Papenfuss, co-manager at the Kaffee Burger. "The last renovation of this place took place in the late '70s and early '80s. So at least you see a little history."
The tallest communist relic is the Fernsehturm, the TV tower that dominates Berlin's skyline. Other notable landmarks include the Cosmos Cinema, a once-thriving memento to the Cold War space race that has been converted to a modern multiplex, and the Kino International, one of the city's few remaining big screens.
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The Kino's retro-socialist style reaches to the main hall's ticky-tacky chandeliers, which Kino manager Kaarsten Goerlitz considers both pretty -- and pretty kitschy.
"I think you can't separate the two perceptions here, not really" Goerlitz says. "I think some kinds of kitsch can be pretty."
As night falls, the once-dour East Berlin becomes the city's hotspot. The Volksbuehne is a wildly successful playhouse; the Traenenpalast, or Tear Palace, where families once tearfully parted near the Berlin Wall, is now a music club. And the Hackischen Hoefe, once a workers' hovel, is full of cafes, restaurants, galleries and movie houses.
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The Cosmos Cinema is now a modern multiplex
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One of the starkest club scene examples of "ossi cool" is at WMF, a dance club in an old post office. The club features a bar that was moved from a famous communist watering hole in the Palace of the Republic.
"After the Wall came down, after the big change, nobody was interested in the former GDR design (or) architecture at all, so we just kind of rescued it," says WMF manager Gerriet Schultz, who suggests there is a bit of humor in the revival of "the strange side of the socialistic Seventies."
Not everyone, though, appreciates the preservation of communist architecture. The decision to restore more than a dozen 1950s housing blocks in Karl Marx Allee -- once known as Stalin Allee until the Soviet dictator died and fell out of favor -- was not well-received by everyone.
"People said it's a socialist, a communist architecture, (that) politically and morally it isn't worthy of being a historical landmark, it's esthetically old-fashioned," said Joerg Haspel of the Berlin Landmarks Office.
But the preservationists won out against the wrecking ball, and the sprawling piece of Soviet-style architecture is now a protected historical landmark -- after $65 million was spent making the ceramic tile buildings shine as they did during their socialist heydey.
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