Although the „Gemäldegalerie” (Old Masters Paintings) has probably the most important and most valuable pictures of Berlin, it’s not too well know among the visitors. The reason may be in it’s location – close to the Potsdamer Platz, at the so called “Kulturforum”.  But most of Berlins famous museums are concentrated on the Museuminsel (museums island), the Old National Gallery, the Old and the New Museum, the Pergamon Museum and the Bode Museum – all in buildings that have their own history and are pieces of art themselves and on top of that some of them like the Bode and New Museum have been renovated with much time, effort and expenses so their recent reopenings were highlights in the art world and drew the attention to this space.  Also the whole area around –  “Unter den Linden” – was planned (18. /19. century) as a center of  art and knowledge. So apart from the museums island the nearby Humboldt University, the Staatsoper and the first public library next to it  – founded by Frederic the Great – belong to this complex.

The Gemäldegalerie was also a child of it’s time: just before the wall came down – in1986 – the competition for a new museumsbuilding that should contain the old master paintings was held and the construction continued during the process of the reunification. 1998 this modern building opend it’s doors. From the outside nearly unvisible is the inside with it’s clear proportions and the quiet elegance stunning. There is huge empty hall in the middle with columns and a fountain based on the geometric elements that are also used to create a clear and calming atmosphere that is the perfect surrounding for the enjoyment of the art pieces.

The Rooms are located in a centric circle around this main hall so that two wings are created that go in chronological order starting with the oldest paintings at the entrance and end up with the 18.century at the other side. What is even more astonishing is that we have the south alpine tradition starting with Italy on the left hand the north alpine tradition on the right hand so that there is not just a chronological but also a geographic order what makes the orientation really simple.

And the art pieces are a feast themselves. They have masterpieces of Giotto and Botticelli, Caravaggio and Canaletto but also Lucas Cranach and Rogier van der Weyden or Rembrandt. In quality – although not quantity – this museum is to compare with such as the National Gallery in London or the Prado in Madrid. The smaller size is more an advantage since one has at least the feeling might be possible to see the main part in one day, but the biggest advantage is the lack of tourist – so one can enjoy all the treasures almost alone.

Mara Maroske

Enjoy some of the most important old master paintings like Caravaggio’s “Amor” in an almost private atmosphere together with all the other museums of Berlin. So don’t hesitate to rent apartments in Berlin and meet also its vivid contemporary art scene.

Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Not always do we have the luck to find, for Christmas, a place where they have interesting cultural events and parties of a certain level. Also, sometimes, going home for Christmas means leaving the big cities where we live in to go back to those small towns that we left a long time ago precisely because there was nothing to do there. If this year you’re lucky enough to find yourself on holiday in Berlin for Christmas, we recommend that you don’t miss a great concert which will take place on the 26th of December.

The band is called Suicide Commando, but don’t be fooled by the name: it’s not death metal or verbal contents with references to death and the such, but a band made up by a single self-ironic member, the great Johan Van Roy, who founded it in 1986. That year, when Johan was very young, he began to experiment with electronic music, putting a lot of passion and dedications into his creations. The result of his artistic investigations was one of the best known industrial electro projects of today.

The first recording that Johan made under the name Suicide Commando was in 1989, when he also appeared on the ‘Electronic’ compilation. Back then, Johan was producing his records himself, relying on his capacities and in the possibility of achieving future results. Time, evidently, proved him right. And so, years later, he began to release his music under the Belgian label Kugelblitz Records. However, it was only in 1994 that, finally, the first true CD appeared, called ‘Critical Stage’, and released under another label (the German Off-Beat). ‘Stored Images’ followed in 1995 (which contains ‘See You in Hell’, one of his most popular tracks), ‘Contamination’ (made for the 10th anniversary of the project of the American label Electronic Death Trip, which has disappeared since), and ‘Construct-Destruct’ (1998). From that moment, Suicide Commando had imposed himself on the international music scene as one of the most successful electronica projects.

For that reason, in 2002, a compilation of his greatest hits was published, ‘Anthology’, on the ‘dependent’ label, created by Johan himself who, also, is a tireless worker and artist, always searching for new stimulations and ideas.

His last work is called ‘Implements of Hell’ (2011), and it’s worth a listen, especially if you love this musical style and if you wish to get to know the sound development of a band which has over 25 years artistic experience.

Suicide Commando will be playing at the Postbahnhof in Berlin on the 26th of December 2011 at 8pm. For more information: http://www.suicidecommando.be.

menschauser

If you’re not in the city and you want to give yourself a Christmas trip, we recommend that you rent apartments in Berlin and come to enjoy this concert and the many other attractions that the German capital offers.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Even among the most fanatic defenders of Coldplay, band that in its world current domination campaign will give a concert in the impressive O2 Berlin on 21^st of December (http://www.o2world-berlin.de/ShowEvent/505/Coldplay.html), maybe it would not be too difficult to find people willing to accept that originality is not exactly perhaps their greatest virtues. After all this is a band that has been accused of plagiarism in their last two albums.

Determining whether something is plagiarism, tribute, homage or something similar, is a too complex issue and delicate as to have here the temptation to set ourselves up as judges of any kind. Picasso himself seems to have once said that great artists copy while the geniuses steal directly. After all, theft is one of the most difficult and delicate arts and the value of the action does not consist in the thing itself but in how it is done, or what it is stolen. Here is where the true excellence of which Greek philosophy speaks -at least before the Presocratics and Sophists discredited started with the trend, though very beautiful, Platonic dialogues-offering, by the way, their own grand and spectacular catalog shoplifting.

Therefore, perhaps this is matter without any importance in that history, because we are talking about an album-concept, Coldplay’s latest album sounds so familiar to us: The Rebellion, with a happy ending where love conquers all, miraculously, against the abuses of an oppressive regime set in futuristic dystopia vague starring wild and rebellious kids inspired by the power of rock music. Perhaps the important matter here is that Chris Martin, lead singer of Coldplay (like the rest of the band members, he is the prototype of well-educated guy and properly sensitized, ie just as in Aristotle, that every parent of what is da-called moderate center-left would like as a groom for their daughter, or even forcing some things, child) is significantly out of register giving voice to the leader of this group of young and dangerously subversive indomitable cars stealers, filling the city with riots and burning,  making a mess the streets with their uncontrollable riots.

Or the fact that the story comes served by the usual collection of clichés, generalities and common places that populate the lyrical universe of the musical group, concerned, in its recent statements about having to compete with the young energy of the certainly impressive emerging talents Adele and Justine Bieber.

Of course no one is likely to go to a Coldplay concert or buy one of their records hoping to find the essence of rebellion or poetry, or other hook melodies clothed in some textures able to pass through sophisticated and stylish, even at his most pretentious moments that will be always present.

Paul Oilzum

Xyloto Mylo, album in which most important song, has the brightest dazzling appearance of Rihanna, in a successful electro-pop called Princess of China has a good portion of them, for Coldplay fans to feel adequately satisfied. If you’re one of them, rent apartments in Berlin and do not miss their highly anticipated concert.

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Translated by: Hans
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Without doubt, one of the most awaited concerts in the ever-vibrant musical scene in Berlin will be the one of the British indie rock band The Vaccines at the Fritz der Club im Postbahnhof on the 18th of December  (http://www.fritzclub.com/index/cmd/catalogue_details/modul/portal/kernwert/programm/block/catalogue_2/field/689/show/20/search//. And it won’t be because of the great stir which the band has created in the last two years, a period during which, since their surprise apperance on Youtube with the demo ‘If you Wanna’ in August 2010, they’ve become one of the most acclaimed bands in the UK, so say the achievements such as being the first band to appear in the prestigious TV programme of Jules Holland without having released a single on the market, having been chosen as a support act for Arcade Fire or their friends the Arctic Monkeys, being the front cover of the famous English music magazine, the NME, or having had more success in the British charts during 2011 than any other new band.

With the previous statements being indicative that the garage rock of The Vaccines, where it’s inevitable to listen to sensible similarities to bands such as Jesus and Mary Chain, The Ramones and, especially, The Strokes (one of whose members, Albert Hammond Jr produced ‘Tiger Blood’, their latest single to date), is one of the most acclaimed sounds on the indie music scene, which makes the concert in Berlin somewhat double special due to the fact that a large part of the band’s international tour this year (including the American and Japanese tours and most of the European one) had to be cancelled due to the serious singing problems of the singer Justin Young, whose throat has suffered up to three operations in the last nine months.

Having overcome the aforementioned problems and once the mandatory recuperation time prescribed by doctors had passed, The Vaccines came back on the last 26th of October with more will and strength than ever, and they’ve expressed their wish that the quality and the commitment of the remaining concerts is in some way a compensation for all the ones that they’ve cancelled in the last few months.

They’ll have Trailer Trash Tracys as their support band, a London quartet who come from the shoegaze sound and atmosphere, creators of songs with fragile, dreamy and ghostly melodies surrounded in dissonant guitar characteristics which incur occasionally in surf-pop territory, Dick Dale or The Shadows style.

Justin Young, who during a period of time dedicated himself to nu folk with the name Jay Jay Pistolet, has stated on different occasions that his two heroes as a boy, both for music and image reasons, were Elvis Presley and Kurt Cobain, which in some way explains his heartfelt way of experiencing his live performances as a high intensity experience.

Paul Oilzum

See it for yourself if you rent apartments in Berlin around those dates. If a concert of The Vaccines is always an attractive plan to combat the ingrained Sunday sadness, this return after the forced break lifts even more the expectations of a unique night.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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On the 16th of December, the German DJ and producer Paul Kalkbrenner will be playing at the Arena Berlin Treptow, where he’ll present his latest album ‘Icke Wieder’, with which he considers he’s arrived to his musical maturity due to the depth and the complexity of his sound mixes. To carry out this album, Kalkbrenner retired for a whole year from the turntables in clubs searching for the tranquillity that creation requires.

Paul Kalkbrenner was born in Leipzig, Germany. His musical studies began in 1985 with the instrumental formation of the trumpet, for which he had a long theoretical preparation in music, construction and sol-fa lectures which he ended successfully in 1990. Since then he dedicated himself to making small musical works, but his aim wasn’t in traditional music.

It was in 1994 when he began his live act career, a variant of DJs who differentiate themselves because not only do they sample but they work live, adding sounds and instruments live, which requires a higher level of knowledge to intervene in the music. At the end of the 90s, more specifically in 1999, he released his first EP, ‘Largesse’. His first pseudonym was Paul db+, and under that name he made his first release.

His creative capacity as well as his incessant work rate to reach his goals took him to record in the same year, 1999, his second EP, Friedrichshain, with the Berlin-based label BPitch Control.

But his interests in music were so broad that in 1996 he’d already began his career as an independent producer with the aim of giving shape to a musical work and to professionalize his activities in music. The capacities that he showed meant that many TV channels noticed him. Through those jobs with ARD, Premiere, ZDF and other companies, he developed an enormous capacity in sound editing, which has finally been a plus in his musical work.

Despite the best about Kalkbrenner is the whole range of creation and production, on stage, he’s a monster of electronic music. In his sets he uses a synthesizer software and a sequencer, together with a MIDI controller, hardware synthesizers and beat machines. A wonderful technical architecture which give his sets stage-musical excellence.

His styles are linked to minimal, techno, minimal techno and the so called IDM, or Intelligent Dance Music, born in Detroit in the 90s and which has styles such as ambient and Detroit techno.

He’s one of the DJs who features permanently in the programmes of the best European and world festivals. Since his beginnings he’s played in festivals such as Fusion Festival, Nature One, Melt, Mayday, SonneMondSterne and other important events.

Film has also been kind to Kalkbrenner. In 2008 he participated as the main character in the film ‘Berlin Calling’, and together with his brother Fritz, they created and produced the background track ‘Sky and Sand’. The whole musical production of this film was edited in the album which has the same name as the film.

For more information: http://www.arenaberlin.de/event.aspx?eventId=349533

Nancy Guzman

Remember that if you feel tempted to attend this show, you must book your tickets in advance. In the same way, I recommend that you rent apartments in Berlin in good time, so that you have the best stay and you can enjoy this city with a Christmassy feel.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Until the 15th of January at the Contemporary Art Museum at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, there’s the exhibition ‘Cloud Cities’ by the Frankfurt-based Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno. The exhibition commissioned by Britta Schmitz with the help of Katharina Schlütler, is produced by the Freunde National Galerie, sponsored by Dornbracht Installation 2011 and by the donation of works of the collection of the National Gallery in London.

The work of Saraceno is a spectacular aerial installation, where thousands of transparent bubbles flote with the breeze. An astonishing mobile architecture, an oneiric game with shapes, textures, and the illusion of observing in an inverted way. Saraceno installs the illusion of aerial gardens, men who flote on pristine colour bubbles and objects suspended in the air.

The installation ‘Cloud Cities’ expresses the human dream of being suspended in mid air and floating softly and the view of not material limits. These are 24 futuristic works that as an ensemble are an aerial city and they transform into a single installation.

Tomás Saraceno was born in Tucumán, Argentina, in 1973. He’s an architect from the University of Buenos Aires and an artist by choice. His dream of installing a collective cloud on the net, taking new paradigms which move humanity through social networks, is one of his most ambitious projects, because it goes further than his creation, making of these great floating spheres a referent of what society is today.

Although he denies his role as an architect, in his work he denotes a different type of architecture, ludic, full of dreams, where science, geometry and even physics play a role in its creation. It’s hard to typecast, maybe it just has to be seen and enjoy its transparent and floating constructions to have the pleasure of appreciating the creation and its beauty.

In them he unfolds a single concept, freedom, that human dream which has moved thousands of men and efforts to reach it, and which still avoids us sometimes. He believes that the artist’s place is nature, and that’s why he builds spider webs, floating gardens and floating museums with objects or items which represent the whole world in its spheres.

He’s a kinetic and luminous sculptor who participated as the founder of the Madí movement. He explains his work by pointing out that it’s not an attempt to beat the laws of nature, like the force of gravity, but of creating the sustainable energy which bases itself in science, and for that he’s worked with NASA scientists who helped him overcome his limits, just like the Argentine-Hungarian artist Kosice, a forerunner of kinetic art, did in a manifest in the early 70s.

Saraceno’s work isn’t just beautiful but it also shows us a dimension of kinetic art which connects dreams with science.

For more information: http://www.smb.museum/smb/kalender/details.php?objID=29989

Nancy Guzman

A great chance to make the most of the autumn days and rent apartments in Berlin to enjoy this extraordinary exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof, the old station remodeled as a museum.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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The National Gallery Museum in Berlin exhibits, until the 9th of January, the exhibition ‘The Collection of the Banker J.H. Wagener’ in the mark of the 150th anniversary of the handing over of the collection which lead to the origin of the museum and the richest art collection of the 19th century.

The long construction process of the National Gallery Museum in Berlin began with great discussions impulsed by sectors who believed that a great city which was to be respected should have a museum to preserve and exhibit paintings from this century and previous centuries. Under this influx, in 1861, they created a gallery for art which didn’t have the museum’s character but would boost its creation.

It was the generosity and futuristic vision of the Berlin banker Joachim Heinrich Wagener, who had accumulated wealth and works of art for forty years, which gave him the boost to create the museum and donate his 19th century painting collection, under the condition that they built a museum and they preserved it for future generations.

The King of Prussia, facing this disjunctive generosity, felt obliged to accept the donation of 262 paintings in March 1861, and he ordered the construction of the palace which holds the National Gallery Museum of Berlin, which was finished 15 years later, in 1876. The first exhibition was made with this collection of paintings and it was called ‘Wagener and the National Gallery’.

This exhibition is an opening to the dialogue on the role that museums have had through history and their collections, since Wagener’s aim was to leave his collection for future generations so that they would appreciate the value that these works contained. A heritage purpose which opens today to be exhibited in its wholeness.

The exhibition has 140 works, all of them paintings, which reflect the life and times of the 19th century, and which show the outlook of the artist of the time in Europe and Germany. In 1815, his collection took the shape of romanticism, with landscape and architecture paintings, with a great sense of realism.

For the occasion they also re-printed the original catalogue from 1861, with rich illustrations and comments which paint a picture of the thought on art at that time. Also, the central archive contains another archive with a collection of texts of the artists that Wagener gave to the museum to be exhibited. On this occasion, the museum organized a small exhibition with a selection of them.

This exceptional exhibition which contains works from great German artists like Peter Von Cornelius, Friedrich Overbeck or Philipp Schadow among others, is an achievement of a public and private alliance which enhances the museum task of the National Gallery of Berlin.

For more information: http://www.smb.museum/smb/kalender/details.php?objID=29805&datum=23.03.2011+00:00

Nancy Guzman

Leave behind that tiredness which usually arrives at the end of the year and the commitments that it brings. Rent apartments in Berlin and enjoy a city where there’s European history written in each corner, and you can also take advantage and buy a few Christmas gifts.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Alison “VV” Mosshart and Jamie “Hotel” Hince are famous in the  music scene since long ago. Both had bands in the past or had been producers before joining up together to initiate  a project called The Kills which rapidly became one of the bands with a solid reputation in  the alternative music scene. The Kills were formed in 2000 and, after four albums, they managed to obtain the love of not only the world’s biggest critics but also of thousands of fans filling stadiums every time they played a gig.

The first three albums of the group were “Keep On Your Mean Side”, “No Wow” and “Midnight Boom” and in April this year, they released their latest production named “Blood Pressure”.

One of the most interesting features about The Kills is their diversity as one of its members is from the U.S. while the other from Britain. Mosshart, before embarking on this project, played in a punk band called Discount in Florida while Hince, on the other hand, was in a few  British bands such Fiji, Scarfo and Bluth Power.

After meeting in a hotel and seeing that both were group-less because their respective bands had separated the two artists created what is now known as The Kills. Both spent a lot of time writing lyrics that were sent back and forth via email due to the distance that separated them.

After rehearsing  and doing a few live shows they found out  that they had the time to record their first album and did so within two weeks. The rest has become history and now the duo is one of the most important ones in the alternative music scene from around the world.

More information: http://www.c-halle.com/events/date/2011-11-30/The%20Kills

C-Halle: Columbiadamm 13-21, 10965 Berlin, Germany

MiLK

If you want to enjoy the power of Mosshart and the quality of Hince’s guitar you can rent apartments in Berlin and enjoy this presentation on the 30th of November at the C-Halle.

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Translated by: Marc
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Two places that, were part of one of the saddest stories of humanity and today are an important part of a society that has learnt how to look at its mistakes in the face, growing and becoming a cosmopolitan country, open and culturally rich. I speak of Sachsenhausen, a former German concentration camp and the Stasi Museum in Berlin.

The first of these museums operated as a concentration camp since 1936. In the beginning, Sachsenhausen was a camp of political prisoners and opponents of the Nazi regime, among these, there were evident distinctions in the way they dressed, this way the Jews were the most dangerous, then there were different levels according to nationalities, social groups and beliefs such as gypsies, homosexuals, blacks and Jehovah’s Witnesses. The camp was home to more than 140,000 prisoners of whom over 30,000 were killed. Among the prisoners, there were a large number of women and children who were carried horrific medical experiments out. Another fact is remembered by this concentration camp, located at about 30 kilometers from Berlin in the town of Oranienburg, was the money counterfeiting by a group of Jewish prisoners who were selected for this mission, a fact that today is famous for the film “the Counterfeiters”. This camp ran until May 2, 1945 when Soviet troops released it, the exact time of this event is marked today in the entrance to the camp, which in later years operated as a gas chamber killing center.

Today Sachsenhausen is a open-air museum that holds many of these buildings of terror to the knowledge of all interested people, it is a nice place to visit, for sure, but we are facing one of the most difficult episodes of human history in a clear and direct way. Within its grounds there are reconstructions of the pavilions where the prisoners survived, as well as a museum with photographs from the period, costumes, weapons, etc.. And still remain the foundation of gas chambers and halls of medical experimentation. Guided tours of the Museum Sachsenhausen performed in almost every language and depart from the Brandenburg Gate at 11:00 hrs in the morning twice a week.

On the other hand, the Stasi Museum is located at the headquarters of the former GDR. It is a museum that impact its visitors, first because it keeps intact many of the high command offices of the ministry and because of the large number of artifacts, photographs and documents of intelligence that were made in the political life of the citizens of East Berlin in order to avoid anti-considered subversive behavior. The museum is now undoubtedly one of the most interesting of the city of Berlin, opened in 1990 in order to keep alive the social memory of the years of repression, like Sachsenhausen, two museums of events that no one wants to live ever again, that’s where its value lies, it avoids the death of social historical memory. Two museums that are recommended for your next visit to Berlin.

For more information visit:

http://www.stiftung-bg.de/gums/en/index.htm

http://www.stasimuseum.de/

Luz Obscura

An important part of society’s knowledge is to try to understand its history, for this there are places like Sachsenhausen and the Stasi Museum. Rent apartments in Berlin and visit these two impressive museums.

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Translated by: Hans
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The figure of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963) will always be shrouded in mystery. Not only because of its mysterious murder, which continue to proliferate on all kinds of conspiracy theories that have filled thousands of books around the world. Also, apart from all these, the years that preceded his arrival in the world are involved in a controversy for allegedly supported his family connections with the Irish mafia and the most dubious manner in which his father made a fabulous fortune speculating advantage in the bag the uncontrolled situation that caused the financial crash of 1929, who also knew how to get an extraordinary revenue.

His undeniable attractiveness, charisma and oratorical skills, coupled with the vigor of his youth, unusual in the political life of the highest levels at the time, helped him to crystallize in his figure the best hopes of the American dream, determined not to turn back to the past nightmare years of war and ideological strength, illustrated by phenomena such as McCarthyism during the first postwar years.

Although in comparison with the extreme conservatism dominant in much of the United States, Kennedy went down in history as one of the figures of civilized American leftism, his management period had some shadows, such as a certain ambiguity, which is often justified by reference to strategic considerations, the struggling of the civil rights that was taking place across America and the assumption of the apocalyptic tone of the Cold War, was the perfect scenario for the United States to get the idea of the necessity of the American hegemony in the world, making an understandable concern of defending against a possible Soviet attack of  most Western bloc countries, into a real crusader ideology dominant in the realpolitik of international power confrontation, whose ultimate goal was the destruction of communism, despite the fact that the Soviet position after the war was essentially defensive and aggressive, but in favor of creating a mixed economy of states governed by parliamentary democracies outside the Soviet Union.

In fact, perhaps the most memorable moment of Kennedy’s political career, was his speech in West Berlin in June 1963, which concluded with hundreds of thousands of the so-called free world, in contrast to the oppression experienced in the other side of the wall , he expressed solidarity with the inhabitants of the city, while pronouncing the famous German phrase (which paraphrased the Latin sentence referring to ancient Roman civilization) “I am a Berliner.”

It is therefore not surprising that Kennedy has a museum in Berlin http://www.thekennedys.de/english/museum/museum1.html dedicated to his memory, which houses one of the most complete collections of photographs, official documents, as well as private and personal recollections of the fascinating Kennedy family.

Paul Oilzum

Regardless of the considerations that can be done about them, it is hard to deny the importance that Kennedy has in the contemporary history, reaching an almost heroic and legendary status, also sanctioned by the tragic death of some of his most relevant members. If you are near Kennedy Museum when renting apartments in Berlin you will see that his power of attraction remains intact.

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Translated by: Hans
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