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Cut. Copy. Paste.
How European Counterculture Shapes Space

Berlin, Germany



Berlin’s industrial development accelerated dramatically in the second half of the 19th century, transforming it from a royal capital into one of Europe’s major manufacturing centers. Following German unification in 1871, companies like Siemens, AEG, and Borsig established enormous factory complexes that employed tens of thousands of workers, while neighborhoods like Wedding, Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, and Prenzlauer Berg developed as dense working-class districts. The city’s manufacturing landscape featured large-scale brick factory buildings as well as Hinterhof workshops hidden in residential courtyards, creating a mixed urban fabric of living and working spaces.

Berlin’s industrial economy was fundamentally disrupted by World War II and the subsequent division of the city. West Berlin, isolated within East Germany, experienced gradual deindustrialization through the 1970s and 1980s. East Berlin sustained state-run industrial production but with aging infrastructure. The fall of the Wall in 1989 and reunification in 1990 triggered catastrophic collapse of East German industry as factories could not compete in the market economy, leaving vast swathes of Berlin—particularly in eastern neighborhoods—filled with abandoned factories, warehouses, and industrial complexes.

The 1990s became an extraordinary moment as this massive inventory of empty industrial space coincided with political upheaval and economic uncertainty. Property ownership was often unclear, rents were extremely low or non-existent in squatted spaces, and authorities were overwhelmed or permissive, creating conditions for unprecedented experimentation. Abandoned factories became techno clubs, squatted housing projects, artist studios, and alternative cultural centers, establishing Berlin’s reputation as a center of underground culture. This period of relatively unregulated occupation would gradually give way to formalization and gentrification, but the legacy of Berlin’s post-wall industrial vacancy fundamentally shaped the city’s cultural landscape.


Kunstquartier Bethanian



Kunstquartier Bethanien occupies a former hospital in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, representing one of the city’s earliest and most influential examples of grassroots cultural conversion. The imposing neo-Gothic building was constructed in 1847 as the Central Deaconess Institute and Hospital Bethanien, commissioned by Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. For over a century, it served as a prominent healthcare facility in Kreuzberg, functioning as both hospital and medical training center. After the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the hospital’s patient base declined sharply as access from the eastern sector disappeared, and by 1968 the building was heavily in debt and slated for demolition to make way for social housing. This sparked the “Battle for Bethanien,” as activists, citizen initiative groups, and preservationists mobilized to save the historic structure. Protests throughout 1969 succeeded in securing protected building status, but the hospital nevertheless closed in 1970 when the Evangelical Church sold it to the state. The question of what would happen to the massive structure remained urgent and contested.

In the early 1970s, activists and artists began occupying parts of the building, establishing Bethanien as one of Berlin’s first art squats and a symbol of the city’s emerging alternative culture movement. In 1973, rather than evicting the occupiers, authorities agreed to repurpose the building complex as a center for independent arts and culture, creating a meeting point for artists, squatters, activists, and socially engaged creatives. Several large cultural institutions formed within the main building, including the communal gallery Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, the BBK Berlin printing workshop, and the Music School Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, most of which remain active today. The Künstlerhaus Bethanien, which played the most influential role in developing a platform for avant-garde experimental art during the 1970s and 1980s, organized international artist residency programs that launched numerous careers and built the center’s reputation as a leading platform for cultural exchange. From the 1970s onward, Bethanien became synonymous with cutting-edge artistic achievement across theater, dance, visual arts, literature, music, and performance, functioning not only as a place where art was presented but as a stage for open cultural, social, and political dialogue where alternative society was being born. Today, more than 25 institutions occupy the building alongside artist studios, galleries, and exhibition spaces, making it one of the last surviving examples of its kind in Berlin. The interconnectedness of art and activism that defined Bethanien’s early years continues, particularly through Kunstraum Kreuzberg/ Bethanien’s focus on current social and cultural issues with local relevance, maintaining the building’s legacy as a space where artistic freedom intersects with political and social engagement.


Haus Schwarzenberg



Haus Schwarzenberg occupies a cluster of buildings/courtyards in Berlin-Mitte. The site carries profound historical significance from World War II, when it housed Otto Weidt’s brush and broom workshop. Weidt, an anarchist and pacifist who despised the Nazis, employed mostly Jewish workers from 1940 onward, claiming their labor was essential for war production since his brushes were purchased by the German army. In reality, Weidt used his business as cover to protect his employees from deportation, bribing Gestapo officials with black market champagne and cigars, falsifying documents and passports, and hiding workers in a secret room behind a backless wardrobe when raids occurred. Though most of his employees were eventually discovered and deported, Weidt never ceased his resistance efforts. In 1971, Yad Vashem recognized him as “Righteous Among the Nations.” After reunification in 1990, when much of the surrounding area was rapidly bought up and redeveloped for upscale retail and tourism, a coalition of artists and activists secured the buildings to maintain them as autonomous cultural space, establishing the site as a memorial and cultural center.

Haus Schwarzenberg continues to operate today as one of central Berlin’s rare surviving examples of alternative cultural space in an area that is now dominated by commerce. The courtyards house the Museum Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt, which preserves Weidt’s original workshop rooms, as well as the Anne Frank Center, galleries, cinemas, bars, and studios. The walls remain covered in graffiti and art, the aesthetic intentionally chaotic and unfinished, rejecting the polished restoration that characterizes the surrounding blocks. 

However, Haus Schwarzenberg exists under constant pressure: surrounded by high-rent developments and tourist traffic, its survival depends on continued organization and the legal protections it achieved after facing eviction threats in the early 2000s. The site represents a defiant assertion that alternative culture and historical memory can coexist in the city center, yet its isolation as a small holdout in an otherwise gentrified quarter raises questions about whether such spaces can truly thrive when severed from broader communities of resistance.

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