History

One hundred and twenty years of Chausseestrasse 102

Inn, ballrooms, casino, Ballhaus. Factory, church congregation, hostel. One plot of land, many lives.

Ballhaus Berlin

Ballhaus Berlin came into being in Feuerland, fire country, as Berliners once called Chausseestrasse, where the factories of the industrial age stood side by side with smoking chimneys, showers of sparks and hammering, in the middle of a half-world of poorhouses, cemeteries and meagre workers' housing. Later Prussian barracks and Berlin tenements replaced them. And with them came Ballhaus Berlin, which opened in 1905 at Chausseestrasse 102, the Chausseepalast of the day, first as the inn and coffee garden Zum Alten Baden.

As Schwankes Festsaele it survived the turmoil of war and revolution and lived through the great age of the pleasure palaces that began in Berlin in the late twenties and is legend today in formats such as Babylon Berlin. By then Chausseestrasse had turned from a poor quarter into the City of the North: a busy commercial district by day, a pleasure mile for everyone by night. Until the war put an end to celebrating.

The establishments housed here and the flat of the factory owner Fuchs were destroyed by Allied bombers in the last days of the Second World War. And so it remained: the beer garden of the Ballhaus is still the last remaining gap in the built row of Chausseestrasse.

The Ballhaus survived nonetheless. In 1949 it reopened as Behrens Casino. The programme was now the cosy Old German Ball, daily except Monday and Tuesday, until the house became public property in 1975. Restored and renamed Ballhaus Berlin, it enjoyed golden years under the couple Gottschlich: partner dancing under the mirror ball, telephone flirting and ladies' choice, sparkling wine and whiskey cola, at a turnover of a million East German marks a year, until it slowly ebbed away after reunification.

In 2014 the house passed to the present Ballhaus team, who fell for its charm on their first visit. A visitor from the old days would recognise the carefully restored architecture at once: balcony and spiral staircase, lamps and table telephones, bar and mirror ball from more than a hundred years of ballroom history. The old ghosts, whether in pince-nez or Charleston dress, still drift through the room now and then. We make sure they stay.

Bierstube Alt Berlin

Bierstube Alt Berlin was not always here. It stood two kilometres away, at Muenzstrasse 23, on the red-light street that gave the establishment its nickname Zu den 3 Ritzen from the twenties onward, along with a colourful crowd of often shady night owls. Here the pub, opened in 1893, survived the bombing nights of the war apart from one looting, and later came under East German administration.

From 1960, under the landlords Heinz and Inge, it became one of the addresses of East Berlin nightlife. Bertolt Brecht, stars and starlets of the Friedrichstadtpalast and many others who thought something of themselves washed up at its bar. Its reputation survived reunification too. Now it was Berlin scene regulars, tourists and adopted Berliners such as David Bowie or Quentin Tarantino who took a, usually not quite so, quick drink at Heinz and Inge's and discovered their love of pickled egg and meatball.

After Heinz died, Inge handed over to Thilo Link in 2010. Although the pub was still booming, 2014 was the end, at least in the building at Muenzstrasse 23, for which an investor had other plans. Old regulars saved chairs, tables, wall panelling and back bar from the wrecking ball. In 2016 the Ballhaus team brought them to Chausseestrasse 102, where two unremarkable storerooms turned into the new Alt Berlin. After the reopening on 27 May 2016 the crowd returned as well.

Hostel Ballhaus Berlin

Opened in 1997, Hostel Ballhaus Berlin is not only one of the oldest in Germany but, thanks to its industrial-age history, also one of the most beautiful. Where it welcomes guests from around the world today, the Berliner Georg Albert Fuchs (1883 to 1951) ran a flourishing business with more than a hundred employees from 1912. Schmidt & Fuchs GmbH made dental equipment and instruments as well as hydraulic furniture and sold them across the globe.

War economy and bombing brought business to a halt in the forties, and the front building with the Fuchs family's living quarters was destroyed. After Georg Fuchs died his wife Edith carried the company on as a shop for dental supplies, until the building of the Wall and the economic conditions of East Germany forced her to give up. On the second floor of the factory, the congregation of the Gnadenkirche, bombed out during the war, found a home from 1951 to 2009, side by side with a meeting place for Russian Germans.

The green and white glazed brick facade, the broad staircases and long corridors still recall the eventful history of the building. The modern fit-out of the rooms with works by contemporary artists connects it to the present. Works by Jim Avignon, Ella Guru, Kai Stuth, Steffen Seeger, Ellen von Unwerth and El Bocho can be found here.

Beer garden

There has always been a small beer garden here; it belonged to the concert and dining house once based in the front building of Chausseestrasse 102. But the courtyard and beer garden were not always as quiet and idyllic as they seem on a mild summer day. Quite the opposite.

In the twenties, where tables, terrace furniture and the fragments of the Berlin Wall stand today, the delivery vans of the Schmidt & Fuchs factory pushed through the courtyard from early until late, loaded with hydraulic chairs, dental lamps and operating tables, past hammering and screwing employees. From the street, until 1918, came the ringing and boot-clatter of soldiers marching past from the neighbouring Maikaefer barracks. And when the evening bowed, the first night owls were already heading for Schwankes Festsaele in the rear building, often to leave it again at dawn, noisy and laughing.