Bar Babette

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The pavilion of the Bar Babette, Karl-Marx-Allee 36 in Berlin-Mitte

The Bar Babette was a 2003 founded a bar and a public meeting room for art and culture at the Karl-Marx-Allee 36 in Berlin district of Mitte . It was located in a pavilion built in 1962 that Josef Kaiser had designed together with Horst Bauer . During the GDR times, the Babette cosmetic salon was operated there. After 15 years, the Babette bar had to close.

history

The building is a flat-roofed glass cube in skeleton construction , the load-bearing reinforced concrete supports and the base of which are clad with light green tiles . It is one of five pavilions that belong to a building ensemble with the Café Moskau and the Kino International and is a listed building . Unlike the neo - baroque buildings in the first section of Karl-Marx-Allee, it is designed in the style of a “modernized” reminiscent of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the Bauhaus . Towards the street and on the side facades, it is fully glazed and appears to be a continuation of the public space. It measures twelve meters square with a seven-meter high ceiling. A floating staircase leads from the ground floor to the open gallery floor. Originally planned as a sales and service pavilion, from 1965 until the political change, it served as a sales point for international and exquisite GDR perfume products and as a beauty salon, even then with the name Babette , under which it is also registered as a monument. With the unification agreement of 1990, the pavilion was managed by the Treuhandanstalt , later rented out by TLG Immobilien , which sold it to Nicolas Berggruen Holdings GmbH in 2008 . After 1992 the building was empty.

An operator collective around the artist and curator Maik Schierloh leased the former beauty salon and founded the Babette bar in 2003 with a low- threshold project space for exhibitions, concerts, book and film presentations. It is furnished in the style of the 1960s and 1970s. Artists living in Berlin exhibited their work there in group or individual shows and celebrated parties, including Thea Djordjadze , Gregor Hildebrandt , Karin Sander and the network of female painters . 190 events had taken place by 2018. The Babette bar was also known as a neighborhood café that Berliners frequented regardless of social status , occupation or age. Georg Diez wrote: "Artists meet here and the lost and strollers who walk along the boulevard [...] it is a place like this city in its best moments, a little lost and all in all pretty wonderful."

In mid-2017, Berggruen Holdings announced that it would not extend the lease for Babette . The glass pavilion should be made available to the Café Moscow . There was no willingness to negotiate. The Café Moskau , also a formerly popular meeting had Berggruen 2007 by TLG Immobilien acquired and converted to its restoration to a place that is rented out for private events exclusively to well-paying prospects. The art critic Gesine Borcherdt described the building as "a perfect example of how a historic restaurant, open to the citizens of the city, mutated into a hermetic and dead venue". The same can be expected for the Babette bar . This is about more than gentrification , said Georg Diez. It is about the fundamental question, "which responsibility should be attached to property".

Artists, visitors and residents of Bar Babette as well as politicians protested against the threatened closure. The District Councilor for Urban Development, Ephraim Gothe, urged Berggruen Holdings to reconsider their decision. He told the Berliner Zeitung that future use as a venue for closed societies would not make any contribution to life in the neighborhood. “It is everyday occurrence in a big city that a bar is quit. The case of Bar Babette is significant, however. It was able to develop an endearing highlight in the Karl-Marx-Allee compared to Kino International. ”The district mayor of Berlin-Mitte, Stephan von Dassel , was also committed to the Babette bar . He did not respond to the letter from the district office to Nicolas Berggruen. An online petition entitled “Babette needs a happy ending!” Received 900 signatures within four days in January 2018. But the 11,000 signatures that are essential to request a statement from the owner did not come together. At the end of September 2018, the Babette bar had to close. According to Schierloh, the name had been registered with the German Patent and Trademark Office . The for Berggruen Holdings belonging Café Moskau GmbH took over the Pavilion on October 1, 2018 and provides him since named Salon Babette as "event location" on request to.

Initially only intended as a temporary solution, the bar at the new location in the Kindl Center for Contemporary Art , the former brewhouse of the Kindl brewery in Neukölln , has been run by the operator Schierloh as the Café Kosmetiksalon Babette since October 2018 .

publication

  • Bar Babette beauty parlor. Event and exhibition chronology 2003–2013, with texts by Peter Lang and Thibaut de Ruyter, ed. v. Maik Schierloh (95 p., PDF for download )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry in the monument database of the Landesdenkmalamt Berlin
  2. ↑ a b c d e Anna-Lena Wenzel: Off for the Babette bar . At: Kultur Mitte (published by Department of Art and Culture, District Office Berlin-Mitte)
  3. ↑ a b c d Irene Bazinger: Berlin cult bar. Save Babette! . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 1, 2018.
  4. ^ A b Susanne Messmer: Bar Babette and the name dispute. Now it's about the name . In: Die Tageszeitung , December 17, 2018.
  5. ↑ According to the entry Bar Babette on the Architectuul.com website, the pavilion was still a beauty salon until 1992.
  6. ↑ Maik Schierloh at kunstaspekte.de , accessed on March 15, 2019 (English).
  7. ↑ a b Kito Nedo: 10 years of Bar Babette - Happy Birthday! Your days, our nights . In: Berliner Zeitung , February 14, 2014.
  8. ^ A b Gesine Borcherdt: "Bar Babette". How Berlin pissed off its creative minds . In: Die Welt , September 25, 2017.
  9. ↑ a b Georg Diez: Gentrification. The city is not a place for egoists . At: Spiegel Online , August 26, 2018.
  10. ^ Christian Gehrke: Art meeting. Bar Babette has to close in 2018 . In: Berliner Zeitung , September 17, 2017.
  11. ↑ Ralf Schönball: The lease for the Bar Babette is not being extended . In: Der Tagesspiegel , September 16, 2017.
  12. ^ Ingeborg Ruthe: Art market. The million dollar game. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , January 15, 2018.
  13. ↑ Leonie Schlick: lease not extended: cultural meeting point in Mitte is threatened . In: Berliner Morgenpost , September 18, 2017.
  14. ^ Christian Latz: Because of Bar-Babette closure: Mayor goes to investor . In: Berliner Morgenpost , October 31, 2018.
  15. ↑ Berggruen does not extend the rental agreement. Online petition fights for the preservation of the Babette bar . At: RBB24 , January 18, 2018.
  16. ↑ Berlin off-space. Dispute over the name “Salon Babette”. In: Monopoly , December 18, 2018
  17. ^ Salon Babette. The little sister of Cafe Moscow . Website cafemoskau.com
  18. ↑ Nina Kugler: New home for the Bar Babette . In: Berliner Morgenpost , October 27, 2018.
  19. ↑ Viola Blomberg: The cult bar Babette is now a café . In: QIEZ , October 18, 2018.