Berlin’s guerrilla gatekeepers

By Andreas Kluth

“We are speaking as Berliners,” the two Brazilians tell me proudly, as they lounge in a shared workspace in the edgy Neukölln district. They’re speaking English because their German isn’t good enough yet. But that hardly matters, for Berlin is the new New York: no matter where you’re from, once you show up and don appropriately grungy clothes, you belong to the city and it to you – especially if you’re young and creative with your facial hair, as these two are. I’m meeting them to talk about a little project they’ve started, not for money but out of conviction, which is why they prefer to remain incognito. Technically it classifies as vandalism, but it’s vandalism in the interests of the beauty and design of Germany’s most famous monument.

The Brandenburg Gate is the symbol of Berlin. Built by a Prussian king during the French revolution, it has Doric columns that support a quadriga on top, in which the goddess Nike brings triumph back to the city from the west on her four-horsed chariot. In effect she is Germany’s Forrest Gump, eerily present whenever anything interesting happens in German history.