Pictures of a District

“This Kreuzberg was so broken-down, with all these traces of war, it didn’t seem finished. I came to the city at the age of six, and back then, Berlin was a ruin.“

— Evelyn Kuwertz

Piles of rubble, firewalls, vacant lots and decaying old buildings: the works presented here vividly depict Kreuzbergin the 1970s and 1980s, a neighbourhood that was neglected in terms of housing policy and urban development. However, due to vacancies and low rents, the district offered migrant workers one of the few opportunities to find housing outside of company dormitories. Besides squatters and students, artists were also drawn to Kreuzberg; they worked in studios and captured their observations of the neighbourhood in their works.

From this diversity and density emerged a unique structure sustained by self-organisation and lived solidarity. Residents handled necessary renovations and repairs themselves, revitalising vacant premises with cafés, shops and collective spaces.

Yet, access to housing in West Berlin became increasingly difficult. In 1975, a residency ban prohibited non- citizens of the European Community from moving to Kreuzberg, Wedding or Tiergarten to join their families. From 1978 onwards, no more than 10% of the city’s housing Units were permitted to be rented to non-citizens. Discrimination manifested in both legal and interpersonal ways: by 1980, nearly all rental advertisements in West Berlin specified “Germans only”. Migrant residents of Kreuzberg responded to the displacement and exclusion with resistance. Their businesses left a lasting mark on the cityscape, and building facades became canvases for political and artistic messages. These developments turned Kreuzberg into a legendary place known far beyond West Germany’s borders as a catalyst for cultural movements.

Grazia Eminente

In 1976, Grazia Eminente published a series of black-and-white photographs in a joint catalogue with her partner, Eduardo Arroyo. Titled Kreuzberg 1976, the book was created to mark Arroyo’s participation in the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program between 1975 and 1976, during which Eminente accompanied him to West Berlin. Her photographs observe the immediate surroundings without judgment, capturing shop windows, storefronts, Egyptian antiquities in the display cases of Berlin museums and people on the district’s streets. These quiet witnesses document the changes brought by migration and its presence in everyday urban life – from the Imperial travel agency offering direct flights between Berlin and Istanbul, to a fast-food restaurant serving both baklava and pizza.

Mathèos Florakis

Schlesisches Tor. Die Mauer

After studying painting at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris, Mathèos Florakis returned to Greece in 1964. In the 1970s, he moved to West Berlin, where he started producing prints from his studio in Kreuzberg. The works from this period depict imagery ranging from the realistic to the fantastic, combining elements of Kreuzberg’s urban environment with natural landscapes and remembered images. Into these at times bleak graphic works, Florakis integrated mythological and poetic symbols from literature and philosophy. The caged ravens in Schlesisches Tor. Die Mauer can be interpreted as bearers of ill fortune, gesturing to the partitioning of Germany. Many of his works from the 1970s feature Kreuzberg’s courtyards and urban architecture, still heavily scarred from the ravages of the Second World War.

Three framed artworks on a white wall, spaced apart from each other.

Kreuzberg: Kunst und Migration seit 1960, installation view, Gropius Bau, 2026

Abuzer Güler

In der Fremde

Abuzer Güler arrived in West Berlin in the 1970s and studied painting at the Hochschule der Künste. In his works, personal memories of his Alevi-Kurdish family in Turkey overlap with everyday observations in Kreuzberg in the 1980s. In In der Fremde, women of different ages merge with building facades and architectural elements. Described by the artist as “supporting pillars of the family”, they assert their place in the urban fabric with a confident posture. At the same time, their presence points to political debates surrounding women perceived as migrants: then as now, discussions of cultural identity, integration and self-determination are negotiated through them.

Aykan Safoğlu

Paydos (End of Work)

It was during his studies at the Berlin University of the Arts that Aykan Safoğlu first noticed the political murals on shop shutters in Kreuzberg. Partly created using screen-printing techniques, he describes them as “surfaces of political desire”. Paydos (Feierabend) reflects on the medium of screen printing while putting the artistic tool itself on display. The screen-printing frame shows numerous hand-made rubbings taken from surfaces found throughout Kreuzberg, including the walls and floors of Gropius Bau, originally built to house the Museum and School of Decorative Arts. These traces coalesce into the figure of Karagöz, the antihero of Turkey’s traditional shadow theatre. Karagöz is an outspoken and courageous “man of the people” who uses wit and wordplay to comment on social conventions and hierarchies. Kreuzberg’s surfaces provide the material from which this resistant “migrant image” emerges. Existing simultaneously in states of formation and dissolution depending on the viewer’s perspective, Paydos (Feierabend) negotiates not only the history of the neighbourhood, but also artistic production and labour time

Person stands in a room with light wooden floor, turquoise wall art behind them.

Aykan Safoğlu

Monika Sieveking

Zusammensetzungen, Beraber Durmak

In Zusammensetzungen, Beraber Durmak, Monika Sieveking captures the window display of a Kreuzberg photo studio near Köpenicker Straße that was operated by migrants from Turkey in the 1980s. She was struck by the elaborate storefront window design, in which various photo formats – including passport photos, portraits, family photos and wedding photos – were arranged alongside jewellery and fabrics in ornate frames. The staging of different moments in the lives of those portrayed held special significance for many migrant workers and served as a visual message to family and friends back home. The title refers to the Turkish phrase “Beraber Durmak”, which could be read in the storefront at the time and can be translated as “compositions”, “staying together” or “sticking together”. Since many years, the work has hung alongside paintings by Hanefi Yeter and other artists at the family-run restaurant Sofram on Potsdamer Straße, which has been a social gathering place since the 1970s.

More on Monika Sieveking

In the exhibition chapter “Street Plays – Childhood in Kreuzberg“In the exhibition chapter “At the Factory“

Hanefi Yeter

Kreuzung Adalbertstraße

Hanefi Yeter’s painting Kreuzung Adalbertstraße offers a glimpse into the condition of Kreuzberg in the 1970s: infrastructure was makeshift and the destruction of World War II was only going to be gradually addressed through renovations or new construction. Property owners rented out apartments to migrant families ahead of planned renovations; they viewed them as temporary tenants within the context of labour recruitment agreements. Since racial discrimination made finding housing difficult, migrants were forced to move into such redevelopment areas – often at inflated rents. Despite these conditions, they developed strategies to improve their living circumstances in the neighbourhood. This included opening retail businesses, as depicted by Yeter, which provided basic supplies for Kreuzberg’s entire population and created new, liveable spaces.

House facade with a vegetable stall in bright colors.

Hanefi Yeter, Kreuzberg Adalbertstr., 1979, courtesy: Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien

More on Hanefi Yeter

In the exhibition chapter “Street Plays – Childhood in Kreuzberg“In the exhibition chapter “At the Factory“In the exhibition chapter “Pursued by the Past“In the exhibition chapter “The Administered Life“