“Haus der Jungen Talente (HdjT, 1959–1991) was the largest youth cultural institution in East Berlin and was located in the baroque Podewil palace in Berlin-Mitte. With its multilayered spatial structure – including a 450-seat hall, a basement venue, a courtyard with a capacity of 1,500 people and 12 rehearsal rooms – around 800 members were active in approximately 40 different groups and circles. Rock, jazz, folk music, cabaret and computer clubs coexisted under one roof, and the HdjT became known as a centre of avant-garde jazz in the GDR. Although it was an official institution under the supervision of the Free German Youth (FDJ), the GDR’s official youth organisation, it functioned as a rare space of autonomous civic culture in the GDR – a place where anyone could freely enter and participate. Around 1989, the HdjT also became an important site of political discussion, and in February 1990 it hosted the Communication Congress KoKon, bringing together hackers from both East and West. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Berlin cultural administration invited the institution’s employees to propose ideas for the future of the centre. As early as spring 1990, a concept for a European youth culture centre (Europäisches Jugendkulturzentrum HdjT e.V.) was developed and submitted to the outgoing East Berlin authorities. The legal documents for the establishment were all finalised and a certificate confirming the establishment of this new institution was issued by the Stadtbezirksgericht (district court). However, none of these concepts were actually realised, and all but two staff members were eventually dismissed. The HdjT was permanently closed in 1991. After extensive renovation work, the building reopened under the name Podewil as an international centre for contemporary arts. The space of autonomous civic cultural production that the HdjT had embodied was transformed into an institutional space dedicated to internationally oriented contemporary art.
What HdjT lost in 1991 was not only the building. It also lost the structure that had sustained it: independent management, many different groups living side by side, and an openness that allowed anyone to walk in freely. We propose to bring that structure back to life at Schönhauser Allee station on the Ringbahn. Specifically, we want to transpose the different kinds of spaces that made up HdjT into the pedestrian space under the elevated U2 tracks in front of the station.
This space under the elevated tracks is a place that is associated with some of the earliest youth culture in East Germany: In the 1957 DEFA film Berlin – Ecke Schönhauser, young people who felt they did not belong were shown meeting right here. In the 1980s, a building at Schönhauser Allee 20 was taken over by young people and became one of the centres of an alternative youth culture that wanted to live on its own terms. The independent culture that HdjT stood for is, in this sense, a continuation of a memory that this street already carried.
As for how the space will be used, young people will be the main users. They will collaborate with architects and hackers to construct temporary structures to fit different needs. The space under the tracks is half open to the outside, so there is a real question here: how can we enable a community govern itself while keeping the place open to all? These two things seem to contradict each other. But this very contradiction is what HdjT stood for in the first place, and bringing it back to life is the heart of this proposal.
Ideally, there should always be a variety of programmes running on top of these temporary structures, planned by the user community itself. Two programmes will form the main pillars. The first is a revival of the plan for a European Youth Culture Centre. The staff proposed this plan when HdjT closed in 1991. It was officially accepted but later abandoned. Still, asking what Europe means to young people is not the same question now as it was in 1991, right after the Cold War. Today, nationalism and hostility toward outsiders are on the rise. This will be a place where young people think about, talk about, and experiment with what Europe means today, and create culture together.
The second is to bring back KoKon. In February 1990, the computer club at HdjT and the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) jointly organised the KoKon communication congress. We want to revive it, working with the CCC and its home base, C BASE, and explore how a real, physical gathering and the digital teamwork that grows out of it can take place simultaneously. One example would be a hackathon under the elevated tracks, connected in real time to people contributing from far away. This place will become a testing ground for a future cultural public space in which physical and virtual spaces intersect.
In the end, what matters most is who holds the power to decide how this place is run, and how that power is protected. Even if the user community holds that power, without a legal framework, the same thing that happened to HdjT could happen again, when its culture was taken over by outside forces. The staff at HdjT had already prepared an answer to this when the institution was closing. They tried to set up an independent association, a Verein, to protect the structure of their independent cultural work. At the time, they completed every legal step needed. But only months later, the newly formed West Berlin government invalidated the registration on its own authority. This time, we want not only to update that idea in the form of an NGO, but also to secure a legally protected right to use the space beneath the elevated tracks. Working with existing independent networks such as the CCC and C BASE will help build political support for this. Establishing legal rights that cannot be overturned by a single administrative decision is what will protect this place as a space where citizens can continue to ask who gets to decide what counts as legitimate culture.”
Akira Takayama
