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Jeden Monat nähern sich unsere Kolumnisten, die Berliner Filmemacher Dominik und Benjamin Reding, dem jeweiligen Heftthema
auf ihre ganz eigene Art und Weise. Geboren wurden die Zwillinge am 3. Januar 1969 in Dortmund. Während Dominik Architektur
in Aachen und Film in Hamburg studierte, absolvierte Benjamin ein Schauspielstudium in Stuttgart. 1997 begann die Arbeit an ihrem
ersten gemeinsamen Kinofilm „Oi! Warning“. Seitdem arbeiten sie für Fernseh- und Kinofilmprojekte zusammen.

Each month our columnists, Berlin-based filmmakers Dominik and Benjamin Reding, approach the respective issue-specific theme
in their very personal way. The twins were born on January 3, 1969 in Dortmund. Whilst Dominik studied architecture in Aachen
and film in Hamburg, Benjamin graduated in acting studies in Stuttgart. They started working on their first joint motion picture “Oi!
Warning“ in 1997. Since then they have tightly collaborated for TV and cinema film projects.

R uins everywhere. Boundless expanse. And sand. And streets buried in the sand, ruins, heavily adorned with Doric columns (shot to pieces), forged ornamental latti-
ces (bent), cantilevered staircases (crushed) and temple-like architraves (broken
lampposts, kerbstones. Traces of artillery on the walls of houses: broken sand-
stone blocks, bright splatters, cracks, holes in the dark burnt stone. Debris was pou- down). Buildings that were supposed to be symbols of something, to represent some-
ring out of the house entrances, the open terrace doors, the broken windows. Here thing: power. “The building at the back there was the Italian Embassy and the one
and there, the rusty shutters still in place twisted in the bleak window openings, like next to it was the Japanese Embassy, its construction started before the world war.”
charred paper curling in smouldering campfires, ready to crumble at the first gust of My architecture-loving brother explained, pointing to the power-expressing facades
wind. Here it looked as if the war had only ended a few days ago. And the bus didn’t with their hastily bricked-up windows and boarded-up doors. “But I don’t think they
show up. Jutta had been standing in the kitchen and suddenly called out, in an al- were ever finished...” Then silence set in again. Only the evening breeze and now
most defiant tone, “Now I’ll show you the city.” Then she had crammed all of us into and then a cracking in the rubble, a crackling in the cracks in the walls. Well, we
her small car and driven us far out, to the centre, to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial knew the signs of the last war: remains of single-storey houses wedged between buil-
Church (we were amazed at the blue light), the Europa Center (we got lost in the dings of the economic miracle, makeshift roofs made of tar and cardboard on old te-
gloomy corridors) and to Café Kranzler (we order coffee and cake for 15 marks, the nements, sandstone slabs above entrances: “Destroyed in 1944, rebuilt in 1950.” We
price of a good dinner with wine and also knew these cleared areas, in the
beer and dessert in my home town). But middle of the city centre, occupied by
Jutta invited us, paid for everything – garlanded car dealerships, car parks, so-
with pleasure and without complaint. metimes just mud and lawn, in summer
Jutta, the wife of the cultural semiotics by a funfair, in winter by a Christmas
professor our parents knew and in market ... But we had not yet seen this,
whose duplex basement we, my two real war ruins in a war landscape rava-
brothers and I, were now allowed to ged by bombs and shells. “I’m going in!”
spend the night on our first trip to Berlin. My big brother shouted, overloud and
Jutta, what an old-fashioned name. She boisterous in the silence surrounding us.
really did have an aura of the past about He was standing in the overgrown, rui-
her. And yet she had once been quite a ned garden of the Japanese Embassy and
modern woman in the 1950s. Interested had spotted a gap in the boarded-up
in art, literature, politics. Now she spent patio door, big enough to squeeze
most of the day – her husband had so through. “But maybe there’s someone in
much to do – in their house on the outs- there?!” I pointed out, half aloud, to my
kirts of the city, especially in the kitchen, brother, looking anxiously at the two un-
working incessantly and listening to damaged lion sculptures guarding the
Friedrich Luft’s theatre reviews on the garden exit, but my big brother had al-
radio: the current stage productions by ready disappeared through the gap. I
Peter Stein, Luc Bondy, Hans Neuenfels. took a step closer. With its high portals,
“Oh, I have to go!” She uttered these Foto: Benjamin Reding; Reichssportfeld, Berlin 1986 huge windows and noble travertine clad-
words in the Neue Nationalgalerie, with ding, the embassy was monumental. And
sudden astonishment, even apprehen- unlike the neighbouring clumsy, ruined
sion, in her voice. “Are you coming?” embassies, the proportions and the de-
The warm, sunny afternoon was just tails were right: Asia-inspired decorative
about to begin; we fussed with the answer. She explained to us at length how to get grilles in front of the doors, thin bronze profiles around the windows. The building
back, and it was a long way: first a bus to the underground, then the underground to even exuded a touch of Art Deco and elegance. It was even a little beautiful. I went
the end of the line, then another bus, and another bus to the end of the line. Behind to the garden door, bent forward, peered through the narrow cracks: the once marble
it was the beginning of the Wall, not to East Berlin, but to the GDR. “We’re having walls were soaked, stained grey, sooted black. The smell was musty. Far back, there
roast pork with red cabbage and dumplings for dinner,” she smiled encouragingly. was a staircase, the banisters overturned, in front of it the remains of filing cabinets,
And off we went, into the sandy, hilly expanse behind the Nationalgalerie. Terra in- chairs, picture frames. And there was something else, yes, really, it was a steel hel-
cognita. My twin brother, who was interested in architecture, said something and I met. Rusty and dented. I wonder if Berlin would one day look like this again. The
heard, “Mean design” and I replied “Mean? Why? I thought the gallery was beauti- thought came suddenly. Hard to believe. It also smelled burnt between the ruins, rot-
ful.” He looked at me critically, “Mies. Mies van der Rohe, the famous architect desi- ten. I turned away, my stomach revolted. “There’s still some furniture in there and
gned it.” “Ah,” I pretended to know whom he was talking about and nodded. We had broken lamps, otherwise it’s empty, there are no people.” My big brother was leaning
expected hustle and bustle, noise, lively city excitement, but the world that lay before casually against a travertine block in the garden, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette.
us was quiet and deserted. Scattered ruins rose from the gentle sand hills, mighty “I’m hungry,” my twin brother said. Then the bus pulled up.

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