Urban Photography | Fotoeins Fotografie

Posts from the ‘Urban Photography’ category

My Berlin: The Parliament of Trees

Above: “Parlament der Bäume gegen Krieg und Gewalt.”

In Berlin’s government district is a patch of ground – a garden, really, with tall trees and a place that’s easy to overlook. The official name is “Parlament der Bäume gegen Krieg und Gewalt” (Parliament of Trees Against War and Violence), begun by artist Ben Wagin in 1990.

Wagin (1930–2021) began planting trees on land where the former Berlin Wall used to run near the historic Reichstag government building, as authorities began dismantling the physical wall. What remains of Wagin’s experiment is a piece of ground that acts as both memorial to what the Wall represented and fractured, and an aspiration for both modern Germany and Europe.

Of the many trees in this space, 16 of them represent the 16 modern federal states of Germany. There are also slabs of granite on which are engraved the names of the victims of the Wall. The “back” wall is painted with murals and messages, and in between are little paths and flower beds. I think Wagin also wants to remind us that in many parts in Berlin and throughout Germany, the former Wall dividing the city and the two former nations, respectively, have been reclaimed by nature.

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Vienna Steinhof Church: city- & Wagner-landmark

Above/featured: East side of the church, in afternoon light. Photo on 28 May 2023, X70 with wide-field WCL-X70 lens attachment, image corrected for geometric distortion.

Building: Steinhof church, also St. Leopold Church, 1907 // Kirche am Steinhof, Kirche zum heiligen Leopold.
Address: Baumgartner Höhe 1, in Penzing, the city’s 14th district.

Up on the city’s Baumgartner Heights is an example of Europe’s first modernist church at Steinhof. Dedicated to St. Leopold, the structure is one of the city’s finest examples of turn-of-the-century architecture, and one of the world’s most important churches in the Jugendstil or Art Nouveau architectural style. The church was designed and built by architect Otto Wagner, inaugurated in 1907 for patients and staff within the surrounding hospital complex the Lower Austria state, sanatorium, and nursing home for the mentally ill (Niederösterreichische Landes-, Heil-, und Pflegeanstalt für Geistes- und Nervenkranke) which included over 30 buildings and room for over 2000 beds. The bright, airy, and spacious modern design was met at that time with skepticism and criticism by local church officials. Of utmost importance on Wagner’s mind were the hospital patients: his church design was about gentle solitude, not fire and damnation.

The church was a collaborative effort with other Viennese artists, including mosaics and stained glass by Koloman Moser, angel sculptures by Othmar Schimkowitz, and exterior tower sculptures by Richard Luksch. The church roof is topped with a dome covered in gold-plated copper plates, whose bright yellow appearance in daylight merits the nickname “Limoniberg” (lemon hill) that’s visible in different parts of the city. The Steinhof church is an example of a “Gesamtkunstwerk“, where every detail and fixture contributed to a “total and functional work of art”; an architectural masterpiece of the period; and one of Otto Wagner’s most important creations.

I included this building as part of my description of Otto Wagner’s architectural legacy in Vienna and of the recent centenary celebration in Vienna of the city’s 19th- to 20th-century architectural transition from historicism to modernism.

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25 for 25: fotoeins fotos in 2025

Above/featured: “Göttin” (goddess), by AlfAlfA, also known as Nicolás Sánchez, for One Wall 2017. Photo, 17 Jun 2025 (P15).

In continuation of high spirits and enthusiastic support of leading choices, I’m very grateful to significant time spent:

in the Bay Area, to visit mum’s family in Sacramento and long-time friends in the South Bay;
in Vienna for the 4th consecutive summer; and
in Berlin for the 1st time in 4 years, as set up for a repeat in the new year.

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Berlin U5-Museumsinsel: Mozart, Schinkel, & Dudler

Above: Museumsinsel U-Bahn station entry-exit ‘A’. Photo, 17 May 2025 (P15).

The Berlin U-Bahn metro station Museumsinsel adjacent to the world renowned Museum Island is located on the U5 line which connects the city’s central station (Hauptbahnhof) with Alexanderplatz and the city’s eastern neighbourhoods. Construction for the station began in 2012 and lasted over 8 years. For the station interior at track level, architect Max Dudler was inspired by Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s 1815–1816 design of the stage for the Mozart opera “Die Sauberflöte” (The Magic Flute). For the appearance of the Queen of the Night, Schinkel imagined a large dome-like space like the overhead starry night sky. Over each of the two tracks in the U-Bahn station, Dudler designed a dark blue barrel-shaped vault embedded with thousands of white point-sources of light.

The fully-completed U5 extension from Hauptbahnhof to Alexanderplatz opened to the public on 4 December 2020, which at long last connected the Hauptbahnhof with Berlin’s U-Bahn city transport system. The Museumsinsel station on the U5 line opened on 9 July 2021. In addition to the city’s bus network, the station now allowed visitors to use the U-Bahn metro to reach the Museum Island complex, inscribed by UNESCO as World Heritage Site in 1999.

Artist and architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841) has his “fingerprints” on many of the city’s early- to middle 19th-century architecture, including in the immediate vicinity of the station the Neue Wache (New Guard House), Schlossbrücke (Castle Bridge), Friedrichswerder Church, Bauakademie (Building Academy), and the Altes Museum (Old Museum).

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My Berlin: Wrapped Reichstag after 30 years

Above: “Wrapped Reichstag 1995–2025” light show.

In 1995, the artist duo Christo & Jeanne-Claude carried out a bold but contentious project by covering Berlin’s landmark Reichstag parliament building. Plans for the project had taken over 20 years, even though the artwork had always meant to be temporary and all expenses had been covered without corporate sponsors. Over 5 million visited in a period of 12 days in the summer of 1995 to look at the undulating “silver dream” in the German capital city. The timing was ideal. After reunification of the two Germanys in 1990, the new home of the federal parliament would be Berlin’s Reichstag. Renovations to the building began in the autumn of 1995 with the federal parliament opening in the spring of 1999.

From 9 to 22 June 2025, the Reichstag building was illuminated nightly with a light show in a 30-year anniversary tribute to the famous 1995 artwork. In a 20- to 30-minute cycle, the light-show appeared to first envelop the building in silver fabric. The fabric cover flapped in artificial breeze, before the cover lost its shape and fell onto the ground at the base of the building. The free-of-charge light show began shortly after sunset at about 930pm and continued until 1am. Whatever Christo and Jeanne-Claude chose to cover and transform, their art works posed questions of perception, origins, shape, functionality, and permanence.

• DW: Germany Arts
• Visit Berlin

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