Though being born and raised in Ber­lin, the typ­ical court­yards came to my atten­tion quite late. Part of a major urban devel­op­ment plan, that dates back to the late 20^th cen­tury, those court­yards were once con­ceived to ensure het­ero­gen­ous, thus vivid social com­pos­i­tions. Believe it or not. Though we pro­ceed to call them some­what falsely “back­yards” (see, we’re pris­on­ers of our past) for this little series, we still strive to endeav­our new spe­ci­mens that leave us both sur­prised and excited.

The first back­yard of this third part of the series is situ­ated in Kreuzberg, not far away from the gal­lery dis­trict around Koch­straße. It belongs to a youth club that provides the kids with a wide space to leg­ally prac­tice their graf­fiti skills. My last visit wasn’t long ago, how­ever, the walls com­pletely changed over the weeks, since kids, youth and grown ups fre­quently over­paint older pieces. The paint already splattered of from the walls, reveal­ing older pieces or even the paint-weary and brittle wall. Thick chunks of myri­ads of lay­ers of paint covered the ground, spray bottle caps, dis­pos­able gloves and other equip­ment lay there scattered as well. Luck­ily, nobody was there when I took the pho­tos; leav­ing the back­yard a pecu­liar notion of rest, since tomor­row the spray­ers would come back and once again, start it all over.

Find­ing the next back­yard near Mor­itzplatz, how­ever, was owed to good luck. Passing by con­struc­tion work­ers who car­ried heavy mater­ial inside, curi­os­ity got the bet­ter of me. I sneaked a peek just to find a nar­row court­yard that was crammed with all sorts of con­struc­tion mater­ial. A crane and some scaf­folds, that was all this court­yard could bear. How­ever, the sight of this neatly tucked away con­struc­tion site was sur­pris­ing, since it seemed that the res­id­ents daily routine wasn’t affected at all. People would simply find their way around the obstacles.

In any case, I was in a hurry. The third court­yard was situ­ated in Schöne­berg, close to the street-walkers’ dis­trict of Pots­damer Straße. While des­per­ately look­ing for a cer­tain gal­lery, I found this near-to aban­doned build­ing that appeared to once was a small shop­ping arcade. The front shops were vacant and so were all the other win­dows facing the court­yard. Only the back­most spaces still accom­mod­ated busi­ness, how­ever, only cab hot­line companies.

I wondered which shops once sold their goods there: fash­ion? Gro­cery? Children’s toys? No hints could be found. Today, the win­dows advert­ise cheap rent­ing space. The court­yard served as a com­pound for said gal­lery to store some big art crates. The place was vir­tu­ally aban­doned. I wondered how many punters would seek the seclu­sion of this court­yard. The upper floors were still inhab­ited: which stor­ies could the res­id­ents tell? I would rather not ask, this place was creepy and so I left, the build­ing and the dis­trict. Some young whores look­ing the worse for wear eyed me on my hasty leav­ing. Boy, I was happy to reach the sub­way station.