… that it’s a socially deprived dis­trict, where the sky­line of grey indus­tri­al­ized build­ings blurs with an equally grey sky – well, that’s just a petty, petty atro­city story. I want to tell you another story about this East Ber­lin dis­trict, a story of a Mar­zahn childhood.

Well, I grew up in Mar­zahn. It’s where my par­ents rooted for my first attempts on a bike – and I rode it right into the thorn bush. It’s where my friends and I sat in the branches of the plum tree, philo­soph­ising about foot­ball, car­toons and girls, nib­bling one plum at a time. It’s where I excitedly found the GameBoy-cartridge for Street Fighter in the bushes, claimed in child­ish hand­writ­ing by some “Rocco Streh.” (wherever you are, Rocco, you can still have it back). It’s where we sneak­ily entered aban­doned build­ings and had the police get us out. In short: Mar­zahn was the back­drop for an ordin­ary child­hood, being merely dif­fer­ent from what we all shared.

But after all, Mar­zahn isn’t like Kreuzberg or Neuk­ölln or most other bor­oughs of Ber­lin. Notori­ous for its vast amount of Plat­ten­bauten, where by all accounts the socially weak live, it never had a good repu­ta­tion. I wouldn’t blame you, if this was also your per­cep­tion. But chances are, you’ve not been there so far. Let me give you some facts about this con­crete jungle: In 1734, Mar­zahn was a small vil­lage of only 357 inhab­it­ants. Until 1975, the some­what waste area grew to house up to 6.149 people. From then on, everything changed for Mar­zahn, since it was chosen to become the site of the GDR’s prestige build­ing pro­ject for a mass hous­ing estate, con­ceived to make room for 35.000 apart­ments. Today, it houses 103.000 people, the con­nec­ted dis­tricts of Bies­dorf, Hellersdorf, Kauls­dorf and Mahls­dorf not included. Over the last two dec­ades most of the build­ings were ren­ov­ated and now offer a high liv­ing stand­ard for the masses.

But Mar­zahn is more than only a huge con­crete jungle. Actu­ally, there are so many parks and green areas that they con­sti­tuted Marzahn’s coat of arms’ green col­our – in fact, one par­tic­u­lar park, Erholung­s­park Mar­zahn, received numer­ous prizes. How­ever, no one would be sur­prised to see hares, foxes or hawks in Mar­zahn. It’s his­toric vil­lage cen­ter is still retained and includes a little farm with live­stock breed you prob­ably only know from the zoo. Hell, there’s even a work­ing and pro­du­cing wind­mill. Pic­ture me as a kid grind­ing the grains of wheat amidst met­ro­polis (I actu­ally did that). Pic­ture me also bare­back rid­ing to school on a majestic Ara­bian horse (I wish I actu­ally did that).

How­ever, Mar­zahn wasn’t always like that. There are still plenty traces from former GDR times: the socialist-realistic art in pub­lic space, the ever-so pop­u­lar and now aban­doned cinema “Sojus” or the still work­ing con­crete lan­terns from the very first days. The people didn’t change that much and there is still a broad mix­ture of res­id­ents from every social and income class. But you’d still say that a sig­ni­fic­ant amount of people struggles for its exist­ence if not already lost. It’s true and it’s a nag­ging pain in every Marzahner’s heart. But times are changing.

Some might find the con­stant mock­ing of comedi­ans such as “Cindy aus Mar­zahn” hil­ari­ous, but we don’t: They’re simply wrong. Mar­zahn surely isn’t rich Grune­wald or posh Mitte. We like to have it mod­est. Because we know that one can eas­ily lead a good life in Mar­zahn. Just ask the kids, they don’t miss any­thing. Neither did I and so am I still return­ing back to the place of my child­hood with rich and joy­ous memor­ies. Check out the pho­tos and decide for yourself.