The founding of the German Kaiserreich in 1870 and the high pace of industrialisation led to an economic boom in the capital city of Berlin. People arrived en masse in the city, which developed into a centre of trade, business and industry. Within only three decades, the population rose to over two million. On 1 February 1872, a group of barkeepers founded the “Vereinsbrauerei Berliner Gastwirte zu Berlin AG” (Associated Brewery of Berlin Barkeepers) at the corner of Hermannstraße and Rollbergstraße in Rixdorf. The brick buildings in historic style became home to the first facility in Northern Germany to brew beer according to the Pilsner technique. Pilsner beer is bottom-fermented, which means that it must be produced, matured, and stored at a low temperature. Modern cooling technologies were only just beginning to develop, but the brewmaster Hugo Ziegra eventually prevailed in his efforts. From 1890 onwards, a special beer was brewed after a Munich recipe that became so popular in Berlin that soon over 200,000 hectolitres were being produced per year.

The beer was named “Berliner Kindl” in reference to the Kindl (Bavarian dialect for “Kind” or child) on Munich’s coat of arms. Georg Räder, an artist from Berlin’s Schöneberg district, won the design competition that was held to choose the beer’s label in 1907. The “golden boy” in the beer stein proved to be a highly effective advertisement and quickly became the trademark of Berlin’s best-known brewery, which was renamed “Berliner Kindl Brauerei AG” in 1910 as a result.

The brewery grounds included a beer garden that seated 10,000 guests. The murals in the historic Kindl Banquet Halls at Hermannstraße 218 depict the abundantly flowing beer the location was once known for throughout the city.

After 133 years, the traditional brewery closed its Neukölln facility in 2006. In 2009 Wilko Bereit and Nils Heins opened the private brewery Privatbrauerei am Rollberg on the premises, which produces high quality craft beer that is available for purchase at the KINDL beer garden Babette’s Garden and at Café Babette in the Sudhaus.

Neukölln, as Rixdorf was renamed several years earlier, became part of Greater Berlin, now a city of nearly four million. Berlin had become a major metropolis on par with Paris, London and New York.

The Weimar Republic saw a boom in the brewing industry, and the increased consumption of alcohol during the global economic crisis ensured that the Kindl brewery could expand its operation. The construction of the highly modern Kindl-Brauerei began on the site of the former Vereinsbrauerei Berliner Gastwirte in 1927. Built of dark red clinker brick from Bockhorn in the style of Expressionism according to designs by the German government’s master builder Hans Claus and the architect Richard Schepke, the building’s unique character is defined by its clear division into vertical and horizontal sections and its highly functional nature. The nearly 38m high, slender tower between Sudhaus and Kesselhaus has served as water reservoir, malt silo and mill and has made the building a landmark in the cityscape. Its entryway in the shape of a pointed arch is reminiscent of the doorways to religious buildings.

Home to six enormous copper vats larger than any other brewing kettles in Europe, the Sudhaus is the brewery’s central representational space. Its complex interior design is symbolic of the desire to demonstrate economic might: the geometric multi-coloured glass mosaic on the floor goes back to designs by mosaicist Heinrich Jungbloedt installed by the Puhl & Wagner workshop from Rixdorf. The bronze-framed windows of partially coloured cameo glass are combined with blue-grey marble walls. Today the KINDL’s Sudhaus is listed as a historical monument.

1933 – 1945

After Germany’s independent unions were busted, the German Labour Front (DAF), a united federation of workers that soon became a mass-NS association, was founded in 1933. In 1936 the DAF started the “Competition of German Businesses”. The award “Nationalsozialistischer Musterbetrieb (Model National Socialist Business created as part of this competition was presented on 1 May, which was renamed “National Labour Day” under National Socialism. The Kindl brewery applied for and was presented with the award in 1937.

The brewery’s closeness to the regime became clear early on. As early as 1933, the brewery made its production facility in Oranienburg available to the National Socialists, who built a concentration camp there the same year. The fact that the camp was located on the brewery grounds was widely known at the time, as is clear from the writings of the imprisoned member of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) Erich Cohn: “On the night of 1 August 1933, the SA men dragged me out of bed shortly after midnight and deported me to the concentration camp at the Kindl brewery in Oranienburg. The teacher and cantor Walter Jacob, conductor of the Workers and Singers federation in Sachsenhausen, an active member of the SPD and close family friend was arrested with me. We had to line up along the high factory wall as large floodlights were shined in our faces.”

From 1940 onwards, the objective of the competition was to adapt businesses to the arms production industry. The Kindl-Brauerei, however, continued to brew beer. The Neukölln facility was badly damaged in an allied air raid on Berlin in 1944. The brewery used prisoners of war and forced labourers to continue production until just before the end of the war.

1950s

The Kindl brewery was badly damaged by air raids and parts of its mechanical facilities were later dismantled and brought to Moscow as part of a reparations payment, where they were used in the construction of a new brewery. Neukölln’s brewing facility was repaired provisionally through bartering and trade, so that beer could once more be brewed on the Rollberg starting in 1947. The first 200 litres served at the reopening, however, came from the Bürgerbräu-Brauerei. As the division of Germany had cut the Kindl brewery off from production sites in East Berlin, the organisation dedicated itself to reconstructing the building with the help of American subsidies. The exterior of the entire complex was preserved while the façade of the fermenting cellar was expanded eastwards. The production equipment was modernised in several of the building’s sections. The interior of the Sudhaus was redesigned during the reconstruction. The “cinema architect” Gerhard Fritsche, who would go on to design the “Zoo Palast” cinema on Berlin Charlottenburg’s Hardenbergstraße, used copper, brass, white metal, Franconian Jurassic limestone and ivory-coloured ceramic glass “Detopak” tiles for the walls. The 32nd edition of the architectural magazine “Bauwelt” published in 1953 was dedicated to the renovated brewery and showed the remodelled Sudhaus on its cover.

Today the Sudhaus houses Café Babette. Here and in the beer garden Babette’s Garden, the artist and curator Maik Schierloh organises concerts, performances and book presentations.

Seit 2012

The 2006 shutdown of the Berliner Kindl production facility in Neukölln was bad news for the district. The loss of 160 jobs in the economically underdeveloped area and the transformation of a unique place in the neighbourhood into an urban wasteland had a lasting effect. In typical Berlin fashion at the time, the art and club scenes soon discovered the impressive building and began using it intermittently.

In 2011, Salome Grisard and Burkhard Varnholdt acquired the complex and founded the KINDL – Centre for Contemporary Art as an independently curated art space together with founding director Andreas Fiedler. This new purpose required the building, which is protected as a historical monument, to undergo careful sanitation and repair work. The architect Salome Grisard developed an open plan for the building’s east firewall: a foyer with a glass façade and an exposed concrete staircase on the outside of the building, also surrounded by point-fixed glass, make up the new additions to the former brewery. The remodelling of the Maschinenhaus and the Kesselhaus into exhibition spaces with skylights was central to the building’s renovation, as was the addition of a beer garden surrounded by large sculptural concrete ashlars with many different uses. Since 2014 – when it was still being renovated – the KINDL has regularly hosted exhibitions and discussions of contemporary art.

Kathrin Becker took over the KINDL’s art direction in 2020. Her work is focussed on the interplay of societal questions and art, and she is developing the KINDL’s function as a communicative space that facilitates a critical perspective on the phenomena of our globalised present moment, thus furthering artistic and social discourses and practices.

The surrounding area is also home to innovative and socially engaged initiatives. Developmental and diasporic NGOs, but also community gardens and Germany’s oldest queer club all cultivate an active presence here.


Bibliography

‘Der Wiederaufbau der Berliner Kindl-Brauerei. Architekt Gerhard Fritsche, Berlin’, in: Bauwelt Heft 32/1953. 

Hans Claus: Regierungsbaumeister, Richard Schepke, Architekt B.D.A., mit einer Einleitung von Martin Richard Möbius, Reihe Neue Werkkunst, Berlin / Leipzig / Wien: Hübsch, 1931. 

Hans Biereigel: ‘Schweigen ist Gold – Reden Oranienburg. Zur Geschichte des ersten Konzentrationslagers der Nazis in Preußen’, in: Berlinische Monatsschrift Heft 9/2000. 

Architekten-Verein zu Berlin (Hg.): Berlin und seine Bauten, Berlin, Ernst&Korn, 1877. 

Hans Claus and Richard Schepke: ‘Neubauten der Berliner Kindl Brauerei’, in: Tageszeitung für Brauerei, 28. Jg. Nr. 34 vom 9.2.1930, S. 155 -158. 

–––: ‘Neubauten der Berliner Kindl Brauerei’, in: Tageszeitung für Brauerei, 28. Jg., Nr. 102, 2.5.1930, S. 481-484.  

Chup Friemert: Produktionsästhetik im Faschismus. Das Amt ‘Schönheit der Arbeit’ von 1933 bis 1939. Mit einem Vorwort von Wolfgang Fritz Haug,  München: Damnitz, 1980. 

R. Heuss: ‘Der Wiederaufbau der Berliner Kindl-Brauerei AG in Berlin-Neukölln (II. Bauabschnitt)’, in: Brauwelt Nr. 45 vom 5.6.1953, S. 576 – 578. 

Claudia Keller and Lars von Törne: ‘Zapfenstreich in Neukölln’, in: Tagesspiegel vom 2.5.2005.  

Paula Lange and Johanna Voß: ‘Die Kindl-Brauerei. Ein Neuköllner Bier-Imperium’, in: neuköllner.net vom 26.1.2018. 

Nils Lehmann and Christoph Rauhut: Fragments of Metropolis Berlin. Expressionist Heritage in Berlin. München: Hirmer, 2016.

Preußisches Finanzministerium: Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung vom 22.4.1882. 

Klaus Rieseler: Frühe Großbrauereien in Deutschland. Die Brauereiarchitektur zwischen 1870 und 1930 in den Städten Dortmund, Kulmbach und Berlin, Dissertation, Technische Universität Berlin 2003. 

Curator: Kathrin Becker with Katja Kynast and Georg Lehmann
Research: Peter Hübert
Project Participants: Alejandra Borea, Ulrich Borgert / Maske + Suhren Gesellschaft von Architekten, Olga Solodova, Can Kurucu, Sarah Lamparter / Büro Otto Sauhaus, Kristina Popov, Maria Rogucka, Anastasios Vardoulakis.