In 1972 the teacher Michael Wilhelmi bought the buildings at Köpenicker Straße 174 and Eisenbahnstraße 21 together with the SPD member of parliament Christel Rupprecht. The price was 450,000 marks, cheap by Berlin standards at the time. Rupprecht supported the undertaking without moving in herself; the Forum later bought back her shares.
Wilhelmi had been looking for a place like this for some time. Inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy, and in particular by his ideas on the threefold social order, he wanted to find a form in which living, learning and working coincide. The rooms on Köpenicker Straße allowed a great deal, and in those years Kreuzberg was a district where alternative ways of life did not meet immediate rejection. Wilhelmi and seven students of the Freie Universität, who had got to know each other in discussion groups, made the start.
1973: the association and the adult education centre
On 1 May 1973 the „Verein Forum Kreuzberg, Zentrum für wissenschaftliche, künstlerische und soziale Arbeit e.V.“ was founded. The Freie Volkshochschule was its first institution, on the third floor of the rear buildings, with courses in joinery and pottery run together with the Kreuzberg adult education centre. Before that these rooms had served as a mosque, with overnight accommodation for guest workers next door.
In the restaurant rooms the Tarantel came into being, intended as a meeting place for the debate on the threefold order. It became above all a student pub with concerts. Two years later it was a problem: noise, a drug scene, long-standing tenants wanting to move out and several court hearings. In 1975 it had to close.
The Midgard moved into the same rooms afterwards, founded by members of the Forum and one of the first vegetarian restaurants in the city. It stayed for well over a decade and became more than a restaurant for the house.
In 1974 Wilhelmi set up the Orientierungsjahr on the fourth floor, a travelling course of study for young people: four weeks of work at the Forum, eight weeks in industry, a placement in agriculture, then work in social projects around the world.
1976 to 1979: from idea to structure
In 1976 work planning and content planning were separated; decisions now lay with the staff of the respective project rather than with the plenary. In 1977 the Forum took part in the competition „Strategien für Kreuzberg“ and received its first public funding, which paid for a plank floor and a kiln for the pottery.
In 1978 Heiner Huober opened a toy workshop in the joinery that had been taken over. In the same year a communal economy came about: what the projects earned went into a shared account from which everyone paid for their living, on trust. That lasted seven years. Those who started a family during that time usually left the arrangement earlier.
By the end of the seventies the initial idealism had given way to pragmatism. The first families were living in the house, and it was about settling structures and responsibilities.
1980 to 1984: workshops, kindergarten, theatre
In 1980 Hermann Leisse set up a metal workshop in the former pattern foundry. Together with the toy workshop and the painting workshop it formed Werkhof Kreuzberg GmbH, which was meant to combine training and commercial operation. A year later the youth housing and training community joined: young people with difficult starting conditions lived in a supported shared flat and were trained in the workshops.
In the same year Eva Seidl and Karl-Heinz Finke took over the Midgard and continued it as a vegetarian restaurant. For a long time there was a shared lunch table there for everyone at the Forum, which did more for cohesion in the house than many a meeting. Young people from the training community did their placements here too.
In 1982 Susan Cojaniz opened the Waldorfkindergarten with a group of parents on the ground floor of Eisenbahnstraße 22. Almost every Forum child went there, and many children from outside as well. Four kindergartens in different buildings have grown out of it since.
In the same year the anthroposophical and artistic foundation year began at the Freie Volkshochschule. Hans Paul Fiechter led it for seven years, until 1989. The one-year courses combined artistic practice with the foundations of anthroposophical understanding of the human being, the world and the arts. The programme covered painting, drawing and modelling, eurythmy, speech formation and voice training after Valborg Werbeck-Svärdström, along with aesthetics, literature, music theory and anthroposophy across three terms. It was intended as preparation for artistic or art-therapeutic training but was open to everyone, and no prior knowledge was required in any subject. Many participants were in the house every day for a year.
In 1983 the big refurbishment began, three years long, financed from public funding and self-help. Balconies were mounted as a timber construction across all four storeys at once, a mobile crane lifting them over the roof. For the children in the house the permanent building site was an adventure playground; in the flooded cellar they went about on a raft they had built themselves.
In 1984 Jobst Langhans founded the theaterforum kreuzberg and the old ballroom became a theatre hall. The first play was „Exit the King“ by Ionesco. In the same year the association bought Eisenbahnstraße 23 for 135,000 marks.
1985 to 1989: the Forum becomes a block
In 1985 Michael Wilhelmi transferred his share in the buildings to the association, giving his co-ownership into the community. In 1986, after long debates and against some misgivings, Köpenicker Straße 175 was added for 1.1 million marks, with a front building, three side wings and two transverse buildings.
In 1987 Birgit Oechsler set up the children’s club in the shops of Eisenbahnstraße 23, a place to go for children from the neighbourhood. Today’s HeldInnen Raum grew out of it.
In 1988 a sculpture workshop and a studio community moved into the factory building, with a candle workshop, a painting studio and a goldsmith. In the rear building the four-year acting training began, from which the Michael Tschechow Studio developed. The joinery moved; Nina Hagen had used its old rooms for a while as a rehearsal space.
How things went on after the fall of the Wall is described under The fall of the Wall and change.
Sources
This chapter follows the chronicle by Jan Michael Leisse, written down in 2002/03. He grew up at the Forum; his father Hermann Leisse built up the metal workshop, his mother Gisela Leisse led several refurbishments as an architect.