Walking Tour: The Red Island in Schöneberg

Name: Walking Tour: The Red Island in Schöneberg
Start: 2026-02-01T14:00:00+01:00
End: 2026-02-01T16:00:00+01:00
Location: Ella-Barowsky-Straße 68, 10829 Berlin, Deutschland

Schedule

Sun Feb 01 2026 at 02:00 pm to 04:00 pm

UTC+01:00

Location

Ella-Barowsky-Straße 68, 10829 Berlin, Deutschland | Berlin, BE

The Red Island is a 33-hectare triangle in Schöneberg surrounded by train tracks. The steel skeleton of the Gasometer towers above the neighborhood. Once, up to 30,000 people lived here in tenements — today, it's more like 10,000. "Red" might have once referred to red-brick military barracks next door. But the Island was also a socialist and communist stronghold. The train tracks created something of a fortress, and even after 1933, the Nazis had great difficulties establishing a foothold here.
On this walking tour, we will look at anti-fascist resistance struggles, from Marlene Dietrich to Julius Leber to Willi Stoph to Paul Zech. In two different eras, the neighborhood was almost demolished to make way for freeways, and we discuss how these plans were stopped. We will see where communists met, and also where several generations later, activists occupied empty apartment buildings.
If you would like to attend a tour, please send an e-mail with the date of the tour to: [email protected]. You will get a confirmation e-mail within one day. This is to make sure we have enough people (at least 5) but also not too many (no more than 25) for a tour to take place.
Our tour will be meeting at Ella-Barowsky-Straße 68, behind the Shell gas station on Sachsendamm, just a few minutes walk from S-Bhf Schöneberg. We will meet at 14:00 and start at 14:10. Our tour will end two hours later near Yorckstraße.
Suggested donation is 15 euros per person, but any contribution is appreciated and none is required. You can also pick up a signed copy of the guide book "Revolutionary Berlin." You can also get a copy of the kids book "Little Rosa Luxemburg Starts a Big Revolution."
If you have any questions, please send an e-mail: [email protected]