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Berliner Weihnachtsmarkt by Franz Skarbina, 1892.

The painting we would like to introduce today is the 1892 “Berlin’s Christmas Market” by Franz Skarbina.

The Christmas Market painted by the artist eight years before the end of the nineteenth century was located in Berlin’s Lustgarten: in the background on the left you can see the western edge of the old Stadtschloß, the Royal City Palace, while the buildings on the right form the line of the soon-to-be-demolished Schloßfreiheit.

Schloßfreiheit was a small street which used to run along the palace’s western front facade and separated it from the Cöllnischer Stadtgraben (now known as the Spreekanal). Built in 1672, it comprised ten buildings whose owners, having paid heavy money for constructing houses on very unstable, marshy grounds, enjoyed a series of financial privileges such as freedom from many forms of taxation practised in Berlin at the time. They were also free from…

D-Rad Taxi and it passenger in 1928 Berlin (author and source of the image unknown).

(The following story has been featured in our first book, “Notmsparker´s Berlin Companion”)

Did you know that between 1925 and the end of 1927 Berlin had a fleet of 180 motorcycle taxis which almost completely replaced the regular car taxi service in many parts of the city? Introduced #OTD 1925 the Motax-Droschke was a well-liked if only temporary form of public transport.

Like the rest of the city, Berlin-Spandau suffered consequences of the raging depression: their taxi service, for instance – a bit of a luxury but also an important means of transportation – collapsed almost entirely. With prices far too high for an average person, customers disappeared and the taxi-drivers were forced to wrap up their business (a catastrophe for their families depending on the driver’s regular income). Central-Berlin taxi companies, on the…