page_title: Kunsthaus Tacheles
section_title: Use until 2011
hierarchical_section_title: Kunsthaus Tacheles / History / Use until 2011
caption_attribution_description: A famous squat Kunsthaus Tacheles located at Oranienburger Straße, Berlin, Germany. "Where is Captain Nemo?" is in the graffiti. Photo taken by Teca in 1998.
context_page_description: The Kunsthaus Tacheles was an art center in Berlin, Germany, a large building and sculpture park on Oranienburger Straße in the district known as Mitte. Huge, colorful graffiti-style murals were painted on the exterior walls, and modern art sculptures were featured inside. The building housed an artists collective from 1990 until 2012.
  Originally called Friedrichstraßenpassage, it was built in 1907-1908 as a department store in the Jewish quarter of Berlin, next to the synagogue. During World
  War II it served as a Nazi prison for a short while. Under GDR authorities it was later partially demolished. After the Berlin Wall had come down in 1989, it was taken over by artists, who called it Tacheles, Yiddish for "straight talking". The building contained studios and workshops, a nightclub, and a cinema. Outside, the garden featured an open-air exhibition of metal sculptures as well as galleries and studios for sculptors and painters.
context_section_description: The building was painted in bright colors and a large courtyard behind the building holds several sculptures erected using rubble, debris, vehicles and other objects. It became an art center with a cafe, cinema, performance space, workshops and exhibition space.
  Tacheles provided inspiration for a scene in the German film Good Bye Lenin!, according to commentary by director Wolfgang Becker on the US DVD release.
  A developer called the Fundus Group had bought the site from the Berlin government in the mid-1990s. Because it was in no hurry to do anything with the building, it gave the artists a 10-year lease in 1998 at a nominal rent of 1 DM (about 0.50 EUR). This contract was then extended but expired at the end of 2009, at which point the artists again became squatters. By this time, the Fundus Group had become insolvent, so the Hamburg-based HSH Nordbank, to which the Fundus Group owed money, decided to sell the property.
caption: One of Kunsthaus Tacheles walls. The graffiti says "Where is Captain Nemo?"
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