Friedenau, founded in 1874: successful authors, famous painters and sculptors as well as politicians of all colours have lived in this bourgeois idyll of small country villas and old buildings with Art Nouveau facades and front gardens worth seeing over the past 100 years. Expressionists Kirchner, Schmidt-Rottluff, Otto Müller and Ludwig Meidner as well as Hans Baluschek painted in imaginatively furnished rooftop studios. In Görresstraße there was a sculptors' courtyard nicknamed Klein-Carrara. In the Ceciliengärten housing estate, Kolbe's sculptures of Evening and Morning face each other. After Kurt Tucholsky and Erich Kästner lived here during the National Socialist era, an illustrious crew of German-language authors moved to Friedenau in the late 1960s and 70s, drinking and discussing in "literary pubs and clubs" and seeking to change the society of the FRG. Shopping is done now and then at the market on Breslauer Platz. Günter Grass, Uwe Johnson, Hans-Magnus Enzensberger, Max Frisch, etc. argued and got along (or not). Grass and Herta Müller, two Friedenauers, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The idyll is deceptive; politically it was often turbulent here: the RAF carried out its first bank robbery, Rosa Luxemburg cooked with the Kautsky family and Hermann Göring grew up in a menage á trois. Goebbels and Theodor Heuss lived in Fregestraße. In Wilhelmshöher Straße, the political resistance of the Red Chapel formed in the "Einküchenhaus". You will also hear about the "Friedenauer Rad" and the founding of the first boy group, the Comedian Harmonists. Finally, we visit Marlene, Helmut Newton and Jeanne Mammen at their final resting place: the Friedenau cemetery.

Please note that this tour is very walking intensive.