Galerie 15

Cross the street ahead and stop when you're across.

Here at the corner of Kuno-Fischer-Straße 15, in the same building where our dear Elfriede lived, where Friedbergstraße brushes against Dernburgstraße, there’s a modest corner space with a simple sign: Galerie 15.

This is the exhibition space of the Michael Thomas Schröder Foundation’s - Collection of Modern art. A quiet but ambitious foundation that cares for art of the 1970s and 80s: political graphics, exile works, the visual fallout of Cold War Berlin. When I was researching this place, I found an interview with the founder, Michael Thomas Schröder, hidden on a small art blog. At first it sounded perfectly normal: dates, exhibitions, a short history of his legendary first gallery from back in the seventies. But this is what really caught my ear.

“Just this past year, we prepared an exhibition for a woman… We had to cancel the show because we couldn’t prove she had ever existed.”

Witnesses swore she appeared Wednesday, November 6th, 2024. The morning presidential election results came in from America, and that she calmed the room by telling a story about a window that refuses to open unless you first admit whom you’ve betrayed.

Inside the café, a flier for the cancelled exhibition still hangs.

Undine von Blankenschiff, “Die ewige unvermeidliche wiedererweckung der Weiße Frau von Hohenzollern”, “The eternal and inevitable resuscitation of the white lady from Hohenzollern.”

For now, keep walking in the same direction we were, toward the park.

Up ahead, where Suarezstr. turns into Dernburgstr, on the left and around the corner, especially during the summer, you'll often find old furnature, clothes, toys, books, and other items that the locals leave out for those who would like to take them.

If you want you're welcome to end the tour to take a look.

Otherwise keep going.