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Study Up For 'Think': Explore The Desolate Beauty Of A Reclaimed Berlin

The once-empty factories, U-Bahn stations and warehouses of Berlin became havens for nightlife and experimentation after the Wall came down in 1990. Think host Krys Boyd talks with German novelist and critic Peter Schneider at noon about how people in the city challenged standards of aesthetic and historical memory by repurposing industrial space - and buildings marked by the horrors of World War II. 

Schneider's book is Berlin Now: The City After The Wall. The layers of regeneration that produced the city you can visit today have presented challenges for artists just as they've been liberated by the changes.

The fate of Art House Tacheles - you see the interior in the lead photo of this post - certainly exemplifies the casualties of growth. Its name is Yiddish for "speaking straight and honestly," and the building itself has done that by surviving many incarnations. It was first a retail center in the city's Jewish Quarter in the early 1900s, then a home base for the Nazi Party, and, much later, a refuge for artists made accessible to each other when the Wall stood between them no more.

Read about its fascinating history and surviving influence in this travel account by John Giuffo for Forbes.

Listen to Think at noon and 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday on KERA 90.1 or stream the show live.

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Lyndsay Knecht is assistant producer for Think.