Vodka Beetle (Wodka-Käfer)

In 1980 the writer Irina Liebmann embarked on an unconventional research trip: she rang the doorbell of an old apartment building in Prenzlauer Berg and asked the residents whether she could write about them. The result was the volume of stories Berliner Mietshaus, in which she depicts her visits to strangers’ apartments.

Thirty-five years later, most of the apartment houses in the area have been modernised. Thirty-five years later, other people have made their homes in these places. How did they come to be in their apartments? And what do these stories tell us about the present day? But above all, the question is: is it still possible to ring a stranger’s doorbell and ask people to talk about themselves?

Playwright Anne Jelena Schulte went off and rang doorbells and found out: yes, it is possible. Not only do people still wish to meet others and exchange stories, but perhaps their desire has even grown. As delightful as it may be to live in a modernised apartment building, each person lives in isolation. Stories about work, of life as a woman, of arriving in the big city and finding oneself in the middle of one’s life, were dictated into her notebook and Dictaphone: stories of fear, melancholy and desire. And somewhere in the cellar, the pest controller does his duty. And not only are the rats digging their way up, burrowing their way into living spaces and present-day stories, the former tenants are too...