Krumme Lanke Lido (1905–ca. 1950)

On hot summer days, head for the lake! Today, anyone wading into the cool water along the unspoilt shores of Krumme Lanke might find it difficult to imagine that there was a proper lido here with slides and a diving platform until the 1950s. In 1894, in his Führer durch die Umgegend Berlins (Guidebook to the Surroundings of Berlin), the writer Theodor Fontane reported on the lively goings-on at the lake, “which on warm summer Sundays is monopolised by boisterous young Berliners who bask on the warm roof in their bathing costumes after refreshing themselves in the water”. Not much seems to have changed when Erich Heckel captured these swimmers in a woodcut around two decades later.

Valentina Bay