Graffiti Wars: A battle for territory in East Berlin

Why I’m obsessed with electricity boxes

About three months ago, I noticed a curious piece of graffiti on my walk into work.

My morning commute is a 30-minute walk along Karl-Marx-Alle. The 1.4km long road is lined with eight-storey apartment buildings, built in the 1950s and rendered in the ‘wedding-cake-style’ typical of socialist architecture at the time. Workers marched down the street during the 1953 uprising; in 1961 the name of the road was changed from Stalinallee and a massive statue of Uncle Joe was torn down during De-Stalinization. Film buffs will likely recognise this famous boulevard from the seminal 2003 picture, Good Bye, Lenin! A tragicomedy that follows a young Ost-Berliner’s efforts to protect his mother from the news that Germany is reunifying, for fear she will suffer a fatal heart attack while recovering from an eight-month long coma.

That’s all a long way of saying; this is East Berlin. So that means it’s Union Berlin country.

One trick I give to new visitors of the city that aren’t quite sure of the previous splits of the Haupstadt is to look for the football-related graffiti. If you’re in the East, you will see electricity boxes decked in red-and-white. Stickers extolling the virtues of the Waldesiete and the Alte Försterei are backed up with quickly scrawled tags of ‘FCU’ and ‘Eisern’.

In the West, you’ll see the ‘blau-weiss’, ‘Ostkurve’,‘Ha-Ho-He!’ and ‘BSC’ of Hertha.

So when I happen upon an electricity box, covered over in the enemy colours, I feel a pang of territorial angst. It seems an uppity band of Hertha fans have taken it upon themselves to infiltrate enemy lines.

Further along the route, there are more examples. This simply isn’t on. And the other Unioner in the area agree.

Over the next few months, a back-and forth ensues. Union fans paint over the offensive ‘art’, with those cheeky little scamps from the West coming back a few days later to wind up the Ossis.

One spring morning, the Unioner have clearly had enough. A message blazoned on a red background reads: ‘lezte warnung’. Last. Warning.

Graffiti is everywhere you look in Berlin. Famous taggers like ‘CLIT’ and ‘ADHS’ are scrawled on pretty much every wall, tram stop or U-bahn station. More adventurous groups like ‘1UP’ have created truly striking pieces of urban art that turn the sides of otherwise unspectacular apartment buildings into canvases. Stickers are bloody everywhere. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been taking a slash in a pub urinal, looked up, and seen the badge of my rugby club hastily plastered to the bathroom wall. I hope you washed your hands lads.

Street art, in all its forms, is a way of life in this city. Having a wall separating two countries but one people, organised under diametrically opposed political ideologies is a fertile breeding ground for taggers and painters to leave their mark. Graffiti is used as a means of communication for the disaffected.

On the East Side Gallery, one of the remaining sites of the Berlin Wall which exhibits some of the most famous street art in the world (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost been run over by a Lime Scooter, veering into the bike line to get around throngs of tourists taking photos of Eric Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev making out) hosts one piece of work that sums the ethos of graffiti (and any political motivated art) perfectly.

The unattributed quote reads:

"Many small people, who in many small places, do many small things, can alter the face of the world"

All this high-minded chat probably doesn’t have much relevance when you think about a group of scallies winding up their intra-city rivals with a can of blue paint and a head full of mischief. But there is more to it than that. I’ve read this brilliant piece by Ethan Rooney countless times since I came across it a few months ago.

The piece reads like a three-way conversation between Rooney, his friend Max Jack — a photographer and filmmaker based in Berlin — and the graffiti he encounters on his travels. There’s pro Dynamo areas in the north east, which almost imperceptibly blend into more Union heavy territory and then disputed grounds between Union and Hertha as he heads back to the wall. There are two quotes that really stand out. One from Ethan’s writing, and one from Max.

Max:

“There’s this competition for visual dominance which I also interpret as another way of laying claim to territory in the city.”

Ethan:

“Walking the streets of Berlin, with its layers of graffiti, you can’t help but feel the weight of its divided past. Through the rivalry between its football clubs—painted on the walls, plastered on lampposts, and etched into the city’s identity—Berlin’s history remains very much alive. Football isn’t just a game here; it’s a battleground where the scars of East and West still show, hidden in plain sight for those who know where to look.”

Clearly, I know where to look. Yesterday, that electricity box turned blue and white again. The battle for supremacy in the Haupstadt rumbles on.

In search of Berlin Football: Part 2 out now on Mundial’s website

Here’s the opening section of my latest piece for Mundial. It’s the second instalment of my series on Berlin’s football culture.

This article looks at the remarkable rise of the women’s game in the city. Both Viktoria and Union are flying the flag at the top of the game, but does that mean girls within the inner city are getting the chance to play ball?

As you step off the S-Bahn at Köpenick station, you can tell this isn’t your average match day at the Alte Försterei. For one, my partner and her friend are with me. Neither would consider themselves football fans by any means, but they have made an exception to be a part of this.

Union Berlin Frauen have a date with destiny. These women have carved up the 2.Bundesliga in 2024/25. With a victory over bottom-of-the-table FSV Gütersloh, they will be crowned champions of the second tier, booking their place at the top table of German football for the first time.

The buzz around the team is impossible to ignore. For the past year, the posters adorning electricity boxes, which used to promote the men’s next fixture, have been replaced by posters of captain Lisa Heiseler and her team.

Union’s women have regularly pulled crowds of 6,000-plus during the run-in, with the expected attendance for the finale topping 20,000, their average crowd will be the fourth highest for any women’s team in Europe, regardless of their level.

The massive crowd skews decidedly female—little girls clad in red and white grip tightly to the hands of their older sisters and mothers. The cries of ‘Eisern Union' are not quite as loud, but are in a slightly higher register. They are no less passionate.

As Union score their sixth goal of the day, the first refrain of “Gütersloh” emanates from the Waldseite. With the title sewn up, the crowd pay homage to their less famous and well-resourced rivals in recognition of their part in a historic day. When Heiseler lifts the trophy, it’s a culmination of a project which has captured the minds and hearts of this fiercely communal club.

You can read the article in full, here.

‘Die 56’

We’ve re-jigged our plans for the upcoming season. We’ll still be visiting as many stadiums as we can, but we need your support to make that happen. Head over to this article, to find out how a €5 per month subscription can help us provide in-depth coverage of Germany's vast football culture.