Photo Gallery Childhood Memories Documented in Ruins

When photographer Sarah Schönfeld returned to Lichtenberg, the eastern Berlin neighborhood where she grew up in East Germany eight years ago, she was shocked to find it disappearing. The playgrounds were gone, schools lay in disrepair and swimming pools were crumbling away. Fascinated, she began to document the decline in photos.
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A past buried: In winter 2005, photograher Sarah Schönfeld returned to the outdoor swimming pool in Siegfried Strasse in Berlin's Lichtenberg district. She found trees and bushes growing between the tiles of the pool where ...

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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... as a child she had spent many an afternoon. She even learned to swim there. This photo shows Schönfeld at the pool when she was four years old.

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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A glimpse at the past: When Schönfeld returned to her former school in Berlin's Lichtenberg district as an adult in 2005, she found a building that had fallen into disrepair. There is little to suggest in this photo that the room was once used as a gymnasium.

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Lights Out: Former government-owned East German graphite product producer VEB Elektrokohle Lichtenberg built an events center in Lichtenberg's Herzberg Strasse where Schönfeld once performed with her violin ...

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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... but today it only consists of abandoned rooms.

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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Schönfeld is pictured here inside her kindergarten in Lichtenberg in 1986. Being brought up by a single mother, Schönfeld spent much time there as child. In a recent art photography project, Schönfeld revisited the disappearing sites of her East German childhood to bid them farewell.

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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Schönfeld has sought to suppress some memories from her school years that confused her as a child. Although she was one of the brightest pupils during her first and second years at school, her achivements were never recognized on a wall dedicated to the best students because she wasn't a member of the official, Communist Party-endorsed youth organization.

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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But she did receive this certificate in year two for "good learning in the Socialist school," commending her for "good learning, exemplary social skills and extracurricular work" during the 1987-88 school year.

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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Dinosaurs in the Undergrowth: After German reunification, the former state-owned Kulturpark, or cultural park, in East Berlin was earmarked to be redeveloped as a West German-style amusement park. Due to high entry prices, however, visitors stayed away, and East Germany's most famous amusement park closed its doors in 2001. Since then, the site, now known as Spreepark, has fallen into disrepair. The ferris wheel is rusting, while the dinosaurs are overrun by undergrowth and ...

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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... the carousels that Schönfeld used to ride (as she did in this 1985 photo) have stopped for good. According to the photographer, the best thing about visiting the amusement park were the views from the nearby Plänterwald S-Bahn commuter train station, rather than the rides. "From there," she remembers, "we could see the high-rise buildings in West Berlin."

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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Schönfeld named a three-part photo series she created in 2004 "Mama, you sow," after a piece of graffiti that is now scrawled on the wall of her former kindergarten classroom, which had since been abandoned. In the works, the photographer hid black-and-white photos of herself as a child in the disused rooms of the kindergarten. This one, located on the right windowsill ...

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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... shows Schönfeld (on the far right) dressed as a clef during Mardi Gras-like carnival celebration in 1984.

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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The final pictures: Schönfeld's kindergarten in Bornitz Strasse in Berlin has since been torn down. Today, it is the site of a supermarket parking lot. In this photo, the artist hid a childhood photograph of herself in the room. It shows ...

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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... Schönfeld in the same room in 1986.

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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A ruined coal heater that was typically used in East German times: Over two decades ago in this room, Schönfeld posed ...

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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... together with other children in her peer group for a photo taken in 1985.

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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A concrete desert: The Palace of the Republic, East Germany's former parliament building, also features in Schönfeld's work. The artist used to attend children's concerts in the building, which was home to the Communist Party's rubber-stamp legislature. She recalls being impressed by the glamorous people and the carpets in the events hall, which was mockingly also referred to as "Erich's Lampenladen," or Erich's lamp store, a reference to former East German leader Erich Honecker and the scores of lamps that hung from the ceiling.

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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Empty halls: By the end of 2008, the Palace of the Republic had been torn down. Schönfeld wandered through the rooms a year earlier to take some final photographs.

Foto: Sarah Schönfeld
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Hunting for motifs: Berlin artist Schönfeld's works are featured in museums and galleries around the world. She prefers analog photography -- meaning she has to decide which shots she is going to take on location, and not later at her computer.

Foto: Kathrin Krottenthaler