In front of the windows of the new editorial offices, the faithful birds that once passed their time at Alexanderplatz gather. Everything remains as it never was.
Ulrich Seidler
Two feuilletonists start the eveningdpa
I know those crows that perch in the trees outside our office windows. I know all about crows from the newspaper. Namely from the Berliner Zeitung, No. 299, Volume 64, issue of 20./21. December 2008. At that time we were still shoveling the letters into the pages at Alexanderplatz. The feature editor at the time, Harald Jähner, must have leaned on the shovel and looked out of the window. Here’s the result of that look. A shovel full of black gold:
“At the moment, thousands of crows gather at dusk, preferably near high-rise buildings, right at the top of the top floors, where the warm updrafts caress their bellies. It has often been heard that crows are said to be the most intelligent birds. One recently mimicked my dog’s bark and feasted on his puzzled face. During the day the crows fly to work, preferably on the outskirts in search of food, in the evening there is this mass party in Mitte, before after a few cozy hours it goes into the sleeping trees. The sky above the Alex is particularly popular, as you can see several glittering Christmas markets from here. The quickly bored crows are offered a lot from below. The people in their merry-go-rounds pretend to fly. With what a screech!’
We recently documented Jähner’s psychogram of the hated mole here. That was great, also because we found out afterwards that there had been a reconciliation. In this small portrait of a crow, however, we feel, with undiminished precision, the vibrating kinship between feuilletonists and the raven birds, their cleverness, clearly, but also their somewhat remote position and the slightly alienated view from above of everyday life, which only makes one aware of one’s own goings-on power. Even if it doesn’t look like a mass party here in Kreuzberg, halfway up in front of our new domicile, tonight, like many readers, the crows have remained loyal to us and have come with us. And the shovels do it too.