Walking along Bethaniendamm in Kreuzberg, most tourists following traces of the old Berlin Wall pass this corner unnoticed: a small, triangular traffic island with a two-story odd structure made of wooden planks on top, surrounded by ivy, tomato seedlings, and a handful of curious tourists. When I first saw it, I couldn't immediately grasp what it was. Only after learning its story did I understand that this wasn't an ordinary garden—this was the monument of a man's stubborn refusal to let go of the land despite bureaucracy and history.
Who Was Osman Kalın?
Osman Kalın was a Turkish immigrant born in 1925. When he first came to Germany, he worked in Austria, Stuttgart, and Mannheim; he settled in Berlin in 1980, when approaching retirement. Father of six children, Kalın was one of hundreds of thousands of Turkish immigrants living in West Berlin at that time—part of the "guest worker" generation that arrived through the labor agreement signed between West Germany and Turkey on October 30, 1961. This agreement formally opened the door for hundreds of thousands of Turkish citizens to migrate to Germany over more than a decade.
What distinguished Kalın from the others was that in 1983, as a retired man, he noticed an abandoned lot on Bethaniendamm and decided to grow onions, garlic, and cucumbers there. What began as ordinary gardening enthusiasm quickly turned into one of Cold War Berlin's strangest peculiarities.
The Place Where a Garden Was Born: Right at the Wall's Edge
The triangular lot on Bethaniendamm was at the exact center of Berlin's division's strangest administrative void. The land administratively belonged to East Berlin, but physically it was located on the West Berlin side of the Wall—in other words, it was a "gray zone" that neither East German authorities could reach nor where the West held full official judicial authority. When Kalın began cleaning the rubble-filled abandoned land and planting, he was essentially cultivating land that no state truly claimed.
The structure he initially built was single-story and deliberately kept low from the Wall—not to be noticed, not to disturb anyone. But at some point, East German border guards noticed this and, suspecting a possible tunnel-digging attempt, took action. Interestingly, rather than getting lost in bureaucracy, the matter was resolved in an unusual way: according to accounts, Kalın was granted permission to use the garden through an approval process that rose to one of East Germany's highest political bodies, the SED Central Committee. The only condition was that the structure could not be higher than the Wall.
After the Wall Fell: The Tree House Grows
When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, Kalın's small garden was freed from its constraints. Expanding eastward, he built a roughly 80-square-meter two-story structure on a concrete foundation—this is what is today known as the "Baumhaus an der Mauer" (Tree House at the Wall). But the story did not proceed smoothly: the structure was subjected to arson attacks twice, in 1991 and 2003. Each time Kalın rebuilt it—as if this small piece of land was not merely a garden for him, but a symbol of resistance.
Today, spread over approximately 350 square meters, this area, though not counted among Berlin's official monuments, has become a frequently mentioned symbol in the city's oral history and tourist guides—an "unofficial" but universally known landmark.
What Is the Situation on Bethaniendamm Today?
Osman Kalın passed away in 2018. Since then, his son Mehmet Kalın has taken over the maintenance of the garden and tree house. There are plans to turn the structure into a museum; the story has also been made into a children's book called "Osman's Garden" (Osmans Garten), which is an indicator of how deeply the story has embedded itself in Berlin's collective memory.
Today, anyone passing along Bethaniendamm can still see the wooden structure standing there, its facade covered with ivy, and small garden patches. Though it lacks official museum or monument status, the structure has become one of Kreuzberg's most photographed "hidden" spots.
The Symbolic Importance of Osman Kalın's Garden in Berlin's Turkish Immigrant History
What truly makes Osman Kalın's garden significant is not merely that it is an odd architectural anecdote. Kreuzberg became one of the most densely settled areas of Turkish immigrants to Berlin in the post-1961 period; it remains to this day the district bearing the city's most visible Turkish cultural traces. Kalın's story is one of the rare examples emerging from this broad wave of immigration that transcends the ordinary through personal stubbornness. The achievement of a man who came as a "guest worker," taking a piece of land that neither state fully claimed, and through bureaucratic obstacles transforming it by his own hand into a living space—this represents one of the most stripped-down forms of the immigrant experience: needing not official permission but stubbornness and labor to belong.
As someone living in Cyprus, I understand somewhat how borders and administrative lines shape daily life. But Kalın's story reminded me that even the strictest of borders sometimes has a forgotten corner—and whoever plants garlic there first, that corner becomes a little bit theirs. The wooden house standing at Bethaniendamm is Berlin's official history's outside, yet one of the stories that defines the city. Those visiting Berlin and seeing the Wall's remains, the East Side Gallery, or Checkpoint Charlie should certainly also see this quiet corner a few hundred meters away—because here stands the still-standing proof of one man's quiet but stubborn resistance, the highest manifestation of the Berlin Wall's shadow, still surviving.
