Gegenfunk Wedding

Gegenfunk Wedding is a digital channel run by young people from Berlin’s Wedding and Moabit districts that concentrates on their thoughts and ideas – both on and off camera. The contributions reflect a broad range of perspectives and illustrate what the medially ubiquitous events of war mean for local young people’s daily lives.

Wedding is changing: a recruitment centre is to open at Leopoldplatz; the Pierburg factory, a subsidiary of Rheinmetall, is in the process of switching its production from auto parts to weapons and ammunition; and Bundeswehr advertisements are everywhere, on kebab wrappers, in trams and in schools.

The Gegenfunk makers have very different experiences with war and its consequences. Some have fled as refugees, while others come from families with refugee backgrounds. Still others hold German passports, yet find that their nationality is at issue. These youngsters are now forced to ask themselves: Would you kill for Germany?

Gegenfunk Wedding regularly meet at the Berlin Anti-War Museum, one of the city’s oldest anti-militarist institutions, founded by Ernst Friedrich. The museum’s collection shows how early on children were moulded into future soldiers by state institutions. Playing at war is easier than playing peace games. 

The anarchist and anti-militarist Gustav Landauer was one of the co-founders of the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. Rosa Luxemburg, who gave her name to the famous square, saw war as a manifestation of the willingness to submit due to economic and social power imbalances. Gegenfunk uses the history of the Volksbühne as a starting point to look at the wars of the present.

In cooperation with Theater X in Moabit and MÄDEA in Gesundbrunnen, a variety of multimedia and performance-based formats are being developed: talk shows, street interviews, and reports, as well as screenprints, posters, and a mobile broadcast station to be set up in public spaces – for example, in front of the recruitment centre at Leopoldplatz.

Gegenfunk Wedding is a local urban-space project of the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz launching in autumn 2026.