Architect Gisbert Pöppler’s home is a shrine to the city’s past – and a collection he’s built up over the 30 years since the Wall came down
Whenever Gisbert Pöppler has people over for dinner, the ghosts of Berlin’s past are guests of honour. Grouped around the dining table in his apartment in Berlin’s central Mitte district are three velvet armchairs the interior architect salvaged from what he calls the “Honecker lounge” at East Germany’s State Council Building, moulded over time by the well-nourished bottoms of Soviet apparatchiks. The table itself was formerly a conference table at Berlin’s Evangelical Academy, and if you look under the table top you realise the short legs are propped up on some old-fashioned metal money boxes, like a piece of concept art. “I’ve always wondered why this table is so low,” Pöppler says as he strolls through his apartment on sunny autumn morning. “One theory is that the Protestant church didn’t want people in important meetings to be able to hide behind the furniture. Isn’t that a beautiful idea?”
Pöppler, whose practice usually designs and builds living spaces for other people, lives in an apartment that not only speaks of his love for the ideas behind everyday objects, but also doubles as a museum of the German capital’s tumultuous history.
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