To some extent, the notoriety of the ewerk name is far greater beyond Germany’s borders than within the country; it is also a name that is experiencing a renaissance of renown today thanks to the recent revitalization of the facility.
 Although many people are familiar with the name ewerk and associate a specific place with it, hardly anyone is aware of the facility’s multifaceted history, whose various strands converge in the center of Berlin at a particular place that is reflective of Germany’s destruction during World War II and the country’s postwar recovery and division, the changes that resulted from unification and the beginnings of normality in the early 21st century. ewerk’s history spans the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, a period that saw the establishment of the international concern AEG and the attendant industrial and technical revolution that was driven by Germany’s electrification; the massive destruction suffered by Germany during World War II as a result of Allied bombardments and the house to house combat engaged in by the Red Army; the pall that was cast over Germany by the Cold War and its consequences; the advent of the Berlin wall; the envisaged facelift of socialist East Berlin to keep the latter from coming up short in the competition between capitalism and socialism; the emergence of Berlin as one of the pioneering locales of the techno movement, the mecca of electronic music, and as the be-all-and-end-all of post communism cultural revitalization.
ewerk is a worldwide magnet for technology aficionados by virtue of its being Germany’s oldest preserved commercial power plant, and was thus one of the secret places from which the techno movement achieved peaceful dominion over the world.
There’s another dimension of ewerk’s history that also deserves mention, namely the fact that over the past 120 years a considerable number of attempts have been made to document ewerk’s history and keep its traditions alive. Two representative examples (among many others that could be mentioned) include the documentary work realized around 1895 by a government building planner named Soeder. This documentation today counts as a rare and precious record of the history of Berlin and its buildings. Another example is the work being done by Paul Kahlfeld and Vattenfall Europe’s Achim Grube, who since 1991 have published numerous articles that endeavor to memorialize the architecture of Hans-Heinrich Müller, the former chief architect of Berlin’s heating and lighting utility BEWAG. Kahlfeld and Grube are also making efforts to find new uses for Berlin’s abandoned electrical supply stations. One fruit of these efforts is the multifaceted revitalization of ewerk.
The success of these commemorative projects realized by Vattenfall Europe has been recognized through the awarding of various non-commercially oriented prizes and honors, including the 2005 German Memorial Prize and the 2003 Berlin Memorial Prize.
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