When David Bowie lived in Berlin between late 1976 and 1978, the late singer-songwriter once told Uncut magazine, what he learned to appreciate most about the city was that he could move around in “virtual anonymity … For some reason, Berliners just didn’t care.”

Forty years after Bowie’s move there, and seven months after his death, Berliners have now done their best to show that they do care about his legacy after all.

On Monday, a throng of several hundred fans, high-profile politicians and former friends brought traffic to a standstill on the main road through west Berlin’s Schöneberg district to witness the unveiling of a plaque commemorating the time Bowie lived there in a flatshare with Iggy Pop.

The €3,400 (£2,900) plaque – made of bone china and quoting the chorus of Berlin-inspired hit “Heroes” – had been signed off by the senate in spite of it usually requiring a five-year waiting period to make sure the deceased figure is really as historically significant as it seems at the time of death.



In Bowie’s case, Berlin’s mayor, Michael Müller, said, there had been no question over the British artist’s significance. Bowie had played a key role in fostering Berlin’s “sense of being a city of culture, creativity and openness … David Bowie belongs to Berlin, David Bowie belongs to us,” the Social Democrat politician said.

The only thing that still puzzled him, the mayor said, was Bowie’s decision to seek out Berlin as a kind of rehab clinic, to help him kick his drug habit – a counterintuitive move, given that the city had its own reputation for substance abuse in the 1970s. “Maybe he didn’t know our city very well when he made that decision,” Müller said.

While Iggy Pop by his own description “moved to Berlin in rude health and left as a wreck”, Bowie managed to convert the new-found anonymity for a phase of creative experimentation, resulting in the three albums often referred to as the “Berlin trilogy” – Low, “Heroes” and Lodger, inspired by Berlin but recorded in Switzerland and the US.

“Heroes”, supposedly inspired by a young couple kissing against the backdrop of the Berlin Wall which Bowie had spied upon from a window at Kreuzberg’s Hansa recording studio, ended up feeding back into the city’s own folklore.

When Bowie played “Heroes” at an open-air concert on the western side of the wall in 1987, thousands of East German fans reportedly sang along to the song on the other side of the barrier that divided the city between 1961 and 1989 – some say it even inspired a wave of dissident protests against the GDR regime.

Bowie had sought out the flat on Hauptstrasse 155 because of the area’s “bleak, anonymous, and culturally lost” character, according to his first wife, Angie, a feel the area retains. Other than the new memorial, nothing gives away the cultural significance of the building now wedged between a tattoo parlour, a book store and a studio offering “psychotherapy and massages”.

The plaque’s manufacturers, KPM (The Royal Porcelain Factory in Berlin), have confirmed that should it be stolen, it can be replaced within 24 hours, which may be construed by Bowie memorabilia collectors as an something of an invitation.



On Monday morning, as Müller lifted a curtain to display the plaque and fans rushed forward to take selfies next to the memorial, a couple of uninterested passersby pushed through the throng on their way to the shops. Evidently, some Berliners still don’t care.

• This article was amended on 26 August 2016 to change the word “disinterested” to “uninterested”.