Berlin Real Estate Developers Are Hot for the Historic Center

Well-stocked snack bars and tricked-out rec rooms have become standard features of startup offices. But how many techies can say they’ve got the remains of a Nazi bunker in the courtyard? Or that their windows were once lookouts for East German border guards?

Music-sharing startup SoundCloud and Mozilla, maker of the Firefox Internet browser, are among the companies that have signed leases for space in a building that once formed part of the Berlin Wall. The former brewery is one of several properties on Bernauer Strasse that investor Simon Schaefer is turning into a technology hub known as the Factory . “It’s a cool way to build on history,” says Schaefer, who was 12 when the wall fell in 1989. “You see the East German architecture, you see the 19th century neighborhood, and then you have something modern we’ve put on top. That’s the essence of Berlin.”