What "Wings of Desire" Shows About Berlin's Housing Reality

Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire), Wim Wenders' 1987 film, captures a divided city where angels watch over Berlin's streets and rooftops. The film's visual obsession with the built environment—crumbling walls, makeshift shelters, the physical separation of East and West—reflects a real housing emergency that was unfolding as the film was made. The movie does not solve housing problems, but it documents them with precision: overcrowded apartments, squatter communities, families living in industrial spaces, and the particular vulnerability of people without legal residency or work permits.

The film was shot during the final years before the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989. At that moment, West Berlin was a walled island surrounded by East Germany, with severe housing shortages, high rents, and a large population of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers. The angels in Wenders' film observe all of this from above—they see the people sleeping rough, the families crammed into single rooms, the young people occupying abandoned buildings. The movie does not explain how to find housing; instead, it shows what happens when housing is scarce, expensive, or legally unavailable.

Key Takeaways

  • The film documents real housing conditions in 1980s West Berlin, including overcrowding, squatter movements, and the vulnerability of people without legal status.
  • Berlin's housing crisis in 1987 was driven by the city's isolation as a walled enclave, high rents relative to wages, and restrictions on who could legally rent.
  • The movie shows how people without formal housing options—migrants, undocumented residents, young people—created informal solutions like occupation and communal living.
  • After the Wall fell and Germany reunified, Berlin's housing market changed dramatically, but the film remains a historical record of pre-reunification shelter conditions.

The Divided City and Its Housing Shortage

In 1987, West Berlin was physically isolated. The Wall surrounded the city on all sides, cutting it off from the surrounding East German territory. This isolation meant that housing supply could not expand outward; the city was trapped within its borders. At the same time, West Berlin attracted people fleeing the East, asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa, and young people from across West Germany drawn by the city's cultural scene and its status as a haven for conscientious objectors to military service.

Rents in West Berlin were high relative to local wages, and landlords could be selective about tenants. People without German citizenship, without stable employment, or without a clean police record faced discrimination in the rental market. Young people, migrants, and anyone perceived as politically radical found doors closed. The result was a visible homeless population, families living in single rooms, and the emergence of squatter communities—people occupying abandoned or underused buildings without permission.

Wenders' film captures this tension visually. The camera lingers on damaged facades, on the Wall itself, on the physical markers of a city under stress. The angels observe a woman sleeping in a doorway, a man in a makeshift shelter under a bridge, families in cramped apartments. These are not invented details; they reflect the actual conditions that social workers, journalists, and housing advocates documented throughout the 1980s.

Squatting and Informal Housing Solutions

Because formal housing was inaccessible to many people, Berlin developed a visible squatter movement. Young people, political activists, and families without rental history occupied empty buildings—often former industrial spaces, abandoned offices, or properties held by speculators. These occupations were not legal, but they were tolerated to varying degrees by city authorities who recognized that the alternative was visible homelessness.

The squatter communities created their own social structures: shared kitchens, collective childcare, communal decision-making. Some occupations lasted for years. Others were raided by police. The film does not show squatter interiors directly, but it shows the world in which squatting became a rational response to an impossible housing market. One of the film's central characters, Damiel (played by Bruno Ganz), is drawn to a circus performer and follows her to a squat—a moment that grounds the film's spiritual meditation in the material reality of Berlin's housing crisis.

After reunification and the fall of the Wall in 1989, Berlin's housing market transformed. East Berlin's housing stock became available; the city could expand; new construction began. The squatter movement did not disappear, but its character changed. Some occupations were legalized; others were cleared. The acute shortage that had driven the movement in the 1980s eased, though housing affordability remained a political issue.

Who Could Not Find Housing in 1980s Berlin

The film's angels observe people across the city, and their observations reveal who was most vulnerable. Asylum seekers and migrants without legal status had almost no access to the formal rental market. Landlords required proof of employment, references from previous landlords, and often demanded that tenants be German citizens or have permanent residency. Young people without employment history faced similar barriers. People with criminal records, people with mental illness, people with addiction histories—all were systematically excluded.

Families with children sometimes found housing, but often in the worst conditions: damp basements, rooms without windows, overcrowded shared apartments. Single mothers faced particular discrimination. The result was a two-tier system: people with stable employment, German citizenship, and clean records could find decent housing at high cost; everyone else faced homelessness, squatting, or exploitation by landlords who charged high rents for substandard conditions.

The film does not name these barriers explicitly, but it shows their effects. The camera moves through the city observing people in circumstances that reflect systemic exclusion from the housing market. This is the film's documentary power: it records a moment in which a city's housing system was failing large numbers of people, and it does so without sentimentality or explanation.

The Role of Communal Living and Collective Spaces

Because individual apartments were scarce and expensive, communal living arrangements became common. Multiple families shared large apartments, dividing them into separate rooms and sharing kitchens and bathrooms. Young people formed housing collectives—groups that pooled resources to rent a large space and then divided it among members. These arrangements were practical responses to scarcity, but they also reflected a political culture in which collective living was seen as preferable to the isolation of nuclear family housing.

The film shows this world without judgment. People live together out of necessity and sometimes out of choice. The circus in the film functions partly as a communal space—a place where people without stable housing can gather, work, and belong. Wenders treats these spaces with respect, recognizing that they serve real social functions beyond mere shelter.

After reunification, as housing became more available and rents began to fall in some areas of East Berlin, communal living arrangements became less necessary. But they persisted as a cultural choice, particularly among young people and political activists. Some of the housing collectives formed in the 1980s still exist today, now formalized as registered cooperatives.

What Changed After the Wall Fell

The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 transformed the city's housing market almost immediately. East Berlin's housing stock—much of it built during the Soviet era and in poor condition, but nonetheless substantial—became available to West Berliners and to the newly mobile population of the former East Germany. The city could now expand beyond its previous borders. New construction began. Rents in East Berlin were initially much lower than in the West, drawing people eastward.

The acute shortage that had characterized West Berlin in the 1980s eased. Homelessness did not disappear, but it became less visible. Squatter occupations were gradually cleared or legalized. Young people who had occupied buildings in the 1980s sometimes negotiated to purchase or lease them formally. The housing crisis that Wenders' film documents was, in material terms, resolved by the simple fact of reunification and the doubling of available housing stock.

However, new problems emerged. Speculation on East Berlin property began almost immediately. Landlords bought buildings cheaply, evicted long-term tenants, and renovated for higher rents. By the mid-1990s, Berlin was experiencing gentrification in many neighborhoods. The film's documentation of 1980s housing scarcity became a historical record of a moment that had passed, but it also became a reference point for later housing activism and for debates about who belongs in the city.

How the Film Functions as a Historical Document

Wim Wenders made Der Himmel über Berlin as a work of art, not as a documentary or a housing policy analysis. But the film functions as a precise historical record of how a city's housing crisis manifests in daily life. The camera shows real streets, real buildings, real people in real circumstances. The film was shot on location in both West and East Berlin, capturing the physical reality of division and scarcity.

For anyone studying Berlin's housing history, the film is valuable evidence. It shows what rents could buy in 1987, what neighborhoods looked like, how people lived when housing was scarce. It captures the texture of a moment—the clothes, the music, the language, the visible signs of economic stress and political division. Later historians and housing researchers have used the film as a source, alongside official statistics and journalistic accounts, to understand what the 1980s housing crisis actually felt like to live through.

The film also captures something that statistics alone cannot convey: the spiritual and emotional weight of housing insecurity. The angels in the film are moved by human suffering, and much of that suffering is rooted in the inability to find safe, affordable shelter. Wenders suggests that housing is not merely a practical problem but a fundamental human need, and that a city in which many people lack it is a city in spiritual crisis.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the film actually about housing, or am I reading too much into it?

The film is not primarily about housing policy, but housing conditions are woven throughout. Wenders was interested in how people live in a divided city, and housing is central to that question. The film shows homelessness, overcrowding, and squatting as part of the texture of Berlin in 1987. You are not reading too much in; you are reading what is there.

Did the squatter movement in the film actually exist?

Yes. Berlin had a visible and active squatter movement in the 1980s, particularly in neighborhoods like Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg. Young people, political activists, and people without access to formal housing occupied empty buildings. Some occupations lasted years; others were raided by police. The movement was real and significant in Berlin's political culture.

What happened to people who were homeless in Berlin when the Wall fell?

The immediate effect was that housing became more available. Rents fell in some areas, particularly in East Berlin. Many people who had been homeless or living in squats found formal housing. However, homelessness did not disappear, and by the mid-1990s, gentrification began displacing people again. The long-term effects were mixed.

Can I visit the locations where the film was shot?

Many of the locations still exist, though Berlin has changed dramatically since 1987. The Tiergarten, the Reichstag, the Victory Column, and various neighborhoods appear in the film. Some buildings have been renovated or demolished. Walking the film's locations is a way to see how the city has transformed in the decades since reunification.

Does the film suggest solutions to housing problems?

No. Wenders observes and documents; he does not propose policy solutions. The film's perspective is that of the angels—witnessing human suffering without intervening. The implicit suggestion is that housing security is a fundamental human need and that a just city must ensure it, but the film does not outline how.