“Paris is always Paris, and Berlin is never Berlin!” a bemused French culture minister, Jack Lang, once exclaimed. With two halves stitched back together, like a maltreated magician’s assistant at the end of a wicked trick, the scars of Berlin’s history still run around her middle. But this tireless performer continues to mesmerise young and old with an exciting talent for shape-shifting.
The past is easily conjured in this most forward-looking of European capitals. All but a tiny stretch is gone of the Wall that once divided the city into capitalist West and communist East. But visitors who glance down near the Brandenburg Gate will see the line of the infamous barrier etched out in paving bricks. Just north of the gleaming Potsdamer Platz development, a 21st-century temple to Mammon, is the site of Adolf Hitler’s bunker. The historic thoroughfare of Unter den Linden runs through the rejuvenated Mitte (or ‘middle’). Three-quarters of the way down the street at Bebelplatz there’s a memorial to the first major Nazi book-burning in 1933. Ten minutes further on, 1970s communist kitsch survives in the revolving restaurant 207m up the Fernsehturm (TV tower).
Staged recovery
The city that visitors see in 2009 arrived in distinct stages, says Nick Gay of Original Berlin Walks and author of the book Berlin Then and Now. It’s “unrecognisable in parts” from the Berlin that Gay first moved to 18 years ago.
After the Wall ‘fell’ with the opening of the East-West border on November 9 1989, there was a heady rush to national unity. The next year, on October 3, the DDR (or East Germany) ceased to exist. The first major change came as ‘Ossis’ (Easterners) went west, lured by the promise of freedom and capitalist riches. Artists, slackers, squatters and other alternative types moved into their abandoned buildings.
Low rents in Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain and other eastern districts laid the ground for Berlin to become the capital of creative start-ups it is today. They also underpinned the east’s rebirth as the epicentre of Berlin’s world-class nightlife. Periodically, arbiters of style will declare the better-off western districts of Charlottenburg and Schöneberg trendy again, and these areas undoubtedly have their charms. In truth, however, the heart of the action in Berlin has – to paraphrase the well-known sign at the Checkpoint Charlie Russian-US crossing point – long left the old American Sector.
The Mitte of reinvention
The revamp of Mitte, just east of the Brandenburg Gate, was the next major redevelopment stage, and it ran alongside the decision to bring the seat of government back to the capital in 1999. As more than 35,000 parliamentarians, bureaucrats and national media personnel packed their bags in Bonn (the western capital from 1949), Berlin prepared for their arrival with a building boom.
Up went five-star hotels, designer shops, restaurants and offices, and up went a space-age government district. Crowds began flocking to the Hackescher Markt complex of shops, artists’ workshops and restaurants. Most notably, the 19th-century Reichstag was reinvented as a major sightseeing attraction with its glass beehive dome. Elsewhere, a Jewish Museum was built.
Another major architectural push preceded the football World Cup in 2006, when united Berlin finally got a central train station, and an undulating field of concrete blocks made a surprisingly moving Holocaust Memorial. However, what Berlin really gained that summer was a newfound confidence. Crowds lining the Fan Mile along Tiergarten park – from the Brandenburg Gate to the winged Siegessäule (Victory Column) – seemed to have lost their ambivalence about sometimes controversial national symbols as they enthusiastically waved the German flag.
Since 2006, Berlin has has had a patchier construction record. The Neues Museum recently reopened after 70 years, bringing a famous bust of Egyptian queen Nefertiti before the public and a new sheen to the renowned Museums Island. But financial restrictions saw the new U55 underground line, nicknamed the Chancellor Line because of its route through the government quarter, opened late and in a comically truncated, three-station version. Similarly, chaos and service cutbacks in 2009 on the city’s normally reliable S-Bahn transit system have been blamed in some quarters on parent company Deutsche Bahn preparing its books for privatisation – a plan postponed only because of the global financial crisis.
Poor but sexy
It’s an ironic twist of fate that has brought the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall into collision with the worst economic conditions since the 1930s. In Berlin, which experienced both communism and capitalism, a joke doing the rounds this year asks the difference between the two systems. Answer: under communism first you nationalise and the economy is ruined; with capitalism it’s the other way around.
In some ways, the German capital can afford to laugh. In 2003, confronted by a e60bn hole left in the city budget by earlier ill-fated construction loans, Mayor Klaus Wowereit memorably declared Berlin “poor but sexy.” This chic poverty, says Michael Burda, an economics professor at Berlin’s Humboldt University, has rendered the city largely recession-proof. “You can’t be poorer than Berlin and still be a world-class city. During the financial crisis, Berlin didn’t have much to lose and in fact it has much more to gain,” Burda says.
The figures seem to bear out his view. Nearly 80 percent of the local economy relies on the service sector (especially tourism, media, advertising, technology and fashion) and this has been much less affected by the current crisis than Germany’s famous automotive and other manufacturing businesses. Consequently, the capital’s GDP dropped by only 2.3 percent in the first six months of 2009, compared to 6.8 percent nationally.
Another 10 percent of Berlin economy is driven by essential federal and state government business. “We’re not home to any of the major production facilities of Daimler, BMW or Opel, which tend to mould a place,” says Petra König, economy policy director of the Berlin Chamber of Industry and Trade. Meanwhile, Berlin has been promised a generous share of stimulus money: e632m of Germany’s e50bn second stimulus package will go into the capital.
Although any city with Berlin’s history is resilient enough to withstand recession, politicians are cautioning against over-optimism. Harald Wolf, Berlin senator for industry, technology and women, has warned that that high unemployment (at 13.6 percent) and weak consumer confidence could hamper recovery.
Too much of a good thing?
Not everyone is happy with how things have panned out over the past 20 years, and since Berliners are famous for their bluntness or ‘Schnauze’ (literally ‘snout’), the disaffected are vocal about it. A minority have a – revisionist or otherwise – nostalgia for the welfare state and greater social cohesion of East Germany. A few simply miss city landmarks like the copper-coloured glass Palace of the Republic (the East German parliament finally demolished in late 2008) or Tempelhof airport, the landing strip for the Berlin airlift that could now be turned into an aviation museum… or a housing estate.
Some decry the Disneyfication of such Cold War landmarks, including Checkpoint Charlie, where actors in military uniforms now pose for tourist photos. Others resent the gentrification of even ‘knallhart’ (tough as nails) districts like Neukölln or Berlin’s less distinguished modern architecture, which they worry might eventually make it like any other metropolis.
But all such gripes have been put aside during this typically chilly, global-warming-defying Berlin winter, as the city has partied like it’s 1989. Historical exhibitions and celebratory cheer will run well into 2010, especially with the 20th anniversary of German reunification on October 3. However, one event chosen for the big night of November 9 2009 exemplifies how Berlin has learned to face and embrace its painful history – the 1,000 eight-foot-tall Styrofoam dominoes erected and then pushed over along part of the east–west divide. “We want to knock the Wall over once again,” said Mayor Wowereit.
