The majority in the German Bundestag in favour of Berlin was rather small when the vote was taken in 1991 on the future seat of government following German reunification. From 1949 the Federal Republic of Germany (West) had been governed from the unassuming and small Rhineland city of Bonn; the German Democratic Republic (East) had made East Berlin the centre of government – with the Wall dividing the city from 1961. Today it is almost impossible to imagine this conflict: Berlin, although located in the northern corner of the country and only 60 kilometres from Poland, is now Germany’s undisputed capital city and the seat of its government and parliament.
The city attracts, rather than repels visitors from all over the world. Germany is not accused of having become more nationalistic. The country’s unity and size have not gone to its head. In fact, the country has become more European, something that is conspicuously evident in Berlin. Berlin sometimes still gets high on itself – it has much to learn about being a metropolis. Berlin is a mishmash, it has no clear “identity”. But it is precisely that, this hodgepodge of the disjointed, the nervous, the old and new, the parochial and urbane, East and West, that has long since constituted Berlin’s true appeal and probably also its self-image.
There was a lot of apprehension when the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe was planned, an enormous field of pillars without names or inscriptions for the individuals, stones towering over passers-by immediately adjacent to the Brandenburg Gate and not far from the Reichstag. But that is long forgotten. The monument, a grey undulating sea of stone stumps, is visited by school groups and tourists. It doesn’t provoke gloom, Berlin – that is the feeling – has refound its integrity as a result. The past, it has been clearly demonstrated, cannot be brushed under the carpet in a city of this kind. The remains of the past are impossible to overlook – the reminders of the Prussian military state that was once rigidly controlled from here, of the last German emperor in the “capital of the German Reich”, of the Nazi terror and, naturally, relics of the decades of division (until 1990).
Berlin mirrored the division of Germany within itself, within the city, because the western part remained connected to the Federal Republic – an island inside the GDR – and a bastion of the “free world”, as the broadcasters at Berliner Rundfunk relentlessly kept pointing out to the East. Now all that is history. Although many traces have disappeared, only a few were swept under the carpet, Berlin does not disavow its scars – and that is precisely what makes it so remarkably modern. The palaces and parks in the southern part of the city recall the “Prussian Arcadia” – as a quotation, not an imitation. It may be the case that the City Palace in Berlin-Mitte, blown up by the GDR in 1950 and replaced by the Palace of the Republic, will be rebuilt, while the Palace of the Republic will first be freed of asbestos and then demolished; nonetheless, the renovated Mitte district with its museums, opera house, university and magnificent façades does not give the impression that an idyll is being restored. Between triumph and destruction, Berlin cannot disown its past.
Integrity therefore seems to me to be the word for Berlin today. Unfortunately, there are usually only markings on the ground to remind us of the location of the Wall that was erected in 1961 by East German “construction soldiers” to stop the flow of people leaving the GDR. Some of it has been built on. Potsdamer Platz – always at the heart of old Berlin – was a deserted wasteland while Germany was divided. Now the most modern part of Berlin rises into the sky here, just so high as Berliners would like it – the people of Frankfurt like their buildings taller, not to mention the inhabitants of Shanghai or New York. Berlin felt it was important here to show it was not only looking back into the past and to build something on the site of the Wall that unites East and West.
Once before, in the 1920s during the Weimar Republic, Berlin enjoyed an unrivalled reputation because of its conspicuous contrasts. The city was divided into up and down, rich and poor. Today these are joined above all by the rift between East and West. Yet the “Wall in people’s heads”, that invisible barrier, is disappearing and this dividing line no longer really exists for the students that are attracted to the Humboldt University (in former East Berlin) or the Free University (in former West Berlin), nor for the people from Bonn who came to the city with the Government, nor for the nouveau riches from all over the world who want nothing more than to live around Prenzlauer Berg and its Kollwitzplatz. This is where East Berlin is being totally revamped. The process is taking place so fast and so thoroughly that one wishes one of the great writers and sociologists of the 1920s, such as Siegfried Kracauer or Walter Benjamin, could take up the subject. Anyway, at least Berlin’s Russian, the author Wladimir Kaminer, has settled here and the Turkish German Feridun Zaimoglu. Here and there Berlin actually becomes a “melting pot”. However, East and West have not really fully intermingled after the fall of the Wall and despite the countless newcomers to Berlin.
Berlin has by far the largest Turkish community in Germany – in fact, it is the largest outside Turkey. Its members live in the West (especially in Kreuzberg and Neukölln), not in the East. It is considered integrated to a remarkable extent. This colourful harmony is self-confidently displayed during the Carnival of Cultures, a street festival with a cast of millions. The appealing image of a pluralistic and tolerant Berlin has encouraged that even more. Unfortunately, however, more and more young people in Berlin’s traditional working-class districts as well as those with large ethnic minorities find they have no future. And Berlin, traditionally a poor city, a city of ordinary people, is again becoming a trailblazer here in the sense that it is acting as a social laboratory for the entire Federal Republic.
Music, art, theatre, museums – they all lend the city that urbane air of sophistication that almost makes you forget that in many respects it has also remained rather provincial. It has one village next to the other. Does the “political class”, which made the definitive move here from Bonn eight years ago, form the roof under which they all come together? Parliamentary debates, the grand coalition, the latest news of the day – these compete here with a large number of other “events” and a certain relativization could perhaps also be rather beneficial. Berlin urgently needed an injection of inspiration, of inner self-confidence, a feeling of a new beginning – and rather ironically, this boost has come from the “provinces”. That is the historical payoff: in the end, a federal Germany, based on many centres and cities with vibrant provincial scenes, has returned the spirit and strength to the capital that it had lost during the years of division.
Of course, commotion and fuss have also accompanied it to Berlin. Frequently, media and politics move around in circles. Nevertheless, this has not given rise to a “Berlin Republic” with ideas beyond its station. Berlin offers everyone space to project their ideas, but obviously these are different for everyone. Do you build a Topography of Terror to present all your inconsistencies to visitors from all over the world or to secretly get rid of the past? Chancellor Schröder primarily saw these places of remembrance, indeed Berlin itself, as venues of German history. His successor, Angela Merkel, views the city – in whose eastern sector she already lived as a young scientist – as a symbol of division and reunification.
Yet no one can seriously claim that Germany has been reinvented and now presents itself with a new national arrogance. No, in Berlin the reunified Germany has clearly continued to build on what the Federal Republic of Germany learned over decades. It wants to remain oriented towards civil society and towards Europe.
Since 1989 and 11 September 2001, the world order has been changing and that has had an impact in return. The city seems modern, but also appears equivocal. It is both small and large, new and old, outmoded and modish. It reflects much of the mood in the country. In Berlin, however, more emphasis has always been placed on style than content, and it would be a miracle if that were not the case now. It’s the Berlin air: you look inwards and think it’s the whole world – or even just the Federal Republic.
