Berlin

While it proved fairly simple to rearrange Berlin’s book and manuscript collections to avoid duplication of services, this was not the case with its great musical ensembles, which were accustomed to performing exactly what they wanted when they wanted. After reunification Berlin’s three opera companies and four major symphony orchestras had to compete for the same state subsidies and discriminating audiences. As in the heady days of Weimar, Berlin hardly seemed big enough for its galaxy of conductors and opera stage directors, which included Glaudio Abbado (Karajan’s replacement) at the Philharmonic; Vladimir Ashkenazy at the Radio Symphony Orchestra; Daniel Barenboim at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden; Götz Friedrich at the Deutsche Oper; and Harry Kupfer at the Komische Oper. To prevent these titans from stepping on each other’s toes, performances had to be carefully scheduled—and sometimes revised. Thus the Deutsche Oper delayed a new production of Wagner’s Parsifal so as not to undercut Barenboim’s debut with the same work at the Staatsoper in 1992. (It is safe to say that Furtwängler would never have done this for Karajan, or Karajan for anyone else.) Of course, Berlin’s musical public profited from this embarrassment of riches, but some former fans could not enjoy the plenty. Because seat prices in the east now matched those in the west, many easterners suddenly found themselves shut out of their favorite venues. “Sadly, I’m going to have to give this up,” complained an aging eastern pensioner during the intermission in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann at the Staatsoper. “The seat prices have become as steep as the stairs!” For many culture-loving Ossis, the freedom that came with the fall of the Wall meant, among other things, the freedom henceforth to derive their cultural enrichment chiefly from the tiny screen at home.

While higher ticket prices may have added to the new “wall” running through reunited Berlin, they did not prevent the city from becoming a greater cultural magnet for the rest of the country, and indeed for the entire world. Much more than in the days of division, Berlin in the 1990s became a regular stop for cultural tourists from abroad. Visitors who had once come to see the Wall now stood in line for tickets to the Philharmonie and the Staatsoper.

Reunited Berlin also became the place to go for Germany’s hip younger generation. According to a Der Spiegel poll in September 1994, the nation’s youth preferred the Spree metropolis over all other German cities as a getaway destination. Every summer thousands of young people descended on Berlin’s Tiergarten area to participate in the so-called “Love Parade,” a bacchanalian orgy of street-dancing, beer, drugs, rave music, and open-air sex. Not surprisingly, such an affair had its detractors, especially among residents of the Tiergarten district, who complained bitterly of being invaded by an army of beer-swilling, whistle-blowing, dope-ingesting louts, who trampled the vegetation in the park and left tons of garbage in their wake. When outraged residents pleaded with city officials to shift this onslaught to a less vulnerable location, such as the Avus speedway or the old Olympic grounds, the event’s sponsors, fearing for their profits, countered that the Love Parade was a “political demonstration” and off-limits to official tampering. Self-serving though the organizers’ argument undoubtedly was, the Love Parade had become too much a fixture in the new Berlin to banish to the suburbs. Moreover, for all its offensive qualities, this celebration of youthful hedonism was rather less ominous in its implications then many of the other demonstrations that had transpired in this historic district.

In April 1999 the new Berlin made its debut on the stage of international diplomacy by hosting the European Union summit. Chancellor Schröder had expressly asked that the conference be moved from Brussels to Berlin so that the new German capital could show what it could do. And that it did. The police escort conducting France’s president Jacques Chirac to a meeting in the restaurant Zur Letzten Instanz in the eastern part of the city got lost en route. A power outage put the press center out of business for two hours. There were so many security officials from so many different agencies that, in their confusion, the officials arrested each other. “The Germans,” said Bernard Demange, the spokesperson for the French embassy in Bonn, “are becoming ever more French, while the French are becoming more German.”