Berlin

While the European Union (EU) chiefs were meeting in Berlin’s Intercontinental Hotel, next to the zoo, a cabaret show entitled “Die Berliner Republik” opened at the nearby Volksbühne. In this send-up of the new Germany, the country’s first chancellor to rule from Berlin lived in a dumpy 1960s-era bungalow filled with flea-market furniture. As his first order of business, the Schröderlike character abandoned his capital for Africa, searching for the Ring of the Nibelungen, the “true German spirit,” and the capacity to fear. “I’m so afraid because I have no fear,” he confessed.

The main fear that the rest of the world harbors about the Berlin Republic is not that it might soon run off the rails, but that it might take too long to get properly on track. One of the principal rationales behind the shift of the capital to Berlin was the hope that this would help the new eastern German states achieve a level of prosperity and productive capacity similar to that in the West, thereby allowing Germany to overcome the debilities attached to reunification and resume its role as the “economic locomotive of Europe.” Ten years after the fall of the Wall, the East could boast some bright spots, such as Dresden and Jena, which were becoming centers of the high-tech industry, but in general the region was still far from pulling its own weight, and there was talk of its becoming a permanent drag on the German (and hence the European) economy—a kind of German Mezzogiorno. If the former GDR was like a “colony of pensioners,” consuming goods with the help of subsidies but not producing enough on its own, could Berlin, a city which itself had long lived on subsidies, help to pull it out of this condition?

Economic indices, of course, can improve as well as decline, and one could only hope that with time Berlin would shake off the bad habits acquired during the long division and play the more dynamic role that most Germans, and most of the rest of the world, wished it to play. One could only hope, too, that the city would find ways to dismantle its “Wall in the Head”—that formidable barrier to cooperation and understanding. As the German government made its move to Berlin, this debility seemed as acute as ever. In the municipal elections of October 10, 1999, one month after Berlin became the official capital of reunited Germany, the PDS gained its largest victory yet, largely at the expense of Schröder’s sagging SPD. As in earlier elections, the PDS recorded its gains almost exclusively in eastern Berlin, where it won approximately 40 percent of the vote. In the western districts of the city, meanwhile, the CDU generated its best showing since World War II by winning 48.9 percent of the tally. While this election, like a series of earlier SPD defeats, represented a setback for Schröder’s moderate reformist course, it was also a setback for Berlin, which needed a modicum of political consensus to deal with its many pressing problems.

It would be remiss, however, to conclude an assessment of Berlin at this historic juncture by focusing exclusively on the many problems that continue to bedevil this perennially troubled city. As we noted above, the Spree metropolis is once again attracting the nation’s youth—and not just for weekend visits or the annual Love Parade. An influx of young writers, artists, filmmakers, and art dealers is collectively fashioning one of Europe’s most vital avant-garde scenes. Once staid Berlin-Mitte is awash in new art galleries. The newcomers are attracted by a sense of excitement, an edginess, that can be found nowhere else in Germany. Even jaded old-time residents are delighted by the fact that Berlin is getting another chance to become a great world metropolis. The city that some thought might become the “capital of the twentieth century”—and which ended up instead being identified with that era’s many horrors—might yet become, if not the capital of the twenty-first century, one of the most dynamic and progressive centers of the new age. “[Berlin] will be a great city of the next century, but it still has to be created,” declared Karl Kaiser in 1999, whose German Institute for Foreign Affairs had just made the move from Bonn to the new capital. “And I think that it is the open-end-edness that creates this strong sense of intrigue.”

Whether or not Berlin soon rivals New York, London, Paris, or Tokyo on the world stage, it is unlikely to remain as self-effacing in its capital role as did Bonn. While Bonn was a suitable, even ideal, capital for a fledgling democracy trying to find its way in a suspicious world, Berlin is in a better position to represent the German state as it seeks to realize the full potential of its democratic maturity and national reunification. Far from departing from the principles of the “Bonn Republic,” the “Berlin Republic” can perfect and extend those ideals.