No, there’ll be no cheers, no hugs and no champagne corks popping, like that time 10 years ago when the Germans in the east ran away from their government. The arrival of our ladies and gentlemen from the west in their dark business suits will be discreet, staggered and unspectacular, like a traffic jam on a Friday afternoon. As a loyal resident of Charlottenburg in west Berlin, I can’t but be perplexed by these spoiled west Germans inexorably drawn to the prefab housing in that new city center that used to be East Berlin.
We’re just about used to governments moving around in Germany anyway. With the end of Bismarck’s Germany in 1918-1919 came the end of government in Berlin: for a while, Germany’s first democratic government looked for inspiration and refuge in tiny Weimar. After the Nazis laid Berlin and almost all of Europe in ruins, Germany’s second democratic government veered off into the Rhineland’s Bonn. In this tug of war, Berlin is something of a constant; whenever German history went horribly wrong, the strings were pulled in Berlin. It’s the provincial capitals that get credit for the halfway successful democratic interludes in between. Berlin has yet to prove to the world that it can govern and breathe life into a democratic Germany.
But this time round, the odds are in its favor. This move wasn’t ordered by a kaiser or dictator, but brought about by a peaceful, successful and democratic revolution, the first in German history. And it’s easy to forget Berlin was not only the capital of the Third Reich, but also–if any German city deserves the title–the capital of German resistance. In no other city did the Nazis have such trouble gaining a foothold as they did in the city from which they wanted to rule the world. And while 30 years of being divided and cut off haven’t made Berlin modest, its long impotence–and a certain humor coming from hard times–have mellowed its arrogance. Let’s be less stingy than history and give the grouchy old lady a chance.
After so many encouraging words about the move to Berlin, I do have to admit to a few fears. I dread the thought of having to share my neighborhood bar with the Bonners and their bodyguards. Just like in Bonn, they’ll try to send the city to bed at 11 o’clock in the evening and get rid of those irritating ladies for sale working the Kurfurstendamm and Lietzenburger Strasse. They’ll introduce their beers and menus from the Rhine and make sure that the successfully Italianized and Balkanized cuisine of west Berlin becomes re-Germanized again.
But as a halfway reasonable citizen, I also tell myself that Berlin desperately needs this invasion from Bonn. West Berlin was a luxurious Alcatraz in a sea of poverty. With its wall torn down and the fortress accessible, the water of poverty flooded in. Only a fool would complain if all these shipwrecked and adventure-seeking easterners are now met by an orderly luxury liner from the Rhine.
The Bonners, I think, are a bit afraid of Berlin, whereas the Berliners aren’t the least bit intimidated by Bonners. For 30 years now, west Berlin has been a truly multicultural city and a hothouse of huge and visible minority groups: gays and lesbians, Alternativen and Autonomen, squatters and artists, dog owners and dog haters. And after 1989, other, rather German minorities arrived as well: ex-GDR bureaucrats, ex-Stasi informants, ex-dissidents and the tremendous minority of ex-GDR citizens. The Bonners rightly fear that they’ll turn into just another of these minorities, with no hope at all of controlling anyone.
A friend recently saw a west German VIP step out of his limousine at the Savignyplatz–a fashion designer, who, with his confused hairdo and even more confused ramblings on west German talk shows, had achieved no small measure of fame. Used to being famous, he stood still on the pavement, waiting in vain for a passerby to recognize him. Perhaps one or two did, but no one gave him the courtesy of even a look. The big city just swallowed him up.
Berliners like to think of the Bonners as provincial bumpkins who can’t find their way around the big city. But these Berliners, so quick to laugh at others, tend to forget that the city of which they’re rightly proud has become a very bumpkin kind of place itself. West Berlin was little more than a Westernized version of socialism, a highly subsidized potentate of local princes crippled by favoritism and patronage. The educated classes fled the city, and the local elite would hardly have made it into Paris’s or London’s fireman’s ball. So we arrive at a strange constellation. The comparatively cosmopolitan small towners from the Rhine would do well to adopt a dose of the big new capital’s tolerance and urban humor. But they’ll have to watch their step–and keep their eyes peeled for the dogshit on the big city pavement.
