Berlin

The fall of the Berlin Wall has appropriately become a kind of shorthand for the entire reorientation of global politics since 1989, but in fact Berlin had stood at the center of European and world events for a much longer period. If Paris was the “Capital of the Nineteenth Century” (in Walter Benjamin’s phrase), Berlin became the signature-city of the next hundred years. No other place has so dramatically encapsulated the highs and lows of our modern human experience. “Until 1933,” writes the historian Reinhard Rürup, “Berlin had been famed as a symbol of modernity, of the capability and creative power of twentieth century man; from 1933 to 1945 it became a world-wide symbol of injustice and the abuse of power.” After 1945, of course, the city took on yet another symbolic role: that of capital of the Cold War. Since the fall of the Wall and the end of the Great Divide, Berlin has come to represent humanity’s aspirations for a new beginning, tempered by caution deriving from the traumas of the recent past.

This book is a narrative history of the city of Berlin framed by the two German unifications. These two historical moments harbor some intriguing similarities. Much of Europe watched in trepidation as the Germans marked the establishment of their new nation with a pompous ceremony at Versailles in 1871, and many Europeans shuddered anew when the two Germanys were reunited in 1990. Berlin’s elevation to the status of imperial capital under Bismarck and its selection as capital-to-be by the Bundestag in 1991 spawned economic booms, which turned the city into a playground for developers and speculators. Real estate prices shot up as Germans from other parts of the country, along with an influx of foreigners, clamored to gain a toehold on the sandy banks of the River Spree. Among the newcomers in both cases were Jews from Eastern Europe who saw the city as a haven from persecution and an arena of economic opportunity. The city’s physiognomy was instantly transformed as old buildings were renovated and new ones thrown up to accommodate the expanding population and new governmental agencies. Old-time residents complained that their town had turned into one huge construction site, overrun by outsiders. Yet while the building sprees seemed to go on interminably, the financial booms that fueled them suddenly lost momentum due to overspeculation, mismanagement, corruption, and economic crises elsewhere in Europe. In each instance, great expectations were quickly replaced by angry disillusionment and a search for scapegoats. Critical commentators, both domestic and foreign, began to assess the city more pessimistically, wondering aloud over its capacity to represent the new nation effectively. Throughout all the hand-wringing and fault-finding, however, Berliners and their backers remained convinced that the Spree city was the crucible of national destiny and the only serious choice for the center of national power.

The similarities between the two unification periods, striking though they are, should not obscure more fundamental differences. Germany’s unification by “blood and iron” in 1871, following the successful wars engineered by Bismarck against Denmark, Austria, and France, was attended by an outpouring of national pride, even hubris. The new capital was awash in patriotic demonstrations and chauvinist rhetoric. By contrast, there was little of this kind of thing following reunification in 1990, which of course was achieved not by war but by the disintegration of the Soviet empire and the implosion of East Germany. The ceremonies in reunited Berlin in October 1990 were marked by a restraint befitting the participants’ consciousness of the painful history of their nation and the world during the previous century. Because the Germany of 1990 was clearly a different political animal from the one in 1871, the fears on the part of its neighbors soon dissipated. By the time Berlin was designated as the new capital a year later there was little opposition from outside the country to the decision to move back to the place from which Germany’s past transgressions had been orchestrated.