동아시아의 평화와 화해의 정치학 Scrapbook: Goodbye to Berlin, Europe’s self-effacing capital

2024-12-28

Goodbye to Berlin, Europe’s self-effacing capital

Guy Chazan DECEMBER 21 2024

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As I pack my bags after nine years in Berlin, I’m leaving a city that seems to be trapped in a narrative of its own decline.

Veterans say it has jumped the shark. Flats are impossible to find. Spots in day care are like hen’s teeth. The bureaucracy is mind-numbingly analogue. Gentrification has flattened its anarchic soul. The edginess has gone.

Some of this may be true. But it doesn’t reflect my experience. To me, Berlin is at the top of its game, a city that, if it weren’t so self-effacing, could almost be the capital of Europe.

When I started out as the FT’s correspondent here in 2016, it all seemed a tiny bit provincial. Its people were notoriously surly and insular. Every day brought a brush with “Berliner Schnauze”, the locals’ famous rudeness.

In the intervening years its hard edges have been smoothed down. It’s become a lot more international and less mistrustful of foreigners. And, as English becomes more prevalent, it has blossomed into a kind of global village.

In the past nine years I’ve seen Berlin welcome tens of thousands of refugees, first from Syria, then from Ukraine. It took in a wave of Brexit émigrés, desperate to preserve their ties to Europe. And then, especially since 2022, it embraced the Russian intelligentsia-in-exile, the artists, writers and human rights activists fleeing Putin’s dictatorship.

It grew while holding on to its — relative — innocence. It’s a capital city, yes, but not like London, looming over the rest of the country. The place isn’t dominated by banks, because they’re all in Frankfurt. The big media conglomerates are in Hamburg, the carmakers in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. Berlin is a lot of things — the seat of government and a thriving tech hub — but it’s by no means a slave to Mammon.

That means public space hasn’t been privatised the way it has elsewhere, and there are few of the dreary chains that make London high streets look so generic. Strangers you meet at parties still seem less interested in what you do for a living than your thoughts on a certain “left-autonomous” technoclub or the latest premiere at the Schaubühne.

Still, those who say the city has changed for the worse do have a point. A former mayor once described Berlin as “poor but sexy”. Some say it’s now wealthy and boring.

Exhibit A — the Am Tacheles complex on Oranienburger Strasse. It’s a former department store that was half-destroyed in the war and then taken over by an artists’ collective after the Wall came down, becoming a symbol of Berlin’s unruly spirit. I remember visits there in the 1990s, the giant murals, the graffiti, the weird sculptures in the courtyard, the raw, scuzzy energy of the place. Now it’s a complex of offices, luxury apartments and high-end shops, all glitzy and smooth, with its own private for-profit photography museum.

Then there’s the small matter of the €130mn Berlin’s government has slashed from the city’s arts budget for next year. The cultural elite, long used to a drip-feed of lavish subsidies, is in uproar: dozens of fringe theatre groups and artist initiatives could close. An act of “self-inflicted cultural vandalism”, one prominent director called it.

But something tells me Berlin will get through. This is, after all, a city that survived the near-death experience of Allied bombing, and being on the frontline of the cold war, split in two by a 4-metre-high wall for 28 years.

Despite everything it is still, in the words of one Irish friend of mine who has lived here for more than two decades, the world’s “largest collection of black sheep”. It is a sanctuary for renegades and misfits of all persuasions, who benignly coexist with their more bourgeois Bürger neighbours. Despite the rising cost of living here, it still seems to be full of creative people doing God knows what but always looking like they’re having the time of their lives.

And as anyone navigating its countless construction sites knows, it’s also a place of sheer, unbounded potentiality. As the art critic Karl Scheffler famously wrote in 1910: it is a city that is “damned to keep becoming, and never to be”. When I finally board the plane out of here after nearly a decade in this city, it will be that “becoming-ness” I’ll miss most.

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Email Guy at guy.chazan@ft.com

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Peter Ewaldt

The two best and unique cities in the world start with a "B": Berlin and Bangkok. If you are a city guy, there is no better place to live.

10h

Ardna Ardna

Berlin is still one of the best and most accessible capitals to live in in the West. The transport is good and cheap enough and it is not yet suffocating busy. But it is still a capital and faces the same issues as big cities such as New York and large capitals such as London faced because it is growing, as a capital should. It is also hard to find a place in Paris by the way. One can have a beer from the supermarket in the park without having to spend a higher cost at a terrace for example. Not even going to discuss the idiotic racist comments, specially since they are written by other immigrants which brings about some irony 🤣 I would agree that it has become more unsafe, as capitals tend to do. More people=more money=more crime

Housing is an issue indeed but nothing different from other capitals. London might have more housing but the price or state of them are shocking sometimes.

Edited

Riccardo Barile

I came to Berlin in 2008. There was a sense of hope and dynamic change.

That is no longer the case.

Even the Germans have changed.

The society is more conservative, full of fears and, to be honest, I no longer trust German efficiency.

It's a society with too many sceptical people who don't trust non-Germans.

It’s not judgement all, it is simply stating the reality.

Germans and even Berliners are skeptical in their soul.

Not my world anymore.

Seth J Adams

A great piece, thank you!!

17h

Reut Paz

Love Berlin: "largest collection of black sheep”

Giulio Focardi

I used to love Berlin, it was rough, but safe day and night. You could live with few money and meet diverse people. It's not like that anymore

11h

Dionysios Mavrodis

Probably the most overrated european capital.

Jörg Schröder

The most ridiculous capital in the world

Rhys Hwyl

The city has changed a lot in this time. I think mainly, it has got sadder. Largely thanks to Covid but also just due to rent prices being allowed to vastly outstrip income. Rent has also made it very hard for small businesses to survive.

Carlos Andre Costa Vicente

i am here since the past decade, all fine, bussiness goes well, what was bad keeps bad, what was good is still good

21h

Arek Fochtman

“To me, Berlin is at the top of its game, a city that, if it weren’t so self-effacing, could almost be the capital of Europe”

Lem Kalem

Beware of Belin-Bangkok Cityguys

19m

Yoann Resmond

Berlin is a forever crush ❤️

54m

Marc Noack

I'm German, raised in a small town, been living in Berlin for almost 12 years now. It is a crowded, dirty, lawless sh*thole that I am deeply ashamed of. Law, rules, manners, common sense, it all went down the drain. It is a European capital, but it does not resemble one. It is overrun by the insane, the criminals, the homeless, the rootless, the careless. Do not come here. It is awful, and it is a lost case.

Edited

Maru Ja

I love to see how racist and snob the people who read this news are.

Alexander Ivanov

Berlin is the most beautiful Arab city in the world. After Dubai, of course 😀

20h

Bruce Fernie

Many of Europes great city neighborhoods are being transformed into 3rd world danger zones by the newly and illegally arrived folks that have no intention of assimilating… just thrusting their religion and lifestyle on the natives… so sad.

53m

Alexander Ivanov

The illegal criminal rent seeking migrants, religious fanatics, the sensless green deal and fully incompetent politicians are the curse of Germany.

20h

Edited

Michael Schrenk

If there were more Germans, you wouldn’t need the immigrants. VW can’t staff their German factories as it stands.

20h

Desiree Leinenbach

After nine years in the city the author could have gone beyond Berlin history and acknowledge its uniqueness. Tegel refugee camp is a shame for Berlin and Germany, as living conditions remind of Germany's darkest times. And yes, since conservatives have taken over they try their very best to undo the immense progress made by the former government. But resistance is rising, as the people don't want to be ruled by egoistic petrol heads of the suburbs. And knowing a bit about Berlin, they better change their policy soon.

Michał Saan

"Transformation"? You mean "fall". They should start to implement actual actions against immigrants that don't assimilate with the rest of society without being scared to be called fascists. It's madness what is happening.

19h

Tu Jais

Berlin - the first time there - a cabbie in Germany tried to swindle me … airport to hotel. He was middle eastern I think

Yea I have GPS on my phone and it connects & works wherever I go… as I get off the plane.

I have been traveling to Germany Frankfurt Munich mostly since ‘99 on business or leisure and it’s mostly always been Pakistani cabbies but back then they appeared grateful for the opportunities and didn’t try to swindle.

Frankfurt did have a lot of pan handlers, pick pockets etc even back then

Munich was always a pleasure though. Was not accosted by swindlers.

20h

Marek Kollar

A journalist from the FT laments how capitalism and the pursuit of profit are destroying cities 🤣

36m

Mohi Moradi

Berlin is absolutely overrated.

42m

Bea Ken

Not only Berlin..... good bye Germany......

Berenice Pendergast

I remember when Italian were the immigrants that did not assimilated and were the responsible of all Germsny s problems. They were regularly beaten up on the streets. Good all times….

Joao Branquinho

Come to Portugal! We need young/healthy entrepeneurs that want to work! No need of additional retirees...we are full of that already.

20h

Jimby Monkie

I loathe how “international” and anglophone Berlin has become. Sometimes I will go into a coffee shop in Mitte and order in German, and no one on the staff understands me. I have to order in English. I hear English ubiquitously in Mitte, K’berg, Prenzl, and F’hain. I don’t go to Berlin just to have a slightly edgier London experience. I lived in Berlin in the 1990s and early 2000s, and the city was more fun and more interesting in its different-ness.

12h

Alfons Schöps

Berlin?!?!

Dysfunctional juggernaut!

Gregory James

In 20 years, it will all be Islamists, so go see it now while you still can.

22h

Edited

Jan Klaus

It's a bloody caliphate now, sadly

Sandra Stevens-Miller

Tough transition. Good luck going forward to us all.

15h

Sara Gomez Arancibia

Berlin with the massive immigration of Muslims and Africans has become a disastrous and dangerous city.

21h

Bruce Maccoinnich

Germany / Berlin is turning into the Weimar republic again and we all know what comes after that!

Alexander Gorbatschow

1) I don’t feel bad about the left anarchists. A was ashamed of them as a German. A capital must be splendid and rich. Poor is not sexy.

2) Berlin couldn’t and can’t be the capital of Europe, since its economic power is too low: its GDP as well as GDP per capita. It is Europe’s only capital, which makes the country poorer, than it would have been without it. Frankfurt has more chances to be Europe’s capital, than Berlin

3) I wouldn’t expect such an article from Financial Times. Maybe from NYT

Edited

Michał Ziobro

Yeah Berlin started to look better and more boring 😀 it stopped to be sexy and poor. Started to be rich and boring

18h

Edited

Dan Gire

Lol. Europe’s Capital?! In what way?

15h

Ray Agn

Berlin's diversity allows simultaneous development and co-existence of Nazism, pretentious wokery, and self-serving neo-liberalism.

23h

Hanfei M. Shen

Germans can look back and thank Merkel for all their current misery. 🤦🏻‍♂️👎

19h

Ilbay Yok

Trump would love to send more immigrants if they need it more.

12h

Edited

Eileen Stafford

Nationalism

Sergey Soloviev

Imho, they still have some sort of "Clones War" between eastern Germany and Western Germany, dear friends 🍷

23h

Kent T Örnholm

Angela Merkel has destroyed Germany. The only solution is a big deportation. This so called refugees need to think. They have received shelter, money, food, education and jobs. But they need to travel back and build up their own countries. There own language, culture and people. Europa belongs to the European people. 😉🙏

22h

De Paul Schlechter

One of the wokest city in the World 🤪

Anthea Mpzka

Christian Vance

17h

Alison Hx

Paula Kirby

Elly Maria Papamichael

Silvia McClanahan

57m

Son Zaremba

Sam Zaremba

Paul Davis

The 2020s and the 2030s will be undoing a lot of the "diversity" BS of the 2010s.

Clay Pardue

Put the jews to work. Oh wait

Sean Irwin

Multicultural cesspool no matter how you talk it up.

Thomas Rygasiewicz

It's a cesspool due to failed liberal policies, par for the course.

Edited

Gio Mubarino

Whenever the Germans fully understand the wiles of 🇮🇱 for “Edom”, with them being part of it , although I’m not optimistic, maybe then … they can repair their country.

They should learn from their Polish neighbor Grzegorz Braun :—). But the GERMans keep displaying the Israeli flags everywhere. Holocaust guilt ? Or being Weimarized? Or what exactly ?

13h

Simon Berri Lange

Yeah it's definitely goodbye to Berlin. Germany is finished.

35m

Nuno Solano

Great article

11h

Thomas Becker

Capital of woke

14m

2024-12-28

Goodbye to Berlin, Europe’s self-effacing capital

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