No city on earth has gone through such a roller-coaster ride–from villain to victim, from horrors to heroics, all in just the past 70 years. First the decadent (and strangely innocent) pre-Nazi world immortalized in “Cabaret.” Then Hitler and the Holocaust: Berlin as the undisputed capital of evil. Yet less than three years after the Battle of Berlin, the city’s Soviet liberators, by blockading it, transformed it into the ultimate symbol of the cold war, a city of heroic freedom-loving survivors. The decades that followed were high theater with Berlin often at center stage: the East German uprising of June 1953, JFK, Checkpoint Charlie, secret spy exchanges, Reagan, the night of November 9, 1989, and, finally, one last photograph for the history books, the Clintons and the Kohls walking side by side through the Brandenburg Gate in 1994 into an ecstatic crowd of more than 100,000 people in East Berlin.
“Berlin is a city that never is, but is always in the process of becoming,” the noted German essayist Karl Scheffler once observed. (He added, disapprovingly, that its people are “lured by the promise of Americanism.”) He wrote this in 1910. Berlin is now becoming something new: Europe’s greatest showcase for modern architecture–although some Berliners, fulfilling their reputation for cynicism, like to say that the world’s best architects have come here to build their worst buildings.
But even here, everything seems reflected through the past: Sir Norman Foster’s transparent modern dome, for example, sits atop the battle-scarred Reichstag building, enabling the visitor to literally (and symbolically) look down upon the members of the German Parliament. A visit to the Ministry of Finance is especially bizarre: its new home is Goring’s indestructible Air Ministry, which survived every Allied attempt to destroy it during the war.
The battle over new and old architecture only underscores the dilemmas of Berlin. Every decision of the planning authority, every new building or monument, triggers an argument based on conflicting views of history. Should more of the Wall be preserved? Should war ruins be paved over? How should the Holocaust be remembered? Is the chancellor’s new office too grandiose–that is, too reminiscent of a certain earlier German leader?
The Germans, who gave the world the word angst, worry constantly about how to deal with the heavy burden history has placed upon them. One of my friends–a prominent German politician–keeps in his study a painting of his grandfather that clearly shows a Nazi membership badge. “I could easily have had the badge painted over,” he told me, “but I felt I had to leave it in, for it is a historical truth. My grandfather thought Hitler would be good for Germany.”
“Berlin, Berlin, great city of misery,” wrote Heinrich Heine in the 19th century. “In you there is nothing to find but anguish and martyrdom.” Heine was prophetic, but I think Berlin’s years of excessive drama have finally come to an end. Many Berliners miss the exciting days when they were the center of the world’s attention. (Though many still talk of the “Wall in the Head”; that is, the continuing gap between Wessis and Ossis.) But in my view, this is not a time for nostalgia. Having worked closely with many of the new generation of Germans, I have more confidence in them, perhaps, than many of them yet have in themselves.
Still, with its overwhelming history Berlin will never be a “normal” city, even though it is no longer divided, even though American, British, French and Soviet troops no longer face each other across a death zone, even though American presidents no longer fly there to reaffirm our commitment to freedom. The ghosts will remain forever. As they should.
