“Nobody can and wants to undo this, but there must be an equalization.” The incumbent mayor thought much the same and brought suit before the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, arguing that the federal government should pay off Berlin’s debt, which has exploded since reunification and grown to the fantastic sum of 60 billion Euro – the city alone could not do it, in spite of the harsh savings program of its finance senator, Thilo Sarrazin. The decision is expected as early as this summer.
Incidentally, what does Kollhoff think about the mayor and his partying-style?
“Wowereit – basically everyone is happy that he’s here. He’s doing more for the city than it might appear. He brought Berlin out of the stale East-West atmosphere; that’s his historical achievement. He lives and operates beyond East-West categories.”
A slightly audacious smile appears. “Wowereit is a Las Vegas type.” Hans Kollhoff means this in an approving way.
How porous the city still is! After an unprecedented wave of construction. If you walk south from Brandenburg Gate, in the direction of the new Potsdamer and Leipziger Platz, you’ll be offered a view of an open horizon. As if the city ended behind the swath of grass that spreads out between the high-rises on both squares. Berlin seems to stop back there. There’s a similar effect when you step out of the new train station (which, incidentally, should not be called Main Station, like in Bielefeld, but Berlin Central). You stand in front of a broad, paved expanse that’s reminiscent of empty fairgrounds. In the distance come the domes: Reichstag, Sony Center, all kinds of portable festival tents. “Africa” is written on one of them.
Such phantasmagorical emptiness opens up in many places. No, Berlin is not too tight in the waist. It is too big for itself, still. The city was so big at one point – the political, social, industrial center of an important empire – that the years since 1990, despite enormous investments, have not been enough to fill it up again. With life, businesses, buildings.
Even where it was possible to fill the emptiness, at least architecturally – as in the densely packed Friedrichstraße, which, in the summertime, shimmers with heat, the buzzing of cell phones, and the clickety-clack of heels, just like any other large urban avenue in the world – floors stand empty. Here the emptiness has merely been packed into stone boxes. That’s unpleasant for those investors who put their money into the many new office buildings during the construction-mad nineties – and pleasant for those who are arriving only now, when everything is nice and cheap.
But there are at least two Berlins – the one inside the “Ringbahn”*, and the one outside. The “Ringbahn” separates the inner city, where myths and investments are flourishing and images of Berlin are broadcast to the entire world, from the outer portions of city, where hotels are called “Berliner Bär” and people are engaged in uncool activities like building motorcycles and row houses and selling geraniums at the garden store.
* The Ringbahn, or “Circle Line,” is the commuter railway line that runs in a circle around Berlin’s city center – eds.
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