Berlin's New Identity by Gillian Ivory

Who could forget Liza Minelli’s brilliant portrayal of the Sally Bowles character at the seedy Kit Kat Club in Cabaret? Still fascinated by past images of Berlin, I arrived there wondering what its identity is today. There was the decadence of the pre-war Weimar Republic, the more menacing times of the capital of the Reich and the arrival of an era when the city was divided into two dramatically different halves. With the erection of the Berlin Wall one day in August 1961, neighbours and families found themselves divided into two different worlds.

So what is the new image of Berlin? A city of great fashion it is not. Don’t expect to find the highly-coutured style of the Milanese in the cafes, nor the uber design-conscious boutique hotels found in every corner of Paris. The atmosphere in the streets of Berlin is low key and laid back – there is almost a student-feel to the central parts of town – an urban verging on functional charm.

Known for its vibrant artistic and cultural activities, its walls are covered with billboards advertising every type of theatre, music and dance imaginable. With numerous museums in the historic city centre - 5 in one stretch on the main boulevard alone - visitors could spend days running from one exhibition to the next, covering everything from natural history to modern and renaissance art collections.

You might wonder if the almost excessive focus on the arts and culture is an attempt to dampen the memory of the darker parts of the city’s history, or at least to replace it with a new face for the future. Surely not every Berliner, native or adopted by the city, spends his time tripping from one cultural event to another? Daily life in the German capital is more likely to be about commerce and study than one great school of the arts.

Covering a very large area, the city is made up of a number of distinct districts and has more than one centre. But a visit should begin in Mitte, the historic city centre which branches off the wide boulevard Unter den Linden. The contrast in architecture is impressive. Here you will find yourself walking back in time through the grandeur of Prussian rule only to suddenly happen on the functional surrounds of the communist era. Because this part of the city was on the east side of the wall and under a communist government, huge 1960’s-style high rise apartment blocks are set side by side with the imperial buildings of the 19th century.

Many of the impressive Prussian structures flanking Unter den Linden today house museums, government buildings and the more up-market hotels. Some of these were used by the government of East Germany, who unfortunately also destroyed a number of the historical buildings, deeming them to be a symbol of the decadence of preceding times. They were replaced by large, plainer structures; a number of these remain but others have been demolished to make way for buildings more in keeping with the Berlin of the 21st century.

With all this going on the city is awash with cranes - it appears as if constantly under reconstruction. Refurbished period buildings are now selling at a premium, while in general, accommodation is cheap and plentiful, largely thanks to the communist era when style was not a priority and buildings were designed to comfortably accommodate large numbers of people. The ‘form over function’ motto was not something that impressed the architects of the 1950s and 60s.

Arriving at one of the city’s main train stations – Friedrichstrasse - those new to Berlin are unaware of the strength of history behind the imposing building. Before the fall of the wall, this was where those visiting East Berlin from the West disembarked, to be met by soldiers rigorously checking documents. Return to the West required departure from here by nightfall. Of course, for the majority resident in this part, there was no freedom to leave.

Today anyone coming from far flung places will be more likely to latch on to the fact that the many bins dotted along the station’s platforms are divided into well defined sections for recycling materials – the most immediate sign that you have arrived in a well-organised German city.

What was previously The Jewish Quarter - Spandauer Vorstadt is now a lively area full of boutiques, cafes, restaurants and nightclubs, with a style of its own difficult to define. Like much of the city it was badly damaged before and during the Second World War and it is only in recent years that the buildings have been restored. Many of them have been tastefully converted into modern apartments and offices, with bars and restaurants on the ground floor, retaining the original inner courtyard structures. A sad reminder of the past lies in the small gold plaques embedded in the ground outside some of the buildings – these bear the names of the Jewish occupants removed from their homes under the Third Reich.

Alexanderplatz, made famous by Alfred Doblin’s novel of the same name, is to one end of Unter den Linden. The façade of the white high-rise blocks are covered in the words of the novel. Whether or not a fan of this type of architecture, it is both striking and unique. Beside it is the TV Tower – the Fernsehturm – Berlin’s tallest edifice. A retreat to the bar at the top for some good quality, preservative-free German beer comes with a panoramic view of the city.

Close by in the Friedrichstadt neighborhood is an eerily linear structure - the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Opened to the public only in May 2005, after much controversy and delay, it is a site of 19,000 square meters featuring grey concrete slabs of differing levels and dimensions. It is a fascinating piece, not one that you would describe as beautiful, but that does perhaps meet the objective of its architect Peter Eisenman, said to have wanted to achieve an uneasy, confusing atmosphere and a structure to represent a supposedly ordered system that had lost touch with human reason. Surrounded by ordinary apartment buildings on three sides, it is disorientating. On the fourth, the glass dome of the Reichstag, the current seat of government, looms over the concrete forms. The memorial is located where Hitler worked from the Chancellery during the Third Reich. It is unforgettable, an image that will linger.

No one comes to Berlin without seeking out the Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate), a poignant symbol of the division and reunification of the city situated on the former border between East and West Berlin. Look down and you will spot where the Wall ran in a circular fashion around the area - small paving blocks are still visible.

Beyond the Brandenburg gate appears a view of what was West Berlin – a sudden shift to more open spaces and wide green parks. To see the western part of the city, go to the Kurfürstendamm - particularly good for shopping - and venture into Charlottenburg to see the summer residence of the Prussian Kings.

Berlin has entered a different phase of its existence – building a new identity incorporating the dramatic and disparate history of the city. While it’s not all about recovery from war and division – this is only one piece of what today’s city is - its past still has a huge bearing on how it unfolds at present.