Finding Beauty in the Beast of Berlin by JB Cooper
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Berlin is probably more comfortable with the 21st century than any other place in the world. Its ease is palpable – the 21st century just suits Berlin. And it knows it. In fact, it knew it long before the millennium ever ticked into view. But Berlin had to bide its time to get here. It had to pay its dues.
It sounds obvious, but to understand Berlin you have to understand its history – this is a city that doesn’t just wear its history on its sleeve; its history is its sleeve. Here, then, in the space of a paragraph that should take less time to read than it would take to pronounce gesamtkunstwerk correctly, is the entire history of Berlin during the second half of the 20th Century (or thereabouts)…
A quick history of Berlin
Decimated during World War II, Berlin spent the 1950s in dark political limbo, torn between the conflicting interests of occupying Allied forces. Eventually it was split in two during the 60s, with East Berlin going to communist Russia, West Berlin to capitalist America, and the Berlin Wall put in place to ensure never the twain would meet. Twenty years later and the wall came down, leaving a unified yet deeply schizophrenic city. And so Berlin huffed and puffed its way through the 90s, erecting cranes and pouring concrete with the equivalent of German abandon as it tried to level out the two halves of its city and create a new identity for its put-upon citizens.
Throughout these years, Germany mourned and apologized for the events of its recent (and not so recent) past. And Berlin headed up the funeral procession. It was as though its landmarks and pot-marks had been charged with carrying a leaden laurel for the country as a whole; try as it may to move forward, Berlin just couldn’t shake the crushing guilt of causing WWII and the subsequent modernity it produced. So when the year 2000 came along, the city heaved an enormous sigh of relief, opened its lungs, and sucked in every post-20th century molecule of air to be had. Berlin’s time had finally come.
Whether it knew it or not, Berlin had spent decades preparing for this moment. Not only had consumerism triumphed in the battle of East Berlin versus West, but the city’s fractured past had also left it deeply schizoid in nature – in other words, Berlin had effectively premeditated the yin and yang of the 21st century metropolis. Fast forward to today and the whole project comes to fruition: from its Prussian grandeur to its truly bleak cityscapes; from its thrusting economy to its vibrant underbelly, no other city in the world quite exemplifies the beauty and the beast of modern living like Berlin.
An unlikely beauty
And it’s the beast in particular that fascinates me. Take the city’s architecture. Much of Berlin is ugly. Ugly. Its city centre is an ugly bubble of shiny malls; its suburbs (especially out to the east) an ugly barrage of forebodingly bleak apartment blocks. And yet, in this incongruous and uncomfortable mix, a kind of post-atomic beauty often arises. The malls are large and unashamed, while the apartment blocks have become iconically kitsch (the graffiti that decorates their walls is considered a sign not of urban vandalism but of cultural expression). There’s a brutalist beauty to these buildings – an aesthetic vibrancy born out of the carte blanche provided by sheer functional simplicity. And it’s thrilling.
I confess I get an equal kick out of Berlin’s metro system. Again, there’s nothing immediately special to look at here – just a lot of slightly dour stations, standard underground trains, and enough graffiti to suggest Berlin must be the world’s foremost consumer of spray paint. But the whole thing works beautifully. And, incredibly, it’s run on a trust basis. There are no ticket barriers on the Berlin metro, just ticket machines and the threat of conductors. If that sounds like an invitation to ride for free, no one takes it up. I’ve seen conductors inspect numerous trains and never once have I seen someone fail to produce a ticket.
Selective squats in Berlin
So Berlin is an impressive place. And it’s not just the city’s structural attributes that are worth shouting about. Its counterculture is also world-renowned. One of my favourite anecdotes about Berlin concerns the city’s unique squatters’ scene: A young student, looking to leave university in order to do less and smoke more, heard Berlin was the place to be, especially if you wanted to stay for free. So he went to Berlin, asked around about squats, and was eventually taken to one. The leader of the squat (the Head Squatter?) sat him down and interviewed him for two hours. Eventually the traveller’s application was rejected. He was under-qualified.
Squats in Berlin, you see, are not the drug-ridden social black holes of those in Paris or London. Rather, they pride themselves on their strong community role. Many of the squats in Berlin run a Volksküche (or VoKü for short) – a neighbourhood restaurant-cum-bar where you can get good food and drink for low prices. Others offer free-to-view art galleries, classical music performances, and even puppet shows. To the uninitiated, the whole scene sounds like an urban legend. Yet it’s true. Berlin, you see, finds beauty where others can only find the beast.
Another real-life urban legend here is the extraordinary party scene. When it comes to music, Berlin is as cutting edge as they come. But while electronic beats regularly pump nonstop for days on end in the city’s hedonistic rave-houses, that doesn’t mean these are necessarily dens of modern iniquity. Instead, the clubs often provide quiet rooms and (fairly sanitized) sleeping areas, offering partygoers the chance to take things easy, chat, and generally recoup. Even when it comes to the mess that is modern partying there’s something pleasingly civilised about the way Berlin does things. So-called low culture is respected as much as high here; beauty is again found in the beast.
Hint of gentrification?
Before I drift away into fits of reverence, I should tell you about the counter-argument. It goes something like this: Berlin is not what it used to be. The underbelly is slimming; money is taking its gentrifying toll; urban malaise is on the increase. You only have to take the plight of Tacheles – Berlin’s most (in)famous squat – to see the argument has credence. Tacheles has been at the forefront of the counterculture scene for the past two decades, but today investors are looking to turn the building into money spinning apartment blocks. Over the years the squat has proven resilient, but it remains to be seen who will win this particular battle between hegemony and undercurrent.
Will Berlin go the way of other European capitals and fade into staid gentrification? Only time will tell. One thing you can say with a fair slice of confidence is that Berlin is well prepared for the fight. This is a city that’s unique in its ability to champion the 'uglier' elements of modern living while filling its pockets. And that, I think, is the point: if Berlin is firmly in the grip of post-modernity, its historically schizoid makeup has allowed it to tackle the 21st century very much on its own terms.
You could almost say Berlin is in a century of its own.