It’s 20 years since the Berlin Wall came down. William Cook on the city’s changing face
On the west bank of the River Spree, beside the old route of the Berlin Wall, there is a building which sums up the strange renaissance of this wonderful, awful city. The Hamburger Bahnhof used to be a train station. During the Cold War it was a ruin. Now it’s an art gallery, Berlin’s answer to Tate Modern. It’s a sign of how Berlin has changed, from the cockpit of the Cold War to Europe’s unofficial cultural capital.
When the Wall came down in 1989, in an avalanche of cheap Sekt and naff graffiti, a lot of people were worried that Berlin would become the centre of a European superstate. Instead it’s become a chaotic centre of the arts. Twenty years later it’s still Europe’s biggest building site, but, beneath the scaffolding, museums and galleries are springing up on every corner. Since reunification Berlin has changed beyond all recognition, but the most dramatic additions are museums. Berlin’s most arresting monument is Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum. Its most beautiful modern building is I.M. Pei’s Historical Museum. There are hundreds of museums here, and a lot of them are brand new. So how has this Prussian garrison town become such a creative mecca?
There are sound financial reasons for Berlin’s transformation from Reichstadt to Kulturstadt. After half a lifetime of division, the city has scant industry and high unemployment (nearly 10 per cent overall — nearer 20 per cent in the East). Culture is an economic catalyst, and (so far) tourism has proved remarkably resistant to the current worldwide slump. Visitor numbers are still growing, Britain is the biggest foreign market, and, when I returned here a few weeks ago, the city seemed even busier than it did last summer, before the advent of the credit crunch.
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