Is Berlin Losing its Edginess?

According to an article in today's Los Angeles Times, the answer is a heavy handed yes. When I visited Berlin in the summer of 2004, it seemed like a relief after Paris and Amsterdam. The prices, while still in the unfavorable euro, were quite cheap. You could feel the history of the city because there were so many people who had lived in a divided city that for years symbolized a global struggle. I found myself roaming the city searching for more hints of its past and trying to figure out where it was going. When I came back there was a course being offered at my university by a visiting German professor on the history of Berlin. Through that course I learned more about the city's prewar image as a heathen's metropolis that the Nazi's ridiculed aptly to grow their power base. I also learned that although it is the capital of the largest country in Europe, it had a 20 percent unemployment rate and the headquarters of only two of the country's 100 largest corporations. It was explained that in many ways Berlin's economic situation more closely resembled a 1980s Detroit or Pittsburgh than a New York or a London.

While I'm saddened by the idea of that city changing, I think that it is inevitable. Again, it is the capital of a true world economic power and it has healed its most visible wounds. It serves as a reminder that cities are organic and change with their surroundings like humans do. The Berlin of my summer of 2004 was far wealthier than Isherwood's of 1924, less dominant and powerful than Bismarck's of 1874, and more at peace with itself than the Cold War symbol of 1964. Like our own lives - surroundings transform cities over time. Don't get too remorseful because witnessing those changes can be pretty exciting too.