A more profound thing has fallen in Berlin than the wall. The brief time I was in the city was enough to notice that the ideas which had produced what Chomsky has called “the absolute peak of western civilization” are no more. Berlin is still very much a city of power and high culture, but it is floundering. The foundation on which its glory was built has been eroded by winds of change. The reich, the empire, now elicits no more than mockery, its memory confined to lavish museums or hinted at by the majestic, mostly official buildings. The new Berlin is a design of corporations, with their ugly glass buildings – an imported, standardised architecture, no different than Singapore’s – and an urbanism of wide roads with gleaming cars, while the rest has fallen to punks and hipsters, a subculture of immigrants and alternative arts that has turned its back on the past. Let me trace the decline of this once great city.
Nationalism came very late to Germany. Divided between kingdoms of mainly Prussia and Austria, its many important cities differing widely in language, religion and political affiliation, Germany began to be controlled from Berlin only after Bismarck forged Prussian hegemony in the late 19th century. But this lack of nationalism had allowed a variety of cultures to flourish, and each German city had vied to achieve greater refinement in music, literature, theatre, philosophy, academia. So when nationalism came, Germany suddenly emerged as the nation with the greatest cultural wealth. The consciousness of this high civilization impelled its kings to create grander architecture and to attempt an overseas empire. The defeat in the First World War was like the crushing of a youthful dream, and the rage and humiliation was channeled by Hitler. Germany was no ordinary nation, Hitler reminded the people; it was destined for a glory that had no precedent, an empire unimagined by any country. Jews were a blot on the Aryan race, the impediment that had hindered Germany, and had to be removed. Thus Hitler carried on his three-pronged strategy: imperial territory, extermination of Jews, and building German pride – especially through architecture.
The shame of the Nazi past, which wouldn’t have been there had Hitler won, has turned Germany away from grand ideas more than any other country. Its government has chosen to rebuild the economy through big industry – automobiles and so on – and its people have lost trust in politicians. Germany has turned its gaze within in introspection, allowing France and England to surge ahead in positions of world influence – Germany cannot even get a Security Council seat. But the obsession to rebuild its pride through its economy, while keeping politics at bay, has created a culture of big money on the one hand – the slick infrastructure, the jazzy markets – and a seemingly hedonistic, radical youth culture that stands only for its own, individual freedom. These two cultures are both contradictory and complementary: rock bands screaming against a mechanical society, for example. Berlin is full of cultural, art events happening every day: plays, films, exhibitions, art installations, and, above all, music. But all these are just rants, mocking the absurdities of modern life and calling for a secession from them. Bereft of vision, offering cults rather than a larger humanism, they represent the descent of a society into impotence. This rage, this confusion spills out in racism, hooliganism, petty crime. The more the society surrenders control to a few corporations, the more the people cry foul. Berlin turns into a magnet for idlers, drifters, people looking only to have a good time.
For all the crimes of colonialism, Europe once had ideas to inspire the world, a civilization that was attractive not just because of its power but because of its enlightened rationality, humanism and culture. A Nehru or Ataturk could follow Europe’s example despite the colonial past. Now, young Germans would hardly read Kant or hear Beethoven. Indians and Turks would find in Berlin economic opportunity, and there are plenty of Indians and Turks looking for it, but absolutely no intellectual guidance, no nobility of ideas, no benchmark of human worth. Berlin is a moral and intellectual wasteland. VS Naipaul once called Europe “a place of mocking glories”. Berlin is the capital of this place.
To see the old regal buildings, to visit the museums and see the great wealth, refinement and craft produced in this country, to see old photographs of Berlin – people dressed elegantly, the streets flanked by beautiful houses, trams jostling with horse carriages, crowds of hundreds of thousands listening admiringly to a public speech – or even to witness the Berlin Philharmonic rehearsing at the grand concert hall in Gendarmenmarkt, an area where French Huguenots were given refuge by Frederick the Great – is to feel sorry for the city. All around are huge abandoned factories, dreary housing, poor immigrants, buildings that seem more appropriate to the Third World. Apart from the historic core of the city, there is nothing of beauty. Even the zoo and the large Tiergarten park date from the 19th century. It is as if, after Hitler, all conception of grandeur ended. The famed street art of Berlin turned out to be pathetic; the only word for the paintings at the East Side Gallery, a relic of the Berlin Wall preserved for tourists, is juvenile. There was an especially dumb figure of Superman, symbolizing the pervasive American pop spirit in the city’s street “art”, which is no more than the patterns emerging out of randomly sprayed colour, often accompanied by pop slogans or, simply, names.
Prague turned out to be quite a contrast to Berlin. It is not commercially as important, and has been saved from being overrun by corporations, though showrooms of large consumer brands have ruined quite a bit of the old world charm. Nevertheless, the entire old part of the city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the government has invested in preservation. Prague also seemed to have retained some of its Bohemian spirit, and there was none of Berlin’s business-like air of power and money. It was still a rather quaint, cozy place with lots of open fun – merry music on streets, smooching couples, people dressed up in motley – unlike the closed-door clubs and squats of Berlin, the aggressively dressed punks, the irritating Bosnian young women with their infants begging for 50 cents. Prague also felt more humane and noble, because of its old Jewish area and synagogues, the memory of its Jews’ slaughter by the Germans, and the spirit of Kafka that seems to guard over the city.
Berlin, as the most powerful city of continental Europe, is a symbol of hollowness and decadence. The achievements of the past mock the confusion of the present – over immigrants, America, loss of culture. The power built on economic prosperity is constantly under threat, and the confidence that came from leading the world is no more. There is a clear generational divide: the old trying to preserve their power, the young disillusioned and searching for an alternative. The only hope seems to lie in a reassertion of past glories, of Europe using the challenge from Islam or Asian economies to get together and fight for its civilization. It is not something that will win Europe many admirers or followers, but it can rejuvenate the continent. The time of leading the world, of showing the way, is, however, certainly past. Come to Berlin and see.
