Berlin Transformationplatz

A year and a half ago I visited my cousin Della and her family in the Charlottenburg/Wilmersdorf area of Berlin. She grew up in Yonkers, her husband Martin (my “cousin-in-law?) grew up in Berlin.

This was my first visit since my drunken dawn arrival on a midnight train out of Poland 16 winters earlier. At that time, the wall had only recently come down -- there were still stretches of it standing and wild amounts of rubble. The buildings, just east of where the wall stood, were all dull, grey and then more of that very dull thing. In a few short years, the place would be utterly transformed. I knew back then, that I was walking through the architectural equivalent of a hormone sodden 13 year old.

 In 2010, it was as though I’d never been there before. Completely unrecognizable, in fact. It was even a wee bit disconcerting -- like seeing an old hipster friend now decked out in Brooks Brothers by way of Beverly Hills.

I asked Martin what it was like for him -- having grown up there. This what he told me:

"The actual realization - sensation - that something had changed came to me quite a while (a few months maybe) after watching the wall come down on TV. My friends and I were invited to a party in the former east. So instead of passing through checkpoints (which always included some form of humiliation, even if only slightly) we SIMPLY DROVE TO THE EAST - no border police, no visa that had to be applied for 3 days in advance, no more compulsory exchange of money, and you could even stay there overnight, too. It felt very strange to wander around the other side of town which was only a few blocks away but always difficult to get to.

In the early nineties everything still looked dreary, and you'd see that every single building was in dire need of fixing and restoration and that the streets needed to be improved. Now, about 15 to 20 years later you find that the east of Berlin has become the shiny new center of Berlin, everything is either newly built or has been restored - smart contemporary architecture next to beautifully ornamented buildings from Berlin's past, a whole island of influential museums, two opera houses, major theaters, new and varied restaurants … The western part of town starts to look a bit pale in comparison.

Unique about this whole situation is that the pre-war center of the city - Berlin-Mitte - has become a center again. Before the wall came down, the west side bordering it was not well cared for because no one liked to live next to the wall and of course, the east was the heavily guarded so-called "death strip" (Todesstreifen) which tried to block people fleeing to the west. Where the wall once ran, the new downtown has been built.

New focus on the east of the city has made the west less attractive. West Berlin had once been the alternative forward-thinking place in Germany* and has now become second best. Artists, the alternative crowd as well as expensive fashion stores and car showrooms now show off their goods in the east. People under 30 who now move to Berlin tend to move to the east while the older crowd chooses the more quiet and settled west to stay in.

* When the wall surrounded Berlin it was theoretically "owned" by the allied forces. This meant that it was illegal to draft anyone residing in West Berlin for the compulsory one-year training in the German forces (which will be suspended throughout Germany p.s., next year)."
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Martin Wenzel isn't just my cousin-in-law, he's the father of two awesome teens, husband to my fab cousin Della AND he's a type designer -- check him out at his site Martin Plus!