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What Is Berlin's Destiny?

What will the map of Europe look like in the coming years? What city appears destined to shape the future of Europe?

by John Ross Schroeder

Ten years ago I was sent to Berlin at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I witnessed the joyous pandemonium of many East Berliners as they flooded into the West. Citizens from both sides of the city warmly embraced and danced on top of the wall Nov. 9, 1989.
For nearly 50 years freedom of travel had been severely restricted--and not a few from the East lost their lives attempting to reach West Berlin.

A different Berlin
But 10 years later we see a transformed Berlin--a city that has begun to resume its former role as capital of a powerfully reunited German nation. Cranes and other heavy construction equipment dot the city as it prepares to house the vast government offices and residences necessary to run the most influential nation in modern Europe.
A new multilevel railway passenger depot is to be built on the site of a relatively small station. The presence of some 100 cranes towering over the site is mute testimony to the seriousness of this superambitious project already hailed as the biggest and finest railway station in all of Europe. Indeed, Berlin is the biggest building site on the Continent.
Official business is already progressing. On Aug. 23 Gerhard Schröder began to govern Germany from Berlin, its historic capital. Throughout July, 40 containers packed with everything from fresh note paper to vital historical records traveled over the busy railway route from Bonn, capital of the former West Germany, to Berlin.
For the first time since the Federal Republic of Germany was founded in 1949, parliament and government are, in the true sense of the phrase, coming home--but at an estimated cost of 20 billion marks.
Berlin is again becoming the fulcrum of a greater Germany. The focus of the nation's politics and decision-making has shifted east. The new capital is the crucial gateway to Eastern European markets. Between 1995 and 1997 exports to Poland increased by 60 percent, and East Europe as a whole has become Germany's second-largest export market.

Future capital of Europe?

Read the full article at www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn25/berlindestiny.htm