But what should one make of this global run on Berlin? Is it the dawn of an imminent Berlin upswing or merely an error of stupid capital – you know, it always runs to the place where prices are lowest and then wonders when the profits don’t materialize.
“Actually,” says Forstner, “you should stay away from Berlin. Actually, you should think: investor beware! Who’s supposed to pay the rents you need to make a profit? Berlin’s purchasing power is weak, its demographic curve is declining, and, additionally, all the graffiti scares people away. In Hamburg everything is immaculate, city cleaners walk around and pick up every scrap.”
Actually. But? “But Berlin tourism is booming. The Berlin hotel industry is booming; it has the highest growth rates in Europe.” In fact, even more luxury hotels are under construction, for example, the Hotel de Rome on Gendarmenmarkt. The pull, then, the myth, the hype: we’re going to Berlin! Is that it? Is that how investors operate, too?
What should an honest broker say to that; he is not a prophet. “Berlin,” says Forstner, “continues to have something ambivalent about it. I think it’ll take another ten years before the face of the new Berlin becomes recognizable. But it’s clear: the investors who are going there now are looking at something other than the naked analysis of the situation.”
Something other. Ettina and Sonja had described it in similar terms. In this sense, investors and the subculture are kindred spirits of the Berlin utopia. You can buy cheaply in the Berlin ambivalence if you have millions – and you can float in it just as nicely if you’re young and have no money but lots of ideas. There are a lot of stores like Klonk. Those who want it super cheap and aren’t afraid of the risk of having a lease terminated on short notice choose an intermediate- use contract in an unrenovated pre-fab construction or an old building in Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg, and slowly also in Wedding. The leaders of the creative crowd move from neighborhood to neighborhood, from street to street, and the baggage train of brokers and investors follows close behind and rents the renovated places to people with more business savvy: law offices, galleries, Indian or Thai restaurants. That’s also how it was in New York City in the eighties.
Poverty as a location advantage, then. Cheap plus myth. Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit gave it a more party-like ring: “Poor but sexy” was the suggestion he made in the glamour-magazine Gala for the identity of the new Berlin. Is this the declaration of surrender of a city that was once a metropolis? Perhaps it’s simply the Berlin way of arriving at reality. In any case, it gives you an idea of just how much Berlin is changing right now.
First, poverty is not longer a disgrace. Berlin is not longer embarrassed about it. It’s wearing its financial indigence like a fake fur.
Second, the era of hollow phrases is over. The slogans of the Berlin propaganda of the nineties – bridge between East and West, soon four, five, six million residents – have faded away. Berlin is what it is. Except, what is it?
[ . . . ]
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