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The Appeal of the Berlin Metropolis (July 6, 2006)

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[ . . . ]

Out here there’s even still industry. Not everyone has left. In his wood-paneled conference room from the 1930s, Gero Wiese, the managing director of Gillette, explains how this works. Gillette has been a German-American company since the prewar period; today it’s part of Proctor & Gamble. Simply put, Boston supplies the beards of the western hemisphere and Berlin-Tempelhof the beards of the eastern hemisphere with razor blades. A good one thousand people work in each of these two parent plants. After the Wall was built, Gillette, like many Berlin companies, also moved some of its technical operations to Western Germany. But only four years later, in 1965, the company returned to West Berlin. “Leaving was an overreaction.”

And today – globalization, the lower labor costs in Eastern Europe?

Wiese nods. No question. Then he explains the special situation of his company. “Our machines, the ones that manufacture razor blades, contain twenty computers. For that we need highly qualified workers; we have them here. In Eastern Europe we have to put them though a lengthy training process first.”

[ . . . ]

The directions for the final meeting say: midnight. Penthouse, open door to the terrace. An expansive view of Berlin. White wine. Ernst Freiberger is sitting at the table and reflecting about life, what matters and what doesn’t, and about Berlin – what works and what doesn’t.

Life is simple. When Freiberger had achieved much, very much, as a Bavarian-Berliner entrepreneur – sold his grocery empire, developed the enormous area at the Spreebogen [Spree bend], 150,000 gross square meters of floor space, at that time the largest construction project in the city, rented to, among others, the Federal Ministry of the Interior – he said to himself, “now I’ll go traveling for a year.” It turned into two-and-a-half years: 1998 to 2001. He visited every continent, ninety countries, kept a diary, and wrote a book about every trip. “Only for myself.” And – what matters?

“What remains of my travels is not the most beautiful beach, the most beautiful women, the best food. What remains is family, religion, hospitality.”

What remains is a man of around fifty, whose group of companies brings in revenues of hundreds of millions of Euro per year, who, on the side, seeks to promote dialogue between the world’s religions, the representatives of which he invites to his Bavarian hometown of Amerang every year, a fruit of his travels.

And what is, what will become of Berlin, his chosen home for nearly thirty nears now?

“I am investing vigorously in Berlin.” When he asks himself what the city is supposed to live from, industry and financial services, he says, are not part of the answer. Other cities have staked out those claims. And so Ernst Freiberger’s Berlin business ideas offer a picture of what might succeed here.

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