Berlin multicultural

The “Repères” collection from La Découverte editions already included works devoted to the sociology of a series of cities: Lyon (2010), Nantes (2013), Bordeaux, Paris (2014) and Marseille (2015). This collection is now intended to expand in France and to expand internationally. In 2016, it was already enriched with a work devoted for the first time to the sociology of a city located outside the borders of France: Berlin.

Its authors, Denis Bocquet and Pascale Laborier, can boast of their very good knowledge of the city as well as a complementarity of approaches. The first, a historian specializing in the history of urban planning and architecture, has lived for about ten years in the German capital where he coordinated Franco-German cooperation in the field of architecture and urban planning for the cultural service of the French embassy. The second, a political scientist specializing in both Germany and public action, was director of the Marc Bloch Center in Berlin (Franco-German center for research in social sciences) from 2000 to 2005. With their Sociology of Berlinthey offer a synthesis which is certainly aimed primarily at historians, geographers, urban planners, sociologists or political scientists wishing to discover and better understand this city, but which is also accessible to any curious visitor to the German capital.

Berlin: a special city

The idea that guides the book is that of the particularity of Berlin, a borderline case or even frankly exceptional in demographic, economic or urban planning terms. This particularity is as true among German cities, Berlin often being presented – somewhat hastily – as “not being Germany”, as among the capitals of Europe, the city having long been considered unclassifiable on an international scale. It is therefore a question of exposing Berlin’s characteristics by returning to their historical foundations, while also evoking the contemporary dynamics that complicate the realities of the city without making it escape certain forms of standardization.

The book’s seven chapters are organized thematically: Chapters 1 and 2 look back at the history that made Berlin the capital it is today; Chapters 3 and 4 examine its economy and demography; Chapters 5 and 6 analyze Berlin as a political and urban planning laboratory; and finally, Chapter 7 addresses the cultural aspects that are at the heart of current Berlin issues. This organization does not ignore the variations in scale that are essential to understanding the city. Berlin is thus fully integrated into a larger environment: that of Brandenburg and the new Länder of the formerGDRthat of the Federal Republic of Germany, of which it has become the official capital, and finally that of Europe, of which it can be seen as the unofficial capital. Furthermore, the city of Berlin itself constitutes the framework for more finely spatialized phenomena. The authors are therefore attentive to the variations that emerge within the Berlin space between center and periphery, between parts inherited from the East-West division or between neighborhoods of heterogeneous compositions.

The first chapter offers a quick overview of Berlin’s history from the first traces of the city to the 13th century.^e century. Trading town, very affected by the religious conflicts of the 17th^e century, Berlin grew in power especially from the 18th^e century. Industrial city at the end of the 19th^e century, it is also the eminently political capital of the German Empire after having been that of the Kingdom of Prussia. The city then becomes the epicenter of the tormented history of Germany during the 20th^e century: cultural metropolis under the Weimar Republic, fantasized Germania of the III^e Reich, a field of ruins at the end of the Second World War and a nerve center of the Cold War, before becoming again – on the wire – the capital of unified Germany. All these phases were accompanied by demographic transformations, architectural developments and profound morphological changes. A city with recent growth, Berlin is paradoxically more than any other caught in an “excess of history” (p. 7) which fractures its spatio-temporal development.

Berlin’s status as the capital has long been affected by this: the capital of Prussia rather than of Germany, the city also arouses the mistrust of those in power both under Weimar and under the III^e Reich. From 1949 onwards, it was only half a capital: East Berlin was in fact the capital of the GDRwhile West Berlin occupied by the Western Allies is a legally separate enclave from the RFA. These institutional variations have led to a changing distribution of places of power, both in Germany and in Berlin. The actors of unification have also found themselves confronted with major administrative and technical challenges in the 1990s, which have not prevented the rebirth of a multi-speed capital. The question of the unity of the city then arises.

A cultural and political laboratory

After these frames on Berlin, the book approaches its real subject: the Berliners. If Berlin has not recovered its pre-war population (4.3 million inhabitants), it has at least recovered its 1989 population (3.4 million inhabitants). However, this should not mask the fluctuations, the inequalities of distribution, and even more a renewal of the inhabitants and a modification of the demographic structure. These transformations are here related to the economic activities of the city, in which deindustrialization has given way to a development of the tertiary sector, in particular the economy of creativity and tourism. If these activities have contributed to reducing unemployment in certain central districts, they have not eliminated the precariousness and income disparities within the Berlin population.

Berlin’s diversity is also a matter of origin. To stick to the recent period, 1 million Berliners are the result (directly or indirectly) of immigration after 1949: Turkish workers from West Berlin and former political refugees who remained in East Berlin; Russians and Poles who arrived after the fall of the Wall; alternative, then artists and young European graduates… The city that was associated with the idea of ​​racial purity is a cosmopolitan city. However, there is no reason to idealize the Berlin model of multicultural : the integration policies implemented since the 1970s are showing their limits in terms of social cohesion and justice, while the recent influx of refugees is rekindling certain ideological tensions.

Overall, however, Berlin remains a left-wing city, which willingly displays its political gap with the rest of Germany. It retains traces of militant struggles that are now partly mythological. Stronghold of SPD from the end of the 19th^e century, “Red Berlin” saw the birth of Spartacism and the German Communist Party. The left was in the majority there – although divided – until its repression by the Nazi regime. After 1945, East Berlin welcomed the international communist elite; West Berlin took in its defectors. West Berlin then reinforced its image as a beacon of counterculture, protest and freedom, especially as it was at the heart of the student demonstrations and extra-parliamentary opposition of the 1960s. This heritage irrigates various branches of alternative movements, from the urban guerrilla warfare of the RAF (Red Army Faction) to community squats. This activism continues through a participatory commitment that contributes to making Berlin a “political laboratory” (p. 62), but which struggles to find institutional expression. At most, the red that presides over the destinies of the city (SPD and Die Linke) is tinged with green (Alliance 90/The Greens) and orange (Pirate Party). Electoral sociology also reveals persistent divisions that reflect both the legacies of the first 20^e century, the division of the city and its recent changes.

The idea of ​​a Berlin laboratory seems particularly justified in terms of urban and architectural policy. After the war, reconstruction was an urgent necessity (60% of the city was destroyed), which was interfering with a double staging in the context of the competition between West and East Berlin during the Cold War. On both sides, the first social housing policies, with little concern for preservation, were renewed from the 1970s: in the West, soft planning and “critical reconstruction”; in the East, renovation of buildings and a “post-modern” turn. The urban policies conducted from the 1990s, which consisted of an extension to the East of policies already tested in the West, were in turn presented as a space for citizen participation. However, the authors here underline the sociological effects of such policies by highlighting the clear gentrification of certain central districts.

A capital on the way to normalization?

The book ends with a chapter dedicated to the contemporary image of Berlin. The authors strive to distinguish between a young, creative and attractive brand image of the city, and a nuanced economic reality, in which the creative fields occupy a small part and where inequalities are prevalent. They also highlight an increasingly flagrant Berlin paradox: as much as the city’s alternative past was able to delay the onset of gentrification in the German capital, this past, through the resulting image of marginality, now clearly serves as a vector for gentrification. The same image is also taken up by urban marketing to consolidate the city’s tourist take-off, which contributes to increasing the cost of living and especially the amount of rents.

A capital that has long been out of the norm, Berlin is thus becoming an increasingly standardized capital. At the end of 128 pages of effective demonstration, of astonishing density, the observation is eloquent. To achieve this result, the authors rely on a vast collection of works from all disciplines that they manage to make intelligible and to create a dialogue. The great conciseness of the work does not allow one to escape a few shortcuts, but it is overall counterbalanced by the numerous insights offered in the form of boxes; these, far from being annexes, fully contribute to the richness of the subject. One can only regret that the future prospects outlined by the two authors are less convincing: Berlin would thus find itself “faced with the challenge of having to invent a new posture of being-in-the-city, in order to preserve its unique character” (p. 111). The hope that they seem to want to place in the “alternative spur” (p. 112) – so that creative development and gentrification continue while avoiding a strong social and spatial divide – is struggling to gain support. This is undoubtedly a confirmation of the fact that the diagnosis they previously made of the Berlin situation is unequivocal: normalization is now well underway.

Writing the sociology of a city as steeped in history and in full mutation as Berlin, in the space allocated by the collection “Repères”, was a challenge; the challenge is brilliantly met. The result is an absolutely fascinating current portrait of Berlin.