In Search of Berlin

No other city has had so many faces and so many disasters and has reinvented itself so many times. No other city is like Berlin.

The Berlin of the past 800 years has been both haven and hell. It is a city tortured by its history, where the traumatised gather and where traumas are unleashed. Each plague, each fire, each war, each act of destruction and self-destruction requires it to start again.

Berlin should never have become a world metropolis. Its geography and topography spell trouble: where are the great rivers and bridges? The mountains on the horizon? Instead, it started out as a swamp and all around are sweeping plains, exposed to the Siberian winds. Over the centuries, few of the great figures who have visited have had much good to say about it.

Yet now it is the destination to which the world is flocking. It has been a trading post, military barracks, industrial powerhouse, centre of science and learning, consumer paradise, hotbed of self-indulgence and promiscuity - and the laboratory for the worst experiment in horror known to man. It has now achieved global status/it is the geographical and spiritual midpoint between the rival superpowers/it is the city of refuge/it is home to 180 nationalities, and more than a quarter of the population have a migrant background. After all the episodes of disaster, redemption and reinvention, is Berlin finally at ease with itself? This is the tale of a turbulent city that in spite of itself has become a magnet for the world.