Meet the Germans | Rory's Berlin Blog | Goethe-Institut

    Berlin’s tourists are being used.  A 5% ‘city tax’ is to be added to every hotel, hostel and guest-house bill from July.  And business travellers are to be exempt from the new charge.  



    Taxes on overnight accommodation are nothing new.  Around the world dozens of cities, from Paris and Rome to New York, impose a similar ‘pillow tax’.  What is different in Berlin – and will prove to be conveniently tricky to police – is the proposed business travel waiver.  

    To any devious observer it obvious that, come the summer, tourists wishing to avoid paying the tax will simply complete an official form, declaring that their visit is for professional reasons.  Hey presto, 5% will be saved.  Berlin won’t raise anything like the extra €25 million a year predicted by the city’s politicians.  The ‘pillow tax’ will be a disaster.  Or will it?

    Berlin likes to portray itself as being upfront and open.  But as in many parts of German life, little is as it seems on the surface.  There is another agenda on (or under) the table, and it’s all about fiscal stimulus.

    While encouraging economic self-restraint across Europe, Germany seems to have embarked again on a policy of domestic stimulus – by expanding its army of tax inspectors.  

    According to unconfirmed estimates, Berlin’s ‘pillow tax’ will need to be administered by as many as 750 new bureaucrats.  These specialist ‘pillow-watchers’ will not simply scour the exemption forms for discrepancies.  After 1st July at the Brandenburg Gate and in Potsdam, atop the Siegessäule and underground on Berliner Unterwelten tours, undercover inspectors – cunningly disguised in ‘leisure’ sandals and white socks – may well seek out the so-called ‘business’ visitors.  Casual conversations will be initiated.  Suspects will be asked if they happen to know – for example -- the GDP of Schleswig-Holstein.  Claimants who cannot name the rates of both the federal Steuermesszahl and Berlin-Brandenburg Hebesatz taxes will be declared bogus businessmen/women.  The possession of a pocket calculator will not be accepted as proof of business travel.

    The ‘pillow tax lunacy’ scheme seems to mirror that of the ‘car tax idiocy’ programme.  As has been reported in the press, the government’s decision to streamline the collection of motor and insurance taxes has necessitated the employment of a further 1,000 specialist tax collectors.  Apparently 50,000,000 tax notices and a further 8,000,000 reminders must be sent out every year, a job so large that employee numbers will have to double.

    Another example of bureaucratic inefficiency?  No way.  Once again Berlin has proven that it worries not about inconveniencing individuals in the name of the common good.  And given the likely success of these two pilot schemes, rumour has it that similar Beamte-expanding programmes will soon be in train in the capital.  Among those under consideration are a fiendishly-complicated fresh air tax (calculated on the number of leaves per tree per street), a Techno tax (10% added to the entry fee of Berghain, Tresor and Picknick) and a condom tax (you can work that one out yourself).  At least 500 new government employees may well be required to administer each scheme.



    Once again little is ever as it seems in Germany.  Berlin’s tourists aren’t being used.  No one should take at face value matters as taxing as these...or believe everything that they read online.

    Once at my boys-only school in Canada, my biology teacher – a tall and aloof Welshman (and devoted frog dissector) named Mr. Baldwin – announced that the time had come to teach us about sex.  He laid before us schematics of the different human body system: respiratory, muscular, cardio-vascular and the rest.
    ‘Now boys, which is the one system that man can live without?’ he asked his overexcited and spotty charges.
    ‘Reproductive?’ ventured John Yamada, by far the smartest of our pubescent bunch.
    ‘Top marks,’ responded Baldwin.  ‘Now let’s get back to amphibians.’
    How different my life would have been if I’d grown up in Berlin.



    Over the last two decades a sex education manual entitled ‘Where Do You Come From?’ has been used at many of Berlin’s elementary schools.  In it a young couple, Lisa and Lars, are displayed in various stages of arousal.  Lisa strokes Lars.  Lars looks happy.  Lisa puts a condom on Lars’ erect penis.  Lisa and Lars bonk under the fluffy feather duvet.
    ‘When it’s so good that it can’t get any better, Lisa and Lars have an orgasm,’ enthuses the text.
    ‘Where Do You Come From?’ is recommended for ages five and up.



    Hold on, lads.  When I was five years old I was still reading the primer ‘Fun with Dick and Jane’ (‘Dick said, “Look, look.  Look up.  Look up, up, up.”’).  Back in those days an erection was something that boys did with their Meccano set.  If I’d happened upon a condom I’d have probably filled it with water and thrown it at a passing horse-drawn carriage.

    Earlier this year parents in Kreuzberg, one of Berlin’s trendiest neighbourhoods, began to complain about ‘Where Do You Come From?’  At first they were ignored, as is usual with Berlin schools, until the press (and so the politicians) got hold of the story.  Monika Grütters, a member of the Bundestag, was soon telling Die Welt that when it comes to sex, educators should be wary of ‘unnecessary zeal’.  Another MP added that ‘sex education should accompany the development of children, but not speed it up.’

    As a result the Kreuzberg school board has confirmed that the book is ‘no longer accessible to the children’.   Loewe Verlag, the publisher of ‘Where Do You Come From?’, has announced that the title – despite its popularity among Berlin's bright-eyed and touchy-feely pre-teens – won’t be reissued because ‘the text and illustrations are no longer up to date’.  In its place Loewe Verlag will print (see below) a less explicit book by the same illustrator titled ‘Was I in Mommy's Stomach, Too?’



    When I was young, the English (and so Canadians) had a reputation for considering sex to be, well, a bit of a chore.  As George Mikes, the Hungarian-born British author, once wrote, ‘Continental people have a sex life; the English have hot-water bottles’.   Because of the ‘hands off’ approach as perpetrated by the likes of Mikes and my old biology teacher, I came to see women as the more precious, life-giving half of mankind.  I believed that the act leading to reproduction was a kind of magical, non-essential process.  I considered love and love-making to be indissolubly linked.

    But if I’d grown up in Berlin, it would have been a different story.  I’d probably have left my Meccano set at home and indulged in (more) enthusiastic teenage sex,  and had loads more fun.  So is modern Berlin becoming like 1960s Toronto, and putting the romance back in to sex?  Answers on a perfumed envelope (marked S.W.A.L.K.) please.

    History has made Berlin among the two or three most exciting cities in Europe, so why are its authorities rushing to pave over much of that same history?



    At the end of the Second World War Berlin was divided into four sectors.  Stalin’s secret intention was to draw Berlin – and then the whole of Germany -- into the Communist orbit.  In 1948 he blockaded the western sectors as a means of driving the Americans (and Brits) out of Europe.

    To sustain the city’s freedom the Allies retaliated by launching an airlift.  But West Berlin’s two airfields – Tempelhof and Gatow – couldn’t handle sufficient traffic.  A third airport was needed to keep the blockaded city supplied with food and fuel.  West Berliners responded by building a new airport at Tegel that, after the Soviets were forced to back down, grew to become the city’s main international airport. 

    Today Tegel is among the most convenient capital city airports in world.  Few parts of town – or at least of the old West – are more than 25 minutes away from its check-in desks.  Add in the fact that there’s a security checkpoint at every gate (unlike a single security checkpoint at most large international terminals) and it’s no wonder that travellers love the airport.

    Nevertheless back in 2006 the Federal Administrative Court approved the government plan for Berlin to have a single large airport, so as both to centralise air transportation needs and limit the number of residents affected by fly-over noise.  As part of the master plan, BER (Berlin International) was to become the continent’s great new jet-setting hub.

    Not only is BER now three years behind schedule but recent reports have suggested that the check-in area is too small, that there will be too few baggage claim carousels and that the proposed duty-free Gummibär outlets are too few in number.  Yet will the authorities reverse their decision to close Tegel?  No way.  Or, as the German Transportation Minister Peter Ramsauer put it, plans to shut down Tegel ‘have already been approved on the highest judicial level, and from the government’s perspective, the legal status of those plans has not changed’.

    In truth the decision has less to do with legal precedent or bureaucratic intransigence, and more to do with emotion.  Berlin’s bureaucrats are besotted with the idea of creating a great airport for a great capital.  Their Albert Speer-like dream of grandeur takes little account of public wishes, or convenience, or choice.  As a result ordinary Berliners have begun to mobilize themselves to save Tegel.  An online petition requesting that the issue be put to a popular vote is quickly gathering support.



    Will it work? Will Berlin’s landmark Tegel be saved?  Might it continue to serve the city for decades as a second airport?  The prospects aren’t good.  Only five years ago a similar referendum to preserve Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport failed because of low voter turnout.  Convenient and much-loved Tegel may soon be paved over and forgotten, making Berlin a more conventional, less remarkable, less historical city.

    Germany’s original anti-nuke campaigners – with their smiley sticker and catchy ‘Atomkraft?  Nein, danke’ slogan – helped to shape modern politics.  In the 1970s they -- along with other like-minded ‘alternatives’ -- galvanized and propelled the Greens into both the political mainstream and power.  Now another upstart movement is offering an ‘Alternative for Germany’.  But its members aren’t calling for an end to Pershing and nuclear-generated electricity.  Instead they want to ditch the Euro.



    Not every German is wedded to the Euro, which may come as a surprise to some hard-of-hearing UKIP voters.  When the single currency was introduced, both sentimental and hard-headed financial folk bemoaned the demise of the Deutsche Mark.  Only in recent years has a majority come to appreciate the advantages (and powerful symbolism) of the Euro, and let go of their monetary nostalgia.  But the continent’s on-going troubles have now unleashed a backlash against the Euro, and given birth to a party determined to extract Germany from it.

    More and more German taxpayers are fed up with paying off – or helping to pay off – the debts of certain, once-profligate neighbours.  In their dreams these voters imagine dumping the Euro (along with all contracted financial obligations) and living happily ever after.  In truth leaving the Euro would be heart-stoppingly expensive, and ruin one of the country’s key competitive advantage.

    I’m no financial wizard but – as far as I can work out – the Euro trades at a discount on the currency markets because of the debt burden of Greece, Spain, Italy and the other usual suspects.  Take them out of the equation and Germany’s new currency would soar in value, taking the cost of exports with it.  At the same time the non-German Euro would collapse, along with the cost of manufacturing elsewhere in Europe.  VWs would become much, much more expensive than Skodas and Fiats.  Germany’s sweet export success would turn sour.

    Yet voters – even German voters -- aren’t renowned for ignoring their emotions.  Germany’s next election is scheduled for September, and the timing of the ‘Alternative for Germany’ movement may be prescient.  As all the other parties (bar the far left) support the Euro, these newcomers are offering the only alternative for frustrated voters who believe that they have already paid enough to shore up the single currency.



    Will ‘Alternative for Germany’ mirror the success of the Greens?  Will Germany be a Euro-free zone within a decade?  One day could it even link up with a Euro-skeptical UK to form an unexpected monetary union (leaving France to muddle through with the rest of the ‘old’ Euro zone)?  It’s much too early to tell of course.  What’s certain is that, come September, some German voters will gaze at their ballot papers and ask themselves, ‘Euro-kraft? Ja, oder...’

    For the last four years I’ve been writing a history of Berlin, exploring how the city has been shaped by its twenty most creative residents, both past and present, German and foreign, among them Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Kathe Kollwitz, Christopher Isherwood and David Bowie.



    Hence I am intrigued by the Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel’s new book, ‘The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present’.  Kandel begins his exploration of creativity and Vienna with a story of Rodin's visit the city in 1902.  In one of its famous artistic salons, the French sculptor sat with the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, staring at two remarkably beautiful young women.  Unable to take his eyes off them, Rodin leaned over to Klimt and said, ‘I have never before experienced such an atmosphere -- your tragic and magnificent Beethoven fresco, your unforgettable temple-like exhibition, and now this garden, these women, this music ... and round it all this gay, child-like happiness ... What is the reason for it all?’
    Klimt simply nodded and responded with a single word, ‘Austria.’

    How are we shaped by art, and how does that art change the place in which we live?  Would Rodin’s sculptures have been different had he worked in Vienna or Berlin, and how would those cities have been changed by his residence?  Do different cities draw different kinds of creative souls, whose work in time changes all its citizens and their understanding of beauty?  

    In his book Kandel portrays fin-de-siècle Vienna as a hotbed of artistic creativity, a hub of intellectual activity and a cradle of modern scientific ideas – much like Berlin was in the ‘Golden Twenties’.  In these places, and at these times, artists strove to create new identities for themselves, and so their city.

    Kandel’s ambition is to unravel creativity through neuroscience.  He wants to link our emotional reactions to a Klimt or Schiele portrait with the electrical flickers of individual neurons.  Of course many people believe that science and art are incompatible, and that explaining art in biological terms both undermines and lessens the pleasure of experiencing it.  But according to Kandel, science and art are simply two ways to search for truth.
     ‘Truth has many dimensions, and the way you arrive at truth in complex situations is through many perspectives,’ he told Der Spiegel last month.  ‘I see psychoanalysis, art and biology ultimately coming together, just like cognitive psychology and neuroscience have merged recently.’  




    Science is a discipline which aims to make sense of the world by building on objective – and repeatable – observations.  Individual artists use subjective observations (both of the outer and inner world) to reach for a different kind of truth.  In a way, ‘The Age of Insight’ can be seen as a call for a new branch of science called neuroaesthetics.   Such a science might bring greater understanding of the mind, which is of value of course, but I doubt it will ever enhance human creativity itself.  In our rational world creativity remains a mysterious process, dependent on learning and whimsy, openness and discipline, mood and mortality, memory and forgetfulness, long, contemplative hot baths and short, sharp emotional shocks.  

    Kandel doesn’t think that ‘biology is replacing the feeling experienced through art.  Biology is capable of giving additional insights. It’s a parallel, not a substitutive process’.  Call me a romantic but I’ll just keep hold of Jean Cocteau’s advice that one should forget that ‘one is a poet and let the phenomenon occur, without our knowing it.’