Economist.com Cities Guide: Berlin Briefing - July 2006

News this month

Everyone's a winner

After a nail-biting final in Berlin, Italy claimed its fourth World Cup on July 9th by beating France 5-3 on penalties. Germany, the host country, came third after beating Portugal on July 8th, but emerged as a definite winner off the pitch. It is too early to predict the economic effects, but analysts hope the month-long euphoria that reigned in Germany will boost consumer confidence. Some industries have already seen benefits: Deutsche Telekom, a telecommunications giant, announced an additional turnover of €350m ($447m) during the tournament; German Rail carried 5m extra passengers; and some sponsors, such as Continental, a tyre-manufacturer, have said the games nearly doubled their name-recognition abroad.

The tournament itself was a definite success. All 64 games were sold out, with an average of 51,000 fans attending each one. And the largest public-viewing area, the so-called "Fan Mile" in Berlin, which stretched two kilometres from the Brandenburg Gate to the Siegessäule monument and broadcast the live games on giant screens, was an enormous hit-police estimate that around 1m came to watch the Germany-Sweden match. One of many free official public-viewing areas in Germany, it was extended in time for the final. These zones, not to mention the fine weather, helped Germany to be a warm host.

Crashing the party

The festive mood on the Fan Mile was dampened on July 2nd when a car drove through barriers near the Brandenburg Gate at about 50km per hour, injuring over 20 people. The driver and his passenger were taken in for questioning by the police. Witnesses say the crash did not appear to be accidental, but no explosives were found in the vehicle. Thankfully no games were being staged at the time, so the area was relatively empty.

Despite worries of terrorist attacks or right-wing extremist violence, the incident was the only big breach in security during the entire World Cup. A record 6,000 police officers were deployed throughout Berlin during the more popular games, with many posted along the Fan Mile. They have been widely praised for being efficient, unobtrusive and-surprisingly for Berlin's usually brusque police force-even friendly.

Looking on the bright side

Germany's business community is more optimistic about the country's economic future than it has been in years, according to a survey published on July 1st. The study by Ernst & Young, a management consultancy, reviewed 3,000 medium-sized German firms. Almost half the respondents expect the economy to improve over the next year, with only 9% believing the situation will decline (last year 55% were naysayers). Over 80% of companies described the present state of their business as positive.

But despite the survey's overall optimism, Germany's mood varies by region. Berlin is one of the most pessimistic areas in the country-only a quarter of the companies in the city-state expect the economic situation to improve, and only 2% described the current situation as good, compared with 56% in Hamburg and a national average of 32%.

Up in the air

Berlin's proposed new international airport, scheduled to open by 2011, is once again the centre of controversy. According to Der Spiegel, a weekly political magazine, Peer Steinbrück, Germany's finance minister, wants to shrink plans for the new Berlin-Brandenburg International airport (BBI) to lower the project's cost from €3.5 billion to €2 billion. BBI is due to be built at Schönefeld, former East Germany's main airport, to replace the city's three existing airports. But Mr Steinbrück believes the project is too ambitious. Plans date back to the 1990s, when Berlin's population was predicted to grow to 5m by 2010. Since then, the city-state's population has actually decreased, to just under 3.4m, and other German airports, such as those in Frankfurt and Munich, have taken on more traffic.

However Wolfgang Tiefensee, the federal minister of transport, has rejected Mr Steinbrück's scheme. He says that making new plans would further delay BBI's construction, which has been stalled for more than a decade. The airport's backers saw a glimmer of progress in March, when they won a lengthy legal fight against the airport's future neighbours by agreeing to restrict night flights. Now the airport's supporters are waiting to see whether Mr Steinbrück's proposal gains traction.

What's in a name?

The proposed renaming of a street has sparked fierce debate in Kreuzberg, a western Berlin borough. In August 2005 the local council agreed to change the name of Kochstrasse, one of Kreuzberg's main thoroughfares, to Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse, in memory of Rudi Dutschke, a student activist in the 1960s. The move has the support of left-wing and Green politicians, but the local branch of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party has balked at the decision and gathered 5,000 signatures to petition against it. Dutschke, members of the CDU say, fought against democracy and tried to incite young people to violence.

Rudi Dutschke was a prominent and controversial leader of the German student movement of the late 1960s, and died in 1979 from injuries suffered when he was shot by a right-wing activist in 1968. He has a special legacy in Kreuzberg, where he enjoyed a large following at a time when the borough, surrounded on three sides by the Berlin Wall, was a centre of West Berlin's counter-culture. The push to name a street after Dutschke was launched by Die Tageszeitung, a left-leaning daily newspaper, which has its editorial office (already named after Dutschke) on the street in question. Whether the street becomes Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse now depends on whether the paper and left-leaning politicians are as avid in their campaigning as the CDU. Ironically, if the name is changed, Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse would lead onto Axel-Springer-Strasse-named after the late right-wing publisher of Bild, a popular tabloid newspaper and a bitter enemy of Dutschke's.

Catch if you can

July 2006

Afrika! Afrika!

Until September 2nd 2006

Africa comes to Berlin with this magical circus, presented by André Heller, an Austrian multimedia artist. Mr Heller and his team travelled for almost two years on the African continent in search of the most talented and fascinating artists. Often they found them in remote villages, in countries ranging from Mali to Morocco, Egypt to South Africa. The result is a joyous spectacle-110 dancers, singers, jugglers and acrobats exude vitality and charisma. The fairyland of fantasy and imagination begins as soon as you enter the main 26-metre-high circus tent, set up near Berlin's shiny new main railway station, where eight smaller Bedouin-like tents house an African café, restaurant, art exhibition and bazaar.

Zeltpaläste, next to the new Hauptbahnhof. Tel: +49 (0)1805 725 299. Performances: Tues-Sun. See website. Tickets are €25-69 (€1 from each ticket goes to UNESCO for art schools in Africa).

More from the Berlin cultural calendar