Swabians in Berlin
One of my New Year resolutions – the one that did not involve sex – was that I would stop complaining about Berliners and here we are, in the First week of September, and I am still staying true to my honourable principles. But racism, that’s something else: you have to say something. Last week a Swabian friend of mine, Brokka, had a leaflet pushed into his hand saying “Blockwartschwaben go home!” It was in the Oderberger Straße, so you think, OK, Schwabenhass has a tradition in Prenzlauer Berg. In the Sommerloch 2008, there were all those ironic signs “Stuttgart-Sindelfingen 610 km – Ost-Berlin wünscht gute Heimfahrt“ and the ‚Antischwabismus’ demos along the Mauerpark. But innerdeutscher racism is still racism and it’s back again. If Berlin wants to be taken seriously as a metropolis, if it wants to sell the ‘Kiez’ as one of its charming attractions, then it should stop behaving as if it is the Asterix Dorf under siege from the rest of the world. I understand that Prenzlauer Berg has its own specific problems: a 50 per cent turnover of population between 1995 and 2000; now, closer to 80 per cent. But actually this ‘problem’ – that is, wealthy Zugezogene coming in and investing in property – is being felt across most of the city. Uli Hannemann, the Nietzsche of Neukölln, recorded the loud Handy conversation of a Münchener Yuppie boasting about his Buschzulage. “Wir haben eine Mordsgaudi,” boasts the well-off-Zugezogene, “ständig schreit jemand rum, dazu der ganze Schmutz, die urigen kleinen Läden, die Junkies – echt der Superhammer.”
OK, it is easy to sneer at people who walk around with pastel-coloured cashmere jumpers tied around their necks, chinos or skinny jeans, the Latte Macchiato-isierung of Berlin. Not everyone, Thank God, wants to look like Guido Westerwelle. But Berlin has to realise that it needs rich people, above all rich people who spend money. And since it is almost impossible to become rich in Berlin, these people have to come from outside. Other cities have long since understood that. As a young man I lived in the Islington district of London because it was cheap, central and the houses built for Victorian workers had high ceilings. Then the area was “gentified” – young lawyers like Tony and Cherie Blair moved in, the rents went through the roof – so I moved east to Hackney and within five years the same thing happened there. But by and large Londoners treat this as a positive development. The streets become cleaner, flower-tubs are put on pavements, the schools get better, the junkies are driven out of the parks and the dog shit gets cleaned up. Sure, the new residents are sometimes irritating, but that is the price you pay for beautifying your town street by street.
The Berlin logic by contrast runs as follows: we are poor, but we are proud to be poor because that is more ‘authentic’ and we have to stay true to our roots. Being poor makes us interesting; new wealth is spießig and uncreative. Disorder is intrinsically superior to order. If the Zugezogene don’t like it and can’t adapt, then they should go back to Stuttgart.
I don’t know if there is anyone left in the world who has not heard the hilarious synchronisation into Schwäbisch of the Barack Obama speech at the Siegessäule. The zugeschobene words exactly match his gestures and make a nonsense of the Obama-vision stuff:
“Was mi echt nervt isch des Thema Fahrräder abstelle im Hausgang. Bei uns stellt jeder Daggel grad wie’s ihm passt sein Drahtesel in Hausgang nei, trotz Verbotsschild….und am allermaischde gaht mir auf d’Geischt, wenn im Winter da Schneematsch ande Reife hängt un da ganze Seich, ä Mischung aus Wasser un Salz im Hausgang umeinanderfährt und sich wirklich kei einziger Mieter berufa fühlt, mal a Putzeimer zu nemme, d’Brieh zsammanzumfegn un draußa in d’Kanalisation neizukippe.“ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W02NbVoPqJQ&feature=related)
This is what seems to be bothering the supposed Ur-Berliner of Prenzlberg. Not just that Stuttgarter are somehow Öko-imperialists, forcing their over-priced Bioladen on to the innocent natives, not just forcing up rents, but also imposing an order devised in the anally retentive villages of southwest Germany. Once upon a time the freedom of Berlin was symbolised by a free press, brightly burning lights in full shops, Pink Floyd concerts that could be heard across the Wall by the enslaved East Berliners. Now the symbol of freedom is the right to put a rusty bike in the Flur without the neighbours complaining.
Berlin’s charm and strength came through waves of immigration from Silesia, from Anatolia, from Odessa. Most of those descended from 19th century Polish immigrants consider themselves nowadays to be well-established Berliners. Now the new arrivals are from Schwabenland; they have chosen to leave their homes not (as in the past) because of financial misery but for positive reasons – they see Berlin as sexy. Let’s be grateful that there are still people in the world whose libido is improved by the sight of dog turds on the pavement. Sure, the Schwaben are naïve. But what has happened to the Berlin tradition of tolerance? Let the Schwaben enrich us with their Maultschen, their Häuslebauer mentality, their sense of cleanliness. The city could use all three.
