The Myth Outlives the Metropolis

Berlin was always more myth than concrete and steel. Few European cities bear so many visible traces of history: the reconstructed Prussian-German City Palace, the buildings of the National Socialist era – German Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil now works in Hermann Göring’s former ministry – the Eastern Bloc architecture around Alexanderplatz and the remnants of the Wall. In the 1990s, hundreds of thousands came from around the world to celebrate the Love Parade around the Victory Column.

Back then, the cultural brilliance Berlin had enjoyed between the wars also seemed to be returning. Franz Kafka took the night train from Prague not to Vienna but to what was then Germany’s only true metropolis. This was where the great theatrical productions were staged, among them Brecht and Weill’s The Threepenny Opera. Just next door in Babelsberg, German films starring Marlene Dietrich were made for audiences far beyond Germany. The British writers Christopher Isherwood and W. H. Auden moved to Berlin altogether, while Vladimir Nabokov lived and wrote here for several years.

Around the turn of the millennium, at least a hint of that cosmopolitan glamour seemed to be returning. The excellent 2006 Berlin Biennale suggested that the capital of reunified Germany might soon rival Venice. Some already saw the art forum berlin fair as poised to join Basel and Miami among the great international art-market centers. There were even rumors that actor and art collector Brad Pitt wanted to buy an apartment in the city.

Those days are gone. Berlin simply does not belong in the same league as London, Paris, Rome and Madrid. Even Dublin Airport handles more passengers than Berlin Brandenburg. So, to answer Die Zeit’s question, why do so many international jet-setters no longer consider Berlin chic?

Getting There Is Half the Problem

The first answer is that, for some time now, getting there has not been particularly easy. Germany’s aviation costs are among the highest in Europe. On top of that, Berlin airport’s management miscalculated when setting take-off and landing charges, overestimating the attractiveness of the location. The result: several airlines simply dropped routes.

The airport is operating at little more than half capacity, roughly in line with the city’s hotels. The alternative – flying to the Frankfurt hub and taking an ICE high-speed train from there – appears even less enticing to many tourists. By now, word has spread beyond Germany that only around 60% of the country’s long-distance trains arrive on time, while quite a few are canceled or terminate before reaching their destination.

The Price of Disorder

The second reason is crime. Berlin, a city of 3.9 million people, recorded 539,000 criminal offenses in 2024. Poland, with a population of 37.8 million, counted 792,014 in the same period. The figures are not entirely comparable: Berlin’s statistics exclude state-security offenses, while Poland’s exclude economic crimes. Even so, they illustrate just how unsafe the German capital has become for residents and visitors alike.

Last year alone, law enforcement authorities recorded 118 gang rapes in Berlin, not far short of the 161 recorded in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, with 18 million residents. Berlin also has a serious firearms problem. Rival criminal clans have recently moved beyond knives and begun reaching for pistols, firing across the street in Kreuzberg’s Graefekiez or from moving cars.

The third reason for the decline is rubbish and the general deterioration of public space. Just a few U-Bahn stops from the still reasonably presentable center, bulky waste lies in the streets of many neighborhoods, while homeless people and drug users camp on pavements or in underground stations. Railway stations are often used as toilets by the same clientele. Municipal cleaning crews appear only sporadically.

A Cultural Capital Running on Memory

Certainly, tourists and locals in Paris also complain about mountains of rubbish. Nor is London necessarily safe. But in the French capital, you can eat better than in Berlin on almost every corner. And culturally, London offers, at a rough estimate, ten times as much.

The question, then, is why anyone should put up first with the ordeal of getting to Berlin and then with the assorted afflictions awaiting them once they arrive. What remains on the plus side? Unfortunately, considerably less than a few years ago, especially in art and culture.

The art forum berlin fair has not taken place since 2011. Buyers who flew in only occasionally were simply not enough to make it commercially viable. The Berlin Biennale today resembles a bargain bin for woke and anti-Israel kitsch. Many exhibitions at other institutions stand out chiefly for their dreary political correctness.

The last truly major exhibition at the Gropius Bau took place in 2016: Germany – Memories of a Nation, curated by British art historian Neil MacGregor. As for the Pergamon Museum, large sections are closed for renovation and will remain so into the 2040s.

Who No Longer Feels Welcome

For two groups of tourists in particular, today’s Berlin has become far more off-putting than it once was: gay partygoers and Jews. Violent attacks on gay men are becoming more frequent, with the perpetrators often young Muslims of Arab or Turkish background. The Islamist terrorist who drove into Berlin’s Christopher Street Day parade in June, killing one person and injuring 31, sent shock waves through the community around the world.

Even before that attack, gay couples were already avoiding walking hand in hand in many parts of the city with large Muslim populations.

For the same reasons, Jews in Berlin no longer openly identify themselves by wearing a Star of David pendant or a kippah. In 2025, the RIAS Research and Information Center on Antisemitism recorded 2,197 antisemitic incidents in the city, including 39 physical assaults and 41 threats.

An Islamist of Syrian origin attacked a Spanish tourist with a knife among the stelae of the Holocaust Memorial because he mistook him for a Jew, seriously wounding him. The victim survived only by sheer luck.

Decline Without Consequence

Berlin’s Governing Mayor Kai Wegner, now on borrowed time, may complain about the tourism slump. But so far he has done nothing about the city’s worsening decay, while the increasingly aggressive behavior of Islamists has elicited little more than the usual platitudes about how deeply concerned he is. Almost every week, Hamas sympathizers and Israel-haters march through the streets without having to fear pressure from the authorities.

There is a reason the capital can watch the decline of its once-flourishing economic sector with such apathy: Germany’s system of fiscal equalization between the federal states. If Berlin collects less in tax revenue, the three states that remain economically strong – Bavaria, Hesse and Baden-Württemberg – simply have to pump even more billions into Berlin than they already do.

Former Mayor Klaus Wowereit once coined the phrase: “Berlin is poor but sexy.” Despite the billions in subsidies from the south, Berlin is growing poorer at a remarkable pace. But sexy? That was true only briefly, during a handful of hopeful years.

That was then. It is not coming back.