歷史創傷熄滅了柏林的雄心

BERLIN — A quarter-century ago today, the Berlin Wall fell, and since then this city has been on a roll. It’s one of the party capitals of the world and an affordable center for young artists and musicians, with enough layers of history to inspire a novelist for a few lifetimes. And its economy has benefited greatly from a growing start-up scene. In a country dominated by pleasant but boring cities, Berlin is Germany’s one truly cosmopolitan metropolis.

柏林——自從柏林牆在25年前的今天（本文發表於11月9日）被推倒，這座城市的發展便一帆風順。它是世界狂歡之都；同時也是年輕藝術家和音樂家的聚居地，不僅生活成本低廉，還有層次豐富的歷史，足夠一個小說家寫上好幾輩子。此外，創業浪潮的興起讓它的經濟受益匪淺。德國大多數城市都很宜居，但卻顯得單調乏味，柏林則是這個國家一個真正國際化的大都市。

Many of these accomplishments are laid out in “Berlin Now: The City After the Wall,” a recent book by the German author Peter Schneider. He is right in saying that in recent decades no other city “has changed as much — and for the better — as Berlin,” lauding the sense of openness that has drawn immigrants, revived the shattered Jewish population and made the city a magnet for a creative class that is also luring cutting-edge businesses.

這些成果的很大一部分都被德國作家彼得·施耐德(Peter Schneide)寫進了他的新書——《今日柏林：一座後柏林牆時代的城市》(Berlin Now: The City After the Wall)。施耐德說得沒錯，最近數十年間，沒有哪座城市“發生過像柏林這麼大的變化——而且是變得更好了”。他對它的開放性稱讚有加，正是這種特質吸引來了移民，讓遭到毀滅性打擊的猶太人羣體恢復了生機，並把這所城市變成了吸引創意階層和尖端企業的磁石。

All of this is worth celebrating, but to longtime residents like me, the moves that made this possible all ended about 20 years ago. Since then, the city has been coasting, mostly consumed by small-bore issues instead of grasping the chance to become a truly great city. Berlin has tried to make a virtue of being a less polished version of London or Paris — in the words of its departing mayor, “poor, but sexy.” Yet that is more a reflection of a city whose ambitions rarely extend beyond narrow parochialism.

所有這些都值得慶祝，但對我這樣的長期居民而言，讓這一切成爲可能的舉措早在大約20年前就已戛然而止。從那時起，這座城市一直在放任自流，它把大部分精力都消耗在了各種瑣碎議題上，而非用於抓住時機，以成爲一個真正偉大的城市。柏林將自己定位爲不那麼光鮮亮麗的倫敦或者巴黎——用即將卸任的柏林市長的話來說，“雖然窮，但是很性感”——並竭力善加利用這種定位。由此卻反映出，它的雄心甚少超越一個相當狹隘的範圍。

Given what happened during and after World War II, perhaps this isn’t surprising. One of the most dynamic cities of the early 20th century lost its elite to emigration or genocide, and then its infrastructure to saturation bombing and street-to-street fighting. In the aftermath, its great companies fled — Allianz and Siemens to Munich, Deutsche Bank to Frankfurt — while what remained of its middle class went anywhere to escape the rubble and isolation.

鑑於二戰期間和戰爭結束以來所發生的一切，這或許並不令人意外。移民潮和大屠殺讓20世紀早期最有活力的一座城市失去了精英階層；隨後，狂轟濫炸和巷戰又讓它的基礎設施毀於一旦。接下來，大企業紛紛撤離——安聯(Allianz)和西門子(Siemens)搬到了慕尼黑，德意志銀行(Deutsche Bank)搬到了法蘭克福——剩下的中產階級也爲了逃離廢墟和隔離狀態而四散各方。

Berlin survived for nearly 45 years on life support, but it was more like a curiosity of the Cold War. On one side, the Potemkin prosperity of East Berlin; on the other, the subsidized West Berlin of squatters and artists made famous by David Bowie. I lived in the western sector for the last couple of years of this period and to me the city was fascinating in a morbid way, like Dr. Caligari’s somnambulist hero Cesare, asleep in a coffin-like cabinet, controlled through hypnosis and displayed as a freak-show attraction to tourists venturing off the beaten track.

柏林勉強撐過了45年，但那一時期的它更像一道冷戰奇景。一邊是呈現波將金式繁榮的東柏林；另一邊是充斥着擅自佔用房屋者和藝術家，靠補貼度日，因大衛·鮑伊(David Bowie)而聞名的西柏林。該時期即將結束的那幾年，我居住在西柏林。對我而言，當時的這座城市有一種病態的迷人氣息，如同《卡里加利博士的小屋》的男主人公夢遊者凱撒(Cesare)，睡在棺材般的箱子裏，被人通過催眠加以控制，成了一個怪物秀，以吸引那些遠離大衆景點的旅行者。

The fall of the Berlin Wall resuscitated the city. Subway and light rail lines between the two halves of the city and its hinterland were reconnected, museum holdings put back together and Germany decided to move its capital here from Bonn, which eventually brought thousands of well-paid and well-educated civil servants to help restock the middle class.

柏林牆的倒塌讓這座城市甦醒了。東西兩部分及其腹地之間的地鐵和輕軌線路重新連了起來，博物館的藏品又被擱在了一處。德國還決定把首都從波恩搬過來，該舉措最終爲柏林帶來了成千上萬名薪酬可觀、受過良好教育的公務員，這對中產階層的復興頗有助益。

Living here during those early years of reunification was thrilling. I recall in 1992 taking one of the first light-rail S-Bahn trains to Potsdam, the city of parks and palaces to Berlin’s south. It had been cut off for decades but suddenly was there, like an apparition out of the Prussian past. It seemed Berlin just had to flip a few switches to join the ranks of great global metropolises.

兩德統一後的最初幾年，住在柏林是一件令人興奮的事情。我記得自己曾在1992年搭乘最初的幾班輕軌列車之一，前往位於柏林之南的波茨坦，一座到處都是公園和宮殿的城市。通向那裏的交通當時已被切斷了好幾十年，卻突然間就出現了，如同一個來自過去的普魯士幽靈。那時候，柏林要躋身世界大都會的行列，彷彿就是打開幾個開關那麼簡單。

Instead, what followed were two decades of inaction. Berlin did get several important things right: the Holocaust memorial in the city center succeeds — as a warning, as a tourist attraction and as a piece of urban planning — far better than most people had thought possible. The nation’s Parliament is another achievement; a young democracy needs a good spiritual center, and Sir Norman Foster exorcised the Reichstag of Wilhelminian bombast, transforming it into a fitting symbol for a vibrant republic.

不料，隨後到來的竟是碌碌無爲的20年。柏林的確把幾件重要的事情辦得不錯：作爲一種警示、一個旅遊景點以及城市規劃的一部分，市中心的那座大屠殺紀念館就建得很好，好得遠遠超出了大部分人的想象。另一項成就是德國國會大廈的改建。一個年輕的民主國家需要一個良好的精神中樞，諾曼·福斯特(Norman Foster)爵士摒棄了國會大廈原有的浮誇風格，把它變成了能夠恰如其分地展現一個共和國生機勃勃的精神風貌的標誌性建築。

But since then, the city’s problems have started to pile up: the cheaply built central train station with its short roof and low ceilings; the failure to redevelop old Tempelhof Airport; the controversial proposal to shoehorn the city’s world-famous museum of European paintings into a smaller space; a similar, tourism-driven plan to shrink the Ethnological Museum and relocate it in a fake Baroque palace; and the inability to come up with effective measures to stave off gentrification. And then there’s the new airport. It was needed 20 years ago, was supposed to open in 2011 and is now unlikely to see traffic before 2016, by which time it already will be too small for projected passenger flows.

但自從那時起，這個城市的問題不斷累積：寒酸的中央火車站，屋頂很矮，天花板很低；沒能重建老舊的滕佩爾霍夫機場(Tempelhof Airport)；搞了一個飽受爭議的方案，非要把該市一座舉世聞名的歐洲繪畫博物館塞進一個較小的空間；又弄了一個類似的旅遊驅動型規劃，要縮小民族博物館(Ethnological Museum)的規模，並把它搬到一座冒牌的巴洛克式宮殿裏去；還有就是沒能找出避免紳士化的有效辦法。再來說說新機場。柏林早在20年前就需要這個新機場，原本應該在2011年投入運營，但現在看來，在2016年之前是不可能開業的。等到那時候，相對於預計的客流量而言，它已經顯得太小了。

All these problems can be explained away as bad luck, or typical of ambitious, large-scale projects. And of course all big cities have their problems. But in Berlin’s case they are a fair reflection of the fact that the city has been treading water, and that many of Berlin’s accolades stem from the big changes of a quarter-century ago and not the efforts of city administrations since then.

所有這些問題都可以簡單地搪塞，比如運氣不好，比如滿懷豪情的大型項目常常會事與願違。的確，所有的大城市都有各自的問題。可在柏林，這些問題卻可以顯示，這座城市的止步不前，柏林的許多榮耀，都來自25年前的劇變，而非在那以後市政府的治理努力。

The reasons for this stagnation go back to the Cold War. Early on, West Berlin did have internationally known mayors like Ernst Reuter and Willy Brandt. But by the 1970s, the city had become a backwater. Few ambitious politicians wanted to lead the western half (not to mention the eastern section, which was run as part of East Germany’s one-party state). The city became synonymous with second-tier politicians.

這種停滯的緣由，可以追溯到冷戰時代。最初，西柏林的確有過一些享譽國際的市長，如恩斯特·羅伊特(Ernst Reuter)和維利·勃蘭特(Willy Brandt)。但到了1970年代，這座城市就成了一灣死水。鮮少會有哪個有志向的政治人物，希望領導柏林的西半部，更不用說東德一黨制國家統治下的東柏林了。這座城市成了二流政治人物的同義語。

When the Berlin Wall fell, these parochial officials took over the unified city. Not surprisingly, their vision was almost comically narrow. In 1993, the long-serving mayor, Eberhard Diepgen, said Berlin’s new center should look like “a city space like those we know from old black and white photographs.”

柏林牆倒塌時，這些目光短淺的官員接管了統一後的城市。可想而知，他們的視野狹隘到了滑稽的地步。1993年，擔任市長已久的艾伯哈·迪根(Eberhard Diepgen)表示，柏林的新市中心要像“老黑白照片裏見過的那種城市空間”。

This lack of imagination was reflected in building codes that required most new structures to be small and not look too modern. Over the years, the city center has become filled with dull, historicized structures. The other lasting effect of this era was an epic housing bubble brought on by a corrupt bank that the city’s leaders created by merging several local banks. That bubble eventually cost Mr. Diepgen his job and saddled Berlin with billions in debt.

這種缺乏想象力的念頭在建築規章裏得到了體現，法規要求多數的新建房屋尺寸要小，看起來不能太現代。日積月累，市中心裏填滿了枯燥的仿古建築。這個時代遺留下了另一個長期的後果。柏林的領導人合併了幾家當地銀行，而合併產生的那家腐敗的銀行，卻催生了巨大的房地產泡沫。這場泡沫最終導致迪根丟掉了工作，也讓柏林背上了沉重的債務。

Mr. Diepgen was replaced in 2001 by the current mayor, Klaus Wowereit, a suave, telegenic Social Democrat. It has been under his leadership that the city has slowly recovered. And yet for the most part his administration has simply stayed out of the way of the longer-term trends that reunification had set in motion. Perhaps the most important of these was the bursting of the housing bubble that Mr. Wowereit’s predecessor created. That left Berlin with a glut of cheap apartments, which made the city a magnet for young, creative people and start-ups.

迪根在2001年由現任市長克勞斯·沃維雷特(Klaus Wowereit)接替，後者是社會民主黨人，文質彬彬也很上鏡。正是在他的領導之下，這座城市才緩慢地復甦。然而他的政府所做的，大部分也只是不去妨礙德國統一所引發的一種長期歷史趨勢。或許其中最爲重要的，就是戳破沃維雷特的前任造就的房地產泡沫。這給柏林留下了許多廉價的公寓，於是它像磁石一般，吸引了年輕、富有創造力的人羣，以及許多創業企業。

But when the city took concrete action, the results were usually closer to the agony of Berlin’s new airport. It is not only decades overdue, but like the central train station, it was built on the cheap. It has no subway connection, no dedicated light-rail line and increasingly it seems that planes will be heavily penalized for landing at night, guaranteeing it will never become a hub.

但是當柏林採取切實行動的時候，其結果常常更接近柏林新機場造成的痛苦。不僅拖延了幾十年，而且像中央火車站一樣，是以極低的成本建成的。沒有對接地鐵、沒有專用的輕軌線，而且越來越常見的問題是，飛機在夜間降落時似乎會遇到很大的麻煩。這樣一來，它絕對成不了一座樞紐。

And like many of Berlin’s big projects, corruption seems to be behind its delay, leading to resignations and official inquiries.

就像柏林的許多大項目一樣，機場長期拖延背後的原因似乎是腐敗。一些官員因此辭職，官方也展開了調查。

For many years, I comforted myself by saying that Berlin had thrived because of its leaders’ mismanagement. After all, if the city weren’t so badly run, real estate prices would be high, which would drive away the young people and tech start-ups. There’s some truth to this, but it’s the equivalent of telling China that it should remain poor because if it got rich its competitive advantage in low wages would evaporate.

多年來，我總是這樣安慰自己：柏林之所以能繁榮，是因爲領導層管理不善。畢竟，如果不是因爲城市管理不善，房地產價格就會高漲，年輕人和創業的科技企業就會被擠走。這在一定程度上是事實，但卻像是在告訴中國應該繼續受窮，因爲一旦富起來，低工資的競爭優勢就會消失。

Comparisons to China’s capital, Beijing, often come up in my mind when I think of Berlin. Over the past quarter-century, I’ve spent all but three years bouncing between the two cities. Of the two, I vastly prefer Berlin: It has a vibrant civil society, better museums, more affordable housing, a more open and tolerant attitude, and of course much less smog.

我在想到柏林時，頭腦裏經常會浮現出與中國首都北京的比較。在過去25年裏，除了三年之外，我一直往返於這兩座城市之間。我喜歡柏林遠遠超出北京，因爲它有活躍的公民社會、博物館更好、住房更便宜、心態更開放也更寬容，當然霧霾也要少得多。

But in some maniacal way Beijing is chasing the future to a degree that Berlin can’t — or won’t. Maybe it’s because Berlin has endured too much to indulge in this game, but Beijing feels as if it is at the center of something special, ominous at times, but thrilling nonetheless. The city can be overcrowded and dirty, but it’s also at the phase in its history where it’s building a subway line every year. Meanwhile, Berlin still hasn’t managed to run a subway line from the eight-year-old main train station to the western part of the city, where two-thirds of the population lives.

然而北京正在以有些癲狂的步調追趕未來，這是柏林所無法企及的，或者說不願企及的。可能是因爲柏林在過往承受了太多苦痛，不願沉湎於這種競賽之中，但北京卻感覺自己站在一個奇蹟的中心，偶爾讓人驚懼，不過還是激動人心。雖然北京過於擁擠也有點髒，但是它處在一個每年都新建一條地鐵線的歷史階段。與此同時，柏林卻一直做不到用地鐵線，把已經落成八年的主火車站，與三分之二柏林人口居住的城市西半部連接起來。

It’s fine to be world-weary. But that shouldn’t be an excuse for being dull and timid. Yet for many who have witnessed the city’s post-wall fortunes, it feels that this is what lies beneath the art galleries and start-ups: a scarred city content to remain in the second league.

厭倦世界恐怕無可厚非，但不應該以此爲藉口，一直枯燥、羞怯。然而，在見證了這座城市在柏林牆倒塌後的命運的許多人看來，在畫廊和創業企業背後，彷彿掩藏着一座傷痕累累，甘願當二線城市的柏林。