Berlin will create a sort of politician who is much more sensitized to the changes in society and more open to the world,'' he predicted. The ambiguous new capital seems to evoke both promise and angst in equal measure among Germans. Some fret that the nation's political heart will beat closer to a new constellation of Central and East European allies. The questions remain largely unsettled even as the tidal shift of an estimated 30,000 Bonn-based government staff, lobbyists, publicists, trade groups and news organizations gets up to full speed this summer. From that moment, Bonn's importance began to fade as political power increasingly concentrates itself in Berlin.
Berlin stands for youth and culture to anyone who cares to see it that way.
Young people who weary of Bonn hail Berlin as a world-class city on a par with New York, Paris and London. But judging from the almost daily debate over the move, Germans see bigger societal shifts ahead. The notion of a new but still undefined society sounds distinctly plausible to a nation that already is dizzy from a decade of nonstop political and social change following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Welcome to the New Berlin,'' exclaim the banners in Berlin's Tegel airport, echoing the theme of unceasing newness. BUT Berlin has another meaning as well, one that is as concrete as its bricks and mortar.