Berlin - Fateful Years of a Metropolis

The Berlin blockade ends, the 1950s begin with the founding of two states in 1949 which tears the city apart into East and West. And yet the economic miracle emerges from the ruins of the war. The existential question that looms over everything: “socialism or capitalism”? Berlin is right in the middle of a competition between systems: the Kurfürstendamm rises to become a magnificent boulevard and “workers' palaces” are being built in the east. An almost forgotten time. Between departure, repression and the Cold War; divided into sectors.

The 60s - in Berlin they are marked by the building of the Wall and everyday life in the shadow of the Wall. Successful escape attempts and Wall deaths. Short hours of shared happiness, when passport agreements made the Wall more permeable for a short time. Race of the systems: Kennedy and Khrushchev arrive. The first man in space - the first man on the moon. The face of the city changes - building boom in East and West: The new center with Alexanderplatz in the East, Ku'damm as the showcase of the West with the Europacenter.

The 1970s are a special decade in Berlin as well. The euphoria and revolutionary mood of the sixties change into a colorful, hedonistic state. New paths in politics: change through rapprochement - also in East and West Berlin. Colorful, loud, politically stirring - a city in flux, that's how Berliners experience the seventies.

Cheap, trashy, creative - that's Berlin in the last decade before the fall of the Wall. Poppers, punks, and new wavers were having a rendezvous. While freaks, rockers and peepshows spread out on the Ku'damm boulevard. The New German Wave takes off. And East and West are further away from each other than ever before. The Wall - brutally normal.

The Wall comes down, Germany and Berlin are reunited. Now what belongs together grows together - or does it? Berlin becomes a workshop of unity and a playground for artists and party people. The people in the western districts, the former island dwellers, groan because their Berlin allowance is cut off. And the East is becoming a vale of tears, because although the new cost of living is already on a par with the West, wages and salaries are still far from it. The city is united and yet divided: into "Besserwessis" and "Jammerossis.

A new millennium - Berlin is poor, but sexy. Terror in New York on September 9, 2001, Berlin is in shock. Rejoicing over the Euro; grumbling about the Teuro Problem neighborhoods and parallel societies. The Hatun Sürücü case - an honor killing shakes the city. A polar bear cub as the star of the capital: Knut.