Berlin’s Monokulti
If you live in Berlin or were even planning to, you’ll be aware that the city is a veritable melting pot of cultures, a modern day Alexandria. Or so you keep hearing. Kotbusser Tor is a delta into which many a meandering and permanently plastered Erasmus student has converged. It is not the Nile, but they’re certainly in denial. You see, Kreuzberg is multikulti, if your idea of a transcultural encounter consists of purchasing a falafel from a Turkish joint at 4 am before moving on to the next clandestine bar. Here, of course, you will hobnob with other fearless intercultural explorers, with whom you share a passion for fried chickpeas, cheap beer and other less legal substances. And they will most certainly be white. Berliners like to picture themselves as extras in a Benetton advert, whereas in reality the city has the ethnic diversity of an Al Jolson concert. But refrain from saying this aloud, mentioning the city glaring lack of different skin tones will not get you many Frühstück invitations. Contrary to what you might think, pointing out the Emperor’s lack of clothes will not cast you as the innocent lonely voice, perilously floating on a sycophantic sea. Instead you’ll get the look normally reserved for Swabian real estate speculators.
But enough with tortured analogies, let’s return to overstretched definitions, like the semantic content of this Berlin mantra. What is “multikulti” exactly? And why does it differ so significantly from its English equivalent? According to the Oxford Dictionary of Politics, “The term ‘multiculturalism’ emerged in the 1960s in Anglophone countries in relation to the cultural needs of non-European migrants. It now means the political accommodation by the state and/or a dominant group of all minority cultures defined first and foremost by reference to race or ethnicity; and more controversially, by reference to nationality, aboriginality, or religion, the latter being groups that tend to make larger claims and so tend to resist having their claims reduced to those of immigrants”.
Call me a pedant if you like, but labelling Berlin “multikulti” just because it contains an unusually high number of Swedish graphic designers and Chilean DJs strikes me as a tad inaccurate. And please correct me if I’m wrong, but I seldom meet someone of Turkish descent not manning a deep fryer. I have no intention of discussing the merits ,or lack thereof, of cultural pluralism, neither is this a contribution to the assimilation debate. And yes, Berlin does contain a visible smattering of individuals that hail from other continents with higher concentrations of melanin in their skin, but these are not usually the main actors in Berlin’s much trumpeted multiculturalism play, full of sound and fury but little else. Amongst the ensemble we encounter Scandinavian art students, interning Iberian architects, Icelandic illustrators, French Erasmus students, Midwestern fashion designers, Estonian bloggers, English TEFL teachers, Australian backpackers, and Polish programers, all of whom enthusiastically take part in this self-proclaimed cultural cornucopia. A pluralism that boils down to bar hopping around Kreuzkölln, drinking cheap beer on public transport and in parks, demonstrably slouching in squatter chic cafés or scouting flea markets for the holy grail of vintage. All while waxing lyrical to new, wide-eyed Ryanair arrivals, about the truly diverse scene, home to a plethora of different lifestyles. Some might start viewing this constant reminder of Berlin’s status as a hotbed of cultural interactions and encounters (it is full of Erasmus students after all) with suspicion, as a symptom of a barely disguised inferiority complex.
But let’s view it in a positive light. With the worrying rise of the extreme right in Europe and many pronouncing multiculturalism as a failed social experiment, it is reassuring to know that MacBooks and street art can unite so many people. So let’s hail Berlin’s monokulti, because frankly there’s no escaping it. Originating in Mitte and moving to Prenzlauer Berg, it is an unstoppable mono culture that keeps expanding, always in search of a non-gentrified host in which it can propagate, colonising Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain and spreading to Wedding and Moabit. Like a huge petri dish in which identical scarf wearing non-comformists are cultivated. I should know, I myself am part of this micro-cosmos.
