STRIVE January 2018 | Page 8

Photo by RDTviews © 2018 Berlin: Dreaming the Future in the Shadow of the Past By Dr. Lauren van Vuuren Berlin in 2017 is a city bristling with new technology start-ups. Young people from all corners of the world take advantage of cheap rent and an abundance of shared work- spaces, often working strange hours in keeping with the wild nightlife of the city. When they’re not working, they race around on fixed gear bikes through the wide streets of Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain, and Mitte. In this irreverent, youthful, and intense environment, the potential of tech- nology to make the world a better place seems unlimited. It is telling that one of the journalists who broke the Edward Snowden story, Laura Poitras, chose Berlin as her base. It is a deeply progressive city, where people treat freedom of the Photo by RDTviews © 2018 8 January 2018 press, freedom of expression, and freedom of movement as inviolate human rights. The drum of the right-wing party Alternative For Deutschland (AFD), beloved in some small towns across the old east Germany, beats very, very faintly in the great metropolis on the Spree. It is precisely the freedom and internationalism of the city that attracts people from around the world. The tech start-up industry has massively boosted Berlin’s always flagging economy. In a mere 10 years, the city has gone from being a minor player on the tech scene to the home of around 2,500 start-ups. And yet as a writer based in Berlin, I often find myself musing about the meaning of technological advancement in a city with such an excoriating twentieth-cen- tury history. In the years before World War I, and especially through the turbulent but wildly exuberant Weimar years of the 1920s, Berlin was the technological center of Europe. Advances in transportation and industry, improvements in living conditions, and the embracing of a progressive, permissive cul- tural life contrasted with the fragmentation and societal upheaval of the larger postwar world. Glittering department stores and roads heaving with new cars, new tram lines, so- phisticated rail networks, and the large-scale introduction of electricity led to Berlin being called “the Chicago of Europe.” Yet the glitter of Weimar was built on very shaky ground. The Great Depression tore that ground from under it and snuffed out its bright lights. When they were turned on again, it was by a