What does the Berlin mean to me? Very much, my family is inextricably linked to it. My mother was born there, still in the Weimar period, her father made a career in the Wehrmacht (he was not a member of the NSDAP), family of mine still lives there and one of my daughters was born there.
I still have intense memories of the years before the fall of the Wall and in the years that followed I have seen the city halves merge again, that also made a deep impression. When I am in the city, and that is seldom these days, I always think a lot about the Nazi time and the separation after that. You are still confronted with that past in so many places in and around the city.
And of course the culture, nature and politics in Berlin also affect me, the city is certainly not boring.
Here you can read the story Todesstreifen (Deadzone) that I wrote for the Financieel Dagblad in 2014.
Frank Gersdorf is an editor at the Dutch newspaper Financieel Dagblad and worked at the DG External Policy of the European Parliament. From 1996 to 2002 Gersdorf was a correspondent in Germany.