Brandenburg is booming. Not even Bavaria can keep up. In no other federal state is the population growing as rapidly as in this state with the hole in the middle. This hole considers itself to be the center of, if not the world, at least quite a lot. Seen from Berlin, this Brandenburg, which is the capital – yes, what now: embraces or oppresses?, this province is “jwd”. In the dialect of the capital city residents: way out there. Negligible.
The people of Brandenburg now casually take the derogatory “jwd” as a compliment and interpret it in an advertising offensive to mean: Everyone wants to go there. The balance of immigration and emigration proves them right. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of people want to go there. And if sea level rise happens as predicted, southern Brandenburg will sooner or later be located directly on the Baltic Sea, while Berlin will suffer the fate of Atlantis. It remains to be seen whether the capital city hipsters will all learn to dive so that they can continue to do capital city hipster things undeterred.
In any case, Brandenburg counters the capital’s posturing with its down-to-earth attitude – and represents it with increasing self-confidence (in this respect, however, Brandenburg has not yet surpassed Bavaria). As well as a good dose of self-irony. “Beautiful places don’t need beautiful names,” is the motto of the state’s current image campaign. It highlights the advantages of nine villages whose names do not serve as a locational advantage: Kackrow, Knoblauch, Kotzen, Motzen, Pitschen-Pickel, Protzen, Ranzig, Sargleben and Sauen.
But the very lively techno festival Evolution takes place in the immediate vicinity of Sargleben. Kotzen and Motzen are natural idylls that make you lean neither towards one nor the other. And in many places the Spree smells more rancid than Ranzig.
The campaign is not primarily aimed at tourism. Pitschen-Pickel will probably not be mentioned in the same breath as mercilessly overrun cities like Barcelona and Venice. But it’s the start of something. Thirty years ago, hardly anyone could imagine going on vacation to Dubai. By the way, the name Dubai is a diminutive of the word “Daba”, which means a young grasshopper.
Stefan Fischer loved swimming in Lake Bibisee as a child.
(Photo: Bernd Schifferdecker (illustration))