On the heels of the twentieth edition of Gallery Weekend Berlin, Artforum revisits “Stage Frights: Diedrich Diederichsen on the New Capital,” published in the magazine’s April 1998 issue. Pitched as a letter from Berlin, Diederichsen’s essay describes a city in the midst of vertiginous transformation, a metropolis remaking its image for a new age of global capitalism. Though published nearly three decades ago, Diederichsen’s piece describes a Berlin that remains startlingly familiar—a city caught between rapid gentrification and bohemian nostalgia, critical art and market spectacle, leftist activism and nationalist creep.  “The number of unemployed and the visibility of those tallying them are rising in proportion to ever more lavish investment in gastronomy, gentrification, and gargantuanism,” Diederichsen writes. “At a time when school and university budgets have been slashed in half, exhibitions and congresses devote their energy to finding ways to represent Germany and its new capital. The big question of what exactly is supposed to be represented remains, and the only sure answer is, build stage sets.”   —The editors