When I began working in Berlin, my attention was on buildings: their location, their condition, and whether they could serve people well over many years. That work matters, and I am still proud of it. But a city is not only a collection of assets. It is a place where people either meet, or remain strangers. The longer I spent in Berlin, the more that second question stayed with me.

The historic Postfuhramt in Berlin-Mitte made this concrete. As Tagesspiegel reported in 2006, the plan was to make it an urban place for living, culture, retail and events. I brought C/O Berlin into the building, and the gallery was based there. I was glad that art had a real home in that landmark, and I supported the exhibitions held in those rooms. A landmark lasts longer, and means more, when it is open to the life of the city and not only occupied.

I did not found C/O Berlin. It was already a photography institution, established in 2000 by Stephan Erfurt, Marc Naroska and Ingo Pott. What I could do, as the building's owner, was give it a home in a historic place and stand behind the work that took place there.

I did that because I believe art can be a bridge, including between Israeli and Arab artists. I will not claim that a gallery can resolve a conflict, and I will not dress this up as more than it was. I did believe then, as I believe now, that something important happens when people stand in the same room and look at the same work. Art does not require agreement. It requires presence. It asks you to stay long enough to see another person.

When I sold the building, around 2010, C/O Berlin had to leave. After negotiations, it was given time into 2011. I have always been more interested in what holds over time than in what makes a brief noise. You cannot judge a cultural home by a single evening. You judge it, slowly, by whether people who might otherwise never have met are willing to share a space.

It is easy, in real estate, to talk only about value, yield and timing. Those things are real, and they have to be taken seriously. But they are not the whole story of a building. The Postfuhramt taught me that a historic place can carry culture as well as walls, and that a room given over to art can carry a hope: that people who might otherwise have stayed apart, including Israelis and Arabs, might come a little closer.

Building in a city and building a bridge between people are not as far apart as they first appear. Both take patience. Both ask you to think beyond your own circle. Both fail if all you care about is the transaction in front of you.

I do not want to overstate this. I am a real estate investor, not a diplomat, and I have no interest in presenting myself as one. What I can say honestly is this: the years in Berlin taught me that the work I care about most is not only about property. It is about leaving behind places, and encounters, that make a city a little more open than it was.

If I have a hope for anything I have built, it is that it helped people meet who might otherwise have stayed apart.

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