Gordon, M. (Ed.). (2006 [2000]). Voluptuous panic: the erotic world of Weimar Berlin (Expanded Edition). Feral House.
“When Voluptuous Panic: The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin first appeared in the fall of 2000, it inspired wide acclaim and multiple printings.
This sourcebook of hundreds of rare visual delights from the pre-Nazi, Cabaret-period “Babylon on the Spree” has the distinction of being praised both by scholars and avatars of contemporary culture, inspiring performers, filmmakers, historians straight and gay, designers, and musicians like the Dresden Dolls and Marilyn Manson.
Voluptuous Panic’s expanded edition includes the new illustrated chapter “Sex Magic and the Occult,” documenting German pagan cults and their bizarre erotic rituals, including instructions for entering into the “Sexual Fourth Dimension.” The deluxe hardcover edition also includes sensational accounts of hypno-erotic cabaret acts, Berlin fetish prostitution (“The Boot Girl Visit”), gay life (“A Wild-Boy Initiation!”), descriptions and illustrations of Aleister Crowley’s Berlin OTO secret society, and sex crime (“The Curious Career and Untimely Death of Fritz Ulbrich”).” – from Feral House
Hockenos, P. (2017). Berlin calling: a story of anarchy, music, the wall, and the birth of the new Berlin. The New Press.
“Berlin Calling is a never-before-told account of the Berlin Wall’s momentous crash, seen through the eyes of the divided city’s street artists and punk rockers, impresarios and underground agitators. Berlin-based writer Paul Hockenos offers us an original chronicle of 1989’s “peaceful revolution,” which upended communism in East Germany, and the wild, permissive years of artistic ferment and pirate utopias that followed when protest and idealism, techno clubs and sprawling squats were the order of the day.
This is a story stocked with larger-than-life characters from Berlin’s highly political subcultures—including David Bowie and Iggy Pop, the internationally known French Wall artist Thierry Noir, cult figure Blixa Bargeld of the industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, and a clandestine cell of East Berlin anarchists. Hockenos argues that the do-it-yourself energy and raw urban vibe of the early 1990s shaped the new Berlin and still pulses through the city today.” – from The New Press
Schneider, P. (2014). Berlin now: the city after the Wall (S. Schlondorff, Trans.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
“A smartly guided romp, entertaining and enlightening, through Europe’s most charismatic and enigmatic city.
It isn’t Europe’s most beautiful city or its oldest. Its architecture is not more impressive than that of Rome or Paris; its museums do not hold more treasures than those in Barcelona or London. And yet, “when natives of New York, Tel Aviv, or Rome ask me where I’m from and I allude to Berlin,” writes Peter Schneider, “their eyes instantly light up.”
Berlin Now is a longtime Berliner’s bright, bold, and digressive exploration of the heterogeneous allure of this vibrant city. Delving beneath the obvious answers—Berlin’s club scene, bolstered by the lack of a mandatory closing time; the artistic communities that thrive due to the relatively low cost of living—Schneider takes us on an insider’s tour of this rapidly metamorphosing metropolis, where high-class soirees are held at construction sites and enterprising individuals often accomplish more, and without public funding (assembling, for example, a makeshift club on the banks of the Spree River), than Berlin’s officials do.
Schneider’s perceptive, witty investigations of everything from the insidious legacy of suspicion instilled by the East German secret police to the clashing attitudes toward work, food, and love held by former East and West Berliners have been sharply translated by Sophie Schlondorff. The result is a book so lively that readers will want to jump on a plane—just as soon as they’ve finished their adventures on the page.” – from macmillan
Nilsen, M. (2008). Railways and the Western European capitals: studies of implantation in London, Paris, Berlin, and Brussels. Palgrave Macmillan.
“This study examines the intense and multifaceted impact of the rail- ways on cities, but it does not attempt to offer a comprehensive treatment of railways in cities: half a dozen books might provide a start for such an agenda. Instead, this work presents various aspects of implantation, high- lighting the complexity of the process and the diversity of its implications. Rather than striving to be a classical edifice, this book is a postmodern faceted construct. It is conceived not as a Grand Central, but as a Union, structure, bringing different lines together.” – from the “Introduction” section of the book
Nash, B. (2015). A Walk Along The Ku’damm: Playground and Battlefield of Weimar Berlin. Self-published?
“The Kurfürstendamm is numbered up one side from Breitscheidplatz to Halensee and back down again, so this walk is about three kilometres round-trip and should take approximately two hours. It is recommended that you do this on a Sunday or Public Holiday if possible, as at all other times the street is so busy that you may not get the chance to pause and take in the detail.In addition to the landmarks and stories along the route, the street is also peppered with Stolpersteine, small brass blocks laid in the cobbles to remember the names of the victims of Nazi rule, outside the homes and workplaces they were taken from. These stones are not always easy to spot, and there are sadly too many of them to tell every individual story, but it’s worthwhile to take the time to pause and reflect.This is, of course, not a definitive history – records get lost, streets are renamed and people forget – but a personal collection of stories that detail the history of a street through the Weimar era and beyond.” – from “How to use this Guide” section of the ebook