Mesch, C. (2018). Modern art at the Berlin Wall: demarcating culture in the Cold War Germanys. I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd.
“At the height of the Cold War, art produced in divided Germany contested the cultural demarcation of East and West. Here Claudia Mesch shows how a wide group of artists struggled to take visual art beyond the crude separations of the ‘Iron Curtain’, and to transcend the first global cultural divide of the twentieth century. Artists in Berlin produced artworks-including painting, performance and film-that engaged critically with imposed national and global identities, and with issues of memory and trauma. ‘Around the Berlin Wall’ presents a new picture of the Cold War border between East and West as a dynamic and international cultural space, and is essential for all those interested in art history, modernism, the Cold War and the cultural history of the twentieth century.” – from Bloomsbury
Fuechtner, V. (2011). Berlin Psychoanalytic: psychoanalysis and culture in Weimar Republic Germany and beyond. University of California Press.
“One hundred years after the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute was established, this book recovers the cultural and intellectual history connected to this vibrant organization and places it alongside the London Bloomsbury group, the Paris Surrealist circle, and the Viennese fin-de-siècle as a crucial chapter in the history of modernism. Taking us from World War I Berlin to the Third Reich and beyond to 1940s Palestine and 1950s New York—and to the influential work of the Frankfurt School—Veronika Fuechtner traces the network of artists and psychoanalysts that began in Germany and continued in exile. Connecting movements, forms, and themes such as Dada, multi-perspectivity, and the urban experience with the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, she illuminates themes distinctive to the Berlin psychoanalytic context such as war trauma, masculinity and femininity, race and anti-Semitism, and the cultural avant-garde. In particular, she explores the lives and works of Alfred Döblin, Max Eitingon, Georg Groddeck, Karen Horney, Richard Huelsenbeck, Count Hermann von Keyserling, Ernst Simmel, and Arnold Zweig.” – from University of California Press
Zierenberg, M. (2015). Berlin’s black market,1939-1950. Palgrave Macmillan.
““This fascinating book responds to a strange paradox in the history of Germany after 1945. … Zierenberg’s book gives readers a rich cultural and social as well as economic history of Berlin’s black markets. … the publishers clearly made the right decision when they decided to have Zierenberg’s book translated into English … thus making it available to a wider audience of English-speaking readers. I think they will find this book as fascinating and thought provoking as I did.” (David F. Crew, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 89 (4), December, 2017)
“Central Europeanists with a focus on urban history, the history of everyday life, and the culture of consumption in Berlin during the first half of the twentieth century will read Malte Zierenberg’s recent monograph with keen interest and appreciation. … Berlin’s Black Market offers a fresh perspective on Berliners’ experiences through several transitional periods with an emphasis on the micro-level economy and the culture of consumption. The book’s sophisticated methodological approach is to be applauded.” (Matthew Berg, H-German, H-Net Reviews, h-net.org, November, 2016)
“This is a work of scholarly elegance and sprawling erudition. It offers a striking vision of a war-torn Berlin remarkably different from traditional histories, leading us through the corridors of Nazi power and then down winding neighborhoods and into cafes, restaurants, homes, and even brothels to the black markets that flourished under and after Nazi rule. Along the way, Malte Zierenberg, who is a remarkably surefooted guide through a most chaotic period, provides insightful explanations of the economic forces motivating illicit trade, draws attention to the new social relations that sprang up around it, and provides astute interpretations of the symbolic meanings Germans attached to their experiences of dictatorship, war, occupation, and national division.” (Jonathan Zatlin, Professor at Boston University, USA)
“This is a wonderful book. It presents an ethnography of Berlin’s black market from 1939 to 1950. It shows how a massive illicit trade in goods and services developed according to its own rules and rituals, which adjusted with agility and ingenuity to the changing political and economic circumstances of dictatorship, war, occupation, and the city’s division. In attending to the connotations that the black market acquired in the eyes of opponents as well as participants, the book offers as well a fascinating cultural analysis of daily life in the big city during these turbulent times.” (Roger Chickering, Professor Emeritus of History, Georgetown University, USA)” – from Springer Link
Richie, A. (1999). Faust’s metropolis: a history of Berlin. Carroll & Graf.
“In ”Faust’s Metropolis” Alexandra Richie surmounts some of these obstacles and stumbles over others. She has written a very long, pear-shaped book. About 165 pages of text and notes deal with the first 600 years of Berlin. Slightly more than 200 pages cover the next 70 years or so, and nearly 700 pages, almost two-thirds of the book, the years from the Weimar Republic to reunification. This allotment may reflect the interests of the author, who knows a great deal about Berlin’s recent past. But it is more difficult to write a good concise account of hundreds of years than an expansive study of a much briefer period, and with a few exceptions — for example, a fine discussion of the deplorable working-class housing built in Berlin from the 1850’s on — the first third of her book is not very good history.
For one thing, it is out of balance. The horrors of the Thirty Years’ War are treated at length and somewhat repetitively, but an event of great significance in Berlin’s history, the acquisition by the Hohenzollern dynasty of the Duchy of Prussia at the beginning of the war, goes unmentioned. Several paragraphs are devoted to a confusing discussion of the Prussian or German Army — it is not made clear which — under Emperor William II, but nothing is said about the Berlin garrison at the time, its strength, its impact on the population and the economy, its political functions, its links with the police. The interpretations of some of the Hohenzollern rulers border on caricature. Generalizations and stereotypes abound.” – from NY Times
Rottman, G. L., & Taylor, C. (2008). The Berlin Wall and the Intra-German Border, 1961-89. Osprey.
“The border between East and West Germany was closed on 26 May 1953. On 13 August 1961 crude fences and walls were erected around West Berlin: the Berlin Wall had been created. The Wall encircled West Berlin for a distance of 155km, and its barriers and surveillance systems evolved over the years into an advanced obstacle network. The Intra-German Border ran from the Baltic Sea to the Czechoslovak border for 1,381km, and was where NATO forces faced the Warsaw Pact for the 45 years of the Cold War. This book examines the international situation that led to the establishment of the Berlin Wall and the IGB, and discusses how these barrier systems were operated, and finally fell.
Gordon L Rottman entered the US Army in 1967, volunteered for Special Forces and completed training as a weapons specialist. He was assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group until reassigned to the 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam in 1969-70. Gordon worked as a civilian contract Special Operations Forces Intelligence Specialist at the Army’s Joint Readiness Center, Ft Polk, until 2002. A highly respected and established author, who is a recognised expert on this subject, he now devotes himself to full-time writing and research. Chris Taylor was born in Newcastle, UK, but now lives in London. After attending art college in his home town, he graduated in 1995 from Bournemouth University with a degree in computer graphics. Since then he has worked in the graphics industry and is currently a freelance illustrator for various publishing companies. He has a keen interest in filmmaking and is currently co-producing a movie.” – from Osprey Publishing