Tag: berlin

Books on Berlin XVII

Parker, J. (2016). Tales of Berlin in American Literature up to the 21st Century. Brill.

“Of all European cities, Americans today are perhaps most curious about Berlin, whose position in the American imagination is an essential component of nineteenth-century, postwar and contemporary transatlantic imagology. Over various periods, Berlin has been a tenuous space for American claims to cultural heritage and to real geographic space in Europe, symbolizing the ultimate evil and the power of redemption. This volume offers a comprehensive examination of the city’s image in American literature from 1840 to the present. Tracing both a history of Berlin and of American culture through the ways the city has been narrated across three centuries by some 100 authors through 145 novels, short stories, plays and poems, Tales of Berlin presents a composite landscape not only of the German capital, but of shifting subtexts in American society which have contextualized its meaning for Americans in the past, and continue to do so today.”  — from Brill

Large, D. C. (2007). Berlin. Basic Books.

“In the political history of the past century, no city has played a more prominent-though often disastrous-role than Berlin. At the same time, Berlin has also been a dynamic center of artistic and intellectual innovation. If Paris was the “Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” Berlin was to become the signature city for the next hundred years. Once a symbol of modernity, in the Thirties it became associated with injustice and the abuse of power. After 1945, it became the iconic City of the Cold War. Since the fall of the Wall, Berlin has again come to represent humanity’s aspirations for a new beginning, tempered by caution deriving from the traumas of the recent past. David Clay Large’s definitive history of Berlin is framed by the two German unifications of 1871 and 1990. Between these two events several themes run like a thread through the city’s history: a persistent inferiority complex; a distrust among many ordinary Germans, and the national leadership of the “unloved city’s” electric atmosphere, fast tempo, and tradition of unruliness; its status as a magnet for immigrants, artists, intellectuals, and the young; the opening up of social, economic, and ethnic divisions as sharp as the one created by the Wall.”  — from Amazon

Beck, G. & Heibert, F. (1999). An underground life: memoirs of a gay Jew in Nazi Berlin. The University of Wisconsin Press.

“Gad Beck, a half-Jewish German, managed to evade the Nazis and live illegally, underground, in Berlin throughout the duration of World War II. While that in itself was notable, Beck didn’t simply exist in some nocturnal world of hiding. Coming of age as a gay man during the war, he also helped organize a Jewish youth group, free friends from the Gestapo, and maintain a series of romantic relationships. The result is An Underground Life: a Holocaust memoir that conveys the surreal horror of the times but also focuses more on living than dying, and captures a life that was fueled as much by a sense of romance, adventure, and humor, as it was by suffering.”  — from The University of Wisconsin Press

Ewing, K. P. (2008). Stolen honor: stigmatizing Muslim men in Berlin. Stanford University Press.

“The covered Muslim woman is a common spectacle in Western media–a victim of male brutality, the oppressed and suffering wife or daughter. And the resulting negative stereotypes of Muslim men, stereotypes reinforced by the post-9/11 climate in which he is seen as a potential terrorist, have become so prominent that they influence and shape public policy, citizenship legislation, and the course of elections across Europe and throughout the Western world. In this book, Katherine Pratt Ewing asks why and how these stereotypes–what she terms stigmatized masculinity–largely go unrecognized, and examines how Muslim men manage their masculine identities in the face of such discrimination. The author focuses her analysis and develops an ethnographic portrait of the Turkish Muslim immigrant community in Germany, a population increasingly framed in the media and public discourse as in crisis because of a perceived refusal of Muslim men to assimilate. Interrogating this sense of crisis, Ewing examines a series of controversies–including honor killings, headscarf debates, and Muslim stereotypes in cinema and the media–to reveal how the Muslim man is ultimately depicted as the abjected other in German society.” — from thriftbooks

Taberner, S. (Ed.). (2007). Contemporary German fiction: writing in the Berlin republic. Cambridge University Press.

“The profound political and social changes Germany has undergone since 1989 have been reflected in an extraordinarily rich range of contemporary writing. Contemporary German Fiction focuses on the debates that have shaped the politics and culture of the new Germany that has emerged from the second half of the 1990s onwards and offers the first comprehensive account of key developments in German literary fiction within their social and historical context. Each chapter begins with an overview of a central theme, such as East German writing, West German writing, writing on the Nazi past, writing by women and writing by ethnic minorities. The authors discussed include Günter Grass, Ingo Schulze, Judith Hermann, Christa Wolf, Christian Kracht and Zafer Senocak. These informative and accessible readings build up a clear picture of the central themes and stylistic concerns of the best writers working in Germany today.” — from Cambridge

Books in Berlin XVI | fiction

We have two Michael Hofmann translations today. Two early, one mid, and two late 20th-century books…

Döblin, A. (2018 [1929]). Berlin Alexanderplatz (M. Hofmann, Trans.). New York Review Books.

“Berlin Alexanderplatz, the great novel of Berlin and the doomed Weimar Republic, is one of the great books of the twentieth century, gruesome, farcical, and appalling, word drunk, pitchdark. In Michael Hofmann’s extraordinary new translation, Alfred Döblin’s masterpiece lives in English for the first time.

As Döblin writes in the opening pages:

The subject of this book is the life of the former cement worker and haulier Franz Biberkopf in Berlin. As our story begins, he has just been released from prison, where he did time for some stupid stuff; now he is back in Berlin, determined to go straight.

To begin with, he succeeds. But then, though doing all right for himself financially, he gets involved in a set-to with an unpredictable external agency that looks an awful lot like fate.

Three times the force attacks him and disrupts his scheme. The first time it comes at him with dishonesty and deception. Our man is able to get to his feet, he is still good to stand.

Then it strikes him a low blow. He has trouble getting up from that, he is almost counted out.

And finally it hits him with monstrous and extreme violence.

PRAISE
A raging cataract of a novel, one that threatens to engulf the reader in a tumult of sensation. It has long been considered the behemoth of German literary modernism, the counterpart to Ulysses. —Alex Ross, The New Yorker

Because of its use of collage, stream of consciousness, and colloquial speech, Berlin Alexanderplatz has frequently been compared to Joyce’s Ulysses and John Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer…Beneath the book’s innovative style, the reader can hear the gears of ancient narrative elements grinding: evocations of folk songs, myths and Old Testament stories, and themes of tragedy and fate. —Amanda DeMarco, The Wall Street Journal

In this new translation, the dissonant voices ring out boldly; we can tell when someone is being mimicked and wickedly sent up, enjoy the black Berlin humor…Döblin is never sentimental, or hysterical. He just gets us to listen to the drumbeat of violence throbbing in this city of the mind. Berlin Alexanderplatz is one of the great anti-war novels of our time. —Joachim Redner, Australian Book Review

The story of Franz Biberkopf is the Éducation sentimentale of the petty thief. The most extreme, dizzying, last, and most advanced embodiment of the old bourgeois bildungsroman. —Walter Benjamin

I found myself reading Berlin Alexanderplatz in a way that you could hardly call reading—more like devouring, gobbling, gulping down. And these expressions still don’t do justice to that way of reading, which dangerously often wasn’t reading at all, but more life, suffering, despair, and fear. —Rainer Werner Fassbinder

[A] major writer who grappled with the roots of darkness in our time… —Ernst Pawel, The New York Times

Without the futurist elements of Döblin’s work from Wang Lun to Berlin Alexanderplatz, my prose is inconceivable…. He’ll discomfort you, give you bad dreams. If you’re satisfied with yourself, beware of Döblin. —Günter Grass

I learned more about the essence of the epic from Döblin than from anyone else. His epic writing and even his theory about the epic strongly influenced my own dramatic art. —Bertolt Brecht” — from New York Review of Books

Walser, R. (2012 [1907-1917]). Berlin stories (J. Greven, Ed.; S. Bernofsky, Trans.). New York Review Books.

“In 1905 the young Swiss writer Robert Walser arrived in Berlin to join his older brother Karl, already an important stage-set designer, and immediately threw himself into the vibrant social and cultural life of the city. Berlin Stories collects his alternately celebratory, droll, and satirical observations on every aspect of the bustling German capital, from its theaters, cabarets, painters’ galleries, and literary salons, to the metropolitan street, markets, the Tiergarten, rapid-service restaurants, and the electric tram. Originally appearing in literary magazines as well as the feuilleton sections of newspapers, the early stories are characterized by a joyous urgency and the generosity of an unconventional guide. Later pieces take the form of more personal reflections on the writing process, memories, and character studies. All are full of counter-intuitive images and vignettes of startling clarity, showcasing a unique talent for whom no detail was trivial, at grips with a city diving headlong into modernity.

Read Susan Bernofsky’s letter about Robert Walser and Berlin Stories.

PRAISE

I think it was Herman Hesse who said that if you can stomach Robert Walser’s prose, you can’t help but fall in love with it, and I fell in love with it pretty quickly. He’s guileless but not stupid, an admiring observer of the inconsequential… He became a chronicler of the ordinary (interestingly, at around the same time Joyce, on the other side of Europe, was doing the same). And in this unbelievably delightful and timeless collection of short pieces, we can recover the delight of ordinary, uncondescending appreciation, places where the vacant-minded stroller can take ‘peculiar pleasure.’ —Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian

The magnificently humble. The enormously small. The meaningfully ridiculous. Robert Walser’s work often reads like a dazzling answer to the question, How immense can modesty be? If Emily Dickinson made cathedrals of em dashes and capital letters and the angle of winter light, Walser accomplishes the feat with, well, ladies’ feet and trousers, and little emotive words like joy, uncapitalized. —Rivka Galchen, Harper’s

Walser’s fictions are charged with compassion: awareness of the creatureliness of life, of the fellowship of sadness. He is a truly wonderful, heartbreaking writer. —Susan Sontag

A writer of considerable wit, talent and originality …. recognized by such impressive contemporaries as Kafka, Brod, Hesse and Musil …. [and] primarily known to German literary scholars and to English readers lucky enough to have discovered [his work] …. [Walser’s tales] are to be read slowly and savored …. [and] are filled with lovely and disturbing moments that will stay with the reader for some time to come. —Ronald De Feo, The New York Times” — from New York Review of Books

Regener, S. (2007 [2001]). Berlin blues [Herr Lehmann] (J. M. Brownjohn, Trans.). Vintage.

“It’s 1989 and, whenever he isn’t hanging out in the local bars, Herr Lehmann lives entirely free of responsibility in the bohemian Berlin district of Kreuzberg. Through years of judicious sidestepping and heroic indolence, this barman has successfully avoided the demands of parents, landlords, neighbours and women. But suddenly one unforeseen incident after another seems to threaten his idyllic and rather peaceable existence. He has an encounter with a decidedly unfriendly dog, his parents threaten to descend on Berlin from the provinces, and he meets a dangerously attractive woman who throws his emotional life into confusion.

Berlin Blues is a richly entertaining evocation of life in the city and a classic of modern-day decadence.” — from Goodreads

Fallada, H. (2010 [1947]). Alone in Berlin [Jeder stirbt für sich allein] (M. Hofmann, Trans.). Penguin.

“Inspired by a true story, Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin is a gripping wartime thriller following one ordinary man’s determination to defy the tyranny of Nazi rule.

Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different ways: the bullying Hitler loyalists the Persickes, the retired judge Fromm and the unassuming couple Otto and Anna Quangel. Then the Quangels receive the news that their beloved son has been killed fighting in France. Shocked out of their quiet existence, they begin a silent campaign of defiance, and a deadly game of cat and mouse develops between the Quangels and the ambitious Gestapo inspector Escherich. When petty criminals Kluge and Borkhausen also become involved, deception, betrayal and murder ensue, tightening the noose around the Quangels’ necks…” — from Penguin

Timm, U. (1998 [1996]). Midsummer night (P. Tegel, Trans.). New Directions.

“If this, Uwe Timm’s enchanting novel, were a cautionary tale, the tag line would go something like this: Should you plan to be in Berlin on Midsummer Night, the time of the summer solstice – Watch Out! The narrator of Timm’s story is a writer who simply can’t get started on his next book. So he accepts a commission to write an article about potatoes. He has some interest in the subject because of an uncle who could, remarkably, from taste alone, differentiate one species of potato from another. Since one of the authorities on the subject worked in East Berlin, our hero takes off to do some research. Rushing around the newly united city, he becomes involved in a series of madcap adventures, strange entanglements, and odd, sometimes threatening encounters. Uwe Timm spins a fascinating tale here, one filled with surprise, magic, comedy, and hope.” — from New Directions

Books around Berlin XV

As the number of books increases, the contextual relationship with Berlin unwinds. The ones from now on have an oblique relationship with the city.

Hugues, P. (2017). Hannah’s dress: Berlin 1904-2014 (C. J. Delogu, Trans.). Polity Press.

“Hannah’s Dress tells the dizzying story of Berlin’s modern history. Curious to learn more about the city she has lived in for over twenty years, journalist Pascale Hugues investigates the lives of the men, women and children who have occupied her ordinary street during the course of the last century. We see the street being built in 1904 and the arrival of the first families of businessmen, lawyers and bankers. We feel the humiliation of defeat in 1918, the effects of economic crisis, and the rise of Hitler’s Nazi party. We tremble alongside the Jewish families, whose experience is so movingly captured in the story of two friends, Hannah and Susanne. When only Hannah is able to escape the horrors of deportation, the dress made for her by Susanne becomes a powerful reminder of all that was lost.

In 1945 the street is all but destroyed; the handful of residents left want to forget the past altogether and start afresh. When the Berlin Wall goes up, the street becomes part of West Berlin and assumes a rather suburban identity, a home for all kinds of petite bourgeoisie, insulated from the radical spirit of 1968. However, this quickly changes in the 1970s with the arrival of its most famous resident, superstar David Bowie. Today, the street is as tranquil and prosperous as in the early days, belying a century of eventful, tumultuous history.

This engrossing account of a single street, awarded the prestigious 2014 European Book Prize, sheds new light on the complex history not only of Berlin but of an entire continent across the twentieth century.” – from Wiley

Frank, S. (2017). Wall memorials and heritage: the heritage industry of Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie (J. Spengler, Trans.). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

“Analysing the transformation of Berlin’s former Allied border control point, “Checkpoint Charlie,” into a global heritage industry, this volume provides an introduction to, and a theoretically informed structuring of, the interdisciplinary international heritage debate. This crucial case study demonstrates that an unregulated global heritage industry has developed in Berlin which capitalizes on the internationally very attractive – but locally still very painful – heritage of the Berlin Wall. Frank explores the conflicts that occur when private, commercial interests in interpreting and selling history to an international audience clash with traditional, institutionalized public forms of local and national heritage-making and commemorative practices, and with the victims’ perspectives.

Wall Memorials and Heritage illustrates existing approaches to heritage research and develops them in dialogue with Berlin’s traditions of conveying history, and the specific configuration of the heritage industry at “Checkpoint Charlie”. Productively integrating theory with empirical evidence, this innovative book enriches the international literature on heritage and its economic and political contexts.” – from Routledge

Gökberk, U. (2020). Excavating memory: Bilge Karasu’s Istanbul and Walter Benjamin’s Berlin. Academic Studies Press.

“This study moves the acclaimed Turkish fiction writer Bilge Karasu (1930 – 1995) into a new critical arena by examining his poetics of memory, as laid out in his narratives on Istanbul’s Beyoğlu, once a cosmopolitan neighborhood called Pera. Karasu established his fame in literary criticism as an experimental modernist, but while themes such as sexuality, gender, and oppression have received critical attention, an essential tenet of Karasu’s oeuvre, the evocation of ethno-cultural identity, has remained unexplored: Excavating Memory brings to light this dimension. Through his non-referential and ambiguous renderings of memory, Karasu gives in his Beyoğlu narratives unique expression to ethno-cultural difference in Turkish literature, and lets through his own repressed minority identity. By using Walter Benjamin’s autobiographical work as a heuristic premise for illuminating Karasu, Gökberk establishes an innovative intercultural framework, which brings into dialogue two representative writers of the twentieth-century over temporal and spatial distances. ” – from Academic Studies Press

Antill, P. D. (2005). Berlin 1945: End of the Thousand Year Reich. Osprey.

“Hitler’s Third Reich was on the brink of total ruin in mid-April 1945, and the Red Army was poised less than 60 miles to the east and ready to seize the German capital. Peter Antill describes the events in this engaging history, examining the Soviets’ march towards Berlin and the Germans’ final resistance. This book, supplemented with a host of maps and illustrations, provides a vivid portrayal of the death throes of the Third Reich and the end of the war in Europe, exploring the strategy of both sides and the tactics of impromptu urban warfare.” – from Osprey

Zitzlsperger, U. (2021). Historical dictionary of Berlin. Rowman & Littlefield.

“After World War II Berlin became one of the playgrounds of the Cold War; the Berlin Wall made the division between East and West, between ‘capitalism’ and ‘communism’ in 1961 highly visible, though it did remove Berlin from front-line politics. East and West Berlin had turned into shop-windows of ideologies – West Berlin representing the lure of a market economy, East Berlin the promise of socialism. It is, then, fitting that the fall of the Wall in 1989 awarded Berlin such a prominent role. It was here that the development after Reunification of East and West became a closely observed event – and, well beyond Germany, Berlin appeared to represent fundamental developments throughout Europe at the time. Today, Berlin is the capital of reunified Germany and therefore one of the key political players in the European Union (EU) and it’s now a desirable destination for young entrepreneurs.

The Historical Dictionary of Berlin contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 300 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, places, institutions, and events. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Berlin.” – from Hugendubel