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MacLean, R. (2015). Berlin: portrait of a city through the centuries<\/em>. Picador, St. Martin\u2019s Press.<\/p>\n “Berlin is a city of fragments and ghosts, a laboratory of ideas, the fount of both the brightest and darkest designs of history’s most bloody century. The once arrogant capital of Europe was devastated by Allied bombs, divided by the Wall, then reunited and reborn as one of the creative centers of the world. Today it resonates with the echo of lives lived. No other city has repeatedly been so powerful and fallen so low; few other cities have been so shaped and defined by individual imaginations.<\/p>\n Berlin tells the volatile history of Europe’s capital over five centuries through a series of intimate portraits of two dozen key residents: the medieval balladeer whose suffering explains the Nazis’ rise to power; the genius Jewish chemist who invented poison gas for First World War battlefields and then the death camps; the iconic mythmakers like Christopher Isherwood, Leni Riefenstahl, and David Bowie, whose heated visions are now as real as the city’s bricks and mortar. Alongside are portrayed some of the countless ordinary Berliners whose lives can only be imagined: the ambitious prostitute who refashioned herself as a baroness, the fearful Communist Party functionary who helped to build the Wall, and the American spy from the Midwest whose patriotism may have turned the course of the Cold War.<\/p>\n Berlin is a history book like no other, with an originality that reflects the nature of the city itself. In its architecture, through its literature, in its movies and songs, Berliners have conjured their hard capital into a place of fantastic human fantasy. No other city has so often surrendered itself to its own seductive myths. Berlin captures, portrays, and propagates the remarkable story of those myths and their makers.” \u00a0\u2013 from macmillan<\/a><\/p>\n Stahl, G. (Ed.). (2014). Poor, but sexy: reflections on Berlin scenes<\/em>. Peter Lang.<\/p>\n “Poor, But Sexy: Reflections on Berlin Scenes offers readers a varied cross-section of the city\u2019s scenes, providing a prismatic view of one of Europe\u2019s mythical cultural capitals. The authors gathered here address a range of topics, including Turkish gay clubs, queer filmmaking, record labels, the legendary Russendisko, electronic music festivals, the city\u2019s famous techno scene, the clandestine dimensions of its nighttime club culture, and the fraught emergence of the Mediaspree. With the shifting context of post-Wende Berlin its backdrop, this collection puts into relief an electic array of case studies, presenting to readers interested in exploring urban issues a number of critical and analytical perspectives on the city\u2019s cultural life as it moves into the twenty-first century. Poor, But Sexy is an important contribution to the critical analysis of the cultural spaces in the city, and allows readers access to one of the few scholarly overviews of Berlin\u2019s varied cultural life available in English.” \u00a0\u2013 from Peter Lang<\/a><\/p>\n Loberg, M. J. (2020). The struggle for the streets of Berlin: politics, consumption, and urban space, 1914-1945<\/em>. Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n “Who owns the street? Interwar Berliners faced this question with great hope yet devastating consequences. In Germany, the First World War and 1918 Revolution transformed the city streets into the most important media for politics and commerce. There, partisans and entrepreneurs fought for the attention of crowds with posters, illuminated advertisements, parades, traffic jams, and violence. The Nazi Party relied on how people already experienced the city to stage aggressive political theater, including the April Boycott and Kristallnacht. Observers in Germany and abroad looked to Berlin’s streets to predict the future. They saw dazzling window displays that radiated optimism. They also witnessed crime waves, antisemitic rioting, and failed policing that pointed toward societal collapse. Recognizing the power of urban space, officials pursued increasingly radical policies to ‘revitalize’ the city, culminating in Albert Speer’s plan to eradicate the heart of Berlin and build Germania.” \u2013 from Cambridge Core<\/a><\/p>\n White-Spunner, B. (2021). Berlin: the story of a city<\/em>. Simon & Schuster.<\/p>\n “The intoxicating history of an extraordinary city and her people\u2014from the medieval kings surrounding Berlin’s founding to the world wars, tumult, and reunification of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n There has always been a particular fervor about Berlin, a combination of excitement, anticipation, nervousness, and a feeling of the unexpected. Throughout history, it has been a city of tensions: geographical, political, religious, and artistic.<\/p>\n In the nineteenth-century, political tension became acute between a city that was increasingly democratic, home to Marx and Hegel, and one of the most autocratic regimes in Europe. Artistic tension, between free thinking and liberal movements started to find themselves in direct contention with the formal official culture. Underlying all of this was the ethnic tension\u2014between multi-racial Berliners and the Prussians. Berlin may have been the capital of Prussia but it was never a Prussian city.<\/p>\n Then there is war. Few European cities have suffered from war as Berlin has over the centuries. It was sacked by the Hapsburg armies in the Thirty Years War; by the Austrians and the Russians in the eighteenth century; by the French, with great violence, in the early nineteenth century; by the Russians again in 1945 and subsequently occupied, more benignly, by the Allied Powers from 1945 until 1994.<\/p>\n Nor can many cities boast such a diverse and controversial number of international figures: Frederick the Great and Bismarck; Hegel and Marx; Mahler, Dietrich, and Bowie. Authors Christopher Isherwood, Bertolt Brecht, and Thomas Mann gave Berlin a cultural history that is as varied as it was groundbreaking.<\/p>\n The story vividly told in Berlin also attempts to answer to one of the greatest enigmas of the twentieth century: How could a people as civilized, ordered, and religious as the Germans support first a Kaiser and then the Nazis in inflicting such misery on Europe? Berlin was never as supportive of the Kaiser in 1914 as the rest of Germany; it was the revolution in Berlin in 1918 that lead to the Kaiser’s abdication. Nor was Berlin initially supportive of Hitler, being home to much of the opposition to the Nazis; although paradoxically Berlin suffered more than any other German city from Hitler\u2019s travesties. In revealing the often-untold history of Berlin, Barney White-Spunner addresses this quixotic question that lies at the heart of Germany\u2019s uniquely fascinating capital city.” \u2013 from Simon & Schuster<\/a><\/p>\n Schl\u00f6r, J. (2016 [1991]). Nights in the big city: Paris, Berlin, London<\/em>, 1840-1930 (P. Imhof & D. Roberts, Trans.; 2nd ed.). Reaktion Books.<\/p>\n “This elegantly written book describes the changes in the perception and experience of the night in three great European cities: Paris, Berlin and London. The lighting up of the European city by gas and electricity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought about a new relationship with the night, in respect of both work and pleasure.<\/p>\n Nights in the Big City explores this new awareness of the city in all its ramifications. Joachim Schl\u00f6r has spent his days sifting through countless police and church archives, and first-hand accounts, and his nights exploring the highways and byways of these three great capitals. Illustrated with haunting and evocative photographs by, among others, Brandt and Kert\u00e9sz, and filled with contemporary literary references, Nights in the Big City has already been acclaimed in the German press as a milestone in the cultural history of the city.” \u2013 from The University of Chicago Press<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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