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F\u00f6llmer, M. (2015). Individuality and modernity in Berlin self and society from Weimar to the wall<\/em>. Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n “Moritz F\u00f6llmer traces the history of individuality in Berlin from the late 1920s to the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. The demand to be recognised as an individual was central to metropolitan society, as were the spectres of risk, isolation and loss of agency. This was true under all five regimes of the period, through economic depression, war, occupation and reconstruction. The quest for individuality could put democracy under pressure, as in the Weimar years, and could be satisfied by a dictatorship, as was the case in the Third Reich. It was only in the course of the 1950s, when liberal democracy was able to offer superior opportunities for consumerism, that individuality finally claimed the mantle. Individuality and Modernity in Berlin proposes a fresh perspective on twentieth-century Berlin that will engage readers with an interest in the German metropolis as well as European urban history more broadly.” \u2013 from Cambridge Core<\/a><\/p>\n Stratigakos, D. (2008). A women\u2019s Berlin: building the modern city<\/em>. University of Minnesota Press.<\/p>\n “Around the beginning of the twentieth century, women began to claim Berlin as their own, expressing a vision of the German capital that embraced their feminine modernity, both culturally and architecturally. Women located their lives and made their presence felt in the streets and institutions of this dynamic metropolis. From residences to restaurants, schools to exhibition halls, a visible network of women\u2019s spaces arose to accommodate changing patterns of life and work.<\/p>\n A Women\u2019s Berlin retraces this largely forgotten city, which came into being in the years between German unification in 1871 and the demise of the monarchy in 1918 and laid the foundation for a novel experience of urban modernity. Although the phenomenon of women taking control of urban space was widespread in this period, Despina Stratigakos shows how Berlin\u2019s concentration of women\u2019s building projects produced a more fully realized vision of an alternative metropolis. Female clients called on female design professionals to help them define and articulate their architectural needs. Many of the projects analyzed in A Women\u2019s Berlin represent a collaborative effort uniting female patrons, architects, and designers to explore the nature of female aesthetics and spaces.<\/p>\n At the same time that women were transforming the built environment, they were remaking Berlin in words and images. Female journalists, artists, political activists, and social reformers portrayed women as influential actors on the urban scene and encouraged female audiences to view their relationship to the city in a radically different light. Stratigakos reveals how women\u2019s remapping of Berlin connected the imaginary to the physical, merged dreams and asphalt, and inextricably linked the creation of the modern woman with that of the modern city.” \u2013 from University of Minnesota Press<\/a><\/p>\n Hake, S. (2008). Topographies of class: modern architecture and mass society in Weimar Berlin<\/em>. University of Michigan Press.<\/p>\n “In Topographies of Class, Sabine Hake explores why Weimar Berlin has had such a powerful hold on the urban imagination. Approaching Weimar architectural culture from the perspective of mass discourse and class analysis, Hake examines the way in which architectural projects; debates; and representations in literature, photography, and film played a key role in establishing the terms under which contemporaries made sense of the rise of white-collar society.<\/p>\n Focusing on the so-called stabilization period, Topographies of Class maps out complex relationships between modern architecture and mass society, from Martin Wagner’s planning initiatives and Erich Mendelsohn’s functionalist buildings, to the most famous Berlin texts of the period, Alfred D\u00f6blin’s city novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) and Walter Ruttmann’s city film Berlin, Symphony of the Big City (1927). Hake draws on critical, philosophical, literary, photographic, and filmic texts to reconstruct the urban imagination at a key point in the history of German modernity, making this the first study\u2014in English or German\u2014to take an interdisciplinary approach to the rich architectural culture of Weimar Berlin.” \u2013 from University of Michigan Press<\/a><\/p>\n Gay, P., & Gay, P. (1999). My German question: growing up in Nazi Berlin<\/em>. Yale University Press.<\/p>\n “In this poignant book, a renowned historian tells of his youth as an assimilated, anti-religious Jew in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1939\u2014\u201cthe story,\u201d says Peter Gay, \u201cof a poisoning and how I dealt with it.\u201d With his customary eloquence and analytic acumen, Gay describes his family, the life they led, and the reasons they did not emigrate sooner, and he explores his own ambivalent feelings\u2014then and now\u2014toward Germany and the Germans.<\/p>\n Gay relates that the early years of the Nazi regime were relatively benign for his family: as a schoolboy at the Goethe Gymnasium he experienced no ridicule or attacks, his father\u2019s business prospered, and most of the family\u2019s non-Jewish friends remained supportive. He devised survival strategies\u2014stamp collecting, watching soccer, and the like\u2014that served as screens to block out the increasingly oppressive world around him. Even before the events of 1938\u201339, culminating in Kristallnacht, the family was convinced that they must leave the country. Gay describes the bravery and ingenuity of his father in working out this difficult emigration process, the courage of the non-Jewish friends who helped his family during their last bitter months in Germany, and the family\u2019s mounting panic as they witnessed the indifference of other countries to their plight and that of others like themselves. Gay\u2019s account\u2014marked by candor, modesty, and insight\u2014adds an important and curiously neglected perspective to the history of German Jewry.” \u2013 from Yale University Press<\/a><\/p>\n Manghani, S. (2008). Image critique & the fall of the Berlin Wall<\/em>. Intellect.<\/p>\n “Although we are now accustomed to watching history unfold live on the air, the fall of the Berlin Wall was one of the first instances when history was produced on television. Inspired by the Wall and its powerful resonances, Sunil Manghani\u2019s breakthrough study presents the new critical concept of \u201cimage critique,\u201d a method of critiquing images while simultaneously using them as a means to engage with contemporary culture. Manghani examines current debates surrounding visual culture, ranging from such topics as Francis Fukuyama\u2019s end of history thesis to metapictures and East German film. The resulting volume is an exhilarating interweaving of history, politics, and visual culture.<\/p>\n \u201cSunil Manghani\u2019s Image Critique & the Fall of the Berlin Wall is the best sort of scholarly book\u2014an intellectually grounded and theoretically adventurous critical performance. Through his concept of image critique, Manghani makes a virtue out of the many attributes of images that bedevil visual cultural studies, rightly insisting that rather than domesticating images for the tyranny of the word, scholars must do visual studies from the ground of images, in the process reconceptualizing theory and criticism. Manghani adeptly anchors his insights in close engagements with images, most notably images from the event of the fall of the Berlin Wall. If heeded, Manghani\u2019s book will change the trajectory of visual cultural studies by making critique a performance with force in the world.” \u2013 from The University of Chicago Press<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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