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Whybrow, N. (2005). Street scenes: Brecht, Benjamin, and Berlin<\/em>. Intellect Books.<\/p>\n “Always the focal point in modern times for momentous political, social and cultural upheaval, Berlin has continued, since the fall of the Wall in 1989, to be a city in transition. As the new capital of a reunified Germany it has embarked on a journey of rapid reconfiguration, involving issues of memory, nationhood and ownership. Bertolt Brecht, meanwhile, stands as one of the principal thinkers about art and politics in the 20th century. The ‘Street Scene’ model, which was the foundation for his theory of an epic theatre, relied precisely on establishing a connection between art’s functioning and everyday life. His preoccupation with the ceaselessness of change, an impulse implying rupture and movement as the key characteristics informing the development of a democratic cultural identity, correlates resonantly with the notion of an ever-evolving city. Premised on an understanding of performance as the articulation of movement in space, Street Scenes interrogates what kind of ‘life’ is permitted to ‘flow’ in the ‘new Berlin’. Central to this method is the flaneur figure, a walker of streets who provides detached observations on the revealing ‘detritus of modern urban existence’. Walter Benjamin, himself a native of Berlin as well as friend and seminal critic of Brecht, exercised the practice in exemplary form in his portrait of the city One-Way Street.” \u2013 from Intellect Books<\/a><\/p>\n Caplan, M. (2021). Yiddish writers in Weimar Berlin: a fugitive modernism<\/em>. Indiana University Press.<\/p>\n “In Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin, Marc Caplan explores the reciprocal encounter between Eastern European Jews and German culture in the days following World War I. By concentrating primarily on a small group of avant-garde Yiddish writers\u2014Dovid Bergelson, Der Nister, and Moyshe Kulbak\u2014working in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, Caplan examines how these writers became central to modernist aesthetics. By concentrating on the character of Yiddish literature produced in Weimar Germany, Caplan offers a new method of seeing how artistic creation is constructed and a new understanding of the political resonances that result from it.<\/p>\n Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin reveals how Yiddish literature participated in the culture of Weimar-era modernism, how active Yiddish writers were in the literary scene, and how German-speaking Jews read descriptions of Yiddish-speaking Jews to uncover the emotional complexity of what they managed to create even in the midst of their confusion and ambivalence in Germany.<\/p>\n Caplan’s masterful narrative affords new insights into literary form, Jewish culture, and the philosophical and psychological motivations for aesthetic modernism.” \u2013 from Indiana University Press<\/a><\/p>\n Nelson, A. (2009). Red Orchestra: the story of the Berlin underground and the circle of friends who resisted Hitler<\/em> (1st ed). Random House.<\/p>\n “Anne Nel\u00adson has writ\u00adten a major work on a trag\u00adic dilem\u00adma of our time\u2009\u2014\u2009how a cul\u00adtured peo\u00adple, defeat\u00aded and impov\u00ader\u00adished though they were, could turn on and bru\u00adtal\u00adize their own cit\u00adi\u00adzen\u00adry. And how the civ\u00adi\u00adlized world could stand by, rea\u00adson\u00ading that it would all \u200b\u201csoon blow over.\u201d<\/p>\n In an inno\u00adv\u00ada\u00adtive approach this book describes Hitler\u2019s rise to pow\u00ader from the point of view of the under\u00adground, which opposed him. The Red Orches\u00adtra was promi\u00adnent in that opposition.<\/p>\n Using exhaus\u00adtive\u00adly researched real-life accounts of peo\u00adple of the time, Nel\u00adson, an expe\u00adri\u00adenced jour\u00adnal\u00adist, shows how men and women scram\u00adbled in and out of Ger\u00admany, some final\u00adly decid\u00ading to stay and fight the glit\u00adter\u00ading, ruth\u00adless new power.<\/p>\n The vol\u00adun\u00adteer spies act\u00aded as loy\u00adal mem\u00adbers of the regime, often par\u00adty\u00ading with the Nazi elite and the Pruss\u00adian nobil\u00adi\u00adty, while pass\u00ading mil\u00adi\u00adtary infor\u00adma\u00adtion to the Rus\u00adsians and Allies.<\/p>\n Nelson\u2019s un-the\u00adatri\u00adcal style some\u00adtimes lacks pace. But her work stands as a trib\u00adute to the under\u00adground that opposed Hitler, the many mur\u00addered, and the embit\u00adtered sur\u00advivors. It is also a fine source for schol\u00adars, libraries, and curi\u00adous read\u00aders. Bib\u00adli\u00ado\u00adgraph\u00adi\u00adcal notes, doc\u00adu\u00admen\u00adtaries, epi\u00adlogue, index, pref\u00adace, pro\u00adlogue, select bibliography.” \u2013 from Jewish Book Council<\/a><\/p>\n Thacker, A. (2020). Modernism, space and the city: outsiders and affect in Paris, Vienna, Berlin and London<\/em>. Edinburgh University Press.<\/p>\n “Explores the crucial role played by the city in the construction of modernism.<\/p>\n This innovative book examines the development of modernist writing in four European cities: London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna. Focusing on how literary outsiders represented various spaces in these cities, it draws upon contemporary theories of affect and literary geography. Particular attention is given to the transnational qualities of modernist writing by examining writers whose view of the cities considered is that of migrants, exiles or strangers, including Mulk Raj Anand, Blaise Cendrars, Bryher, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, Christopher Isherwood, Hope Mirrlees, Noami Mitchison, Jean Rhys, Sam Selvon and Stephen Spender.<\/p>\n Key Features<\/em> Funder, A. (2018). Stasiland<\/em>. Penguin Random House Australia.<\/p>\n “In this now classic work, Funder tells extraordinary stories from the most perfected surveillance state of all time, the former East Germany. She meets Miriam, condemned as an enemy of the state at sixteen, and Frau Paul, for whom the Berlin Wall \u2018went through my heart\u2019. She drinks with the legendary \u2018Mik Jegger\u2019 of the East, once declared by the authorities to \u2018no longer exist\u2019. And she meets ex-Stasi \u2013 men who spied on their families and friends \u2013 still loyal to the deposed regime as they await the next revolution.<\/p>\n Stasiland<\/i> is a brilliant, timeless portrait of a Kafkaesque world as gripping as any thriller. In a world of total surveillance, its celebration of human conscience and courage is as potent as ever.” \u2013 from Penguin<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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\n* The first book in modernist studies to bring detailed discussion of these four cities together
\n* Breaks new ground in being the first book to bring affect theory and literary geography together in order to analyse modernism
\n* An extensive range of authors is analysed, from the canonical to the previously marginal
\n* Situates the literary and filmic texts within the context of urban spaces and cultural institutions” \u2013 from Edinburgh University Press<\/a><\/p>\n
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