Berlin

Before the Deluge: Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, A

A fascinating portrait of the turbulent political, social, and cultural life of the city of Berlin in the 1920s.

Berlin and Its Culture: A Historical Portrait

What is the culture of a city? Is it the corporate personality, the politics of the founders, the undertaking of its artists and visionaries? Berlin and Its Culture surveys all these arenas, paying particular attention to the writers, philosophers, actors, and later, interior designers and filmmakers. In relating the lives and accomplishments of its inhabitants, Ronald Taylor maps the social patterns of the city in fascinating detail.

Taylor takes care to include accounts of life in both East and West Berlin, and while he does provide some coverage of Nazi culture, he does not perform an in-depth analysis. Rather, with his focus on the periods of artistic proliferation, he writes at length on the Romanticism of Berlin's early years and the flourishing of literature during the Weimar period.

The book itself is a weighty, glossy endeavor. The reader can not turn a page or two without encountering an illustration, painting reproduction (often in color), or elaborate map of the changing face of the city. Berlin and Its Culture is a visual, visceral treat and an appealing survey of one of the world's most complex locales.

A Dance Between Flames: Berlin Between the Wars

Faust's Metropolis: A History of Berlin

An ambitious undertaking, Faust's Metropolis : A History of Berlin aims to chronicle the history of Germany through the microcosm of its most dramatic city. Alexandra Richie's thousand page tome spans from the time of Nero to Helmut Kohl. It is an encyclopedic description of the Schicksal Stadt Deutschlands--the City of German Destiny--filled with the politics of rulers and the ideology of artists.

Richie doesn't romanticize Berlin; early on, she invokes Goethe's view of the city as bourgeois, brash, and onerous. "Like the metropolis in Faust it has always been a rather shabby place," Richie comments. "It is neither an ancient gem like Rome, nor an exquisite beauty like Prague, nor a geographical marvel like Rio. It was formed not by the gentle, cultured hand which made Dresden or Venice but was wrenched from the unpromising landscape by sheer hard work and determination." By placing her historical account in a world-encompassing perspective, the culture described in Faust's Metropolis comments on the whole of Germany and its people.

The author is most eloquent in describing the recent history of the city. As a resident during its divided years, she describes Berlin as the ultimate "border city," on the frontline of the dueling Weltanschauungs of the Cold War. Her tone is familiar in describing the changing face of the city, and her enthusiasm evident as the book moves into the modern era. Filled with the insights of its unique and myriad residents, Faust's Metropolis recounts Berlin's culture, providing the reader with a thorough history and authoritative analysis.

Berlin Rising: Biography of a City

Berlin

Giles MacDonogh intends to a fill a void in the historical documentation of the former capital city of the German empire and the eventual capital of unified Germany. Instead of presenting yet another scholarly account of the city's past, he instead explores the spirit of the city, delving into themes that convey "something of the colour of the great city and the variety of life that has been lived there in the past seven and a half centuries." His defiance of traditional historical narrative may be well intended, but it runs the risk of creating a book that does not contribute to any historical dialogue whatsoever.

The seven broadly titled chapters of Berlin ("Ich bin ein Berliner," "Berlin Itineraries," "Berlin Life," etc.) present a thematically arranged, telegraphic litany of people, places, and events in Berlin's history, interspersed frequently with personal anecdotes, that never quite develops any particular issue at length or leads to any compelling observations about Berlin's historical past or its future. "It is hard to think of a city which has suffered so much," he concludes. "Harder still to think of another which has proved so clearly that it is inextinguishable." Yet, of the city's many characteristics, suffering and survivalism are not among those which predominate MacDonogh's analysis. For such an account, one best await the English translation of Wolgang Ribbe's Berlin--Geschichte, mentioned by MacDonogh himself in his preface as a logical starting point for a more comprehensive study of the former and future German capital. --Bertina Loeffler

Views of Berlin: From a Boston Symposium

Berlin! Berlin!: Its Culture, Its Times

The Last Division: A History of Berlin, 1945-1989

Berlin has played a major role in world politics since the Nazi era. It was made hostage in the Cold War, and continues to be in the spotlight today as the once-again great capital of Germany. Ann Tusa's book is an engaging chronicle of the partitions of this historic city, from the administrative division by the victors against Hitler, through the building and eventual destruction of the wall.

Berlin: The Spatial Structure of a Divided City

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