Edited by Iain Boyd Whyte & David Frisby

“Rich and engrossing. . . . Berlin’s transformation takes place vividly before our eyes.”—Andrew Mead, The Architectural Review

"Metropolis Berlin is a superb collection of important texts. The selections are at once representative and delightfully off-beat; the editorial signposts are helpful but do not discourage rogue exploration or thematic innovation by the reader; and the presentation (from translation quality to layout design) is excellent. An absolute no-brainer, a must-have for every library, Germanist, and lover of Berlin."—Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature

“Metropolis Berlin evokes a kaleidoscopic panorama of impressions, opinions, and utopian hopes that constituted Berlin from the end of Imperial Germany to the rise of National Socialism. Iain Boyd Whyte and the late David Frisby invite the reader to be a flâneur in a truly great city, to marvel at the vitality of its urban spaces, and to listen to the cacophony of its voices and sounds. This extraordinary anthology of hundreds of documents tells the story of metropolitan Berlin by letting its inhabitants, visitors, and critics speak. A must have for every personal bookshelf and library.”—Volker M. Welter, Professor for Architectural History, University of California at Santa Barbara

Metropolis Berlin: 1880-1940 reconstitutes the built environment of Berlin during the period of its classical modernity using over two hundred contemporary texts, virtually all of which are published in English translation for the first time. They are from the pens of those who created Berlin as one of the world’s great cities and those who observed this process: architects, city planners, sociologists, political theorists, historians, cultural critics, novelists, essayists, and journalists. Divided into nineteen sections, each prefaced by an introductory essay, the account unfolds chronologically, with the particular structural concerns of the moment addressed in sequence—be they department stores in 1900, housing in the 1920s, or parade grounds in 1940. Metropolis Berlin: 1880-1940 not only details the construction of Berlin, but explores homes and workplaces, public spaces, circulation, commerce, and leisure in the German metropolis as seen through the eyes of all social classes, from the humblest inhabitants of the city slums, to the great visionaries of the modern city, and the demented dictator resolved to remodel Berlin as Germania.

Hardcover
632 pages
University of California Press, 2012
6 x 2 x 9 inches
ISBN 9780520270374
German History, Architecture, Urban Studies