European Studies - Germany, German History - Social Aspects, General & Miscellaneous German History, German History - 1918 - 1933 (Postwar Period & Weimar Republic), German History - 1933 - 1945 (The Third Reich), Berlin - History
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Overview
Anton Gill brilliantly recaptures the Berlin of the twenties and thirties, where the world's most creative talents flourished against a background of decadence, corruption, hyperinflation, and finally fear. For a few, the twenties really were golden. Max Reinhardt, Bertolt Brecht, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo and Josephine Baker electrified the stage. Berlin became the nightclub capital of the world - just as in the film Cabaret, inspired by Christopher Isherwood who was there with W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender. Berlin rivaled Hollywood, where Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg, Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder all started their careers. For most Berliners, though, life was harsh. While the rich danced there was fighting in the streets. When the mark crashed, those with hard currency lived like princes, but middle-class Germans prostituted their own daughters to make ends meet. As the twenties became the thirties, politics veered from farce to tragedy in the face of the Nazi terror. After 1933 those who could escape left for London, Paris, or New York. Others threw in their lot with the new regime. Leni Riefenstahl created the greatest pieces of film propaganda in history. Werner von Braun developed the rockets that would later fall on London and contribute to the U.S. space program. Nazi victory would condemn Berlin, one of the world's greatest capitals, first to destruction and then to fifty years in the cultural and political wilderness. This book coincides with its return to capital status and, perhaps, its former elan.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
This fast-paced, wonderfully evocative chronicle of interwar Berlin opens with the Communist revolution of 1918, which nearly took over Germany; it closes on Kristallnacht , Nov. 9, 1938, when Nazis burned and pillaged Jewish property and synagogues. Drawing primarily on German sources, British writer Gill re-creates the creative frenzy of a city that nurtured Bertolt Brecht, Max Reinhardt, Josephine Baker, Kathe Kollwitz, George Grosz, Arnold Schonberg, Christopher Isherwood, satirical journalist Kurt Tucholsky and dozens more against a backdrop of economic chaos and rising Nazism. He charts the Weimar Republic's doomed attempt to introduce democratic ideas to a wrecked, disillusioned people craving order, and he includes a wealth of fresh material on Berlin's cafe society, criminal underworld, theater, arts and its regimented university system--which emphasized militarist nationalism and actively harassed Jewish students and teachers. Photos. (Apr.)Library Journal
Gill ( Berlin to Bucharest , LJ 11/1/90) here collects wonderful anecdotes from Berliners who remember the Weimar era. A master raconteur who knows Berlin and Berliners well, he captures the Zeitgeist from the collective memory of a city that was both exhilarating and terrifying. Gill doesn't tell how Germany descended into a nightmare, but he shows how Berlin remembers the descent. This work is the perfect complement to the current explosion of books in Germany on the Weimar Republic, which consider whether there is anything to be learned from the pre-Hitler era concerning Germany's present difficulties. There is no fresh scholarship here, however, and Gill gets sloppy with his facts. For example, he cites the controversy about the republic's flag but describes the flag backward. Still, this book will be a good addition to public and undergraduate collections.-- Randall L. Schroeder, Augustana Coll. Lib., Rock Island, Ill.Book Details
Published
April 1, 1994
Publisher
Carroll & Graf Pub
Pages
320
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780786700639