Berlin by David Clay Large

Berlin



Download Berlin




Berlin David Clay Large
Language: English
Page: 608
Format: pdf
ISBN: 046502632X, 9780465026326
Publisher:

Amazon.com Review

Founded in the 13th century as a trading post on a windswept Prussian plain, Berlin was something of an accidental capital. It was selected by Chancellor Bismarck after Germany's unification in 1871, in part because the choice of any other city--Munich, say, or Frankfurt--would have provoked terrible regional rivalries. As it was, the rest of Germany simply looked down on the hinterland Berliners as, in historian words, "parvenus whose civilization was hardly more substantial than the Prussian sands on which their town was built."

The people who soon swarmed to Berlin from all over Germany--and elsewhere in Europe--put their scorn for the city aside, and they turned it, writes Large, "into a hothouse of modernity, a place that pursued change like a drug." That change becomes a dominant theme as Large charts the rapid growth of Berlin in the early 1900s from regional backwater to a leading European center of socialist politics and the arts. Berlin's avant-garde culture and freewheeling atmosphere made it a target of the Nazi leadership, which put in motion grandiose schemes of social and civil engineering intended to remake it into an imperial city the likes of which the world had never known. Devastated, instead, by World War II and divided by the victorious Allies for four decades afterward, Berlin was, until recently, gray and unattractive compared with many other German cities--and, writes Large, that suited many Germans who "harbored the conviction that Berlin, the former Nazi capital, had no business being pretty or glamorous."

In Berlin, David Large brings the city's recent past to life. Though lacking the literary flair that makes Alexandra Richie's wider-ranging history of Berlin, , so readable, it stands as a substantial contribution to the historical literature. --Gregory McNamee
--This text refers to the

edition.

From Publishers Weekly

"This book is a narrative history of the city of Berlin framed by the two German unificationsAGermany's unification by 'blood and iron' in 1871," and that of 1990, "which of course was achieved not by war but by the disintegration of the Soviet empire and the implosion of East Germany." Large (Where Ghosts Walked: Munich's Road to the Third Reich), professor of history at Montana State University, has written a lively, rich and engaging work, full of his passion for his subject, that puts the question of Berlin's future in the context not only of its past but also of the past of the entire nation of which it has long been an ill-fitting part. As he explains, Berlin has suffered for most of the last 100 years from a "municipal inferiority complex," but with the most recent reunification, Berliners are hopeful that their city "will finally make the grade" as a world-class city. Likewise, Germans outside the capital have long maintained a love-hate relationship with Berlin, which Large equates with most Americans' "wonderful, terrible" opinion of New York City. But while its political history during the last century has been tumultuous and dangerous, the city's ability to influence the world in positive ways has been sustained by Berliners' adaptability in embracing the new, intellectually, artistically and culturally. Large cites examples including efforts to get rid of "the ghosts of Berlin" such as the Reichstag, "the war-scarred fossil... so laden with conflicting, mainly depressing, historical associations"Awhich was accomplished when the artist Christo was given permission to "wrap" the building completely. Large claims that the city's hosting of the April 1999 European Union summit marked Berlin's "debut on the stage of international diplomacy," and that a renewed Berlin may be among the world's leaders in embracing an era of globalization. Readers interested in the history of Germany or of European culture in general will find much to enlighten them. Agent, Agnes Krup. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the

edition.

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