A Woman's Berlin: Building the Modern City

Abstract

Despina Stratigakos’ engaging new book, A Women's Berlin: Building the Modern City, recovers a largely unknown history of the German capital city at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. By ‘Women's Berlin’ Stratigakis means physical sites for not only women but also societies, charities and other associations founded to promote women's agency. Her story spans the early years of the women's movement worldwide, when women were gaining suffrage, access to universities and the workplace. The book is not only an architectural history but also a social, economic and class history. In Germany, this is the period of the emergence of the Neue Frau or New Woman: a sophisticated, urban, modern woman who was self-sufficient and self-aware. Stratigakos’ work fits into a growing scholarly interest in the New Woman shown in such titles as Sonja Norhegger-Troppmair's Die Neue Frau der 20er Jahre am Beispiel Vicky Baum[The New Woman of the 1920s, the Example of Vicky Baum] (Broschiert, 2008); Antje Wischmann's Auf Probe Gestellt[In Rehearsal: the New Woman of the 1920s and 1930s in Sweden, Denmark and Germany] (Broschiert, 2006); and Shearer West and Marsha Meskimmon's Visions of the ‘Neue Frau’: Women and the Visual Arts in Weimar Germany (Scolar Press, 1995). But Stratigakos diverges from most contemporary studies by focusing on the contributions the new women made to the physical and institutional make-up of the city.