Faust's metropolis: a history of Berlin

Abstract

In the city of Berlin, history is tangible: the history of Germany, of Europe and in particular of the 20th century with all its myths, depravities, idealism and horror. The sense of the past hangs in the air around the old Hinterhofs and deserted railway stations, around the famous landmarks from the Wall to the bullet-ridden Reichstag, the imposing Brandenburg Gate. Even the geography is provocative: the Spree river beside which the first settlements grew and into which Rosa Luxemburg's battered body was dumped after the 1919 Revolution; the sprawling Mark Brandenburg favoured by the Prussian Princes as a parade ground; and the Teufelsburg or Devil's Mountain, created out of hundreds of tons of rubble cleared from the flattened city at the end of World War II. It is for good reason that Berlin has been named the Schicksal Stadt Deutschlands, the city of German destiny. Perhaps no European city has played such a part in the tides of 20th-century European history, none been so lionized, mythologized, so cast down. Full of humour and street-level philosophy on the ambience of the new capital of reunited Germany, it also offers an analysis of the legends and myths created about the city, the tensions which have historically existed between Berliners and other Germans, the crucial role which Berlin has played in shaping the political life of Europe, and the city's pervasive influence as many-faceted cultural symbol.