Berliner Orte: Westend bis Köpenick

by Kurt Tucholsky

Kurt Tucholsky kannte Berlin wie seine Westentasche. Er wurde am 9. Januar 1890 in der Lübecker Straße 13 in Moabit geboren und war mit Unterbrechungen bis zu seiner Emigration ein Berliner. Er erkundete schreibend – manchmal mit Augenzwinkern, manchmal mit wütendem Biss – den Berliner Alltag, die Berliner Provinz, die Berliner Gesellschaft wie die Berliner Lebens verhältnisse. Immer hatte der genaue und spöttische Beobachter Tucholsky das Wesentliche im Blick – und seine Texte lesen sich auch heute noch erstaunlich aktuell.

144 pages, Hardcover

First published September 9, 2013

About the author

Kurt Tucholsky was a German-Jewish journalist, satirist and writer. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Kaspar Hauser, Peter Panter, Theobald Tiger, and Ignaz Wrobel. Born in Berlin-Moabit, he moved to Paris in 1924 and then to Sweden in 1930.

Tucholsky was one of the most important journalists of the Weimar Republic. As a politically engaged journalist and temporary co-editor of the weekly magazine Die Weltbühne he proved himself to be a social critic in the tradition of Heinrich Heine. He was simultaneously a satirist, an author of satirical political revues, a songwriter, and a poet. He saw himself as a left-wing democrat and pacifist and warned against anti-democratic tendencies—above all in politics, the military, and justice—and the threat of National Socialism. His fears were confirmed when the Nazis came to power in 1933: his books were listed on the Nazi's censorship as "Entartete Kunst" ("Degenerate Art") and burned, and he lost his German citizenship.