What do you think?
Rate this book
Berlin: A Literary Guide for Travellers
Located at the epicentre of modern Europe's most significant and turbulent events, Berlin has long held a magnetic attraction for writers. From nineteenth-century authors recording the city's dramatic transition from Prussian Hauptstadt to German capital after 1871 and the modernist intellectuals of the Weimar period, to the resistance writers brave enough to write during the dark years of the Nazi era and those who captured life on both sides of the divided city, a body of literature has emerged that reveals Berlin's ever-shifting identity. Since 1989, Berlin has yet again become a crucible of creativity, serving as both muse and sanctuary for a new generation of writers who regularly claim it as one of the most exciting cities in the world.
Berlin: A Literary Guide for Travellers illuminates some of the finest writing in and about Berlin. Spanning more than 200 years of local life and literature, it features German authors as diverse as Goethe, Nietzsche, Marx, Hermann Hesse and Joseph Roth and a kaleidoscope of famous international names such as Mark Twain, Philip Hensher, Walter Benjamin and Christopher Isherwood. It is also a singular guide to some of the best sights, most vibrant neighbourhoods and best-kept local secrets that this unique city has to offer.
Berlin: A Literary Guide for Travellers illuminates some of the finest writing in and about Berlin. Spanning more than 200 years of local life and literature, it features German authors as diverse as Goethe, Nietzsche, Marx, Hermann Hesse and Joseph Roth and a kaleidoscope of famous international names such as Mark Twain, Philip Hensher, Walter Benjamin and Christopher Isherwood. It is also a singular guide to some of the best sights, most vibrant neighbourhoods and best-kept local secrets that this unique city has to offer.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published October 30, 2016
5 people are currently reading
48 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 9, 2017
I've read quite a lot about Berlin, as it is one of my favorite cities in the world. This literary guide gave a whole new perspective on the history of the city, and the city itself. The literature list is a big bonus. There are plenty of books on it, both about the city but also German literature, that I will add to my reading list.
August 17, 2016
Exactly what it says it is – a literary guide to Berlin. Comprehensive, with many anecdotes, and a wealth of suggestions for reading about Berlin, this is the ideal book for any booklover who intends to visit the city, or even just to be an armchair traveller there. Just my sort of book.
May 23, 2017
The facts are here, but laid out catalogue-style: the result is a very dry book, despite having a very exciting premise.
I was particularly frustrated by the lack of comment or insight from the author, which robs you of that gratifying feeling of being part of a discussion on the subject: did Berlin produce great or middling writers; did socialism produce anything or artistic merit; what did a Democratic Germany contribute, compared to an aristocratic Prussia?
I was particularly frustrated by the lack of comment or insight from the author, which robs you of that gratifying feeling of being part of a discussion on the subject: did Berlin produce great or middling writers; did socialism produce anything or artistic merit; what did a Democratic Germany contribute, compared to an aristocratic Prussia?
April 23, 2023
По-моему, замечательная книга: надлежит прочитывать сразу после Любовь в эпоху ненависти. Хроника одного чувства, 1929-1939, вместе они смотрятся особенно хорошо: в "Любви" они присутствуют еще как герои, в "Путеводителе" уже как могилки и таблички, sic transit, все проходит, и все пройдет, но главное, пусть никуда не пропадает вот это удивительное чувство наполненной и интересной, захватывающей жизни, которое, кажется и составляет мое "я"; "почему с тобой вечно все случается" — потому что я такая, вот и все. Запишу для памяти: когда я написала А.Л., что буду жить около дома Рильке, это вызвало отчего-то его негодование — почему? Это очень смешно, бедный Рильке. "Ну знаете, Рильке это вообще!"
July 25, 2019
An excellent guide which reveals those histories that make Berlin such an unique destination for so many categories of travellers from all over the world. Very well documented and offering unique content and literary references, this guide creates special itineriaries through the most famous boroughs and their even more famous residents across centuries. Even if you consider yourself a relatively knowledgeable person in all matters related to Berlin - as I do - there are still so many corners to discover and books to read about this city and this guide offers exactly the missing references that you need to build even more layers of knowledge about the city. A recommended read to anyone curious about a completely different perspective on Berlin.
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
June 24, 2019
The book focuses extensively, almost exclusively, on the years 1900-1945. Since it is arranged not chronologically but geographically, focusing on certain districts and their neighborhoods, we have to relive these same 45 years ad nauseam. There is more to Berlin's history than this, but you wouldn't know it from this book.
My advice is that if you cream over WWI and II and/or the Weimar Era grab this book because you'll love it; if you feel ambivalent about these years give it a read, but only in small doses otherwise the continuous time loop will be maddening; and if you are bored to tears by the thought of yet another book about Germany's 1900-1945 years, then this book is not for you.
My advice is that if you cream over WWI and II and/or the Weimar Era grab this book because you'll love it; if you feel ambivalent about these years give it a read, but only in small doses otherwise the continuous time loop will be maddening; and if you are bored to tears by the thought of yet another book about Germany's 1900-1945 years, then this book is not for you.
September 8, 2018
If the best way to learn about a city was through a book, then how about a book that talks about a city through many many books! Being an urban planner and literature fan, this might have been one of the best books i have read.
It contains some of the best stories about Berlin, and i was lucky to discover them one step after another while going about the city as as semi-newcomer.
Also it is very well written, intensely informative and fun. Would highly recommend it
It contains some of the best stories about Berlin, and i was lucky to discover them one step after another while going about the city as as semi-newcomer.
Also it is very well written, intensely informative and fun. Would highly recommend it
August 25, 2017
I saw this in a bookstore in Berlin last year and got it to read during my trip this year. Perfect for that.
May 23, 2022
Berlin has always been concerned with its own image and development than with looking too far beyond its borders, and its detachment has undoubtedly helped it serve as both canvas and laboratory over the centuries, drawing artists and dreamers, city planners and megalomaniacs. In turn, the rich blend of immigrants who have made the place home since its birth have ensured that the city has never remained static: in the famous word of arts historian Karl Scheffler, Berlin is a city destined forever to become and never to be.
Berlin's Alexanderplatz has a reputation for impermanence, instability, criminality, even insurrection - all of the values that stood opposed to those embodied in the royal palace located a few hundred meters away. On the one hand, it represented the modernity of Berlin, with its department stores, cinemas, hectic traffic and constant construction. On the other hand, the Alexanderplatz signified poorer sectors of the population: proletarians, part-time workers, unemployed, criminals, prostitutes, Jewish immigrants. If both aspects of the square implied instability, it was because they were related: the processes of modernization brought with them massive social and economic change, which offered employment to some but made other jobs redundant.
For many, the architecture on and around Alexanderplatz remains not only a quintessential part of the city's history but a familiar aspect - however bleak - of the contemporary cityscape. The TV Tower, meanwhile, has become an iconic symbol of Berlin, on a par with the Brandenburg Gate, and the most recognisable aspect of its skyline.
Charlottenburg is often regarded as a something of a separate city from the 'real' Berlin - especially since reunification put the spotlight firmly on the city's hip eastern districts. In fact the district was a separate city up until 1920, and still carries its own specific, relatively bourgeois aura, one that is tied in with its royal heritage - Charlottenburg Palace is the largest surviving royal palace in Berlin and a tourist highlight. Today, the palace is a major tourist sight in Berlin, its wings and baroque state rooms displaying a mix of restored ceiling paintings, porcelain cabinets and a collection of 18th century French art. The meticulously landscaped gardens, originally designed in the style of the gardens of Versailles, are also a big hit with visitors.
South of the castle lies the aspiringly bourgeois shopping street, the Kurfürstendamm. By the start of the 20th century it was generally regarded as the city's Fifth Avenue of Champs Elysee, a place to not only shop but to meet, gossip and generally see and be seen. Its glamour and glitz stood in stark contrast to the tenements and factories of the city's more proletarian eastern districts.
In the north Berlin district lies Wedding, a city that has never been what you could call a beautiful place. This former blue-collar area and 1930s Communist stronghold, which gave it the lasting nickname Red Wedding, remains a sprawling, no-frills area with an abundance of postwar residential estates, fast-food shops and garish casinos interspred with the occasional trendy bar, restaurant or nightclub. Wedding has preserved something of a 'frontier town' atmosphere that today is intertwined with the immigrant communities.
Friedrichshain is famed throughout the city for its vibrant nightlife, and most obviously manifested in its most famous techno club m, Berghain. Like Kreuzberg, it also has an alternative reputation as a magnet for anarchists, students and other left-wing revolutionaries, though it stems mostly from the early 1990s when squatters - many from Kreuzberg - moved into many of the vacated buildings in what had previously been a neglected and run-down part of inner city East Berlin.
Berlin's Alexanderplatz has a reputation for impermanence, instability, criminality, even insurrection - all of the values that stood opposed to those embodied in the royal palace located a few hundred meters away. On the one hand, it represented the modernity of Berlin, with its department stores, cinemas, hectic traffic and constant construction. On the other hand, the Alexanderplatz signified poorer sectors of the population: proletarians, part-time workers, unemployed, criminals, prostitutes, Jewish immigrants. If both aspects of the square implied instability, it was because they were related: the processes of modernization brought with them massive social and economic change, which offered employment to some but made other jobs redundant.
For many, the architecture on and around Alexanderplatz remains not only a quintessential part of the city's history but a familiar aspect - however bleak - of the contemporary cityscape. The TV Tower, meanwhile, has become an iconic symbol of Berlin, on a par with the Brandenburg Gate, and the most recognisable aspect of its skyline.
Charlottenburg is often regarded as a something of a separate city from the 'real' Berlin - especially since reunification put the spotlight firmly on the city's hip eastern districts. In fact the district was a separate city up until 1920, and still carries its own specific, relatively bourgeois aura, one that is tied in with its royal heritage - Charlottenburg Palace is the largest surviving royal palace in Berlin and a tourist highlight. Today, the palace is a major tourist sight in Berlin, its wings and baroque state rooms displaying a mix of restored ceiling paintings, porcelain cabinets and a collection of 18th century French art. The meticulously landscaped gardens, originally designed in the style of the gardens of Versailles, are also a big hit with visitors.
South of the castle lies the aspiringly bourgeois shopping street, the Kurfürstendamm. By the start of the 20th century it was generally regarded as the city's Fifth Avenue of Champs Elysee, a place to not only shop but to meet, gossip and generally see and be seen. Its glamour and glitz stood in stark contrast to the tenements and factories of the city's more proletarian eastern districts.
In the north Berlin district lies Wedding, a city that has never been what you could call a beautiful place. This former blue-collar area and 1930s Communist stronghold, which gave it the lasting nickname Red Wedding, remains a sprawling, no-frills area with an abundance of postwar residential estates, fast-food shops and garish casinos interspred with the occasional trendy bar, restaurant or nightclub. Wedding has preserved something of a 'frontier town' atmosphere that today is intertwined with the immigrant communities.
Friedrichshain is famed throughout the city for its vibrant nightlife, and most obviously manifested in its most famous techno club m, Berghain. Like Kreuzberg, it also has an alternative reputation as a magnet for anarchists, students and other left-wing revolutionaries, though it stems mostly from the early 1990s when squatters - many from Kreuzberg - moved into many of the vacated buildings in what had previously been a neglected and run-down part of inner city East Berlin.
Read
December 30, 2016Well researched, detailed and offering great insights into an emblematic city. Thanks to NetGalley and to I.B.Tauris for offering me an ARC copy of this book that I voluntarily choose to review.
This is a book that does what it says on the tin, and much more. The authors share a great wealth of research that they divide by neighbourhoods, not only of the writers born in Berlin but also of those who emigrated to the city or visited and produced some significant piece of work inspired by their stay or travels. Providing a detailed historical background into the birth and development of the city, it also describes the most important buildings in each area, and their significance to culture, be it official culture or underground and resistance.
The book contains brief biographies of the authors it discusses, from the Grimm Brothers, Mark Twain, David Bowie and Iggy Pop, to writers published within the last five years. It illustrates the city with quotes and extracts from a variety of works, from poems, songs, novels… I’ve personally discovered fascinating stories of parks housing suicidal literary lovers, of breweries that became hubbubs of culture and neighbourhood life through the centuries, of resistance on both sides of the wall, of writers who continued to create no matter how dire their circumstances, of heroics and controversies, and of a city that has suffered and endured as much as its citizens. Destroyed and rebuilt, fragmented and reunited, it has provided fertile ground for literature and artistic creation through its history and this guide offers the reader a taster that is sure to encourage further exploration.
I haven’t visited Berlin personally, but I finished the book with an urgency to go, and with the feeling that anybody who visits Berlin taking this guide with them will see it through a myriad of perspectives and live an unforgettable experience.
I hope to read more of these literary guides and to be able to take them with me on future trips. Highly recommended to lovers of travel and literature alike.
This is a book that does what it says on the tin, and much more. The authors share a great wealth of research that they divide by neighbourhoods, not only of the writers born in Berlin but also of those who emigrated to the city or visited and produced some significant piece of work inspired by their stay or travels. Providing a detailed historical background into the birth and development of the city, it also describes the most important buildings in each area, and their significance to culture, be it official culture or underground and resistance.
The book contains brief biographies of the authors it discusses, from the Grimm Brothers, Mark Twain, David Bowie and Iggy Pop, to writers published within the last five years. It illustrates the city with quotes and extracts from a variety of works, from poems, songs, novels… I’ve personally discovered fascinating stories of parks housing suicidal literary lovers, of breweries that became hubbubs of culture and neighbourhood life through the centuries, of resistance on both sides of the wall, of writers who continued to create no matter how dire their circumstances, of heroics and controversies, and of a city that has suffered and endured as much as its citizens. Destroyed and rebuilt, fragmented and reunited, it has provided fertile ground for literature and artistic creation through its history and this guide offers the reader a taster that is sure to encourage further exploration.
I haven’t visited Berlin personally, but I finished the book with an urgency to go, and with the feeling that anybody who visits Berlin taking this guide with them will see it through a myriad of perspectives and live an unforgettable experience.
I hope to read more of these literary guides and to be able to take them with me on future trips. Highly recommended to lovers of travel and literature alike.
June 27, 2016
I have lived in Berlin since 2010 and I have learned a lot of interesting and funny and also sad things on my actual city after reading this book! I just suggest not to read it all together but maybe a chapter at a time, to savor it better.
Vivo a Berlino dalla fine del 2010 e nonostante credevo di sapere parecchie cose, ne ho imparate molte altre, sia belle che brutte che divertenti, scritte in questo libro. Unico suggerimento che mi sento di dare é quello di non leggerlo tutto assieme, ma un capitolo per volta, in modo da assaporarlo meglio.
THANKS TO NETGALLEY AND I.B.TAURIS FOR THE PREVIEW!
Vivo a Berlino dalla fine del 2010 e nonostante credevo di sapere parecchie cose, ne ho imparate molte altre, sia belle che brutte che divertenti, scritte in questo libro. Unico suggerimento che mi sento di dare é quello di non leggerlo tutto assieme, ma un capitolo per volta, in modo da assaporarlo meglio.
THANKS TO NETGALLEY AND I.B.TAURIS FOR THE PREVIEW!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews