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Berlin
As Joseph Pearson poetically puts it in this rich look at one of Europe’s most fascinating Berlin is a party in a graveyard . Europe’s youth capital, Berlin is also beset by sustained guilt for the atrocities that were ordered by its Nazi officers during the Third Reich. Built and rebuilt on the ruins of multiple regimes, Berlin in the twenty-first-century houses an extraordinary diversity of refugees, immigrants, and expats. Offering a comprehensive but concise history, Pearson tells the story of Berlin’s past over nine centuries while also painting a portrait of the vibrant German capital today.
Pearson describes the rise of Berlin from a small settlement surrounded by bog to one of the crucial economic and political centers of Europe. Berlin is a palimpsest of a cutting edge and dynamic modern culture over a troubled history, one that is visible in bombsites, museums, late-night clubs, and even a lake that allegedly hosts a man-eating monster. He ultimately shows how the city is imbued with an array of unnerving emptiness, provincialism, ramshackle industrial eclecticism, lurid and lascivious counter-cultural expressions, and a tremendous history of violence—but also that these are precisely the sorts of things that give the city its unique charge. Posing one thought-provoking question after another, Pearson walks the city’s neighborhoods, peeling back layer upon layer of history in order to reveal a Berlin that few of us know.
Pearson describes the rise of Berlin from a small settlement surrounded by bog to one of the crucial economic and political centers of Europe. Berlin is a palimpsest of a cutting edge and dynamic modern culture over a troubled history, one that is visible in bombsites, museums, late-night clubs, and even a lake that allegedly hosts a man-eating monster. He ultimately shows how the city is imbued with an array of unnerving emptiness, provincialism, ramshackle industrial eclecticism, lurid and lascivious counter-cultural expressions, and a tremendous history of violence—but also that these are precisely the sorts of things that give the city its unique charge. Posing one thought-provoking question after another, Pearson walks the city’s neighborhoods, peeling back layer upon layer of history in order to reveal a Berlin that few of us know.
280 pages, Paperback
Published August 15, 2017
4 people are currently reading
33 people want to read
About the author
Joseph Pearson
6 books1 followerJoseph Pearson is a writer and historian, author of the books The Airlift / Sweet Victory (The History Press, Pegasus Books, 2025), My Grandfather’s Knife (The History Press, HarperCollins, 2022) and Berlin (Reaktion Press, 2017). His work has appeared in The Guardian, Lettre International, New England Review, AGNI, PRISM International, Geist and many other publications. For more than a decade, he was the author of one of Berlin’s favourite blogs, The Needle. Since 2014, he has been the essayist of the Schaubühne Theatre. He lectures in Berlin at a German university, the Barenboim-Said Akademie, and at New York University in Berlin.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 18, 2018
Unsentimental and sharp, dry humor, clear eyes: a visit to Berlin, both historical and contemporary, that instructs, deconstructs, and pleases.
May 6, 2021
Berlin has an inimitable aesthetic. On arriving, form the taxi window, one is struck by the detritus of the 12th century: derelict warehouses, the glint of the sprawling railway tracks, buildings orphaned next to lots once devastated by war damage. In the background are rows of Communist-era block housing. A disused factory might have a new purpose: a swimming pool turned arts space, or power plant turned nightclub. Peeling walls are mottled with decades of street art; they reveal the buildings' former lives, their past degradations. That newly whitewashed surface, in the foreground, will not last long before it is attacked. You accelerate along the leafy canals, where grass grows wild, untended; the city's cost-cutting dovetails with a fondness for the unkempt. The absence of a foursquare grid plan allows a disorderly assume try. It is a haphazard cityscape. Berlin invites an aestheticizing of the decrepit, the shattered, the imperfect, the dissonant. After a few weeks here, you might nee be satisfied with a freshly painted wall again.
Perhaps there are moral qualities to this Berlin aesthetic. It privileges process and time passing; it is a reminder that nothing is fixed. The Neues Museum is an illuminating example: here the bombing damage is not patched up but exposed, recalling how war brutalized Berlin, as Berlin brutalized Europe. The weight of past crimes, the fact that the city has been a laboratory of ideologies and the command centre for their victims, is inescapable. With this comes a heightened historical mindfulness, with the many memorials and a strong public culture of remembrance. Perhaps that's why walls are not whitewashed, but allowed to peel.
The omnipresent graffiti, the general deficiency of mass advertising and the fact that so much space in Berlin continues to be undeveloped despite recent gentrification gives Berlin an anti-authoritarian and not entirely streamlined feel. For a long time half-Communist, the capital is an affront to the mass-produced, consumerist, capitalistic mode of standardized living that dominates most Western cities.
Nor is there a standard Berliner. The moment your train pulls into the busy interchange of Alexanderplatz, the crowd piles in and you are faced with a barrage of tattoos, unusual haircuts, Taliban-hipster facial hair and sharp-edged German eyewear. The fashionable mix with those in workaday proletarian garb. Two journeymen apprentices in medieval overalls stand above the camera-laden tourists. An Italian couple looks out of place - Berlin is decidedly a city that dresses down. Swarming the doors are a group of party kids, flushed and half-clothed, carrying open containers, fresh from the Technostrich. Your morning is only their late evening. There is the smell of sex somewhere. One has his hand down his boyfriend's trousers. No one deigns to notice - it's Berlin, after all. The base culture of Berlin is proletarian, and many Berliners are suspicious of national codes. Parts of the city are full of immigrants from Turkey, Lebanon and elsewhere, mixing with a recent influx of internationals and refugees. All this means that expectations to acculturate are diminished.
For artists, the city is the concentration of camaraderie and opportunity. The city overflows with music and theatre events, and not just in its better-known cultural institutions. The creative buzz of exchange means it is remarkably easy to meet people. Perhaps too easy. One's life becomes a vortex of metropolitan vanities, the kind of monadic flutter that gives a city its moment. New Berliners are drawn by Europe's party capital. The scene is exciting enough to get many Italians and Spaniards to trade the Mediterranean sun for dark winter nights. Because this city feels unfinished, there is room for experimentation, opportunities to 'remake' yourself. Those expecting the standardized oppression of statuesque Europe - manicured lawns, Baroque foundations, symmetrical city squares with uninterrupted ancient facades and ornate palaces - are not going to find themselves in an archetypal Continental city. It is not that the Old World does not exist here - the city is full of cultivated lakeside walks and restaurants with white table cloth - it's just not what distinguishes Berlin. Perhaps Berlin's charm is that you can go from the Baroque Charlottenburg Palace to the industrial stretch of Friedrichshain in less than half an hour.
Berlin's aesthetic has been something of an inspiration, or a stereotype, for other cities, and has melded into a more generalized hipster aesthetic, cross-pollinated between Berlin, Detroit, east London and Brooklyn, and now found worldwide. Gentrification, rising rent prices and the paradoxical standardization of non-standardized aesthetic make some wonder whether Berlin is 'over'. But the city is so vast that the alternative nightspots have simply moved farther out from the centre. Some say: you can still have a wild time in Berlin, but at least now it's also possible to have a good meal. The 'Berlin Renaissance', as it's called, is not over, but perhaps it is entering its decadent phase.
The most famous gate to the west would be the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of the city, associated with the reunification of Germany. The gate was originally meant to symbolize peace. It was an elegant architectural statement, a model of balance.
Berlin in the 1990s became a legendary maze of abandoned industrial spaces, electronic sounds from empty buildings and the stark remaining differences between East and West. But it was also a place of mass unemployment and economic uncertainty. There were big plans for Berlin shortly after reunification. As part of the reunification treaty, the capital was moved back to Berlin although certain ministries would remain in Bonn. Propelled by grand expectations for the new capital, Berlin became a city of cranes.
As Germany discovers pride and its power, other expatriates rediscovered Berlin, and the capital became a byword for 'cool' and 'youth culture', attracting thousands of young artists and 'hipsters', many of them unemployed youth refugees from the very Eurozones economies languishing under austerity policies designed in the German capital. The creative vibrancy, especially in theatre, music and visual art, has been compared to the Weimar Republic years, hence the name 'the Berlin Renaissance'. With Berlin gentrifying, internationalizing and becoming increasingly forward-looking, many Berliners feel the change has been too quick and would prefer the city to remain an exceptional island. Rising rents and living costs have been the bane of the half-million welfare recipients in the city.
Berlin is Europe's greenest capital. More than 8 times the size of Paris with only 1.5 ties its population, Berlin fills its relative excess with trees. The city, depopulated by war and division, feels spacious, with the horizon often visible. The largeness can frighten some visitors, who find themselves alone on a street corner of a boulevard at night, in the centre of the city, confronted by depopulated gloom. They might wonder whether this could possibly be Germany's most dynamic hub, or instead one of those provincial places to which administrators are relegated. For the metropolitan, you can smell the countryside a little too often in Berlin. For others, this release from the usual city noise and claustrophobia is a liberation, because in Berlin you have the advantage of a capital's attitude and infrastructure without the inconvenience of metropolitan stress.
Most of the city's life happens in the neighborhoods. If the city is like the night sky, where it's easy to get lost in the dark places between, it's also dotted with many stars, places of life, called the Kiez. Each Kiez is named after a high street that runs through it, often full of commerce, restaurants and bars. You can perceptibly feel yourself entering a Kiez when walking through Berlin: from the lonely abandonment of empty streets, you turn a corner and enter an avenue with many more people. Each Kiez has its peculiar character, and two located within a short walking distance of one another. Graefe-kiez is a vibrant area of Kreuzberg.
The combination of these various peculiarities of the city's shape makes Berlin unique in relation to other European metropolises. The breezy greenness, parks and the fact that you can see the sky conquer claustrophobia. The sprawl and depopulation give an element of surprise, a constant feeling of discovery in the vast patchwork. No place in the city dominates; centres compete but are in fact empty, while neighbourhoods gain more importance. The enduring lack of centre gives one a liberating feeling: that there is no standard; there is no radius bu which to measure distance.
These days the neighbourhood around Nollendorfplatz, and especially down Motzstrasse, is adorned with rainbow flags and dotted with leather shops, bars and establishments with dodgy happenings in the basements. Schöneberg is stereotyped as catering for mature gay men. Certainly much of West Berlin's gay history happened here. Germany's long tradition of artisanal leatherwork finds expression in the number of fetish shops on Fuggerstrasse.
Now, how to meet a Berliner? Simply whistling is not quite enough these days. But doing much more can also be dangerous. A surprise for many visitors is the amount of personal space that Berliners take, and how little value is placed on small talk. 'Distance and respect' is the mantra. Endless questions and being chatty are the marks of superficiality. Berlin is famous as the city where most of the conversations happens after sex. An aggressive look might be the only necessary prelude before something expected happens to you in a dark room, after which you might be permitted to inquire about someone's name and maybe even get a phone number. This process is disheartening for romantics, those who rely on their witty conversation to get some, or those who need to feel a little more comfortable than being pressed against a cement wall.
Perhaps because Berlin is one of the most secular places on the planet, there is a low social cost from being promiscuous or going to a sex club; there's no pretending that you are a good girl, no need to hide your adventures from your friends. An open relationship (a 'Berlin relationship') is the norm rather than the exception. Others complain that Berlin is a revolving door of talent, making it hard to have any kind of relationship because something better always seems to come along.
Berlin is not conservative. In the basement of that power plant turned nightclub, Berghain, is the city's most famous gay sex club, with nights appealing to a revealing number of fetishes from latex, to scat and piss, to formal and office dress. The same level of sexual liberty goes for women, which means that they arguably have better agency over their sexuality in a society unlikely to shame them. For heterosexuals, the KitKatClub is a massive burlesque palace with hundreds of heterosexual couples writhing downstairs in the Dragon Room, while on the dance floor upstairs a polysexual 'sex dance' takes place. Meanwhile, swingers' clubs and private parties for straight or polysexual couples are popular. In the 1990s, Amsterdam was the city overzealous parents wouldn't let their kids travel to because of the drugs. Today, it must be Berlin because of the sex.
Sex works is meanwhile legal in Berlin. Kurfürstenstrasse is commonly perceived as one of Berlin's more downmarket prostitution catwalks, with pornography shops, empty lots, some high-end furniture shops and rent-boy bars. A more touristic version of the same neighbourhood is on Oranienburger Strasse.
'I am walking to a gritty industrial club, through the warehouses and parking lots of East Berlin's rust belt. I reach the darkened facade of a former factory alongside the tracks of Oskreuz. I clip around the building, take the back way, behind a pile of bricks or a broken wall of graffiti, past the fluorescent still-life of a security guard through a cubicle's window, past a vent that smells vaguely of poppers, until I hear voices as I turn the corner. It's a summer night; the party's in the garden, the crowd heaving before the DJ. The moon is out, behind clouds. The movement of lights, lifted by the warm air, the stars above, the diversity and happiness of the crowd. This is Berlin. When I leave it's already day - one of those amazing Berlin June days that start the moment you walk out of the club in the early hours. I am saturated with cigarette smoke and sweat and kisses. The now faint blue above softens the steely train tracks. I go home, shower, sleep for a few hours, wake up for brunch with my friends. We compare our evening adventures - you never know what is going to happen to you when you walk out of that door.'
Berlin is still a place where people can pursue their creative work with fewer pressures from the market than in other European capitals, and have the opportunity too o so in an urbane international environment where they are allowed to live decently. What would cause Berlin to be 'over'? If the conditions for its non-corporate lifestyle were suddenly to evaporate, there would be cause for concern. With property speculation and gentrification, this is the looming threat. Despite the onslaught of gentrification, civic initiatives are in place to protect the city's multi-income neighbourhoods, and there are some indications things will sooner get better than worse. Let's hope.
Museum and Sites:
1. Museum Island
- Mitte
-UNESCO world heritage site is an ensemble of 5 museums including the Pergamonmuseum, Neues Museum, Arte Nationalgalerie, Bode-Museum, Altes Museum
- Also on the island are Berlin Cathedral and Berlin City Palace not far away from the Nikolaiviertel
2.Unter den Linden
- Mitte
- Berlin's most famous avenue with German Historical Museum, Brandenburg Gate, Gendarmenmarkt, Staatsoper, Neue Wache, Humboldt University
3. Reichstag
- Platz der Republik 1, Tiergarten
- The German Parliament
4. Kulturforum
- Matthäikirchplatz
- Has one of Europe's most important collections of European paintings
5. Museum Berggruen
- Schlossstrasse 1, Charlottenburg
- It is across the street from the late 17th century Schloss Charlottenburg with its opulent interiors
6. Jewish Museum
- Lindenstrasse 9-14, Kreuzberg
Perhaps there are moral qualities to this Berlin aesthetic. It privileges process and time passing; it is a reminder that nothing is fixed. The Neues Museum is an illuminating example: here the bombing damage is not patched up but exposed, recalling how war brutalized Berlin, as Berlin brutalized Europe. The weight of past crimes, the fact that the city has been a laboratory of ideologies and the command centre for their victims, is inescapable. With this comes a heightened historical mindfulness, with the many memorials and a strong public culture of remembrance. Perhaps that's why walls are not whitewashed, but allowed to peel.
The omnipresent graffiti, the general deficiency of mass advertising and the fact that so much space in Berlin continues to be undeveloped despite recent gentrification gives Berlin an anti-authoritarian and not entirely streamlined feel. For a long time half-Communist, the capital is an affront to the mass-produced, consumerist, capitalistic mode of standardized living that dominates most Western cities.
Nor is there a standard Berliner. The moment your train pulls into the busy interchange of Alexanderplatz, the crowd piles in and you are faced with a barrage of tattoos, unusual haircuts, Taliban-hipster facial hair and sharp-edged German eyewear. The fashionable mix with those in workaday proletarian garb. Two journeymen apprentices in medieval overalls stand above the camera-laden tourists. An Italian couple looks out of place - Berlin is decidedly a city that dresses down. Swarming the doors are a group of party kids, flushed and half-clothed, carrying open containers, fresh from the Technostrich. Your morning is only their late evening. There is the smell of sex somewhere. One has his hand down his boyfriend's trousers. No one deigns to notice - it's Berlin, after all. The base culture of Berlin is proletarian, and many Berliners are suspicious of national codes. Parts of the city are full of immigrants from Turkey, Lebanon and elsewhere, mixing with a recent influx of internationals and refugees. All this means that expectations to acculturate are diminished.
For artists, the city is the concentration of camaraderie and opportunity. The city overflows with music and theatre events, and not just in its better-known cultural institutions. The creative buzz of exchange means it is remarkably easy to meet people. Perhaps too easy. One's life becomes a vortex of metropolitan vanities, the kind of monadic flutter that gives a city its moment. New Berliners are drawn by Europe's party capital. The scene is exciting enough to get many Italians and Spaniards to trade the Mediterranean sun for dark winter nights. Because this city feels unfinished, there is room for experimentation, opportunities to 'remake' yourself. Those expecting the standardized oppression of statuesque Europe - manicured lawns, Baroque foundations, symmetrical city squares with uninterrupted ancient facades and ornate palaces - are not going to find themselves in an archetypal Continental city. It is not that the Old World does not exist here - the city is full of cultivated lakeside walks and restaurants with white table cloth - it's just not what distinguishes Berlin. Perhaps Berlin's charm is that you can go from the Baroque Charlottenburg Palace to the industrial stretch of Friedrichshain in less than half an hour.
Berlin's aesthetic has been something of an inspiration, or a stereotype, for other cities, and has melded into a more generalized hipster aesthetic, cross-pollinated between Berlin, Detroit, east London and Brooklyn, and now found worldwide. Gentrification, rising rent prices and the paradoxical standardization of non-standardized aesthetic make some wonder whether Berlin is 'over'. But the city is so vast that the alternative nightspots have simply moved farther out from the centre. Some say: you can still have a wild time in Berlin, but at least now it's also possible to have a good meal. The 'Berlin Renaissance', as it's called, is not over, but perhaps it is entering its decadent phase.
The most famous gate to the west would be the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of the city, associated with the reunification of Germany. The gate was originally meant to symbolize peace. It was an elegant architectural statement, a model of balance.
Berlin in the 1990s became a legendary maze of abandoned industrial spaces, electronic sounds from empty buildings and the stark remaining differences between East and West. But it was also a place of mass unemployment and economic uncertainty. There were big plans for Berlin shortly after reunification. As part of the reunification treaty, the capital was moved back to Berlin although certain ministries would remain in Bonn. Propelled by grand expectations for the new capital, Berlin became a city of cranes.
As Germany discovers pride and its power, other expatriates rediscovered Berlin, and the capital became a byword for 'cool' and 'youth culture', attracting thousands of young artists and 'hipsters', many of them unemployed youth refugees from the very Eurozones economies languishing under austerity policies designed in the German capital. The creative vibrancy, especially in theatre, music and visual art, has been compared to the Weimar Republic years, hence the name 'the Berlin Renaissance'. With Berlin gentrifying, internationalizing and becoming increasingly forward-looking, many Berliners feel the change has been too quick and would prefer the city to remain an exceptional island. Rising rents and living costs have been the bane of the half-million welfare recipients in the city.
Berlin is Europe's greenest capital. More than 8 times the size of Paris with only 1.5 ties its population, Berlin fills its relative excess with trees. The city, depopulated by war and division, feels spacious, with the horizon often visible. The largeness can frighten some visitors, who find themselves alone on a street corner of a boulevard at night, in the centre of the city, confronted by depopulated gloom. They might wonder whether this could possibly be Germany's most dynamic hub, or instead one of those provincial places to which administrators are relegated. For the metropolitan, you can smell the countryside a little too often in Berlin. For others, this release from the usual city noise and claustrophobia is a liberation, because in Berlin you have the advantage of a capital's attitude and infrastructure without the inconvenience of metropolitan stress.
Most of the city's life happens in the neighborhoods. If the city is like the night sky, where it's easy to get lost in the dark places between, it's also dotted with many stars, places of life, called the Kiez. Each Kiez is named after a high street that runs through it, often full of commerce, restaurants and bars. You can perceptibly feel yourself entering a Kiez when walking through Berlin: from the lonely abandonment of empty streets, you turn a corner and enter an avenue with many more people. Each Kiez has its peculiar character, and two located within a short walking distance of one another. Graefe-kiez is a vibrant area of Kreuzberg.
The combination of these various peculiarities of the city's shape makes Berlin unique in relation to other European metropolises. The breezy greenness, parks and the fact that you can see the sky conquer claustrophobia. The sprawl and depopulation give an element of surprise, a constant feeling of discovery in the vast patchwork. No place in the city dominates; centres compete but are in fact empty, while neighbourhoods gain more importance. The enduring lack of centre gives one a liberating feeling: that there is no standard; there is no radius bu which to measure distance.
These days the neighbourhood around Nollendorfplatz, and especially down Motzstrasse, is adorned with rainbow flags and dotted with leather shops, bars and establishments with dodgy happenings in the basements. Schöneberg is stereotyped as catering for mature gay men. Certainly much of West Berlin's gay history happened here. Germany's long tradition of artisanal leatherwork finds expression in the number of fetish shops on Fuggerstrasse.
Now, how to meet a Berliner? Simply whistling is not quite enough these days. But doing much more can also be dangerous. A surprise for many visitors is the amount of personal space that Berliners take, and how little value is placed on small talk. 'Distance and respect' is the mantra. Endless questions and being chatty are the marks of superficiality. Berlin is famous as the city where most of the conversations happens after sex. An aggressive look might be the only necessary prelude before something expected happens to you in a dark room, after which you might be permitted to inquire about someone's name and maybe even get a phone number. This process is disheartening for romantics, those who rely on their witty conversation to get some, or those who need to feel a little more comfortable than being pressed against a cement wall.
Perhaps because Berlin is one of the most secular places on the planet, there is a low social cost from being promiscuous or going to a sex club; there's no pretending that you are a good girl, no need to hide your adventures from your friends. An open relationship (a 'Berlin relationship') is the norm rather than the exception. Others complain that Berlin is a revolving door of talent, making it hard to have any kind of relationship because something better always seems to come along.
Berlin is not conservative. In the basement of that power plant turned nightclub, Berghain, is the city's most famous gay sex club, with nights appealing to a revealing number of fetishes from latex, to scat and piss, to formal and office dress. The same level of sexual liberty goes for women, which means that they arguably have better agency over their sexuality in a society unlikely to shame them. For heterosexuals, the KitKatClub is a massive burlesque palace with hundreds of heterosexual couples writhing downstairs in the Dragon Room, while on the dance floor upstairs a polysexual 'sex dance' takes place. Meanwhile, swingers' clubs and private parties for straight or polysexual couples are popular. In the 1990s, Amsterdam was the city overzealous parents wouldn't let their kids travel to because of the drugs. Today, it must be Berlin because of the sex.
Sex works is meanwhile legal in Berlin. Kurfürstenstrasse is commonly perceived as one of Berlin's more downmarket prostitution catwalks, with pornography shops, empty lots, some high-end furniture shops and rent-boy bars. A more touristic version of the same neighbourhood is on Oranienburger Strasse.
'I am walking to a gritty industrial club, through the warehouses and parking lots of East Berlin's rust belt. I reach the darkened facade of a former factory alongside the tracks of Oskreuz. I clip around the building, take the back way, behind a pile of bricks or a broken wall of graffiti, past the fluorescent still-life of a security guard through a cubicle's window, past a vent that smells vaguely of poppers, until I hear voices as I turn the corner. It's a summer night; the party's in the garden, the crowd heaving before the DJ. The moon is out, behind clouds. The movement of lights, lifted by the warm air, the stars above, the diversity and happiness of the crowd. This is Berlin. When I leave it's already day - one of those amazing Berlin June days that start the moment you walk out of the club in the early hours. I am saturated with cigarette smoke and sweat and kisses. The now faint blue above softens the steely train tracks. I go home, shower, sleep for a few hours, wake up for brunch with my friends. We compare our evening adventures - you never know what is going to happen to you when you walk out of that door.'
Berlin is still a place where people can pursue their creative work with fewer pressures from the market than in other European capitals, and have the opportunity too o so in an urbane international environment where they are allowed to live decently. What would cause Berlin to be 'over'? If the conditions for its non-corporate lifestyle were suddenly to evaporate, there would be cause for concern. With property speculation and gentrification, this is the looming threat. Despite the onslaught of gentrification, civic initiatives are in place to protect the city's multi-income neighbourhoods, and there are some indications things will sooner get better than worse. Let's hope.
Museum and Sites:
1. Museum Island
- Mitte
-UNESCO world heritage site is an ensemble of 5 museums including the Pergamonmuseum, Neues Museum, Arte Nationalgalerie, Bode-Museum, Altes Museum
- Also on the island are Berlin Cathedral and Berlin City Palace not far away from the Nikolaiviertel
2.Unter den Linden
- Mitte
- Berlin's most famous avenue with German Historical Museum, Brandenburg Gate, Gendarmenmarkt, Staatsoper, Neue Wache, Humboldt University
3. Reichstag
- Platz der Republik 1, Tiergarten
- The German Parliament
4. Kulturforum
- Matthäikirchplatz
- Has one of Europe's most important collections of European paintings
5. Museum Berggruen
- Schlossstrasse 1, Charlottenburg
- It is across the street from the late 17th century Schloss Charlottenburg with its opulent interiors
6. Jewish Museum
- Lindenstrasse 9-14, Kreuzberg
January 2, 2019
Europe has hundreds of delightful, picture-perfect towns and cities. Tourists love em. I love em. Berlin is not one of those places. It has it's beautiful bits, but even these are usually dotted with the pockmarks of allied bombing or sit adjacent to a patch of land that used to be an apartment block. It is a place where the reminders of failed regimes and brutal ideologies can be found around every corner. They haven't tried to hide the past. It's all on show.
Berlin is also a youthful place, defiant, inclusive and endlessly creative. It's not a straightforward proposition for the casual tourist, and that is why this book - rather than a generic DK or Time Out travel guide - will serve you well.
This book offers an engrossing personal appraisal, written by a non-native who has come to love this troubled city. He gets into the psychology of the place and people. He points out that travellers can come to Berlin and feel lost, overwhelmed by the scale, they can't seem to find the equivalent of Las Ramblas or Trafalgar Square. It can sometimes feel alienating.
Pearson offers his take on the history and landmarks. He offers ideas of films to watch, other books to read. You get the culture and counter culture. You start to understand this is a city fighting corporate gentrification. It's also a place where, despite being the Nazi capital, Hitler got less than 20% of the vote back in 1933. Berlin was always a leftie place, the first industrial city to unionise.
The stories of the wall - a structure built by the communists to keep people in, not out - are often so heart-breaking they make a simple walk along the River Spree a thousand times more poignant.
I don't think I would have loved my time in Berlin quite so much without having first read this book. It does a great job of pointing you at the right things, often hidden in plain sight, and arming you with the right perspectives. (And if you still just want a quick guide covering where to eat, galleries, museums, hotels, clubs etc, a good concise selection can be found in the back pages.)
Berlin is also a youthful place, defiant, inclusive and endlessly creative. It's not a straightforward proposition for the casual tourist, and that is why this book - rather than a generic DK or Time Out travel guide - will serve you well.
This book offers an engrossing personal appraisal, written by a non-native who has come to love this troubled city. He gets into the psychology of the place and people. He points out that travellers can come to Berlin and feel lost, overwhelmed by the scale, they can't seem to find the equivalent of Las Ramblas or Trafalgar Square. It can sometimes feel alienating.
Pearson offers his take on the history and landmarks. He offers ideas of films to watch, other books to read. You get the culture and counter culture. You start to understand this is a city fighting corporate gentrification. It's also a place where, despite being the Nazi capital, Hitler got less than 20% of the vote back in 1933. Berlin was always a leftie place, the first industrial city to unionise.
The stories of the wall - a structure built by the communists to keep people in, not out - are often so heart-breaking they make a simple walk along the River Spree a thousand times more poignant.
I don't think I would have loved my time in Berlin quite so much without having first read this book. It does a great job of pointing you at the right things, often hidden in plain sight, and arming you with the right perspectives. (And if you still just want a quick guide covering where to eat, galleries, museums, hotels, clubs etc, a good concise selection can be found in the back pages.)
March 4, 2024
I was going to Berlin and bought this and Alone in Berlin to accompany me. When it arrived in the post, I suddenly wasn't so sure about it. It is unusually well produced, glossy and heavy, yet looks very sober too. I popped it in my bag still feeling doubtful but on the plane it proved its worth.
This is an informal selection of essays on topics of interest regarding Berlin. You get the sense that here, you have the insight of an informed insightful and well educated local. He takes you by the hand and walks you through the history, linking it back to the landscape and architecture. You hear about the Berlin Wall, escape through a kitchen window, the son of an emperor whose lover had his head chopped off but proved to be exceptionally tolerant of difference himself. You learn how spread out it is, how informal, how it is still really recovering from the atrocities of WW2 and it's subsequent schism. You get a sense of a self conscious, still conflicted people, a place where anxieties are still bubbling, even in the midst of current freedoms.
Berlin is a fascinating unique place and it was an invaluable experience to be reading this book as I walked its streetscapes. Highly recommend it - read it while you are there!
This is an informal selection of essays on topics of interest regarding Berlin. You get the sense that here, you have the insight of an informed insightful and well educated local. He takes you by the hand and walks you through the history, linking it back to the landscape and architecture. You hear about the Berlin Wall, escape through a kitchen window, the son of an emperor whose lover had his head chopped off but proved to be exceptionally tolerant of difference himself. You learn how spread out it is, how informal, how it is still really recovering from the atrocities of WW2 and it's subsequent schism. You get a sense of a self conscious, still conflicted people, a place where anxieties are still bubbling, even in the midst of current freedoms.
Berlin is a fascinating unique place and it was an invaluable experience to be reading this book as I walked its streetscapes. Highly recommend it - read it while you are there!
June 7, 2022
If not the best then for sure one of the best books about a city I have ever read. Of course, Berlin‘s past reads like a novel wherein the history makes for an exciting backdrop and its current arts and wild nightlife make for a fascinating contemporary look but what’s makes it exceptional is the writing, which is excellent history that feels thorough but is not stuffed with too much detail and has the right amount of personal conjecture mixed in with the history— and lots of art (novels and film) to make it so well rounded and a quick read.
Walking through Berlin Was disorienting and I couldn’t get a sense of the geography or history as a whole which is why I bought this book; it put everything into context so I really feel like I understand this city better now
Walking through Berlin Was disorienting and I couldn’t get a sense of the geography or history as a whole which is why I bought this book; it put everything into context so I really feel like I understand this city better now
April 5, 2021
Short and poetic though wished it was a bit more detailed
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