Book description
The great cities at the turn of the century were mediated by words--newspapers, advertisements, signs, and schedules--by which the inhabitants lived, dreamed, and imagined their surroundings. In this original study of the classic text of urban modernism--the newspaper page--Peter Fritzsche analyzes how reading and writing dramatized Imperial Berlin and anticipated…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Reading Berlin 1900 as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
There are many books about the glitz and the cultural icons that we associate with Weimar Berlin. This one gives us a broader and deeper picture. Instead of concentrating on a few writers and artists, it anchors the city’s creative explosion in mass-market newspapers and their readers, turning our eyes to people in the streetcars and cafés and the stories they read about their own lives. We can read about sensational crimes just as Berliners did, and we find the prototypes of modern art in the layout and content of newspapers and in the chaos of the streets where they…
From Brian's list on understanding 20th-century Berlin.
When my students read this book they find Fritzsche’s idea of “the word city” incredibly compelling and useful for thinking about our knowledge and interpretations of the past but also for experiencing our own lives in cities. As in the books by Walkowitz and Schwartz, we wander with Fritzsche through the city as a tangible place and the city as a text, and how these shaped one other. We experience the ways newspapers saw and made the city: its voices, rhythms, fantasies, and dramas. With beautiful writing—Fritzsche is one of the most elegant and insightful of historical writers and I…
From Mark's list on the modern history of cities.
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