Reading Berlin 1900
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Berlin was transformed from the courtly seat of an arriviste principality into a bustling modern city. The court of the Hohenzollerns that dominated the city in the 1880s had, by the 1910s, become just one colorful aspect of a varied and pulsating metropolis. These two books deal in differing ways with this transformation. LaForgue offers the brief eyewitness account of a French poet in the employ of the court of the 1880s. He reflects a cultured Frenchman's critical assessment of court functions and the beginnings of metropolitan life. Fritzsche (history, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) uses theories of reading as well as analysis of the varied and flourishing popular press and novels of the early 1900s to form a picture of a complex society on the eve of an epoch that would be dominated by Germany. Taken together, these two books form a fascinating picture of the evolving metropolis. Both books are well written and accessible to the serious reader. LaForgue's sensitivity as a poet and the felicity of this translation make his account especially pleasurable for general readers. Fritzsche's book is aimed at an academic audience but is well organized, clear, interesting, and reasonably jargon-free as well as being the first to take this kind of approach to dealing with Berlin. Both deserve to be in larger collections of European history or literature.?Barbara L. Walden, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., MinneapolisCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.