Berlin : life and death in the city at the center of the world

Berlin Life and death in the city at the center of the world

Sinclair McKay

Book - 2022

"Sinclair McKay's portrait of Berlin from 1919 forward explores the city's broad human history, from the end of the Great War to the Blockade, rise of the Wall, and beyond. Sinclair McKay's Berlin begins by taking readers back to 1919 when the city emerged from the shadows of the Great War to become an extraordinary by-word for modernity-in art, cinema, architecture, industry, science, and politics. He traces the city's history through the rise of Hitler and the Battle for Berlin which ended in the final conquest of the city in 1945. It was a key moment in modern world history, but beyond the global repercussions lay thousands of individual stories of agony. From the countless women who endured nightmare ordeals at ...the hands of the Soviet soldiers to the teenage boys fitted with steel helmets too big for their heads and guns too big for their hands, McKay thrusts readers into the human cataclysm that tore down the modernity of the streets and reduced what was once the most sophisticated city on earth to ruins. Amid the destruction, a collective instinct was also at work-a determination to restore not just the rhythms of urban life, but also its fierce creativity. In Berlin today, there is a growing and urgent recognition that the testimonies of the ordinary citizens from 1919 forward should be given more prominence. That the housewives, office clerks, factory workers, and exuberant teenagers who witnessed these years of terrifying-and for some, initially exhilarating-transformation should be heard. Today, the exciting, youthful Berlin we see is patterned with echoes that lean back into that terrible vortex. In this new history of Berlin, Sinclair McKay erases the lines between the generations of Berliners, making their voices heard again to create a compelling, living portrait of life in this city that lay at the center of the world"--

Saved in:
Place a Hold Save to List Email this

2nd Floor Show me where

943.155/McKay
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor 943.155/McKay Checked In
Subjects
Berlin (Germany) > History > 20th century.
Published
New York : St. Martin's Press 2022.
Language
English
Main Author
Sinclair McKay (author)
Edition
First U.S. edition
Physical Description
xxiv, 437 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (black and white), maps ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9781250277503
  • List of Illustrations
  • Picture Credits
  • Maps
  • Preface; 'Every city has history, but Berlin has too much!'
  • Part 1. Dissolution
  • 1. The Dwellers in the Dark
  • 2. The Sacrificial Children
  • 3. The Revolutionary Agony
  • 4. Spilled Blood and Exultation
  • 5. The Road That Led into Darkness
  • 6. The Projection of Dreams
  • 7. The Uranium Club
  • 8. The Prophecy of Flesh
  • 9. The Ruins of Palaces
  • Part 2. Necropolis
  • 10. Suspended in Twilight
  • 11. The Screaming Sky
  • 12. The Tears of All Mothers
  • 13. Streets of Blood
  • 14. Oblivion
  • 15. 'The shadows on our souls'
  • Part 3. Possession
  • 16. Complicity
  • 17. 'Where was home?'
  • 18. The Islanders
  • 19. 'The crowd started howling'
  • 20. The Widening Chasm
  • 21. There is a World Elsewhere
  • Afterword
  • Acknowledgements
  • Selected Bibliography
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Booklist Review

Rather than focus on grand strategies and movements of enormous armies, McKay zeroes in, as he did with his coverage of the firebombing of Dresden (The Fire and the Darkness, 2020), on war's impact on citizens and neighborhoods, this time in Germany's capital, Berlin. McKay leads with the economic and political upheavals that descended on Berlin after WWI's armistice and the negative consequences of the Versailles treaty. A brief period of cultural flowering during the Weimar era gave way to political divisions as Communists and Fascists struggled to dominate government. Deepening anti-Semitism pitted neighbors against one another in the runup to Kristallnacht, with Jews who had assumed they were solidly German learning otherwise. Students of film history will revel in McKay's account of Berlin's innovative filmmakers. Berliners seized on moviegoing to escape oppressive realities both before and during WWII--Gone with the Wind became a favorite. Drawing on memoirs and other records of Berliners' experiences, McKay makes vivid the physical, emotional, and spiritual devastations meted out indiscriminately to all by daily threats of aerial bombings. The termination of WWII divided the city and subjected every Berliner to Cold War challenges. This is a must-read chronicle of a city central to twentieth-century history.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Journalist McKay (The Secret Life of Bletchley Park) delivers an anecdotally rich if somewhat lopsided history of Berlin from the end of WWI to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He devotes an inordinate amount of space to the fall of the Third Reich, detailing the horrific mass rapes of German women by Red Army troops and the "epidemic of suicide" among Berliners fearful of the Soviet takeover. By comparison, McKay races through the intellectually and culturally vibrant years of the Weimar Republic and the nearly three decades between the construction of the Berlin Wall and its tearing down. Though he provides an insightful account of the 1947--1948 Soviet blockade of West Berlin and the Anglo-American airlift, and unearths intriguing yet lesser-known aspects of the city's history, including the cutting-edge atomic research by Jewish scientists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in the 1920s and 1930s, he also overlooks some major themes, including the Wirtschaftswunder ("economic miracle") of rapid reconstruction and growth in the first two decades after WWII. Despite the omissions and pacing issues, however, McKay's sparkling prose and expert mining of archival material results in a memorable study of a city that has "alternately seduced and haunted the international imagination." (Aug.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Berlin is outstanding among cities for its unique industrial, intellectual, scientific and artistic vigor. Journalist McKay (The Fire and the Darkness: The Bombing of Dresden) traces the spirit and history of Berlin from the end of World War I through the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The city's novel culture is illustrated through Berlin luminaries like Albert Einstein, film director William Wyler, actress Hildegarde Knef, and artist George Grosz. The lives of everyday Berliners, especially during World War II, are also explored through memoirs and diaries. The city's contradictory mix of tradition, avant-garde, rich, poor, obedient, anarchy, history, and modernity thrives, despite being at the heart of global geopolitics for most of the 20th century. The Nazis caused near destruction of the city by 1945, and the Soviets literally split it with a wall. But when it was torn down 44 years later, Berlin's spirit as a whole was triumphant. VERDICT Readers with an interest in the life of cities, 20th-century European history, World War II, and the Cold War will appreciate McKay's well-researched book.--Laurie Unger Skinner

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A 20th-century history of a major European city that has "alternately seduced and haunted the international imagination." For most of the 1900s, writes Telegraph features writer McKay, "Berlin stood at the center of a convulsing world." It was known for artistic and scientific innovation but also for flaming pyres of books. It features abundant culture, beautiful parks, and handsome streets, but it was also the center of fascism. The author begins in 1919, noting the speed with which Berliners cycled through stages of postwar deprivation, disorder, and extremism. Even while hyperinflation crippled the economy, there was a flowering of creativity in literature, cinema, and architecture. Velocity, writes the author, is a defining trait of Berlin. The Nazis replaced anarchy with violent repression, and for years, it seemed like Berlin would become an imperial capital. However, by 1945, large parts of the city were rubble. McKay focuses intensely on this period; more than half the book chronicles the collapse of the Nazi regime and the arrival of the Russians. Unfortunately, this brutal period has already been analyzed countless times, as shown by the book's extensive bibliography, and the author has little new to add. Then the city became a Cold War front line, especially after the construction of the Berlin Wall. At this point, McKay's narrative dwindles away. The destruction of the wall in 1989--a crucial moment in the city's story--receives only a page. The author fails to explain Berlin's 30-year evolution from isolation and stagnation to economic and cultural powerhouse, and he offers no examination of the impact of unification. Showing how the mosaic of the past informs the present should be a crucial target for a historical writer. Berlin is a city of layers and contradictions, but McKay misses it. For a more gratifying portrait, turn to Rory MacLean's Berlin: Portrait of a City Through the Centuries or Barney White-Spunner's Berlin: The Story of a City. A largely dissatisfying history of one of the world's great cities. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Similar Items