Berlin

The Story of a City

White-Spunner Barney

• Publisher: Pegasus Books
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781643137230
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

The intoxicating history of an extraordinary city and her people—from the medieval kings surrounding Berlin's founding to the world wars, tumult, and reunification of the twentieth century. Therehas always been a particularfervoraboutBerlin, a combination ofexcitement, anticipation, nervousness, anda feeling of the unexpected.Throughout history, it has been a city oftensions: geographical, political, religious, and artistic.In the nineteenth-century, politicaltension became acute between a city that was increasingly democratic, home toMarxandHegel, and oneof the most autocraticregimes in Europe. Artistic tension, between free thinking and liberalmovementsstarted to find themselves in directcontention with the formal official culture.Underlying all of this was the ethnic tension—between multi-racialBerlinersand thePrussians. Berlinmay have beenthe capital of Prussia but it was never a Prussian city.Then there is war.Few European cities have suffered from war asBerlin has over the centuries. It was sacked by the Hapsburg armies intheThirty Years War; bythe Austrians and the Russians in the eighteenth century; by the French, withgreat violence, in the early nineteenth century; bytheRussiansagain in1945and subsequently occupied, more benignly, by theAlliedPowersfrom 1945 until 1994.Nor can many cities boast such a diverseand controversial number of international figures: Frederick the GreatandBismarck;Hegel andMarx; Mahler, Dietrich, and Bowie. Authors Christopher Isherwood, BertoltBrecht, and Thomas Mann gave Berlin a cultural history that is asvaried as itwas groundbreaking.The story vividly told in Berlin also attempts to answerto one of the greatest enigmas of the twentieth century: How could a people ascivilized, ordered, and religious as the Germans support first aKaiserand then theNazisin inflicting such miseryon Europe? Berlin was never assupportive of the Kaiser in 1914 as the rest ofGermany; it was the revolution in Berlin in 1918 that lead to the Kaiser's abdication.Nor was Berlin initially supportiveof Hitler, being home to much of the opposition to the Nazis; althoughparadoxically Berlinsuffered more than any other German city from Hitler's travesties.In revealing the often-untold history ofBerlin, Barney White-Spunneraddresses thisquixotic question that lies at the heart of Germany's uniquely fascinating capitalcity.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• List of Maps and Illustrations
• Maps
• Notes on the Text
• Prologue
• Chapter One: 1237–1500
• Chapter Two: 1500–1640
• Chapter Three: 1640–1740
• Chapter Four: 1740–1786
• Chapter Five: 1786–1840
• Chapter Six: 1840–1871
• Chapter Seven: 1871–1918
• Chapter Eight: 1918–1933
• Chapter Nine: 1933–1945
• Chapter Ten: 1945–1961
• Chapter Eleven: 1961–1989
• Chapter Twelve: After 1989
• Photographs
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Notes
• Further Reading and Notes on Sources
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright