Amazon.com Review
Giles MacDonogh intends to a fill a void in the historical documentation of the former capital city of the German empire and the eventual capital of unified Germany. Instead of presenting yet another scholarly account of the city's past, he instead explores the spirit of the city, delving into themes that convey "something of the colour of the great city and the variety of life that has been lived there in the past seven and a half centuries." His defiance of traditional historical narrative may be well intended, but it runs the risk of creating a book that does not contribute to
any historical dialogue whatsoever.
The seven broadly titled chapters of Berlin ("Ich bin ein Berliner," "Berlin Itineraries," "Berlin Life," etc.) present a thematically arranged, telegraphic litany of people, places, and events in Berlin's history, interspersed frequently with personal anecdotes, that never quite develops any particular issue at length or leads to any compelling observations about Berlin's historical past or its future. "It is hard to think of a city which has suffered so much," he concludes. "Harder still to think of another which has proved so clearly that it is inextinguishable." Yet, of the city's many characteristics, suffering and survivalism are not among those which predominate MacDonogh's analysis. For such an account, one best await the English translation of Wolgang Ribbe's Berlin--Geschichte, mentioned by MacDonogh himself in his preface as a logical starting point for a more comprehensive study of the former and future German capital. --Bertina Loeffler
From Publishers Weekly
Journalist and historian MacDonogh has written most extensively about food and drink, particularly in the German-speaking lands. So while there's plenty of history here, MacDonogh is the sort of writer who's fully aware that it's not just fine words that keep one alive. MacDonogh's history is woven into a broadly thematic arrangement that can make it spotty, redundant and hard to piece together. For example, in a section about various revolutions in Berlin in which he notes that "[b]y 1918 the middle classes had achieved their political aims," he sheds little light on the Second Reich's unfair electoral system. Said section belongs in a chapter titled "Belial," which also deals with the battle of Berlin and the 1953 uprising. Other chapters are equally amorphous agglomerations: "City of Order," for example, deals with all facets of regulation whether it be the U-Bahn or the Deutsche Christen movement of the 1930s. But if the various chapters lack an overreaching coherence ("Berlin Itineraries," in particular, almost requires the presence of the city itself to realize any narrative logic), there is still a great deal of fascinating information, mostly about aspects of popular or daily life ignored by more traditional histories. MacDonogh is particularly good on certain recurring themes and people: the history of beer; the satirist Adolf Glassbrenner (aka Brennglas); painter Heinrich Zille, whose subject was the Berlin worker; and police commissioner Wilhelm Stieber. There are also extensive references to Adam von Trott zu Solz (a reflection of his biography of the anti-Nazi conspirator, A Good German) and to E.T.A. Hoffmann that might hopefully indicate a forthcoming biography of that great writer.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
