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25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Berlin Between the Wars--More than just "Cabaret", June 26, 2007
This review is from: Berlin: The Twenties (Hardcover)
This is quite an informative as well as beautifully-produced book (by Abrams; printed in the Czech Republic) primarily of photographs but with a very pereceptive textual analysis as well by Rainer Metzger. Among other things, the book contains an abundant selection (often in color) of the Expressionist artists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, George Grosz, Otto Dix and Max Pechstein. These practitioners of the "New Objectivity" certainly win the award for stark realism. A number of topics are covered: the changing face of Berlin during the period, as the city grows, modernizes and energizes with cultural effervescence; the postwar revolution that was so bloodily suppressed; Expressionism and DaDa; the film industry (Caligari; Golem; Metropolis, e.g.); and Bauhaus architecture. Much attention is devoted to dance and music; night life; theater (Max Reinhard); Josephine Baker; and experimental photography. The power of the masses is illustrated by focusing upon the growth of the media, including radio and even television. The first glimmerings of Nazi Berlin also make an appearance toward the end of the book. The author poses a most interesting query (at 369): how could Berlin which reeked with freedom, nonchalance, laissez-faire, and individual freedom transform itself to become the dour, grey and frightening Berlin of the Nazi period? The same might be asked of all of Germany. A particularly interesting question given the current resurgence of Berlin as a "world city", which ripples with artistic energy and excitement much like the 1920's.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing kaleidescope, June 24, 2007
This review is from: Berlin: The Twenties (Hardcover)
Fascintating and moving pictorial biography of the city's most turbulent period seen through the eyes of the artists of Berlin at that time. Strong on analysis, short on chronology, so if you don't know the story of the city reasonably well, buy this book in conjunction with a more conventional narrative.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Groundbreaking !!, December 24, 2007
This review is from: Berlin: The Twenties (Hardcover)
The photographs in this book are so vivid and carefully reproduced that the reader feels as though they are actually present. Providing the reader with highly detailed and carefully crafted photographs of the opulance, sophistication, culture and seeming erudition of Weimar Berlin in the 1920's, this book not only adds to an existing battery of questions but provides an entirely new level of confusion to the already, repeated questions regarding the Germans and National Socialism.....what could have possesed them to secumb to such thought controlling, inflexible, gingoistic, restrictive and Machiavelllian fear and terror?? ......the highly prized, Jewish cultural life of a people, so easily compromised no, sacrificed by a seemingly intellectual and complex society? The seeming self-destruction of the litterary and artistic fabric of what the reader will see as a complex society, (from outward appearances not too unlike that which we enjoy today), practically jumps from the pages. The sense of freeedom and creativity displayed in these photographs is eerily familiar to any New Yorker, San Franciscan, Chicagoan, Londoner, Parisian or Bostonian. Music, Art, intensly frank discussion, schools, meuseums, architecture, philosophical questioning, technological advancement and an engaging active night-life will be seen as familiar to all........leading to one over-arching question.....what happened ? Of course, such a question is nothing new, but this book will shock the reader into re-asking it.
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