Customer Reviews

Berlin: The Twenties

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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.

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.

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.

If I were a time traveler it would be fascinating to join the four million inhabitants of Berlin in the 1920s!!!
It was a time when the bleak defeat of World War I, runaway inflation and political instability still ruled Berlin. It was also a time when there were many great advances made in art, architecture, music, science and culture.
A person could walk the Berlin streets alongside the likes of Albert Einstein and other great scientists. Great artists such as Otto Dix, George Grosch and many others were at the top of their games! Artistic movements such as Dadism, Expressionism, Cubism and New Objectivism in photography were flourishing. Bertolt Brecht was staging his remarkable plays while Kurt Weill was busy with the music for "The Threepenny Opera." You might be fortunate enough to spend time with writers of such stature as Thomas Mann and Eric Maria Remarque the author of the runaway bestseller "All's Quiet on the Western Front." Berlin had hundreds of papers and periodicals covering the broad politcal spectrum available in a democratic society. Few realized how short lived would be the fragile Weimar government.
Berlin was a grey city transformed by electricity, modern transportation systems and the rise of mass entertainment. The Bauhaus school of architecture whose leader was Walter Gropius made Berlin a city on the architectural map of the world's most modern cities. Berlin was noted for its clothing fashion while women went to work outside the home in large numbers. The population was well fed and the economy was recovering from inflation.
Music in the German capital was led by such men as Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and music hall and cabaret culture. German movies directed by such greats as Joseph Von Sternberg, Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, Murnau and Fritz Lang the director of the futuristic utopian film "Metropolis" were flickering on Berlin movie screens.
Politics was a mess as the frail Weimar government failed. Street warfare was waged between brown shirted Nazis and the red brigades of the communists. Hitler took total power in 1933 destroying German Jewry and the freedom of expression which had been a given in Berlin's heady 1920s.
The book has a large biographical section listing the names of prominent Berliners of the era.
Viennese author Metzger has written an engaging text and the pictures (many in color) and illustrations make this book a pure joy to read!

This book is not only aesthetically pleasing but also full of interesting information. It is not one of those coffee table books with numerous comely pictures but do not provide any contents. The book well summarizes and elucidites the cultural milieu of the turbulent but arguably most vibrant period in the modern German history. When fin de siècle Paris represented the beauty of Materialism and diametrically opposite sordid side of the modernity, and fin de siècle Vienna that so illuminatingly coveyed the disintegration and decay of repressive "old" psyche and looming "modern" psyche, what Berlin in 20s was able to provide is extreme creativity and energy that gave birth two modern culture( or post-modernity ) in the last half of the 20th century. Then , how could this aberration be possible from Wilhelimian Bürgertum? The book covers virtually every cultural aspects in Berlin in 20s. Expressionism,Neue Sachlichkeit(New Objectivity ), Movies ( Lang and Murnau) theather (Brecht,Piscator, and Reinhard), and of course, literature. However, the book also doesn't overlook political and social aspects , so first chapters covers the immediate upheaval of breif revolutionary period and consequences.One of the most interesting pictures is the one depicted the march of war wounds. the verisimilitude of Remarque's "the Roadback" and the picture is simply striking.

I got this book based on the glowing reviews, but was quite disappointed by this rather odd book that seems to aim for an impressionistic feel yet ends up feeling unfocused and difficult to follow.

To begin, the photos often don't match up with the text at all. So, for instance, you might suddenly see a number of pictures of Marlene Dietrich (pages 310,311, 323) despite the fact that the only time Marlene gets mentioned is on page 155, and that only in a single sentence which talks about how Hollaender composed a song for her. This happens over and over again. The book talks about the importance of journalism in Berlin, so throws up many pictures of journalists and newspaper kiosks without talking about virtually any of them. A critic (Siegfried Kracauer) decries the joyless world of people working nine-to-five, and so we get 11 pages of photos of people typing and filing (leaving the reader, I presume, to make the assumption that typing is a joyless occupation).

What's also problematic about this book is that it assumes the reader is an expert on the history of Berlin and Germany since it constantly writes about how artists reacted to certain historical events with little explanation of those events. I'm fairly well read in German history, yet I found myself puzzled a number of times trying to follow a thread of thought. It's as if the context was missing.

Finally, the language in this book feels archaic and stilted. This book was translated from German, which problematizes what was probably already a fairly abstract book. The wording is often painfully prosaic. So, for instance, this sentence, "The caesura that defined the Twenties is markedly present in the Bauhaus's concept and execution: up until 1923 the school remained sympathetic to the rapturous ideas of those who wanted to change the world; it was committed to handcrafts, and upheld the esoteric philosophy of the Swiss teacher Johannes Itten, who taught the preliminary course and initiated the novices in the harmony of colour and composition." We, of course, get no further explanation of Johannes Itten, the authors assuming that their readers are familiar with his "esoteric philosophy."

Or a few pages later we get this sentence: "Metropolis really came along two years too late, for it spoke the language of Expressionism; the overwrought plot, the exalted succession of scenes, always over-stressed regardless of pace, the at times unbearable sentimentality of relationships, whether male-female or father-son, and above all the eschatological mood in which no disaster or redemptive figures is omitted, and which calls for the rebirth of civilization in a classless harmony." The book is replete with such language, making it feel like some Ph.D. thesis from the 60s.

This book could have been much better. As it is, it's a hard slog that has little payoff in the end.

This is an excellent book! Graphics are well-chosen, contents and flow of information is well-organized, entertaining, and informative. It's a nice book to own and enjoy... Also, makes a great gift!

The photos in here are gorgeous, but there is very little text. And what there is comes off as half-baked.