Walking in Berlin: a flaneur in the capital
Author: Hessel, Franz
ISBN: 9781925321128
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Year first published: 05 Dec 2016
Pages: 240
Format: Hardback
A timeless guide to one of the world's greatest cities.
Franz Hessel was an observer par excellence of the increasingly hectic metropolis that was Berlin in the late 1920s. In Walking in Berlin, originally published in Germany in 1929, he captures the rhythm of Weimar-era Berlin, recording evidence of the seismic shifts shaking German culture at the time.
Nearly all of the pieces take the form of a walk or outing, focusing either on a theme or part of the city, and many end at a theatre, cinema, or club. Hessel effortlessly weaves historical information into his observations, displaying his extensive knowledge of the city. Today, many years after the Nazi era and the postwar reconstruction that followed, the areas he visited are all still prominent and interesting. From the Alexanderplatz to Kreuzberg, his record of them has become priceless. Superbly written, and as fresh today as when it first appeared, this is a book to be savoured.
'An absolutely epic book, a walking remembrance.'
-Walter Benjamin
'This is a lively translation of Franz Hessel's literary peregrinations through Weimar Berlin, as he takes in the historically saturated sights and sounds of the most self-consciously modern of the early twentieth-century metropolises, from its boulevards, parks, cafes, and courtyards to its department stores, theaters, dance halls, and slaughterhouses.'
-Howard Eiland, Literature Section, MIT; cotranslator of The Arcades Project
'Hessel describes the small joys and ephemeral pleasures of big-city life in the age of commodity display. The Berlin that comes alive on these pages was destroyed in the last world war, which took as its victims both Hessel and his comrade in flanerie, Walter Benjamin. Hence the poignancy of this beautifully written book. Today we know the fragility of urban dreamworlds, drawn into the orbit of fashion's temporality. The urban pleasures captured here come to us with a sense of foreboding.'
-Susan Buck-Morss, Distinguished Professor, CUNY Graduate Center
ISBN: 9781925321128
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Year first published: 05 Dec 2016
Pages: 240
Format: Hardback
A timeless guide to one of the world's greatest cities.
Franz Hessel was an observer par excellence of the increasingly hectic metropolis that was Berlin in the late 1920s. In Walking in Berlin, originally published in Germany in 1929, he captures the rhythm of Weimar-era Berlin, recording evidence of the seismic shifts shaking German culture at the time.
Nearly all of the pieces take the form of a walk or outing, focusing either on a theme or part of the city, and many end at a theatre, cinema, or club. Hessel effortlessly weaves historical information into his observations, displaying his extensive knowledge of the city. Today, many years after the Nazi era and the postwar reconstruction that followed, the areas he visited are all still prominent and interesting. From the Alexanderplatz to Kreuzberg, his record of them has become priceless. Superbly written, and as fresh today as when it first appeared, this is a book to be savoured.
'An absolutely epic book, a walking remembrance.'
-Walter Benjamin
'This is a lively translation of Franz Hessel's literary peregrinations through Weimar Berlin, as he takes in the historically saturated sights and sounds of the most self-consciously modern of the early twentieth-century metropolises, from its boulevards, parks, cafes, and courtyards to its department stores, theaters, dance halls, and slaughterhouses.'
-Howard Eiland, Literature Section, MIT; cotranslator of The Arcades Project
'Hessel describes the small joys and ephemeral pleasures of big-city life in the age of commodity display. The Berlin that comes alive on these pages was destroyed in the last world war, which took as its victims both Hessel and his comrade in flanerie, Walter Benjamin. Hence the poignancy of this beautifully written book. Today we know the fragility of urban dreamworlds, drawn into the orbit of fashion's temporality. The urban pleasures captured here come to us with a sense of foreboding.'
-Susan Buck-Morss, Distinguished Professor, CUNY Graduate Center
