Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Books
Huge numbers of books have been written about Berlin. The collection
below shows a bias towards unravelling the evil mysteries of the Third Reich,
the double-dealing of the Cold War and getting to grips with the Wende. But
Berlin has also attracted dozens of specialist guides, the most useful of which
are books on its architecture, new and old. Books marked with a
Ì
are
particularly recommended.
HISTORY
GENERAL HISTORY AND PRE
THIRD
REICH
Otto Friedrich
Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the
1920s.
An engaging social history, full of tales and
anecdotes, of the city when Dada and decadence reigned.
An excellent history of Berlin's most engaging period.
Anton Gill
A Dance Between Flames.
Gill's dense but
readable account of Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s has lots
of colour, quotation and detail but leans so heavily on a
single source - The Diary of Henry Kessler - that you feel
he should be sharing the royalties. Even so, one of the best
books on the period.
Mark Girouard
Cities and People.
A well-illustrated social
and architectural history of European urban development
that contains knowledgeable entries on Berlin, particularly
the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century periods.
Alex De Jong
The Weimar Chronicle.
While not the most
comprehensive of accounts of the Weimar Republic, this is
by far the liveliest. A couple of chapters focus on Berlin, and
the topic is spiced with eyewitness memoirs and a mass of
engaging detail, particularly about the arts in the city.
Giles MacDonogh
Berlin.
The topic's thematic rather than
chronological organization can initially be a bit ba
ing -
and doesn't really work in uncovering themes from the
city's past as it intends - but there's a wealth of fascinating
anecdotes on aspects of daily life here that's ignored by
traditional histories.
Andreas Nachama et al
Jews in Berlin.
Packed with
source material of every kind, this well-illustrated book
charts the troubled history of Berlin's Jewish community
between 1244 and 2000.
Alexandra Richie
Faust's Metropolis.
A thick and thorough
general history of Berlin, beginning with the very first
settlers and ending in the 1990s. Richie debunks a number
of myths about the city - such as its supposed anti-Nazism
- but her conservatism too often intrudes on the narrative.
Ronald Taylor
Berlin and Its Culture.
Profusely illustrated
survey of the cultural movements and personalities that
constituted the artistic life of the city; especially good on
Weimar writing and cinematography.
THIRD REICH
Allied Intelligence Map of Key Buildings.
This large, detailed
map published by After The Battle is an excellent resource
for anyone searching for Nazi and prewar remains in the city.
Ì
Anonymous
A Woman in Berlin.
Remarkable war diary
kept by a female journalist who vividly describes the pathetic
lot of Berlin's vanquished in the closing days of the war, when
looting and gang rape were part of daily life. The honesty of
the topic caused such an uproar when it was first published in
1950s Germany - when society was unprepared to face its
recent trauma - that it wasn't reprinted again during the
author's lifetime; she died in 2001.
Antony Beevor
Berlin the Downfall 1945
. Berlin doesn't
actually start to fall until the middle of the topic, but once
there a synthesis of many sources provides a riveting
account of how the city's defences crumbled and its
civilians suffered, with few harrowing details spared.
Beevor was congratulated by many female victims of brutal
rapes by Soviet troops for at last telling their story as in
A Woman in Berlin
(see above).
Christabel Bielenberg
The Past is Myself.
Bielenberg,
the niece of Lord Northcliffe, married German lawyer Peter
Bielenberg in 1934 and was living with her family in Berlin
at the outbreak of the war. Her autobiography (serialized
for TV as
Christabel
) details her struggle to survive the Nazi
period and Allied raids on the city, and to save her husband,
imprisoned in Ravensbrück as a result of his friendship with
members of the Kreisau resistance group.
George Clare
Berlin Days 1946-1947.
“The most
harrowing and yet most fascinating place on earth” is how
Clare begins this account of his time spent as a British army
translator. This is Berlin at what the Germans called the
Nullpunkt
- the zero point - when the city, its economy,
buildings and society began to rebuild almost from scratch.
Packed with characters and observation, it's a captivating
- if at times depressing - read.
D. Fisher and A. Read
The Fall of Berlin.
Superb and
essential account of the city's
Götterdämmerung
, carefully
researched with a mass of anecdotal material you won't
find elsewhere.
