In the political history of the past century, no city has played a more prominent-though often disastrous-role than Berlin. At the same time, Berlin has also been a dynamic center of artistic and intellectual innovation. If Paris was the "Capital of the Nineteenth Century," Berlin was to become the signature city for the next hundred years. Once a symbol of modernity, in the Thirties it became associated with injustice and the abuse of power. After 1945, it became the iconic City of the Cold War. Since the fall of the Wall, Berlin has again come to represent humanity's aspirations for a new beginning, tempered by caution deriving from the traumas of the recent past. David Clay Large's definitive history of Berlin is framed by the two German unifications of 1871 and 1990. Between these two events several themes run like a thread through the city's history: a persistent inferiority complex; a distrust among many ordinary Germans, and the national leadership of the "unloved city's" electric atmosphere, fast tempo, and tradition of unruliness; its status as a magnet for immigrants, artists, intellectuals, and the young; the opening up of social, economic, and ethnic divisions as sharp as the one created by the Wall. ### About the Author **David Clay Large** , Professor of History at Montana State University, is a specialist in modern German history. He is the author of *Where Ghosts Walked, Germans to the Front, Between Two Fires* , and *Berlin*. He lives in Bozeman, Montana, and San Francisco, California.
BERLIN
Also by David Clay Large
BERLIN
David Clay Large
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Copyright © 2000 by David Clay Large
Published by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews, for information address Basic Books, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810.
Illustrations appear by permission of Archiv fur Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin; Archive Photos, New York; Bildarchiv preussicher Kulturbesitz, Berlin; Bundesarchiv, Berlin; Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif.; Landesbildstelle, Berlin; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, Berlin; and Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN-10: 0-465-02632-X ISBN-13: 978-0-465-02632-6
ebook ISBN: 9780465010127
ILLUSTRATIONS
(AKG = Archiv Für Kunst und Geschichte; BPK = Bilderarchiv preussicher Kulturbesitz; LBS = Landesbiltstelle; Ullstein = Ullstein Bilderdienst)
Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral) and Lustgarten, 1900 (LBS)
Kaiser Wilhelm I enters the Pariser Platz during the victory celebration in Berlin on June 16, 1871 (BPK)
Siegessäule, 1930 (LBS)
Reichstag, 1896 (LBS)
Bismarck with Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1888 (BPK)
Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church), circa 1930 (LBS)
Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDaWe), 1910 (LBS)
Siegesallee, circa 1903 (LBS)
Käthe Kollwitz, circa 1905 (AKG)
Preparations for the Berlin Secession exhibition in 1904 (Bundesarchiv)
Ludwig Meidner,
Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse, circa 1900 (LBS)
Hotel Adlon, 1914 (LBS)
Magnus Hirschfeld, founder of the Institute for Sexual Research (LBS)
Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, 1909 (Ullstein)
Kaiser Wilhelm II proclaims war from a balcony of the Royal Palace, August 1, 1914 (BPK)
Berliners admire a model trench in a local park, 1915 (BPK)
Hungry Berliners carve up a horse cadaver, 1918 (BPK)
Elephants from the Berlin Zoo pressed into service during World War I (Ullstein)
Claire Waldoff, Berlin’s favorite cabaret artist (LBS)
The “Iron Hindenburg” statue on the Königsplatz (LBS)
Soldiers returning from the front march through the Brandenburg Gate, December 1918 (BPK)
Revolutionaries man a machine gun atop the Brandenburg Gate, January 1919 (LBS)
An armored truck belonging to the Kapp forces, March 1920 (BPK)
Gustav Böss, governing mayor of Berlin, 1921–1930 (LBS)
Walther Rathenau in 1921, a year before his assassination (LBS)
Money being transported to a Berlin bank during the Great Inflation, 1923 (BPK)
German children demonstrating that it takes 100,000 marks to buy one U.S. dollar in early 1923 (Author collection)
Jews in Berlin’s Scheunenviertel, 1929 (LBS)
Romanisches Café, 1925 (LBS)
Bertolt Brecht, circa 1925 (LBS)
A scene from
Fritz Lang, photographed in 1945 (AKG)
A scene from Lang’s
The First International Dada Fair, Berlin, 1920 (BPK)
The Haller Review at Berlin’s Admiralspalast (BPK)
Kempinski Haus Vaterland on the Potsdamer Platz (AKG)
Erich Mendelsohn’s “Einstein Tower,” Potsdam, 1924 (LBS)
Elevated train at Gitschiner Strasse, 1930 (BPK)
Josephine Baker in her famous “banana skirt” (AKG)
Kurt Tucholsky (AKG)
George Grosz,
Alfred Döblin (LBS)
Joseph Goebbels, Berlin’s
W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, and Stephen Spender, 1930 (National Portrait Gallery, London)
Marlene Dietrich as Lola Lola in
Franz von Papen at a governmental ceremony, August 1932 (BPK)
An unemployed man sifts through garbage in search of food, 1930 (BPK)
Reichstag president Hermann Göring and two Nazi parliamentary deputies, 1932 (BPK)
Nazi torchlight parade, January 30, 1933 (LBS)
The Reichstag on fire, February 27, 1933 (LBS)
Hitler with President Hindenburg at the “Day of Potsdam,” March 21, 1933 (AKG)
Nazi-orchestrated book-burning on Berlin’s Opernplatz, May 10, 1933 (AKG)
