Alexandra Richie

Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin


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      FAUST’S METROPOLIS

      A HISTORY OF BERLIN

      ALEXANDRA RICHIE

      

COPYRIGHT

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers in 1998

      Ebook edition published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2013

      Copyright © Alexandra Richie 1998

      Alexandra Richie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780002158961

      Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007455492

      Version: 2017-04-25

       DEDICATION

       For Władysław Bartoszewski

      CONTENTS

       COVER

       TITLE PAGE

       VIII: The Bitter Aftermath of War

       IX: The Golden Twenties

       X: The Betrayal of Weimar

       XI: Nazi Berlin – Life Before the Storm

       XII: The Second World War

       XIII: The Fall of Berlin

       XIV: The Berlin Crisis and the Cold War

       XV: Flashpoint Berlin

       XVI: East Berlin

       XVII: The Walled City – West Berlin

       XVIII: The New Capital

       KEEP READING …

       NOTES

       INDEX

       ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

       PREFACE

      From the moment I first set foot in the city as a young student I became fascinated by Berlin. Like Faust, Berlin can be said to have two spirits in the same breast; it is both a terrible and a wonderful city, a place which has created and destroyed and whose name is both acclaimed and blackened. It is not without reason that Berlin has been called everything from the ‘symbol of German destiny’ to the ‘city of the twenty-first century’. Above all, it is a place where history could not and still cannot be hidden away.

      When I first went to live there Berlin was the ultimate border city, representing nothing less than the Cold War division between the ‘Communist’ and the ‘Free’ world. It was a capital city and a strange backwater, a centre and a borderland at the same time. The revolution which erupted in 1989 and led to the destruction of the Berlin Wall made it once again the focus of world attention. As I watched the Wall being reduced to rubble I realised that the dramatic changes would raise very disturbing questions about Berlin’s role in Germany and its function as a symbol in the creation of German identity. Now more than ever it is imperative for us to be aware of the triumphs and the mistakes of its past, as the decisions made in Berlin in years to come will affect us all.

      I have tried to write a book that addresses the city’s crucial role in world events. It is not a local history, although it has elements of this, but is a history