Abstract

A great deal of attention continues to focus on Berlin’s cultural and political landscape after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but as yet, no single volume looks at the divided city through an interdisciplinary analysis. This volume examines how the city was conceived, perceived, and represented during the four decades preceding reunification and thereby offers a unique perspective on divided Berlin’s identities. German historians, art historians, architectural historians, and literary and cultural studies scholars explore the divisions and antagonisms that defined East and West Berlin; and by tracing the little studied similarities and extensive exchanges that occurred despite the presence of the Berlin Wall, they present an indispensible study on the politics and culture of the Cold War.

Sabine Hake is the Texas Chair of German Literature and Culture in the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of six books, including Topographies of Class: Modern Architecture and Mass Society in Weimar Berlin (2008) and Screen Nazis: Cinema, History, and Democracy (2012), and has published numerous articles and edited volumes on German film and Weimar culture.

“Eschewing the primacy of political history, the authors provide a nuanced picture of a city that, in many respects, was less divided than the Cold War mindset would have us believe…This interesting volume demonstrates the many ways in which East and West Berlin were mutually influential, and how commonalities extended beyond the division.”  ·  English Historical Review

“This volume taps into the on-going fascination with Berlin but, refreshingly, broadens the historical and conceptual scope, asking us to reconsider some of the assumptions we tend to make about the relationship between East and West Berlin during the time of the city’s division…The volume is so well conceived and simply so interesting that most readers will probably want to read it in its entirety…It demonstrates what an essay collection can accomplish when it grows out of a shared discussion. The broad range of topics and the interdisciplinary perspectives presented in this book could not have been achieved by an individual author. The editors deserve praise for the volume’s coherence and consistency.”  ·  The German Quarterly

"Adopting an explicitly interdisciplinary approach, this volume ambitiously aims to offer more than just a cultural history of Cold War Berlin…[Its] mix of spatial and chronological demarcations proves insightful inasmuch as the best essays transgress and even undermine them, in effect articulating one of the editors’ stated emphases ‘on the continuities of urban culture beyond historical ruptures and spatial divides"  ·  German History

"[An] important contribution to current scholarship on Berlin in the Cold War period. Although this is an anthology, it is well conceived to focus on various aspects of Berlin culture during the years of the Cold War."  ·  Stephen Brockmann, Carnegie Mellon

Philip Broadbent is Assistant Professor in the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published on literary representations of post- 1990 Berlin and contemporary European fiction. His current book project looks at the emergence of cool aesthetics in West Germany.