Berlin: Life and Death in the City at the Center of the World
About This Novel
Throughout the 20th century, Berlin remained at the center of history. This is a charming city with neat boulevards, bright waters and forests, as well as fashionable residential buildings and futuristic department stores; there are beautiful palaces and stately and elegant State Opera Houses, as well as technologically advanced Siemens and Osram. Here, movies have officially transformed from fancy carnival tricks into gorgeous art; scientific superstars such as Einstein and Heisenberg opened the mysterious door of quantum mechanics and promoted the rapid development of nuclear physics. Yet it is also a city of violence, death and crime. The First World War brought disease, violence and successive revolutions. Street fights and smashed shops were commonplace, and lower-class citizens hid in large, dark slums. After a brief period of prosperity, the economy declined sharply, social unrest and crime surged, followed by the rise of the Nazis to power, the madness of genocide and the raging fire of World War II. After 1945, under the occupation of the Allied forces, Berlin, which was almost in ruins, experienced the collapse of living order, economic re-boost, ideological conflict and final reunification. To this day, parts of the Berlin Wall, a symbol of oppression and resistance, still stand, recording that crazy history. This book focuses on the lives and inner world of ordinary Berliners during and before World War II: a little boy who witnessed his Jewish neighbors being kidnapped one after another, teenagers who were sent to the battlefield, rebellious female students, concentration camp prisoners who escaped death, actresses who successfully escaped, office workers who sought their own way but still fell into the tiger's mouth, and even the little hippopotamus "Konouschka" who survived in the zoo. Through a large number of archival materials, paintings, films and photography, this book provides a panoramic view of Berlin's prosperity, turmoil, destruction and rebirth in the 20th century, and considers how evil, oppression and freedom penetrated the lives of civilians. Berlin has gone through many vicissitudes, but remains young, open, rebellious and full of vitality. This may be its eternal charm.
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