Constructing Imperial Berlin: Photography and the Metropolis

(Paperback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

This is the first book to critically assess, contextualize, and frame urban and architectural photographs of Berlin's crucial Imperial years between 1871 and 1918. Imperial Berlin emerges as a modern metropolis, only half-heartedly inhibited by urban preservationist concerns and rather more akin to North American cities in their bold industrialization and competing urban expansions than to European counterparts.

Reviews

"A late starter among European capitals, Imperial Berlin was eager to be recognized as a Weltstadt (World City). Miriam Paeslack has carefully analyzed a trove of rarely seen images that perfectly document the citys feverish development at the end of the nineteenth century and the parallel evolution of its self-conscious imagery. Taken together, the photographs present a compelling psychogram of the city on its way to becoming the 'Capital of the Twentieth Century'the place where the dramatic tides of modernity and its traumatic conflicts would leave their most visible scars."Dietrich Neumann, Brown University

"Miriam Paeslack has written a compelling account of the multifarious ways in which photographers mediated in the construction of Berlins urban imaginary. She brilliantly demonstrates photographys potency as Berlin contended with modernity by simultaneously promoting progress and inventing the past."Nancy Stieber, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Author Bio

Miriam Paeslack is associate professor of modern and contemporary visual culture and arts management at the University at Buffalo. She is author of Berlin im 19. Jahrhundert: Frhe Photographien 18501914, coauthor of Johanna Diehl Displace, and editor of Ineffably Urban: Imaging Buffalo.