“Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin”, by Alexandra Richie

1168 pages, Carroll & Graf Publishers, ISBN-13: 978-0786706815

Before reviewing this book I have a statement for the previous owner: you filthy, inhuman, grotesque reprobate. I bought this book for a mere $5 from 2^nd & Charles, and I still feel I overpaid because of all of the damage you’d done to it: to underline as often and haphazardly as you did is to defile a fine book; but to dog-ear the hell out of it to the point of disfiguring it is to desecrate knowledge itself. Your disrespect and disregard for this book makes you worse than the offal found at the bottom of the worst toilet in Calcutta.

Okay, with that out of my system…

Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin by Alexandra Richie is that rare thing: a monumental history on a huge subject that is also accessible to a mass audience. “Crude” was how Goethe described the city of Berlin in 1778, while Stendhal wondered why anyone would construct a city in such a desolate place, but even worse was when it was named the capital of the new nation in 1871 and other Germans grumbled that Berlin was too Prussian, too militaristic, too Protestant and, perhaps most damning of all, too new. Lacking the shine of Paris or the glory of Rome, Berlin nonetheless has been at the center of European history no less than its more alluring cousins, although more often than not for less glamorous reasons. Although remembered more for Bismarck and Hitler (the ghosts of whom still hover over the city), Berlin was also the home of the Enlightenment in Germany and for a creative art scene in the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries, until such pursuits were stamped out by National Socialism. This is an engrossing read, history on a sweeping scale, but while reading I couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that this book is not so much a history of the city of Berlin as a history of Germany from a Berliner’s (or Berlinerin’s) perspective – not that this is a bad thing as any history of Berlin needs must be a history of Germany, as well.

Richie, a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, is a descendent of the von Moltke family, which has been a major protagonist in Germany’s and the city’s history. Critical to understanding Berlin is the municipality’s conception of itself as the City of German Destiny, a conception that has perhaps done more damage to the metropolis than any foreign occupying army. Equally critical for modern Berlin has been the way German unification was achieved, through “blood and iron” in Bismarck’s memorable phrase, rather than through any nobler, less violent ideals. All-too-appropriate epigraphs from Faust by Goethe open each chapter, and Richie dwells at length on the many, trials, tribulations and triumphs of this city throughout its long and contested history: it’s founding in 1163 by Albert the Bear; it’s destruction during the Thirty Years’ War (and the reason so many early documents were destroyed); its creation as the capital of the Kingdom of Prussia in 1701; its first-time (but not last) as the focus of world attention during the Seven Years’ War; the spiraling and out-of-control expansion during the 18^th Century’s Industrial Revolution; its newfound role as the capital of Imperial Germany in 1871; its eruption during the fall of the Empire in 1918; its role as the capital of the (sadly) failed Weimar Republic; the focus if German Expressionism, architecture, cinema, theater; the capital of the demonic Third Reich; its flattening during the second World War; its symbol as the frontline between Western Democracy and Eastern Tyranny with the building of the Berlin Wall; its symbol as the rebirth of Europe with the falling of the wall…but all this is merely part of a sweeping canvas that succinctly covers several centuries of changing politics, economics and social conditions, from absolutism to romanticism; from nationalism to socialism and, tragically, National Socialism. Richie weaves a colorful tapestry and, in the process, adroitly separates fact from fiction, myth from history.

Richie’s overall theme that Berlin has been the engine that has driven Germany for the past several centuries is, I believe, well substantiated. The story of a backwater town in the small Electorate of Brandenburg emerging suddenly in the 19^th Century as the center of the German universe is extremely well documented. From the perspective of the serious German history student this book is a good summary and the footnotes lead to worthy sources. From the reader’s perspective it is a book that you have trouble putting down. I even found myself looking forward to returning home from work each night to begin reading the next chapter, each one better than the one before. I was also gratified that Richie, a Canadian by birth who has lived can Europe for several decades now, was not a bleeding heart moral equivocator: she describes the eveils of Nazism, but also the evils of Communism, as well, and isn’t afraid to call out the hypocrisies and shortcomings of those on the left all over the world who made their peace with this monstrous system. Historians should take note: THIS is the way to reach a mass audience.