Description |
227 pages :22cm |
Contents |
What I Saw -- Going for a Walk -- The Jewish Quarter -- The Orient on Hirtenstrasse -- Refugees from the East -- Solomon's Temple in Berlin -- Wailing Wall -- Displaced Persons -- Nights in Dives -- With the Homeless -- The Steam Baths at Night -- Schiller Park -- The Unnamed Dead -- Traffic -- The Resurrection -- The Ride Past the Houses -- Passengers with Heavy Loads -- Some Reflections on Traffic -- Affirmation of the Triangular Railway Junction -- Berlin Under Construction -- Skyscrapers -- Architecture -- The Very Large Department Store -- "Stone Berlin" -- Bourgeoisie and Bohemians -- The Man in the Barbershop -- Richard Without a Kingdom -- The Word at Schwannecke's -- The Kurfurstendamm -- Berlin's Pleasure Industry -- The Philosophy of the Panopticum -- An Hour at the Amusement Park -- The Twelfth Berlin Six-Day Races -- The Conversion of a Sinner in Berlin's UFA Palace -- The Berlin Pleasure Industry -- An Apolitical Observer Goes to the Reichstag -- The Tour Around the Victory Column -- A Visit to the Rathenau Museum -- Election Campaign in Berlin -- An Apolitical Observer Goes to the Reichstag -- Farewell to the Dead -- Look Back in Anger -- The Auto-da-Fe of the Mind |
Summary |
"When the twenty-six-year-old Joseph Roth arrived in the war-shattered city of Berlin in 1920, he produced a series of impressionistic and political essays that would influence an entire generation of writers, including Thomas Mann and, later, the young Christopher Isherwood. Translated by Michael Hofmann and collected here for the first time in English in What I Saw, Roth's essays record the violent social and political paroxysms that threatened to undo the precarious democracy that was the Weimar Republic." |
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"Roth, who considered himself not just a reporter but also a poet who "paints portraits of an age," began his career when he traveled with the Austrian army during the First World War. A leading foreign correspondent for various Austrian and German papers, he contributed pieces from cities all over Europe throughout the 1920s and 1930s while at the same time writing novels that would bring him international acclaim. As demonstrated in What I Saw, the feuilleton or short essay form allowed Roth to "say true things on half a page" in a biting, economical style." "Against the traditional portrayal of Berlin as an entrepot of fun and transport, of government, nightlife, and literary glamour, Roth's gritty depiction chronicles the lives of the city's forgotten inhabitants: the war cripples, the Jewish immigrants from the Pale, the criminals, the bathhouse denizens, and the nameless dead who filled the morgues."--BOOK JACKET |
Notes |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
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Reprint. English translation originally published: ©2003 |
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Translation of: Joseph Roth in Berlin |
Subject |
Crime -- Germany -- Berlin -- History -- 20th century.
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SUBJECT |
Berlin (Germany) -- Intellectual life.
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008114408
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Berlin (Germany) -- Intellectual life -- 20th century.
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008114413
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Berlin (Germany) -- Social life and customs. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008114405
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Berlin (Germany) -- Social conditions. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008114412
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Berlin (Germany) -- Politics and government. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85013352
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Germany -- Politics and government -- 1918-1933. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85054639
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Genre/Form |
History.
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Author |
Bienert, Michael, 1964-
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Hofmann, Michael, 1957 August 25-
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LC no. |
2002014211 |
ISBN |
0393051676 |
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0393325822 paperback |
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