Walking in Berlin
Franz Hessel
In Walking in Berlin, Franz Hessel captures the rhythm of Weimar-era Berlin, recording the seismic shifts in German culture. Nearly all of the essays take the form of a walk or outing, focusing on either a theme or part of the city, and many end at a theater, cinema, or club. Hessel deftly weaves the past with the present, walking through the city’s history as well as its neighborhoods. Even today, his walks in the city, from the Alexanderplatz to Kreuzberg, can guide would-be flaneurs.
Highlights
The Berliners, especially the better ones, which I don't designate by level of education but rather by degree of authenticity, are somewhat wary of anything that they immediately like. And so, as an audience they lack the naiveté of the pure pleasure-seekers.
Let us believe ourselves capable of it, let us learn a bit of idleness and indulgence, and look at the thing that is Berlin, in its combination and chaos of luxury and meanness, solidity and spuriousness, peculiarity and respectability, until we become fond of it and find it beautiful, until it is beautiful.