Berlin through English Eyes

Berlin through English Eyes charts how English-speaking writers encountered the city of Berlin and how they wrote about it in their published and private works. This website is aimed at researchers, students, and readers of English literature, as well as at Berlin’s residents and visitors who want to know more about the city’s cosmopolitan heritage. 

The site maps the interaction between literature and urban space, reconstructing a network of places, authors, and texts. A map of 1931 Berlin shows places that had a special significance for English-speaking writers. These range from private homes to cultural institutions, cafés, hotels, cinemas, and cabarets. Concise essays on individual writers provide information on their connections to the city and to other writers. All content is written by academic specialists.

In this initial phase, the site concentrates on the period between the turn of the twentieth century and the onset on the Nazi regime. These were particularly meaningful years in the city’s history. After the Franco-Prussian war, Berlin rapidly transformed itself into a world city, a process that was marked by an exponential growth in population, infrastructure, and cultural ambition. The First World War, and the revolutionary chaos and inflation that followed it, placed the city under considerable strain. But during the Weimar Republic, Berlin rose to international prominence again: it gained a reputation as a progressive and often transgressive place, a rival to London and Paris in terms of cosmopolitan culture. 

Berlin was noted for the arts, notably cinema, and its tolerant attitude to LGBTQ+ communities; but it was also rife with urban poverty and political tensions. The last years of the Weimar Republic were of course also overshadowed by the rise of Nazi totalitarianism. As we mark the centenary of the roaring or, as they are called in German, ‘golden’ 1920s, it seems timely to look back on this complex period.

Christopher Isherwood’s iconic portrait of Berlin has been extensively enjoyed and scrutinised. The very prominence of his Berlin, however, has drowned the voices of many other English writers who visited the city during its international art boom in the early twentieth century. The long list included familiar and less familiar writers, ranging from the decadent poet Arthur Symons to the aristocratic diarist Evelyn Blücher, from the pacifist H.G. Wells to the Nazi-leaning Wyndham Lewis, from Rupert Brooke and T. E. Hulme to Virginia and Leonard Woolf, from psychoanalytic pioneer Alix Strachey to film enthusiasts Bryher and Kenneth Macpherson. Berlin left an important mark on all of these writers.