A WATERSTONES BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2023
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 ONDAATJE PRIZE
'A masterful portrait of one of the world's greatest cities... A must-read' PETER FRANKOPAN
'Such a delightful read' KATJA HOYER, The Times
'Berlin may well be Europe's most enigmatic city and John Kampfner is the ideal guide.' JONATHAN FREEDLAND, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Escape Artist
'Gripping' Financial Times
No other city has had so many lives, survived so many disasters and has reinvented itself so many times. No other city is like Berlin.
Ever since John Kampfner was a young journalist in Communist East Berlin, he hasn't been able to get the city out of his mind. It is a place tortured by its past, obsessed with memories, a place where traumas are unleashed and the traumatised have gathered.
Over the past four years Kampfner has walked the length and breadth of Berlin, delving into the archives, and talking to historians and writers, architects and archaeologists. He clambers onto a fallen statue of Lenin; he rummages in boxes of early Medieval bones; he learns about the cabaret star so outrageous she was thrown out of the city.
Berlin has been a military barracks, industrial powerhouse, centre of learning, hotbed of decadence - and the laboratory for the worst experiment in horror known to man. Now a city of refuge, it is home to 180 nationalities, and more than a quarter of the population has a migrant background. Berlin never stands still. It is never satisfied. But it is now the irresistible capital to which the world is gravitating.
In Search of Berlin is an 800-year story, a dialogue between past and present; it is a new way of looking at this turbulent and beguiling city on its never-ending journey of reinvention.
No other city has had so many faces and so many disasters and has reinvented itself so many times. No other city is like Berlin.
The Berlin of the past 800 years has been both haven and hell. It is a city tortured by its history, where the traumatised gather and where traumas are unleashed. Each plague, each fire, each war, each act of destruction and self-destruction requires it to start again.
Berlin should never have become a world metropolis. Its geography and topography spell trouble: where are the great rivers and bridges? The mountains on the horizon? Instead, it started out as a swamp and all around are sweeping plains, exposed to the Siberian winds. Over the centuries, few of the great figures who have visited have had much good to say about it.
Yet now it is the destination to which the world is flocking. It has been a trading post, military barracks, industrial powerhouse, centre of science and learning, consumer paradise, hotbed of self-indulgence and promiscuity - and the laboratory for the worst experiment in horror known to man. It has now achieved global status/it is the geographical and spiritual midpoint between the rival superpowers/it is the city of refuge/it is home to 180 nationalities, and more than a quarter of the population have a migrant background. After all the episodes of disaster, redemption and reinvention, is Berlin finally at ease with itself? This is the tale of a turbulent city that in spite of itself has become a magnet for the world.
