”The true greatness of a city is measured by how willing it is to treat all people who live in it as citizens without exception and to let them partake in the life in its streets, institutions and history books.”
This idea has been the great chronicler Hans Ostwald´s leading - and still valid - conception for his biggest project: The Metropolitan Documents, a publication series he started in 1904 and that encompassed 50 volumes by 1908, each issue being dedicated to a certain aspect of city life. Never before had there been such a large-scale attempt to capture the essence of a metropolis in all its facets.
The texts show a cosmopolitan city in the making: mundane clubs, department stores, sporting events, along with prostitution, crime and excessive nightlife. Ostwald sent fellow reporters and writers to every corner of the city to undertake "expeditions to the nearest vicinity" and to experience - he himself spent time with the homeless, to be able to better describe their situation -, and document the rapid development of Berlin. The result is a broad panorama of both raw and poetic moments of urban life. Some issues broached explosive matters: a description of the gay scene caused a real scandal after it was published, and a book on lesbian couple relationships was banned immediately.
Thomas Böhm now takes it on to transport relevant passages from the large project into our time. He has compiled a selection that brings turn-of-the century Berlin to life and reveals astonishing parallels between then and now.
"The Berlin of the 1920s and its metropolitan myth have their roots in the Kaiserreich. If you want to know how the tranquil Athens on the Spree became the bustling Chicago on the Spree, you should read Hans Ostwald." - Volker Kutscher
