When walking my daughter’s dog in Charlottenburg, I enjoy examining the plaques on buildings. My favorite is the one marking the building on Mommsenstraße where Hanns Sachs lived from 1920 to 1932. Sachs was a Viennese lawyer who was trained by Freud and became a member of his inner circle. Karl Abraham, another early student… Read more »
This is the first in our ongoing series of essays written by German writers about America. Thomas Pletzinger was born in 1975 and grew up in Germany’s industrial area Ruhrgebiet. He holds an M.A from Hamburg University and an MFA from the German Literature Institute Leipzig. He worked for publishers and a literary scouting… Read more »
Herbie Hancock’s piano intro follows with a short riff of staccato trumpet. The 10 o’clock crowd is excited and attentive; beers sprawled across the packed tables. This is just a regular night at the historic A-Trane jazz club. Or at least I picture it that way. This Charlottenburg musical institution can boast the likes of… Read more »
Eric Banks is a writer based in New York. While at Columbia in the late 1980s, he had a radio show on WKCR. He has since written for The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the New York Times, and the Chronicle of Higher Education and is a contributing editor of Men’s Vogue among other… Read more »
Ralph Martin is a writer and journalist living in Prenzlauer Berg. He has written for the New York Times, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, GQ, and other publications; his book Ein Amerikaner in Berlin, a comic ‘gonzo memoir’ in ten chapters of German-American culture shock, will appear on August 24 from Dumont Verlag. Visit his website at… Read more »
EIN AMERIKANER IN BERLIN, Berlin Stories Editorial Director Ralph Martin’s very funny book about how he learned to to love all things Deutsch, is published in German by Dumont Verlag. EIN AMERIKANER…is the nonfiction tale of an ex-New Yorker who moves to Berlin, settles down, and to his sometimes horrified fascination, becomes German. Ten… Read more »
Andrea Scrima is an artist and writer from New York who has been living in Berlin for much of her adult life. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts and the Hochschule der Künste, she has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards for her art and writing from institutions including the… Read more »
Eve Lucas grew up in England and has a degree in French and German from King’s College London and a Masters in Art History from the University of Maryland. She has lived in Berlin since returning to Germany from Washington DC in 2003 and works as a book critic and journalist for English-language magazines based… Read more »
As Berlin upgrades its chameleon wardrobe toward something more sophisticated, it’s tempting to find its bohemian foundations provincial or quaint—in any case, relegated to the pile marked, “donations.” But such a linear notion of progress belies this city’s iconoclastic nature. Berlin is a humane place, scaled for human beings. This is clear to anyone who… Read more »
In the winter, Berlin streets are notoriously grim; the eye savors any bright spot—a child’s mittens, a circus ad. But at the top of Rosa Luxemburg Strasse stands an oasis of color: local milliner Rike Feurstein’s eponymous boutique, a veritable confectionery of candy-hued hats. Inside, one tries them on like identities: A leopard-print cloche à… Read more »
