Berlin! Berlin!

Dispatches from the Weimar Republic
1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-935902-21-8
Verlag: Berlinica

Buch, Englisch, 198 Seiten, GB, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 627 g

Berlin! Berlin! is a satirical selection from the "man with the acid pen and the perfect pitch for hypocrisy,” as New York author and Tucholsky-expert Peter Wortsman writes. This book os a complete collection of Tucholsky’s news stories, features, satirical pieces, and poems about his hometown Berlin. It depicts Weimar Berlin, its cabarets, its policies, its follies, its ticks, and its celebrities, such as Pola Negri, Gussy Holl, Bert Brecht, Max Reinhardt, or Heinrich Zille. The book contains some of Tucholsky’s most famous pieces, among them Berlin! Berlin!, a feature of the stereotypical Berliner on the phone, on vacation or doing “bizness”, more than one satirical biography of the author himself, and some of his most famed stories such as where the holes in the cheese come from, or about the lion who escaped the Berlin zoo. Herr Wendriner, the chatty Berlin businessman makes an appearance, as well as Lottchen, the flapper, modelled after one of Tucholsky’s real-life gilrfriends. Also Tucholsky’s long-term friends Karlchen and Jakopp are part of this book.The foreword was written by Anne Nelson, the author of “The Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler”. Ian King, the distinguished chair of the Kurt-Tucholsky-Society and a former professor of German in London and Sheffield, who wrote his Ph. D. on Tucholsky and is the co-editor of Volume 3 of Tucholsky’s Complete Works provided a biographical introduction. “His writings still have lessons for us today,” King writes, “that a man who might have preferred to write idylls, humorous pieces and unpolitical verse instead devoted his life to fighting against injustice and arguing passionately against the addiction to military uniforms which afflicted too many of his compatriots.”Peter Schneider, the author of the Berlin novel "Walljumper" writes about this book: “Kurt Tucholsky was one of the most brilliant German-Jewish writers and satirists of his time. He had to leave his beloved Berlin because of his biting, witty stories against militarism and Nazi Fascism. Today’s Berliners adore him as one of the greatest sons of this city. The world has yet to discover his genius.” This collection of Tucholsky’s stories has never been published in America—or in English language—before. This book will hopefully help to rediscover the famed writer in the United States.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Tucholsky, Kurt

Schweitzer, Eva

Weitere Mitwirkende

King, Ian

Nelson, Anne

Opitz, Cindy

Leseproben

Why Kurt Tucholsky? And why now?Ask most Americans for their impression of Berlin in the 1920s, and they’ll come up with images from “Cabaret.” Liza Minelli’s “divine decadence” suggested a blend of naughty Moulin Rouge and tawdry Las Vegas. Today this seems like a distant past. But Tucholsky, who occupied the center stage in the tumultuous political and cultural world of 1920s Berlin, still emerges as an astonishingly contemporary figure. As an angry truth-teller, he pierced the hypocrisy and corruption around him with acute honesty. Imagine a writer with the acid voice of Christopher Hitchens and the satirical whimsy of Jon Stewart, combined with the iconoclasm of Bill Maher. That’s Tucholsky in a nutshell.Anne Nelson is the author of The Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler. She teaches at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Über Autor(innen)

Opitz, Cindy
Cindy Opitz lebt in Iowa City, Iowa, als Kurator des Museums für Natural History an der University of Iowa. Sie arbeitet auch als freiberufliche Übersetzerin. Sie hat deutsche Literatur und Sprache an der Brown University studiert, aber auch zwei akademische Jahre in der DDR verbracht, wo sie ihren heutigen Mann kennenlernte.

Schweitzer, Eva
Eva Claudia Schweitzer ist die Gründerin von Berlinica, der erste Verlag in Amerika für Bücher, DVDs und Musik aus Berlin. Sie lebt in Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg, und New York. Sie hat selbst sechs Bücher verfasst, zuletzt Manhattan Moments, sowie eine Doktorarbeit über den New Yorker Times Square. Sie arbeitet seit 25 Jahren als Journalistin, anfangs aus Berlin, und seit 1998 aus New York; sie berichtet vornehmlich über Medien und Entertainment, hauptsächlich für Die Zeit, Spiegel Online, die Jüdische Allgemeine und Magazine. Zuvor war sie Lokalredakteurin des Tagesspiegel und der taz in Berlin. Sie hat in München und Berlin Germanistik studiert. Sie ist Mitglied im Overseas Press Club, im Verlegerverband IPBA und der IG Medien.

Tucholsky, Kurt
Kurt Tucholsky war einer der profiliertesten und bedeutensten Journalist und Schriftsteller der Weimarer Republik. Er schrieb auch unter den Pseudonymen Kaspar Hauser, Peter Panter, Theobald Tiger und Ignaz Wrobel. Er wurde am 9. Januar 1890 in Berlin geboren und nahm sich am 21. Dezember 1935 im schwedischen Göteborg das Leben. Er schrieb vor allem für die politische Wochenzeitschrift Weltbühne und für das Berliner Tageblatt; zwischenzeitlich war er auch Mitherausgeber der Weltbühne. Er gilt als Gesellschaftskritiker in der Tradition von Heinrich Heine. Er war Satiriker, Kabarettautor, Lyriker, Liedtexter, und Kritiker für Literatur, Film und Musik, und schrieb zwei Romane, Rheinsberg und Schloss Gripsholm. Der linke Demokrat, Sozialist,[ Pazifist und Antimilitarist warnte schon früh vor der politischen Rechten – vor allem in Politik, Militär und Justiz – und vor der Bedrohung durch den Nationalsozialismus.

Nelson, Anne
Anne Nelson ist Autorin ("Die Rote Kapelle", "The Guys") und Professorin an der Columbia University. Sie lebt in New York

King, Ian
Ian King ist der langjährige Vorsitzende der Kurt Tucholsky Gesellschaft und nun emeritierter Professor für deutsche Literatur und Geschichte in London und Sheffield.

Kurt Tucholsky was a brilliant satirist, poet, storyteller, lyricist, pacifist, and Democrat; a fighter, lady’s man, reporter, and early warner against the Nazis who hated and loathed him and drove him out of Germany after his books were burned in 1933. His contemporary Erich Kaestner called him a "small, fat Berliner," who "wanted to stop a catastrophe with his typewriter." The New York Times hailed him as "one of the most brilliant writers of republican Germany. He was a poet as well as a critic and was so versatile that he used five or six pen names. As Peter Panter he was an outstanding essayist who at one time wrote topical sketches in the Vossische Zeitung, which ceased to appear under the Nazi regime; as Theobald Tiger he wrote satirical poems that were frequently interpreted by popular actors in vaudeville and cabartes, and as Ignatz Wrobel he contributed regularly to the Weltbühne, an independent weekly that was one of the first publications prohibited by the Hitler government." Tucholsky, who occupied the center stage in the tumultuous political and cultural world of 1920s Berlin, still emerges as an astonishingly contemporary figure. As an angry truth-teller, he pierced the hypocrisy and corruption around him with acute honesty. Imagine a writer with the acid voice of Christopher Hitchens and the satirical whimsy of Jon Stewart, combined with the iconoclasm of Bill Maher. That’s Tucholsky in a nutshell. Like Hitchens, Tucholsky wrote a mixture of literary essays, social observations, and political commentary. His irony made the line between his “serious writing” and his “entertainments” almost invisible. The fashionable outsider watched the political “center” disappear, and, in the end, he found himself catapulted out of society altogether. His career was sandwiched between the two most deadly events of his century: the bloodbath of World War I and the scourge of Nazism. Just as the first war launched Hemingway’s lifelong career as a wounded tough guy with a soft spot for guns and broads, Tucholsky discovered the reflexes of an escape artist. He was equally elusive as a writer. In today’s world, a journalist isn’t supposed to write plays, and a playwright isn’t welcomed as a novelist. But in 1920s Berlin, Tucholsky was dealing with postwar realities that required shouting from the rooftops, and any rooftop would do.