Berlin Now

April 28, 2014
In this enlightening collection of essays, Berlin resident Schneider unearths the city’s charms and hazards. Journalist Schneider (Eduard’s Homecoming; The Wall Jumper) first came to Berlin from Freiburg as a student in 1962 and has since seen enormous changes, the most shattering of which was the tearing down of the Berlin Wall after the earthshaking events of November 1989. Apart from the subsequent building projects that have transformed the city, such as the development of Potsdamer Platz and the shifting of the historic Mitte (middle) toward what was once East Berlin, Schneider is intensely focused on the East-versus-West dynamic. He describes East Berliners as dragging their Communist ideals and Stasi legacy, and resenting Western democratic standards, and he says that East Berlin women are “self-confident and divorce-happy,” as more of them have been forced to work than their Western counterparts. Moreover, the once-ostracized Turkish “guest workers” now make up a largely assimilated minority, with Vietnamese, Russians, and Jews nestled in far-flung neighborhoods, despite lingering episodes of racist violence. Covering the city’s grim history as well as its current night clubbing, these essays reveal an authentic city that does not bother being more lively than beautiful.

June 15, 2014
An intriguing journey through Berlin by a longtime interested observer. Ungainly, amorphous, overrun by armies, clotted by construction, inhabited by uneasy neighborhoods of ethnic niches (including Turks, Russians, Vietnamese and Israelis), and still affordable to starving artists and all-night partiers, Berlin is a wildly attractive tourist spot, not least due to its dark history. In these amusing, knowledgeable essays and dispatches, German novelist and journalist Schneider (Eduard's Homecoming, 2000, etc.), who first came to the city as a student in the early 1960s to claim exemption from serving in the Bundeswehr (German defense forces), unearths much that is fascinating and even beautiful about Berlin. He examines the conversion of various sections of the city and warehouses, industrial ruins and other structures in what was formerly East Berlin-e.g., Potsdamer Platz, the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport and newly gentrified Prenzlauer Berg. Deeply engaged with friends and colleagues both East and West, Schneider has written extensively on the ramifications of the removal of the Berlin Wall, not only in the physical revelation that Berlin's great historic center and grand buildings were all located in the East, but also in the souls of "Ossi" and "Wessi" remnants, now cohabitating a little like oil and water. In his autobiographical essay "West Berlin" ("the name...refers to a city that no longer exists"), the author reaches back into the student movement of the late 1960s and the building of the "wall of the mind" mentality he wrote about in his novel The Wall Jumper (1984). In "The Stasi Legacy," he writes poignantly of the poisonous effect the secret police had on even married couples informing on each other. Berlin's "culture of remembrance," he writes, has also been transformed-e.g., the multitude of Holocaust commemoration exhibits and memorials paying quiet tribute to a vanished community. A seasoned journalist conveys the charms and perils of this "Cinderella of European capitals."

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March 15, 2014
Berlin is a world-class city, and what makes it special--even more than the up-all-night clubs or vibrant artistic scene--is the enterprising spirit of its ever-shifting community. So says Schneider, a sometime resident who has written nearly two dozen books (e.g., "The Wall Jumper") and has taught at leading universities in this country.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2014
The author of The Wall Jumper (1984) presents his collected musings about the city that has inspired and perplexed him since he was first seduced by West Berlin as a young man in the early 1960s. Berlin is not traditionally beautiful, he notes; it is a hodgepodge of architectural fits and starts, like the aging Fernsehturm and the ubiquitous concrete Plattenbau apartments of the old East Berlin but also the contested and commercialized new Potsdamer Platz. It is a city scarred by its history but also proud of its weirdness, its resilience, and its condition of constant change; a city in which a bitter debate over what to do with an asbestos-filled East German government building culminates in a massive piece of performance art. Berlin today struggles with racial politics and the same gentrification challenges that confront many major cities, as Schneider explores in insightful essays on the Turkish district of Neuklln and the increasingly South German streets of Prenzlauer Berg. But it is also a city that, for now at least, continues to be a magnet for the young, creative, and poor, to whom it offers cavernous apartments and an unparalleled club scene (which the author dutifully explores, having gotten from his grown children a few tips on where to go and how best to enjoy himself). In the end, Schneider seems to suggest, liveliness is far more important than beauty.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)