I love our customers. Sometimes you get people taking notes, asking all sorts of questions, chatting away with you while you’re showing them the city. It’s a wonderful job made even better by great customers. Some people leave Berlin with a real passion for the city’s history, and one of the questions I’m asked most often is “what books do you recommend”. Well, there are quite a few! I’ll write about more of them in the future, and I’ve got a couple of lists planned, but I think it’s good to cover the basics first. Thankfully there is an excellent book that covers the Berlin basics (and then some!) In a very readable and exciting way: “Berlin: A Modern History” by David Clay Large.

When I started my guiding career 11 years ago I was recommended this book. I was warned back then that it was a little old (2001) and hard to find. The office copy was well worn by many guides, and I think there was even a waiting list to get your hands on it. I was so eager to get started as a guide that I bought the Kindle version and read it all on my tiny iPod Touch! When I finally encountered the print version years later I couldn’t believe how big it was, and that I’d managed to get through its 700+ pages on a dinky phone screen, back when phones were small.

Large presents Berlin as the centre of 20th Century world history. It’s a pretty good argument to be fair. So much of the world’s history happened in, because of, or could be reflected in Berlin at this time. To give you the quickest overview I can, here’s my version of Berlin from 1900 to 2000:

Berlin entered the 20th Century as the capital of an empire, the seat of the Kaiser. Within 20 years the monarchy had crumbled following World War One, and Germany had become an idealistic, if unstable, democratic republic. Crises in the 1920s and early ’30s lead to the rise of fascism, and eventually Hitler’s ascent to Chancellor and Dictator. Hitler’s vile ideology lead to industrialised genocide the likes of which the world hadn’t seen before. Much of which was of course planned in Berlin, which by this point the Nazis were planning to completely remodel as “Germania, capital of the Empire of the World”.

The Neue Synagogue (1866) in Berlin-Mitte, one of many spots in Berlin where visitors can learn about Berlin’s Jewish community, and what happened to them at the hands of the Nazis. See it for yourself on the **WWII and Third Reich Tour**.
Photo by Jonathan Whitlam

Following the Nazis’ defeat in 1945, I think anyone could agree with Large that Berlin had claimed the title for being the centre of 20th Century history already. The second half was going to get stranger still, though. With the fascists out of power, Berlin was occupied by Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the USA. Reluctant allies with a common enemy during World War Two, relations between the capitalist West and the communist East rapidly deteriorated, leading to Germany’s division into two countries by 1949. Berlin, deep in East Germany, was similarly split in two. West Berlin was (kind of) part of West Germany, East Berlin was the capital of the “German Democratic Republic”. The border remained open, and over the next decade, West Berlin became the destination for millions (literally) of East Germans to defect to the West. By 1961 East Germany had a major problem. Around 1 in 6 people had left the country. The border with West Germany had been sealed in 1953, but Berlin remained open. Drastic measures would be needed to stop the flow of people to the West, and drastic action was taken.

See the remains of the Berlin Wall next to the excellent Topography of Terror museum - a free museum covering three infamous Nazi institutions: the SS, the Gestapo, and the Reich Security Main Office (*Reichssicherheitshauptamt*)
Photo by Jonathan Whitlam

At 3 am on Sunday, August 13, 1961, barbed wire was rolled out around the 160km (100-mile) perimeter of Berlin. Overnight the city was divided. Friends and family were separated by armed guards, and over the next 28 years, they would be further torn apart as the Berlin Wall became an almost impenetrable concrete barrier running through the middle of the city. Once again, Berlin had become the centre of world history. No longer was it a metaphor for the division of the world, that division had become quite literal. So strong is this image that the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 is used as a byword for the end of the Cold War, despite it coming well after the collapse of communism in neighbouring Poland, and a couple of years before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Berlin entered the 21st Century once again as the capital of a unified Germany. In the past decade, the country had made its first steps on the world stage as the country we know today: a country open about its dark past. An imperfect place, as everywhere is, somehow Germany came out the other side of the tumultuous events of the 20th Century as a country admired by many people across the world.

Large’s Berlin covers all these events in so much detail, yet manages to tie them together and not get bogged down in too many small details. If you’re interested at all in Berlin and want to make sense of the beautiful mess that is the modern-day city I still recommend, as it was recommended to me, starting with David Clay Large.