Synonyms
Definition
Spazieren in Berlin (1929) – strolling in Berlin – renders into German the concept of flânerie, of being the flâneur not in Paris, where the type of the stroller is discussed by Balzac and by Baudelaire, and commented on by Walter Benjamin (whom Hessel met through a mutual friend, Charlotte Wolff), but in a very different capital city. Since Berlin in 1929 was entering the most dangerous years of Nazism, anti-Semitism, and reaction, to suggest that anyone could stroll, or wander, in Berlin was a political act, especially coming from its author, the Jewish Franz Hessel (1880–1941). It is a response to Benjamin (1892–1940) and an attempt to see city-space in a way which counters attempts to control it.
Franz Hessel and Walter Benjamin
Hessel was born in Stettin on the Oder River; the port-city was then in Germany (Prussia), but now in Poland (and known as Szczecin). The family relocated to Berlin in 1888, to live, like...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Benjamin, Walter. 1999. Selected writings vol 2: 1927–1934, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Benjamin, Walter. 2002. Selected writings vol. 3: 1935–1938, ed. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Further Reading
Brian, Amanda M. 2013. Art from the Gutter: Heinrich Zille’s Berlin. Central European History 40: 28–60.
Eiland, Howard, and Michael W. Jennings. 2014. Walter Benjamin: A critical life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Fritsche, Peter. 1994. Vagabond in the Fugitive City: Hans Ostwald, Imperial Berlin and the Grossstadt-Dokumente. Journal of Contemporary History 29: 385–402.
Gleber, Anke. 1999. The art of taking a walk: Flânerie, literature, and film in Weimar culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Goebel, Rolf J. 2009. Media Competition: Ruttmann’s Berlin: die Symphonie der Grossstadt and Hessel’s Ein Flaneur in Berlin. In Topography and literature: Berlin and modernism, ed. Reinhard Zachau. Göttingen: V and R unipress.
Hake, Sabine. 2008. Topographies of class: Modern architecture and mass society in Weimar Berlin. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Hessel, Franz. 2016. Walking in Berlin. Trans. Amanda DeMarco. London: Scribe Publications.
Simmel, Georg. 1997. The metropolis and mental life. In Simmel on culture: Selected writings, ed. David Frisby and Mike Featherstone. London: SAGE.
Weitz, Eric D. 2007. Weimar Germany: Promise and tragedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Tambling, J. (2019). Hessel: Walking in Berlin. In: Tambling, J. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_123-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_123-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62592-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62592-8
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities