Topographies of Class: Modern Architecture and Mass Society in Weimar Berlin

In Topographies of Class, Sabine Hake explores the question of why Weimar has such a powerful hold on the urban imagination. Approaching Weimar architectural culture from the perspective of mass discourse and class analysis, Hake examines the way in which architectural projects, debates, and representations in literature, photography, and film played a key role in establishing the terms under which contemporaries made sense of the rise of white-collar society.Focusing on the so-called stabilization period, Topographies of Class maps out complex relationships between modern architecture and mass society, from Martin Wagner's planning initiatives and Erich Mendelsohn's functionalist buildings, to the most famous texts of the period, Alfred Doblin's city novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) and Walter Ruttmann's city film Berlin, Symphony of the Big City (1927). Hake draws on critical, philosophical, literary, photographic, and filmic texts to reconstruct the urban imagination at a key point in the history of German modernity, making this the first study - in English or German - to take an interdisciplinary approach to the rich architectural culture of Weimar Berlin. This is the first interdisciplinary exploration of the cultural architecture of Weimar Berlin.