Death in Berlin From Weimar to Divided Germany [Paperback]

Death in Berlin traces rituals and perceptions surrounding death from the Weimar Republic to the building of the Berlin Wall.Death in Berlin is the first study to trace the rituals, practices, perceptions, and sensibilities surrounding death over the decades between Germany's defeat in World War I and the construction of the Berlin Wall.Death in Berlin is the first study to trace the rituals, practices, perceptions, and sensibilities surrounding death over the decades between Germany's defeat in World War I and the construction of the Berlin Wall.We tend to think of death as a basic and immutable fact of life. Yet death, too, has a history. Death in Berlin is the first study to trace the rituals, practices, perceptions, and sensibilities surrounding death in the context of Berlin's multiple transformations over the decades between Germany's defeat in World War I and the construction of the Berlin Wall. Evocatively illustrated and drawing on a rich collection of sources, Monica Black reveals the centrality of death to the evolving moral and social life of one metropolitan community. In doing so, she connects the intimacies of everyday life and death to events on the grand historical stage that changed the lives of millions  all in a city that stood at the center of some of the twentieth centurys most transformative events.Introduction; 1. Death in Berlin, ca.1930; 2. Nazi ways of death; 3. Death in everyday life; 4. Death and reckoning; 5. Death in socialism; 6. Death and the West; Conclusions.Twentieth-century Germany is often described as a culture living in the shadow of mass death. Monica Blacks book, however, is the first that traces the changing perceptions, rituals, memories, and sensibilities surrounding death from the Weimar Republic to post-fascist divided Germany. She brilliantly shows not only how the dead haunted the living but also how loss, honor, and moral community were radically transformed in Berlin during these turbulent decades of rapid regiml³w