Walking in Berlin: A Flaneur in the Capital

About this book

The first English translation of a lost classic that reinvents the flaneur in Berlin. Franz Hessel (18801941) a German-born writer grew up in Berlin studied in Munich and then lived in Paris where he moved in artistic and literary circles. His relationship with the fashion journalist Helen Grund was the inspiration for Henri-Pierre Roches novel Jules et Jim (made into a celebrated 1962 film by Francois Truffaut). In collaboration with Walter Benjamin Hessel reinvented the Parisian figure of the flaneur. This 1929 bookhere in its first English translationoffers Hessels version of a flaneur in Berlin. In Walking in Berlin Hessel captures the rhythm of Weimar-era Berlin recording the seismic shifts in German culture. Nearly all of the essays take the form of a walk or outing focusing on either a theme or part of the city and many end at a theater cinema or club. Hessel deftly weaves the past with the present walking through the citys history as well as its neighborhoods. Even today his walks in the city from the Alexanderplatz to Kreuzberg can guide would-be flaneurs. Walking in Berlin is a lost classic known mainly because of Hessels connection to Benjamin but now introduced to readers of English. Walking in Berlin was a central model for Benjamins Arcades Project and remains a classic of walking literature that ranges from Surrealist perambulation to Situationist psychogeography. This MIT Press edition includes the complete text in translation as well as Benjamins essay on Walking in Berlin originally written as a review of the books original edition. An absolutely epic book a walking remembrance. Walter Benjamin