Berlin's rapid growth during the years covered by this book transformed the aristocratic Prussian capital into an exemplary modern Weltstadt. Between 1850 and 1925, London and Paris almost tripled in population, while Berlin's multiplied by ten. In 1911, the Encyclopedia Britannica called Berlin the “model city of Europe” (59). It was an experiment in modern architectural and urban planning, heavily influenced by rapidly changing politics. The document collection Metropolis Berlin displays shifting contemporary thinking about how the city should represent political power and national ambition, and about what living and working conditions it should provide to its residents—subjects that often led to conflicting conclusions.

The editors explain that their purpose is to discuss the “spaces of Berlin,” especially as they were built and rebuilt, planned over and over again. Metropolis Berlin collects over two hundred examples of opinion on the built city, ranging from studies of ornamentation of notable buildings, to detailed plans for particular city intersections, to an argument about aesthetics versus practicality in the construction of the early twentieth-century transport system, to manifestos about how to plan a Weltstadt. The juxtaposition of theoretical excerpts on how to plan buildings, squares, roads, and suburbs—along with close descriptions of the architectural and decorative culture of hospitals, government offices, monuments, restaurants, and houses—is fascinating.

A less explicit editorial objective is to rescue Berlin from the criticism from all sides that accompanied this explosive and unregulated growth. The editors publish these criticisms from left and right, proletarian and elitist, modernist and traditionalist perspectives—interspersed with praise, both contemporary and their own, for what Berliners achieved. They emphasize that Berlin offered everything: “a dazzling array of temptations,” “a truly metropolitan architecture,” all done with “characteristically excessive vigor” (175–76). There are many wonderful illustrations, mainly contemporary photographs.

The typical Berlin apartment building, usually labeled accurately as Mietskaserne (tenement), was a major concern of city planners and architectural writers for decades. The capitalist drive to maximize profit in a situation of high and expanding demand for real estate and lodging created a nightmare of overcrowding. After 1900, 43 percent of the population was living in just one room and 39 percent had lodgers. Nearly half of all tenements were Hinterhäuser in back courtyards. Middle-class urban critics were extremely concerned about the Mietskaserne, and many of their comments are included here. The working-class tenants do not speak to us, however, and the homogeneity of authorial origin leads to a lack of variety in expression. We read the abstract and sophisticated language of the educated but cannot hear the voices of the tenants themselves.

The arresting cover image displays the emphases and absences of this volume: bustling Friedrichstrasse in 1930, exemplifying Berlin's dynamism, is superimposed on a map of central Berlin. The articles chosen for Metropolis Berlin provide a running commentary on this dynamism, and emphasis is placed on the size and decoration of the city's buildings, the width of the streets, the elevated railway—often in terms of architectural theories and plans. This is illustrated by the cover map, a creation of Albert Speer. Yet, the people who crowded Friedrichstrasse—shoppers and flower sellers, businesspeople and flaneurs, Berliners working and living—appear only occasionally. The editors note that Berlin was “a laboratory for modern living” (4), but their selections focus on modern building much more than on living. It is noteworthy that the very few pieces by women focus much more on actual people.

The editors use footnotes to identify people and things named in the documents, but one wishes they had given the same attention to identifying the actual writers of those texts. Descriptions of well-known personalities, such as Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin, are not directly connected with their writings here. Less recognizable names, such as Theodor Goecke, remain anonymous, although Goecke's long description in 1890 of working-class tenements touched on this characteristic Berlin problem. An entry from the diary of artist Käthe Kollwitz describes the demonstrative march at the funeral of Karl Liebknecht, who is described in a lengthy footnote, but Kollwitz herself is not identified. Many of the largely descriptive pieces require geographical orientation in order to be more understandable, especially when they deal with neighborhoods outside of the city center. A city map would have been an enormous help in locating the myriad names of buildings, streets, neighborhoods, and districts, which, for anyone who has not spent much time in Berlin, may otherwise be meaningless.

In the final chapter about the planned transformation of Berlin into Germania, the editing breaks down. Spelling errors pile up, an Adolf Hitler quotation from Mein Kampf already produced on page 377 is repeated from a different edition and in a different translation on page 582, and a lengthy quotation from Albert Speer reproduced in the chapter introduction (583) serves later as a complete entry (601–602). A great deal of work nevertheless went into this volume, especially the translations. Metropolis Berlin is a useful compendium of opinion on built Berlin, but fewer entries, with more commentary and context, would have made the book more useful to a larger audience.