Constructing Imperial Berlin

Miriam Paeslack is associate professor of modern and contemporary visual culture and arts management at the University at Buffalo. She is author of Berlin im 19. Jahrhundert: FrÜhe Photographien 1850–1914, coauthor of Johanna Diehl – Displace, and editor of Ineffably Urban: Imaging Buffalo.

• ContentsIntroduction1. Crafting the Metropolis: Photo-Panoramas in the Illustrated Journal Berliner Leben2. Framing Progress: Ludwig Hoffmann, Ernst von Brauchitsch, and Berlin Architectural Photography 1902–19123. Tracing Transformation: Berlin’s Urban Palimpsest in Photogrammetry and “Rubble Photography”4. Inventing Tradition: Berlin’s MÄrkische Museum and Its Photo Survey Picturesque BerlinConclusionAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

"A late starter among European capitals, Imperial Berlin was eager to be recognized as a Weltstadt (‘World City’). Miriam Paeslack has carefully analyzed a trove of rarely seen images that perfectly document the city’s feverish development at the end of the nineteenth century and the parallel evolution of its self-conscious imagery. Taken together, the photographs present a compelling psychogram of the city on its way to becoming the 'Capital of the Twentieth Century'-the place where the dramatic tides of modernity and its traumatic conflicts would leave their most visible scars."-Dietrich Neumann, Brown University"Miriam Paeslack has written a compelling account of the multifarious ways in which photographers mediated in the construction of Berlin’s urban imaginary. She brilliantly demonstrates photography’s potency as Berlin contended with modernity by simultaneously promoting progress and inventing the past."-Nancy Stieber, University of Massachusetts, Boston