Description
arani Verlags-GmbH, Published 1961. Hardcover, 37 pp. plus plates; 22 cm; text in English, captions in German and English; fifth edition; 132 black-and-white photographs (frontispiece and 131 numbered plates). Introduction and notes to the illustrations by Felix A. Dargel; translated by Patrick Lynch from the original Hauptstadt Berlin, gestern - heute - morgen.
Condition & notes
In Good condition with an Acceptable dust jacket. Cream cloth boards lettered in brown on front and spine, light soiling, lower corners lightly bumped. Binding tight. Pages mildly toned but otherwise clean. Pictorial dust jacket with black-and-white photograph of the Schlossbruecke statue and Unter den Linden, black title panel and spine, plain cream rear panel; chipping and short tears along top edge, losses at head and tail of spine and at lower front spine fold, rubbing to black panels, soiling to rear panel. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. A photographic portrait of Berlin by Otto Hagemann (1884-1974), the Berlin architecture photographer whose glass-plate negatives of 1921 to 1960 are now held by the Landesarchiv Berlin. The plates run from the city's monuments before the war (the Reichstag debating chamber and lobby, the Schloss) through the ruins after 1945 (the Schloss and Schlossbruecke, the stripped Tiergarten with the Soviet War Memorial and the burned-out Reichstag behind it) to the rebuilt West Berlin of the 1950s: the Henry Ford building of the Free University, the Canisius Church, the Berlin Hilton, and a model of Scharoun's new Philharmonie as "Berlin of tomorrow." Dargel's essay, "Berlin, As It Was and Is," traces the city's history from its medieval founding, followed by notes on each plate. Jacket flaps advertise the companion arani volumes Outpost Berlin and The New Face of Berlin.