Without Lifting A Finger

Sanssouci  is the summer palace of  Frederick the Great , King of  Prussia , in  Potsdam , near  Berlin . It is often counted among the German rivals of  Versailles . While Sanssouci is in the more intimate  Rococo style and is far smaller than its  French Baroque  counterpart, it too is notable for the numerous  temples and  follies  in  the park . The palace was designed/built by  Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff  between 1745 and 1747 to fulfill King Frederick's need for a private residence where he could relax away from the pomp and ceremony of the  Berlin  court. The palace's name emphasises this; it is a French phrase ( sans souci ), which translates as "without concerns", meaning "without worries" or "carefree", symbolising that the palace was a place for relaxation rather than a seat of power. The name in past times reflected a play on words, with the insertion of a comma visible between the w...

Kleist met Henriette Vogel in 1809 through his friend  Adam Müller  and a friendship flourished between them. They shared a fondness for music, and according to Ernest Peguilhen, Henriette Vogel asked her friend to explain to her the art of war, as well as to teach her  fencing , for the dramatist had been a soldier. The relationship between the two became more intimate in the autumn of 1811. According to their contemporaries, there was no fire of passion but a purely spiritual love. It was Adam Müller's point of view, who in fact had been in love with Henriette for a while.  Marie von Kleist , who was the most important sponsor and confidant of Heinrich von Kleist, also made sure that this claim was widely spread. On November 21, 1811, the two traveled from Berlin to Wannsee. Prior to their departure, they both penned farewell letters, which along with an account of the final night they spent at the inn Gasthof Stimming, are now part of world literature. Upon th...

Tiergarten , a photo by Marcio Cabral de Moura on Flickr.

Tiergarten im Nebel , a photo by Photodendron on Flickr.

tiergarten , a photo by frado76 on Flickr. Tiergarten (literally "animal garden" and Tier is cognate to our "deer"): the largest urban park in Berlin. The large column (golden Victoria on top) is the Siegessaule ("Victory Column"), which commemorates a series of Prussian victories.   

Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper Project, Berlin , a photo by glen.h on Flickr. A variation of this photo appears as the frontispiece to Roth's "Skyscrapers."

Karstadt - Berlin Hermannplatz 1930's , a photo by Oldimages on Flickr. An image similar to the one included with Roth's "The Very Large Department Store." OK, there's a bit of a difference: the one in the book is darker, doesn't show the complete store, has a streetcar in the forefront, and has swastikas flying (1939).

From The World of Yesterday : Along the entire Kurfurstendamm powered and rouged young men sauntered and they were not all professionals; every high school boy wanted to earn some money and in the dimly lit bars one might see government officials and men of the world of finance tenderly courting drunken sailors without any shame. Even the Rome of Suetonius had never known such orgies as the pervert balls of Berlin, where hundreds of men costumed as women and hundreds of women as men danced under the benevolent eyes of the police. In the collapse of all values a kind of madness gained hold particularly in the bourgeois circles which until then had been unshakeable in their probity. Young girls bragged proudly of their perversion, to be sixteen and still under suspicion of virginity would have been considered a disgrace in any school of Berlin at that time, every girl wanted to be able to tell of her adventures and the more exotic, the better.