Berlin for Jews: A Twenty-First-Century Companion

In this idiosyncratic work, Barkan (Mute Poetry, Speaking Pictures), professor of comparative literature at Princeton, combines travel guide, history, and personal musings on Jewish Berlin from the 18th-century Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) until the 21st century. He guides readers through two Jewish areas of Berlin—a cemetery bounded by the Schönhauser Allee and the Bavarian Quarter—and focuses on three important cultural figures: Rahel Varnhagen, host of an influential salon early in the 19th century; James Simon, a turn-of-the-20th-century art collector and philanthropist; and 20th-century philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin. Barkan offers some original observations about their Jewishness, which was a source of torment for Varnhagen (“My whole life is one long bleeding,” she famously wrote) and of pride for Benjamin (“Everything that is loftiest in my ideas and in myself as a human being is Jewish”). The writing is often witty and engaging, but he races through far too many names in the neighborhood chapters, and his focus on three prominent members of the intelligentsia seems too narrow. Despite these flaws, for readers visiting Berlin who would like to get a good sense of how pre-Holocaust Jews felt at home in the city and influenced its cultural life, this is a very good place to start. (Oct.)