A riveting story about the rivalry between two brothers living on opposite sides of the Berlin wall during its construction in the 1960s, and how their complicated legacy and dreams of greatness will determine their ultimate fate. A city divided. A family fractured. Two brothers caught between past and present. Berlin, 1961. Rudi Möser-Fleischmann is an aspiring photographer with dreams of greatness, but he can't hold a candle to his talented, charismatic twin brother Peter, an ambitious actor. With the sudden divorce of their parents, the brothers find themselves living in different sectors of a divided Berlin; the postwar partition strangely mirroring their broken family. But one night, as the city sleeps, the Berlin Wall is hurriedly built, dividing society further, and Rudi and Peter are forced to choose between playing by the rules and taking their dreams underground. That is, until the truth about their family history and the growing cracks in their relationship threaten to split them apart for good. From National Book Award-nominated, critically acclaimed author-illustrator Vesper Stamper comes a stark look at how resentment and denial can strain the bonds of brotherhood to the breaking point.

Helmut and Charlotte Jacobitz were born in Berlin during the mid-1920s. They experienced depression and inflation, and witnessed violence as fascists and communists vied for control of Germany. When the Nazis prevailed, they survived the 12 years of the Third Reich. Drafted in 1943, Helmut was wounded fighting in Normandy. Charlotte, meanwhile, worked at the Reichsbank and took shelter against frequent bombing raids. After the Russians surrounded Berlin in April 1945, she witnessed firsthand the brutal battle for the city. The two young Germans met each other after the war, Charlotte joining Helmut to smuggle food into Berlin through the Russian blockade. The family finally immigrated to America, barely escaping before the Berlin Wall sliced the city in half. We Were Berliners combines the personal reminiscences of the Jacobitzs with a lively, detailed overview of historical events as they related to the family, to Germany, and to Europe.

The Berliners is a collection of stories revolving around three very different pairs of lovers who find each other at the wrong place and the wrong time. The place: Berlin, Germany. The time: three decades in the twentieth century, each with its own unique social and political implications. The tragedy of true love both found and forbidden cycles in each story. The question remaining to be answered during the course of each plot is whether or not our heroes will be able to overcome the obstacles of war, political division, and racism and finally arrive at both accepting themselves and being accepted by society in their unique time and place. The story of Heinrich and Paul follows their relationship from adolescence during compulsory attendance at a Hitler Youth program and on through their years of self-loathing as members of the Nazi Party and armed forces. The antiheroes of this story struggle to accept themselves and their sexuality while also battling the guilt and hypocrisy of their crimes and inhumanity under the Third Reich. During the 1970s, we witness the serendipitous affair between West Berliner Thomas Gaettens and East Berliner Marita Luettig. Their brief relationship spans the limits of the Berlin Wall and family obligation over personal indulgence. Our protagonists are faced with the difficult prospect of overcoming the barrier that stands between their two worlds. Their dangerous relationship is quickly enveloped in suspicion, fear, and hopelessness under the pressure of the authoritarian government and its powerful police force, the Stasi. Finally, the contemporary tale of Hilal and Peter recounts the turbulent love story of a young German student and Turkish girl from school. This story is based on true events that took place in Berlin in 2006. The conflicts that exist even today between the former guest-worker Turkish population of Germany and the native Germans is reflected in the couple’s confrontation against the conservative, religious views of Hilal’s father. In the final chapters of the novel, our three stories begin to intertwine in modern times. Berlin herself is perhaps the main character of the entire book, bearing witness to this recurring motif of lovers unable to find peace with each other in the capital. The reader is left to question why the universality of this theme seems to exist and reemerge throughout human history, particularly in the history of Berlin and Germany.

This book explores the politics of place marketing and the process of ‘urban reinvention’ in Berlin between 1989 and 2011. In the context of the dramatic socio-economic restructuring processes, changes in urban governance and physical transformation of the city following the Fall of the Wall, the ‘new’ Berlin was not only being built physically, but staged for visitors and Berliners and marketed to the world through events and image campaigns which featured the iconic architecture of large-scale urban redevelopment sites. Public-private partnerships were set up specifically to market the ‘new Berlin’ to potential investors, tourists, Germans and the Berliners themselves. The book analyzes the images of the city and the narrative of urban change, which were produced over two decades. In the 1990s three key sites were turned into icons of the ‘new Berlin’: the new Postdamer Platz, the new government quarter, and the redeveloped historical core of the Friedrichstadt. Eventually, the entire inner city was ‘staged’ through a series of events which turned construction sites into tourist attractions. New sites and spaces gradually became part of the 2000s place marketing imagery and narrative, as urban leaders sought to promote the ‘creative city’. By combining urban political economy and cultural approaches from the disciplines of urban politics, geography, sociology and planning, the book contributes to a better understanding of the interplay between the symbolic ‘politics of representation’ through place marketing and the politics of urban development and place making in contemporary urban governance.