Armed with Franz Hessel´s cult guidebook, Walking in Berlin, published in 1929, Vanessa Thorpe is transported back to the city´s decadent periodTime travel is still a long way off as a short break option, but happily there are some good approximations. Last month, in a very chilly but sunny Berlin, I opened up a copy of Franz Hessel´s cult 1929 guidebook, Walking in Berlin: A Flâneur in the Capital, and, sure enough, the jaunty, literary tone of the book, now published in English for the first time, is like a private invitation back to the city´s most beguiling era.Hessel had an appetite for cafe culture and people-watching, although his own life was easily as colourful as the life he observed around him. His open relationship with his wife, fellow writer Helen Grund, inspired Henri-Pierre Roché´s famous ménage-a-trois novel Jules et Jim. He was, to use his preferred French term, a flâneur - a man of means at ease in the cosmopolitan hub of Weimar Germany. Continue reading...
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