Walking with Franz Hessel in 1920s Berlin – The Public Domain Review

For a book ostensibly about walking, it is remarkable how much Hessel enjoys zipping around the city in fast cars and on public transport. During the book’s centerpiece, a longer section called “The Tour,” he hops on a tourist bus to see some major sights (Potsdamer Platz, Gendarmenmarkt, Schlossplatz, Museum Island), supplementing the journey with his own insider insights. His seemingly boundless enthusiasm for bridges, sculptures and architectural ornamentation – arabesques, catyrids, cherubs and Atlantids – can become tiresome, but his disdain for stuffy Wilhelminian-era buildings produces some amusing moments: after eagerly refusing to enter the Berlin Cathedral on the grounds that it ‘offends every religious and humanistic sentiment with its sheer quantity, materiality and poorly applied erudition’, he distractedly expresses, childishly out of joy at the appearance of an ice cream seller.