Death in Berlin From Weimar to Divided Germany

We tend to think of death as a basic and immutable fact of life. Yet death, too, has a history. Death in Berlin traces the rituals, practices, perceptions, and sensibilities surrounding death in the context of Berlin's multiple transformations over the decades between Germany's defeat in World War I and the construction of the Berlin Wall. Evocatively illustrated and drawing on a rich collection of sources, Monica Black reveals the centrality of death to the evolving moral and social life of one metropolitan community. In doing so, she connects the intimacies of everyday life and death to events on the grand historical stage that changed the lives of millions - all in a city that stood at the center of some of the twentieth century's most transformative events.

Introduction; 1. Death in Berlin, ca.1930; 2. Nazi ways of death; 3. Death in everyday life; 4. Death and reckoning; 5. Death in socialism; 6. Death and the West; Conclusions.

Death in Berlin, published in 2010, was the first study to trace the rituals, practices, perceptions, and sensibilities surrounding death over the decades between Germany's defeat in World War I and the construction of the Berlin Wall.

Monica Black is Assistant Professor of History at Furman University. She was awarded the Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize by the Friends of the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, in 2007 and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council on Germany, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/Council for Library and Information Resources, and others.