Berlin Before and After with author Wendy Lesser

Berlin is more than a city; it survives as an enigma and a mirror to the world, a place whose recent past holds essential lessons for today.

Berlin is more than a city; it's a survivor, an enigma, and a mirror to the world, a unique place whose recent past holds essential lessons for us today.

IIn 1929, Berlin stood at a precipice—alive with art, literature, and radical politics, yet trembling under the weight of economic instability and the shadows of extremism. A century later, the city bears the scars and triumphs of everything that followed: dictatorship, devastation, division, and ultimately reunification. Today’s Berlin is both haunted by and distinct from its past, a metropolis where every street corner and memorial carries the echoes of history, acknowledging and thus atoning for what took place there.

A seasoned chronicler of cities and culture, Wendy Lesser reveals Berlin as a place that refuses to forget, a living reminder of both catastrophe and resilience. In its transformations lie urgent lessons for the rest of the world, and particularly for America today.

A history, travelogue, cultural study, and personal reflection, Berlin Before and After captures the essence of a city that has lived through extremes and offers hope and proof that the past need not dictate the future.

"This adoring tribute to Berlin considers the city’s history as a 'cautionary mirror' for the present….Ultimately, Lesser’s goal is to show what other cultures can learn from the fact that, there, 'the desire to wipe out the disparaged past did not prevail.'” - The New Yorker 

About the Speaker

Wendy Lesser is an acclaimed critic and founder of The Threepenny Review. She is also the author of over a dozen books, including The Amateur, Scandinavian Noir, Why I Read, and You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn. Her numerous awards and honors include the Marfield Prize for Arts Writing, an NEH Public Scholar Award, and the Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She divides her year between Berkeley and New York, and sometimes adds in Berlin as well. 

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