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Georg Simmel and the Berlin Trade Exhibition of 1896

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Dorothy Rowe
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Abstract

In tracing a theoretical history of modernity peculiar to Imperial Berlin after 1871, the urban themes developed in the writings of the German social theorist, Georg Simmel, have proved to be particularly pertinent. The exhibition of 1896 provides Simmel with a major site of investigation into the visible effects of the commodified urban sphere upon the individual city dweller which finds one of its most spectacular forms in the rise of the mid-nineteenth-century ‘World Exhibition’. The paper outlines aspects of Simmel's theories of the differentiation of the individual in the capitalist metropolis as a background to an investigation into the various functions assigned to the 1896 Berlin Trade Exhibition both by its organizers and by Simmel.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , August 1995 , pp. 216 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

1 See, for example, Simmel's collection of essays in Levine, D. (ed.), Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms (Chicago, 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 For further information on Simmel's theories of male and female culture, see Oakes, G. (ed.), Georg Simmel, On Women, Sexuality and Love (New Haven and London, 1984).Google Scholar

3 In this essay Simmel positions the individual as male. However, it is clear from many of Simmel's other writings that he was also concerned to situate the position of women within a framework of sociological modernity; although he may not have been wholly successful in these attempts, he did display an unusual awareness of and sensitivity to the complexities of women's role in social life. For further details see Oakes, , Georg Simmel.Google Scholar

4 Simmel, G., ‘Money in modern culture’ (1896). Published in translation in Theory, Culture and Society, 8, 3 (1991), 17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Ibid., 18.

6 Ibid., 21.

7 Ibid., 23.

8 It is interesting to note that a similar observation is elaborated on by the post-Simmelian German writer, Walter Benjamin, in his critique of the flâneur when he dwells on the comfort which the bourgeoisie obtain from surrounding themselves with material objects. See Benjamin, W., Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism (London, 1976), 46.Google Scholar

9 Simmel, , ‘Money in modern culture’, 25.Google Scholar

10 Ibid.

11 See, for example, Friebe, W., Buildings of the World Exhibitions (Leipzig, 1985)Google Scholar; Greenhalgh, P., Ephemeral Vistas (Manchester, 1988)Google Scholar; Holt, E., The Expanding World of Art 1874–1902 (New Haven, 1988).Google Scholar

12 Simmel, G., ‘Berliner Gewerbeaustellung’, Die Zeit, Vienna, 7 (91), 1896, 204ff.Google Scholar Translated in full by Whimster, in Theory, Culture and Society, 8, 3 (1991), 119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 For further information, see Lindenberg, P., Pracht-Album der Berliner Gewerbe-Ausstellung 1896 (Berlin, 1896), 6–10.Google Scholar

14 Greenhalgh, , Ephemeral Vistas, 9.Google Scholar

15 For further details on the distinction between the terms Großstadt and Weltstadt, see Masur, G., Imperial Berlin (London, 1971)Google Scholar, ch. 5: ‘World city? Perhaps’, 125ff.

16 For the development of London and Paris, see Sutcliffe, A. (ed.), Metropolis 1890–1940 (London, 1984).Google Scholar For Vienna, London and Paris, see Olsen, D., The City as a Work of Art (New Haven, 1986).Google Scholar

17 Lindenberg, , Pracht-Album der Berliner Gewerbe-Aussteltung 1896, 9.Google Scholar

18 Verwaltungsbericht des Magistrats zu Berlin pro 1876,3. Quoted in Matzerath, H., ‘Berlin 1890–1940’ in Sutcliffe, Metropolis 1890–1940, 289–318.Google Scholar

19 Quoted in Masur, , Imperial Berlin, 126.Google Scholar

20 Offizieller Haupt-Katalog der Berliner Gewerbe-Ausstellung, 1896 (Berlin, 1896), 36.Google Scholar

21 For further details on Treptower Park, see Holmsten, G., Die Berlin Chronik (Düsseldorf, 1984), 275.Google Scholar For an in-depth account of the financial and historical background to the exhibition see Offizieller Hauptkatalog, part 1, ‘Geschichtliches’, i–xvii.

22 For further details see Lindenberg, , Pracht-Album der Berliner Gewerbe-Ausstellung 1896, 12.Google Scholar

23 See Offizieller Hauptkatalog, xiii.

24 Masur, , Imperial Berlin, 127.Google Scholar

25 Simmel, , ‘Berliner Gewerbeausstellung’, 121.Google Scholar

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 AEG is the common abbreviation for the Allgemeine Elektizitäts Gesellschaft.

29 Masur, , Imperial Berlin, 131.Google Scholar

30 AGFA is the common abbreviation for the Aktiengesellschaft für Anilinfabrikation.

31 For further details on the development of Berlin, see Ladd, B., Urban Planning and Civic Order in Germany 1860–1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).Google Scholar

32 Simmel, , ‘Berliner Gewerbeausstellung’, 120–1.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., 123.

34 Baedecker Travel Guide to Berlin (1901). Cited in Balfour, A., Berlin: The Politics of Order, 1737–1989 (New York, 1990)Google Scholar, ch. 2: ‘Moving pictures’, 51.

35 Bowlby, R., Just Looking (London, 1985), 11.Google Scholar

36 Simmel, , ‘Berliner Gerwerbeausstellung’, 119–20.Google Scholar