Advent, Advent! On the fifth of December!

Advent, Advent! Today, on December 5, dear Friends and Fans, I will tell you about St. Nikolaus. So, Nikolaus was real. At least as real as Robin Hood. The character goes back to Nikolaus von Myra, a Bishop and a Christian Saint and martyr. According to Wikipedia, he is the patron Saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, toymakers, unmarried people, and students in most parts of Europe. The patron Saint of unrepentant thieves is Robin Hood.

 

Myra was a town in Lycia, a Greek region in the Western part of what became Turkey about 700 years later, when the Turks drove the Greeks out. So no, Nikolaus was not Turkish, the same way Geronimo was not an Englishman. At the time of Nikolaus, Lycia belonged to the Roman Empire. Around the year 300 after Christ, the Roman Emperor Diokletian went after the Christians all over his lands. He had churches burned down and Bibles destroyed, and he killed or enslaved many Christians, especially clerics, including Bishop Nikolaus.

 

Nikolaus had a testament that gave his earthly possessions to the poor, which was not surprising because also in his life time, he did a lot of charity, some of it secret. He was said to have given toys to poor children and also performed miracles. Fast forward to the near-present, Nikolaus would visit German and Austrian children on the evening of December 6 (in some other countries on December 5) and leave little gifts in their boots outside. Like a tiny bar of chocolate, two cookies, and an orange when I was young, or a Sony PlayStation and a big screen TV today.

 

Nikolaus was depicted as that old man with a white beard, a red hat, and a red coat. His helper and companion was Krampus, who had a deformed foot and a rod. Krampus gave a piece of coal to kids who did not behave, or would even spank them. I would not know because I w
as always a very well-behaved kid.

 

In America, Dutch settlers brought his story to the new world (they call him Sinterclaas), and the British also knew him as Father Christmas (sadly, they did not emphasize Robin Hood). Soon, Nikolaus would develop into Santa Claus. The New York caricaturist Thomas Nast drew the first picture of Santa Claus as we know him. His red-and-white coat was eventually picked up and popularized by the Coca-Cola company.

 

And he would no longer show up at the beginning of December, but on Christmas Eve, the night before Christmas. With a sledge, filled by his North Pole elves (also a later add-on). Coca-Cola-Santa Claus has made his way back to Europe after WWII, including Germany, with the help of Hollywood movies, but not necessarily beloved by everybody. Because traditionally, the Christ Child brings the gifts, not Nikolaus. Tomorrow, I will tell more about Christmas and why some people think Santa Claus is really Odin, the Germanic God of war.

 

In the meantime, here is an angel from our book „Wings of Desire —Angels of Berlin“. Also available in German, including in book stores.

 

 

 

Advent, Advent! Your December 4th story

 

Advent, Advent! This day 77 years ago — on December 4, 1948 — Free University was founded in West-Berlin, in the district of Zehlendorf, with a festive act at the Titania Palast, a movie theater in Steglitz. Berlin's mayor Ernst Reuter was present as well as Lucius D. Clay (both depicted below). This was decided after the Soviets tried to take over the main University of Berlin that was soonafter named Humboldt University. This is an excerpt from our book The Cold War in Berlin.

 

 

The University as a Political Battlefield

 

Soon even Berlin University, where teaching had already resumed in January 1946, by order of the Soviet Military Administration (SMAD), became the scene of political disagreement between the East and the West.

 

The university, located on the Avenue Unter den Linden and therefore in the Soviet sector, was subjected to increasing pressure by the Soviets and the SED, with regard to both course content and personnel. Professors or students who did not willingly submit to this influence were harassed and pressured. In March 1947, several students were arrested, most of them members of the SPD or the CDU.

 

In spring 1948, the situation intensified further when the SED reacted to student demands for more freedom in research and teaching by expelling numerous students and making serious threats. About two dozen students and lecturers took the initiative to found an independent university, free of any political influences, in the western part of the four-sector city. They were supported above all by the Americans, in particular by US Military Governor Lucius D. Clay, and the new institution was officially founded on December 4, 1948, as “The Free University,” situated in the idyllic area of Dahlem in the American sector, just a stone’s throw from the Allied Kommandatura building.

 

From then on, the Cold War in Berlin was also manifest in the existence of two competing universities. Both of the other two higher-level educational institutions, the Academy of Arts and the Technical University, were in West Berlin and were therefore shielded from the East–West confrontation, since the East did not have competing institutions.

 

 

 

 

 

And here is the actual book!

 

 

Advent, Advent, Day 3! The death of Siegfried Jacobsohn

 Advent, Advent! On this day in 1926, Siegfried Jacobsohn died. Jacobsohn was a towering figure in the Weimar Republic. He was the founder and editor of Die Weltbühne, a small, but very influential weekly magazine many famous writers worked for, among them Lion Feuchtwanger, Kurt Hiller, Erich Mühsam, Else Lasker-Schüler, Erich Kästner, Alfred Polgar, Carl Zuckmayer, Arnold Zweig, and Kurt Tucholsky.

 Harold Poor wrote in his Ph.D. about the Weimar Republic: "Jacobsohn had the most coveted editor’s gift in abundance, the ability to recognize true writing talent." When Jacobsohn died at the early age of 46 years, a very unhappy Tucholsky returned from Paris — where he had been the correspondent for Die Weltbühne — to Berlin to take over. 

 Read more about this in Harold Poor's landmark biography of Kurt Tucholsky

 

 

And here is a picture of Harold Poor himself

 

 

Advent, Advent! A book about a bygone half-city

 Advent, Advent! Today is the second day of our Advent Calendar. Today, we will remember West Berlin, the only socialist place that ever existed successfully because the money never ran out — until the Wall came down. Where bars and pubs were open all night so the locals could plot the revolution! Where beer was cheap and sausage on a roll was considered dinner. Where the tenements still bore bullet holes from World War II, and the draft did not exist. You can now buy the hardcover at Amazon.com for a limited time in America for $20 only. And in Germany you can, of course, buy it in every book store.

 

 

 

However, if you prefer the English version, we have it, too.

 

 

 

And here are some pics!

 

The Berlinica Advent Calendar, Day 1

 Advent, Advent! This is December 1, the day the traditional Advent Calendar begins. Usually, you get little shiny color pictures, or chocolates, and since chocolates is out of the question, you will get a literary gift, tied to the date.

So, yesterday, Mark Twain would have turned 190 years old, had he lived, and his writing is a fresh than the day he stepped aboard the Enterprise (by some time-traveling accident). However, did you know that Mark Twain spent half a year in Berlin? 

This was quite an adventure. He conspired with diplomats, frequented the famed salons, had breakfast with duchesses, and dined with the emperor. He suffered an “organized dog-choir club,” at his first address, which he deemed a “rag-picker's paradise,” picked a fight with the police, who made him look under his maid's petticoats, was abused by a porter, got lost on streetcars, was nearly struck down by pneumonia, and witnessed a proletarian uprising in front of his hotel Unter den Linden. He even began a novel about Wilhelmina von Preussen, the lonely Prussian princess. Read all about it here, also the stories he wrote about Berlin.

 

 

 

 

And here is your pic!

 

 

 

If you get the book at Bookshop.org, you will endorse local booksellers and NOT You-Know-Who, and also, they have a 20 percent discount today, on Cyber Monday.

Also, if you sign up for our (American) newsletter, we will send you a free e-book; Berlin - The Chicago of Europe, Twain's main story he wrote about Berlin.

 

 

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This Sunday: The Brooklyn Book Festival

Next Sunday,  September 21, is the main day of the week-long Brooklyn Book Festival! Berlinica will have a table in the 1000 area, the number is 132. It is shared with Pink Tree Press and Under the BQE. You will see our signature fleece banner from afar (or so I hope). The festival takes place in Downtown Brooklyn, at Cadman Plaza / Columbus Park, near the 2/3 Borough Hall and the R Court Street subway station, right at the Brooklyn Court House and Borough Hall, from 10 am to 6 pm, rain or shine.

We will be there with all our English-language books, and a handful of German books. Most of them will be sold at half-price! We have a special new edition of our Bruce Springsteen book with glossy paper and color photos, as well as a few advance copies of our newest book, New York and London, by Alfred Kerr, and also, our Berlin Cookbook and our Mark Twain in Berlin book. As always, we will have copies of all our Kurt Tucholsky books, the famed Weimar writer who foresaw the Nazis in the 1920s.

 

Evidently, there is an app with a code to lead your way. You can get it here.

https://www.bloombergconnects.org

We have a few advanced copies of Alfred Kerr's book about his journey to America at the Festival. Kerr visits the Broadway theaters and Wall Street, and marvels at Times Square and Pennsylvania Station. He talks to the satirist Henry Louis Mencken, the railroad magnate W. Averell Harriman and Adolph Ochs, the publisher of The New York Times. In London, he meets the poet George Bernard Shaw. But the book, written concisely and wittily, is much more than just a travelogue. Kerr is also on a mission to ask for sympathy and help for the fragile Weimar democracy. 

 

New York and London
Author: Alfred Kerr
Translator: Professor Alan Bance
Cover Picture: Berenice Abbott
Genre: Narrative Nonfiction
Softcover; 172 pp.
Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5’’
ISBN USA: 978-1-935902-64-5 
Suggested retail $13.95
Release: 2025

Today in 1945, Alexander Roda Roda left us

On this day in History, on August 20, 1945, Alexander Roda Roda died in New York City. Roda Roda, whose full name was Alexander Friedrich Ladislaus Roda Roda, was born in 1872 as Sándor Friedrich Rosenfeld. He thought of himself as the "quintessential poet of Austria-Hungary". Roda Roda was born in Moravia, went to school Slovakia, was drafted into the military in Croatia, wrote for papers in Hungary, and lived in Vienna.

In the Austrian capital, he became a correspondent for Neue Freie Presse, the paper Karl Kraus loved to hate. During WWI, the satirist ran into trouble with the military censors of Austria who did not like his comedy Der Feldherrnhügel (In translation: Grandstand for General Staff). After the war, he performed in cabarets in Berlin and Munich and he became tremendously successful.

Shortly before the annexation of Austria, the Jewish satirist fled the Nazis to Switzerland, where he got expelled in 1940. He emigrated to New York soonafter. Sadly, he was unable to regain his career; he died impoverished in New York City in 1945. Friends brought his ashes back to Vienna.

When Roda Roda entered the USA in 1940, this was not his first trip. He had visited America, mostly New York City, in 1923 and wrote a book about this, Frühling in America, Springtime in America. It is filled with many funny, and also some serious observations. Berlinica will publish the book at the end of this year!

In fall, we will publish a book by another Weimar author traveling to New York in the 1920s; Alfred Kerr's New York and London, translated by Alan Bance, Professor emeritus of German, University of Southampton, England. Stay tuned, we will keep you posted!

Springtime in America
Author: Alexander Roda Roda

Translator: Cindy Opitz
Cover Picture: Berenice Abbott
Genre: Narrative Nonfiction
Softcover; ca 140 pp.
Dimensions: 5.5’’ x 8.5’’

ISBN USA: 978-1-935902-01-0 

ISBN Germany: 978-3-96026-056-1
Suggested retail: $ 13.95
Release: 2025

 

Heute vor 80 Jahren: Roda Roda starb am 20. August 1945 in New York City

An diesem Tag vor 80 Jahren, am 20. August 1945, starb Alexander Roda Roda in New York City. Roda Roda, dessen vollständiger Name Alexander Friedrich Ladislaus Roda Roda lautete, wurde 1872 als Sándor Friedrich Rosenfeld geboren. Er sah sich selbst als den „Inbegriff des Dichters von Österreich-Ungarn“. Roda Roda kam in Mähren zur Welt, ging in der Slowakei zur Schule, wurde in Kroatien zum Militär eingezogen, schrieb für Zeitungen in Ungarn und lebte in Wien.

In der österreichischen Hauptstadt wurde er Korrespondent für die Neue Freie Presse, die Zeitung, die Karl Kraus mit Leidenschaft hasste. Der Satiriker geriet in Schwierigkeiten mit der österreichischen Militärzensur, der seine Komödie Der Feldherrnhügel  nicht gefiel (und die ihn verklagte). Nach dem Krieg trat er in Kabaretts in Berlin und München auf und wurde äußerst erfolgreich, mit Büchern und Filmen.

Kurz vor der Annexion Österreichs floh der jüdische Satiriker vor den Nazis in die Schweiz, wo er 1940 ausgewiesen wurde. Daraufhin emigrierte er nach Amerika. Leider konnte er seine Karriere nicht wieder aufnehmen und starb 1945 verarmt in New York City an Leukämie. Freunde brachten seine Asche nach Wien zurück. Er wurde auf dem Zentralfriedhof bestattet.

Als Roda Roda 1940 in die USA kam, war dies nicht seine erste Reise. Er hatte Amerika, vor allem New York City, bereits 1923 besucht und darüber ein Buch geschrieben: Ein Frühling in Amerika. Es ist voller lustiger, aber auch ernster Beobachtungen. Berlinica hat dieses Buch veröffentlicht, mit einem Vorwort von Kurt Tucholsky; die englische Ausgabe erscheint Ende dieses Jahres.

 

 

 

Ein Frühling in Amerika
Geschichten aus der Neuen Welt
Autor: Alexander Roda Roda
Vorwort: Kurt Tucholsky
Genre: Reisebericht
Broschur, ca 170 Seiten
Format: 140 x 216 cm
Ladenpreis 10,50 €
ISBN:  978-3-96026-050-9
USA: 978-3-96026-082-0
Erscheint Dezember 2021

 

Today in 1961—The Berlin Wall was built

On this day 64 years ago, the Berlin Wall went up. It was a surprise for the people of East Berlin who were suddenly trapped, but politicians in Germany and in America had a hunch of what was coming. John F. Kennedy, President of the USA at that time dreaded instability in the middle of the Cold War, when millions of people fled the Eastern bloc. He feared that the Soviet Union would militarily take over all of Berlin and force the U.S. Army out, especially since the CIA was using West Berlin as a spy post. A Wall was a hell of a lot better than a war was his thinking, based on advisors such as Senator William Fulbright, a Democrat from South Dakota. The rest is history.

If you want to know more about the Berlin Wall, its history and its aftermath, these are the two books Berlinica can offer.

 

The Berlin Wall Today
Author: Michael Cramer
Translator: Cindy Opitz
Genre: City History
Softcover, 102 color pages
​Dimensions: 8.5'' x 8.5’’
Sugg. Retail: $15.95, 16,00 €
ISBN: 978-1935902-10-2
ASIN: B01FKTIW82
Release: Spring 2015

Berlin in the Cold War
Author: Thomas Fleming
Translator: Penny Croucher
Genre: City History
​Softcover, 90 pages / 51 pics / 3 maps
​Dimensions: 7’’ x 10’’
Suggested Retail: $12.00
ISBN 978-3-96026-006-6

 

Heute vor 37 Jahren: Der Boss in Weissensee

 

Es war am 19. Juli 1988, als Bruce Springsteen sein legendäres Konzert in Berlin-Weissensee gab. Das Buch zum Konzert schrieb Erik Kirschbaum. Er sprach mit Fans und Konzertveranstaltern, darunter Jon Landau, Springsteens langjähriger Freund und Manager. Mit Augenzeugenberichten, Zeitungsausschnitten, TV-Aufnahmen und sogar Stasi-Akten sowie Fotos und Erinnerungsstücken versetzt dieses fesselnde Buch den Leser und die Leserin zurück zu einem der aufregendsten Rockkonzerte aller Zeiten, wo The Boss live auf der Bühne eine Rede gegen die Mauer hielt, vor mehr als 300.000 jungen Ostdeutschen

 

 

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Pressestimmen:

“Dieses Buch belegt die Macht der Musik so klar wie niemals zuvor.”
Dave Marsh, Musikkritiker des Rolling Stone

“Eine beeindruckend detaillierte Betrachtung eines kaum bekannten Zusammentreffens von Rockmusik und politischer Befreiung.”
Eric Alterman, Autor von The Promise of Bruce Springsteen

“Der Boss inspirierte eine ganze Generation, für Freiheit zu kämpfen."
David Crossland, Spiegel Online

“Springsteen ist immer noch bei uns—das Regime der DDR nicht.”
Stephen Evans, BBC Kultur

“Für Springsteen war es ein Konzert, an das er sich immer erinnern würde."
Kate Connolly, The Guardian

“Der Moment, auf den manche von uns ein Leben lang gewartet hatten.”
Michelle Martin, Washington Post

Wir haben das Buch — die englischsprachige Ausgabe — nun neu herausgebracht, mit einem Vorwort von Mike Spengler, der damalige Hornbläser der E Street Band, in einem etwas größeren Format, und auf farbigem Glanzpapier. Es ist in jedem Buchladen bestellbar. Gedruckt wird es von der Firma Zeitfracht.

 

Today in 1988—Bruce Springsteen's Legendary Concert in Berlin

On July 19, 1988, The Boss gave his legendary concert in East Berlin that helped bring down the Wall. This is the story Erik Kirschbaum tells in Rocking The Wall, a book that explores how this changed concert the world. Kirschbaum  spoke to scores of fans and concert organizers on both sides of the  Berlin Wall, including Jon Landau, Springsteen's long-time friend and  manager. With lively behind-the-scenes details from eyewitness accounts,  magazine and newspaper clippings, TV recordings, and even Stasi files,  as well as photos and memorabilia, this gripping book transports you  back to those heady times before the Berlin Wall fell and gives you a  front-row spot at one of the most exciting rock concerts ever. It takes  you to an unforgettable journey with Springsteen through the divided  city, to the open air concert grounds in Weissensee, where The Boss,  live on stage, delivered a speech against the Wall to a record-breaking  crowd of more than 300,000 delirious young East Germans full of joy and  hope.

Now back for sale everywhere were books are sold.

"It was cultural forces, not merely political or military ones, that won the Cold War for the West, and which may yet spring more oppressive regimes from the tyranny of the old and joyless. Young East Germans wanted their rock and roll;
—Tris McCall, The Star Ledger, New Jersey

"...a glorious example of the influence that rock ‘n’ roll can have on people who are hungry and ready for change."
—Michelle Martin for The Washington Post

Kirschbaum is convinced it was the most politically important rock concert ever held. His book makes a strong case that historians should explore Springsteen's impact in fuelling the revolution.
—David Crossland, Der SPIEGEL, Germany

Springsteen is still with us. The regime of the German Democratic Republic is not.
—Stephen Evans, the BBC

In telling the back story of how the concert came to be, “Rocking the Wall” also offers a fascinating historical snapshot of East German Communist cultural officials scrambling to contain the brewing political restlessness all around them.
—Vanessa Fuhrmanns, The Wall Street Journal

 "Once in a while you play a place, you play a show that ends up staying inside of you, living with you for the rest of your life," he said. "East Berlin in 1988 was certainly one of them."
—Kate Connolly, The Guardian

"What was intended by East Berlin’s hard-line leadership as a pacifier for their people, Kirschbaum argues, had the opposite effect and turned into a powerful agent for change."
—Derek Scally, The Irish Times

 

The End of the War

On May 8, 1945, World War II ended in Europe with the capitulation of Germany (and Austria) after the Soviet Union had conquered Berlin days earlier. The war itself would only end on September 2, 1945, when Japan capitulated after America dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

World War II had started more than five years earlier, when Germany and the Soviet Union—allied in the Hitler-Stalin-pact—had invaded Poland in September 1939. It was the bloodiest war in history: Approximately 60 million people were killed, including six million European Jews. Germany lost about ten million people including those killed by Hitler, and the Soviets around 20 million people, including those killed by Stalin.

 

The end was especially brutal: In the battle for Berlin, hundreds of thousands Soviet and German soldiers died, some only 16 and 17 years old. Two million women were raped by the Red Army. More than two million German civilians, many of them refugees, would perish in 1945 and later.

While the Soviets took Berlin, the U.S. Army under the command of Dwight D. Eisenhower waited at the river Elbe for two more months, about 50 miles west of Berlin. This was a promise Franklin Roosevelt had made to Stalin in Yalta earlier, to allow the Soviet leader to take the German Capital. Churchill felt uneasy about this already, and Eisenhower was on the fence, but Harry Truman, FDR's successor, decided to go along with it.

 

The U.S. Army arrived in Berlin in July 1945, together with the British and the French Army. Berlin was divided in four zones of occupation. Alas, the friendship of the four victorious Allies lasted for three years only, until the Soviet blockade of 1948. Nevertheless, all four Allies would govern Berlin together until the Wall came down in 1989.

 

But what happened in those months 80 years ago? Pictures of those times, together with a short historic overview, can be found in Berlin 1945. World War II: Photos of the Aftermath, by Michael Brettin and Peter Kroh. The pictures have been taken by Soviet solders and Germans in their employ, and were collected by Berliner Verlag, With a preface by Stephen Kinzer, formerly the New York Times' Berlin bureau chief.

 

 

 

See us at the Indie Book Fair at the Pen World Voices Festival

 On May 3, from 12pm to 5pm, Berlinica Publishing will participate in the ninth annual Indie Lit Fair, co-presented by the PEN World Voices Festival and the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP). It will take place south of Astor Place, on the sidewalk of Lafayette Street, between Astor Place and Joe’s Pub. You can stroll — the festival is free and open to the public — and you can also buy books. You can get Berlinica books at a discount.

 

The Indie Lit Fair celebrates the vitality and diversity of independent literary publishing. In addition to Berlinica, the 2025 lineup of independent presses and literary magazines includes 128 Lit, Alice James Books, Contra Mundum Press, The Evergreen Review, Fence / Fence Books, Fiction, Get Fresh Books, Indolent Books, Sagging Meniscus Press, Solid Objects, and Under the BQE.