Summer Program 2020 Berlinica Presents: Fall Program 2020
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The American Publishing Company for Books, Movies, and Music from Berlin Summer Program 2020 Berlinica Presents: Fall Program 2020 Berlinica, the independent publisher based in The Short Fat Berliner Who Tried to Stop a Catastro- New York and Berlin, brings Berlin to America. phe With A Typewriter; a new edition of the land- Our 2020 program features Our West Berlin, a sto- mark book by Harold L. Poor about the famed ry collection about life in the West part of Ber- German writer. Berlinica has now published lin from when the Wall was build until when it five books in translation by Tucholsky himself. came down. Twenty-three authors, among them The newest is Hereafter, where the iconic Weimar Gretchen Dutschke, Harald Martenstein, Rosa author muses about the afterlife. Our previous von Praunheim, Paul Hockenos, and Wladi- Tucholsky works include Berlin! Berlin! Dispatches mir Kaminer remember when Kennedy came from the Weimar Republic and Rheinsberg, to town, when the Kurfürstendamm was lined In the near future, we are planning to publish with protesters, how David Bowie found a trans- another Weimar author, Egon Erwin Kisch. vestite girlfriend, and how it was to drive to West The journalist, who hailed from Prague, based Germany. With many black-and white-pictures. his book Paradise America on a road trip from In 2019, we launched a series of German plays the East Coast to the West, where he met Upton in English, starting with Hinkemann by Ernst Sinclair and Charlie Chaplin. He wrote about it Toller, translated by Peter Wortsman. This will from the perspective of the working class. be followed in fall 2020 by the drama Hoppla, All our books are available at Amazon, Barnes We’re Alive, also by Toller and translated by Drew & Noble, and independent bookstores, also as Lichtenberg. We also published Kurt Tucholsky: ebooks. Booksellers can get them at IPG. Berlinica on Zazzle Berlinica on Cafepress Berlinica pictures are available on T-shirts, sweatshirts, necklaces, clocks, hat, mugs, iPads, and many more items, in many different styles. Berlinica-Books are available whereever books are sold. Booksellers can get them at IPG in Chicago. Berlinica Publishing LLC, 255 W 43rd St, Suite 1012, New York, NY, 10036, www.Berlinica.com, [email protected]; (1)-212-575-5586 2 City History Our West Berlin! The beloved urban island where bars and pubs were open all night so the locals could plot the revolu- tion! Where beer was cheap and sausage on a roll was considered fancy dinner. Where the tenements still bore bullet holes from World War II, and the draft did not ex- ist. Where the city government regularly stumbled over some real estate scandal and the Communist-controlled S-bahn train did not run. Where old-timers, Turkish im- migrants, and students from West Germa- ny lived side on side without much talking, where winter smelled like coal, and sum- mer like weed. This book is devoted to this half-city, surrounded by the Wall, thrown into being in 1949, which ceased to exist in 1989. Two dozen journalists and authors who are living in Berlin, both native-born and later arrivals, have contributed their stories: for those who remember, and for those who wish they did. … Colorful, and ugly but acffectionate… little pictures from a big place … — Hella Kaiser, Der Tagesspiegel Written by Andreas Austilat, Bernd Matthies, Detlef Kurth, Erkan Arikan, Eva C. Schweitzer, West Berlin Gerd Nowakowski, Gretchen Dutschke, Harald Storybook from the Island Jähner, Harald Martenstein, Ingo Lamberty, 21 Authors from Berlin Kerstin Schilling, Martina Schrey, Michael Son- Translator: Cindy Opitz theimer, Paul F. Duwe, Paul Hockenos, Rosa von Genre: Literary nonfiction Praunheim, Tanja Dückers, Thomas Rogalla, Ulli Hardcover; 224 pp. / 64 pics Kulke, Uwe Rada, and Wladimir Kaminer. The Dimension: 6’’ x 9’’ cover was designed by Gerhard Seyfried (above). Suggested retail: $ 19.95 ISBN: 978-1-935902-54-6 Release: Fall 2020 Visit Berlin 3 Jewish Life Pippa Goldschmidt, an author inspired by science who lives in Edinburgh, Scot- land, wanted to become German to be closer to her grandfather, a refugee from the Nazis whom she admired. Maya Shwayer, a journalist for the TV Station Deutsche Welle in Washington, DC, pursued German citizenship to boost her career in Berlin. Yermi Brenner is an Israeli writer and filmmaker and also the grandson of Alice Licht, a resistance fighter in 1940s Berlin. He has a response for people who question his decision to live in the coun- try that murdered his relatives. “In Berlin I feel a sense of belonging—to the culture, the values. I feel welcome here.” This book showcases twelve authors from six coun- tries who all have German Jewish heritage. For different reasons, they all have chosen to restore their German citizenship. And they all have reclaimed something that was taken from them and from their families. This book opens the mind to a difficult history while tugging at your heartstrings. —Eugene DuBow, Founding director of the AJC Berlin Donna Swarthout was born in New Jersey to Jewish parents who had fled Germany before A Place They Called Home World War II. She grew up in California. She Reclaiming Citizenship. Stories of holds a Master’s degree in political science from a New Jewish Return to Germany Berkeley University. Afterward, she worked Edited by Donna Swarthout in higher education in Montana. In 2010, she Genre: Biography, Jewish Life moved to Berlin with her husband and her three Hardcover; 208 pp. / 14 pics children, a place where she still lives. One year Dimension: 6’’ x 9’’ later, she had her German citizenship restored. Suggested retail: $ 20.00 ISBN 978-1-935902-65-2 Release: December 2018 Donna’s Blog 4 Drama Hoppla, We’re Alive, Toller’s most successful play was written in an attempt to understand his own role in the failed November Revolution of 1919 and the Weimar Republic. The translator is Drew Lichtenberg, author, critic, and dramaturg at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC. Hinkemann, a drama about a wounded veteran was translated by Peter Wortsman, author of Ghost Dance in Berlin and many other books and a former fellow- Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin. Ernst Toller, born in 1892, was a revolutionary, poet, playwright, a gifted orator and president of the Hinkemann Hoppla, We‘re Alive! short-lived Bavarian Soviet Repub- Author: Ernst Toller Author: Ernst Toller lic after WWI, a stint that got him Translator: Peter Wortsman Translator: Drew Lichtenberg into prison. He began his career as Genre: Drama Genre: Drama a left-wing dramatist in 1920s Ber- Softcover; 86 pp. Softcover; 120 pp. lin. High profile persona non grata Dimensions: 5’’ x 8’’ Dimensions: 5’’ x 8’’ when the Nazis came to power, he Suggested retail: $ 11.95 Suggested retail: $ 12.95 fled to London and subsequently to ISBN. 978-1-935902-52-2 ISBN. 978-1-935902-49-2 New York. In 1939, he was found Release November 2019 Release November 2020 dead in his hotel room, by suicide. 5 Biography Harold L. Poor’s biography Kurt Tuchol- sky: The Short Fat Berliner Who Tried to Stop a Catastrophe With A Typewriter, is the landmark biography about the iconolclast German Jewish author and a still unmatched labor of love by the late Rutgers history profes- sor. The book is not just about Tucholsky, but about his role in the Weimar Republic. According to the New York Review of Books, Poor’s biography provides a “new focus of the Weimar Republic and its fate”; The New York Times called the book “…one of the best of a large and growing crop.” Poor spent years of research not only at universi- ties, he also visited Tucholsky’s widow Mary Gerold in Germany, and unearthed letters, pictures, and other previously unknown materials. This book is a well-written gem that has finally been rediscovered. With a new preface by Rutgers History Chair Be- linda Davis and an introduction by Chris Poor, the son of Harold Poor. … an introduction for general readers to a very important period and a witty, cosmopolitan, quite tragic man. —Kirkus Review Harold Lloyd Poor was born 1935 in Missouri Kurt Tucholsky. and grew up in Alabama. He attended Harvard and The Short Fat Berliner Who Tried to earned a Ph.D. in German and European history Stop a Catastrophe With a Typewriter at Columbia University. In 1966, he joined the Rut- Author: Harold L. Poor gers History Department where he was regarded as Preface: Belinda Davis / Chris Poor one of the school’s most charismatic teachers. He Genre: Biography / German History also produced a Musical based on Tucholsky and Softcover; 256 pp. / 22 pics teached about the history of homosexuality. He Dimension: 6’’ x 9’’ Suggested retail: $ 19.95 died 1992 in New York City of AIDS. ISBN 978-1-935902-47-8 Release: Fall 2019 Rutgers University 6 Essays / Satire Berlin! Berlin! is a satirical selection from the man with the acid pen and the perfect pitch, who was as much the voice of 1920s Berlin as Georg Grosz was its face. This book is a complete collection of Tuchol- sky’s news stories, features, funny pieces, and poems about his hometown Berlin about the cabaret, the policies, the follies, and the celebrities: Pola Negri, Gussy Holl, Bert Brecht, Max Reinhardt. The book contains some of Tucholsky’s most famous pieces, among them features about the ste- reotypical Berliner on the phone, on vaca- tion, and more than one satirical biography of the author himself. Herr Wendriner, the chatty businessman makes an appear- ance, as well as Lottchen, the flapper, mod- eled after one of Tucholsky’s real-life girl- friends.