"Berlin is damned forever to become, and never to be." Scheffler could not have anticipated that his dictum would prove prophetic. No other author has captured the city's fascinating and unique character as perfectly. From the golden twenties to the anarchic nineties and its status of world capital of hipsterdom at the beginning of the new millennium - the formerly divided city has become the symbol of a new urbanity, blessed with the privilege of never having to be, but forever to become.

Unlike London or Paris, the metropolis on the Spree lacked an organic principle of development. Berlin was nothing more than a colonial city, its sole purpose to conquer the East, its inhabitants a hodgepodge of materialistic individualists. No art or culture with which it might compete with the great cities of the world. Nothing but provincialism and culinary aberrations far and wide. Berlin: "City of preserves, tinned vegetables and all-purpose dipping sauce."

»Berlin«, writes Karl Scheffler at the end of his classic 1910 portrait of the city, is »damned forever to become and never to be«. Scheffler could not have anticipated that his dictum would prove prophetic. From the golden twenties to the anarchic nineties and its status of world capital of hipsterdom at the beginning of the new millennium - hardly has another author captured the fascinating and unique character of the city as perfectly. The formerly divided city has become the symbol of a new urbanity, blessed with the privilege of never having to be, but forever to become.

»An Aktualität hat Schefflers erstaunlich modernes Stadtporträt in 100 Jahren nichts eingebüßt.«