Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin. Alexandra Richie

wise man worries when the soldiers come.

      (Faust, Part II, Act 4)

      WHEN BERLIN WAS DECLARED the capital of a united Germany it seemed nothing could stop her meteoric rise to power. Max Weber was struck by the wealth and speed of the new metropolis with its ‘tramways, underground railways, its electric … lamps, display windows, concert halls and restaurants, cafés, smokestacks, masses of stone, and the wild dance of impressions of sound and colour’. Berliners had longed for unification but found the expectations heaped upon the new capital a heavy burden and the tensions which resulted from it were, if anything, greater than they had been before 1871. Weber’s ‘wild dance’ papered over deep divisions which quickly resurfaced when the boom began to turn sour.