Aris Fioretos

Berlin Above and Below Ground
Alfred Grenander, the Subway, and Metropolitan Culture

Essays
Original title: Berlin über und unter der Erde
Editor
Berlin: Nicolai Verlag, 2006,
360 pages with 300 illustrations
Cover and Layout: Atelier Gewerk
ISBN: 3-89479-344-9

He was the secret lord of the Berlin underworld. From the turn of the century through the early 1930s, Alfred Grenander (1863–1931) provided the emerging metropolis of the Weimar Republic with an extensive net of subway stations. He was an architect, draughtsman, and city planner; he was an interior decorator, furniture designer, and renewer. And he was a Swede.
With this book, an unknown chapter in the architectural history of Berlin is uncovered. Presenting a plethora of unpublished documents in words and images, it comprises opulent material concerning buildings by Grenander in Berlin and its vicinity. It devotes attention to his importance for today’s discussions of urban planning, and it paints a portrait of the German representative at the world’s fair in St. Louis in 1904, where he was being celebrated as “the renewer of German art.” In addition, the book treats the cultural and technological history of the subway, which as almost no other means of transportation influenced the perceptual habits of people during the first decades of the twentieth century, providing life with its new, metropolitan rhythm.
Contributions by Christoph Brachmann, Alfred Gottwaldt, Durs Grünbein, Falk Jaeger, Sven-Åke Johansson, Jörg Kuhn, Steffie Kuthe, Thomas Macho, Dorrit Müller, Martin Petsch, Ann Katrin Pihl Atmer, Thomas Steigenberger, Anja Steinhorst, Hanns Zischler, and Aris Fioretos.