You’d think you know everything about postwar Berlin, but you are wrong. Berlin in the years after 1945 is seen as a city divided among the four Allies—America, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union—but it was the Soviet Army only that conquered Berlin in April and May 1945 and …
Mark Twain in Berlin, and Why He Loved the German Language
Mark Twain’s love-hate relationship with the German language is well-known, but often misunderstood. After the author visited Germany in 1878 — Heidelberg, Baden-Baden, the Black Forest —, he wrote the book, “A Tramp Abroad,” with the now-famous appendix, “The Awful German Language”. Here, Twain gripped with the confusing gender of nouns, …