Berlin and New York City: Art, Culture, and Urban Identity

Artists of all media are inspired by the culture in which they live and work. This is a universally accepted idea; it is impossible to extricate the artist from the culture in which he or she created their work, whether that art takes the form of writing, painting, or any other type of multimedia. One of the most important influences an artist can encounter is the life that exists in the city in which they were raised — the landscapes, the people, and the sights and sounds cannot help but find their way into the works of artists who lived in a given location.

The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were pivotal in the development of what are now considered modern metropolises. Examining Berlin, Germany and New York City, New York, the culturally significant criteria of each can be observed and an analysis of society in those regions can be understood. These two locations were the preeminent cities in their respective countries, and the artwork that emerged from them during this period can give researchers and historians a clearer understanding of what life was like in Berlin and New York, how life was similar in certain respects, and particularly how the values of one population differed from those of the other.

Berlin is, and has long been, the capital of Germany. It is the place where the country's most prominent politicians lived and convened, and it served as the financial and economic capital of the nation. Consequently, people of all kinds came to live in the city at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The city continued to grow following the end of the First World War, when Germany was mired in a period of financial despair. Depressed, hungry, and insolvent families moved to major metropolitan areas in the hopes of finding work and being able to support themselves and their loved ones.

Germany's politicians tried to alleviate the despondency of the majority of the population by reinventing the nation as a perfect society and by imbuing the populace with the idea that as Germans they were part of a higher order of humanity.¹ Consequently, the artwork that emerged from Berlin during this period tends to portray the country as an ideal place — one of beauty, intelligence, and international importance — defying the reality of hardship for most Germans during the beginning of the twentieth century. By the middle of the 1920s, Berlin was the fastest-growing city in Europe and home to some of the most significant intellectual and artistic minds of the modern period.

New York City is still considered one of the most vibrant cities in the United States and indeed the world. It is the most populous city in the country and home to millions of people. Since the colonial period, New York was established as the epitome of American society, even serving as the first national capital before that distinction was moved to Washington, D.C. By the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, New York was already regarded internationally as a metropolis of unimaginable scale. Everything imaginable could be found there. People from all over the country came to New York City to seek their fortunes, and people living in poverty in Europe and Asia likewise came to call New York their home. There were neighborhoods populated almost entirely by Jewish residents or by Italian-Americans. The entire world seemed to represent itself in New York City as a microcosm of life on earth.

Artists from every medium were drawn to New York City because of its expansiveness. The city was already divided along aesthetic lines: African-Americans travelled to take part in the Harlem Renaissance. Many writers and painters made Greenwich Village or SoHo their home. Actors and playwrights travelled to midtown Manhattan in the hopes of making it on Broadway. In another district, the first film companies were producing their "flickers" and distributing them to eager audiences. It became widely believed that whatever your talent happened to be, there was a place for you somewhere in New York City — and only in New York City.

The artwork of the two different cities exhibits the societal perspective of the culture in which each piece was created. This aspect of human life and artistic influence can be seen across a wide variety of different mediums. Poetry, for example, shows what life might have been like for the poets at the time in which they were writing. Walt Whitman's poem "Mannahatta" describes New York City from the perspective of one small person surrounded by the luxury and extravagance of the nation's greatest city. At the same time, the unnamed narrator of the poem is awed by New York City while also feeling a part of it — and in that way the city becomes intimate. Whitman writes, "City of hurried and sparkling waters! City of spires and masts! / City nested in bays! My city!"²

In the poem, Whitman is speaking about New York City, but this attitude — of personal belonging to a great urban place — is the same feeling that artists seem to convey about any city they have claimed as their home. This holds true for artists coming out of New York City and, of course, out of Berlin as well.

A more concrete example of real life being portrayed through artistry is the documentary film, which offers a living, breathing relic of a period now passed. Short documentaries still exist that were made in Germany and New York respectively in the early twentieth century and capture what life was like at the time they were filmed. Both silent films, Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis and Manhatta, nonetheless provide modern viewers the ability to see and experience the living city of another century. The two films also exhibit the underlying psychology that accompanies any piece of art: nothing can be created within a culture without also exploring the sociology of what is occurring in that culture. The films, in turn, show a country on the verge of collapse as it attempts to rebuild itself, and a nation secure in its own power and awed by its own capabilities.