”Berlin Under the Sign of the Cinematograph”

While urbanisation was one of the principal facets of modernisation, new means of transportation were prior to almost every other innovation as Wilhelmine Berlin grew and expanded to become a modern metropolis. Sometimes called ‘Chicago on the Spree’ – and definitely the most modern European capital at the time – Berlin’s infrastructure of road and rail networks constituted the core of urban communication. In the year 1900, more than 80 million passengers used the city’s public transportation network. A similar infrastructural assumption serves as the guiding principle of this study on urban mobility and transportation, population density and cinema as a new media institution. The article, in short, argues that transportation facilities and pedestrian traffic are the definitive factors to describe and understand the dispersion of the early Berlin Kintopps (the equivalent of the US nickelodeons).

Artikeln ”Berlin Under the Sign of the Cinematograph: Urban Mobility and Cinema Location in Wilhelmine Berlin” ingår i Film 1900: Technology, Perception, Culture 1895-1920 (2009).

Redaktörer: Annemone Ligensa & Klaus Kreimeier

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