2026-09-24T11:53:58Z https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/49816 2023-07-11 col_2142_5131 col_2142_14792 com_2142_5130 com_2142_814 com_2142_8903

Fritzsche, Peter A. Fritzsche, Peter A. Liebersohn, Harry Micale, Mark S. Steinberg, Mark D. Carrington, Tyler 2014-05-30T17:19:06Z 2014-05-30T17:19:06Z 2016-09-22T20:59:22Z 2014-05 2014-05-30T17:19:06Z 2014-05 This dissertation examines the surprising push and pull between tradition and modernity that occurred when men and women living in Europe’s fastest growing city fought off isolation and attempted to find love using self-consciously modern mindsets and technologies. Whether it was the decision to approach a stranger on the streetcar, go dancing with a co-worker, look for a mate in one of the city’s many gay bars, post a newspaper personal ad, or eschew the institution of marriage altogether and opt for a free love union, Berliners of all stripes left the shores of tradition and ventured into the choppy waters of a more individualized kind of love. And while there was much to be gained (as they describe in diaries, short stories, penny novels, and lively newspaper debates), the decision to break with the way “grandfather took grandmother” was risky, not least because these maverick Berliners were testing the boundaries of both middle- class respectability and hegemonic masculinity and femininity. In exploring Berliners’ narratives about their love lives, their metropolis, and their status as men and women, this dissertation argues that, even in a city whose most celebrated trait was its newness, traditional respectability proved remarkably robust. It reveals how Berlin – ostensibly Europe’s most liberating city at the turn of the century – was not primarily a space of sexual anonymity and romantic freedom but rather the site of immense friction between modern individualism and traditional virtue. Dissecting the way Berliners found love in the big city thus demonstrates that both modern cities and fin de siècle gender and civic identities were rooted as much in a world that was quickly fading as they were in one that was rapidly cresting the horizon. Item withdrawn by Laura Spradlin (lspradl2@illinois.edu) on 2014-03-28T16:12:11Z Item was in collections: University of Illinois Theses & Dissertations (ID: 1) No. of bitstreams: 2 CARRINGTON LOVE IN THE BIG CITY.docx: 21603345 bytes, checksum: ab31b1f8a3a1db05c0e02c01f9231bc0 (MD5) Carrington_Tyler.pdf: 16158024 bytes, checksum: ca16357d8b0aa1249a0faeb4be6d37b5 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2014-05-30T17:19:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Tyler_Carrington.pdf: 16158215 bytes, checksum: 06183ebb7cc96883705daba4f09b5f18 (MD5) license.txt: 4066 bytes, checksum: 37226ed53908ef633dc9056971d71dce (MD5) Item marked as restricted to the 'Administrator' Group (id=1) by Seth Robbins (robbins.sd@gmail.com) on 2014-05-30T17:21:36Z Item is restricted until 2016-05-30T17:21:23Z Restriction data tranferred 2014-07-01T11:39:44-05:00 Original Data Group with Access Administrator Release Date: 2016-05-30 12:21:23 UTC Reason: Author requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD system Limited Restriction Lifted for Item 49867 on 2016-09-22T20:59:22Z. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/49816 en Copyright 2014 Tyler Carrington Berlin Germany love gender urbanization metropolis intimacy homosexuality marriage personal ads Love in the big city: Intimacy, marriage, and risk in turn-of-the-century Berlin text History 1451 History 0342 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Dissertation Ph.D. PHD:History -UIUC 10KS0342PHD