The new journal Berlin Review revives this debate

CThe online magazine Berlin Review has only been around for about a month, but so far there is no impression that it has attracted much interest, or that it has been seen as anything truly new or even necessary. And indeed: in Germany, in contrast to Great Britain and the United States, where the great “book review” models of the new journal come from, there is no diverse scene with constant consideration of important new publications and discussions. Not to mention intellectual magazines with their long texts?

The hallmark of the new company, the gap it wants to fill, is not immediately recognizable, and the editorial by the four editors (two women and two men) does not make it easy to guess: “What we need is precisely literary knowledge and courage, and perhaps also beauty and distraction.” And nervousness. Texts that open a window and – how German is it? “Give it a good airing.” This has momentum, with its mixture of bits of English, and it also has a bit of forced momentum, but it doesn't remove the suspicion that others might try Also doing this very thing, because it is literary knowledge, precision, beauty, distraction, and even a little “nervousness.” Conversely, the magazine cannot do without “opinion” and “interpretation” that it wants to programmatically distance itself from its current excesses.

But one of the reviews in the first issue makes it clearer from the editorial than it could be. “Sometimes, however, interesting things lie dormant precisely when public disinterest is at its greatest”: this is the last sentence of Berte Müllhoff’s review of historian Peter Brown’s latest book, his intellectual autobiography Journeys of the Mind “, which was published last year. By Princeton University Press out. The review uses the book to trace how Brown managed to arouse interest not only in his subject, but also in the educated public of the Western world in a field that did not even have a name in many countries: late antiquity and the question why “little Jewry”? The sect that preached poverty became, within a few centuries, the richest and most powerful institution in the entire Mediterranean region. Muehlhoff offers the book as a lesson on “how to develop your own interesting question.” It succeeds in arousing curiosity not only about the book and the life of its author, but also about the many surprising questions that can arise from dealing with this strange time.

Checkers position in Germany

The discussion also addresses the question of how a topic can find interest outside its usual circles of interest – while at the same time using its milieu to illustrate how this can be done. Indeed, she manages to take not only the book but also its themes seriously in extraordinary detail, even though they had not previously been recognized as relevant and urgent topics for a wide audience. Of course, because of the fame of its author, a book review in a daily newspaper might also be considered, but given the limited space available there, presentation there often has to be limited to the aspects necessary for the review. Justification of the judgment about the book is. This is the great opportunity afforded by the length of texts, for example, in the New York Review of Books and now also in the Berlin Review: it allows you to distinguish between necessarily brief reviews in a daily newspaper and necessarily brief reviews in a daily newspaper. Their themes to create a link between the books that unfold generously. It can also give objects a resonance frame that wasn't there before.