Germany's Urban Frontiers: Nature and History on the Edge of the Nineteenth-Century City

Through a series of insightful case studies, Poling shows how the shifting urban border, especially as embodied in the city wall, became a flashpoint for both conflicting interpretations of Germany's urban past and competing visions for the ideal German city of the future. Her astute and engaging analysis encourages us to reevaluate much of our conventional wisdom regarding urbanization and modernity in nineteenth-century Germany.--Matt Erlin, Washington University in St. Louis
Kristin Poling's innovative and deeply researched monograph uses nineteenth-century debates about de-fortification and the ongoing and uneven transformations of the urban edges to imagine the German burgher as a pioneer 'frontiersman' caught between new horizons of development and the weight of a history and tradition. By envisioning the city from its margins, Poling reinforces a key finding in urban studies: settlement frontiers, whether in the form of fashionable apartment blocks or improvised 'shantytowns, ' are not simply overflow from a crowded city but strategically and creatively shaped urban spaces in their own right.--Thomas Lekan, University of South Carolina