He was born Israel Baline but when he and his family moved from Russia to his new home in the United Sates he accidentally became Irving Berlin. He was born in 1888 and lived an amazing 101 years dying in 1989. During those long years he worked mainly as a writer of songs, so many ...
After the end of World War Two, Germany was divided into four military occupation zones under the control of the four major allied powers. The Soviets controlled the Eastern part of Germany while the French, British, and Americans all controlled their own section of West Germany. The city of Berlin, located far inside the Soviet ...
When it comes to music, Germans don’t like to do anything halfway. And when it comes to music in Berlin, things just start getting excessive. Take opera, for instance. There is many an important city out there that takes great pride in its opera house. Berlin does, too. Only Berlin enjoys the privilege of being ...
For 29 years between the abrupt construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and its dramatic fall in 1989, the city existed as a divided urban entity. Because cities do not grow their infrastructures expecting to be artificially divided, Berlin’s early 20th century development was partially undone by the precipitous divorce (not to mention WWI ...