What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933 by Roth Joseph

Author:Roth, Joseph [Roth, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2002-12-16T16:00:00+00:00

18

The Very Large

Department Store

(1929)

Large department stores are nothing new in Berlin. But there seemed to be the odd person who bemoaned the lack of a very large department store. Some were not content with the existing four- or five- or six-story department stores, and they dreamed ambitiously of department stores that were to have ten or twelve, or even fifteen stories. It was not part of their plan to be nearer to God—which would have been a futile endeavor in any case—because, on the basis of everything we know, we don’t get any nearer to him by climbing up toward the clouds, but if anything perhaps the opposite: the nearer we are to the dust of which we are made. No! The people who dreamed of very large department stores were only out to lift themselves above the smaller department stores, just as with today’s runners, one of whom tries to outstrip the other not to reach his target the sooner, but merely to reach some arbitrary mark before the other does. The dreamers of department stores dreamed of a skyscraper. And so one day they built the very large department store, and everyone went along to look at it, and I went with them. . . .

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