At the moment, no other European city attracts so much fascination as
the city of Berlin. An unrivalled symbol of modern urban life, Berlin is
a dynamic city whose inhabitants, in the course of the past two
centuries, have lived through both the rapid growth and the violent
destruction of the institutions of civil society, several times over.
This volume situates itself within these developments by presenting, for
the first time in English, a sample of the best, recently written essays
on contemporary civil societies, their structural problems, and their
uncertain future, written by scholars with a close, long-standing
relationship with the city. They are pre-occupied with a broad sweep of
substantive themes, but in each case they focus upon one or other of the
key trends that are shaping actually existing civil societies.