Review: Leif Jerram, Germany's other modernity: Munich and the building of metropolis, 1895-1930

With Germany’s Other Modernity, Leif Jerram has produced a sophisticated analysis of howMunich responded to the anxieties and opportunities galvanized by modernity. FurtheringLefebvre’s understanding of the ways in which spatial practices, representations, values and beliefs shape our experience of being in the world, Jerram’s study rescues space from abstraction by focusing, in his own words, on ‘the transition from imaginary space into real spaces’ (8), and, in the context of Munich at the turn of the twentieth century, on the role that people, ideas and policies play in enabling that process. By focusing on Munich’s experience of modernity, albeit within a German and European context, and examining the creation of unspectacular, non-iconic architecture, Jerram reframes the study of German modernity in terms of both character and meaning.