Overview

In June 1914, a seamstress named Frieda Kliem left Berlin on a commuter train to meet the man she had fallen in love with through a newspaper personal ad. Instead of proposing marriage, the man lured her into the forest, murdered her, and stole the few valuables she had in her apartment. Through Kliem's story, Love at Last Sight examines the risk associated with modern approaches to dating and finding love in the turn-of-the-century metropolis. Using newspapers, diaries, police records, and court cases, it reveals the strangers, swindlers, and traditional middle-class values that threatened single people looking for intimacy in new ways. For most men and women, using modern technologies to seek romance-making an acquaintance on the street, pursuing a missed connection from a streetcar, or paying for a matchmaking service or personal ad-meant putting one's livelihood, respectability, and life on the line. Those attracted to the opposite and same sex alike experimented with these and other novel approaches, including looking for mates at their workplaces, apartment buildings, dance halls, and bars. In doing so, they navigated traditional and modern class and gender norms in search of financial stability and personal fulfillment. Love at Last Sight exposes the tensions of romance in the modern city as turn-of-the-century Berliners found the metropolis a place of new opportunities to find meaningful connections, as well as a site of isolation, alienation, and danger.

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9780190917791

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Reviews

Workplace romance, personal ads, new dating technologies, matchmaking services, broken engagements, same-sex intimacy, marriage and upward mobility, sexual dangers in the big city, the decline of marriage, sexual assault, a rising urban murder rate-all of this sounds familiar. Love at Last Sight empathetically deploys the telling life and tragic death of Frieda Kliem to illuminate how these personal fears and sexual disruptions are nothing new. Tyler Carrington's vivid prose and meticulous research successfully transforms turn-of-the-twentieth-century Berlin into a prism of our own time. --Timothy J. Gilfoyle, author of City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920 Tyler Carrington's Love at Last Sight focuses on the tension between modernity and traditional respectability that is at the core of his central case study on the tragic story of Frieda Kliem. He demonstrates that this tension was typical in the behavior of so many German men and women (straight and gay) who were looking for love, especially if they were middle class or aspired to be so. Carrington thus paints a rich, fascinating picture of life in Berlin around 1900. --Rick McCormick, University of Minnesota Love at Last Sight is a fascinating tale of the search for intimacy in the modern metropolis and a surprising account of how dreams of attaining middle-class respectability shape our romantic lives. Though it's set in turn-of-the-century Berlin, Carrington's historical narrative speaks directly to our most contemporary concerns. --Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life

""Workplace romance, personal ads, new dating technologies, matchmaking services, broken engagements, same-sex intimacy, marriage and upward mobility, sexual dangers in the big city, the decline of marriage, sexual assault, a rising urban murder rate-all of this sounds familiar. Love at Last Sight empathetically deploys the telling life and tragic death of Frieda Kliem to illuminate how these personal fears and sexual disruptions are nothing new. Tyler Carrington's vivid prose and meticulous research successfully transforms turn-of-the-twentieth-century Berlin into a prism of our own time.""--Timothy J. Gilfoyle, author of City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920 ""Tyler Carrington's Love at Last Sight focuses on the tension between modernity and traditional respectability that is at the core of his central case study on the tragic story of Frieda Kliem. He demonstrates that this tension was typical in the behavior of so many German men and women (straight and gay) who were looking for love, especially if they were middle class or aspired to be so. Carrington thus paints a rich, fascinating picture of life in Berlin around 1900.""--Rick McCormick, University of Minnesota ""Love at Last Sight is a fascinating tale of the search for intimacy in the modern metropolis and a surprising account of how dreams of attaining middle-class respectability shape our romantic lives. Though it's set in turn-of-the-century Berlin, Carrington's historical narrative speaks directly to our most contemporary concerns.""--Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life

Author Information

Tyler Carrington is Assistant Professor of German Studies and History at Cornell College.

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