An American Flâneur in Berlin

Abstract

Background An American Flaneur in Berlin is the stream of consciousness account of Gabi Hartmann’s fictional visit to Berlin in the late Winter of 2018. While this is her first trip abroad, she feels a connection with that part of the world and wants to find out what that means. Her ancestors worked the land for centuries on farms outside of Eberswalde, a town 50 kilometers North-East of Berlin. This work explores the nature of a person’s sense of connection with a place never visited, but which is their ancestral homeland. Is the connection real or presumed? How can we explore the nature of this subjective phenomenon without unduly influencing the interpretive process? Gabi Hartmann is a young American woman who feels a strong connection with the city of Berlin. Her great grandfather was born near Berlin, but emigrated to the United States. Her ancestral roots in that part of the world goes back several hundred years. As a rite of passage, she has made the trip alone to Berlin in search of answers.

Contribution Flanuering is a practice identified in earlier work by French poet Charles Baudelaire. It is a legitimate tool for discovering the nuanced aspects of a location through the moment-by-moment sensing of that nuance and making decisions based on them in real time.

Significance As a Flaneure, Gabi’s goal is to encounter new and authentic experiences through intuitively-directed drifting. The process has been described by Guy Debord as a mode of experimental behaviour linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances.