Fleeting Cities

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

   PDF

2. Introduction: How to Read an Exposition

   • Alexander C. T. Geppert

   Pages 1-15

3. Berlin 1896: Wilhelm II, Georg Simmel and the Berliner Gewerbeausstellung

   • Alexander C. T. Geppert

   Pages 16-61

4. Paris 1900: The Exposition Universelle as a Century’s Protean Synthesis

   • Alexander C. T. Geppert

   Pages 62-100

5. London 1908: Imre Kiralfy and the Franco-British Exhibition

   • Alexander C. T. Geppert

   Pages 101-133

6. Wembley 1924: The British Empire Exhibition as a Suburban Metropolis

   • Alexander C. T. Geppert

   Pages 134-178

7. Vincennes 1931: The Exposition Coloniale as the Apotheosis of Imperial Modernity

   • Alexander C. T. Geppert

   Pages 179-200

8. Conclusion: Exhibition Fatigue, or the Rise and Fall of a Mass Medium

   • Alexander C. T. Geppert

   Pages 201-247

9. Coda: Pictures at an Exhibition

   • Alexander C. T. Geppert

   Pages 248-249

10. Back Matter

    Pages 250-406

    PDF

Imperial expositions held in fin-de-siècle London, Paris and Berlin were knots in a world wide web. Conceptualizing expositions as meta-media, Fleeting Cities constitutes a transnational and transdisciplinary investigation into how modernity was created and displayed, consumed and disputed in the European metropolis around 1900.

• 1900
• Berlin
• Empire
• Europe
• Transnational history
• Paris
• London
• Imperialism

“This book is a stunning achievement. … The whole volume is full of insights, as the reader is taught how to read an exposition, as existing chronologies (not least the belief that exhibitions declined in popularity) are challenged and overturned, and as Geppert offers new ways of conceptualising the whole process, uncovering transnational links and exploring these places as sites for an urban modernity in ways that other authors have hitherto scarcely touched on.” (William Whyte, English Historical Review, February, 2016)

"Geppert not only invites us to look beyond exhibitions as vessels of imperial propaganda, but also adds depth to our understanding of them with his theorised account on the spatial element of world exhibitions.” (Matthijs Kuipers, European Review of History, Vol. 22 (6), August, 2015)

Shortlisted for the Longman - History Today Book Prize 2010

"If I were to recommend only one book about nineteenth- and early twentieth-century international expositions, it would be this one. Geppert's writing is clear, his learning is massive but never in the way, and his subject the spaces and places of world's fairs becomes in his hands a way of thinking about the self-reflexive and self-referential qualities of modernity. Fleeting Cities is an exemplary cultural and institutional history of one of the most talked about, glitzy new media phenomena of their age." - Thomas W. Laqueur, University of California, Berkeley, USA

"Fleeting Cities vividly and authoritatively demonstrates how European exhibitions formed an integral part of the material and mental urban environment which they helped to shape. It is a model of transnational, comparative history, attentive to the architectural grammar, social imaginaries, and political histories of these urban installations." - Judith R. Walkowitz, Johns Hopkins University, USA

"A careful reading of the complex history of international exhibitions. As a social theorist, the author presents a brilliant analysis of the writings of Georg Simmel, the German cultural philosopher, on exhibitions, as well as his confrontation with Wilhelm II on the subject of exhibitions and the German cultural and national ideology." - Aram A.Yengoyan, University of California, Davis, USA

"Geppert has succeeded in writing five worthwhile, brilliant essays on five 'late' major exhibitions held in the European metropoles, all based on a commanding knowledge of his sources and the (by now rampant) secondary literature." - Daniel Mollenhauer, Sehepunkte

"This is an important and ambitious study which will serve as a valuable resource of reference for future students of the subject. It is extremely well illustrated and supported with plenty of useful graphs, appendices, and an extensive bibliography." - Jill Steward, H-Net Reviews

"A successful Gesamtkunstwerk and a pleasure to read." - Klaus Dittrich, Comparativ

"Geppert has elegantly fathomed and brought new perspectives to the subject of international exhibitions. He has succeeded in producing an enormously stimulating contribution to a transnational history of modernity in the age of metropoles." - Martin Baumeister, Historische Zeitschrift

"Can an author move forward the theoretical discussion? In the case of Alexander C. T. Geppert's Fleeting Cities, the answer to those queries is yes. This book breaks new ground . . . Geppert throws down the scholarly gauntlet on his book's first page . . . Geppert's work will . . . attract those captivated by how we study exhibitions and modernity and by the modern history of Europe's 'great' cities specifically, Berlin, Paris, and London. He has discovered strange but true facts and things that never were . . . as well as things that were but about which we know very little, if anything. Geppert illuminates . . . [An] ambitious effort to transform network analysis . . . [A] fascinating monograph." - Peter H. Hoffenberg, The Journal of Modern History

"An admirably researched and well-written monograph that clearly indicates the subtle messages to be read beneath the glitz of these spectacular festivals. Above all, it exemplifies the insights that fresh scholarship in textual and representational analysis can bring to the study of events long recognized as landmarks in both cultural and urban history." - John R. Gold, The London Journal

"At its best, Geppert's text presents the possibility for theoretical interpretations while simultaneously undermining their reasonableness . . . The strength of Geppert's book is in highly detailed and vivid presentation of the events and their surrounding culture. Fleeting Cities is the result of painstaking first-hand research of a scope that has previously eluded any individual scholar." - Robert Proctor, Planning Perspectives

"Authoritative . . . As elsewhere, Geppert's research here is rich and probing; it adds significantly to our understanding and certainly helps correct other scholars' more speculative interpretations." Mark Crinson, History Workshop Journal

"Unique [ ]. Fleeting Cities offers an ambitious and engaging study of imperial expositions of fin-de-siècle Europe, tracing the medium's nuances and numerous metaphors, and succeeding in its premise to provide a fresh close reading of the contemporary impact and urban legacy of the complex network of exhibitions." - Sophie Franklin, London School of Economics and Political Science

• Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

  Alexander C. T. Geppert

ALEXANDER C. T. GEPPERT  is Emmy Noether Research Group Director at Freie Universität Berlin. He received his PhD from the European University Institute in Florence and has held fellowships in Berkeley, Paris, London, Vienna, Essen and at Harvard University. At present he is writing a book on the cultural history of outer space in the European imagination of the twentieth century.

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