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From the 1960s onward, Prenzlauer Berg was associated with proponents of East Germany's diverse counterculture including Christian activists, bohemians, state-independent artists, and the gay community. It was an important site for the peaceful revolution that brought down the Berlin Wall in 1989. In the 1990s the borough was also home to a vibrant squatting scene.

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Near Soho house- not bad

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Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 - 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.

Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the conservatoire, Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity and incorporating elements of modernism, baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. Renowned for his abilities in orchestration, Ravel made some orchestral arrangements of other composers' piano music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is the best known.

A slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet music, two operas and eight song cycles; he wrote no symphonies or church music. Many of his works exist in two versions: first, a piano score and later an orchestration. Some of his piano music, such as Gaspard de la nuit (1908), is exceptionally difficult to play, and his complex orchestral works such as Daphnis et Chloé (1912) require skilful balance in performance.

Ravel was among the first composers to recognise the potential of recording to bring their music to a wider public. From the 1920s, despite limited technique as a pianist or conductor, he took part in recordings of several of his works; others were made under his supervision.

Ravel was born in the Basque town of Ciboure, France, near Biarritz, 18 kilometres (11 mi) from the Spanish border. His father, Pierre-Joseph Ravel, was an educated and successful engineer, inventor and manufacturer, born in Versoix near the Franco-Swiss border. His mother, Marie, née Delouart, was Basque but had grown up in Madrid. In 19th-century terms, Joseph had married beneath his status - Marie was illegitimate and barely literate - but the marriage was a happy one. Some of Joseph's inventions were successful, including an early internal combustion engine and a notorious circus machine, the "Whirlwind of Death", an automotive loop-the-loop that was a major attraction until a fatal accident at Barnum and Bailey's Circus in 1903.

Both Ravel's parents were Roman Catholics; Marie was also something of a free-thinker, a trait inherited by her elder son. He was baptised in the Ciboure parish church six days after he was born. The family moved to Paris three months later, and there a younger son, Édouard, was born. (He was close to his father, whom he eventually followed into the engineering profession.) Maurice was particularly devoted to their mother; her Basque-Spanish heritage was a strong influence on his life and music. Among his earliest memories were folk songs she sang to him. The household was not rich, but the family was comfortable, and the two boys had happy childhoods.

Ravel senior delighted in taking his sons to factories to see the latest mechanical devices, but he also had a keen interest in music and culture in general. In later life, Ravel recalled, "Throughout my childhood I was sensitive to music. My father, much better educated in this art than most amateurs are, knew how to develop my taste and to stimulate my enthusiasm at an early age." There is no record that Ravel received any formal general schooling in his early years; his biographer Roger Nichols suggests that the boy may have been chiefly educated by his father.

When he was seven, Ravel started piano lessons with Henri Ghys, a friend of Emmanuel Chabrier; five years later, in 1887, he began studying harmony, counterpoint and composition with Charles-René, a pupil of Léo Delibes. Without being anything of a child prodigy, he was a highly musical boy. Charles-René found that Ravel's conception of music was natural to him "and not, as in the case of so many others, the result of effort". Ravel's earliest known compositions date from this period: variations on a chorale by Schumann, variations on a theme by Grieg and a single movement of a piano sonata. They survive only in fragmentary form.

In 1888 Ravel met the young pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became not only a lifelong friend, but also one of the foremost interpreters of his works, and an important link between Ravel and Spanish music. The two shared an appreciation of Wagner, Russian music, and the writings of Poe, Baudelaire and Mallarmé. At the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889, Ravel was much struck by the new Russian works conducted by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. This music had a lasting effect on both Ravel and his older contemporary Claude Debussy, as did the exotic sound of the Javanese gamelan, also heard during the Exposition.

Émile Decombes took over as Ravel's piano teacher in 1889; in the same year Ravel gave his earliest public performance. Aged fourteen, he took part in a concert at the Salle Érard along with other pupils of Decombes, including Reynaldo Hahn and Alfred Cortot.

With the encouragement of his parents, Ravel applied for entry to France's most important musical college, the Conservatoire de Paris. In November 1889, playing music by Chopin, he passed the examination for admission to the preparatory piano class run by Eugène Anthiome. Ravel won the first prize in the Conservatoire's piano competition in 1891, but otherwise he did not stand out as a student. Nevertheless, these years were a time of considerable advance in his development as a composer. The musicologist Arbie Orenstein writes that for Ravel the 1890s were a period "of immense growth... from adolescence to maturity".

In 1891 Ravel progressed to the classes of Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot, for piano, and Émile Pessard, for harmony. He made solid, unspectacular progress, with particular encouragement from Bériot but, in the words of the musicologist Barbara L. Kelly, he "was only teachable on his own terms". His later teacher Gabriel Fauré understood this, but it was not generally acceptable to the conservative faculty of the Conservatoire of the 1890s. Ravel was expelled in 1895, having won no more prizes. His earliest works to survive in full are from these student days: Sérénade grotesque, for piano, and "Ballade de la Reine morte d'aimer", a setting a poem by Roland de Marès (both 1893).

Ravel was never so assiduous a student of the piano as his colleagues such as Viñes and Cortot were. It was plain that as a pianist he would never match them, and his overriding ambition was to be a composer. From this point he concentrated on composition. His works from the period include the songs "Un grand sommeil noir" and "D'Anne jouant de l'espinette" to words by Paul Verlaine and Clément Marot, and the piano pieces Menuet antique and Habanera (for four hands), the latter eventually incorporated into the Rapsodie espagnole. At around this time, Joseph Ravel introduced his son to Erik Satie, who was earning a living as a café pianist. Ravel was one of the first musicians - Debussy was another - who recognised Satie's originality and talent. Satie's constant experiments in musical form were an inspiration to Ravel, who counted them "of inestimable value".

In 1897 Ravel was readmitted to the Conservatoire, studying composition with Fauré, and taking private lessons in counterpoint with André Gedalge. Both these teachers, particularly Fauré, regarded him highly and were key influences on his development as a composer. As Ravel's course progressed, Fauré reported "a distinct gain in maturity... engaging wealth of imagination". Ravel's standing at the Conservatoire was nevertheless undermined by the hostility of the Director, Théodore Dubois, who deplored the young man's musically and politically progressive outlook. Consequently, according to a fellow student, Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi, he was "a marked man, against whom all weapons were good". He wrote some substantial works while studying with Fauré, including the overture Shéhérazade and a violin sonata, but he won no prizes, and therefore was expelled again in 1900. As a former student he was allowed to attend Fauré's classes as a non-participating "auditeur" until finally abandoning the Conservatoire in 1903.

In May 1897 Ravel conducted the first performance of the Shéhérazade overture, which had a mixed reception, with boos mingling with applause from the audience, and unflattering reviews from the critics. One described the piece as "a jolting debut: a clumsy plagiarism of the Russian School" and called Ravel a "mediocrely gifted debutant... who will perhaps become something if not someone in about ten years, if he works hard". Another critic, Pierre Lalo, thought that Ravel showed talent, but was too indebted to Debussy and should instead emulate Beethoven. Over the succeeding decades Lalo became Ravel's most implacable critic. In 1899 Ravel composed his first piece to become widely known, though it made little impact initially: Pavane pour une infante défunte (" Pavane for a dead princess"). It was originally a solo piano work, commissioned by the Princesse de Polignac.

From the start of his career, Ravel appeared calmly indifferent to blame or praise. Those who knew him well believed that this was no pose but wholly genuine. The only opinion of his music that he truly valued was his own, perfectionist and severely self-critical. At twenty years of age he was, in the words of the biographer Burnett James, "self-possessed, a little aloof, intellectually biased, given to mild banter". He dressed like a dandy and was meticulous about his appearance and demeanour. Orenstein comments that, short in stature, light in frame and bony in features, Ravel had the "appearance of a well-dressed jockey", whose large head seemed suitably matched to his formidable intellect. During the late 1890s and into the early years of the next century, Ravel was bearded in the fashion of the day; from his mid-thirties he was clean-shaven.

Around 1900 Ravel and a number of innovative young artists, poets, critics and musicians joined together in an informal group; they came to be known as Les Apaches ("The Hooligans"), a name coined by Viñes to represent their status as "artistic outcasts". They met regularly until the beginning of the First World War, and members stimulated one another with intellectual argument and performances of their works. The membership of the group was fluid, and at various times included Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla as well as their French friends.

Among the enthusiasms of the Apaches was the music of Debussy. Ravel, twelve years his junior, had known Debussy slightly since the 1890s, and their friendship, though never close, continued for more than ten years. In 1902 André Messager conducted the premiere of Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande at the Opéra-Comique. It divided musical opinion. Dubois unavailingly forbade Conservatoire students to attend, and the conductor's friend and former teacher Camille Saint-Saëns was prominent among those who detested the piece. The Apaches were loud in their support. The first run of the opera consisted of fourteen performances: Ravel attended all of them.

Debussy was widely held to be an Impressionist composer - a label he intensely disliked. Many music lovers began to apply the same term to Ravel, and the works of the two composers were frequently taken as part of a single genre. Ravel thought that Debussy was indeed an Impressionist but that he himself was not. Orenstein comments that Debussy was more spontaneous and casual in his composing while Ravel was more attentive to form and craftsmanship. Ravel wrote that Debussy's "genius was obviously one of great individuality, creating its own laws, constantly in evolution, expressing itself freely, yet always faithful to French tradition. For Debussy, the musician and the man, I have had profound admiration, but by nature I am different from Debussy... I think I have always personally followed a direction opposed to that of [his] symbolism." During the first years of the new century Ravel's new works included the piano piece (1901), the String Quartet and the orchestral song cycle Shéhérazade (both 1903). Commentators have noted some Debussian touches in some parts of these works. Nichols calls the quartet "at once homage to and exorcism of Debussy's influence".

The two composers ceased to be on friendly terms in the middle of the first decade of the 1900s, for musical and possibly personal reasons. Their admirers began to form factions, with adherents of one composer denigrating the other. Disputes arose about the chronology of the composers' works and who influenced whom. Prominent in the anti-Ravel camp was Lalo, who wrote, "Where M. Debussy is all sensitivity, M. Ravel is all insensitivity, borrowing without hesitation not only technique but the sensitivity of other people." The public tension led to personal estrangement. Ravel said, "It's probably better for us, after all, to be on frigid terms for illogical reasons." Nichols suggests an additional reason for the rift. In 1904 Debussy left his wife and went to live with the singer Emma Bardac. Ravel, together with his close friend and confidante Misia Edwards and the opera star Lucienne Bréval, contributed to a modest regular income for the deserted Lilly Debussy, a fact that Nichols suggests may have rankled with her husband.

During the first years of the new century Ravel made five attempts to win France's most prestigious prize for young composers, the Prix de Rome, past winners of which included Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet and Debussy. In 1900 Ravel was eliminated in the first round; in 1901 he won the second prize for the competition. In 1902 and 1903 he won nothing: according to the musicologist Paul Landormy, the judges suspected Ravel of making fun of them by submitting cantatas so academic as to seem like parodies. In 1905 Ravel, by now thirty, competed for the last time, inadvertently causing a furore. He was eliminated in the first round, which even critics unsympathetic to his music, including Lalo, denounced as unjustifiable. The press's indignation grew when it emerged that the senior professor at the Conservatoire, Charles Lenepveu, was on the jury, and only his students were selected for the final round; his insistence that this was pure coincidence was not well received. L'affaire Ravel became a national scandal, leading to the early retirement of Dubois and his replacement by Fauré, appointed by the government to carry out a radical reorganisation of the Conservatoire.

Among those taking a close interest in the controversy was Alfred Edwards, owner and editor of , for which Lalo wrote. Edwards was married to Ravel's friend Misia; the couple took Ravel on a seven-week Rhine cruise on their yacht in June and July 1905, the first time he had travelled abroad.

By the latter part of the 1900s Ravel had established a pattern of writing works for piano and subsequently arranging them for full orchestra. He was in general a slow and painstaking worker, and reworking his earlier piano compositions enabled him to increase the number of pieces published and performed. There appears to have been no mercenary motive for this; Ravel was known for his indifference to financial matters. The pieces that began as piano compositions and were then given orchestral dress were Pavane pour une infante défunte (orchestrated 1910), Une barque sur l'océan (1906, from the 1905 piano suite ), the Habanera section of Rapsodie espagnole (1907-08), Ma mère l'Oye (1908-10, orchestrated 1911), Valses nobles et sentimentales (1911, orchestrated 1912), Alborada del gracioso (from Miroirs, orchestrated 1918) and Le tombeau de Couperin (1914-17, orchestrated 1919).

Ravel was not by inclination a teacher, but he gave lessons to a few young musicians he felt could benefit from them. Manuel Rosenthal was one, and records that Ravel was a very demanding teacher when he thought his pupil had talent. Like his own teacher, Fauré, he was concerned that his pupils should find their own individual voices and not be excessively influenced by established masters. He warned Rosenthal that it was impossible to learn from studying Debussy's music: "Only Debussy could have written it and made it sound like only Debussy can sound." When George Gershwin asked him for lessons in the 1920s, Ravel, after serious consideration, refused, on the grounds that they "would probably cause him to write bad Ravel and lose his great gift of melody and spontaneity". The best-known composer who studied with Ravel was probably Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was his pupil for three months in 1907-08. Vaughan Williams recalled that Ravel helped him escape from "the heavy contrapuntal Teutonic manner... Complexe mais pas compliqué was his motto."

Vaughan Williams's recollections throw some light on Ravel's private life, about which the latter's reserved and secretive personality has led to much speculation. Vaughan Williams, Rosenthal and Marguerite Long have all recorded that Ravel frequented brothels; Long attributed this to his self-consciousness about his diminutive stature, and consequent lack of confidence with women. By other accounts, none of them first-hand, Ravel was in love with Misia Edwards, or wanted to marry the violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange. Rosenthal records and discounts contemporary speculation that Ravel, a lifelong bachelor, may have been homosexual. Such speculation recurred in a 2000 life of Ravel by Benjamin Ivry; subsequent studies have concluded that Ravel's sexuality and personal life remain a mystery.

Ravel's first concert outside France was in 1909. As the guest of the Vaughan Williamses, he visited London, where he played for the Société des Concerts Français, gaining favourable reviews and enhancing his growing international reputation.

The Société Nationale de Musique, founded in 1871 to promote the music of rising French composers, had been dominated since the mid-1880s by a conservative faction led by Vincent d'Indy. Ravel, together with several other former pupils of Fauré, set up a new, modernist organisation, the Société Musicale Indépendente, with Fauré as its president. The new society's inaugural concert took place on 20 April 1910; the seven items on the programme included premieres of Fauré's song cycle La chanson d'Ève, Debussy's piano suite D'un cahier d'esquisses, Zoltán Kodály's Six pièces pour piano and the original piano duet version of Ravel's Ma mère l'Oye. The performers included Fauré, Florent Schmitt, Ernest Bloch, Pierre Monteux and, in the Debussy work, Ravel. Kelly considers it a sign of Ravel's new influence that the society featured Satie's music in a concert in January 1911.

The first of Ravel's two operas, the one-act comedy L'heure espagnole was premiered in 1911. The work had been completed in 1907, but the manager of the Opéra-Comique, Albert Carré, repeatedly deferred its presentation. He was concerned that its plot - a bedroom farce - would be badly received by the ultra-respectable mothers and daughters who were an important part of the Opéra-Comique's audience. The piece was only modestly successful at its first production, and it was not until the 1920s that it became popular.

In 1912 Ravel had three ballets premiered. The first, to the orchestrated and expanded version of Ma mère l'Oye, opened at the Théâtre des Arts in January. The reviews were excellent: the Mercure de France called the score "absolutely ravishing, a masterwork in miniature". The music rapidly entered the concert repertoire; it was played at the Queen's Hall, London, within weeks of the Paris premiere, and was repeated at the Proms later in the same year. praised "the enchantment of the work... the effect of mirage, by which something quite real seems to float on nothing". New York audiences heard the work in the same year. Ravel's second ballet of 1912 was Adélaïde ou le langage des fleurs, danced to the score of Valses nobles et sentimentales, which opened at the Châtelet in April. Daphnis et Chloé opened at the same theatre in June. This was his largest-scale orchestral work, and took him immense trouble and several years to complete.

Daphnis et Chloé was commissioned in or about 1909 by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev for his company, the Ballets Russes. Ravel began work with Diaghilev's choreographer, Michel Fokine, and designer, Léon Bakst. Fokine had a reputation for his modern approach to dance, with individual numbers replaced by continuous music. This appealed to Ravel, and after discussing the action in great detail with Fokine, Ravel began composing the music. There were frequent disagreements between the collaborators, and the premiere was under-rehearsed because of the late completion of the work. It had an unenthusiastic reception and was quickly withdrawn, although it was revived successfully a year later in Monte Carlo and London. The effort to complete the ballet took its toll on Ravel's health; neurasthenia obliged him to rest for several months after the premiere.

Ravel composed little during 1913. He collaborated with Stravinsky on a performing version of Mussorgsky's unfinished opera Khovanshchina, and his own works were the Trois poèmes de Mallarmé for soprano and chamber ensemble, and two short piano pieces, À la manière de Borodine and À la manière de Chabrier. In 1913, together with Debussy, Ravel was among the musicians present at the dress rehearsal of The Rite of Spring. Stravinsky later said that Ravel was the only person who immediately understood the music. Ravel predicted that the premiere of the Rite would be seen as an event of historic importance equal to that of Pelléas et Mélisande.

When Germany invaded France in 1914 Ravel tried to join the French Air Force. He considered his small stature and light weight ideal for an aviator, but was rejected because of his age and a minor heart complaint. While waiting to be enlisted, Ravel composed Trois Chansons, his only work for a cappella choir, setting his own texts in the tradition of French 16th-century chansons. He dedicated the three songs to people who might help him to enlist. After several unsuccessful attempts to enlist, Ravel finally joined the Thirteenth Artillery Regiment as a lorry driver in March 1915, when he was forty. Stravinsky expressed admiration for his friend's courage: "at his age and with his name he could have had an easier place, or done nothing". Some of Ravel's duties put him in mortal danger, driving munitions at night under heavy German bombardment. At the same time his peace of mind was undermined by his mother's failing health. His own health also deteriorated; he suffered from insomnia and digestive problems, underwent a bowel operation following amoebic dysentery in September 1916, and had frostbite in his feet the following winter.

During the war, the Ligue Nationale pour la Defense de la Musique Française was formed by Saint-Saëns, Dubois, d'Indy and others, campaigning for a ban on the performance of contemporary German music. Ravel declined to join, telling the committee of the league in 1916, "It would be dangerous for French composers to ignore systematically the productions of their foreign colleagues, and thus form themselves into a sort of national coterie: our musical art, which is so rich at the present time, would soon degenerate, becoming isolated in banal formulas." The league responded by banning Ravel's music from its concerts.

Ravel's mother died in January 1917, and he fell into a "horrible despair", compounding the distress he felt at the suffering endured by the people of his country during the war. He composed few works in the war years. The Piano Trio was almost complete when the conflict began, and the most substantial of his wartime works is Le tombeau de Couperin, composed between 1914 and 1917. The suite celebrates the tradition of François Couperin, the 18th-century French composer; each movement is dedicated to a friend of Ravel's who died in the war.

After the war, those close to Ravel recognised that he had lost much of his physical and mental stamina. As the musicologist Stephen Zank puts it, "Ravel's emotional equilibrium, so hard won in the previous decade, had been seriously compromised." His output, never large, became smaller. Nonetheless, after the death of Debussy in 1918, he was generally seen, in France and abroad, as the leading French composer of the era. Fauré wrote to him, "I am happier than you can imagine about the solid position which you occupy and which you have acquired so brilliantly and so rapidly. It is a source of joy and pride for your old professor." Ravel was offered the Legion of Honour in 1920, and although he declined the decoration, he was viewed by the new generation of composers typified by Satie's protégés Les Six as an establishment figure. Satie had turned against him, and commented, "Ravel refuses the Légion d'honneur, but all his music accepts it." Despite this attack, Ravel continued to admire Satie's early music, and always acknowledged the older man's influence on his own development. Ravel took a benign view of Les Six, promoting their music, and defending it against journalistic attacks. He regarded their reaction against his works as natural, and preferable to their copying his style. Through the Société Musicale Indépendente, he was able to encourage them and composers from other countries. The Société presented concerts of recent works by American composers including Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and George Antheil and by Vaughan Williams and his English colleagues Arnold Bax and Cyril Scott.

Orenstein and Zank both comment that, although Ravel's post-war output was small, averaging only one composition a year, it included some of his finest works. In 1920 he completed , in response to a commission from Diaghilev. He had worked on it intermittently for some years, planning a concert piece, "a sort of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, mingled with, in my mind, the impression of a fantastic, fatal whirling". It was rejected by Diaghilev, who said, "It's a masterpiece, but it's not a ballet. It's the portrait of a ballet." Ravel heard Diaghilev's verdict without protest or argument, left, and had no further dealings with him. Nichols comments that Ravel had the satisfaction of seeing the ballet staged twice by other managements before Diaghilev died. A ballet danced to the orchestral version of Le tombeau de Couperin was given at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in November 1920, and the premiere of La valse followed in December. The following year Daphnis et Chloé and L'heure espagnole were successfully revived at the Paris Opéra.

In the post-war era there was a reaction against the large-scale music of composers such as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. Stravinsky, whose Rite of Spring was written for a huge orchestra, began to work on a much smaller scale. His 1923 ballet score is composed for voices and twenty-one instruments. Ravel did not like the work (his opinion caused a cooling in Stravinsky's friendship with him) but he was in sympathy with the fashion for "dépouillement" - the "stripping away" of pre-war extravagance to reveal the essentials. Many of his works from the 1920s are noticeably sparer in texture than earlier pieces. Other influences on him in this period were jazz and atonality. Jazz was popular in Parisian cafés, and French composers such as Darius Milhaud incorporated elements of it in their work. Ravel commented that he preferred jazz to grand opera, and its influence is heard in his later music. Arnold Schönberg's abandonment of conventional tonality also had echoes in some of Ravel's music such as the Chansons madécasses (1926), which Ravel doubted he could have written without the example of Pierrot Lunaire. His other major works from the 1920s include the orchestral arrangement of Mussorgsky's piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition (1922), the opera L'enfant et les sortilèges to a libretto by Colette (1926), (1924) and the Violin Sonata (1927).

Finding city life fatiguing, Ravel moved to the countryside. In May 1921 he took up residence at Le Belvédère, a small house on the fringe of Montfort-l'Amaury, 50 kilometres (31 mi) west of Paris, in the Yvelines département. Looked after by a devoted housekeeper, Mme Revelot, he lived there for the rest of his life. At Le Belvédère Ravel composed and gardened, when not performing in Paris or abroad. His touring schedule increased considerably in the 1920s, with concerts in Britain, Sweden, Denmark, the US, Canada, Spain, Austria and Italy.

Ravel was fascinated by the dynamism of American life, its huge cities, skyscrapers, and its advanced technology, and was impressed by its jazz, Negro spirituals, and the excellence of American orchestras. American cuisine was apparently another matter.

After two months of planning, Ravel made a four-month tour of North America in 1928, playing and conducting. His fee was a guaranteed minimum of $10,000 and a constant supply of Gauloises cigarettes. He appeared with most of the leading orchestras in Canada and the US and visited twenty-five cities. Audiences were enthusiastic and the critics were complimentary. At an all-Ravel programme conducted by Serge Koussevitzky in New York, the entire audience stood up and applauded as the composer took his seat. Ravel was touched by this spontaneous gesture and observed, "You know, this doesn't happen to me in Paris." Orenstein, commenting that this tour marked the zenith of Ravel's international reputation, lists its non-musical highlights as a visit to Poe's house in New York, and excursions to Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon. Ravel was unmoved by his new international celebrity. He commented that the critics' recent enthusiasm was of no more importance than their earlier judgment, when they called him "the most perfect example of insensitivity and lack of emotion".

The last composition Ravel completed in the 1920s, Boléro, became his most famous. He was commissioned to provide a score for Ida Rubinstein's ballet company, and having been unable to secure the rights to orchestrate Albéniz's , he decided on "an experiment in a very special and limited direction... a piece lasting seventeen minutes and consisting wholly of orchestral tissue without music". Ravel continued that the work was "one long, very gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, and there is practically no invention except the plan and the manner of the execution. The themes are altogether impersonal." He was astonished, and not wholly pleased, that it became a mass success. When one elderly member of the audience at the Opéra shouted "Rubbish!" at the premiere, he remarked, "That old lady got the message!" The work was popularised by the conductor Arturo Toscanini, and has been recorded several hundred times. Ravel commented to Arthur Honegger, one of Les Six, "I've written only one masterpiece - Boléro. Unfortunately there's no music in it."

At the beginning of the 1930s Ravel was working on two piano concertos. He completed the Piano Concerto in D major for the Left Hand first. It was commissioned by the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm during the war. Ravel was stimulated by the technical challenges of the project: "In a work of this kind, it is essential to give the impression of a texture no thinner than that of a part written for both hands." Ravel, not proficient enough to perform the work with only his left hand, demonstrated it with both hands. Wittgenstein was initially disappointed by the piece, but after long study he became fascinated by it and ranked it as a great work. In January 1932 he premiered it in Vienna to instant acclaim, and performed it in Paris with Ravel conducting the following year. The critic Henry Prunières wrote, "From the opening measures, we are plunged into a world in which Ravel has but rarely introduced us."

The Piano Concerto in G major was completed a year later. After the premiere in January 1932 there was high praise for the soloist, Marguerite Long, and for Ravel's score, though not for his conducting. Long, the dedicatee, played the concerto in more than twenty European cities, with the composer conducting; they planned to record it together, but at the sessions Ravel confined himself to supervising proceedings and Pedro de Freitas Branco conducted.

His final years were cruel, for he was gradually losing his memory and some of his coordinating powers, and he was, of course, quite aware of it.

In October 1932 Ravel suffered a blow to the head in a taxi accident. The injury was not thought serious at the time, but in a study for the British Medical Journal in 1988 the neurologist R. A. Henson concludes that it may have exacerbated an existing cerebral condition. As early as 1927 close friends had been concerned at Ravel's growing absent-mindedness, and within a year of the accident he started to experience symptoms suggesting aphasia. Before the accident he had begun work on music for a film, Don Quixote (1933), but he was unable to meet the production schedule, and Jacques Ibert wrote most of the score. Ravel completed three songs for baritone and orchestra intended for the film; they were published as Don Quichotte à Dulcinée. The manuscript orchestral score is in Ravel's hand, but Lucien Garban and Manuel Rosenthal helped in transcription. Ravel composed no more after this. The exact nature of his illness is unknown. Experts have ruled out the possibility of a tumour, and have variously suggested frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer's disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Though no longer able to write music or perform, Ravel remained physically and socially active until his last months. Henson notes that Ravel preserved most or all his auditory imagery and could still hear music in his head.

In 1937 Ravel began to suffer pain from his condition, and was examined by Clovis Vincent, a well-known Paris neurosurgeon. Vincent advised surgical treatment. He thought a tumour unlikely, and expected to find ventricular dilatation that surgery might prevent from progressing. Ravel's brother Edouard accepted this advice; as Henson comments, the patient was in no state to express a considered view. After the operation there seemed to be an improvement in his condition, but it was short-lived, and he soon lapsed into a coma. He died on 28 December, at the age of 62.

On 30 December 1937 Ravel was interred next to his parents in a granite tomb at Levallois-Perret cemetery, in north-west Paris. He was an atheist and there was no religious ceremony.

Marcel Marnat's catalogue of Ravel's complete works lists eighty-five works, including many incomplete or abandoned. Though that total is small in comparison with the output of his major contemporaries, it is nevertheless inflated by Ravel's frequent practice of writing works for piano and later rewriting them as independent pieces for orchestra. The performable body of works numbers about sixty; slightly more than half are instrumental. Ravel's music includes pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concerti, ballet music, opera and song cycles. He wrote no symphonies or church works.

Ravel drew on many generations of French composers from Couperin and Rameau to Fauré and the more recent innovations of Satie and Debussy. Foreign influences include Mozart, Schubert, Liszt and Chopin. He considered himself in many ways a classicist, often using traditional structures and forms, such as the ternary, to present his new melodic and rhythmic content and innovative harmonies. The influence of jazz on his later music is heard within conventional classical structures in the Piano Concerto and the Violin Sonata.

Whatever sauce you put around the melody is a matter of taste. What is important is the melodic line.

Ravel placed high importance on melody, telling Vaughan Williams that there is "an implied melodic outline in all vital music". His themes are frequently modal instead of using the familiar major or minor scales. As a result, there are few leading notes in his output. Chords of the ninth and eleventh and unresolved appoggiaturas, such as those in the Valses nobles et sentimentales, are characteristic of Ravel's harmonic language.

Dance forms appealed to Ravel, most famously the bolero and pavane, but also the minuet, forlane, rigaudon, waltz, czardas, habanera and passacaglia. National and regional consciousness was important to him, and although a planned concerto on Basque themes never materialised, his works include allusions to Hebraic, Greek, Hungarian and gypsy themes. He wrote several short pieces paying tribute to composers he admired - Borodin, Chabrier, Fauré and Haydn, interpreting their characteristics in a Ravellian style. Another important influence was literary rather than musical: Ravel said that he learnt from Poe that "true art is a perfect balance between pure intellect and emotion", with the corollary that a piece of music should be a perfectly balanced entity with no irrelevant material allowed to intrude.

Ravel completed two operas, and worked on three others. The unrealised three were Olympia, La cloche engloutie and Jeanne d'Arc. Olympia was to be based on Hoffmann's The Sandman; he made sketches for it in 1898-99, but did not progress far. La cloche engloutie after Hauptmann's The Sunken Bell occupied him intermittently from 1906 to 1912, Ravel destroyed the sketches for both these works, except for a "Symphonie horlogère" which he incorporated into the opening of L'heure espagnole. The third unrealised project was an operatic version of Joseph Delteil's 1925 novel about Joan of Arc. It was to be a large-scale, full-length work for the Paris Opéra, but Ravel's final illness prevented him from writing it.

Ravel's first completed opera was L'heure espagnole (premiered in 1911), described as a "comédie musicale". It is among the works set in or illustrating Spain that Ravel wrote throughout his career. Nichols comments that the essential Spanish colouring gave Ravel a reason for virtuoso use of the modern orchestra, which the composer considered "perfectly designed for underlining and exaggerating comic effects". Edward Burlingame Hill found Ravel's vocal writing particularly skilful in the work, "giving the singers something besides recitative without hampering the action", and "commenting orchestrally upon the dramatic situations and the sentiments of the actors without diverting attention from the stage". Some find the characters artificial and the piece lacking in humanity. The critic David Murray writes that the score "glows with the famous Ravel tendresse."

The second opera, also in one act, is L'enfant et les sortilèges (1926), a "fantaisie lyrique" to a libretto by Colette. She and Ravel had planned the story as a ballet, but at the composer's suggestion Colette turned it into an opera libretto. It is more uncompromisingly modern in its musical style than L'heure espagnole, and the jazz elements and bitonality of much of the work upset many Parisian opera-goers. Ravel was once again accused of artificiality and lack of human emotion, but Nichols finds "profoundly serious feeling at the heart of this vivid and entertaining work". The score presents an impression of simplicity, disguising intricate links between themes, with, in Murray's phrase, "extraordinary and bewitching sounds from the orchestra pit throughout".

Although one-act operas are generally staged less often than full-length ones, Ravel's are produced regularly in France and abroad.

A substantial proportion of Ravel's output was vocal. His early works in that sphere include cantatas written for his unsuccessful attempts at the Prix de Rome. His other vocal music from that period shows Debussy's influence, in what Kelly describes as "a static, recitative-like vocal style", prominent piano parts and rhythmic flexibility. By 1906 Ravel was taking even further than Debussy the natural, sometimes colloquial, setting of the French language in Histoires naturelles. The same technique is highlighted in Trois poèmes de Mallarmé (1913); Debussy set two of the three poems at the same time as Ravel, and the former's word-setting is noticeably more formal than the latter's, in which syllables are often elided. In the cycles Shéhérazade and Chansons madécasses, Ravel gives vent to his taste for the exotic, even the sensual, in both the vocal line and the accompaniment.

Ravel's songs often draw on vernacular styles, using elements of many folk traditions in such works as Cinq mélodies populaires grecques, Deux mélodies hébraïques and Chants populaires. Among the poets on whose lyrics he drew were Marot, Léon-Paul Fargue, Leconte de Lisle and Verlaine. For three songs dating from 1914 to 1915, he wrote his own texts.

Although Ravel wrote for mixed choirs and male solo voices, he is chiefly associated, in his songs, with the soprano and mezzo-soprano voices. Even when setting lyrics clearly narrated by a man, he often favoured a female voice, and he seems to have preferred his best-known cycle, Shéhérazade, to be sung by a woman, although a tenor voice is a permitted alternative in the score.

During his lifetime it was above all as a master of orchestration that Ravel was famous. He minutely studied the ability of each orchestral instrument to determine its potential, putting its individual colour and timbre to maximum use. The critic Alexis Roland-Manuel wrote, "In reality he is, with Stravinsky, the one man in the world who best knows the weight of a trombone-note, the harmonics of a 'cello or a pp tam-tam in the relationships of one orchestral group to another."

For all Ravel's orchestral mastery, only four of his works were conceived as concert works for symphony orchestra: Rapsodie espagnole, La valse and the two concertos. All the other orchestral works were written either for the stage, as in Daphnis et Chloé, or as a reworking of piano pieces, Alborada del gracioso and Une barque sur l'ocean, ( Miroirs), Valses nobles et sentimentales, Ma mère l'Oye, Tzigane (originally for violin and piano) and Le tombeau de Couperin. In the orchestral versions, the instrumentation generally clarifies the harmonic language of the score and brings sharpness to classical dance rhythms. Occasionally, as in the Alborada del gracioso, critics have found the later orchestral version less persuasive than the sharp-edged piano original.

In some of his scores from the 1920s, including Daphnis et Chloé, Ravel frequently divides his upper strings, having them play in six to eight parts while the woodwind are required to play with extreme agility. His writing for the brass ranges from softly muted to triple-forte outbursts at climactic points. In the 1930s he tended to simplify his orchestral textures. The lighter tone of the G major Piano Concerto follows the models of Mozart and Saint-Saëns, alongside use of jazz-like themes. The critics Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor comment that in the slow movement, "one of the most beautiful tunes Ravel ever invented", the composer "can truly be said to join hands with Mozart". The most popular of Ravel's orchestral works, (1928), was conceived several years before its completion; in 1924 he said that he was contemplating "a symphonic poem without a subject, where the whole interest will be in the rhythm".

Ravel made orchestral versions of piano works by Schumann, Chabrier, Debussy and Mussorgsky's piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. Orchestral versions of the last by Mikhail Tushmalov, Sir Henry Wood and Leo Funtek predated Ravel's 1922 version, and many more have been made since, but Ravel's remains the best known. Kelly remarks on its "dazzling array of instrumental colour", and a contemporary reviewer commented on how, in dealing with another composer's music, Ravel had produced an orchestral sound wholly unlike his own.

Although Ravel wrote fewer than thirty works for the piano, they exemplify his range; Orenstein remarks that the composer keeps his personal touch "from the striking simplicity of Ma mère l'Oye to the transcendental virtuosity of Gaspard de la nuit". Ravel's earliest major work for piano, Jeux d'eau (1901), is frequently cited as evidence that he evolved his style independently of Debussy, whose major works for piano all came later. When writing for solo piano, Ravel rarely aimed at the intimate chamber effect characteristic of Debussy, but sought a Lisztian virtuosity. The authors of The Record Guide consider that works such as Gaspard de la Nuit and Miroirs have a beauty and originality with a deeper inspiration "in the harmonic and melodic genius of Ravel himself".

Most of Ravel's piano music is extremely difficult to play, and presents pianists with a balance of technical and artistic challenges. Writing of the piano music the critic Andrew Clark commented in 2013, "A successful Ravel interpretation is a finely balanced thing. It involves subtle musicianship, a feeling for pianistic colour and the sort of lightly worn virtuosity that masks the advanced technical challenges he makes in Alborada del gracioso... and the two outer movements of Gaspard de la nuit. Too much temperament, and the music loses its classical shape; too little, and it sounds pale." This balance caused a breach between the composer and Viñes, who said that if he observed the nuances and speeds Ravel stipulated in Gaspard de la nuit, "Le gibet" would "bore the audience to death". Some pianists continue to attract criticism for over-interpreting Ravel's piano writing.

Ravel's regard for his predecessors is heard in several of his piano works; Menuet sur le nom de Haydn (1909), À la manière de Borodine (1912), À la manière de Chabrier (1913) and Le tombeau de Couperin all incorporate elements of the named composers interpreted in a characteristically Ravellian manner. Clark comments that those piano works which Ravel later orchestrated are overshadowed by the revised versions: "Listen to Le tombeau de Couperin and the complete ballet music for Ma mère L'Oye in the classic recordings conducted by André Cluytens, and the piano versions never sound quite the same again."

Apart from a one-movement sonata for violin and piano dating from 1899, unpublished in the composer's lifetime, Ravel wrote seven chamber works. The earliest is the String Quartet (1902-03), dedicated to Fauré, and showing the influence of Debussy's quartet of ten years earlier. Like the Debussy, it differs from the more monumental quartets of the established French school of Franck and his followers, with more succinct melodies, fluently interchanged, in flexible tempos and varieties of instrumental colour. The Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet (1905) was composed very quickly by Ravel's standards. It is an ethereal piece in the vein of the Pavane pour une infante défunte. Ravel also worked at unusual speed on the Piano Trio (1914) to complete it before joining the French Army. It contains Basque, Baroque and far Eastern influences, and shows Ravel's growing technical skill, dealing with the difficulties of balancing the percussive piano with the sustained sound of the violin and cello, "blending the two disparate elements in a musical language that is unmistakably his own," in the words of the commentator Keith Anderson.

Ravel's four chamber works composed after the First World War are the Sonata for Violin and Cello (1920-22), the "Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré" for violin and piano (1922), the chamber original of Tzigane for violin and piano (1924) and finally the Violin Sonata (1923-27). The two middle works are respectively an affectionate tribute to Ravel's teacher, and a virtuoso display piece for the violinist Jelly d'Arányi. The Violin and Cello Sonata is a departure from the rich textures and harmonies of the pre-war Piano Trio: the composer said that it marked a turning point in his career, with thinness of texture pushed to the extreme and harmonic charm renounced in favour of pure melody. His last chamber work, the Violin Sonata (sometimes called the Second after the posthumous publication of his student sonata), is a frequently dissonant work. Ravel said that the violin and piano are "essentially incompatible" instruments, and that his Sonata reveals their incompatibility. Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor consider the post-war sonatas "rather laboured and unsatisfactory", and neither work has matched the popularity of Ravel's pre-war chamber works.

Ravel's interpretations of some of his piano works were captured on piano roll between 1914 and 1928, although some rolls supposedly played by him may have been made under his supervision by Robert Casadesus, a better pianist. Transfers of the rolls have been released on compact disc. In 1913 there was a gramophone recording of Jeux d'eau played by Mark Hambourg, and by the early 1920s there were discs featuring the Pavane pour une infante défunte and Ondine, and movements from the String Quartet, Le tombeau de Couperin and Ma mère l'Oye. Ravel was among the first composers who recognised the potential of recording to bring their music to a wider public, and throughout the 1920s there was a steady stream of recordings of his works, some of which featured the composer as pianist or conductor. A 1932 recording of the G major Piano Concerto was advertised as "Conducted by the composer", although he had in fact supervised the sessions while a more proficient conductor took the baton. Recordings for which Ravel actually was the conductor included a Boléro in 1930, and a sound film of a 1933 performance of the D major concerto with Wittgenstein as soloist.

Ravel declined not only the Légion d'honneur, but all state honours from France, refusing to let his name go forward for election to the Institut de France. He accepted foreign awards, including honorary membership of the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1921, the Belgian Ordre de Léopold in 1926, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1928.

After Ravel's death, his brother and legatee, Edouard, turned the composer's house at Montfort-l'Amaury into a museum, leaving it substantially as Ravel had known it. As of 2022, the maison-musée de Maurice Ravel remains open for guided tours.

In his later years, Edouard Ravel declared his intention to leave the bulk of the composer's estate to the city of Paris for the endowment of a Nobel Prize in music, but evidently changed his mind. After his death in 1960, the estate passed through several hands. Despite the substantial royalties paid for performing Ravel's music, the news magazine reported in 2000 that it was unclear who the beneficiaries were. The British newspaper The Guardian reported in 2001 that no money from royalties had been forthcoming for the maintenance of the Ravel museum at Montfort-l'Amaury, which was in a poor state of repair.

Notes, references and sources

1. Joseph's family is described in some sources as French and in others as Swiss; Versoix is in present-day (2015) Switzerland, but as the historian Philippe Morant observes, the nationality of families from the area changed several times over the generations as borders were moved; Joseph held a French passport, but Ravel preferred to say simply that his paternal ancestors came from the ^ Jura.

2. ^ Students who failed in three consecutive years to win a competitive medal were automatically expelled ("faute de récompense") from their course.

3. ^ When he was a boy his mother had occasionally had to bribe him to do his piano exercises, and throughout his life colleagues commented on his aversion to practice.

4. Respectively, "A great black sleep" and "Anne playing the ^ spinet".

5. This critic was "Willy", ^ Henri Gauthier-Villars, who came to be an admirer of Ravel. Ravel came to share his poor view of the overture, calling it "a clumsy botch-up".

6. Other members were the composers ^ Florent Schmitt, Maurice Delage and Paul Ladmirault, the poets Léon-Paul Fargue and Tristan Klingsor, the painter Paul Sordes and the critic Michel Calvocoressi.

7. Ravel admitted in 1926 that he had submitted at least one piece deliberately parodying the required conventional form: the cantata ^ Myrrha, which he wrote for the 1901 competition.

8. The musicologist David Lamaze has suggested that Ravel felt a long-lasting romantic attraction to Misia, and posits that her name is incorporated in Ravel's music in the recurring pattern of the notes E, B, A - "Mi, Si, La" in French ^ solfège.

9. This remark was modified by Hollywood writers for the film ^ Rhapsody in Blue in 1945, in which Ravel (played by Oscar Loraine) tells Gershwin (Robert Alda) "If you study with me you'll only write second-rate Ravel instead of first-rate Gershwin."

10. Ravel, known for his gourmet tastes, developed an unexpected enthusiasm for English cooking, particularly ^ steak and kidney pudding with stout.

11. He never made clear his reason for refusing it. Several theories have been put forward. Rosenthal believed that it was because so many had died in a war in which Ravel had not actually fought. Another suggestion is that Ravel felt betrayed because despite his wishes his ailing mother had been told that he had joined the ^ army. Edouard Ravel said that his brother refused the award because it had been announced without the recipient's prior acceptance. Many biographers believe that Ravel's experience during the Prix de Rome scandal convinced him that state institutions were inimical to progressive artists.

12. Satie was known for turning against friends. In 1917, using obscene language, he inveighed against Ravel to the teenaged ^ Francis Poulenc. By 1924 Satie had repudiated Poulenc and another former friend Georges Auric. Poulenc told a friend that he was delighted not to see Satie any more: "I admire him as ever, but breathe a sigh of relief at finally not having to listen to his eternal ramblings on the subject of Ravel..."

13. According to some sources, when Diaghilev encountered him in 1925, Ravel refused to shake his hand, and one of the two men challenged the other to a ^ duel. Harold Schonberg names Diaghilev as the challenger, and Gerald Larner names Ravel. No duel took place, and no such incident is mentioned in the biographies by Orenstein or Nichols, though both record that the breach was total and permanent.

14. In ^ The New York Times Olin Downes wrote, "Mr. Ravel has pursued his way as an artist quietly and very well. He has disdained superficial or meretricious effects. He has been his own most unsparing critic."

15. In 2008 ^ The New York Times published an article suggesting that the early effects of frontotemporal dementia in 1928 might account for the repetitive nature of Boléro. This followed a 2002 article in The European Journal of Neurology, examining Ravel's clinical history and arguing that Boléro and the Piano Concerto for the Left Hand both suggest the impacts of neurological disease.

16. ^ Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians credits Saint-Saëns with 169 works, Fauré with 121 works and Debussy with 182.

17. In 2009 the pianist ^ Steven Osborne wrote of Gaspard, "This bloody opening! I feel I've tried every possible fingering and nothing works. In desperation, I divide the notes of the first bar between my two hands rather than playing them with just one, and suddenly I see a way forward. But now I need a third hand for the melody."

18. In a 2001 survey of recordings of ^ Gaspard de la nuit the critic Andrew Clements wrote, "Ivo Pogorelich... deserves to be on that list too, but his phrasing is so indulgent that in the end it cannot be taken seriously... Ravel's writing is so minutely calculated and carefully defined that he leaves interpreters little room for manoeuvre; Ashkenazy takes a few liberties, so too does Argerich." Ravel himself admonished Marguerite Long, "You should not interpret my music: you should realise it." ("Il ne faut pas interpreter ma music, il faut le réaliser.")

19. Other composers who made recordings of their music during the early years of the gramophone included ^ Elgar, Grieg, Rachmaninoff and Richard Strauss.

1. ^ Langham Smith, Richard. "Maurice Ravel - Biography" Archived 11 February 2018 at the Wayback Machine, BBC, retrieved 4 March 2014

2. "Hidden clue to composer's passion" Archived 30 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine, BBC, 27 March 2009

3. ^ "New York Symphony in New Aeolian Hall", The New York Times, 9 November 1912 (subscription required) Archived 5 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine

4. ^ "Noces, Les" Archived 16 March 2021 at the Wayback Machine, The Oxford Companion to Music, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, retrieved 11 March 2015 (subscription required).

5. Nichols (1987), p. 134; and ^ "La maison-musée de Maurice Ravel", Ville Montfort-l'Amaury, retrieved 11 March 2015

6. Quoted in Orenstein (2003), p. 477

7. Blakeslee, Sandra. ^ "A Disease That Allowed Torrents of Creativity" Archived 22 January 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, 8 April 2008

8. Nectoux Jean-Michel. ^ "Fauré, Gabriel Archived 30 May 2020 at the Wayback Machine"; Ratner, Sabina Teller, et al. "Saint-Saëns, Camille"; and Lesure, François and Roy Howat. "Debussy, Claude", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, retrieved 13 March 2015 (subscription required)

9. Nichols, Roger. ^ "Enfant et les sortilèges, L'" Archived 16 March 2021 at the Wayback Machine, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, retrieved 14 March 2015 (subscription required)

10. Osborne, Steven. ^ "Wrestling with Ravel : How do you get your fingers - and brain - round one of the most difficult pieces in the piano repertoire?", The Guardian, 30 September 2011

11. Kennedy, Michael (ed). ^ "Gramophone (Phonograph) Recordings", The Oxford Dictionary of Music, Oxford University Press, retrieved 6 April 2015 (subscription required)

12. ^ "Maurice Ravel's museum house", Montfort l'Amaury, retrieved 7 April 2022

13. Inchauspé, Irene. (In French) ^ "A qui profite le Boléro de Ravel?" Archived 2 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Le Point, 14 July 2000

Jankélévitch, Vladimir (1959) [1939]. Ravel. Margaret Crosland (trans). New York and London: Grove Press and John Calder. OCLC 474667514.

Kilpatrick, Emily (2009). "The Carbonne Copy: Tracing the première of L'Heure espagnole". Revue de Musicologie: 97-135. JSTOR 40648547.

Landormy, Paul (October 1939). "Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)". The Musical Quarterly. 25 (4): 430-441. doi:10.1093/mq/xxv.4.430. JSTOR 738857.

Lanford, Michael (September 2011). "Ravel and The Raven: The Realisation of an Inherited Aesthetic in Boléro". Cambridge Quarterly. 40 (3): 243-265. doi:10.1093/camqtly/bfr022.

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Strasser, Michael (Spring 2001). "The Société Nationale and its Adversaries: The Musical Politics of L'Invasion germanique in the 1870s". 19th-Century Music. 24 (3): 225-251. doi:10.1525/ncm.2001.24.3.225. ISSN 0148-2076. JSTOR 10.1525/ncm.2001.24.3.225.

Whitesell, Lloyd (2002). "Ravel's Way". In Sophie Fuller; Lloyd Whitesell (eds.). Queer Episodes in Music and Modern Identity. Urbana, US: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-02740-6.

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Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 - 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.

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Daphnis et Chloé, M. 57, Tableau 1: V. (a) Danse de Lycéion

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Daphnis et Chloé, M. 57, Tableau 1: V. (a) Danse de Lycéion

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The Berlin Wall Memorial is the central memorial site of German division.

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Berlin - See the places where the GDR is still alive. I'm a journalist, GDR expert and author of a book about architecture and lifestyle within the German Democratic Republic. It's a fascinating period and there's nowhere better to explore it than Berlin.

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Werwolf ( pronounced [ˈveːɐ̯vɔlf], German for " werewolf") was a Nazi plan which began development in 1944, to create a resistance force which would operate behind enemy lines as the Allies advanced through Germany, in parallel with the fighting in front of the lines. It is widely misconstrued as having been intended to be a guerrilla force to harass Allied forces after the defeat of Germany, a misconception created by Joseph Goebbels through propaganda disseminated in the waning weeks of the war through his "Radio Werwolf," which was not actually connected in any way with the military unit.

How and by whom the name was chosen is unknown, but it may have alluded to the title of Hermann Löns's novel, Der Wehrwolf, first published in 1910. Set in the Celle region ( Lower Saxony) during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), the novel concerns a peasant named Harm Wulf. After marauding soldiers kill his family, Wulf organises his neighbors into a militia who pursue the soldiers and mercilessly execute any they capture, while referring to themselves as Wehrwölfe. Löns wrote that the title was a dual reference to the fact that the peasants put up a fighting defense ( sich wehren, see " Bundeswehr" - Federal Defense) and to the protagonist's surname of Wulf, but it also had obvious parallels with the word Werwölfe in that Wulf's men came to enjoy killing. While Löns was not himself a Nazi (he died in 1914), his work became popular with the German far right, and the Nazis celebrated it. Indeed, Celle's local newspaper began serialising Der Wehrwolf in January 1945.

In 1942, Adolf Hitler named the OKW and OKH field headquarters, at Vinnytsia in Ukraine, "Werwolf", and Hitler on a number of occasions had used "Wolf" as a pseudonym for himself. (The etymology of the name "Adolf" itself carries connotations of noble ( adal; Modern German Adel) wolf, while Hitler referred to his first World War II Eastern Front military headquarters as Wolfsschanze, commonly rendered in English as " Wolf's Lair" (literally "Wolf's Sconce").

In late summer/early autumn 1944, Heinrich Himmler initiated Unternehmen Werwolf (Operation Werwolf), ordering SS Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann to begin organising an elite troop of volunteer forces to operate secretly behind enemy lines. As initially conceived, these Werwolf units were intended to be legitimate uniformed military or paramilitary formations trained to engage in clandestine operations behind enemy lines in the same manner as Allied Special Forces such as Commandos. They were never intended to act outside of the control of the German High Command ( OKW), or to fight in civilian clothes, and they expected to be treated as soldiers if they were captured.

Prützmann was named Generalinspekteur für Spezialabwehr (General Inspector of Special Defence) and assigned the task of setting up the force's headquarters in Berlin and organising and instructing the force. Prützmann had studied the guerrilla tactics used by Soviet partisans while he was stationed in the occupied territories of Ukraine, and the idea was to teach these tactics to the members of Operation Werwolf. According to German officers who were interrogated after the war, those who were familiar with Prützmann's central office said that it was, like its commanding officer, inefficient, weak, and uninspired, and that Prützmann himself was, in addition, "vain, idle and boastful". Walter Schellenberg, Heinrich Himmler's head of foreign intelligence, claimed to have told Himmler that the whole operation was "criminal and stupid".

Rumors of a secret Nazi guerrilla organization began to surface soon after the Allied invasion of Normandy. ran an article containing speculation that the Germans would try to prolong the war indefinitely by going underground after their defeat. The 27 January 1945 issue of Collier's Weekly featured a detailed article by Major Edwin Lessner, stating that elite SS and Hitler Youth were being trained to attack Allied forces and opening with a 1944 quote from Joseph Goebbels: "The enemy (invading German territory) will be taken in the rear by the fanatical population, which will ceaselessly worry him, tie down strong forces and allow him no rest or exploitation of any possible success."

On 23 March 1945 Goebbels gave a speech known as the "Werwolf speech", in which he urged every German to fight to the death. The partial dismantling of the organised Werwolf, combined with the effects of the Werwolf speech, caused considerable confusion about which subsequent attacks were carried out by Werwolf members, as opposed to solo acts by fanatical Nazis or small groups of SS.

The Werwolf propaganda station " Radio Werwolf" broadcast from Nauen near Berlin, beginning on 1 April 1945. Broadcasts began with the sound of a wolf howling, and a song featuring the lyrics, "My werewolf teeth bite the enemy / And then he's done and then he's gone / Hoo, hoo hoo." The initial broadcast stated that the Nazi Party was ordering every German to "stand his ground and do or die against the Allied armies, who are preparing to enslave Germans." Every Bolshevik, every Englishman, every American on our soil must be a target for our movement ... Any German, whatever his profession or class, who puts himself at the service of the enemy and collaborates with him will feel the effect of our avenging hand ... A single motto remains for us: 'Conquer or die.' "

Historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, writing not long after the end of the war, asserts that Radio Werwolf had no actual connection to the Werwolf military unit, and was instead organized and run by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, possibly in the hope of seizing control of the unit, which Goebbels deemed to be not radical enough. Trevor-Roper assesses Goebbels' Radio Werwolf as propagating "an ideological nihilism" which was not consonant with the limited aims of the actual unit. This disconnect between the broadcasts of Radio Werwolf and the purpose and actions of the military unit is, according to Trevor-Roper, the reason for popular misconceptions about the actual purpose of the unit, which was to attack the Allies from behind their lines, in parallel with the Germany Army fighting the Allies from the front, not to be a guerrilla-style resistance unit once Germany was defeated.

British and American newspapers widely reported the text of Radio Werwolf broadcasts, fueling rumors among occupation forces. Armed Forces Radio claimed that

Every friendly German civilian is a disguised soldier of hate. Armed with the inner conviction that the Germans are still superior ... [they believe] that one day it will be their destiny to destroy you. Their hatred and their anger ... are deeply buried in their blood. A smile is their weapon by which to disarm you ... In heart, body and spirit every German is Hitler.

According to Belgian Resistance operatives, the Werwolf name held clout in the general population in Northern Austria. Using an alleged link with the group as cover they were able to reroute a train of "refugees" (Belgian and French Nazi collaborators running away from justice) from Innsbruck back to Switzerland and then Brussels.

Gauleiters were to suggest suitable recruits, who would then be trained at secret locations in the Rhineland and Berlin. The chief training centre in the West was at Hülchrath Castle near Erkelenz, which by early 1945 was training around 200 recruits mostly drawn from the Hitler Youth.

Werwolf originally had about five thousand members recruited from the SS and the Hitler Youth. These recruits were specially trained in guerrilla tactics. Operation Werwolf went so far as to establish front companies to ensure continued fighting in those areas of Germany that were occupied (all of the "front companies" were discovered and shut down within eight months).[citation needed ] However, as it became clear that the reputedly impregnable Alpine Fortress, from which operations were to be directed by the Nazi leadership if the rest of Germany was occupied, was yet another delusion, Werwolf was converted into a terrorist organisation in the last few weeks of the war.

Werwolf agents were supposed to have at their disposal a vast assortment of weapons, from fire-proof coats to silenced Walther pistols but in reality, this was merely on paper; Werwolf never actually had the necessary equipment, organisation, morale or coordination. Given the dire supply situation German forces were facing in 1945, the commanding officers of existing and SS units were unwilling to turn over what little equipment they still had for the sake of an organization whose actual strategic value was doubtful.

Attempts were made to bury explosives, ammunition and weapons around the country (mainly in the pre-1939 German-Polish border region) to be used by Werwolf in resistance fighting after the defeat of Germany, but not only were the quantities of material to be buried very low, by that point the movement itself was so disorganised that few actual members or leaders knew where the materials were. A large portion of these "depots" were found by the Soviets, and little of the material was actually used by Werwolf.

The tactics available to the organisation included sniping attacks, arson, sabotage, and assassination. Training was to cover such topics as the production of home-made explosives, manufacturing detonators from everyday articles such as pencils and "a can of soup", and every member was to be trained in how to jump into a guard tower and strangle a sentry in one swift movement, using only a metre of string.

In the early months of 1945, SS Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny was involved in training recruits for the Werwolfs, but he soon discovered that the number of Werwolf cells had been greatly exaggerated and that they would be ineffective as a fighting force. Knowing, like many other Nazi leaders, that the war was lost, he decided that the Werwolfs would instead be used as part of a Nazi "underground railroad," facilitating travel along escape routes called " ratlines" that allowed thousands of SS officers and other Nazis to flee Germany after the fall of the Third Reich.

On 28 April 1945 Staff Sergeant Ib Melchior of the US Counter-Intelligence Corps captured six German officers and 25 enlisted men dressed in civilian clothes, who claimed to constitute a Werwolf cell under the command of Colonel Paul Krüger, operating in Schönsee, Bavaria. The group was captured while hiding in a tunnel network which contained communications equipment, weapons, explosives and several months' food supplies. Two vehicles were hidden in the forest nearby. Documents discovered in the tunnels listed US military commanders as targets for assassination, including General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Krüger stated that in 1943 a school was created in Poland to train men in guerrilla warfare. On 16 September 1944, it was relocated to the town of Thürenberg, Czechoslovakia. Krüger claimed that a total of 1,200 men completed Werwolf training in the school in less than two years. On 1 April 1945, the school was moved to Schönsee and a subterranean base was constructed. The students were instructed to "stay behind, evade capture, and then harass and destroy supply lines of United States troops ... Special emphasis was put on gasoline and oil supplies." According to the G-2 report:

Operations were to begin three or four weeks after being overrun by US troops. The plan was for each unit to receive designated targets from the headquarters. Bands of from 10 to 20 men were then to be sent out to destroy the target and to return immediately to their unit. No targets were to be located nearer than fifteen kilometers to the unit. Secrecy and camouflage were relied upon for security and all personnel had strict orders to conceal themselves if US troops came into their area and under no circumstances to open fire in the bivouac area. No routes of escape had been planned. Members of the unit usually wore the Wehrmacht uniform, but a few members disguised themselves as foresters and were used as outposts to report any approaching danger. Their ordnance supplies consisted of mortars, machine guns, sub-machine guns, rifles, and various types of side arms. Each man was issued a Liliput pistol which could be very easily concealed on the person. The ammunition supply for each type weapon was ample for four months of ordinary operations. The unit had one civilian type sedan and one Wehrmacht motorcycle which were well hidden in the woods, and 120 horses which were dispersed on farms throughout the vicinity. Food consisting of canned meat, biscuits, crackers, chocolate, and canned vegetables was sufficient for over four months. Additional food supplies such as bread, potatoes, fresh vegetables, and smoked sausages were obtained from local sources. The unit was supplied with water by a brook passing through the area. Dugouts were constructed in such a manner as not to destroy the live trees around them. The dugouts were located on the slope of a hill which was densely covered with fir trees ... The entrance to the dugout was a hole approximately 24 inches in diameter and four to five feet deep. Approximately two feet down, this hole extended horizontally to a length of eight to ten feet. The dugout has a capacity of three men and has a wooden floor and a drainage ditch. Walls and roof are reinforced with lumber.

The following day a CIC unit led by Captain Oscar M. Grimes of the 97th Infantry Division captured about two hundred Gestapo officers and men in hiding near Hof, Bavaria. They were in possession of American army uniforms and equipment but had decided to surrender.

In May 1945 CIC Major John Schwartzwalder arrested members of a Werwolf cell in Bremen whose leader had fled. Schwartzwalder believed that the Werwolf never constituted a threat to Allied personnel:

...the Bremen group of the Jugend had received its orders to organize as a Werwolf cell only about four days before the fall of the city. By that time the Wehrmacht had taken all but the halt and the lame, and the Volkssturm had taken most of the rest. Nevertheless an organization had been started using the younger boys but it had not progressed to accumulating either weapons or supplies before the entry of the Allied troops...The only remaining fraction of the Werwolf that was of any importance was a residue of veterans of the last war who were physically ineligible for service in this one and who had weapons concealed here and there. These were not too hard to dispose of.

After it became clear, by March 1945, that the remaining German forces had no chance of stopping the Allied advance, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels seized upon the idea of Werwolf, and began to foster the notion, primarily broadcasts of Radio Werwolf, that Werwolf was a clandestine guerrilla organization comprising irregular German partisans, similar to the many insurgency groups which the Germans had encountered in the nations they occupied during the war. Despite such propaganda, however, this was never the actual nature of Werwolf, which in reality was always intended to be a commando unit comprising uniformed troops. Another popular myth about Werwolf is that it was intended to continue fighting underground even after the surrender of the Nazi government and the German military.

No officially recognized effort was ever made by the Nazi leadership to develop an insurgency to continue fighting in the event of defeat, in no small measure because Adolf Hitler, as well as other Nazi leaders, regarded anyone who even discussed the possibility as defeatists and traitors. As a result, no contingency plans to deal with defeat were ever authorized in the official, public record. However, as a result of Goebbels' efforts, Werwolf had, and in many cases continues to have, a mythological reputation as having been an underground Nazi resistance movement, with some even claiming that Werwolf attacks continued for months, or even years, after the end of the war-in particular, sources cited by West Coast radio broadcaster Dave Emory, for instance in this archived program on audio, following a brief first segment. Its perceived influence went far beyond its actual operations, especially after the dissolution of the Nazi regime.

Historians Antony Beevor and Earl F. Ziemke have argued that Werwolf never amounted to a serious threat, and furthermore propose that the plan barely existed. According to a study by former Ambassador James Dobbins and a team of RAND Corporation researchers, there were no American combat casualties after the German surrender.

German historian Golo Mann, in his The History of Germany Since 1789 (1984) also states that "The [Germans'] readiness to work with the victors, to carry out their orders, to accept their advice and their help was genuine; of the resistance which the Allies had expected in the way of 'werwolf' units and nocturnal guerrilla activities, there was no sign."

Perry Biddiscombe has offered a somewhat different view. In his books Werwolf!: The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement, 1944-1946 (1998) and The Last Nazis: SS Werwolf Guerrilla Resistance in Europe, 1944-1947 (2000), Biddiscombe asserts that after retreating to the Black Forest and the Harz mountains, the Werwolf continued resisting the occupation until at least 1947, possibly until 1949-50. However, he characterizes German post-surrender resistance as "minor", and calls the post-war Werwolfs "desperadoes" and "fanatics living in forest huts". He further cites U.S. Army intelligence reports that characterized Nazi partisans as "nomad bands" and judged them as less serious threats than attacks by foreign slave laborers and considered their sabotage and subversive activities to be insignificant. He also notes that: "The Americans and British concluded, even in the summer of 1945, that, as a nationwide network, the original Werwolf was irrevocably destroyed, and that it no longer posed a threat to the occupation."

Biddiscombe also says that Werwolf violence failed to mobilize a spirit of popular national resistance, that the group was poorly-led, poorly-armed, and poorly-organized, and that it was doomed to failure given the war-weariness of the populace and the hesitancy of young Germans to sacrifice themselves on the funeral pyre of the former Nazi regime. He concludes that the only significant achievement of the Werwolfs was to spark distrust of the German populace in the Allies as they occupied Germany, which caused them in some cases to act more repressively than they might have done otherwise, which in turn fostered resentments that helped to enable far right ideas to survive in Germany, at least in pockets, into the post-war era.

Nevertheless, says Biddiscombe, "The Werewolves were no bit players"; they caused tens of millions of dollars of property damage at a time when the European economies were in an already desperate state, and they were responsible for the killing of thousands of people.

A number of instances of resistance have been attributed to Werwolf activity:

25 March 1945 - Under the code name Unternehmen Karneval, Franz Oppenhoff, the newly appointed mayor of Aachen, was assassinated outside his home by an SS unit which was composed of Werwolf trainees from Hülchrath Castle, including Ilse Hirsch. They were flown in at the order of Heinrich Himmler.

28 March 1945 - The mayor of the eastern Ruhr town of Meschede was assassinated, even though Meschede was still behind German lines and was not overrun until mid-April. Werwolf Radio later announced that the assassination had been carried out by Werwolf agents.

30 March 1945 - Radio Werwolf claimed responsibility for the death of Major General Maurice Rose, commander of the US 3rd Armored Division, who was in reality killed in action by troops of the 507th Heavy Panzer Battalion.

14 March 1945 - Former social-democrat councillor and farmer Willi Rogge was shot and killed by a Werwolf unit near Dötlingen, in Lower Saxony, accused of stealing from a Reich Labour Service store.

21 April 1945 - Major John Poston, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's liaison officer, was ambushed and killed by unidentified assailants shortly before Germany's surrender; in reality Poston died in an ambush by regular troops.

22 April 1945 - Radio Werwolf claimed that a Werwolf unit composed of German citizens from Leuna and Merseburg had entered the Leuna synthetic petroleum factory and set off explosives, destroying four factory buildings and rendering it inoperable.

28 April 1945 - The Penzberg Murders: Werwolf operatives were allegedly responsible for the murder of the mayor of Penzberg, Bavaria, and fourteen others, because of their actions in freeing prisoners and preventing the destruction of property.

5 June 1945 - It has been claimed that the destruction of the United States Military Government police headquarters in Bremen by two explosions which resulted in 44 deaths was a Werwolf-related attack. There is, however, no proof that it was due to Werwolf actions rather than to unexploded bombs or delayed-action ordnance.

16 June 1945 - Colonel-General Nikolai Berzarin, Soviet Red Army commandant of East Berlin, is often claimed to have been assassinated by Werwolfs, but actually died in a motorcycle accident.

31 July 1945 - An ammunition dump in Ústí nad Labem (Aussig an der Elbe), a largely Sudeten German city in northern Bohemia exploded, killing 26 or 27 people and injuring dozens. The explosion was blamed on the Werwolf organization and resulted in the "Ústí massacre" of ethnic Germans.

According to Biddiscombe "the threat of Nazi partisan warfare had a generally unhealthy effect on broad issues of policy among the occupying powers. As well, it prompted the development of draconian reprisal measures that resulted in the destruction of much German property and the deaths of thousands of civilians and soldiers". Ian Kershaw states that fear of Werwolf activities may have motivated atrocities against German civilians by Allied troops during and immediately after the war.

The German resistance movement was successfully suppressed in 1945. However, collective punishment for acts of resistance, such as fines and curfews, was still being imposed as late as 1948. Biddiscombe estimates the total death toll as a direct result of Werewolf actions and the resulting reprisals as 3,000-5,000.

In the Soviet occupation zone, thousands of youths were arrested as "Werwolves". Evidently, arrests were arbitrary and in part based on denunciations. The arrested boys were either executed or interned in NKVD special camps. On 22 June 1945, Deputy Commissar of the NKVD Ivan Serov reported to the head of the NKVD Lavrentiy Beria the arrest of "more than 600" alleged Werwolf members, mostly aged 15 to 17 years.

The report, though referring to incidents where Soviet units came under fire from the woods, asserts that most of the arrested had not been involved in any action against the Soviets, which Serov explained with interrogation results allegedly showing that the boys had been "waiting" for the right moment and in the meantime focused on attracting new members. In October 1945, Beria reported to Joseph Stalin the "liquidation" of 359 alleged Werwolf groups. Of those, 92 groups with 1,192 members were "liquidated" in Saxony alone. On 5 August 1946, Soviet minister for internal affairs Sergei Nikiforovich Kruglov reported that in the Soviet occupation zone, 332 "terrorist diversion groups and underground organizations" had been disclosed and "liquidated". A total of about 10,000 youths were interned in NKVD special camps, half of whom did not return. Parents as well as the East German administration and political parties, installed by the Soviets, were denied any information on the whereabouts of the arrested youths. The Red Army's torching of Demmin, which resulted in the suicide of hundreds of people, was blamed on alleged preceding Werwolf activities by the East German regime.

Eisenhower believed he would be faced with extensive guerrilla warfare, based on the Alpine Redoubt. The fear of Werwolf activity believed to be mustering around Berchtesgaden in the Alps also led to the switch in U.S. operational targets in the middle of March 1945 away from the drive towards Berlin and instead shifted the thrust towards the south and on linking up with the Russians first. An intelligence report stated "We should ... be prepared to undertake operations in Southern Germany in order to overcome rapidly any organised resistance by the German Armed Forces or by guerrilla movements which may have retreated to the inner zone and to this redoubt". On March 31 Eisenhower told Roosevelt, "I am hopeful of launching operations that should partially prevent a guerrilla control of any large area such as the southern mountain bastions".

Eisenhower had previously also requested that the occupation directive JCS 1067 not make him responsible for maintaining living conditions in Germany under the expected circumstances; "... probably guerrilla fighting and possibly even civil war in certain districts ... If conditions in Germany turn out as described, it will be utterly impossible effectively to control or save the economic structure of the country ... and we feel we should not assume the responsibility for its support and control." The British were "mortified by such a suggestion", but the War Department took considerable account of Eisenhower's wishes.

In April 1945 Churchill announced that the Allies would incarcerate all captured German officers for as long as a guerrilla threat existed. Hundreds of thousands of German last-ditch troops were kept in the makeshift Rheinwiesenlager for months, "mainly to prevent Werwolf activity". In addition, civilians held by the U.S. climbed from 1,000 in late March to 30,000 in late June, and more than 100,000 by the end of 1945. Conditions were often poor in the camps for civilians.

Prior to the occupation SHAEF investigated the reprisal techniques the Germans had used in order to maintain control over occupied territories since they felt the Germans had had good success. Directives were loosely defined and implementation of reprisal was largely left to the preferences of the various armies, with the British seeming uncomfortable with those involving bloodshed. Rear-Admiral H.T. Baillie Grohman for example stated that killing hostages was "not in accordance with our usual methods". Thanks to feelings such as this, and relative light guerrilla activity in their area, relatively few reprisals took place in the UK zone of operations.

From 1946 onward, Allied intelligence officials noted resistance activities by an organisation which had appropriated the name of the anti-Nazi resistance group, the Edelweiss Piraten ( Edelweiss Pirates). The group was reported to be composed mainly of former members and officers of Hitler Youth units, ex-soldiers and drifters, and was described by an intelligence report as "a sentimental, adventurous, and romantically anti-social [movement]". It was regarded as a more serious menace to order than the Werwolf by US officials.

A raid in March 1946 captured 80 former German officers who were members, and who possessed a list of 400 persons to be liquidated, including Wilhelm Hoegner, the prime minister of Bavaria. Further members of the group were seized with caches of ammunition and even anti-tank rockets. In late 1946 reports of activities gradually died away.

In 2015 Danish police uncovered files in their archives outlining the Danish part of Operation Werwolf under the command of Horst Paul Issel who was caught in Germany in 1949 before being handed over to Denmark. A total of 130 stashes of weapons and explosives were placed around Denmark and personnel were inserted into strategically important parts of society.

The remains of some military organizations which collaborated with Axis forces continued with raid activities like Crusaders (guerrilla) (until 1950), Balli Kombëtar (until 1947) and Chetniks (until 1946).

The Iraqi insurgency was initially compared to the history of Werwolf by the Bush Administration and other Iraq War supporters. In speeches given on 25 August 2003 to the Veterans of Foreign Wars by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld parallels were drawn between the resistance faced by the Multi-National Force - Iraq's occupation forces in Iraq to that encountered by occupation forces in post-World War II Germany, asserting that the Iraqi insurgency would ultimately prove to be as futile in realizing its objectives as had the Werwolfs.

Former Clinton-era National Security Council staffer Daniel Benjamin published a riposte in magazine on 29 August 2003, entitled "Condi's Phony History: Sorry, Dr. Rice, postwar Germany was nothing like Iraq" in which he took Rice and Rumsfeld to task for mentioning Werwolf, writing that the reality of postwar Germany bore no resemblance to the occupation of Iraq, and made reference to Antony Beevor's Berlin: The Downfall 1945 and the US Army's official history, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944-1946, where the Werwolf were only mentioned twice in passing. This did not prevent his political opponents from disagreeing with him, using Biddiscombe's book as a source.

The 1955 James Bond novel Moonraker portrays the primary antagonist Hugo Drax as a former Werwolf commando who disguised himself as a British industrialist after the war and used his identity to build a nuclear missile to launch at London.

The 2001 film The Substitute: Failure Is Not an Option by Robert Radler. The movie depicts a white supremacist Colonel at a military academy, who trains a group of young soldiers to carry out terrorist attacks on American soil.

The 2008 alternate history novel The Man with the Iron Heart by American author Harry Turtledove depicts a longer-lived Reinhard Heydrich organising a "German Freedom Front", also called Werewolves, in an attempt to drive the Allied occupiers out of Germany.

The 2015 alternate history novel by Robert Conroy sees Gobbels bring his hypothetical resistance force to fruition. In one scene, an Allied character discovers that the insurgents use a particularly frightening werewolf as an insignia.

Lars von Trier uses the Werwolf-theme as backdrop in his 1991 movie .

The Golden Age horror comic Adventures into the Unknown #14, released in December 1951, includes the story "The Werewolf Strikes", by Charles Spain Verral. In this story, American occupation forces are tasked with protecting pro-democracy German figures from assassination by Werwolf agents, allegedly co-ordinated by a surviving Schutzstaffel officer. The presence of Werwolf activities creates fear and uncooperativeness among the occupied German population. The leading Werwolf assassin is revealed to be an actual Werewolf, and she is slain with a silver knife.

Notes

Bibliography

Further reading

Henke, Klaus-Dietmar (1995) Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3486561753

Lucas, James (2014) Kommando: German Special Forces of World War Two (part 4) Frontline. ISBN 978-1848327375

Rose, Arno (1980) Werwolf, 1944-1945: Eine Dokumentation Stuttgart: Motorbuch-Verlag. ISBN 978-3879437009

Whiting, Charles (1972) Hitler's Werewolves New York: Stein & Day. ISBN 978-0812814682

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Werwolf ( pronounced [ˈveːɐ̯vɔlf], German for " werewolf") was a Nazi plan which began development in 1944, to create a resistance force which would operate behind enemy lines as the Allies advanced through Germany, in parallel with the fighting in front of the lines.

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Which sector for Soho House?

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Hackbarth's - Berlin, Germany - Restaurant | Facebook

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Hackbarth's, Berlin, Germany. 225 likes. Restaurant

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Excellent bakery and coffee shop just reound the corner in the same neighbourhood with cobbled streets:

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Vorspeisen / starters

Lauwarmer Ziegenkäse mit Zwetschgen-Wacholder Marmelade, Salat
warm goat's cheese with plum-juniper marinated salmon tatar, avocado cream and lentil salad jam and small salad black salsify cream soup with fried quail breast
Gebeiztes Lachstatar, Avocadocreme und Linsensalat

Schwarzwurzelcremesuppe mit gebratener Wachtelbrust
swabian ravioli filled with linumer veal served with a green salad Hauptspeisen / main courses
10,90€
cheese noodles served with a green salad
Maultaschen vom Wiesenkalb (Freilandhaltung) mit Blattsalat
fish of the day with risotto and rocket

Käsespätzle mit Allgäuer Bergkäse und Blattsalat
boiled beef with root vegetables and fresh horseradish
Fisch des Tages mit Rote Bete Risotto und Rucola
beetroot risotto with baked mushrooms
Gesottener Rindertafelspitz mit Bouillongemüse und frischem Meerrettich
fried leg of vension with rutabaga and pumkin potato noodles
Rote Bete Risotto mit gebackenem Kräutersaitling
"Wiener Schnitzel" of linumer veal with potato salad and cucumber salad Dessert / desserts
Rosa gebratene Rehkeule mit Steckrübe und Kürbisschupfnudeln
apple strudel with vanilla sauce
Wiener Schnitzel vom Linumer Wiesenkalb (Freilandhaltung)mit Gurkensalat und schwäbischem Kartoffelsalat

Apfelstrudel mit Vanillesoße

Schokoladenkuchen mit Passionsfrucht Parfait

chocolate cake with passion fruit parfait
cheese produced in the Alps with fruit bread and cassis mustard
10,90

Käsespezialitäten aus der Allgäuer Sennerei:Bergkäse, U'steiner und Romadur, hausgebackenes Früchtebrot
beetroot essence with fried quail breast
Valentins-Menü 2018
- 4 Gänge -

Rote Bete Essenz mit gebratener Wachtelbrust
beetroot essence with apple & cucumber
Vegetarische Variante

Rote Bete Essenz mit Apfel- Gurken- Relish
raw marinated halibut with avocado cream and truffles potato
*****

Roh marinierter Heilbutt an Avocadocreme und Trüffelkartoffeln

Vegetarische Variante

Gefüllte Spitzpaprika mit Avocadocreme und Trüffelkartoffeln
fried boillet beef with black salsify ragout and pumkin potato noodles
filled pepper with avocado cream and truffles potato
*****

Rosa gebratener Kalbstafelspitz an Schwarzwurzelragout und Kürbisschupfnudeln

Vegetarische Variante

Schwarzwurzelrisotto mit gebackenem Kräutersaitling und rotem Mangold
passion fruit ice cream with chocolate cake and mascarpone cream
black salsify risotto with baked mushrooms and swiss chard

*****

Passionsfruchteis mit Schokoladenkuchen und Mascarponecreme

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cheese noodles served with a green salad
Mittagskarte in der Bäckerei

swabian ravioli filled with meat or vegetarian served with a green salad Tagesgerichte in der Woche 05.02.-09.02.18
Suppe der Woche
Allgäuer Käsespätzle mit gemischtem Salat

Schwäbische Maultaschen mit Blattsalat

Rote Bete Suppe 5,90€

Montag:

Linsen mit Spätzle und Wiener Würstchen 8,90€

Dienstag:

Wildragout mit Brezn´ Knödel und Salat 9,90€

Mittwoch:

Königsberger Klopse mit Kartoffel-Endivienstampf und Salat 8,90€

Donnerstag:

Gefüllte Paprikaschote (Hackfleisch) in Tomatensoße mit Reis 8,90 €

Freitag:

Wiener Saftgulasch vom Rind mit Semmeltalern und Krautsalat 9,90 €

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Vorspeisen / starters Lauwarmer Ziegenkäse mit Zwetschgen-Wacholder Marmelade, Salat warm goat's cheese with plum-juniper marinated salmon tatar, avocado cream and lentil salad jam and small salad black salsify cream soup with fried quail breast Gebeiztes Lachstatar, Avocadocreme und Linsensalat Schwarzwurzelcremesuppe mit gebratener Wachtelbrust swabian ravioli filled with linumer veal served

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PRENZLAUER BERG OR MITTE?

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What are these Alison?

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Rachel B Doyle

Good Stuff Supper Club

The hobby chef Aishah Bennett aims to educate Berliners "that English cuisine is more than fish, chips and Jamie Oliver". Her menus, which typically combine European, South American and Middle Eastern influences, are complex affairs with thoughtful wine pairings. A recent hit meal involved home-cured gravalax, ostrich steak with a sweet potato gratin, and ricotta-aubergine rolls. The events are either held on the fourth floor of a chic apartment in Neukölln or in the bar Geist im Glas, which was just opened by the chef and her friends. More often than not guests stick around to drink and listen to music afterwards.
* Approximate location: Flughafenstrasse, Neukölln, facebook.com/Good.Stuff.Supper.Club. Monthly events, €40 donation for five or more courses

Travels With My Fork

Travels With My Fork is a versatile pop-up restaurant specialising in pintxos, the tiny dishes served in bars in the Basque country. The event began last autumn as a themed supper club: one night was Mexican, another was called 1001 Nights and served Persian cuisine - yet another was south Indian in flavour and given for Diwali. The focus on pintxos evolved after the Scottish-American couple came back from a trip to the Basque country with food cravings and realised that Berlin's tapas restaurants mainly served patatas bravas and chorizo. Now locals can enjoy piquillo peppers stuffed with bacalhau and baby eel tartlets.
* Prenzlauer Berg and various locations, twmfsupperclub.moonfruit.com. Check site for dates, €30 donation

Metti una sera a cena

In a ground floor atelier belonging to two visual artists, guests at this supper club gather around a long wooden table and swap stories while waiting for prettily plated experimental Italian food to appear. The cooks, Chiara Zanella Ferro and Marco Thiella, had a supper club in their native Venice before transplanting it to Berlin in 2010. Their art is strewn about the dining area: Marco creates cardboard sculptures and Chiara embroiders on plastic. Expect updated Venetian dishes such as briny, garlicky shrimp over creamy polenta and Parmesan ice-cream for desserts.
* Approximate location: Bötzowstrasse, Prenzlauer Berg; mettiunaseraacena.wordpress.com. Saturdays once monthly, €39-€49 suggested donation for five courses

Pret a Diner

Perhaps Berlin's most ambitious concept dining experience, the pop-up restaurant Pret a Diner has been known to occupy roller rinks, secret canalside locations, even a cavernous former mint. Each time, a different celebrity chef has taken to the burners. Most recently, a Michelin-starred Japanese chef was asked to use the sea as inspiration, and the result - which included an experimental sushi platter with truffle-egg maki rolls - was pricey but very exciting. Held on a white, glittery terrace, sponsored by Swarovski, the crowd on that night was relentlessly fashionable.
* Various locations in Mitte, pretadiner.com. Join the mailing list for dates and prepare to pay around €60 a head

The Owling Supper Club

After living in Paris, Nathalie Moukarzel arrived in Berlin intent on defending British cooking from its tepid reputation abroad. The English chef, who works in the well-liked Berlin restaurant Little Otik, began organising secret supper clubs with her boyfriend Cyril in February. She wanted to combine the Lebanese cuisine of her father's family with the greatest hits of British nosh: yorkshire pudding and quail feature as prominently as tabbouleh and tahini. She recently served a crispy pig's head to a party sitting on cinema chairs around a long table lit by white candles.
* Approximate location: Rosa Luxembourg Platz, Mitte, +49 178 656 2021, theowlingsupperclub.com. €33-€40 donation for four courses

Fortuna's Feast

An ideal way to start the night in Neukölln - the hot neighbourhood of the moment - is with a reservation at Fortuna's Feast, a Friday night tasting event run by chef and caterer Suzy Fracassa. Located on a bar-heavy stretch of Weserstrasse, the rustic two-room storefront has communal wooden tables, mid-century modern decor and friendly staff. The menu comprises seven small dishes, such as chicken fried steak and gravy, which are often Italian or American in style. A waiter will advise you to order two each, and share them with friends (€4-€9 each). The vibe is warm, the crowd is international, and the food is truly comforting.
* Weserstrasse 58, Neukölln, +49 30 6273 2538, fortunastable.de. Most Friday evenings

Lotería Supper Club

One of Berlin's most popular and also most mysterious supper clubs is Lotería, run by an American graduate student who cooks mouth-watering north Mexican and southern Californian feasts in between working on her thesis. This means that events in her intimate red-painted dining room are irregular but in demand. While Berlin offers a number of Mexican kitchens, none are as high-end as this, with dishes such as slow-braised duck in a rich mole poblano sauce, a tuna, halibut and avocado ceviche trio, and a chocolate-chilli souffle for dessert.
* Approximate location: Boxhagener Platz, Friedrichshain, loteriasupperclub.blogspot.com. Check site for dates, €35-€50 donation for a five-course menu

Thyme Supperclub

The supper club most admired by locals is Thyme, a year-old event helmed by an amateur chef from Bristol. Her expansive seven-course menus are rich in traditional English flavours, but dishes such as slow-roasted lamb with black olives and lentils and canapes of mini Scotch eggs are new to Berliners. The dinners take place in the large third-floor apartment of a 120-year-old building. An 18-person table, built by the chef's husband, is set up in a minimalist studio space. It's best to book a few weeks in advance - there's often a waiting list.
* Approximate location: Winsstrasse, Prenzlauer Berg, thyme-supperclub.com. Once monthly on Fridays, €40 donation for seven courses

Fisk & Gröönsaken

The most wallet-friendly of the Berlin supper clubs, Fisk & Gröönsaken is a fish and vegetable-only event run by a pair of Berliners. Jan, a biologist, does the cooking, while Melanie, a librarian, serves her husband's modern German food in their art-filled living room. Neither can fathom why some supper clubs in their city cost as much as Michelin-starred restaurants: their most expensive dinner - a three-course menu involving herb soup with a quail egg, bream fillet on bean ragout and buttermilk panna cotta- comes in at €23. Plus they're real Berliners, so have interesting suggestions about where to go afterwards.
* Approximate location: Helmholzplatz, Prenzlauer Berg, groonsaken.wordpress.com. Every six weeks, €18-€23 donation for three courses

Phoebe in Berlin

The Provence-trained Taiwanese chef Phoebe Wang ran her own French restaurant, Louis XIV, in Taipei, for more than a decade. The Chinese restaurants in the German capital did not impress her when she arrived in 2009, so she opened her 108-year-old apartment - full of traditional Chinese furniture - to visitors this April. The intention is to serve high-class Chinese and French fare on alternating evenings. Already known for her savoury French dishes - including lamb fillet coated with Gruyère cheese and Parma ham, and macaroons (which she sells) - Wang is now getting the chance to showcase the Chinese specialities, such as slow-cooked Poet's pork with broccoli, that she grew up with.
* Approximate location: Volkspark, Friedrichshain, phoebe-berlin.de. Bi-monthly on Fridays, €50-€65 donation for five courses
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Rachel B Doyle The hobby chef Aishah Bennett aims to educate Berliners "that English cuisine is more than fish, chips and Jamie Oliver". Her menus, which typically combine European, South American and Middle Eastern influences, are complex affairs with thoughtful wine pairings.

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Which ones do we choose Alison?

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Curry 36

If you want to eat currywurst the Berlin way, order yours here boiled and naked ("ohne darm", without skin), looking a little pale in comparison with the ones in pink skins. The sausage at this particular snack bar is so popular that they've started a range of merchandise sporting their daft logo. Besides the currywurst there's bockwurst, krakauers and several other types of sausage as well as proletarian Berlin specialities such as fried burgers and bouletten (meatballs/patties). Take it away or wolf it all down at one of the outdoor stand-up tables.
Mehringdamm 36, Kreuzberg, no telephone, www.curry36.de. Mon-Sun 9am-5pm. Currywurst €2.50

Burgermeister

Gel Gör Inegöl Köfteci

Neukölln and Kreuzberg, two low-income districts in a formerly remote and unloved walled-in corner of west Berlin, have always attracted radical students and immigrants. The area on the border of the two districts, nicknamed Kreuzkölln, attracts plenty of locals looking for good food and a party, and this Turkish snack bar does a great job satisfying their craving for köfte - tasty minced meatballs with herbs - served in a baguette with salad and mint sauce. There are vegetarian options too. It's open 24 hours and buzzes on weekend nights.
Kottbusser Damm 80, Neukölln/Kreuzberg, +49 30 6958 2753, no website. Open 24 hours. Köfte €3.50

Konnopke's Imbiss

A contender for the title of best currywurst in town, Konnopke's newly renovated snack bar in Prenzlauer Berg serves its curry sausages with or without skin and with great dollops of spicy sauce. The simple snack shack is located below the tracks of the Eberswalder Strasse U-Bahn station and is run by the Ziervogel family, whose forefathers started selling their famous sausages on this spot in 1930. There always seems to be a line of people waiting for the wurst, buletten and French fries. This particular snack bar cashes in on its popularity by selling postcards and a book about Berliner curry sausage.
Schönhauser Allee 44b, Prenzlauer Berg, +49 30 442 7765, konnopke-imbiss.de. Mon-Fri 10am-8pm, Sat 12-8pm. Currywurst €2.50

Hamy Cafe

A fantastic and exceedingly busy Vietnamese fast food joint with lightning-quick service and fresh, tasty food. The open kitchen churns out two different main dishes every day, and a good range of daily meals; try the pho ga chicken soup, the pho bo beef soup, or a goi mien noodle salad, finished off with banana pudding. Amazingly, even when the place is packed and hectic, it manages to serve food fast. Fraternise with the locals by sitting at the communal tables outside. Located between Kreuzberg and Neukölln, it's well positioned for a quick snack to start or round off an evening out.
Hasenheide 10, Kreuzberg/Neukölln, +49 30 6162 5959, hamycafe.com. Mon-Sun noon-midnight. Main dishes €4.90

Miss Saigon

The Bird

Henne Alt Berliner Wirtshaus

Witty's

After shopping at west Berlin's massive KaDeWe department store, head to the district's best currywurst kiosk to refuel on its sausages in spicy sauce, before you attempt strolling and shopping your way up the famous Kurfürstendamm (Ku' damm) boulevard. Witty's is the best joint on the square, using only the best local meat and vegetables. Beside the famed sausages (with our without the skin), Witty's has grilled bratwurst, frankfurters and some great chunky Belgian-style fries - all liberally drenched in a sauce of your choosing. In keeping with its organic credentials, it sells tasty Weissenoher, a monastery-brewed bio-beer.
Wittenbergplatz 5, Schöneberg, +49 30 211 9496, wittys-berlin.de. Mon-Sun 11-8pm. Currywurst €3

Hühnerhaus

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Berlin's best fast food joints and cheap eats including currywurst, buletten and Vietnamese noodles - available around the clock

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Mauermuseum – Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie!

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Mauermuseum – Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie!

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Please find attached your ticket/s. Each ticket has a unique barcode that is scanned at the entrance. Please present each ticket as a print out. We are delighted to welcome you at our museum.

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Oliv Café

Charcoal walls, modernist chairs and slab tables give this corner cafe on a happening street in Mitte a contemporary edge; but this is the place to go for homey slices of German cheesecake made with Quark, jars of puckery fruit crumble and wedges of flourless chocolate cake. The baristas at Oliv are experts and the coffee is delicious, as are the sandwiches and vegetable quiches served with a tangle of greens for lunch. In warm weather, customers cluster around small wooden tables on the street. And in winter, you'll be grateful for the felt sleeve that hugs your glass of Kusmi tea.
Münzstrasse 8, Mitte, +49 30 8920 6540, oliv-cafe.de. Mon-Fri 8.30am-7pm, Sat 9.30am-7pm, Sun 10am-6pm

Konditorei und Cafe Buchwald

The Buchwald family has been making Baumkuchen - a layered cake baked on a spit over an open flame, thinly glazed with apricot jam and covered in sugar icing or dark chocolate - for more than 150 years. Not much has changed at the pleasingly old-fashioned cafe and bakery in Tiergarten's Hansaviertel. For a restorative coffee and a slice of Baumkuchen or rich chocolate Herrentorte, ask for your order to be served in the tea salon, which features parquet floors. In fine weather, you can take your snack out to the hydrangea-lined garden that overlooks the river Spree.
Bartningallee 29, Tiergarten, +49 30 391 5931, konditorei-buchwald.de. Mon-Fri 9am-6pm, Sundays and public holidays 10am-6pm

Café Einstein Stammhaus

Café Einstein, housed in a handsome, turn-of-the-20th-century villa with wood-panelled walls and leather banquettes, is a refined Viennese restaurant and coffee house that prides itself on serving the best versions of Austrian classics, such as Wiener Schnitzel, Tafelspitz and Apfelstrudel, for lunch and dinner. You can while away hours nursing a Wiener mélange, reading a newspaper and surreptitiously eavesdropping on your neighbours, which include luminaries from Berlin's art and theatre scene, or rent out the lovely back garden for a private party. Café Einstein roasts its own coffee and bakes its own bread, pastries and cakes - and serves breakfast all day long.
Kurfürstenstrasse 58, Tiergarten, +49 30 2639 1918, cafeeinstein.com. Mon-Sun 8am-1am

Brotgarten

Brotgarten was one of Berlin's first wholegrain bakeries when it opened on a quiet Charlottenburg street in 1978. It still produces some of the city's best Vollkorn breads, appealingly dark and sour and stuffed with seeds and grains. The bakery is a slim place that sells up to 29 different types of bread every day and attracts customers from the neighbourhood and around the city. Next door to the bakery, there's the small Brotgarten cafe where you can have a bowl of vegetable soup with a few slices of its inimitable bread, or an afternoon coffee with a wholesome treat, such as wholegrain Linzer Torte or apple cake.
Seelingstrasse 30, Charlottenburg, +49 30 322 8880, brotgarten.de. Mon-Fri 7am-6.30pm, Sat 7am-2pm, Sun 7am-3pm

The Barn

Passionate about coffee? Head to The Barn, a slither of a cafe on a small street in Mitte where owner Ralf Rüller serves up single origin coffees from micro-roasters such as Denmark's Coffee Collective and Portland's Stumptown Coffee Roasters. Rüller is a fan of the Slow Food movement and does his best to follow its tenets by filling his freshly made sandwiches with local cheeses and meats and serving impressively flaky croissants. For those with a sweet tooth, a slice of homemade carrot cake with a cream cheese frosting, or a pot of creamy rice pudding topped with apple sauce, should do the trick.
Auguststrasse 58, Mitte, +49 151 2410 5136, . Mon-Fri 8am-6pm, Sat-Sun 10am-6pm

Pasam Baklava

On a grim strip of Goebenstrasse, straddling the border of Schöneberg and Kreuzberg, is a little gem of a bakery selling nothing but Turkish baklava, all freshly made on the premises. The family-run bakery sells many different kinds of the pastry, either filled with chopped walnuts or pistachios and drenched in syrup, or with a creamy semolina-milk filling nestled in with the nuts. Some of the baklava are made with bird's-nest-like kataifi dough, rolled into tiny cigar or crescent shapes and some with the more familiar phyllo (filo). The pastry is always crisp and fresh, the honey syrup is cool and sweet, and the flavour true and clear.
Goebenstrasse 12a, Schöneberg, +49 30 2196 2383, pasam-baklava.de. Mon-Sun 10am-8pm

Weichardt Brot

Far from the crowds of Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg, the family owned Weichardt Brot, sports a bronzed croissant as a door handle and has a stone mill grinding wheat berries into fresh flour in a side room with big windows onto the street. Besides its wholesome loaves of bread, the bakery crafts pastries, sweet breads, Christmas cookies, seasonal marmalades and marzipan confections. But it's Weichardt's Schokosahne Torte that truly warrants a visit - a miracle of pastry engineering, formed from a towering mixture of chocolate and bitter cream that dissolves in your mouth. Go early, as it sells out by noon every day.
Mehlitzstrasse 7, Wilmersdorf, +49 30 873 8099, weichardt.de. Tues-Fri 8am-6.30pm, Sat 9am-2pm

Sgaminegg

This unassuming deli-cum-cafe, tucked away in a small street in Prenzlauer Berg, is considered a quiet haven by many of the bustling neighbourhood's residents. The emphasis is on organic and local produce, led by a Slow Food philosophy. The coffee is from a local roaster and the lunches are simple and rustic, from tomato soups to southern German potato salad. A side-room features a well-curated selection of wines, artisanal juices, olive oils, chocolates and dry goods. On Saturdays, a small green market selling regional produce, meat and fish sets up in front of the store.
Seelower Strasse 2, Prenzlauer Berg, +49 30 4473 1525, sgaminegg.de. Tues-Fri 8.30am-6pm, Sat 9.30am-6pm

Bäckerei Balzer

Come early if you want a chance to snagg one of this bakery's famous Streuselschnecken, streusel-topped and sugar-glazed yeast buns that many say are the best in the city. In a neighbourhood where most of the older businesses have long given way to trendy boutiques, galleries and cafes, Bäckerei Balzer has stubbornly held its ground. Opened in the 1920s, it's still a family-run business, and supplies the area with traditional bread rolls, sugar-topped squares of butter cake, fresh apple fritters and miles of Quark cheesecake. The lace curtains and simple interior are a throwback to another time.
Sophienstrasse 31, Mitte +49 30 282 6537, no website. Mon-Sun 6am-6pm

DoubleEye

Rain or shine, there's never a shortage of people standing in line waiting to order at this tiny coffee bar on the Akazienstrasse in Schöneberg, where small boutiques, cafes and local businesses abound. The low prices at DoubleEye belie the fact that the baristas are world champions and the quality of the coffee is superb; the consensus seems to be that it's the best coffee Berlin has to offer. Bring along some patience until it's your turn to order and some extra change for a Portuguese tart to eat with your cortado.
Akazienstrasse 22, Schöneberg +49 179 456 6960, doubleeye.de. Mon-Fri 9.31am-6.29pm, Sat 10.05-3.29pm

Luisa Weiss is a former cookbook editor; she blogs at The Wednesday Chef

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10 of the best cafes and bakeries in Berlin

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Cakes, pastries, other eats and coffee treats, blogger Luisa Weiss rounds up the cafes and bakeries to make a beeline for in Berlin

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NO FIRE NO GLORY, Berlin, Germany. 11K likes. Nach dem Kaffee ist vor dem Kaffee. Speciality Coffee in Berlin / Fr. & Sa. Bar