History Flakes - The Berlin History Podcast

S4E9: Rosa Luxemburg Part 1. From Warsaw to Zurich.

That’s right! Part 1! And you’d better enjoy this one, because it’s the most fun we’re gonna have on this topic! Imagine, you’re a young woman, charming, witty, a political genius with an unbridled passion for life and your fellow human beings. You make it to Switzerland, one of the only places women can study and meet the love/biggest political influence /worst pain in the arse of your life. He’s rich and good looking. Coalescing here are countless political refugees from multiple different countries, struggling to throw off the yolk of autocratic oppression, and you can switch between multiple different languages to engage with them. Something unstoppable seems to be swelling throughout Europe, an irrefutable appetite for massive change. And you have the intellectual acumen, unstoppable energy and resounding humanity that this cause will need to propel it into the twentieth century. God…can’t we just stay here?++++++  💸 Donations keep us running.Click below to support the show 🤩 Donate €50😆 Donate €20😄 Donate €10 🙂 Donate €5++++++🎟️ You can get in touch and book a tour of Berlin with Jonny: www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com.Or now Pip: https://www.piproper.com/Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks!++++++You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok!You can find Pip on Instagram++++++Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffithshttps://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/++++++Sources:Revolutionary Berlin: A Walking Guide, Nathaniel FlakinRed Rosa, A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg, Kate EvansThe Socialist Manifesto, Bhaskar SunkaraRosa Luxemburg: Letters to Karl and Luise Kautsky from 1896 to 1918, Luise Kautsky, Translated: Louis P. Lochner: Marxist Internet ArchiveComrade and Lover: Rosa Luxemberg's Letters to Leo JogichesElzbieta EttingerLove, Money, and Career in the Life of Rosa LuxemburgDeborah HertzIn Our Time Podcast: Rosa LuxemburgOnline Resource Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung: https://www.rosalux.de/en/

S4E8: Queer Women in Nazi Germany

Jumping off from Jonny’s brilliant discussion with historian Samuel Clowes Huneke about his book I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany (2026), we talk about some of the stand out stories from this time and the strangely invisible, sometimes very dangerous status queer women occupied under the Third Reich.Jonny and Sam chat on youtube watch here! ++++++  💸 Donations keep us running.Click below to support the show 🤩 Donate €50😆 Donate €20😄 Donate €10 🙂 Donate €5++++++🎟️ You can get in touch and book a tour of Berlin with Jonny: www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com.Or now Pip: https://www.piproper.com/Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks!++++++You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok!You can find Pip on Instagram++++++Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffithshttps://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/++++++Sources: Samuel Clowes Huneke, I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany (2026)

S4E7: Fritz Lang, early years to 1933

Legendary pioneering film director, original bad boy auteur, visionary…bit of a dick. Fritz Lang’s personal life was almost as dramatic as his films. He’s in Paris for the febrile pre-war days of 1914, showing real acts of bravery on the Galician front. Driving to work at the UFA studios on the days of the Spartacist Uprisings and conveniently dodging Goebbels in 1933.Not the most reliable narrator, particularly when it comes to his first wife and his departure from Berlin in 1933, but if there were ever a man of his time, it’s Fritz Lang. His work would span the turbulent era from silent to sound, and later from Europe to the US. Obsessive and dictatorial on set, he directed some of the most recognisable films of the Weimar era, Metropolis and M.++++++  💸 Donations keep us running.Click below to support the show 🤩 Donate €50😆 Donate €20😄 Donate €10 🙂 Donate €5++++++🎟️ You can get in touch and book a tour of Berlin with Jonny: www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com.Or now Pip: https://www.piproper.com/Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks!++++++You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok!You can find Pip on Instagram++++++Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffithshttps://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/++++++Sources:Podcasts: In our time: Fritz LangYou Must Remember This, Karina LongworthBooks: Fritz Lang The Nature of the Beast by Patrick McgilliganFritz Lang and Goebbels: Myth and Facts by Gösta WernerDocumentary: From Caligari to Hitler

S4E6: Comedian Harmonists w/ Matti Geyer

Matti Geyer is here!!And we’re talking about The biggest boy band 20th-century Germany had to offer!The Comedian Harmonists, move over 5ive, get out of the way N’sync.Who could forget ‘Mein Kleine Grune Kaktus’ (my small green cactus) ‘Veronica der Lent ist da’…a song about Lent. The sexiest time of year Who’s the cute one? Which one loves his mamma? Most importantly who’s the bad boy?! (It’s…the Bass!).  All against the backdrop of the Third Reich and World War Two, wowzer!++++++  💸 Donations keep us running.Click below to support the show 🤩 Donate €50😆 Donate €20😄 Donate €10 🙂 Donate €5++++++🎟️ You can get in touch and book a tour of Berlin with Jonny: www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com.Or now Pip: https://www.piproper.com/Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks!++++++You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok!You can find Pip on Instagram++++++Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffithshttps://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/++++++

S4E5: Circus Busch comes to town!

Roll up Roll up and welcome to Circus Busch! Sometimes it’s always there, in a permanent building along the Spree, that may or may not be used for significant meetings by various shades of the political spectrum, but this is Germany everybody, the context is gonna be colourful! Sometimes the circus is travelling to other places, like Paris in 1940 and everyone there is really happy to see you. Honest.We talk about the broader context of the history of The Circus in twentieth-century Europe and focus in on some specific families, like the Althoffs, the Blumfelds, and the Grand Dame of Circus Busch herself, Paula. We talk about some of the shadier elements of what it meant to be the person in charge of a huge money making institution, with incredibly diverse people at it’s core, and how some of the fascinating lives of some of those involved contracted and expanded against the backdrop of the twentieth century.++++++  💸 Donations keep us running.Click below to support the show 🤩 Donate €50😆 Donate €20😄 Donate €10 🙂 Donate €5++++++🎟️ You can get in touch and book a tour of Berlin with Jonny: www.whitlams-berlin-tours.com.Or now Pip: https://www.piproper.com/Don't forget to subscribe for more Berlin history every two weeks!++++++You can find Jonny online on YouTube, Instagram, BlueSky, and TikTok!You can find Pip on Instagram++++++Mixed and Produced by Alex Griffithshttps://www.instagram.com/alexgriffiths_music/https://alexgriffiths.bandcamp.com/++++++Sources:Online resources: http://www.divergingfates.eu/index.php/2017/02/22/historical-context/https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-story-of-circus#slideshow=58613815&slide=0Berlin Circus Festival Interview with Gisela and Dietmar Winkler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsFyQcsXrngArticles:Dean Carnegie: slow Travel Berlin, Houdini and the Circus BuschSabine Hanke, Worlds of the ring: Nation and empire in the British and German circus