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

About the Author
Tyler Carrington is Associate Professor of German Studies and History at Cornell College.

Reviews
An ingenious microhistory. * Robert Beachy, Journal of Modern History *
Carrington's micro-history Love at Last Sight opens like a work of true crime....Carrington uses the case notes from the murder investigation to bring to light experiences that don't usually make it into history books. Frieda's life, especially her love life, he argues, reveals the tensions inherent in the urban middle-class experience during this period: between older and younger generations, between respectability and opportunity, between the public perception of events and reality. * Chloe Daniel, London Review of Books *
The book is most engaging when it links historical context with the documented reality of its primary subject's life-in Frieda Kliem, Carrington has found a case thateffectively showcases Berlin women's "struggle for existence" and the dangers they might encounter in pursuing a stable, middle-class marriage. * Dinah Lensing-Sharp, University of California, German Studies Review *
The study is deeply researched, engagingly written and full of fascinating insight. Particularly significant, both for his analysis and for future work, is his decision not to marginalize queer relationships by examining them separately, but rather to explore all forms of dating and intimacy as part of the broad field of urban experience ... The book can be productively read alongside other recent books on intimacy and urban space in Berlin and will fit very well in graduate or undergraduate courses on Berlin, urban history or the history of emotions. * Sace Elder, German History *



Book Information
ISBN 9780190917760
Author Tyler Carrington
Format Hardback
Page Count 264
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 499g
Dimensions(mm) 163mm * 241mm * 20mm