Georg Simmel was born in the heart of Berlin in 1858. That city epitomised the tensions of Germany’s special path to modernity. Rapid urbanisation and financial speculation propelled Berlin to the world stage. An avant-garde cultural elite flourished uneasily alongside central Europe’s aristocracy while a young proletariat fought the state and the bourgeoisie for rights, political and economic. A proliferation of modern technologies generated power and wealth while eroding the landed Prussian Junker nobility, the foundation of Bismarck’s united German Reich. The Hohenzollern dynasty – one of the oldest in Europe – reigned over a volatile empire, intoxicated by the most modern ideas.