Watch Alexanderplatz Unawares (1934) Official Trailer

These fragments of a documentary film project by Peter Pewas about Berlin’s Alexanderplatz show the neon signs on the big department stores, but also children playing unsupervised amid the rubble of vacant lots, passers-by trudging hurriedly through the slush, and a torchlight procession of Nazi storm troopers – a heterogeneous social reality. The film was never completed because the director was arrested by the Gestapo and the footage seized.