Hans Ostwald (1873-1940) was a writer, and a sociologist of sorts. Between 1904 and 1908 he issued fifty pamphlet sized Grossstadt Dokumente. These were a series of short investigations, each about one hundred pages long and marketed separately, but which together would encompass urban experience, not by compiling exhaustive records, but rather by varying angles of observation and introducing different voices. Although Ostwald directed the project and wrote five pamphlets himself, the significance of the Grossstadt Dokumente lies in the diversity of the thirty-odd contributors that he assembled.

Ostwald and his contributors basically revised conceptions of the metropolis by expanding the geographical and social parameters of city reportage.