CHAPTER 2
BERLIN DURING THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC
The period of the Weimar Republic is divided into three periods, 1918 to 1923, 1924 to 1929, and
1930 to 1933, but we usually associate Weimar culture with the middle period when the post
WWI revolutionary chaos had settled down and before the Nazis made their aggressive claim
for power. This second period of the Weimar Republic after 1924 is considered Berlin’s most
prosperous period, and is often referred to as the “Golden Twenties”. They were exciting and
extremely vibrant years in the history of Berlin, as a sophisticated and innovative culture
developed including architecture and design, literature, film, painting, music, criticism,
philosophy, psychology, and fashion. For a short time Berlin seemed to be the center of
European creativity where cinema was making huge technical and artistic strides. Like a
firework display, Berlin was burning off all its energy in those five short years.
A literary walk through Berlin during the Weimar period begins at the Kurfürstendamm,
Berlin’s new part that came into its prime during the Weimar period. Large new movie theaters
were built across from the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church, the Capitol und Ufa-Palast, and
many new cafés made the Kurfürstendamm into Berlin’s avant-garde boulevard. Max
Reinhardt’s theater became a major attraction along with bars, nightclubs, wine restaurants,
Russian tearooms and dance halls, providing a hangout for Weimar’s young writers. But
Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm is mostly famous for its revered literary cafés, Kranzler, Schwanecke
and the most renowned, the Romanische Café in the impressive looking Romanische Haus
across from the Memorial church. Here writers, painters, actors, theater and movie directors,
journalists and critics mingled, among them Thomas Mann’s children Erika and Klaus Mann,
Kurt Tucholsky, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Mascha Kaléko, Erich Kästner, Joseph Roth, and
the painter George Grosz. Since the Nazis hated the Romanische Café as a center of Jewish
intellectualism, they raided the café on numerous occasions, even before Hitler came to power.
Although it was not shut down, the restaurant lost its importance after the Nazi takeover, when
most of its illustrious guests emigrated. The building was destroyed in a bombing raid in 1943
and replaced by the current Europa-Center, a shopping center built in style of the nineteensixties.
Our walk through Berlin’s West continues eastward from Kurfürstendamm to the Potsdamer
Platz, which lies a few blocks south of the Brandenburg Gate at the geographic center of Berlin.
During the Weimar period the Potsdamer Platz was Europe’s busiest square with two big
railroad stations, Potsdamer Platz Bahnhof and the Anhalter Bahnhof to its south. Thirty bus
and streetcar lines crossed the square, which was lined by some of Berlin’s largest hotels and its
first underground shopping mall. Europe ‘s first traffic light was installed here in 1926 to
control the large traffic volume. Some of Berlin’s most vibrant nightclubs such as Haus
Vaterland and the Hotel Esplanade were also located on Potsdamer Platz.
All that remains today of the old architecture is the Weinhaus Huth and the ballroom of the
Esplanade hotel, which has been incorporated into the new Sony Center. During the Cold War
the square was divided by the intimidating wall. It was hard to imagine that there once was life
in this no-man’s-land, when the Potsdamer Platz was the heart of Berlin. During the Cold War
the death strip around the Potsdamer Platz became one of the most visited spots for western
tourists who would try and spot activities in the east from an elevated platform.
Since the architecture with its distinctly nineteenth century appearance seemed out of touch
with modern life plans were made to modernize Potsdamer Platz. The Potsdamer Platz hotels,
restaurants and clubs were cheap 1880s imitations of neoclassical architecture. Modern
signature buildings were supposed to be constructed beginning with Erich Mendelssohn’s
Columbushaus of 1930, Germany’s first air-conditioned building. However since Mendelssohn
was Jewish and since the Nazis regarded modernist architecture as decadent, further
modernization of the square could not proceed. The Columbushaus is on the left (west) side of
the picture, still obscured by advertising panels due to construction.
Another more prominent building stood on the Eastern extension of the square, Leipziger Platz.
Beyond Schinkel’s neoclassical Potsdam Square Gates was Berlin’s largest department store,
Wertheim. It contained many modern luxuries, such as elevators and escalators normally not
found in department stores at that time. Ironically the Jewish Wertheim store was next to the
new Reich chancellery Hitler had built in 1938, on Voßstraße across Wertheim’s delivery
entrance. Hitler’s infamous “bunker” located directly under the chancellery was also next to the
Potsdamer Platz.
Erich Kästner’s 1929 poem “Visit from the Country” captures the atmosphere the square
presented to newcomers stepping away from the surrounding train stations:
“Confused they wait at Potsdam Square,
Berlin seems too loud for them,
Night glows like a million.
A lady beckons ‘Come along, my darling’.
And her legs are terribly bare.
They marvel and they are too tense,
They walk around in awe.
Streetcars screech, tires squeal,
They want to be at home,
Berlin is too much for them.
It sounds as if the city moans
Because they made a mistake,
Houses sparkle, the subway roars,
Everything they see seems fake,
And Berlin is far too rough.
Their legs are bent with anxiety.
They get it all wrong.
Their smile is uncomfortable.
On Potsdam Square they stand in awe
Until run over by a car.” 1
1
Besuch vom Lande
Sie stehen verstört am Potsdamer Platz.
Und finden Berlin zu laut.
Die Nacht glüht auf in Kilowatts.
Ein Fräulein sagt heiser: "Komm mit, mein Schatz!"
Und zeigt entsetzlich viel Haut.
Sie wissen vor Staunen nicht aus und nicht ein.
Sie stehen und wundern sich bloß.
Die Bahnen rasseln. Die Autos schrein.
Sie möchten am liebsten zu Hause sein.
Und finden Berlin zu groß.
Es klingt, als ob die Großstadt stöhnt,
weil irgendwer sie schilt.
Die Häuser funkeln. Die U-Bahn dröhnt.
Sie sind alles so gar nicht gewöhnt.
While the Kurfürstendamm area in Berlin West was developing into Berlin’s major cultural and
entertainment center, the Friedrichstraße area had continued as the theater district since the
Kaiserzeit. Although Unter den Linden crossed by Friedrichstraße had been a fashionable
promenade for a while, it was now beginning to look faded and attracted mainly older
Berliners. However, this loss of appeal was mitigated by the emergence of Friedrichstraße and
adjoining smaller streets that were developing into Berlins’s second fashionable entertainment
district. There were forty-nine theaters in Berlin during the nineteen-twenties, with the more
serious ones playing in Mitte; among them the Deutsche Theater, the Kammerspiele, and the
Großes Schauspielhaus at Weidendammer Brücke across from Friedrichstraße station. The
famous Austrian Max Reinhardt worked here, Leopold Jessner, Erwin Piscator, and Bertolt
Brecht who was beginning to make a name for himself by working with Reinhardt. Several of
the variety theaters were located on Friedrichstraße as well, such as the Admiralspalast and the
Wintergarten across from Friedrichstraße station. Most of Berlin’s forty daily newspapers were
printed in the newspaper district in the southern part of Friedrichstraße.
Walking still further east we reach Alexanderplatz, the center of the Eastern districts, where
roads from Berlin’s Eastern, Northern and Southern districts converged. Named after the
Russian Czar Alexander, Alexanderplatz was Berlin’s largest farmers’ market and trading
center in front of the Frankfurter Tor. For hundreds of thousands of Jews leaving Poland and
Russia headed for Berlin, the Alexanderplatz/Rosenthaler Platz area became the first stopping
place, where the Scheunenviertel, one of the largest Jewish districts in Europe developed.
Upstream along the Spree from Alexanderplatz the industrial parks of Berlin had been evolving
since the nineteenth century, with the Stadtbahn continuing its course along the Spree from
Alexanderplatz to Jannowitzbrücke and beyond. Eastern Berlin was always more rural and
more proletarian than the rest of Berlin.
Berlin's rapid growth from the Prussia’s small regional capital to Germany’s center of four
million people in less than fifty years generated large social and political differences. Berlin saw
its greatest surge in cultural innovations after post WWI street-fighting had calmed down.
Berlin’s political turmoil began after the end of WWI in November 1918 when the new
constitution could not guarantee a stable government and the constituting assembly had to
withdraw to the small town of Weimar. Since Goethe and his fellow-artists had established a
literary movement in Weimar in the early nineteen-hundreds, German classicism, which
became the origin for Germany’s national literature, Weimar has been a synonym for the
synthesis of culture and politics.
Rightist violence and Communist refusal to cooperate with Socialists set the stage for Berlin’s
chaotic years between 1918-23, which culminated in staggering inflation in 1923. Although its
causes are still under discussion, the government’s inability to pay for WWI reparations
certainly contributed to the collapse of the old currency system. Despite the disappearance of
the middle class through inflation, economic expansion quickly resumed. During those chaotic
times, Communists and Nazis were rapidly gaining power not only among the masses, but also
Und finden Berlin zu wild.
Sie machen vor Angst die Beine krumm.
Sie machen alles verkehrt.
Sie lächeln bestürzt. Und sie warten dumm.
Und stehn auf dem Potsdamer Platz herum,
bis man sie überfährt.
among the cultural elite, as radical ideas became fashionable in the literary cafes of Berlin. With
the economy gaining strength, by the mid-1920s Berlin became the largest industrial city on the
European continent, attracting an ever-increasing influx of industrial and office workers.
On March 29, 1930 the finance expert Heinrich Brüning was appointed Chancellor. Since the
two radical parties, the Communists and Nazis had gained enough votes to eliminate a coalition
of moderate parties, Brüning ruled by decrees. Brüning drastically cut state expenditures,
including unemployment insurance, following the theory that cutting public spending would
spur economic growth. The results were disastrous, as unemployment skyrocketed and the
Nazis became the largest party. On May 30, 1932, Brüning resigned and was succeeded by
Franz von Papen. The following elections held on July 31, 1932 yielded even greater gains for
the Nazis, who won over 37% of the vote, replacing the Social Democratic Party as the largest
party. On December 3, 1932 in a last attempt to prevent Hitler from taking power General von
Schleicher succeeded Franz von Papen as chancellor. However, on the infamous January 30,
1933, the date dubbed Machtergreifung (seizure of power) by the Nazis, Reich’s President Paul
von Hindenburg replaced Schleicher by Hitler.
WALTER RUTTMANN, BERLIN, SINFONIE EINE GROßEN STADT (1927)
Our literary excursion to Weimar Berlin begins with Walter Ruttmann's movie Berlin, Symphony
of a Great City. Walter Ruttmann’s movie is divided it into five parts or “Acts” and as the
subtitle “Visual Symphony” indicates, is supported by a soundtrack.
The film begins with a steam locomotive riding through fields and then through suburban
housing and living quarters before coming to a stop at Anhalter Bahnhof. After panning over
the roofs of the sleeping city the film focuses on Berlin’s streets, continuously interrupted by the
image of the Berlin Rathaus clock. The streets slowly fill with workers on their morning
commute. The rhythm of the city and the movie increase, the cuts become more frequent and
are intercut between factories, offices, street life and traffic. With the 12-noon bell speed
collapses while people take their lunch break. In the afternoon the city comes back to its frantic
pace, which only breaks in late afternoon when peace and quiet return. In the late afternoon
and early evening the movie shows the many sports and leisure time activities on water, in
parks and in many entertainment venues.
With its train ride the movie imitates a typical arrival in the city. The fictional characters in the
following text are newcomers to Berlin; Emil in Emil und die Detektive hails from Neustadt,
Pinneberg in Kleiner Mann, was nun? from Ducherow, and Doris in Das kunstseidene Mädchen
from Cologne. As a decentralized country, Germany had never developed a large metropolis as
Britain had with London and France with Paris. Berlin had become a big city only after German
unification in 1870/71. The movie, released in 1927, illustrates the city’s attraction to Germans
who were clearly flocking to the city, either as tourists or as permanent residents to benefit from
the ever-increasing employment possibilities. As a documentary, the movie gives an excellent
introduction to Berlin’s life during the Weimar Republic.
The film focuses on speed, which became Weimar Berlin’s prominent characteristic. The
establishing shots of the film leap from nature represented by water to modernity characterized
by the train hurtling towards Berlin. Trains, speed and traffic became characteristic of Berlin,
and Ruttmanns’s movie uses them as symbols to hold the many episodes together. There are
more than twenty scenes with moving trains. The first train introduces us to the increasingly
complex city traffic and sets the tone with its changing rhythm. Other urban vehicles are soon
introduced, bicycles, streetcars, cars and trucks, and most prominently, Berlin’s S-Bahn and
underground train which had been electrified a few years before the movie was made.
Ruttmann is a master in inter-cutting moving trains with buildings and doorways to give the
impression that the city is connected by its moving parts. Traffic is the motor that holds this
huge city together. With its juxtaposition of traffic and buildings, the movie focuses on
inorganic elements, its vehicles and buildings. To highlight this effect, scenes often end with a
close-up of motors or clocks.
Although we see most people in vehicles, the film also shows crowds. The camera often focuses
on individuals taking a walk in hectic traffic: an old woman climbing stairs, an excited man
advertising a product, soon to be surrounded by curious customers, another man arguing and
eventually fighting with an opponent. The movie singles out women going about their
business, walking or sitting on sidewalk café terraces eating, or meeting men at street corners.
Two scenes stand out in this movie: a woman dressed in an elegant white outfit with a gorgeous
hat meeting her equally elegant gentleman friend at a street corner, and another woman looking
at a man who turns to look at her through an angled shopping window and eventually takes off
with her. These scenes and a staged scene of a woman jumping of a bridge in an apparent
suicide attempt have generated a lot of discussion as important footage of women in urban life.
The movie aims to give an introduction to the actual mood of Berlin in 1927 by presenting a
snapshot of life. Ruttmann achieved this mood of the slowly awakening city and its hectic life
during the day and its gradual slowing down in the evening with his analogy to a symphony.
As one of the first music films Ruttmann cut the film to synchronize it with a musical score. His
model was the Russian formalist filmmaker Dziga Vertov who considered “the unerring ways
of electricity more exciting than the disorderly haste of active people” and abandoned fictitious
film making as subjective. Berlin, Sinfonie einer großen Stadt wants to present an aesthetic
statement based on the principles of New Objectivity (“Neue Sachlichkeit”), a stark realism.
Ruttmann was obsessed with form, evident in the introductory scenes with abstract lines and
railroad tracks, waves and sunlight. The message of the film is therefore one of form and
nature, as repeatedly shown in crosscutting people and animals. It reinforces the relationship of
man and nature on the one hand, but also on the other hand it stresses the message that the city
had left its natural origins.
ERICH KÄSTNER, EMIL UND DIE DETEKTIVE (1927)
Erich Kästner’s famous detective novel begins in the provincial town of Neustadt. His father has
died and his mother raises him alone working as a hair stylist. She sends Emil to Berlin with one
hundred twenty marks to give to his grandmother and twenty marks for himself. Emil is careful
not to lose the precious money and uses a needle to pin it to the lining of his jacket. But on the
train to Berlin, Emil falls asleep in the compartment he shares with a man named Grundeis.
After he wakes up the money and Grundeis are gone. Emil gets off at Zoologischer Garten in
Berlin, and when he is able to find Grundeis, he follows him. Emil dares not call the police since
the policeman in Neustadt had seen him paint a moustache on a monument and he worries
about the consequences. While he is watching Grundeis, a Berlin boy named Gustav offers to
help and calls twenty-four children he knows, "the detectives", to assist in the search. After
many adventures, including watching Grundeis at a café, following him in a taxi, and observing
him during his night in a hotel, Emil gets his money back when Grundeis tries to exchange it at
a bank for smaller bills. Emil proves that the money was his by describing the holes left by the
needle he used. As Grundeis tries to run away, Emil's cousin Pony Hütchen brings a police
officer to the bank. Once he is arrested, Grundeis is discovered to be a bank robber and Emil
receives an award of 1000 marks. After everything is straightened out, Emil's grandmother says
that the moral of the story is: "Never send cash - always use a money order."
The book introduces Berlin to children with an exciting chase through the city, which gives the
reader an opportunity to get acquainted with Berlin’s many areas. After Emil gets off at Zoo
station (“Berlin Zoologischer Garten”) instead of Friedrichstraße where his grandmother and
his cousin are waiting, he follows Grundeis and boards streetcar number 177. The streetcar
travels down Kaiserallee, today Bundesallee, where Grundeis gets off at Trautenaustraße and
sits down at the Café Josty. Emil hides behind an advertising column, a Litfaßsäule, where he
meets Gustav and later the whole gang of detectives. They decide to send a message to the
frustrated grandmother who has returned to her apartment at Schumannstraße near
Friedrichstraße station where she had been waiting for Emil. The thief meanwhile continues his
journey by cab through Berlin’s west, which the kid detectives follow in another cab. Grundeis
ends up at the Hotel Kreid on Nollendorfplatz just west of the Zoo station where he stays for
the night. While waiting outside of the hotel the detectives call many other children they know
and eventually, when Grundeis emerges from the hotel the next morning, he is followed by
hundreds of children. The chase is soon over in Kleiststraße when Grundeis tries to exchange
the stolen money in a bank and gets caught. The thief is arrested and Emil and his friends are
invited to police headquarters on Alexanderplatz where Emil is handed his reward.
It is obvious that Emil und die Detektive shows the area of Berlin that Kästner knew best, Berlin’s
affluent western district with its theaters and literature cafes around the Kaiser Wilhelm
Gedächtniskirche, the Bahnhof Zoo station and the expensive Kaufhaus des Westens. Poorer
parts of Berlin, such as the apartment of Emil’s grandmother near Friedrichstraße are excluded,
while the police headquarters building near crime-ridden Alexanderplatz is only mentioned in
the final chapter. There are other interesting autobiographical elements in the novel. Kästner,
whose second name was Emil, had experienced a similar situation in Dresden when he was
chasing a thief who had stolen money from his mother. Kästner appears twice in the novel with
his real job as newspaper reporter, once in the chapter “Street Car 177” where he buys a ticket
for Emil, and again to interview Emil after the chase is over.
As Kästner’s Emil und die Detektive is Germany’s most famous children’s novel translated into
many languages, the book acquainted more children and adults to Berlin’s topography and
culture than any other work of Berlin fiction. The book has all the ingredients of a children’s
adventure novel, a quest where the city represents the obstacles the young heroes have to
master. By reading this book, the reader views Berlin from a child’s perspective and explores
the vast metropolis as a jungle. Emil is clearly overwhelmed when he enters the city in the
beginning and is amazed by the traffic, noise, and lights. While the city confuses and energizes,
Emil soon realizes how easy it is to get lost. Nobody seems to care for the little boy from the
German provincial town. However, Kästner does not let his hero and his readers despair and
he introduces a group of detectives to give a sense of solidarity, which he describes as the only
way to survive in the anonymous city.
The children represent the city’s varied social groups, that are absent in the small town where
Emil comes from. They represent a social microcosm and their cooperative interaction is clearly
intended as a utopia where rich and poor help to defeat crime. The children overcome
impossible odds to defeat evil and in the end receive a surprise reward. The author’s other
lesson is expressed by the grandmother: “Life is difficult sometimes but there are many kind
people in the world and a true friend comes when you need help.”
Emil und die Detektive is foremost a rites of passage story about a young, frightened country boy,
lost and penniless in a big city, who faces up to his situation and deals with every problem that
he encounters. By the end of the story, Emil is no longer a wide-eyed innocent, but has learned
that strangers can be dangerous. Kästner saw himself as a moralist vis-à-vis the cynical
atmosphere he encountered in Berlin during the nineteen-twenties. Although he began his
career writing in the style New Objectivism (Neue Sachlichkeit), he soon realized that a new
generation of children was needed to change the atmosphere.
The novel was put on screen as one of Germany’s first sound films in 1931 under the direction
of Gerhard Lamprecht with a script by Billy Wilder. As an expressionist production along the
lines of earlier silent movies, with the thief played by Fritz Rasp as a demonic character, it was
considered an avant-garde film, especially with its original location shots. It is still worth
watching because it shows Berlin as a complex and exciting city with a lot of space for
adventure and discovery. This big city effect is obviously the product of Wilder’s fast
documentary narrative style.
As Kästner’s story is still a classic, the movie industry capitalized on its success by producing
frequent remakes of Emil und die Detektive. Disney changed the plot considerably with its 1964
production. Though the story is still set in Berlin, the younger characters have been extensively
Americanized, especially the teenage detective Gustav. In the Disney production, Grundeis is in
league with a master criminal known as “baron”, who is planning a major heist. Franziska
Buch’s 2001 version expands the Disney story further and copies American gangster elements
with exploding dynamite and the children acting like counterparts to the gangsters. Buch also
changes the story from a single mother to a single father who has lost his job after a traffic
accident. Emil is sent to his aunt in Berlin who is a protestant minister. Another change
concerns the fact that the gang is now led by Pony Hütchen, who is not Emil’s cousin in this
version. One of the gang members, a gypsy, is sent to the aunt, pretending to be Emil, but he is
soon discovered by Gustav, the minister’s son and Emil’s cousin. Berlin in Franziska Buch's
movie is very hip and the city’s rampant multicultural and cosmopolitan atmosphere sets the
tone. The chase takes the detectives down die Straße des 17. Juni and the thief ends up in
Berlin’s most expensive hotel, the Adlon. In a key scene when all the detectives are introduced
to Emil by Pony Hütchen in a rap song, they run, bike and skateboard all over the city and
highlight key buildings in this scene, that emanates the pop song atmosphere of Run Lola Run.
The renewed updating of Emil’s story shows that Berlin’s most popular narrative story is still
alive and serves as an important literary ambassador for the city’s ever changing culture.
HANS FALLADA, KLEINER MANN, WAS NUN? (1932)
In Fallada’s famous depression-era story Johannes Pinneberg loses his job in the small town of
Ducherow and moves to Berlin. He works at Mandel’s department store where he experiences
the work atmosphere of a big city with efficiency standards imported from America that will
soon cost him his job. In a bizarre scene Pinneberg cajoles a customer who he recognizes as a
movie star and begs him to buy something to fill his quota for the week. He fully expects the
movie star to understand his plight since he had played a “little man” in a movie. But
obviously the movie star shows no mercy, which results in Pinneberg’s dismissal.
As one of six million unemployed in depression-era Germany, Pinneberg is struggling to make
ends meet and, when all else fails, his wife Bunny pitches in with several small jobs. The novel
captures the role reversal of Weimar society with the increasing social competence of women
while men lose their social standing. Pinneberg takes this very hard since it challenges these
traditional images with the father as the head of the family. He recognizes change only
reluctantly. In the scene in Berliner Spaziergänge Pinneberg begins to understand his social
position by watching himself in a delicatessen store window reflection, while musing, “Could
this be him, this downtrodden example of a human being?”
With this scene the novel captures the political situation in Germany at the end of the Weimar
Republic. In what direction was the country headed? What party would the unemployed and
downtrodden vote for in the next election? After Weimar’s centrist parties, including the Social
Democrats, were no longer able to provide stability who would be able to help the economy
turn around, the Communists or the Nazis? Towards the end of the novel Pinneberg considers
voting Communist, largely influenced by his wife Bunny who comes from a communist family.
But in the end it is Bunny, who advises him against voting Communist since she recognizes that
Pinneberg still has his middle class pride to preserve amid all the misery of the poor driven to
stealing and prostitution.
Fallada’s novel Kleiner Mann, was nun? is a well-known Weimar novel depicting the plight of
middle class citizens during the depression. The book’s protagonist Johannes Pinneberg comes
to Berlin with his new wife expecting to find a better life. However, Pinneberg never finds his
own place, but instead is pushed around like the majority of people. The novel captures the
plight of large numbers of Germans who felt powerless in the economic turmoil. In its stark
realism the book is a pessimistic and honest account that shows the fertile ground for the Nazi
movement during the nineteen-thirties.
Although Pinneberg's desperate search for a job covers the entire city, he cannot be called a
flaneur. A flaneur was always a carefree affluent gentleman who roamed the city for pleasure
and watched the crowds for fun, but never had to care for his needs. Pinneberg’s walks are
those of an impoverished job seeker who has no eye for anything other than his own concerns.
After Pinneberg and his wife move to Berlin from the provincial Ducherow, they are met by his
mother at Stettiner Bahnhof (now Nordbahnhof), from where she takes them to her apartment
in Moabit, a working class neighborhood northwest of the city. After his mother offers a room
in her apartment to the young couple for which she expects rent, Pinneberg finds out to his
dismay that his mother is running an escort and dating service. Although an unlikely scenario
for the very proper and middle-class young Pinneberg, Fallada chose this constellation to
accentuate the ever-increasing entertainment industry in Weimar Berlin with its seedy
reputation.
Jachmann, the boyfriend of Pinneberg’s mother, is a fashionable shady Berlin underworld
figure. He finds a job for Pinneberg at Mandel's department store, based on the Wertheim chain,
which operated its flagship store on Leipziger Platz. Wertheim tried to dazzle customers with
its grand design, merchandize and its eight escalators which most non-Berliners had never seen.
Since many large Berlin department stores were Jewish, Fallada chose the store for the novel to
reflect the political reality of Weimar Berlin. During the Nazi period the Wertheim and all other
Jewish stores were “aryanized”, which meant they were taken away and sold to non-Jews at a
bargain prize. Ironically Wertheim was larger than Hitler’s Reich’s chancellery built by Hitler’s
architect Albert Speer in 1938 in neighboring Voßstraße, whose fancy main front faced
Wertheim’s delivery entrance.
Pinneberg eventually moves out of his mother’s apartment and rents his own place above a
Moabit movie theater, where he and Bunny decide to raise a family. They soon have a child,
Murkel. However, Jachmann the pimp breaks into their quiet life again and takes them to a
movie theater in Berlin’s fancy western district around Kurfürstendamm. The poverty-stricken
Pinnebergs are very excited about the movie, a Chaplinesque comedy with the little man trying
to break away from his miserable life, while his wife runs away with another man. Pinneberg
loses his job a week later, but when he begs the movie’s actor to buy anything to improve his
sales quota, Pinneberg reasons that because he has played a poor person so well that he should
understand the poor, but he is disappointed.
After some time of unemployment, Pinneberg does not realize how shabby his outfit has
become, and that he is suspicious to the affluent theatergoers taking a leisurely stroll in the
Leipziger/Friedrichstraße district. Kleiner Mann, was nun? captures Pinneberg’s dilemma at an
important location in Berlin’s center, Friedrichstraße, where Berlin’s social and cultural
contrasts came together. West of the axis of Friedrichstraße was Potsdamer Platz, the entrance
to the intellectual and affluent west, and east of Friedrichstraße was the old city core with
Alexanderplatz, the entrance to Berlin’s poorer classical working class neighborhoods of
Prenzlauer Berg, Wedding and Kreuzberg.
The novel shows the political plight of the middle class citizen deciding whether to vote
Communist, Nazi or to stay with middle class parties at this time. It also captures another
important change in modern life, the changing role of the woman. In the beginning of the novel
Bunny is the innocent housewife only interested in taking care of the apartment and the child,
but later becomes a major moral and financial support for Pinneberg. While he falls apart she is
still able to pull the family through, first with her ability to find employment when he fails and
with her adaptable moral standards with which she is able to adjust to the failing economic
situation. Where Pinneberg can only act like a typical middle class citizen with strict social
standards, Bunny quickly adapts and although she does not condone Pinneberg’s situation she
advises him to stick it out.
Pinneberg’s choices were difficult ones since no political party in Weimar Germany had a
solution for the economic debacle of 1929 when the New York stock market crash hit Germany.
Soon the economy had almost collapsed with more than one third of the population out of
work, radically cut back unemployment benefits, without housing and little savings. Berlin
became a disaster zone with squatters occupying large parts of the suburbs. Through the
generosity of a friend, the Pinnebergs eventually find a small cottage on a garden plot
(Schrebergarten) where they hope to weather out the bad times.
IRMGARD KEUN, DAS KUNSTSEIDENE MÄDCHEN (1932)
Doris, Irmgard Keun’s young, working class protagonist sees advertisements and watches
movies and becomes infatuated with images of glamour in Das kunstseidene Mädchen. She steals
a fur coat, leaves her hometown, and travels to Berlin to be a star (“ein Glanz”), Finally, she is
overwhelmed by Berlin’s dazzling lifestyle.
As in most Berlin novels of the Weimar era, this book includes a wealth of autobiographic
elements from the author’s life, giving the novel a strong sense of authenticity. Like her
protagonist, Keun came to Berlin from Cologne looking for a life of fame in the movies. The
stolen fur coat serves as a symbol for the glamorous life she is dreaming of. Like a picaresque
hero, Doris is in awe of everything she experiences in the exciting city and writes her
experiences down as they come to her. But unlike a flaneur, Doris does not come from a
privileged background and has to work hard for a living. She turns to dating men who will
feed, clothe, and house her when she realizes how hard her dreams are to fulfill.
Doris loves the city: “I love Berlin with an anxiety in my knees and I don’t know what I will eat
tomorrow, but I don’t care, since now I sit at the Café Josty at the Potsdamer Platz.” Since fame
eludes her, the novel portrays Doris’ gradual social downfall and her constant struggle against
becoming a prostitute. She is taken in by various men, among them a blind war veteran and
later a more educated man whose wife has left him. As Doris moves from a girlfriend's
apartment to a filthy rented room and then to a park bench, the novel’s narrative style
disintegrates into a jumble of emotions and impressions: "And the light oozed from the earth
like silken white fog, and my tired head wondered how it was possible that it could come out of
such hard pavement.” But eventually Doris has learned her lesson: the desire to strike it rich
and to trick yourself to the top is not the right approach to life. She hopes to return to a working
class friend whose offer of a place in his small house on the outskirts she had initially declined.
The naiveté of Keun’s protagonist is shown in her first arrival at Friedrichstraße station, where
she runs into a political demonstration for the French politicians Laval und Briand. Although
Doris had never heard of the politicians before, she is soon swept away by the enthusiasm of the
rally and cheers with the others in front of the hotel Adlon where the politicians are staying.
Like the demonstrators, Doris screams for world peace, because she senses if she does not
demonstrate there will be war. At the rally Doris picks up her first male acquaintance in Berlin.
He buys her food, but is only interested in discussing sex with her, not French politicians.
In another scene (reprinted in Berliner Spaziergänge) Doris befriends Brenner, a blind war
veteran, who is interested in her experiences in the city. She describes Berlin’s glittering world
to him, the world of coffeehouses, bars, streetwalkers, advertisements, traffic, and the
atmosphere of frantic exhilaration the city provides. It is in these scenes where Keun excels and
where her modernist style shines. Her description is written in a true flaneur style when Doris
records her impression with camera-like precision and excitement. When Doris takes Brenner
out later, she desperately seeks to describe Berlin's energy for him. “I just want him to like my
Berlin”. But her images do not convince Brenner: “The city isn’t any good and the city isn’t
happy and the city is sick.”
Keun’s model for her book was Anita Loos’ 1925 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes that describes
the successful adventures of a blonde Arkansas bombshell who worked various cities in the US
and Europe as a gold digger. But, unlike her model, Keun shows her tongue-in-cheek humor in
scenes, which the critic Kurt Tucholsky praised as "a woman writer with humor”. Keun writes,
Doris “made the side of [her] nose quiver like a giant Belgian rabbit eating cabbage”, when she
wants to seduce a man. With her style, Keun imitates life as she perceives it: I want “to write
like a movie, because my life is like that and its going to become even more so. … And it will be
good to be writing just for myself without commas for a change, and in real language – not the
unnatural stuff from the office.”
With Doris the figure of the “femme flaneur” entered Berlin culture. They were professional
women, who worked as secretaries in offices from eight to six, and roamed Berlin’s exciting
streets at night. These “new” women used their financial freedom to decide when and if they
wanted to get married or lead a party life, sit in bars until the sun rose, and walk the boulevards
watching others and being watched themselves. All of these activities had previously been
dominated by men, but now women became interested in nightlife and flanerie, always on the
verge of going one step too far and loosing their reputation. Women began to develop a sense of
fashion appropriate to the occasion, shortened their skirts, danced the “Charleston” and lived
life to its fullest. Several female artists began to record the new freedom of the “femme
flaneur”, such as Jeanne Mammen, a passionate flaneur who recorded Berlin’s libertine
entertainment world. Doris is Keun’s version of Christopher Isherwood’s Sally Bowles, an
American bar singer at Berlin’s Kit Kat nightclub that Bob Fosse turned into the successful 1972
movie Cabaret.
Like Keun Doris was a regular barfly at the Romanische Café, located in Berlin West across
from the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. Although Doris questioned the legitimacy of
writers with their long hair she is still intrigued by their lifestyle. Unlike her naive protagonist
however, the real Irmgard Keun was an intellectual who frequented literary circles and was a
serious writer. She was friends with many of Weimar Germany’s critical establishment, among
them Alfred Döblin, who encouraged her to write. From 1936 to 1938 she lived with the
Austrian writer Joseph Roth with whom she traveled throughout Europe. After the German
invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, Keun returned to Nazi Germany and, protected by false
reports of her suicide, lived undercover until 1945. Keun’s books were rediscovered by the
women’s movement in the nineteen-eighties shortly before her death in 1982.
It was Keun’s literary colleague Mascha Kaléko, another regular at the Romanische Café, who
captured the atmosphere of young women roaming the streets of Berlin West in her poetic
Lyrisches Stenogrammheft. In her poem “Julinacht an der Gedächtniskirche”, reprinted in Berliner
Spaziergänge, she describes the feeling of drifting along the glittering windows of Tauentzien
Street where the pulse of the city beats among hundreds of movie posters. Although Kaléko like
Keun searches for happiness and love, she also realizes its futility. The melancholic recognition
of failure established her poetry volume as an important document of poetic expression during
the Weimar period.
ALFRED DÖBLIN, BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1929)
Berlin Alexanderplatz is the story of a small-time criminal, Franz Biberkopf, who after his release
from prison, is drawn back into Berlin’s underworld. The city, a chaotic collection of buildings,
people, newspapers, advertising, and blaring lights thrives on petty criminals, prostitutes and
bars full of jazz music. Biberkopf is “befriended” by the criminal Reinhold, but Reinhold betrays
him and almost causes his death in a car accident. When Biberkopf becomes a pimp, Reinhold
rapes and kills his girl, over which Biberkopf almost goes insane, but eventually recovers.
Biberkopf is beaten down three times in his confrontation with the city, the first time, after
discovering that a widow who he enticed into sleeping with him had been robbed because an
acquaintance had misrepresented him. Biberkopf is so embarrassed that he leaves his girlfriend
and goes into hiding, drinking himself into a stupor. His second breakdown occurs after
another partner, Reinhold urges him to participate in a crime caper, but pushes him in front of a
car when Biberkopf wants to quit. After losing his arm in this incident Biberkopf still tries to be
loyal to Reinhold. Biberkopf is so naïve that he does not realize that Reinhold is after his girl,
Mieze. When Mieze refuses to leave Biberkopf, Reinhold gets mad and strangles her. As a
consequence, Biberkopf almost goes insane and is sent to the city asylum. After his release he
helps convict Reinhold. Biberkopf finally picks up where he left before the accident and
continues working, now without fighting the city. “I have nothing further to report about his
life”, are Döblin’s last words about this tragic character, adding “Cursed are those who rely on
others”.
At over six hundred pages, Berlin Alexanderplatz is not a simple novel. Berlin’s topography
represents only one of the many layers of meaning in this collage-like novel. Initially, the city is
Biberkopf’s adversary, a hostile environment, as Biberkopf senses after leaving jail in the
northern district of Tegel, “the punishment begins.” The punishment means mounting a
streetcar, facing other people, seeing the streets, houses and stores again. Bouts of terror strike
him over and over again as he walks around. The next stop is Rosenthaler Platz, his old haunt,
where many petty criminals hung out in the nineteen-twenties. The Rosenthaler Platz area used
to be one of the few places where Jews could enter Berlin through the Rosenthal Tor, which was
torn down in 1861. It is the notorious Scheunenviertel area that Fallada describes in his memoirs
(in this book in chapter 1). Two Jews Biberkopf meets help him overcome his fear that life in
Berlin is punishment and he is off again to walk the city. The next stop is a cinema, then a
prostitute, and finally the sister of his ex-girl friend who he had killed, the crime he was sent to
jail for. Franz is finally off to a new start and feels at home again in this dubious district of
Rosenthaler Platz/Alexanderplatz.
Döblin uses the nine books of his lengthy novel to show Franz’s progress in his relationship
with the city. Book I showed Franz’ gradual emergence from his feeling of claustrophobia, the
second book introduces the ways in which the city functions; Franz registers with the police as
an ex-convict, and starts working as a street vendor. The middle parts of the book show Franz
running repeatedly into the violent side of the city, where industrial force is equaled with
violence against people. This excerpt is reprinted in Berliner Spaziergänge.
Franz’ struggle in the sixth book is compared with the struggle of the city of Babylon whose
sinfulness angered God and caused him to destroy the place. Döblin sees Biberkopf’s struggle
as a struggle between man and the city he must conquer before he can become a decent person.
Berlin has become Babylon, the ultimate sinful city that tries to seduce Biberkopf to a life of
immorality. In Fassbinder’s movie version we see several scenes of prostitution and persuasion
to prostitution, which Biberkopf’s steadfastly resists. Babylon is the ancient city known in Old
Testament as the city of the Tower of Babel where man tempted God by dancing around the
golden calf. The Babylonians were punished by God by confusing all languages so that people
could no longer communicate. Interesting enough, the tower of Babylon was used again in Fritz
Lang’s movie Metropolis, completed only two years before Döblin’s novel, to show the
sinfulness of fictitious Metropolis. Döblin knew that Berlin’s Pergamon Museum possessed the
magnificent Ishtar Gate from ancient Babylon. It had been assembled under the Kaiser as an
expression of imperial glory to rival the British museum, but was now seen as a sign of hubris.
If the central parts of the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz constitute a battle between Biberkopf and
the city of Berlin, the end indicates that Berlin has won. An amorphous mass of concrete, bricks
and steel never changes but simple devours its people. Franz is now one of those millions,
without any ambitions. The book is not merely a novel about Berlin but also cacophonic city life.
Fragmented scenes are presented in different styles such as in Berlin dialect, in advertising
language, or as excerpts from science books, along with allusions to mythology and the Bible.
The result is a confusing blend of information, allowing the reader to experience Biberkopf’s
utter bewilderment. Biberkopf attempts to cope, but the city turns out to be stronger and almost
crushes him.
A popular revival of Döblin’s novel began with Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1978 TV movie
version. At fifteen and a half hours, the film was the longest narrative film ever produced in
Germany. With Berlin Alexanderplatz Fassbinder created a melodrama not just about Berlin, but
about German history. Fassbinder altered Döblin’s novel in setting Biberkopf’s death scene in a
concentration camp to turn the story into a universal symbol. Fassbinder identified closely with
Biberkopf and explored his intense friendship with Reinhold. According to Fassbinder, these
two men love and hate one another, but refuse to admit their feelings, because there is
"something mysterious [that] brings them closer together than is normally considered decent
between men". Fassbinder does not see them as homosexuals, for "there is nothing more and
nothing less between them than a pure love that is not jeopardized by anything social". Franz
Biberkopf is a man full of contradictions, as we can never predict how he will react. Mieze’s
murder scene stands out as an unsettling film portrayal where neither the culprit nor the victim
realizes they were heading towards disaster.
The ambiguity of the story is underlined in Fassbinder’s cinematic interpretation, which he
filmed in low light, almost in darkness. When the movie was first presented on TV in 1980
Fassbinder’s choice of lighting was heavily criticized. In the digitally remastered and lighter
version of 2007 more details are visible, where the stylized use of studio light makes sense, since
“real sunlight in real streets would have transformed the film's realism into something
documentary and thus destroyed it” (William Roth).
QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY
1. Look at the map and locate some of Berlin’s prominent buildings. What has changed
after the end of WWI? What do these changes suggest about the development in the
city? When was this map printed and what might have been the reason for its
publication?
2. Take a look at the picture of Potsdamer Platz and locate the buildings on the map. Look
at Kästner’s poem and imagine stepping off the Potsdamer Platz train station. What
would a first-time visitor explore?
3. Locate the buildings and streets in the excerpts of Keun’s, Fallada’s and Döblin’s novels.
Where do the locations differ from those in Erich Kästner’s novel Emil und die Detektive?
4. Single out a sequence of Ruttmann’s film Berlin, Sinfonie einer großen Stadt, and explore
some of the movie’s guiding principles, form and city life. Where do you see
crosscutting between abstract forms and buildings or traffic?
5. What “story” does Berlin, Sinfonie einer großen Stadt tell? Analyze whether it is a true
documentary or whether there are enough elements for a feature film.
6. Discuss the overall appeal of Kästner’s story, considering that it is one of the most
popular children’s novels ever written. In order to be popular a children’s book has to
appeal to adults as well. What might adults see in this novel?
7. Fallada’s novel was another a very popular novel of the Weimar period, not least due to
its memorable title. Told in a chatty style it combines elements of pulp fiction with a
serious social topic. Make a list of serious and less serious elements of this book.
8. Read the new English translation of Irmgard Keun’s novel Das kunstseidene Mächen?
How does Keun’s style match her approach to life? Give specific examples.
9. Döblin uses Berlin’s Alexanderplatz as a symbol for the city’s contentious class society.
Unlike Potsdamer Platz in the West, Alexanderplatz was swarming with small time
crooks and homeless people. What was Döblin’s intention of placing his novel in a
crime district?
10. What is your overall perception of Weimar Berlin after reading the excerpts and books?
Why has Weimar Berlin still such appeal to present-day Berliners?