234
See also: Metamorphosis 210 –11 ■ The Magic Mountain 224–27 ■
The Man Without Qualities 243A
lthough the 15 years after
the end of World War I saw
hyperinflation and mass
unemployment in Germany, it was
also a time of a great flourishing
in the arts and sciences, known
as Weimar culture. Many leading
intellectuals were Jewish, and
the period came to an end with
Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933
and the rise in anti-Semitism, when
thousands of Jews fled Germany.New forms for a new world
While the Weimar era lasted,
German-language literary
experimentalism was ambitious
in its attempts to express the
complexities of the modern world,
and Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred
Döblin (1878–1957) was a key work.
It is the story of a low-level pimp,
Franz Biberkopf, who struggles
to make his way in the criminal
underclass after being released
from prison. The characters speak
in the almost untranslatable argot
of the slums of interwar Berlin,
and the novel is a dazzling exercise
in literary montage. At times ittakes the form of newspaper
stories, street ballads, speeches,
and extracts from fictional books.
The narrative incorporates stream
of consciousness and a mixture of
first- and third-person viewpoints.
Through this complex experimental
technique, 1920s Berlin itself is
given vivid expression, leading
Berlin Alexanderplatz to be seen as
one of the great Großstadtromane,
or “big city novels,” which focus
on life in urban areas. ■THE OLD WORLD MUST
CRUMBLE. AWAKE,
WIND OF DAWN!
BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1929),
ALFRED DÖBLIN
IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
Weimar-era
experimentalismBEFORE
1915 Metamorphosis, a key
early antirealistic text by
Franz Kafka, influences several
other modern German-
language writers.AFTER
1931–32 Austrian author
Hermann Broch’s trilogy The
Sleepwalkers experiments
with form, changing genre
according to the plot.1930–43 Austrian Robert
Musil’s novel The Man Without
Qualities is structured as a
tour of ideas through which
the central character attempts
to define himself.
1943 Herman Hesse’s use of
Jungian psychoanalysis and
Eastern mysticism in The
Glass Bead Game results in
a combination similar to the
later genre of magic realism.German fellow-citizens,
never has a nation been
betrayed more ignominiously
and more unjustly than
the German people.
Berlin AlexanderplatzUS_234-235_Berlin_Eyes.indd 234 08/10/2015 13:08