The Times - UK (2022-05-28)

12 saturday review Saturday May 28 2022 | the times

grammes of bread, 400

grammes of potatoes and 40

grammes of meat.”

The succeeding chapters

dealing with postwar Berlin

are the most interesting, not

least because they explain

to Berlinophiles why we see

what we see today — the

residues of the recent past,

from the stretch of Cold

War wall along the Spree to

the remade Unter den Lin-

den and the East German

TV tower.

Postwar Berliners were

hungry, exhausted and

aware of being hated, but,

McKay says, Berliners part-

ly dealt with their situation

through a medium the city

had pioneered — film. “An

entirely new film genre, the

Trümmerfilm (rubble film)

came into being,” he writes;

it consisted of movies shot

against the backdrop of the

ruined city. “The careful

aesthetics of black and

white cinematography,” he sug-

gests, “made what was intolerable in reality

somehow bearable to watch when projec-

ted through silvery darkness on to large

screens.” And, he adds, “the shadows on the

ruins so starkly depicted in monochrome

could be understood as metaphors for the

shadows of their own natures”.

One of the film-makers was Wilder, who

had returned with the US army to help

with the moral reconstruction of Ger-

many via celluloid. The Americans turned

irrepressible New

Year’s Eve at the Hotel

Adlon in 1930-31. Top: the

Berlin airlift of 1948-49

books

The city that

even Hitler

and Stalin

couldn’t kill

From the Great War to

the Great Wall, Berlin

has survived it all.

David Aaronovitch on

a triumph of urban

bloody-mindedness

T

he motivation for writing this

book, its author suggests, is this:

a Berliner born at the beginning

of the 20th century and who sur-

vived into her nineties would

have become an adult as the defeat in the

Great War precipitated revolution and

counter-revolution, in her twenties as the

Weimar era of cultural experimentation

and popular culture took off, her thirties

when the Reichstag burnt and Hitler’s dic-

tatorship was established, her forties as her

city was all but destroyed, her fifties when

her country was divided, her sixties when

a physical barrier was set up across the city

and pressing 90 when that wall fell and

Germany was reunited. And every one of

these eras and events has left some kind of

mark on the physical geography of the city

and the psyches of its inhabitants.

Everyone — except that young chap

on Clarkson’s Farm who once went to

London, but stayed on the coach — has

their favourite city. I’d list mine as New

York for its pizzazz, Mumbai for its aston-

ishing colours and smells, and Rome for its

unmatched availability of classical and

Renaissance history and art. But at the top

I’d put Berlin, without quite being able to

explain why. Now I have a better idea.

From its early pages it feels as though

Sinclair McKay was born to write this

book. Previously, he had laboured hard in

the lucrative “Britain at war” publishing

mines writing several books about Bletch-

ley Park (and so perhaps explaining why

the publishing director for Viking de-

scribes Berlin as “a perfect Father’s Day

gift”, which it isn’t of course, any more

than it’s a perfect Mother’s Day or any-

body else’s day gift). But this one reads as

the work of someone who has been ro-

manced and badly needs to communicate

the nature of his love to his readers.

In essence it is a story of pain and loss,

often redeemed by resilience and bloody-

mindedness. You need to know this

because a quick look at the chapter heads

(The Dwellers in the Dark; The Sacrificial

Children; The Revolutionary Agony etc)

would seem to suggest a mere repetition

of awfulness and that is definitely not

McKay’s intention.

The disaster/resilience dichotomy is

clear from the beginning, in 1918, as red

revolutionaries and right-wing Freikorps

have shooting battles in the streets, but

blocks away the jewellers remain open and

customers drink coffee in

the teegarten. In the 1920s,

hyper-inflation strikes,

workers in their crumbling

tenements face starvation

and progressive politicians

are assassinated. Yet Bau-

haus produces wonderful

designs, the city is full of illu-

mination, cinemas are full to

bursting and music and sex

are everywhere. A very Ger-

man nudity decorates the

cabarets and the summer

lakesides.

Then comes Hitler. The

intellectuals and the scien-

tists leave. “Good news about

Einstein,” one Nazi news-

paper proclaims. “He’s not

coming back.” A young Jew-

ish screenwriter who comes

to be called Billy Wilder

makes for the US. Berlin

knuckles under, but never

quite completely.

By the spring of 1945 the

city is destroyed by bombs and

shells, its occupants forced

into a basement existence,

coming out to find food or

water, their teenagers con-

scripted into Hitler’s last stand.

Then, when he is ash and bone outside the

bunker, women face the campaign of mass

rape by Soviet soldiers, partly in revenge

for the horrific crimes of the Nazis in the

lands to their east.

This is followed by hunger. In June 1945,

McKay writes, “the food allowance for

each citizen was 1,100 calories a day”. By

comparison, the NHS recommends that

our intake should be more than 2,000 cal-

ories a day. “The daily allowance was 200

Book of the week

Berlin

Life and Loss in the

City that Shaped

the Century

by Sinclair McKay

Viking, 437pp; £20

B

L

C

t

b

V out to be very good at this, but there’s a

bizarre story that sheds a very unpleasant

light on British sensibilities. Seeking to

share the best of British culture with the

Berliners, J Arthur Rank shipped over

recent movies at the behest of the govern-

ment, one of which caused riots outside

the cinema where it was being shown.

The offending movie was David Lean’s

1948 version of Oliver Twist. The film fea-

tured Alec Guinness as the villainous

Fagin, equipped with a huge false nose,

thickened lips and an exaggerated “Jew-

ish” accent. Between them, McKay writes,

“Lean and Guinness had created an almost

medieval Jewish stereotype. From the per-

spective of those protesting, there was lit-

tle difference between this and the notori-

ous Nazi Werner Krauss vehicle Jud Süss.”

Outside the cinemas the people were

busy reconstructing. “Tuberculosis was

rife. Yet the vast shopping strip of the

Kurfürstendamm was beginning to stir,”

McKay writes, and “cadaverous looking

middle managers were commuting

through the wrecked centre in shirts and

ties.” By the summer the U-Bahn was rum-

bling under Berliners’ feet and the S-Bahn

running over their heads.

Still, the division of the city into occupa-

tion zones was beginning to shape two Ber-

lins. “By 1948,” McKay observes, “Berlin

was a city in a quantum state, with differ-

In 1945 middle

managers commuted

through the rubble

in shirts and ties

g g g d a l t w r f W t d T h a M l t h e T c i a r a

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