UNDER BELLY

A young upper-class Englishman slumming it in the poorer suburbs of Berlin hardly seems a promising start to understanding the last years of the Weimar Republic. An unattributed quote in a Wikipedia article on Christopher Isherwood suggests otherwise: "Goodbye to Berlin is his portrait of a city in which Adolf Hitler was rising to power ― enabled by poverty, unemployment, increasing attacks on Jews and Communists, and ignored by the defiant hedonism of night life in the cafes, bars and brothels".

In March 1929, Isherwood aged 25 years, joined his schoolfriend Wystan (WH) Auden for a ten day visit. He returned there in July and finally moved there in November. Isherwood remained resident in Berlin until May 1933, when he was forced to flee the new Nazi regime with his German boyfriend Heinz Neddermeyer.

His relevant stories are based on raw material recorded in his diary while he was there:

      Mr Norris Changes Trains, a novel published in 1935,

      Sally Bowles, a novella published in 1937, and

      Goodbye To Berlin, a novel published in 1939.

This pre-war output was combined and reprinted as The Berlin Stories in 1945.

* * * * *

Despite the darkness of its setting, Mr Norris Changes Trains is actually a funny book. Narrator William (Willi) Bradshaw is a wry observer, the antics of absurd Arthur (Mr) Norris are often amusing, and the bizarre odd-fellows from their sordid social milieu ― Olga the obese dominatrix, Baron (Kuno) Pregnitz the aristocratic queer ― are so strange that it is difficult not to laugh.

The book appears to be a wonderfully exaggerated theatrical romp, until it isn't. Flashes of political reality stab into the text, puncturing Bradshaw's normally sardonic commentary, deflating the mood instantly. 

Although he is an Englishman, the character of Mr Norris acts as a sort of mirror of the author's Berliners. Down at heel, decidedly seedy, looking on to the next scheme which will surely succeed but doesn't, his is an "immoral resourcefulness" that takes of advantage of friends as well as strangers. He 'lives by his wits', as corrupt as the German society he hopes to exploit.

Mr Norris inhabits a city of like-minded souls, each doing whatever they can get away with in order to survive. Otto, the earnest Communist and activist for the Red Front, 'works' as a pimp for his prostitute girlfriend Anni. The massive Olga is 'by necessity' a "woman of many occupations ...a procuress, a cocaine-seller and a receiver of stolen goods; she also let lodgings, took in washing and, when in the mood, did exquisite fancy needlework."

In this climate of 'ethical confusion' it probably shouldn't come as a surprise when Bradshaw reports an instance of violent social breakdown (although it does):

      "Berlin was in a state of civil war. Hate exploded suddenly, without warning, out of nowhere; at street corners, in restaurants, cinemas, dance halls, swimming baths; at midnight, after breakfast, in the middle of the afternoon. Knives were whipped out, blows were dealt with spiked rings, beer mugs, chair legs, or leaded clubs; bullets slashed the advertisements on the poster-columns, rebounded on the iron roofs of latrines. In the middle of a crowded street a young man would be attacked, stripped, thrashed, and left bleeding on the pavement; in fifteen seconds it was all over and the assailants had disappeared."

Critic Hena Maes-Jelinek (1970) has argued that episodes of political violence in the last days of Weimar democracy became routine, and so did German decisions to look the other way. City-dwellers grew accustomed to openly expressed hatred. In the end they were prepared to accept Hitler's leadership with a mixture of practiced indifference and relief.

      "Isherwood describes Berlin in a state of civil war, the dubious shifts and devices the unemployed resorted to in order to survive, the indifference of the German public to shootings, arrests, acts of violence committed under their very eyes, and the satisfaction of many of them after Hitler's coup d'etat."

The complicity of German citizens in the decline and fall of the Weimar Republic is an important point for Maes-Jelinek. She concludes that Isherwood is "presenting the individual as a victim of a situation for which he is also accountable." As Isherwood puts it:

      "The newspaper readers by the café smiled approvingly at these youngsters in their swaggering boots who were going to upset the Treaty of Versailles. They were pleased because it would soon be summer, because Hitler had promised to protect the small tradesman, because their newspapers told them that the good times were coming. They were suddenly proud of being blonde. And they thrilled with a furtive, sensual pleasure, like schoolboys, because the Jews, their business rivals, and the Marxists, a vaguely defined minority of people who didn't concern them, had been satisfactorily found guilty of the defeat and the inflation, and were going to catch it."

* * * * *

Goodbye To Berlin is a more consistently dark book, unleavened by the humour of the earlier volume. The narrator is no longer concerned to distinguish himself from the author. He is now plain Christopher Isherwood, and this is what he saw:

       "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking...Some day all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed."

The standout character in this series of four stories is, of course, Sally Bowles. English like Isherwood, she is an elfin, wilful teenager who is breath-takingly naïve but determined to 'act out' as a woman of the world. Since made famous by Lisa Minnelli's performance of her in the 1972 film Cabaret, Sally Bowles in the novel is similarly compelling. She is 'bright', brittle, and plummeting.

However, it is the German characters who really alarm. It is frankly impossible, for example, to read about the demented "little doctor" without mental reference to the Holocaust. Because he predates the grotesque medical crimes of euthanasia and extermination in concentration camps, contemporary readers may have dismissed him as an atypical freak. Current readers cannot.

'The little doctor fairly revels in this atmosphere [at the beach on the Baltic coast]...

      "The young people here are a magnificent lot! I as a doctor know how to appreciate them. The other day I was over at Hiddensee. Nothing but Jews! It's a pleasure to get back here and see some real Nordic types!"

'But the little doctor won't let us alone...

      "But you can't be a communist! You can't! ...

       Because there isn't any such thing as a communism. It's just an hallucination. A mental disease. People only imagine they're communists. They aren't really...

       My work at the clinic has convinced me ...

       What people need is discipline, self-control. I can tell you this as a doctor. I know it from my own experience."

'He was fairly consumed with curiosity [about an English man and a German boy]...

       "My work in the clinic has taught me it is no use trying to help this type of boy...

        This type of boy always reverts. From a scientific point of view...extremely interesting...

        He has a criminal head...

        I believe in discipline. These boys ought to be put in labour camps...

        You are an idealist! ...But it is unscientific, quite unscientific. You...do not understand such boys as Otto. I understand them. Every week, one or two such boys come to my clinic, and I must operate on them for adenoids, or mastoids, or poisoned tonsils. So you see, I know them through and through...

        I know this type of boy very well...It is a bad degenerate type. You cannot make anything out of these boys. Their tonsils are almost invariably diseased."

This is a moment for one of those awkward embarrassing laughs, spontaneous, unbidden, and completely inappropriate in the circumstances. 

Moving on, and Isherwood certainly does. Next in focus are Jewish Germans, those most in danger, yet remaining some of the most blinkered.

Take the wealthy Bernsteins of Berlin. Herr Bernstein doesn't want Frau Bernstein to go shopping in the car in the afternoon because there has been a lot of Nazi rioting in the city recently.

       "You can go in the tram", said Herr Bernstein. "I will not have them throwing stones at my beautiful car."

       "And suppose they throw stones at me?" asked Frau Bernstein good-humouredly.

       "Ach, what does that matter? If they throw stones at you I will buy you a sticking-plaster for your head. It will cost me only five groschen. But if they throw stones at my car, it will cost me perhaps about five hundred marks."

The underlying message of this teasing exchange is that anti-Semitism and persecution have come and gone over the centuries, and Jews have always survived. A middle-aged woman on public transport is a much smaller target than a rich woman in a shiny new motor car. So the trick is to not draw attention to yourselves, to adopt neutral and anonymous behaviours, so that the SA thugs are not provoked.

The Landaur family, rich owners of a large glass and steel department store in Berlin, are especially frustrating for the Isherwood. On the evening of the big Hindenberg vs Hitler election, Bernhard Landauer holds a glamorous reception at his inherited mansion on the banks of the Wannsee:

      "Yet in spite of all Bernhard's frisking, the party didn't really 'go'. It split up into groups and cliques; and even when the fun was at its height, at least a quarter of the guests were talking politics in low serious voices...

       When it got dark, a girl began to sing. She sang in Russian and, as always, it sounded sad. The footmen brought out glasses and a large bowl of claret-cup. It was getting chilly on the lawn. There were millions of stars. Out on the great calm brimming lake, the last ghost-like sails were tacking hither and thither with the faint uncertain night-breeze. The gramophone played...

       A girl laughed suddenly, shrilly, from the middle of a group of young men. Over there, in the city, the votes were being counted. I thought of Natalie [Landauer]: she has escaped ― none too soon perhaps. However often the decision may be delayed, all these people are ultimately doomed. This evening is a dress-rehearsal of a disaster. It is like the last night of an epoch."

It is difficult to judge the reason for this novel's impact. It could be the strength of the author's writing, or it might be that the book is being read retrospectively, when the eventual outcome of the stories is clear to all. But there is an impact. It is like wanting to retrace our steps, to go back to Bernhard's party ― to those who "stood about in the hall or around the front door while someone phoned through to Berlin to get the news" about the election results ― and yell at those unhearing backs, "Go! For God's sake! Get Out! Leave Germany while you still can!"

__________________________________________________________________________

Christopher Isherwood, 1935, Mr Norris Changes Trains

                                      1939, Goodbye To Berlin

found online in the combined 1945 version of The Berlin Stories

googlesearch "Full text of 'Isherwood, The Berlin Stories' - Internet Archive"

                       <in.ernet.dli.2015.224503.pdf>

Hena Maes-Jelinek, 1970, 'Christopher Isherwood', in  Criticism of Society in the English Novel between the Wars, Presses universitaires de Liege, pp 449-471

available on Google Scholar 

<https:/books.openedition.org/pulg/885?lang+en>