CHAPTER 1

BERLIN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Until the 19th century, Berlin’s center was a small German city on a river with a bridge for easy crossing, a castle for protection and a market square as a place for commerce. At first each side of the river settlement had a different name, Cölln on the western side and Berlin on the eastern side. The town of Cölln was first mentioned in a document in 1237, and Berlin across the river in 1244. Both towns formed a trading union and developed in parallel, but they did not formally unify until 1709. As a colonial settlement on Germany’s eastern frontier, Berlin/Cölln lacked the cultural history of western and southern German towns with their Roman roots. Instead, Berlin/Cölln were founded on land the Germanic tribes took from eastern European Slavic tribes in the colonization drives around 1200. Most residents of this early city were traders or craftsmen as the opportunity to travel up and down the river Spree and to cross the river was the reason for the commercial success of the city. This was enhanced when the local prince electors built a castle near the river crossing to protect the burgeoning market place. Berlin’s and Cölln’s combined medieval center covered only a small area, with Cölln as the smaller of the two, on the island now known as Museum Island or Fischer Island, with the castle which grew into the massive Hohenzollern Palace. Berlin across the river could be reached by the only bridge, the current Rathausbrücke. The small size of this medieval city becomes evident, if we continue across the bridge on Rathausstraße into the medieval center of Berlin, which ended at the Frankfurt gate, the current location of the Alexanderplatz station. The Nikolaikirche (1220-30) and the Marienkirche (1292) belong to the few medieval structures left in Berlin. The current Nikolaiviertel is an attempt to reconstruct the picturesque medieval city around the rebuilt Nikolaikirche, but the rest of the old city is gone due to the destruction of WWII and subsequent socialist city planning. Without the Nikolaiviertel it would be difficult to imagine what old Berlin looked like. Until the mid-19th century, this old city with the Königstraße, today’s Rathausstraße, as the main thoroughfare is basically the city in which Georg Hermann’s character Jettchen Gebert and Wilhelm Raabe’s Johannes Wacholder resided. After 1688 Berlin expanded to the west, the Friedrichstadt and the Dorotheenstadt suburbs west and northwest of Cölln, which doubled Berlin’s size. The Friedrichstadt centered on the boulevard Unter den Linden west of the city, which created an impressive urban atmosphere for Prussia’s new capital. Many Berliners were slow to accept these changes, which is reflected in the literature selections from Georg Hermann’s and Wilhelm Raabe's books. The western extensions broke with the traditional style of German medieval cities, which were mostly built during the Gothic period in the 13th and 14th century. With neoclassicism, developed by the Royal architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, a new imperial style was introduced in the Friedrichstadt expansion along Unter den Linden, at the Forum Fridericianum and on the Gendarmenmarkt south of Unter den Linden. With this construction Unter den Linden became Berlin’s central neoclassical boulevard. While exploring the medieval city would have been similar to walking in hundreds of small to midsize German towns at that time, a stroll down magnificent Unter den Linden would have a decidedly imperial feeling. Although heavily damaged in WWII, Unter den Linden is one of the few Berlin areas to give a sense of the old imperial city. A walk through neoclassical Berlin starts at the Stadtschloss or city palace, the principal residence of the Hohenzollern, dating back

to 1450. The palace was constantly remodeled and rebuilt. Its baroque front was built by the famous architect Andreas Schlüter around 1700, modeled after Rome’s Palazzo Madama. Friedrich August Stüler's dome of 1850 gave the Schloss its final look, which was later duplicated by the adjacent Cathedral dome of 1905 and provided symmetry to central Berlin’s architecture. The Kings of Prussia, who became German emperors in 1871, occupied the palace from 1701 until 1918, when the palace became a museum. Damaged by Allied bombing in World War II, the ruins were later removed by the communists as a symbol of the despised Prussian militarism. However, the fourth portal of the original building was incorporated in the front of the GDR state council building (Staatsratsgebäude) across the Schlossplatz. After Phillip Scheidemann’s declaration of a democratic republic the communist leader Karl Liebknecht had attempted to proclaim a German Communist state from this balcony in 1918. It was only after the Schloss removal in 1951 that its current function became clear: It had served as the focus for all neighboring buildings, including the cathedral, the museum buildings the armory (now the National History Museum) and foremost, the beginning of the Unter den Linden axis which ran from the river and continued for miles past the Brandenburg Gate to the western suburbs of Berlin. A temporary replica of the Schloss in 1993 demonstrated its key function as a central space for Berlin, which was occupied by the communist Palast der Republik from 1976-2008. The replica initiated a lengthy discussion of how to fill this void with the result that the Palace of the Republic was removed and the Schloss should be recreated as an art center under the name Humboldt-Forum. Across the Lustgarten and north of the Schloss is the Alte Museum, the oldest and largest public building in Berlin at the time of its construction in 1830. Between both buildings on the East side of the Lustgarten sits the grandiose Berliner Cathedral, whose predecessor had been designed by Schinkel. Combined with the facades of the Cathedral and the City Palace, the Alte Museum became known as one of the three heads of authority: God, King and Art, Schinkel's idea of replicating Greek ideas on the Spree. The Alte Museum, opened in 1830 as one of Europe’s first art museums, uses a Greek stoa with an ionic column front, and is one of Berlin’s most spectacular buildings. The museum, which was badly damaged during WWII, re-opened in 1966 as a museum for ancient Greek and Roman art. Behind the Alte Museum a number of newer museums were added, the Pergamonmuseum, the Neue Museum, the Bodemuseum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, and the Alte Museum, which are known as the museum island complex. Further west on Unter dem Linden, the Forum Fridericianum, dates back to 1740. In 1947 it was renamed Bebelplatz after the founder of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). The first building on the Forum Fridericianum was the opera house (1741–43), followed by Hedwig's Cathedral (1747–1773). Its western side is occupied by the Royal Library (Königliche Bibliothek , 1775–80), known colloquially as the "Kommode" ("chest of drawers"). Today, this building belongs to Humboldt University and is attached to the Alte Palais, also used by Humboldt University. On May 10, 1933, the infamous "book burning " by the Nazis took place at the Forum Fridericianum when the works of some of Germany’s best-known authors such as Thomas Mann, Erich Kästner, Heinrich Heine, and Karl Marx were thrown into the flames of a huge fire. A monument in the form of an underground library with empty shelves behind a transparent window commemorates this event. One block southwest of the Forum Fridericianum lies another neo-classical city square, the Gendarmenmarkt, considered by many the most attractive plaza in Europe. In its center stands the Schauspielhaus, and the two dome church buildings, the French Church, built by Frederic the Great for the Huguenot community of Berlin on the northern side of the plaza and the German Church on the southern side. The

Schauspielhaus, used today as a concert hall, was built by Karl Friedrich Schinkel in 1817–21, with the Schiller Monument added to its front in 1871. The name of the boulevard Unter den Linden goes back to the linden trees, which were planted along its sides from the city center to the Brandenburg Gate in 1647. By the 19th century, as Berlin had grown and expanded to the west, Unter den Linden had become the best-known street in Berlin, a true boulevard worthy of a great city. The core of Unter den Linden is made up of a series of neo-classical buildings, which give the boulevard its unique Greek feeling. The Neue Wache (New Watchhouse), one of the smallest buildings on Unter den Linden, represents the neoclassical style in its perfect harmony. Of all the buildings on Unter den Linden the Neue Wache has the most complex history, reflecting Berlin’s many political changes. As Schinkel’s first building (1816) it was designed as a guardhouse for the troops of the Crown Prince of Prussia. Schinkel described the design of the Neue Wache as a copy of a Roman fortress (castrum), with four sturdy corner towers and an inner courtyard. The portico (front) of the building consists of six Doric columns. In 1931 the Neue Wache was redesigned as a memorial for German WWI soldiers by converting the interior into a memorial hall with an oculus (a circular skylight), renamed the "Memorial for the Fallen of the War." After the building was heavily damaged in WWII, it was again redesigned as East Germany’s “Memorial to the Victims of Fascism and Militarism” in 1960. On the 20th anniversary of the GDR in 1969 an eternal flame was placed in the center of the hall, along with the remains of an unknown WWII German soldier and of an unknown concentration camp victim. After reunification, the Neue Wache was rededicated as the “Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Tyranny” in 1993. An enlarged version of the Käthe Kollwitz sculpture Mother with her Dead Son was placed directly under the oculus, where it is exposed to rain and snow, symbolizing the suffering of civilians during World War II. This new monument was conceived by chancellor Helmut Kohl and has become an impressive and successful WWII memorial, despite the controversy over enlarging Kollwitz’s statue to ten times its original size. Berlin’s best known neoclassical building on Unter den Linden is the city’s symbol, the Brandenburg Gate, built by Carl Gotthard Langhans from 1788 to 1791 as the city’s first neoclassical building, which gave Berlin its nickname Spreeathen. As a former city gate, it is located next to Pariser Platz at the end of Unter den Linden. The Brandenburg Gate is the only remaining gate of a series of gates through which Berlin was entered. Another well-known example was the Potsdam Gate to the south, which was destroyed in WWII. One block north of the Brandenburg Gate lies the German Parliament, the Reichstag. The Brandenburg Gate consists of twelve Roman Doric columns, six on each side. This allows for five roadways, although ordinary citizens were only allowed to use the outer two. Above the gate is the Quadriga, consisting of the goddess of peace, driving a four-horse chariot in triumph. The design of the gate was based on the Propylea, the gateway to the Acropolis in Athens. The Quadriga was designed by Johann Gottfried Schadow. Like the Neue Wache, the Brandenburg Gate has been a symbol of Germany’ dramatic history. It was returned in 1814 after Napoleon’s defeat; however, the olive wreath of the statue was exchanged for the German Iron Cross and the gate subsequently became a German state symbol. The Brandenburg Gate itself survived WWII as the only structure left standing in the ruins of Pariser Platz. After 1961, the Gate gained its notoriety when the Berlin Wall was built directly in front of it, thus placing it in a no man’s land that could be reached neither from the east nor

from the west. The isolated Brandenburg Gate became such a symbol for the cold war that in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy visited, the Soviets hung large banners across it so he could not see the East Berlin side. Kennedy’s famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech however was not delivered at the Gate, but still became an icon for US foreign policy. In 1987, Ronald Reagan demanded in front of the Brandenburg Gate that the Berlin Wall be torn down “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”. And thus it is no surprise that when the Berlin Wall fell during the revolutions of 1989, Berlin’s central party took place in front of the Brandenburg Gate. On December 22, 1989 the gate was finally reopened to the west, which began a major rebuilding boom around Pariser Platz. The Brandenburg Gate is now the most popular place for tourists in Berlin. With the completion of Unter den Linden Berlin was ready for its function as capital of the new German empire. Although Germany’s authoritarian political system in which the right to vote depended on taxation, excluded large numbers of the population, it nevertheless made Germans increasingly pro-empire and proudly nationalistic. As a prosperous middle class supported the military it became fashionable to be connected with the army or navy reserve and strut around in a blue uniform as shown in Carl Zuckmayer’s play Der Hauptmann von Köpenick. Despite this new middle-class affluence at the end of the 19th century large parts of the population were still excluded from the benefits of the new society, which accounted for the fast growth of the Social Democratic Party. Berlin grew rapidly, and by 1900 had become Germany’s largest industrial city and within fifty years had grown from 300,000 to about two million. The growth was centered mostly in the newly developing suburbs around the city core, to the west in Charlottenburg, Wilmersdorf and Schöneberg; to the north in Wedding and Reinickendorf; to the east in Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain and Weissensee; and to the south in Kreuzberg and Neukölln. Because Berlin maintained lax building codes the prominent construction method became the economical and space-saving “rental barrack” (Mietskaserne), a four to five-floor building with a narrow courtyard and several cheaper buildings added behind the courtyard. Some of these rental barracks housed thousands of residents and, due to their unsanitary living conditions without running water, they became a leading cause for disease and civil unrest. Since they were often modeled on Unter den Linden buildings, rental barracks soon gave the city its uniform pseudo-neoclassical look. This typical founders’ period architecture (Gründerzeitarchitektur) has been immortalized by Heinrich Zille, a popular artist. Providing economical transportation between the new suburbs became a major task for the industrial city. At the turn of the century, Berlin’s industry developed into a leader in transportation technology through Borsig, Siemens and AEG (Allgemeine Elektrizitätsgesellschaft). In the early years after 1865, horse drawn streetcars were used, however electrification of streetcars started as early as 1886 and was completed by 1902. A second transportation system was built in the 1870s with the new steam powered city train (Stadtbahn) to connect Berlin’s eight main railway terminals, which all ended in the new suburbs at the city's edge. The Stadtbahn opened in 1882 and became the forerunner of Berlin’s efficient suburban train system (S-Bahn for Stadt- and Schnellbahn), which was electrified in the 1920 and still carries the majority of Berlin’s public traffic.

GEORG HERMANN, JETTCHEN GEBERT (1906)

Georg Hermann’s novels Jettchen Gebert and Henriette Jacoby give a rare literary impression of early 19th century Jewish Berlin. Jettchen Gebert was published in 1906, and Henriette Jacoby in 1908. The novels describe the tragic fate of twenty-eight year old Jettchen who falls in love with the poet Kößling. However, since her family are wealthy Berlin cloth merchants, they want Jettchen to marry a relative, the shrewd businessman Julius Jacoby from Bentschen (Polish: Zbaszyn). Unable to express her opposition to the family plans in any other way, Jettchen runs away from the marriage ceremony on her wedding night and hides at her uncle Jason’s apartment. As Jason tries to negotiate an agreement for her return to the family, Julius eventually disappears, and Jettchen changes her mind and no longer wants to marry Kößling because he is too weak and undecided to stand up to her family. Her uncle Jason seems more attractive to her, but when she realizes that a romantic connection with him is out of the question she takes her own life. Jettchen’s story takes place in 1839/40 during the Biedermeier time in Germany. Hermann had researched the period meticulously by collecting Biedermeier art and furniture for his book Das Biedermeier im Spiegel seiner Zeit (1913). The term Biedermeier, based on the artist Gottlieb Biedermeier, was originally intended as a parody of the era showing depoliticized and petite bourgeois characters. Due to strict censorship rules official writing could only cover nonpolitical topics, such as historical fiction and life. Although Germanists preferred the term Vormärz or Junges Deutschland in the period following WWII to distinguish progressive writers from Biedermeier writing regarded as apolitical and opportunistic, recent years witnessed a new appreciation of Biedermeier culture. The Biedermeier movement was comprised of the educated urban middle class in German cities, first in Vienna and later in Berlin. Although the novel reconstructs Biedermeier life sixty years after its peak, Hermann’s Jettchen Gebert is still considered an excellent description of Berlin’s culture and its numerous parties and private gatherings. Many of the novel’s conversations take place while the three protagonists, Jettchen, Kößling and Jason are walking through the city. Jettchen as a typical Berlin native appears fully integrated into the medieval old city. With her harmonious balance between city and nature, between the past and the present Hermann used her as a model for an educated Jewish woman. The scene in Berliner Spaziergänge, taken from the beginning of the novel, introduces Jettchen walking down Königstraße. By setting Jettchen’s walk in the awakening spring, Hermann shows her as part of nature, but also as part of the city. After a description of the surroundings, the houses, the vehicles, and the atmosphere of a mid nineteen-century Berlin street, the text focuses on the girl as an example of Biedermeier culture. The description is impressionistic but also realistic since it highlights movement with onomatopoetic verbs for the elaborate dress Jettchen is wearing; rauschen (rustle), gleiten (glide), and zittern (tremble), which transcends the stiff Biedermeier realism a contemporary description would have provided. The section ends with a description of Jettchen's face and focuses on her eyes as a representation of tragic beauty, setting the tone for the story. It can be seen as an anticipation not only of the fate of the Jews in twentieth century Germany, but also of German national history and its self-destructive tendencies. In the course of the novels Jettchen explores the city from her home base as she roams further and further to Charlottenburg and finally to Potsdam. The poet Kößling, however, as a

thoroughly romantic character feels only at home in Berlin’s medieval city, which reminds him of his hometown Braunschweig. While Jettchen attains an ever-increasing grasp on reality, Kößling loses his and vacillates between his inner life and coming to terms with political reality of the Biedermeier period, which had stripped its citizens of their power. Although he had once wanted to write a book about the plight of Berlin’s Borsig workers, Kößling no longer cares about what is happening in the world. From our current perspective, Kößling represents all of what post-WWII readers despise in Biedermeier culture, its political withdrawal, its romantic introspection, and its opportunism. Later the novel centers more on Jason, Jettchen’s uncle and mentor who uses his niece like a Pygmalion. Jason is a frustrated Jewish intellectual. He had been wounded while fighting on the side of German unification in the anti-Napoleon freedom wars (Freiheitskriege). In the following years Jason had been active in liberal politics only to discover that the time for legal equality for Jews in Prussia was over in the conservative atmosphere. Jason’s survival strategy became his attempt to find a balance between his political idealism and a new realism. To leave a legacy he wants to use his niece as a model for educating the following generation of female Jews to defend their status. Jason’s own lifestyle as one of Berlin’s first flaneurs shows a modern intellectual intent on exploring the city on foot, who watches the expansion of Prussia’s capital into a great European city with keen interest which makes him the forerunner of contemporary Berliners who explore the rapid development of their city.

WILHELM RAABE, DIE CHRONIK DER SPERLINGSGASSE (1856) The fictitious author and narrator of Die Chronik der Sperlingsgasse is old Johannes Wacholder who tells the story of his neighborhood of Berlin’s Sperlingsgasse as the story of his own life. The scene in Berliner Spaziergänge reveals a complex story, which can only be partially summarized here: Wacholder looks back to a love story in his youth, his love to Mary, who also loved his friend Franz. Franz finally won Marie’s affection, and they had a daughter, Elise. After both, Marie and Franz, found an early death Johannes became Elise’s guardian. More secrets are revealed about Franz’s family, the rape of his mother by Count Seeburg and the subsequent birth of Franz as the count’s illegitimate son. Die Chronik der Sperlingsgasse reads like a trashy melodramatic novel with its complex narrative, which was common for nineteenth century writing. The novel operates on two levels, a personal and a historical, as Raabe wanted to connect German national history with personal history. The history of the family becomes the history of the entire country, with the notion that the sins of the fathers should not be repeated by their children. Raabe’s text recalls the old Berlin, its Spreegasse on Fischer Island where Raabe himself had lived. Although this setting might be perceived as an idyllic small-town fantasy, Raabe shows the dark side of urban romanticism in its overcrowded cities: „It is full of people and so noisy that it could drive those with a nervous headache to madness and to the madhouse.“ Raabe does not only introduce the many different people in the district, but also the hidden rooms and apartments where they live, along with their unnerving chatter, which is all but drowned out by “the hurdy-gurdy melody.” The novel recognizes the voice of God in this indistinct sound which simulates the „activities of the human world“. With this metaphor Raabe uses a popular 19th motive epitomized by Adalbert Stifter who saw God in small things. The narrator’s claim in Sperlingsgasse that a true writer can get his inspiration to record the universe of people and their stories only in an attic room with its complex synthaesia of sounds is Raabe’s creed as his basis for writing – he mentions Oliver Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Jean Paul as models who took advantage of a similarly condensed universe in an attic room. The narrator finds the image for his narrative style in an air bubble in a windowpane of his room. The air bubble becomes his eye on the world that condenses and reduces everything to microscopic size. As the air bubble condenses the outside image, Raabe condenses a multitude of stories and events into a coherent narrative - Raabe’s way of interpreting life, which eliminates the need to explore the outside world. If the author remains patient, the world eventually comes to the writer, which became the Biedermeier motto. As Raabe’s book shows, Biedermeier culture emphasized home and family life and promoted artistic endeavors such as music and reading. Today’s Sperlingsgasse is a small street just south of the former Palast der Republik on Fisher Island, the Cölln part of Berlin. It does not resemble the street where Raabe lived in 1854, when it was called Spreegasse. In order to get a sense of Raabe’s period we should cross the river and go to Berlin’s Nikolaiviertel which, although ridiculed by many Berliners for the GDR’s attempt to recreate history, can give a sense of the medieval architecture through its make-belief village. We have to accept the fact that old Berlin is gone, the Berlin prior to the neoclassical period. Although Germany’s best-known 19th century painter Carl Spitzweg did not paint in Berlin, his quaint pictures are excellent illustrations of Biedermeier life, which celebrated simple pleasures. The painting “The Poor Poet” is considered Spitzweg’s masterpiece. It is full of realistic looking detail, where each element carries a symbolic meaning: the umbrella indicates a leaking roof

which the absorbed poet does not notice; the hat on the stovepipe and the open stove door along with the snow on the roofs outside, or the bed to which the cold poet had to retreat indicates his disregard for the reality of life. The poet lives in an intellectual and spiritual sphere and is absorbed in reading and writing poetry. The painting stresses the complete withdrawal from reality and life and includes an ironic criticism. This humorous depiction of the ivory-tower poet explains the iconic status of the painting.

THEODOR FONTANE, IRRUNGEN, WIRRUNGEN (1888) Fontane’s novel describes social change that took place in Berlin when Berlin and Prussia were transformed from an agriculture base to an industrial society. The novel, a third person narrative, focuses on the love story of Lene Nimptsch, the niece of a gardener, and Botho von Rienäcker, an aristocratic heir to an impoverished estate. Eventually Botho is forced to end the relationship with Lene in order to save the family estate. Irrungen, Wirrungen presents a classic nineteenth century story in which property and wealth dominate life and prevent a truly romantic affair. Lene lives with her guardians in a small house near the Zoological Garden west of the city where Botho owns an apartment in the nearby Tiergarten district. The first part of the novel culminates in Botho’s and Lene’s weekend trip to a country place on the Spree river, Hankels Ablage, where they spend the night. When Botho's friends show up the following day and make fun of them, both realize that society will never accept their relationship. After a discussion with his uncle about his affair, Botho receives a letter from his mother in which she describes the precarious financial situation of the family and suggests that a marriage with his cousin Käthe von Sellenthin would remedy their problem. When Botho tells Lene about his quandary, Lene sympathizes with him and, although or because she loves him, she is ready to leave him. Botho is soon disappointed by the superficiality of his new wife and settles into a life of disenchantment. Lene marries an industrial manager twice her age, Gideon Franke, but she can never forget her first love. When she accidentally runs into Botho and Käthe on Lützowstraße in the Tiergarten district, she turns away so Botho does not recognize her. After Käthe and Botho pass, Lene collapses and is assisted by a child to whom she explains that life is a continuous and sorrowful journey, and she wants “to be able to cry”. Botho’s reaction to their separation is shown in his decision to burn Lene's letters. When Käthe later reads Lene’s marriage announcement and comments on Gideon’s name Botho simply states: “Gideon is better than Botho,” the final words of the book. The scene in Berliner Spaziergänge shows a conversation Botho has with his uncle at his club, where he is reminded that he needs to marry his cousin. On his stroll to the club through the Brandenburg Gate and Unter den Linden, Botho looks at an art store displaying pictures by Andreas and Oswald Achenbach. Botho von Rienäcker owns Achenbach paintings and he realizes that he prefers Oswald’s pictures over those of his brother Andreas because they represent the vitality of Italy better than the neo-classical paintings of his older brother. Botho is startled at this discovery because it could be interpreted as heresy against the traditional neoclassical style. The scene continues with Botho running into his army friend Wedell. He invites Wedell to come along to the club where is to meet his uncle, probably to have an ally against his uncle’s criticism. The scene explores further the display of affection Botho had shown for Lene which was met by aggressive teasing by his army friends at Hankel’s Ablage. Botho is reminded of his class position by the picture and Berlin’s surrounding architecture that represent this society and show him how deeply he is rooted in Prussian society.

The novel is one of resignation and of protest against the rigid class order. Neither Lene nor Botho are ready to protest the established order, as Botho realizes he would jeopardize not only his family but also his own position in society by marrying Lene, and that all he could do would be to go to the United States and become a wood cutter, as he ironically states. He would lose everything. Lene complies, out of a Christian sense of suffering and also because she loves Botho and knows that he would be better served by maintaining the current social order. This choice is irritating to our modern sensibility since it solidifies the status quo; however the story also provides a promise that social conditions might change someday. By choosing symbolic places for Lene’s and Botho’s encounters, Fontane can equate abstract intention with architecture. The “official” art form of the Prussian state was neo-classicism since Prussia’s state culture was Botho’s world. His vain attempt to connect with a member of the new middle class may have been a half-hearted escape. But social reality proved too established and, as the insistence of his uncle demonstrated, Prussia’s reactionary culture once again dominated. On a larger scale this novel can be seen as a symbol for Prussia’s and Germany’s inability to change. Irrungen, Wirrungen is a novel about the changing of Berlin and how these changes affect the city. Over and over, Fontane connects his narrative to emerging places in the city, first Lene’s home in Charlottenburg, a new suburb for the middle class, gardeners and craftsmen that a few decades later would dominate the city. Botho’s family has an estate in the country, in Brandenburg-Prussia, but when in Berlin he dines at a club at Unter den Linden. In order to avoid the limitations of the city Botho and Lene break away a few times and take trips to the country, once to Tempelhof with Lene’s family and once to Hankel’s Ablage on the banks of the Spree which could be reached via the new railroad and represents the new interest of the middles classes in weekend excursions. In its kaleidoscopic mix of historic (Unter den Linden) and newly emerging locales (Hankel’s Ablage) the novel captures a Berlin caught between immobility and a new beginning. HANS FALLADA, DAMALS BEI UNS DAHEIM (1941) Although it contains some fictional parts Hans Fallada’s childhood memoirs Damals bei uns daheim is an honest attempt to describe the emerging writer as a young man. Here Fallada described his family, especially his father Wilhelm Ditzen as a sensitive man and as a connoisseur of music and literature. Fallada shows how Ditzen suffered greatly when he had to sign death sentences in his job as royal judge (Reichsgerichtsrat). Fallada portrays himself as an unconventional teenager who was more interested in reading, and who was viewed with suspicion by his teachers. The excerpt from Fallada’s memoirs is taken from the chapter entitled “Prügel” (beating) in which Fallada describes his excursions into the forbidden parts of Berlin’s east. Since Fallada’s family lived in Luitpoldstraße in Berlin’s western Schöneberg district, the excursion begins in Berlin’s center near the Royal Palace. The Schloss still marks the border between east and west Berlin as the ongoing debate over the use of the space formally occupied by the Palace of the Republic demonstrates: Does it belong to the west of the east? Who will have the power to permanently change its character and control the interpretation of history? For Fallada the

exciting underworld of the city started behind the palace where the poorer half of the population lived. Although completely forbidden by the parents, this part of Berlin contained plenty of excitement for the adolescent. The Scheunenviertel of Berlin’s east had never appeared in literature before as it was completely off limits for most people including middle class teenage boys. For the young Fallada an excursion into the unknown was his first glimpse of the “other” Berlin, the Berlin of poverty and ethnic minorities. With his famous 1927 novel Emil und die Detektive Erich Kästner explored similarly exciting and crime-infested parts of the city. The term Scheunenviertel (Barn District) derives from the twenty-seven barns that were erected outside the city wall in 1672 in order to store supplies for the cattle market at the Alexanderplatz. After the city walls were removed and Berlin expanded into the eastern and northeastern directions, all Jews without property were ordered to move there, thereby turning it into Berlin’s Jewish Ghetto. Mostly immigrants from Eastern Europe lived in the Scheunenviertel’s cramped quarters, always in fear of frequent police raids. With industrialization more and more immigrants were squeezed into the Scheunenviertel’s already cramped buildings, and in 1906 the city administration decided to completely rebuild the entire area around the present Rosa Luxemburg Platz. As one of the very few famous Weimar writers Fallada stayed in Germany after the Nazis took over although he knew that as a social critic in books such as Kleiner Mann, was nun? (about the depression) and Bauern, Bonzen, Bomben (Farmers, party officials and bombs) about the rise of radical politics in Weimar Germany, he could predict would have major problems in Nazi Germany. To avoid an outright ban of his writing Fallada decided to write mostly entertainment novels, which included the publication of his memoirs. Fallada wrote Damals bei uns Daheim in 1943. In his comments on crime in the Jewish quarter his middle class position becomes evident in comparison with Martin Beradt’s book which also deals with the Jewish quarter. Beradt, who was Jewish, understands the spirituality of Eastern European Jews and also shows their extreme poverty coupled with the anxiety of the police who were either intent on shutting down buildings or expelling people in order to “sanitize” the quarter. Compared with Beradt’s and Alfred Döblin’s book Berlin Alexanderplatz, Fallada’s report gives insight into middle class prejudice and anxiety towards Jews. Thus Fallada’s book provides a glimpse into the mindset of the German middle class that would support Hitler’s ideology.

QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY 1. Explore the map of 19th century Berlin. What are some of the prominent public buildings? Which ones are mentioned in the literary texts by Georg Hermann and Theodor Fontane? Trace Jettchen’s and Botho’s walk on the map. Which areas in Berlin do they cover? 2. Take a close look at the boulevard Unter den Linden on the map.

Which of the

buildings are not discussed in the introductory chapter? Find out more about the history of each building by using the Internet, especially wikipedia. 3. Berlin’s public transportation system was added after Hermann’s, Fontane’s and Raabe’s novels were written. What are some of the more prominent stations on the train lines? Find out where in Germany those trains originated. For example, Anhalter Bahnhof was the station for trains arriving from the south of Germany, Italy and France, as the name “Anhalt” refers Saxony-Anhalt, a district southwest of Berlin. 4. Compare Berlin’s development to that of other major European and American cities, e.g. London, Vienna, Paris or New York. Where does their development differ and where are the similarities? 5. Find references to Biedermeier culture in Jettchen Gebert. Look up Biedermeier and find examples of Biedermeier in daily life. What parts did Biedermeier culture focus on? Why would Hermann have chosen a Biedermeier setting for his novel? 6. Hermann’s books have been called premonitions of the holocaust. Do you see signs of the Jewish tragedy in the Jettchen Gebert excerpt? 7. Biedermeier culture had created an atmosphere where family life was important and political inquiry, traveling or exploring the world was frowned upon, as the picture The Poor Poet shows. Can you think of other examples where people displayed those attitudes? 8. The general attitude of Fontane’s novel is one of resignation to the prevalent class structure. There are also examples in American literature such as Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. How would contemporary people react to those restrictions? 9. Fallada and his friend are straying from the prescribed course by entering the forbidden Jewish quarter of Berlin. Can you think of examples in your own life where you violated a parental rule? Did you benefit from this violation or do you feel your parents’ restriction was justified? 10. Do you see Fallada’s description of Jews as anti-Semitic, considering that his text was written in the middle of WWII, which was the most anti-Semitic period in German history.