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Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf (Continuum Impacts)

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Cyberfriendships are one of the bizarre artifacts of contemporaneity, but without the prodding of one of my "amazon friends", I might never have gotten around to reading Berlin Alexanderplatz, one of the beacon masterworks of 20th C literature. Alfred Döblin is one of several German and Austrian writers who have not captured the attention of English-language readers as much as they deserve. Others include Robert Walser, Joseph Roth, Arno Schmidt, and Siegfried Lenz. Döblin, born in 1878, was a physician who lived and practiced medicine in the working-class district around Alexanderplatz (Alexander Plaza) in Berlin for more than twenty years, ending with his flight from Hitlerism in 1933. In the USA, he worked for MGM, but after the war he returned to Europe. Uncomfortable with the social currents in Germany, eventually he spent the last years of his life in France. After some decades of neglect, his work has now become iconic in Germany, his popularity boosted by the massive 15-hour film rendition of Berlin Alexanderplatz by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Berlin Alexanderplatz is usually described as a "stream of consciousness" novel, the first to reveal the influence of James Joyce's 'Ulysses' in the German language. It was published in 1929, just a year before the American John Dos Passos published the first volume of his trilogy 'USA', also considered a seminal work of experimental fiction. If B-A is a "stream of consciousness" novel, however, it behoves us to ask whose consciousness is streaming. Unlike many such novels, B-A doesn't precisely trepan the mind of its principal character, Franz Biberkopf, to expose his flow of thoughts. Quite the opposite! This is a novel with an 'omniscient narrator' - a self-aware Schöpfer - and the consciousness streaming through its pages is the writer's own. And what a mighty stream it is! a Humboldt Current of history, mythology, religious iconology, front page news, gossip, weather reports, street-corner ranting and politics from right and left, the eternal and the ephemeral of German society all spewing over the life of the hapless "Everyman" Biberkopf. It is not, by the way, a jolly romp through the land of Bach and Goethe. It's a dark, almost revolting portrayal of the Lumpenproletariat - the under-class - of Germany in the years between the first act and the second act of the one and only Great War.

Seen from an older literary perspective, B-A is a "Totentanz" -- a Dance of Death -- or a Ship of Fools novel, a montage of the follies of mankind in which the fate of Everyman Biberkopf is analogous to the fate of Germany. Much of the 'stream of consciousness', in fact, dances to the tunes of old German nursery lullabies, army marching songs, and Lutheran hymns. This may be an obstacle for English readers, this rhythmic incorporation of song lyrics that have immediate allusive resonance for German readers but might not even be recognizable as such to Anglophones. For me, the swirling musicality of Döblin's prose was a major centripetal force, focusing my attention on the 'tale' of Biberkopf amid all the excursions and diversions of Döblin's consciousness, one moment recounting the tribulations of Job, another the trials of Odysseus among the Sirens, next a court transcript of an embezzlement, and then a drunken brawl between pimps. Without such a musical structure, A-P might have been a laborious book to read; as it is, I've found it as thrilling as wandering through an exotic, slightly dangerous, luridly sensuous carnival of life.

If you're looking for simple dialogue, simple characters, and a simple, enjoyable story, then the Hardy Boys should be right up your alley. If you want to be challenged by one of the great novels of the 20th century - expressionism at its most compelling - then settle in with Doblin. I'm a little tired of the carp "stream of consciousness" when it's nothing of the kind. The diversions into slaughterhouse techniques, newspaper ads, etc. all combine to create a visceral rendering of Berlin of the 1920's. That's the point. It's meant to jar, to attack, to disorient. That's it's genius. If you think that might bore you (or be beyond you) don't read it. You won't get it. It's not meant to be an assigment. It's meant to be an experience. If you're up to it, dive in. It'll change the way you read from then on.

This is the best German novel; mordant, dark, hilarious, packed with the fascinations of Modernism and modern urban life... Joycean literary technique applied by a historical realist to the social life in one of the world's great cities at a critical turning point in its history, it's as close as the German novel can get to Rabelais, Brecht, Joyce and Dickens at the same time. Here's to Franz Biberkopf!

What a miracle of condensation Doeblin achieved when he packed Fassbinder's 16 hour TV movie into a mere 400 action filled book pages!

This grandiose novel (one of my personal top favorites), published in 1929, has been called Germany's first big city novel. Its main protagonist is Berlin. Germany lacks a dominating capital like Paris or London, so no Balzac or Dickens equivalent found a subject there in the 19th century. Berlin's greatest writer of the late 19th, Theodor Fontane, never drops the provincial tone and outlook. (He was likeable anyway, or maybe because of it.)

Berlin's career started only, really, when Bismarck founded the 2nd Reich. From the early 1870s to the 1920s, this former village in the sandy flatlands of the Mark Brandenburg became one of the most exciting places in Europe, a center for innovative arts and a hotbed of political trouble. If you are used to think in terms of painters or painting styles when imagining a novel or story or poem, then look at the expressionists of the time: Erwin Schiele, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, George Grosz... If you know their work, you have a fairly good idea of Berlin Alexanderplatz! Just put them in words.

One might also call Doeblin's style expressionist; at least, when he produces his own text and doesn't take what he finds in the newspapers or the tram schedule or an advertisement, weather report, company profile, song text... Anyway, Doeblin actively associated himself with expressionism as a literary movement.
The novel has aspects of a collage, integrating all sorts of Berlinish details.
All this is wrapped around the story of our anti-hero: Franz Biberkopf, ie Beaverhead. (Doesn't that make you think of a popular cartoon series?).

Franz is a Lumpenprolet, a petty criminal, sometimes in a job, often unemployed; a mover between worlds. He likes to think of himself as a peaceful man, but tends to explode in violence. Domestic violence of the worst kind has brought him a jail term. After his release he has the best intentions to remain out of prison.
He has been a soldier in WW1, and he was involved in the failed revolution in 1918/19. Now he is disillusioned with his past and joins the right wing fringe for a while, without proper convictions. He is probably typical for many lost souls who moved between the political extremes. The situation at the time was quite close to a civil war, with street fights between Nazis and communists, and many assassinations.

But the novel is not primarily a political one, it is set in the half-world and the underworld of Berlin's shady end 1920s. Doeblin's understanding of the underlying motivation of the wanderers between the worlds is uncanny. The man was a medical doctor specializing on mental disorders. I think that shows. It would make sense to call the novel a murder book.

While the artistic method was obviously a dead-end (nobody writes things like this any more), this one example is pulsating with life. The novel has been compared to Ulysses; I don't see that much similarity. Doeblin for sure does not intend any allegorical parallels, despite occasional references to Greek and Old Testament mythology. If there is a mythological person that would fit as reference to Biberkopf, it is Job. There is no quarreling with God though.
It has been compared to Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer or USA. I need to check on that, can't remember them clearly enough. I tend to think that this is also not a convincing comparison.

One of the many song texts that are used in the book is the grim reaper song: Es ist ein Schnitter, der heisst Tod...
Confession: I have not read the translation. I hope it is good. It can not have been an easy job, with all the slang and dialect and all the obscure references.

Berlin Alexanderplatz is in a sense Alfred Doblins combination of Dostoeovesky and James Joyce. It is the heavy physcological tale of franz biberkopf and his diffcult sometimes surreal life in alexanderplatz. Biberkopf is caught and in ever complex web of trying to leave behind all his old afflictions to lead a better life but as the more he tries to leave his former self the more he trips and reverts back to them. Doblin combines and increable amount of physcological insight similar to Thomas mann and dostoevesky to create a deep somtimes obtuse and complex portrait of the human condition ina diffcult always chaging situations. Doblin skillfully use the interoi monologues in tandom whit his physcological insight to creat a full portrait of both biberkopfs inner and outter world. Doblin has a gritty , sometimes convoluted writting style which compliments his dark tale perfectly. also worked into his tale a number of diverse and complex charater who doblin uses to furhter probe biberkopf dark journey into his mind and soul .Doblins nove is as exhausting becaues of the dpeth and complexity of it themes but rewrards readers who are willing to endure biberkopfs trip and who are willing to engage the way Doblin is will to take of there. A powerful portrait of the human conditon as it is slowly being destoryed is presented in Doblins epic.

I love Berlin - there is something special about the place - the "Berliner Luft" as the locals call it. _Berlin Alexanderplatz_ captures this, although it also shows the seedier, grittier part of the city - the dirty parts that tourists rarely see. Set in the years between the world wars, it is the story of Franz Biberkopf, a common working man just released from prison and struggling to get his life together. Written in a "stream of consciousness" style, it is challenging, not the least because it is not only Franz Biberkopf's consciousness we read, but also that of other characters who see and interact with Biberkopf, with the addtion of all sorts of random ideas and tangents thrown in. (An entire section, for example, is dedicated to a slaughterhouse in Pankow.) It is a bit overwhleming in this respect, and I strugged with this. (I'm not a fan of Joyce.)

However, Doeblin's writing (and Eugene Jolas' translation) is magnificent. The city's personality is honestly captured in the lives of the residents as shown by Doeblin - at once beautiful, terrible, hard and generous. I can only assume he has also accurately captured the "zeitgeist" of the inter-war years as the older generation of veterans struggle to keep body and soul together and find an ideology to explain what has happened to them, while a younger generation seeks to push them over and make its own way. In the midst of this "sturm und drang" is Biberkopf, a German "everyman" whose travails and misfourtunes seem all the more tragic, as he is an unwitting victim to fate and the larger forces at work in that place at that time. In spite of this, Biberkopf prevails - a wonderful statement about the human spirit.

I suspect _Berlin Alexanderplatz_ is not to everyone's taste. Knowing the city, I was able to mentally navigate the allees, U-bahn stations and places referred to; my deep fondness for the place and Berliners also helped me negotiate the challenging prose and shifting (almost non-sensical) perspectives. Without this to fortify me, I would not be so forgiving. The writing itself is beautiful, and the story - getting past the Joyce-ian style - is a marvelous commentary on humanity and our ability to harm, love and forgive. Recommended.

Hace algún tiempo que leí la novela y recuerdo que fue un placer hacerlo. No es una obra excesivamente fácil y hay que acercarse a ella con atención y sin prisas. Pero es un esfuerzo que verdaderamente compensa.

Using the story of Franz Biberkopf as a vehicle, Döblin creates a panorama, at the same time wide and microscopic, of Berlin during the bellic interlude (1927-1928). It begins with Biberkopf leaving Tegel prison, where he has done four years for his girlfriend's murder. He has the firm purpose of leading an honest life, and for a while he manages to do it, as a newspaper seller and performing other menial jobs. But it seems Fate is determined to lead him astray from the good path... Friends at the tavern don't help much, and despite Biberkopf's resistance, he gets involved with a guy named Reinhold, who is a wolf in a sheep's disguise. And so begin his new misfortunes.

I won't reveal the rest of the plot, even though this is not a plot-driven story, not even a character-driven one, but, if any, a nightmare-driven one. The city and the times are the central characters. Now that Berlin is such a rich, beautiful city, certainly with the usual urban problems but up there with the most powerful and livable mega-cities, and now that Germany is a peaceful nation, developed and prosperous, it is hard to relate it to this dark, not only poor but lumpenized, violent city, destroyed by one war and soon to be even more destroyed by its second part. A city with rampant inflation, unemployment, disenchantment, and despair.

The novel is told via a superimposition, on a "conventional" storytelling by an omniscient narrator, of stream of consciousness, biblical interpretations, pieces of news, songs and poems, and other resources which manage to make the city the true protagonist: streets, parks, taverns, warehouses, theaters, etc., as a mosaic alive and necessarily sordid, given the times. Certainly depressing and chaotic, it is a true masterpiece of the horrors of the XXth Century.

This 635-page German novel, written by Alfred Doblin and published in 1929, is set in an area of Berlin that no longer exists. In the 1920s, though, it was the hub of the city. The novel is the story of that time and place as well as the story of Franz Biberkopf, who has just been released from prison after serving four years for the murder of his girlfriend. He then becomes a street vendor but eventually turns to crime and has one misfortune after another. This narrative is surrounded by a lot of words spilling out of the author's mind including long surreal stream of conscious thoughts, references to Greek mythology and the bible, constant weather reports, and dozens of short side stories. The result is like an abstract painting, one that is not only confusing, but depressing.

The characters struggle, feel pain, and make horrible blunders in choices they make. Women are treated terribly but are just too stupid to care about. Franz actually loses his arm when run over by a car and later is confined to a mental institution, but I never could relate to him, his world, or his humanity. The author was a physician and a psychologist and the influence of these fields of study definitely permeate the book, which searches to understand the human condition and cruelty of the world. Considering when it was written, and the mood in Germany at the time, it is a foreshadowing of the future.

This book is considered a masterpiece. But to me it was just the unedited outpourings of the author's slightly warped mind. And yet, as I kept reading, I gradually got into its rhythms and appreciated some of its complexities. It brought me to a world I didn't care about, and a way of thinking that is overbearing and pretentious. I did gain a few insights though and I'm glad I got a glimpse of that world. But in spite of its few redeeming qualities, there is no way I can recommend it.

Doblin describes pre-Nazi Germany through the life of Franz Biberkopf in such a fashion that even the lax historian can get a feel for what it was like. The reader is constantly bombarded with highly symbolic analogies that quite clearly paint a portrait of rough standards of living amongst the proletariat and a highly controlling, highly nervous government. The life of Franz Biberkopf, as mentioned before, is the foundation of the story. Franz is released from prison, after having served a four year sentence for the murder of his girlfriend, only to suffer shell shock at being immediately subjected to the outside world. He soon decides to be straight and live the life of a working man. He starts on his journey which has its impediments: he is consumed by sexual desire and manipulates the women in his life, he goes into hiding at times, he has fits of jealous rage in unwarranted scenarios, and he is a member of the National Socialists. He meets many people along the way - "Fat" Lina who is his lover for a period, betraying Reinhold, loyal Eva, a friend who helps Franz, and Mieze, Franz's love - who help to change him into Franz Karl Biberkopf, a new Franz who is conscious of his country and his life. Franz's epiphany doesn't come without a price, however; he will feel the pain of loss every step of the way. Mixing Franz's episodic life story with narrations closely resembling radio news broadcasts ingeniously and gracefully lifts the veil of time and politics to give present day readers a glimpse of pre-Nazi Berlin. In Book Four the narrator intricately describes the slaughtering of pigs. Through deception, the pigs are led to the slaughter house and made to suffer as their deceptors watch trying to justify their actions. Using symbolism Doblin illustrates a disillusioned people searching so hard for stability they settle for oppression. These analogous illustrations are speckled throughout the novel. Through irony and symbolism Doblin gives the reader a unique view of pre-Nazi Germany. This was a confusing time when Germany was still wounded from World War I and it left them open to tyranny. This novel serves to place the reader in pre-Nazi Germany to experience the manipulation and politics of the working class that existed at that time.