Goodbye to Berlin

Spoiler Alert – this review reveals the plot of the book

Why Did Isherwood Write Goodbye to Berlin?

In the author’s introduction we learn that it is a fictional account but that one of the characters is called Christopher Isherwood, who is an author who has written a book with the same name as one of the books that Isherwood had written. Right. So that was quite an interesting start before I’d even turned a page! Quite apart from anything else it made the author sound rather self important.

The style of the book reminded me of a cartoon in Punch which I think must have dated from the thirties. A young dandy is sitting in a drawing room with a cigarette in one hand and with his other is airily dismissing the scowls of his worried fiancé and angry mother in law to be. ‘One doesn’t write about anything in particular nowadays, one just writes’ he explains.

Goodbye to Berlin feels a lot like a rather self-indulgent project where the author is very concerned with the writing itself. We get a dollop of this on the first page where we get the most famous line from the book.

 “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.”

All very thirties where everything was modern.

Goodbye to Berlin’s Original Project

I think from how the opening of the book is written, that the original project was reportage. It was supposed to be a camera-like portrait of Berlin low life and middle classes, with colourful characters like prostitutes, cabaret performers, and monied but marginalised homosexuals all contrasting with the respectable bourgoisie. 

Print Was Primary in the Thirties

Print was the primary medium of communication in the 1920s and with a wider literate population than ever before books were the mass media and authors were celebrities who were taken very seriously. This included by themselves in some cases. Talking films were soon to overtake them. The first one, the Jazz Singer, had already been made. But at the time of writing this book Isherwood was still justified in thinking of writing a book as a very serious undertaking.

Photography was newish, but was being used to enhance print rather than overthrow it. It was not exactly cutting edge in the thirties but it was still a modern technology. 

One theme of the literary world of the era was accurately portraying the world in print. Examples would be Grapes of Wrath, Down and Out in Paris and London

How Nazis Derailed The Plot

So the project seems to have been for Isherwood to come to Berlin, get to know the city and its occupants and to write about them. He also admitted in later interviews that he wanted to get to know the young men particularly well. I think the aim was basically a series of sketches of interesting characters where the stories would illustrate what they were like. And the writing, and his role as the author, was to support this goal.

If I’m right, the bit at the beginning of the book about him being a camera was the premise of the book and the first four chapters fit the mould.

This aim was derailed by the Nazis who take over more and more of the book, eventually wiping out characters and forcing Isherwood out of Berlin altogether.

Christopher Isherwood 

The main character of Goodbye to Berlin is Christopher Isherwood who seems to be drifting through life without any particular aim but nonetheless is on a journey. His current leg of the journey finds him in lodgings in Berlin in a colourful part of town. His landlady has seen better days and now eaks out a living living off the rents while having to do all the work herself. Her former wealth had dissappeared in the inflation, which was recent enough when the book was published to not require any explanation. But it must have been a common enough story – middle class people whose wealth was primarily in the form of cash rather than property were the big losers when Germany’s economy succumbed to hyperinflation in 1923.

The rest of the chapter sets up the scene for the novel. The main character who happens to have the the same name as the author is making a living by teaching, which brings him into contact with a well-off German family. They are not as well-off as well-off people usually are. The inflation and general economic malaise have taken their toll. But they are somewhat blasé about the Nazis who are being violent in town, but seem to only register as a threat to their car’s body work.

Isherwood is clearly at home with the well-to-do but is enjoying slumming it in the company of bartenders and prostitutes. His landlady is Bavarian with an accent to match, but conforms to the stereotype of landladies in every age and country in that she takes way too much interest in the affairs of her lodgers.

The Troika Club

We also get to see a bit of Berlin nightlife in the shape of the Troika Club, a seedy down at heel music hall where the paying customers are in short supply. I haven’t seen the fim of Caberet, but I have seen the clips. But it feels to be a lot less glamorous in the book than it does in the film. I can also see that Isherwood isn’t going to be playing a big part in the action. We’ve already had the most famous line in the book on page one. I am a camera – he is going to be taking some pictures for us. It looks like they are going to be interesting.

Sally Bowles

Sally Bowles is probably better known than the book itself. She is 19 years old, performer, bohemian with a string of lovers of both genders, living on an allowance from wealthy parents. She is introduced to Isherwood  by Fritz, who seems to be involved in nightlife without having any particular role and there is no obvious explanation for his friendship with Isherwood.

Obviously a camera can’t get involved in a romantic entanglement so Isherwood’s relationship with her is strictly platonic. But very close. She has a fling with Klaus, a pianist, who goes to England and meets another girl – an aristocrat. Period point – aristocrats seem to rank above celebrities

The Christopher Isherwood in the novel is going to write novels. In fact he is working on one.

Sally is not sure if she is pregnant with Klaus’s child- we are prior to reliable birth control.

Before this pans out we meet a drunk millionaire called Chris who promises to take them around the world.

At this point it isn’t clear whether the book is going to have a plot, or if we are simply going to be introduced to a suite of interesting characters. Sally Bowles has the chapter named after her and is definitely an interesting person. She is 19 years old, a performer, a bohemian with a string of lovers and is living on an allowance from wealthy parents meaning she is free to behave as she pleases. It also means the author is free to allow her to do things that a real 19 year old would not be able to do.

But having let the reader get to know the millionaire he leaves without warning. Will he turn up again? No he doesn’t..

Next Sally falls pregnant and has to have an abortion. I thought this was dealt with with great sensitivity – she’s too addicted to her single lifestyle to have the baby but she obviously regrets it as well.

On The Baltic

Chris decides to debunk to the Baltic for a few months to get some writing done. When he gets back we have an actual historic event. Darmstädter und Nationalbank fails – I looked it up on Wikipedia and it happened in 1931. Up until now although we have definitely been in Berlin we have had a sort of timeless atmosphere.

Otto Nowak is a working class teenager. He seems to either be bisexual or just prepared to sleep with Christopher’s friend Peter Wilkinson as a way of earning some cash. He also picks up girls at a dance. He ends up falling out with Peter rather spectacularly. Both he and Isherwood head back to Berlin.

Life with the Nowaks

Working class life in Berlin is the theme of this chapter. Isherwood lodges with the family of his former friends former lover. The big event is that the mother of the family falls ill and has to go to the hospital. It isn’t clear how this healthcare is funded. Google reveals that this was a social programme so even poverty stricken people like Frau Nowak got treatment. Isherwood doesn’t deem this fact worthy of note.

The Landauers

The 1930s aren’t that long ago. There are a handful of people still alive who can remember them. And there are a lot of things that seem very modern about the period. But every now and again you get a reminder that the past is a place where they do things differently. An example of this is that a well to do Englishman like Isherwood on moving to Berlin had introductions in place to well to do types in Germany. This gets us into the life of a wealthy Jewish family called the Landauers

Homosexuality

It is pretty obvious that Christopher and Peter are homosexuals. But this is never stated explicitly. I have a feeling that if I had read it in the seventies it might well have escaped my notice. There’s also the possibility that modern readers would consider the relationship with Otto as one where a vulnerable young man was groomed. Otto’s character in the book is pretty assertive – but he clearly is at a disadvantage given that he was broke and Peter had plenty of money. Is this a problem? If it is, it isn’t one that crosses the author’s mind.

Berlin Diary 1932-3

The Nazis have been growing in significance throughout the book. Now they take over the narrative in much the way they took over Germany. We get to hear about explicitly political events. On a day of an organised Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses the writer defiantly buys a ginger grinder.

The title was probably the last bit that was written. And it must have been completed before the war broke out. I imagine at the time it probably felt overtaken by events. But in some ways this is what makes this book so interesting. The Nazis are seen as a threat. But somehow not really as big as a threat as we have now come to realise that they were. There might be a warning to us in there.

Cabaret and I am A Camera

Nothing about reading this book suggested to me that it would make a good play. Nonetheless, that is just what happened. A Broadway production of a play called I Am A Camera was staged in 1951. This was turned into a film in 1955. I only know about these thanks to Wikipedia. The next move was to turn it into a Broadway musical, which went on to be a film under the name Cabarat. Being around in the seventies, I was very aware of this. It was a huge hit and established Liza Minnelli as a star. I haven’t seen the film, but several of the numbers from it are very well known. They look a lot more glamorous than the book would suggest.

Is Goodbye To Berlin Any Good As History?

It is tempting to imagine that this account of Berlin gives us a good picture of what it was like to live in Berlin during the rise of the Nazis. This isn’t the view of the author. In an interview he was incredulous that his portrait of a Berlin given over to hedonism, hustling and homosexuality was in any way representative of the city as a whole. He told a story of a German writer having a book on pre-war Berlin rejected because it didn’t ‘capture the feel’. Isherwood’s vision has become the standard one. Isherwood thought this was as absurd as pre-war London being summed up by a single short book by somebody from South Africa or Los Angeles. A moment’s thought is all it takes to agree with him.

It really is quite amazing how this book has influenced our idea of pre-Nazi Berlin. The population of Berlin then would have been around 4 million. The patch Isherwood was living in might well have been populated by prostitutes, petty thieves, homosexual gigillos and hopeful musical performers. But all big cities have those types of people. It is very unlikely that Berlin was any more ‘decadent’ than any other.

But while I think it might not be a good guide to getting the overall political or even sociological situation in Berlin, there is something to be said about a first hand account of what it was like to live through that period in history, especially one written so shortly after the events it is describing. For instance, it is worth remembering that nobody foresaw just how violent and brutal the coming years were to be. That’s an easy mistake to make.