The Berlin Novels of Alfred Doblin: Wadzek's Battle with the Steam Turbine, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Men without Mercy and November, 1918

244 Pages·1988·0.92 MB·English

by  David B. Dollenmayer

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The Berlin Novels of Alfred Döblin
Wadzek's Battle with the Steam Turbine, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Men without Mercy, and November 1918
David B. Dollenmayer

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Page iv
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 1988 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dollenmayer, David B.
The Berlin novels of Alfred Döblin.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Döblin, Alfred, 18781957Criticism and
interpretation. I. Title.
PT2607.035Z66 1988 833'.912 87-25527
ISBN 0-520-06000-8 (alk. paper)
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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For Linda

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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
1. The City Theme in Döblin's Early Works 8
2. Wadzek's Battle with the Steam Turbine 33
3. Berlin Alexanderplatz 54
4. Men without Mercy 98
5. November 1918: A German Revolution 124
Conclusion 179
Notes 185
Works Cited 203
Index 211

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Acknowledgments
I would like to express my thanks to Professors Catherine Chvany, Kathryn Crecelius, and Robert E. Jones of MIT,
Professor Heidi Thomann Tewarson of Columbia University, and to Judith Dollenmayer, who read parts of the
manuscript and made good suggestions for its improvement. I also honor the memory of Professor Krystyna
Pomorska, whose interest in Futurism was a source of inspiration. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Professor
Heinz D. Osterle of Northern Illinois University for two thorough, critical, and immensely helpful readings of the
entire manuscript.
A fellowship from the Old Dominion Foundation gave me some precious time to begin work on Döblin.
Parts of the book have appeared in different form in The German Quarterly, The Germanic Review, and the Jahrbuch
für Internationale Germanistik.
Finally, this book would not have been possible without the constant encouragement and infinite patience of my
wife, Linda Pape.

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Abbreviations
Complete bibliographical information for these and other works by Döblin is given in "Works Cited," Pages 2034.
ASLA Autobiographische Schriften und letzte Aufzeichnungen
AzL Aufsätze zur Literatur
BA Berlin Alexanderplatz. Die Geschichte vom Franz Biberkopf
BMG Berge Meere und Giganten
Briefe Briefe
DHF Drama. Hörspiel. Film
E Erzählungen aus fünf Jahrzehnten
EJ Alexanderplatz Berlin: The Story of Franz Biberkopf, trans. Eugene Jolas
IüN Das Ich über der Natur
JR Jagende Rosse, Der schwarze Vorhang, und andere frühe Erzählwerke
MWM Men without Mercy, trans. Trevor and Phyllis Blewitt
November November 1918: Eine deutsche Revolution. Vol. 1, Bürger und Soldaten; vol. 2,
Verratenes Volk; vol. 3, Heimkehr der Fronttruppen; vol. 4, Karl und Rosa
P Pardon wird nicht gegeben
RP Reise in Polen
SLW Schriften zu Leben und Werk
SPG Schriften zur Politik und Gesellschaft
UD Unser Dasein

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W Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine
WL Die drei Sprünge des Wang-lun. Chinesischer Roman
Woods November 1918: A German Revolution, trans. John E. Woods. Vol. 1, A People Betrayed;
vol. 2, Karl and Rosa
WV Der deutsche Maskenball von Linke Poot. Wissen und Verändern!
Zeitlupe Die Zeitlupe. Kleine Prosa

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Introduction
Alfred Döblin belongs in the pantheon of great German writers who were born in the final quarter of the nineteenth
century, began writing before the First World War, flourished during the Weimar Republic, and went into exile
during the Third Reich. Like Kafka, he was a Jew from a lower-middle-class mercantile family. Like the poet
Gottfried Benn, he had a parallel career as a practicing physician. Like Thomas Mann, whom he despised, and
Bertolt Brecht, whose friend he was, he spent his exile in the exotic refuge of southern California and returned to
Europe soon after the war was over. Like the Austrian novelist Joseph Roth, he turned to Catholicism late in life
under the pressures of exile.
In his life and works, Döblin mirrors the turbulence and fecundity of German letters in the first half of the twentieth
century. Before the First World War he had already established himself on the Berlin literary scene with his
contributions to the journal Sturm, one of the central organs of German Expressionism. Early stories like "Die
Ermordung einer Butterblume" (The Murder of a Buttercup) are masterpieces of Expressionist prose, a genre most
Expressionists neglected in favor of poetry and theater. Beginning with Die drei Sprünge des Wang-lun (The Three
Leaps of Wang-lun), completed just before the First World War, Döblin developed a new style that he called "epic"
fiction. During and after the war, he continued to write monumental epics of social upheavals and mass movements.
Like most Berlin writers between the wars, Döblin's political sympathies were left of center. 1 Although he became
increasingly disillusioned with party politics and resigned from the Social Democratic Party in 1928, he continued to
be an active member of various left-liberal writers' organizations and, after 1928, of the prestigious Prussian
Academy of Sciences. His masterpiece Berlin Alexanderplatz, published in 1929, was an immediate best-seller and
Döblin's only commercial success. Forced into exile in 1933, he spent bitter years in

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Paris and Hollywood, cut off from his German-speaking public and from the Berlin he loved so much. In 1945,
largely forgotten in his native country, he returned to Germany as an officer of the French army of occupation.
Embittered by his inability to place his works with German publishers and by the conservative restoration he saw
developing in West Germany, he emigrated a second time in 1953 and settled in Paris. His last novel was published
in East Germany in 1956, the year before his death.
Alfred Döblin's reputation with the reading public, both in his own time and today, rests largely on the novel Berlin
Alexanderplatz. "Whenever they mentioned my name," he wrote in 1955, "they added Berlin Alexanderplatz." 2 It
was an especially ironic fate for so prolific a writer, a fate he struggled unsuccessfully to overcome. Unlike Robert
Musil and The Man without Qualities, Döblin did not regard Berlin Alexanderplatz as his magnum opus, but rather as
one link in a chain of works, each of which he described as growing out of questions left open by its predecessor (BA
506). The open and problematic ending is indeed one of the most striking characteristics of Döblin's works, a
reflection of his own discomfort and inability to find satisfactory and conclusive answers to the urgent social and
moral questions he raised. For Döblin is a writer with a deep sense of unease both about himself and his place in
society and about modern man and society in general. His novels arise from and reflect that unease.
The popularity of Berlin Alexanderplatz is based to some extent on the misconception that it is a document of Berlin
in the turbulent, seething twenties. It is that, but it is also much more. The montage technique that informs every page
of the novel was immediately recognized as a major formal achievement by critics like Walter Benjamin,3 and we
will see that while the montage does serve a documentary purpose by mounting things like contemporary hit songs
and advertisements directly into the fictional text, it also has the more important purpose of suggesting the
integration and unity of a reality that at first appears chaotic. In its encompassing of everything from vulgar Schlager
to mythological and biblical references, the montage pieces together universal meaning out of the often sordid reality
of Berlin in the twenties.
Berlin was for Döblin both his real home and the archetypical metropolis, a microcosm of the entire world. In an
early autobiographical sketch he describes himself as a "Berliner with vague notions of other

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