The Berlin Stories

Last updated

The Berlin Stories
TheBerlinStories.jpg
The cover of the first edition
Author Christopher Isherwood
LanguageEnglish
Genre Novels
Published1945
Publisher New Directions
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN 0-8112-1804-X
OCLC 2709284

The Berlin Stories is a 1945 omnibus by Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood and consisting of the novels Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939). The two novels are set in Jazz Age Berlin between 1930 and 1933 on the cusp of Adolf Hitler's ascent to power. Berlin is portrayed by Isherwood during this chaotic interwar period as a carnival of debauchery and despair inhabited by desperate people who are unaware of the national catastrophe that awaits them.

Contents

The first novel focuses on the misadventures of Arthur Norris, a character based upon an unscrupulous businessman named Gerald Hamilton whom Isherwood met in the Weimar Republic. [1] The second novel recounts the travails of various Berlin denizens whose lives are directly or indirectly affected by the Nazis' rise to power. Isherwood based the character of Sally Bowles on teenage cabaret singer Jean Ross, Isherwood's intimate friend during his sojourn in Berlin. [2]

The omnibus inspired the John Van Druten play I Am a Camera , which in turn inspired the film I Am a Camera as well as the famous stage musical and film versions of Cabaret. [3] Sally Bowles is the best-known character from The Berlin Stories, and she became the focus of the Cabaret musical and film, although she is merely the main character of a single short story in Goodbye to Berlin . [2] In later years, Ross regretted her public association with the naïve and apolitical character of Sally Bowles. [4]

Although The Berlin Stories secured Isherwood's reputation, the author denounced his writings after the collection's publication. [5] In a 1956 essay, Isherwood lamented that he misunderstood the suffering of the people which he depicted. [5] He regretted depicting many persons as "monsters" and noted they were "ordinary human beings prosaically engaged in getting their living through illegal methods. The only genuine monster was the young foreigner who passed gaily through these scenes of desolation, misinterpreting them to suit his childish fantasy." [5] In 2010, Time chose the collection as one of the 100 Best English-language works of the 20th century. [6]

Historical background

Christopher Isherwood and W. H. Auden circa 1938. W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood en route to China, 1938. (7893554712).jpg
Christopher Isherwood and W. H. Auden circa 1938.

I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.

—  Christopher Isherwood, A Berlin Diary, Autumn 1930

The events depicted in The Berlin Stories are derived from Isherwood's colorful escapades in the Weimar Republic. [7] [8] In 1929, Isherwood moved to Weimar Berlin during the twilight of the Golden Twenties. At the time, Isherwood was an apprentice novelist who was politically indifferent [lower-alpha 1] about the rise of fascism in Germany. [11] [12] He had relocated to Berlin to pursue a hedonistic life as an openly gay man and to enjoy the city's orgiastic Jazz Age cabarets. [13] [14] He socialized with a blithe coterie of gay writers that included Stephen Spender, Paul Bowles, [lower-alpha 2] and W.H. Auden. [17]

In Berlin during Winter 1930–1931, Isherwood met Gerald Hamilton, an unscrupulous businessman who inspired the fictional character of Arthur Norris. [1] Like the fictional character which he inspired, Hamilton was regarded by his fellow British expatriates to be a "nefarious, amoral, sociopathic, manipulative conniver" who "did not hesitate to use or abuse friends and enemies alike." [1] Isherwood later alleged that Hamilton likely stole a large sum of money from him when the author asked Hamilton to bribe officials in order to rescue his gay lover Heinz Neddermeyer from persecution by the Nazi regime due to his sexual orientation. [1]

Jean [Ross] was more essentially British than Sally [Bowles]; she grumbled like a true Englishwoman, with her 'grin-and-bear-it' grin. And she was tougher. She never struck Christopher as being sentimental or the least bit sorry for herself. Like Sally, she boasted continually about her lovers. In those days, Christopher felt certain that she was exaggerating...

—Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind (1976) [18]

Due to his limited finances, Isherwood shared modest lodgings in Berlin with 19-year-old Jean Ross, [lower-alpha 3] a British cabaret singer who inspired the fictional character of Sally Bowles. [20] An aspiring film actress, Ross earned her living as a chanteuse in lesbian bars and second-rate cabarets. [20] [21] Isherwood visited these nightclubs to hear Ross sing, [22] and he later described her voice as poor yet effective: "She had a surprisingly deep, husky voice. She sang badly, [lower-alpha 4] without any expression, her hands hanging down at her sides—yet her performance was, in its own way, effective because of her startling appearance and her air of not caring a curse of what people thought of her." [24] Likewise, Stephen Spender recalled that Ross' singing ability was quite underwhelming: "In my mind's eye, I can see her now in some dingy bar standing on a platform and singing so inaudibly that I could not hear her from the back of the room where I was discreetly seated." [25]

While rooming together with Isherwood at Nollendorfstrasse 17 in Schöneberg, [26] Ross became pregnant. [27] [28] She assumed the father of the child to be jazz pianist—and later actor—Peter van Eyck. [28] Following Eyck's abandonment of Ross, she underwent an abortion facilitated by Isherwood. [29] [30] Ross nearly died as a result of the botched abortion. [23] [28] While Ross recovered from the abortion procedure, the political situation rapidly deteriorated in Germany. [31]

John Van Druten adapted Isherwood's work into the 1951 Broadway play I Am a Camera. John Van Druten.jpg
John Van Druten adapted Isherwood's work into the 1951 Broadway play I Am a Camera .

As Berlin's daily scenes featured "poverty, unemployment, political demonstrations and street fighting between the forces of the extreme left and the extreme right," [32] Ross, Spender, and other foreigners realized that they must leave the country. [31] [33] "There was a sensation of doom to be felt in the Berlin streets," Spender recalled. [31] In contrast to Spender's feeling of impending doom, Isherwood complained "somewhat unpresciently to Spender that situation in Germany seemed 'very dull.'" [34]

However, following Adolf Hitler's ascension as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, Isherwood finally noticed the sinister developments occurring within the country, [23] and he commented to a friend: "Adolf, with his rectangular black moustache, has come to stay and brought all his friends.... Nazis are to be enrolled as 'auxiliary police,' which means that one must now not only be murdered but that it is illegal to offer any resistance." [23] Two weeks after Hitler passed the Enabling Act which cemented his power, Isherwood fled Germany and returned to England on 5 April 1933. [35]

Following Isherwood's departure from Germany and the enstatement of Hitler's brutalitarian regime, most of Berlin's seedy cabarets were shuttered by the Nazis, [lower-alpha 5] and many of Isherwood's cabaret friends would later flee abroad or perish in concentration camps. [37] These factual events served as the genesis for Isherwood's Berlin tales. His 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin was later adapted by playwright John Van Druten into the 1951 Broadway play I Am a Camera and, ultimately, the 1966 Cabaret musical. [38]

Plot summaries

Mr Norris Changes Trains

In another moment, when I had drunk exactly the right amount of champagne, I should have a vision. I took a sip. And now, with extreme clarity, without passion or malice, I saw what Life really is. It had something, I remember, to do with the revolving sunshade. Yes, I murmured to myself, let them dance. They are dancing, I am glad.

—Christopher Isherwood, Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) [39]

While traveling on a train from the Netherlands to Germany, British expatriate William Bradshaw meets a nervous-looking man named Arthur Norris. As they approach the frontier, Bradshaw strikes up a conversation with Norris, who wears an ill-fitting wig and carries a forged passport. After crossing the frontier, Norris invites Bradshaw to dinner and the two become friends. In Berlin, they see each other frequently. Over time, several oddities of Norris's personal life are revealed, one of which is that he is a masochist. Another is that he is a communist, which is dangerous in Hitler-era Germany. Other aspects of Norris's personal life remain mysterious. He seems to run a business with an assistant Schmidt. Norris gets into more and more straitened circumstances and has to leave Berlin.

Norris subsequently returns with his fortunes restored and apparently conducting communication with an unknown Frenchwoman called Margot. Schmidt reappears and tries to blackmail Norris. Norris uses Bradshaw as a decoy to get an aristocratic friend, Baron Pregnitz, to take a holiday in Switzerland and meet "Margot" under the guise of a Dutchman. Bradshaw is urgently recalled by Ludwig Bayer one of the leaders of the communist groups, who explains that Norris was spying for the French and both his group and the police know about it. Bradshaw observes they are being followed by the police and persuades Norris to leave Germany. After the Reichstag fire, the Nazis eliminate Bayer and most of Norris's comrades. Bradshaw returns to England where he receives intermittent postcards from Norris, who has fled Berlin, pursued by Schmidt. The novel's last words are drawn from a postcard that Norris sends to Bradshaw from Rio de Janeiro: "What have I done to deserve all this?"

Goodbye to Berlin

I thought of Natalia: she has escaped — none too soon, perhaps. However often the decision may be delayed, all these people are ultimately doomed. This evening is the dress-rehearsal of a disaster. It is like the last night of an epoch.

—Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin (1939) [40]

After relocating to Berlin in order to work on his novel, an English writer explores the decadent nightlife of the city and becomes enmeshed in the colorful lives of a diverse array of Berlin denizens. He acquires lodgings in a boarding house owned by Fräulein Schroeder, a caring landlady. At the boarding house, he interacts with the other tenants including the frank prostitute Fräulein Kost who has a Japanese patron and the divinely decadent Sally Bowles, a young Englishwoman who sings in a seedy cabaret. The narrator and Bowles soon become roommates, and he learns a great deal about her sex life as well as her coterie of "marvelous" lovers.

When Sally becomes pregnant after a brief fling, the narrator facilitates an abortion, and the painful incident draws them closer together. When he visits Sally at the hospital, the hospital staff assume he is Sally's impregnator and despise him for forcing her to have an abortion. Later during the summer, he resides at a beach house near the Baltic Sea with Peter and Otto, a gay couple who are struggling with their sexual identities. Jealous of Otto's endless flirtations with other men, Peter departs for England, and the narrator returns to Berlin to live with Otto's family, the Nowaks. During this time, he meets teenage Natalie Landauer whose Jewish family owns a department store. After the Nazis smash the windows of several Jewish shops, he learns that Natalie's cousin Bernhard is dead, likely murdered by the Nazis. Ultimately, the narrator is forced to leave Germany as the Nazis continue their ascent to power, and he fears that many of his beloved Berlin acquaintances are now dead.

Isherwood's reevaluation

Isherwood and Auden by Carl van Vechten, 1939.jpg
Isherwood in 1939

Although his stories about the nightlife of Weimar Berlin became commercially successful and secured his reputation as an author, Isherwood later denounced his writings. [5] In a 1956 essay, Isherwood lamented that he had not understood the suffering of the people which he depicted. [5]

Isherwood stated that 1930s Berlin had been "a real city in which human beings were suffering the miseries of political violence and near-starvation. The 'wickedness' of Berlin's night-life was of the most pitiful kind; the kisses and embraces, as always, had price-tags attached to them.... As for the 'monsters', they were quite ordinary human beings prosaically engaged in getting their living through illegal methods. The only genuine monster was the young foreigner who passed gaily through these scenes of desolation, misinterpreting them to suit his childish fantasy." [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christopher Isherwood</span> English-American novelist (1904–1986)

Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include Goodbye to Berlin (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel which inspired the musical Cabaret (1966); A Single Man (1964), adapted into a film directed by Tom Ford in 2009; and Christopher and His Kind (1976), a memoir which "carried him into the heart of the Gay Liberation movement".

<i>Cabaret</i> (1972 film) 1972 American musical film by Bob Fosse

Cabaret is a 1972 American musical period drama film directed by Bob Fosse from a screenplay by Jay Allen, based on the stage musical of the same name by John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Joe Masteroff, which in turn was based on the 1951 play I Am a Camera by John Van Druten and the 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood. It stars Liza Minnelli, Michael York, Helmut Griem, Marisa Berenson, and Joel Grey. Multiple numbers from the stage score were used for the film, which also featured three other songs by Kander and Ebb, including two written for the adaptation.

<i>Cabaret</i> (musical) Stage musical by John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Joe Masteroff

Cabaret is an American musical with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and a book by Joe Masteroff. It is based on the 1951 play I Am a Camera by John Van Druten, which in turn was based on the 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Van Druten</span> English actor and playwright (1901–1957)

John William Van Druten was an English playwright and theatre director. He began his career in London, and later moved to America, becoming a U.S. citizen. He was known for his plays of witty and urbane observations of contemporary life and society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Don Bachardy</span> American painter (born 1934)

Donald Jess Bachardy is an American portrait artist. He resides in Santa Monica, California. Bachardy was the partner of Christopher Isherwood for over 30 years.

<i>Goodbye to Berlin</i> 1939 novel by Christopher Isherwood

Goodbye to Berlin is a 1939 novel by Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood set during the waning days of the Weimar Republic. The novel recounts Isherwood's 1929–1932 sojourn as a pleasure-seeking British expatriate on the eve of Adolf Hitler's ascension as Chancellor of Germany and consists of a "series of sketches of disintegrating Berlin, its slums and nightclubs and comfortable villas, its odd maladapted types and its complacent burghers." The plot was based on factual events in Isherwood's life, and the novel's characters were based upon actual persons. The insouciant flapper Sally Bowles was based on teenage cabaret singer Jean Ross who became Isherwood's friend during his sojourn.

<i>I Am a Camera</i> 1951 Broadway play by John Van Druten

I Am a Camera is a 1951 Broadway play by John Van Druten adapted from Christopher Isherwood's 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin, which is part of The Berlin Stories. The title is a quotation taken from the novel's first page: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking." The original production was staged by John Van Druten, with scenic and lighting design by Boris Aronson and costumes by Ellen Goldsborough. It opened at the Empire Theatre in New York City on November 28, 1951 and ran for 214 performances before closing on July 12, 1952.

Bowles is an English surname of Norman origin. Notable people with the surname include:

Gary Conklin is an independent American filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Caudwell</span> English barrister and detective fiction author (1939–2000)

Sarah Cockburn, who wrote under the pseudonym of Sarah Caudwell, was a British barrister and author of detective stories. Her series of four murder stories written between 1980 and 1999 centered on a group of young barristers practicing in Lincoln's Inn, narrated by a Hilary Tamar, a professor of medieval law whose gender is never specified, who fills the role of detective.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter van Eyck</span> German-American actor (1911–1969)

Peter van Eyck was a German-American film and television actor. Born in Prussian Pomerania, he moved to the United States in the 1930s and established a career as a character actor. After World War II, he returned to his native country and became a star of West German cinema.

<i>Mr Norris Changes Trains</i> 1935 novel by Christopher Isherwood

Mr Norris Changes Trains is a 1935 novel by the British writer Christopher Isherwood. It is frequently included with Goodbye to Berlin, another Isherwood novel, in a single volume, The Berlin Stories. Inspiration for the novel was drawn from Isherwood's experiences as an expatriate living in Berlin during the early 1930s, and the character of Mr Norris is based on Gerald Hamilton. In 1985 the actor David March won a Radio Academy Award for Best Radio Actor for his performance in a dramatisation of the novel for BBC Radio 4.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jill Haworth</span> English-American actress (1945-2011)

Valerie Jill Haworth was an English-American actress. She appeared in films throughout the 1960s, and started making guest appearances on television in 1963. She originated the role of Sally Bowles in the musical Cabaret on Broadway in 1966.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Spender</span> English poet and man of letters (1909–1995)

Sir Stephen Harold Spender was an English poet, novelist and essayist whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1965.

Claudia Cockburn Flanders, OBE was an American-British disability activist who spent much of her working life in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sally Bowles</span> Fictional character created by Christopher Isherwood

Sally Bowles is a fictional character created by English-American novelist Christopher Isherwood and based upon 19-year-old cabaret singer Jean Ross. The character debuted in Isherwood's 1937 novella Sally Bowles published by Hogarth Press, and commentators have described the novella as "one of Isherwood's most accomplished pieces of writing." The work was republished in the 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin and in the 1945 anthology The Berlin Stories.

<i>Christopher and His Kind</i> (film) 2011 BBC television film

Christopher and His Kind is a 2011 BBC television film. It tells the story of Christopher Isherwood's exploits in Berlin in the early 1930s. The film, adapted by Kevin Elyot from Isherwood's autobiography Christopher and His Kind, was produced by Mammoth Screen and directed by Geoffrey Sax. Isherwood is played by Matt Smith, whilst the cast also includes Douglas Booth, Imogen Poots, Pip Carter, Toby Jones, and Alexander Dreymon.

<i>Christopher and His Kind</i> 1976 memoir by writer Christopher Isherwood

Christopher and His Kind is a 1976 memoir by Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood, first printed in a 130-copy edition by Sylvester & Orphanos, then in general publication by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. In the text, Isherwood candidly expounds upon events in his life from 1929 to 1939, including his sojourn in Berlin which was the inspiration for his popular 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Ross</span> British writer, political activist, and film critic (1911–1973)

Jean Iris Ross Cockburn was a British journalist, political activist, and film critic. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), she was a war correspondent for the Daily Express and is alleged to have been a press agent for Joseph Stalin's Comintern. A skilled writer, Ross worked as a film critic for the Daily Worker. Throughout her life, she wrote political criticism, anti-fascist polemics, and socialist manifestos for a number of disparate organisations such as the British Workers' Film and Photo League. She was a devout Stalinist and a lifelong member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

<i>I Am a Camera</i> (film) 1955 British comedy-drama film

I Am a Camera is a 1955 British comedy-drama film based on the 1945 book The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood and the 1951 eponymous play by John Van Druten. The film is a fictionalized account of Isherwood's time living in Berlin between the World Wars. Directed by Henry Cornelius, from a script by John Collier, I Am a Camera stars Laurence Harvey as Isherwood and Julie Harris recreating her Tony Award-winning performance as Sally Bowles.

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Jean Ross later claimed the political indifference of the Sally Bowles character more closely resembled Isherwood and his hedonistic friends, [9] many of whom "fluttered around town exclaiming how sexy the storm troopers looked in their uniforms." [10]
  2. ↑ Paul Bowles was an American writer who wrote the novel The Sheltering Sky . [15] Isherwood appropriated his surname for the character of Sally Bowles. [16]
  3. ↑ Isherwood claimed that he and Ross "had a relationship which was asexual but more truly intimate than the relationships between Sally and her various partners in the novel, the plays and the films." [19]
  4. ↑ Peter Parker notes that Ross "claimed that Isherwood 'grossly underrated' her singing abilities, but her family agreed that this was one aspect of Sally Bowles that Isherwood got absolutely right". [23]
  5. ↑ Many Berlin cabarets located along the Kurfürstendamm avenue, an entertainment-vice district, had been marked for future destruction by Joseph Goebbels as early as 1928. [36]

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 4 Izzo 2001, pp. 115–116.
  2. 1 2 Izzo 2005, p. 144.
  3. ↑ Lehmann 1987, pp. 78–79; Izzo 2001, pp. 97, 144.
  4. ↑ Croft 1989, p. 156; Firchow 2008, p. 120.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Fryer 1977, pp. 146–47.
  6. ↑ Grossman 2010.
  7. ↑ Garebian 2011, p. 3; Gray 2016.
  8. ↑ Bloom & Vlastnik 2004, p. 46.
  9. ↑ Firchow 2008, p. 120; Caudwell 1986, pp. 28–29.
  10. ↑ Isherwood 1976, pp. 124–125; Doyle 2013.
  11. ↑ Allen 2004: "The real Isherwood... [was] the least political of the so-called Auden group, [and] Isherwood was always guided by his personal motivations rather than by abstract ideas."
  12. ↑ Stansky 1976: Isherwood was a "self-indulgent upper middle-class foreign tourist" who was "a good deal less dedicated to political passion than the legend has had it."
  13. ↑ Moss 1979: Isherwood frequented "the boy-bars in Berlin in the late years of the Weimar Republic.... [He] discovered a world utterly different from the repressive English one he disliked, and with it, the excitements of sex and new subject matter."
  14. ↑ Isherwood 1976 , Chapter 1: "To Christopher, Berlin meant Boys... Christopher was suffering from an inhibition, then not unusual among upper-class homosexuals; he couldn't relax sexually with a member of his own class or nation. He needed a working-class foreigner. He had become clearly aware of this when he went to Germany in May 1928."
  15. ↑ Garebian 2011, pp. 6–7.
  16. ↑ Izzo 2005, p. 144: "Isherwood himself admitted that he named the character of [Sally Bowles] for Paul Bowles, whose 'looks' he liked."
  17. ↑ Garebian 2011, pp. 6–7; Spender 1977; Spender 1966, pp. 125–130.
  18. ↑ Isherwood 1976, pp. 60–61.
  19. ↑ Isherwood 1976, p. 63.
  20. 1 2 Parker 2004; Parker 2005, p. 205.
  21. ↑ Lehmann 1987 , p. 18: "Jean Ross, whom [Isherwood] had met in Berlin as one of his fellow-lodgers in the Nollendorfstrasse for a time, when she was earning her living as a (not very remarkable) singer in a second-rate cabaret."
  22. ↑ Lehmann 1987, p. 18.
  23. 1 2 3 4 Parker 2005, p. 220.
  24. ↑ Isherwood 1963, p. 25, Goodbye to Berlin.
  25. ↑ Spender 1993, p. 74.
  26. ↑ Isherwood 1976 , p. 63: "Jean moved into a room in the Nollendorfstrasse flat after she met Christopher, early in 1931."
  27. ↑ Isherwood 1976, pp. 244–245.
  28. 1 2 3 Parker 2004: "An affair with a Jewish musician called Götz von Eick, who subsequently became an actor in Hollywood under the name Peter van Eyck, led to her becoming pregnant, and she nearly died after an abortion."
  29. ↑ Parker 2004; Parker 2005, p. 220; Thomson 2005.
  30. ↑ Lehmann 1987, pp. 28–29.
  31. 1 2 3 Spender 1966, p. 129.
  32. ↑ Spender 1977.
  33. ↑ Parker 2005, p. 254.
  34. ↑ Parker 2005, p. 219.
  35. ↑ Parker 2005 , p. 221: "Isherwood recognized that he could not remain in Berlin much longer and on April 5, the day measures were brought in to ban Jews from the teaching professions and the Civil Service, he arrived back in London, bringing with him many of his possessions."
  36. ↑ Farina 2013, p. 79.
  37. ↑ Isherwood 1976, pp. 164–166; Isherwood 1976, pp. 150, 297; Farina 2013, pp. 74–81.
  38. ↑ Lehmann 1987, pp. 28–29; Izzo 2001, pp. 97, 144.
  39. ↑ Isherwood 1963, p. 23, The Last of Mr. Norris.
  40. ↑ Isherwood 1963, p. 177, Goodbye to Berlin.

Works cited

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.