Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf

BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ

The Story of Franz Biberkopf

Alfred Döblin

Translated by
Eugene Jolas

Foreword by
Alexander Stephan

Continuum

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© 1961 by Walter Verlag AG, Olten

Translated from the original German
Berlin Alexanderplatz.
English edition formerly published under the title
Alexanderplatz Berlin.

This edition 2004

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0-8264-7789-5

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire

Foreword

Berlin Alexanderplatz
(1929) by Alfred Döblin (1878-1957) ranks among the masterpieces of modern literature. Like John Dos Passos’s
Manhattan Transfer,
it explores the speed, anonymity, and chaos of the contemporary metropolis. From Upton Sinclair and
The Jungle,
it borrows the concern over social injustice in modern mass society. James Joyce’s
Ulysses
has been mentioned as a source for Döblin’s writing style, with its rapid shifts between interior monologue, collage of quotations, and montage of fragmented details. Filmmakers from Phil Jutzi (1931) to Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1980) have been attracted by its technique.

In the words of one of its first reviewers,
Berlin Alexanderplatz
is a book that “gets under the skin.” German Expressionism reached its zenith with Döblin’s masterpiece. The “Americanization” of the Weimar Republic and its culture is reflected in the hectic life at Alexanderplatz in the heart of Berlin, in the emergence of a new, socially and sexually independent woman, and in the at-once fascinating and threatening aspects of technology.

Döblin was a physician who lived and practiced in a working-class district of Berlin. He had firsthand experience with antiheros like Franz Biberkopf, who wheels and deals in an underworld of thieves and pimps, makes friends with bums, and is twice done in by a small-time gangster. Like his contemporary Benoit Brecht, Döblin uses running synopses of the plot to focus the reader’s attention on the process rather than the outcome of Franz Biberkopf’s story. But unlike the Marxist Brecht, Döblin does not aim to change, by political means, the social injustice he sees around Alexanderplatz. Instead, the beginning and conclusion of the book deal with “fate.” “Hell-fire” blazes from people’s eyes in the periods of dreams and delusions experienced by “Franzeken.” The surface of reality is ruptured by symbolic, metaphysical and religious references to fundamental human situations. Animals and people are sacrificed to Death and the Whore of Babylon. The prison from which Biberkopf is released at the start of the story, the madhouse in which he vanishes suffering from “psychic trauma” near the ending, and the crazy world of Berlin between Alexanderplatz and Rosenthalerplatz, all blur into one. When Hitler came to power in Germany, Döblin fled first to France and then to the United States.
Berlin Alexanderplatz,
which very soon after publication had been translated into many languages, was banned by the Nazis. Virtually ignored following his return to Europe in 1945, Döblin’s books fortunately since have been rediscovered.

Alexander Stephan

Contents

Foreword by Alexander Stephan v

First Book 3

Second Book 30

Third Book 79

Fourth Book 92

Fifth Book 128

Sixth Book 173

Seventh Book 247

Eighth Book 293

Ninth Book 341

This book reports the story of Franz Biberkopf, an erstwhile cement-and transport-worker in Berlin. He has just been discharged from prison where he has been doing time because of former incidents, and is now back in Berlin, determined to lead a decent life.

And, at first, he succeeds. But then, though economically things go rather well with him, he gets involved in a regular combat with something that comes from the outside, with something unaccountable, that looks like fate.

Three times this thing crashes against our man, disturbing his scheme of life. It rushes at him with cheating and fraud. The man is able to scramble up again; he is still firm on his feet.

It drives and beats him with foul play. He finds it a bit hard to get up, they almost count him out.

Finally it torpedoes him with huge and monstrous savagery.

Thus our good man, who has held his own till the end, is laid low. He gives the game up for lost; he does not know how to go on and appears to be done for.

But, before he puts a definite end to himself, his eyes are forcibly opened in a way which I do not describe here. He is most distinctly given to understand how it all came about. To wit, through himself, that’s obvious, through his scheme of life, which looked like nothing on earth, but now suddenly looks entirely different, not simple and almost self-evident, but prideful and impudent, cowardly withal, and full of weakness.

This awful thing which was his life acquires a meaning. Franz Biberkopf has been given a radical cure. At last we see our man back on Alexanderplatz, greatly changed and battered, but, nevertheless, bent straight again. To listen to this, and to meditate on it, will be of benefit to many who, like Franz Biberkopf, live in a human skin, and, like this Franz Biberkopf, ask more of life than a piece of bread and butter.

FIRST BOOK

Here in the beginning, Franz Biberkopf leaves Tegel Prison into which a former foolish life had led him. It is difficult to gain a foothold in Berlin again, but he finally does. This makes him happy, and now he vows to lead a decent life.

On Car 41 into Town

He stood in front of the Tegel Prison gate and was free now. Yesterday in convict’s garb he had been raking potatoes with the others in the fields back of the building, now he was walking in a tan summer topcoat; they were still raking back there, he was free. He let one street-car after another go by, pressed his back against the red wall, and did not move. The gateman walked past him several times, showed him his car-line; he did not move. The terrible moment had come (terrible, Franze, why terrible?), the four years were over. The black iron gates, which he had been watching with growing disgust for a year (disgust, why disgust?), were shut behind him. They had let him out again. Inside, the others sat at their carpentry, varnishing, sorting, gluing, had still two years, five years to do. He was standing at the car-stop.

The punishment begins.

He shook himself and gulped. He stepped on his own foot. Then, with a run, took a seat in the car. Right among people. Go ahead. At first it was like being at the dentist’s, when he has grabbed a root with a pair of forceps, and pulls; the pain grows, your head threatens to burst. He turned his head back towards the red wall, but the car raced on with him along the tracks, and only his head was left in the direction of the prison. The car took a bend; trees and houses intervened. Busy streets emerged, Seestrasse, people got on and off. Something inside him screamed in terror: Look out, look out, it’s going to start now. The tip of his nose turned to ice; something was whirring over his cheek.
Zwölf Uhr Mittagszeitung, B. Z., Berliner Illustrierte, Die Funkstunde.
“Anybody else got on?” The coppers have blue uniforms now. He got off the car, without being noticed, and was back among people again. What happened? Nothing. Chest out, you starved sucker, you, pull yourself together, or I’ll give you a crack in the jaw! Crowds, what a swarm of people! How they hustle and bustle! My brain needs oiling, it’s probably dried up. What was all this? Shoe stores, hat stores, incandescent lamps, saloons. People got to have shoes to run around so much; didn’t we have a cobbler’s shop out there, let’s bear that in mind! Hundreds of polished Window-panes, let ‘em blaze away, are they going to make you afraid or something, Why, you can smash ‘em up, can’t you, what’s the matter with ‘em, they’re polished clean, that’s all. The pavement on Rosenthaler Platz was being torn up; he walked on the wooden planks along with the others. Just go ahead and mix in with people, then everything’s going to clear up, and you won’t notice anything, you fool. Wax figures stood in the show-windows, in suits, overcoats, with skins, with shoes and stockings. Outside everything was moving, but-back of it-there was nothing! It-did not-live! It had happy faces, it laughed, waited in twos and threes on the traffic islands opposite Aschinger’s, smoked cigarettes, turned the pages of newspapers. Thus it stood there like the street-lamps-and-became more and more rigid. They belonged with the houses, everything white, everything wooden.

Terror struck him as he walked down Rosenthaler Strasse and saw a man and a woman Sitting in a little beer-shop right at the window: they poured beer down their gullets out of mugs, yes, what about it, they were drinking, they had forks and stuck pieces of meat into their mouths, then they pulled the forks out again and were not bleeding. Oh, how cramped his body felt, I can’t get rid of it, where shall I go? The answer came: Punishment.

He could not turn back, he had come this far on the car, he had been discharged from prison and had to go into this thing, deeper and deeper into it.

I know, he sighed to himself, that I have to go into this thing and that I was discharged from prison. They had to discharge me, the punishment was over, that’s as it should be, the bureaucrat does his duty. I’ll go into it, too, but I’d rather not, my God, I can’t do it.

He wandered down Rosenthaler Strasse past Wertheim’s department store, at the right he turned into the narrow Sophienstrasse. He thought, this street is darker, it’s probably better where it’s darker. The prisoners ,lre put in isolation cells, solitary confinement and general confinement. In isolation cells the prisoner is kept apart from the others night and day. In solitary confinement the prisoner is placed in a cell, but during his walks in the open air, during instruction or religious service, he is put in company with the others. The cars roared and jangled on, house-fronts were rolling along one after the other without stopping. And there were roofs on the houses, they soared atop the houses, his eyes wandered straight upward: if only the roofs don’t slide off but the houses stood upright. Where shall I go, poor devil that I am, he shuffled alongside the walls of the houses, there was no end to it. I’m really a big duffer, a fellow ought to be able to traipse his way through hereabouts, five minutes, ten minutes, then drink a cognac and sit down. When the given signal rings, work must being immediately. It can only be interrupted at the time set aside for eating, walking, and instruction. During the walk the prisoners must hold their arms stiff and swing them back and forth.

A house appeared, he took his glance away from the pavement, he pushed open the door of a house, and a sad growling oh, oh, came from his chest. He thrashed his arms about, well, old boy, you won’t freeze here. The door of the courtyard opened, someone shuffled past him, stood behind him. Now he groaned, it did him good to groan. In the first days of his solitary confinement he had always groaned like this, and had been happy to hear his own voice, there you have at least something, everything is not lost yet. Many did that in the cells, some in the beginning, others later on, when they felt lonely. Then they started it, it was something human, it consoled them. Thus our man stood in the hallway, did not hear the terrible noise from the street, those mad houses were not there. With pursed lips he grunted to give himself courage, his hands clenched in his pockets. His shoulders in the tan summer topcoat were hunched for defense.

A stranger had stopped beside the discharged prisoner and was watching him. He asked: “What’s the matter, anything wrong, are you in pain?” until the man noticed him and stopped his grunting at once. “Are you sick, do you live here in this house?” It was a Jew with a full red beard, a little man in an overcoat, with a black plush felt hat, a cane in his hand. “No, I don’t live here.” He had to get out of the hallway, the hallway had been all right. And now the street started once more, the house-fronts, the show-windows, the hurrying figures with trousers or light socks, all so quick, so smart, each moment another. And making up his mind, he stepped again into an entrance-way, but just here the gates opened to let a wagon pass. Then quickly into the next-door house, into a narrow hallway next to the staircase. No wagon could get in here. He clung to the banister-post. And while he held on to it, he knew he wanted to escape punishment (oh, Franz, what do you want to do? You’ll not be able to do it), he would certainly do it, he knew now where there was an escape. And softly he started his music again, the grunting and grumbling, and I won’t go back to the street either. The red Jew stepped back into the house, did not at first notice the man by the banister. He heard him humming. “Say, tell me, what are you doing here? Are you sick?” He moved away from the post, walked towards the courtyard. As he grasped the gate, he saw it was the Jew from the other house. “Leave me alone, what do you want anyway?” “Well, well, nothing. You moan and groan so, can’t a body ask how you are?” And through the crack in the door across the way he saw the blamed old houses again, the swarming people, the sliding roofs. The discharged prisoner opened the courtyard gate, the Jew behind him: “What could happen? Now, now, it’s not going to be as bad as all that. You’re not going to go under. Berlin is big. Where a thousand live, one more can also live.”