Berlin Alexanderplatz (novel)

Berlin Alexanderplatz is a novel by Alfred Döblin . The book was published in 1929 by S. Fischer Verlag with the subtitle The story of Franz Biberkopf . Döblin's most successful book is one of the main works of German modernism and is characterized by an innovative structure, expressive language and poetic narrative technique. The city ​​novel is also an important testimony to the early 20th century, especially the Weimar Republic . The experimental works Ulysses and Manhattan Transfer are considered equivalents .

Döblin tells the story of the wage worker Franz Biberkopf, who wants to start a new life after his release from prison. In the stylized battle against the metropolis of Berlin, the incorrigible Biberkopf threatens to perish. After his failure to lead a regular life, he joins the gang around Reinhold. An attack in the getaway car leaves him crippled, but he rejoins the gang and begins a relationship with the prostitute Mieze. Your murder by Reinhold inflicts the decisive blow on him. He comes under suspicion, is arrested and ends up as a patient in an asylum. There he is purified from death and acknowledges his own wrongdoings. After his release, Franz began a new life as an assistant porter.

The novel quickly developed into a sales success, not least because of the Biberkopf fable - the failure of a simple worker who was played badly and whose life does not really want to succeed. This is countered by the poeticization of the big city through the process of montage , as well as stylistic pluralism, novel composition as well as countless references to literature and myths, which among other things substantiate the importance of Berlin Alexanderplatz as one of the most important novels in German-language literature. The novel stimulated numerous authors to parodies, imitations and processing, while the incomplete variety of interpretations made it the subject of literary research early on.

Emergence

Döblin began working on his novel in autumn 1927 and completed it two years later. The subtitle The story of Franz Biberkopf goes back to a suggestion by the publisher Samuel Fischer , who wanted to prevent the reader from narrowing the reference to the station name Berlin Alexanderplatz . The novel was to be the only great financial success of the avant-garde Döblin. Between August 1928 and October 1929 preprints appeared in the Neue Rundschau , Frankfurter Zeitung , Vorwärts and Berliner Volkszeitung . These were mostly preconceptions.

The city of Berlin was the scene of several prose pieces and stories from Döblin early on. 1910 appeared in the magazine Der Sturm Das märkische Ninive , a sketch that shows similarities to the later novel in its combination of “apocalytic motifs and big city themes”. Döblin's first Berlin novel, Wadzek's Struggle with the Steam Turbine, was written in 1914 . Especially the wandering of the protagonist, the montage of advertising texts during a cab ride and the literary technique, according to which the reader is given a picture of the big city through the perception of the “probe” Wadzek, appear again in Berlin Alexanderplatz . Among Döblin's journalistic texts is the report East about Alexanderplatz from September 29, 1923, which, according to Gabriele Sander, has an “atmospheric and stylistic closeness” to the novel, like the article An Unknown Radiation Type from 1925. This concludes with a sketch of the milieu that seems to point to the novel. In his journal Reise in Polen (1924), Döblin experimented again with assembly and staged his movement through Berlin in a similar way to that of the Biberkopf figure. According to Hans-Peter Bayerdörfer, the diversity of Jewish life in Warsaw is the godfather for the portrayal of Berlin.

To what extent James Joyce's Ulysses had an impact on the conception of the novel remains partly controversial. Hermann Wiegmann sees parallels in the narrative style as well as in the composition technique. The novel is preceded by a prologue, five language levels are to be distinguished, and the inner monologue is equally formative for the narrative. In contrast, Helmuth Kiesel emphasizes the independence of Berlin Alexanderplatz ; Even if Döblin may have found some suggestions from Ulysses , he himself already had a “considerable innovative capacity”. As early as 1930 Walter Benjamin pointed out that the inner monologue in Döblin's novel has a completely different function than that of Joyce and that the central stylistic principle is montage. Maren Jäger sees only a catalytic effect of the Irish on Döblin's work on Berlin Alexanderplatz . Döblin reviewed the Ulysses in 1928 and praised it as an "experimental work". However, when some critics wanted to see an overwhelming influence on Döblin, and moreover few even saw an imitation, he resisted the discrediting. A quarter of the novel was written before Döblin even came into contact with Ulysses . Ultimately, a simultaneity of ideas can be assumed; Döblin belonged to the literary avant-garde in his early years and from 1913 at the latest to the leading expressionists. In addition, long before Joyce, Döblin came into contact with literary modernism and its numerous currents such as Futurism and Dadaism , and also contributed to it as a theoretician.

There was also speculation as to whether the experimental documentary Berlin - The Symphony of the Big City had an influence on Döblin, since the film's premiere took place in September 1927. The choice of fabrics was based on Alfred Döblin's experience as a doctor. Looking back on his work on his novel, Döblin wrote to the Zurich reading circle in 1932: “It would be a long story to tell how I came up with the subject matter and the basic motif of the book. Here I just want to say: my medical profession has brought me together with criminals a lot. I also had a criminal watch station years ago. From there came some interesting things and things worth saying. "

content

Alexanderplatz, 1903

The novel “tells of a former cement and transport worker Franz Biberkopf in Berlin. He has been released from prison where he was due to older incidents and is now back in Berlin and wants to be decent. "

first book

Franz Biberkopf is released from Tegel prison. After killing his girlfriend Ida out of jealousy, he was sentenced to four years in prison for manslaughter . Overtaxed by everyday life in a big city, Biberkopf reacts to his new surroundings with a distorted perception; The lifeless passers-by merge with the buildings, at Rosenthaler Platz he is frightened by a dining couple and changes the side of the street because of the pleasant darkness that reminds him of his stay in prison. Biberkopf is soon afraid of roofs sliding down there. He looks for protection in a hallway; A red-bearded Eastern Jew rushes to the aid of the exhausted and visibly bruised Biberkopf and takes him to a rabbi's room . Once in the room, Nachum argues with an old man about Biberkopf's presence. To reassure Biberkopf, Nachum tells the story of Stefan Zannowich, son of a fraudster and cardholder. In Padua that Stefan is said to have copied the noble behavior of the nobles. He later posed as Baron Warta and called himself Skanderbeg , or, after the ruler's death was known, a descendant of the Albanian national hero, Prince Castriot of Albania. He had traveled to Germany and Montenegro and made friends with the Saxon Elector , the Crown Prince of Prussia and Empress Therese . Their affection even went so far that the Empress saved the impostor from possible persecution. When Biberkopf finally gets up from the floor and takes a seat on the sofa, another man enters the room. Eliser, a young, brown-haired Jew, finished the story; accordingly, Stefan Zannowich was heavily in debt and was reported in Brussels. At the age of thirty he finally died in prison by suicide. They say goodbye to Biberkopf, who first wants to drink a cognac. After seeing an adult movie in the cinema , he craves a wife. He negotiates with a fat little prostitute for three marks: “She unbuttoned her blouse from above. There were two royal children who loved each other so much. When the dog jumps over the gutter with the sausage. She grabbed him, hugged him. Putt, putt, putt, my chicken, putt, putt putt, my cock. ”Afterwards he is disappointed. Over the next few days he drinks and eats copiously. Biberkopf visits Ida's sister Minna and rapes her; he replaces her torn apron. He visits the two Jews again. He swears to himself and to the rest of the world to be decent. "But then he ran out of money ..."

second book

At the beginning of the chapter, a picture of Berlin is drawn from many small parts. Biberkopf hangs around on Rosenthaler Platz (“Rosenthaler Platz is talking”). In a meeting, an angry speaker turns him papers that identify him as an outpatient trader in textile goods. He starts selling tie holders. He later decides to sell newspapers (initially sexual education magazines), in which he is also supported by his new girlfriend, Polish Lina Przyballa. In a bar he meets a drunken invalid and begins to share his attitude. Biberkopf, who actually has nothing against Jews and is only for order, begins to distribute national newspapers. When he was about to go into his local pub one lunchtime, some leftists were watching him. In the restaurant they pull out his swastika armband and make fun of Franz. The former prisoner, apparently disappointed by the failed November Revolution in 1918/1919 and now apparently switched to the enemy camp, reminds the angry guests in vain of the trench warfare at Arras . In the evening Biberkopf is back in his pub and this time is attacked by some leftists. Because of the threatened fight, the landlord Henschke asked Biberkopf to leave his restaurant. Biberkopf rages and roars at his opponents. He is leaving with Lina, who is hoping for a real engagement. Finally, Franz Biberkopf is introduced as a man; His previous history is added: how he hit his bride Ida in an argument so that she died five weeks later. This manslaughter is set in parallel with the murder of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra - Franz was not hounded by the Erinyes.

Third book

Just in time for Christmas, Franz shifts his sales to shoelaces. He is successful ("Zwanzich Märker"): He has won the heart of a widow who buys all sorts of things from him after a cuddle. He then leaves some of his goods with them to pick them up later. In a bar, Franz brags about this story in front of Lüders, Lina's uncle; he visits the widow the next morning and pretends to pick up the goods on behalf of Biberkopf. He also steals her money and is still rummaging around in the table boxes. The woman loses consciousness and Lüders disappears. The unsuspecting Franz visits the widow on another day, but she slams the door and pulls the bolt. Franz learns of Otto Lüders' fraud from a letter and quits his room on the same day; he disappears without a trace. After twenty-four hours, the worried Lina turned to Meck, who knocked Lüders down, forcing him to find Biberkopf. He gives Franz money, probably the money stolen from the widow. Franz sprinkles him with water and has to give up the new apartment. After that, it remains gone. - In the prelude to the third book, the narrated event is announced as the first blow that fate missed Franz.

Fourth book

Franz crawls into his new shack on Linienstraße and spends his time drinking and sleeping while the again broadly described big city life takes its course. He thinks about his life, but the questioning does not lead him out of the hopelessness. So he looks for a pastor, who cannot help him. Biberkopf then visits the Jews in Münzstrasse without taking part in their conversations. This is followed by the slaughterhouse scene, which begins with the description of the Berlin slaughterhouse in the northeast of the city and goes through the representation of various slaughterings (pigs, a bull, a lamb) to the display of the meat products in the butcher's shop. A lot of information, such as the number of cattle, the size and location of the farm, is presented to the reader. The allegory is interrupted by a conversation of Job , in which an unknown “voice” (God, Satan, angel?) Reveals to the tormented Job that only he can help himself; after Job has screamed all night, his first ulcers are healed.

The numerous battle scenes take place in Berlin's central courtyard

When a calf has been slaughtered, the slaughterhouse scene ends: “The body on the bench throws itself. The legs twitch, bump, childlike thin, knotty legs. But the eyes are completely fixed, blind. They are dead eyes. That is a dead animal. ”A subheading (“ And they all have the same breath, and man has nothing more than cattle ”- a sentence from the biblical wisdom literature) indicates the meaning of the slaughterhouse scene. - One night in February 1928, the carpenter Gerner, employed as a property manager, witnessed a theft; He and his wife decide to go into business for themselves as a thief, but the crooks join them twice when he tries to steal from the camp. The stolen goods are stored in his apartment; he gets drunk with his wife and is surprised the next day by the police and taken away. Franz sees the arrest and the gaping philistines. He gets out of his rut, goes out to eat, and resists the temptation to start drinking again. He goes to Minna and only meets Karl, Minna's husband (and Ida's brother-in-law). A reconciliation fails, Karl rejects him; Franz insults Karl and leaves the building dissatisfied. - Finally, Franz speaks in a voice he does not know; he is aware of himself and his strength again.

Fifth book

First, the life and goings on at Alexanderplatz are described again. - Franz Biberkopf remains decent. He sells newspapers at Alexanderplatz, even if the number of his buyers remains small. On the evening of February 9th, he meets little Meck, who lures him into a pub. There a certain Pums asks him if he doesn't even want to trade in “fruit”. Biberkopf says no, but Meck draws attention to a “yellow”. It is Reinhold who arouses pity in Biberkopf because of his appearance and the demeanor of a sick person. Franz takes a liking to Reinhold, but continues to distance himself from Pum's gang. One evening Reinhold comes to Biberkopf and tells him about a driver's wife whom he would like to get rid of. Instead of simply sending her away himself, Biberkopf takes over his girlfriend Fränze. Biberkopf learns of Reinhold's hypersexuality , so he has to have a new girlfriend every four weeks; Franz soon takes over his girlfriend Cilly. When Reinhold wants to give Franz a friend again, he refuses because he actually loves Cilly. With Reinhold he discusses his addiction for new women without them coming to a conclusion. Another day Franz meets Meck in a bar, Pums and his people are there too; Pums, who obviously does dirty business, wants to involve Franz in his business - Franz hesitates. With a quote from Jeremiah ("The man who relies on people is cursed ..."), which is repeated later, the narrator indicates that the first difficult trick announced in the prelude will soon hit Franz: On April 8th, a Sunday , Franz observes a fight between two Pums people; Franz lets himself be persuaded to place an order with Pums for one of them. Pums hires him for a good hourly wage to take part in the fruit trade (five marks an hour). Reinhold is there too, but completely different: strong and dominant. Franz does not notice how he is being taken on a raid; he should be dope. When he tries to escape, he is stopped by Reinhold. "The world is made of iron, there is nothing you can do, there it comes, there it runs, there they sit in ..." As they drive off with the stolen goods, they are followed by a car. Reinhold gets angry because he revealed his problems to Franz; Franz is brutally pushed out of the moving getaway car by Reinhold and his accomplices. The chase car runs over him. - The fifth book closes with the narrator's reflections on sunrise the next morning.

Sixth book

Alexanderplatz , 1928

Reinhold is happy; After discovering alcohol for himself, he beats up his girlfriend Trude, with which he manages to get rid of her. Franz Biberkopf is driven to Magdeburg on the night of April 9th, his right arm is sawed off. The pimp Herbert and his girlfriend Eva visit Biberkopf in the hospital, but he does not react to questions about the accident, he is silent. When he returned to Berlin, his friends Herbert, Eva and Emil reveal to him that Pums was an over-the-top con man; but Franz refrains from punishing the Pums gang or demanding compensation for the arm. After the Pums gang realized that Franz had survived, Reinhold is the only one demanding that he be killed; the others collect money for Franz, which is withheld by Schreiber.

The narrator reports events in Berlin from June 1928. Franz now consumes apolitical newspapers, Herbert and Eva take over his maintenance. However, he goes back to Berlin pubs, gets to know Emmi and even plans to stand on his own two feet. He tells the curious Meck about a shootout with police officers. He comes to stolen goods through Willi. Biberkopf changes his clothes and adopts a new name; he is wearing a summer suit and the iron cross on his chest explains the injury. As Franz Räcker, he succeeds in big business. After Eva Biberkopf worried a girl, Emilie Parsunke, who prefers to be called Sonja and is called "Mieze" by Franz, although she is still in love with him, his world seems to be in order. Sonja goes to buy for him. For a short time he politicized again and pleaded against decent work at an event. Eva and Herbert are worried about Franz's dealings; Eva wants a child from Franz, which Sonja approves of. Franz is pushing for Tegel again, he stays away drunk for the night. He reconciles with Sonja again and sleeps once with Eva, his ex-girlfriend, because Sonja doesn't mind. However, Franz did not get over the loss of his arm; he turns to alcohol and refuses any help. He visits Reinhold and learns from his mouth that Cilly is with him. Reinhold pretends to see the wound, and when Biberkopf shows him the stump, he is disgusted with it. Then he mocks him with banal questions and suggests a wrong arm to Biberkopf . When Biberkopf refuses, Reinhold reaches for handkerchiefs and stockings, which he stuffs into his empty sleeve. The humiliated man still has to hear from Reinhold that this cripple cannot stand - Franz is trembling the whole time and is finished. He is ashamed of this humiliation; soon afterwards he goes to see Reinhold again, this time he is strong and self-confident and talks about Sonja. Reinhold is ready to negotiate with him about compensation, but secretly wants to take Sonja away from him.

At the end of the sixth book, the narrator draws a conclusion: Franz has turned backwards. He's now a lude (pimp) and will be a criminal again. He wanted to be decent, but he could not keep this oath; because Lüders cheated on him and Reinhold threw him out of the car. He wants to ask why he lost his arm. After two “maybe” the reader suspects that it will end badly with Franz.

Seventh book

Reinhold murders Biberkopf's friend Mieze in the forest of Bad Freienwalde

It begins with city scenes, an account of the criminal career of an aviator, diary entries of a girl and scenes from the labor court. Franz visits Reinhold, he joins the Pums gang, which accepts him despite initial reluctance. Since Pums is a silent partner in five fur stores, they steal bales of cloth on a Saturday night in September. Biberkopf is paid 200 marks that he wants to give to his girlfriend Mieze. She suspects that her Franz wants to leave her and suddenly bursts into tears. She remembers Eva's request to take care of Franz and then informs Eva, who in turn tells her friend Herbert; Eva is concerned. When Franz and a colleague are searching the area for the possibility of the next break-in, Reinhold visits Mieze, talks about all sorts of things and tells her about his wife swapping with Franz. At Reinhold's insistence, Franz introduces him to his kitty; for this he hides Reinhold in his bed. At the front door he makes Mieze swear that she won't go to bed because he has hidden a surprise for her there. Mieze keeps her promise and tells Franz about a young locksmith who loves and has persecuted her - she wants to be comforted by Franz. Full of jealousy, he beats his girlfriend badly, so that Reinhold has to intervene. In the evening Franz and his injured kitty make up again. On August 29th, Mieze, disguised in a mask, goes to the ball in Rahnsdorf, which the Pums gang regularly attends, and talks to the plumber Matter. Reinhold now makes the decision to take away Biberkopf Mieze. He succeeds in luring her to Bad Freienwalde (Oder) with the help of his criminal colleague Karl “Klempnerkarl” Matter, the fitter of the Pumsbande ; but in the hotel Mieze simply goes to her room and withdraws from Reinhold. The game will repeat itself on Saturday September 1st; Karl withdraws, Reinhold goes for a walk with Mieze in the forest. For a kiss, he should say what Pums actually does. After a wild kiss, Mieze flees, but Reinhold catches up with her. He tells her how Franz lost his arm; he desperately wants Mieze to himself and tries to rape her, but she resists. Then he strangles the twenty-year-old and, with Karl's help, buries her body in the forest. “The trees sway, sway. Anything, anything. (...) Boom boom. "- In the preamble to the eighth book, the meaning of the murder is paraphrased as follows:" Franz Biberkopf received the hammer blow (...). "

[There is an error in the chronology in the novel: the date of the murder does not match the date of the break-in.]

Eighth book

Biberkopf is not particularly worried about Mieze's absence at first (on September 2nd and 3rd), since he assumes that she has gone away with a genteel gentleman. Eva is pregnant; she suspects Kitty is dead. Herbert doesn't know what to do - Matter will be back in Berlin at the end of September. The narrator describes impressions of Berlin and quotes verses from the book Kohelet about the dreary situation of man .

The members of the Pums Gang begin to quarrel; because they feel outwitted by their fence Pums. After the break-in in a bandage factory fails, they blame Klempnerkarl, who gets angry about Reinhold. Karl, disappointed in his former partners, forms his own gang; after a successful first break-in, he is caught at the second - presumably he was betrayed by Reinhold. He decides to punish Reinhold and tells a judge about Mieze's murder. After a long search - the corpse had been buried elsewhere - it is dug up; the police begin to investigate Reinhold, who is also dragging Franz Biberkopf into the matter. The narrator puts Franz in parallel to Job that he is threatened by the great whore Babylon. Franz finds shelter with friends.

Eva learns of Mieze's murder from the newspaper and informs Franz about this in a dissolute manner; Franz and Reinhold are wanted as suspects. Franz understands Mieze's murder as Reinhold's revenge; he wants to punish Reinhold. Herbert is also hunting Reinhold; Franz is finished. In November he looks for Reinhold everywhere in vain; he sets fire to his house as a warning. Two angels walk next to Franz and temporarily protect him so that the police do not recognize him. Biberkopf visits the pubs on Alexanderplatz again and gets caught in a raid there ; he is approached by a police officer, draws a gun and shoots. Franz, who had long evaded the reporting obligation and is considered a suspect in the Emilie Parsunke case, is arrested. He is identified at police headquarters as the one wanted for murder.

Ninth book

Reinhold has already been arrested: he saw himself on wanted posters and, in order to camouflage himself, attacked a lady with the papers of the Polish pickpocket Moroskiewicz; so he hoped to avoid being wanted. Reinhold meets the Pole Dluga in the mat weaving mill in the penitentiary. Reinhold's disguise threatens to attract attention through Dluga's acquaintance with the real Moroskiewicz. In fact, the Pole begins to blackmail the fake Moroskiewicz. Reinhold beats Dluga, whereupon he has to spend his detention in a solitary cell . After spending a few weeks alone, Mieze's killer makes the crucial mistake. He sleeps with a young inmate who, after being released, brags about his knowledge of Reinhold's murder in front of an unemployed man. The unemployed, Konrad, whistles on Reinhold to get the 1000 Mark reward; Reinhold is relocated to Berlin. Franz Biberkopf goes nuts and is taken to the Buch insane asylum , half starved ; he is forcibly fed artificially. He resists it; the young doctors analyze him and give him electric shocks. He hears the storm spirits; the old doctors give up, parts of his soul sneak away.

Death has begun its song; Franz hears him sing, death waves his shining ax. He accuses Franz Biberkopf of not opening his eyes in life and not listening to death. The important figures of his life appear before Franz; Reinhold appears to him as a devil, with whom he should not have fought. Ida also appears to him. Franz weeps about himself, what he has done and how he has been. Kitty appears too. Franz has regretted his mistakes and dies.

Now the first days of the new person Franz Biberkopf are told. The whore Babylon lost the battle with death. Schupos and doctors interviewed the sick person who was Franz; he was innocent or not sane, he will be released from the book. The narrator gives it the name Franz Karl Biberkopf to distinguish it from the old Franz Biberkopf. He goes to Eva, who is separated from Herbert and has lost her child; together they go to Mieze's grave. You also take part in the trial against Reinhold and Matter: Reinhold is sentenced to ten years in prison for manslaughter in affect. After the trial, Biberkopf took a job as an assistant porter in a factory.

At the end, the narrator reflects on Franz's life: "Be awake, be awake, you are not alone."

“It goes into freedom, into freedom, the old world must fall, wake up, the morning air. And taking steps and right and left and right and left, marching, marching, we go to war, a hundred minstrels are going with us, they drum and whistle, whistle and whistle, one is straight, one is crooked, one stops, the other falls over, one runs on, the other lies mute, widebumm widebumm. "

shape

construction

The novel consists of nine books, which are in turn divided into individual stories, which are announced by headline- like chapter headings such as "With the 41 into the city", "Still not there" and "Instruction through the example of Zannowich". The actual plot of the novel is preceded by a prologue, in which the release from prison and the subsequent cure for violence are reported, which Franz Biberkopf will leave behind on Alexanderplatz “very changed, tattered, but bent into shape”. In the epilogue, Franz Karl watches the soldiers march. The time told is about eighteen months. The narrative perspective is decidedly modern, as it says goodbye to the authorial narrator without giving up the position of commentator and observer. Here the narrator resorts to the banter . The individual prologues represent an announcement of the subsequent events, whereby Döblin also prevents a narrative based solely on tension.

First Book
Here in the beginning Franz Biberkopf leaves the Tegel prison,
into which a previous meaningless life led him.
He finds it difficult to regain a foothold in Berlin,
but in the end he succeeds
in doing what he is happy about, and he now swears to be decent.

The story of the anti-hero Biberkopf is not only announced by the narrator, but also addresses the reader himself. The assembly technique lets the action merge into an abundance of voices. In addition, the novel is characterized by the narrative technique of the stream of consciousness , inner monologues and experienced speech .

Antichronological and simultaneous narration

The narrator dispenses with a linear narration of the plot. For example, Biberkopf's expulsion from a pub is mentioned right at the beginning: “In the evening, Franz is really kicked out at Henschke's. He taps at 9 on his own, looks at the bird, it already has its head under its wing, sits in the corner on the pole, […]. ”In the course of the day, a quarrel between Biberkopf and political opponents is told that leads to that Franz Biberkopf has to leave the pub. "He's out in the cold."

The simultaneous narration, narration and narration run simultaneously here, allowing the reader to participate directly in the action. Although the individual actions are written down one after the other, he recognizes a unity: “Reinhold secretly put his hand on the door handle close to Franz. You rush into a wide avenue. Franz looks backwards. He is suddenly grabbed by the chest and dragged forward. He wants to get up, he hits Reinhold's face. ”Furthermore, the collage of the most varied of text fragments reproduces the chaotic city life.

intertextuality

Set pieces from high literature permeate the entire novel. For example, the murder of the Mycenaean king Agamemnon by Klytaimnestra and his cousin Aigisthos , his wife's lover: He groans: “Woe to me, hit!” Outside they ask: “Who is screaming over him?” “Woe to me and again!” The ancient world Beast grabs him, doesn't flinch, she opens her mouth while outside: “I've done it, I knocked a fishing net over and hit him twice, and with two sighs he stretched, and then I sent him a third blow to Hades for ". on the other hand, the comparison is rejected with Orestes, because he is otherwise not pursued as the avenger of parricide of Furies and has no guilt. By juxtaposing mythological text and the subsequent sarcastic classification of the narrator, the limits of an ideal personality concept based on bourgeois ideas and actual individuation are shown. The snake had rustled from the tree. You shall be cursed with all cattle, you shall crawl on your belly, eat dust all your life. , as well as other biblical allusions are contained in the novel. The Intertext concretely signals Biberkopf's task of wanting to hold on to his resolution, as the parallelization of the expulsion from paradise to his complacent decision charges the character's further development with meaning. Döblin therefore consciously uses a common means of trivial literature, but ironizes this through the targeted use of highly literary texts. There are also numerous paraphrases of those works in the novel. Lina Przyballa approaches Franz in a bar. Their unauthorized advance is compared with that of the Prince of Homburg . "Well, oh immortality you are completely mine, dear, what a splendor is spreading, Heil, Heil, the Prince of Homburg, the victor in the Battle of Fehrbellin, Heil!"

The Prince of Homburg: Well, oh immortality, you are all mine!
You
shine through the blindfold of my eyes, With the shine of the thousandfold sun! (10th appearance)

Kottwitz: Heil, Heil to the Prince of Homburg!
The officers: Heil! Salvation! Salvation!
All: The victor in the Battle of Fehrbellin! (11th appearance)

The fictional character of the story is revealed to the reader beyond the use of literary cues. Nachum's ball parable, for example, sums up the Biberkopf fable, while the author consciously invokes his character: “I didn't call him here to play, but to experience his difficult, true and illuminating existence”. Aestheticism, on the other hand, is devalued with poetological intent when a proletarian figure of all people reviews the novel Lust by Gabriele D'Annunzio from a petty bourgeois perspective, but can authentically testify to the romance of the novel because of its origin. Literary genres like the dime novel and porn fiction are mocked by the montage.

Assembly

Walter Benjamin rated the montage as a style-defining element of the novel: “Montage blows up the novel, blows it up in both structure and style, and opens up new, very epic possibilities. It is the Bible verses, statistics, and popular texts, by virtue of which Döblin gives authority to the epic process. They correspond to the formulaic verses of the old epic. ”In fact, Döblin assembled a wide variety of texts in his novel, these range from advertisements, news, advertising texts, practice signs to articles from non-fiction books, hit texts and songs to literature. When Biberkopf enters Berlin in the second book, there are even pictograms . Nevertheless, the montage differs considerably from the simple insertion of texts in order to increase the authenticity or illustration of the story. Döblin's montage is linked to motifs, thus serving the structure of the novel. With the help of montage, the big city is poeticized. “This city is indifferent to the personal fate of the individual. In its pure factuality, in its circumstances and processes, it leads its own existence and also claims its own epic weight. "

According to Gabriele Sander, the assembled material can be categorized according to its origin and the type of takeover. The following sources could be reconstructed from Döblin's comments in the manuscript alone:

• Newspapers

Berliner Zeitung, Berliner Tageblatt, Berliner Morgenpost, Welt am Montag, Berliner Illustrierte, Die Woche, Green Post, Der Friedensbote, Die Funk-Stunden, Rote Fahne, Vorwärts, Black Flag, Völkischer Beobachter, Berliner Arbeiterzeitung, Der Arbeitslose, Pfaffenspiegel and Der Atheist.

• Periodicals

The friendship, Figaro, the marriage, the ideal marriage, the celibate and the married couple and womanly love.

Leitmotif

Recurring motifs include individual verses such as "Clap your hands, clap your little feet, trap, trap [...]" from the children's song Brother Come dance with me. Song quotes, the verses of the reaper's song : “There is a reaper whose name is death, he has power from the great God. Today he sharpens the knife, it cuts much better, soon he will cut it, we must suffer. ”And numerous biblical quotations, such as the first verse“ Every thing has its time ”from the third chapter of the book of Kohelet . According to Alexander Honold, these are not leitmotifs, insofar as they serve neither to recognize figures nor to represent characters: “They are not accompanying aesthetic signals which, as reading aids, comment on and simplify the actual action. No, the repetitions are part of the action itself, they reflect back on the characters in the novel, are suffered by themselves or even caused. "

Narrative attitude

The narrator alternates between a factual form of reporting (battle scene), an omniscient narrator (prologue) with an ironically broken pedagogical gesture (chapter introductions), a personal narrator (falling from the driving getaway car) and a commenting narrator with a decidedly ambivalent attitude towards the protagonists. The individual voices can evoke an atmosphere themselves as a chorus of voices (Der Rosenthaler Platz is talking) or, in the form of the narrator in first-person form, express their attitude towards the development of the character Biberkopf. The attitude of the commenting narrator fluctuates between compassion, helpfulness and concern on the one hand, warning predictions, cool self-affirmation, scorn and sarcasm on the other. Biberkopf is conveyed to the reader with the help of the experienced speech, the stream of consciousness and the montage. As a commenting and punishing authority, death also has its own voice.

language

The novel is characterized by multiple languages, language levels, slang and dialects . Above all, “the language of the common people and crooks, the wise Jews and the irritated doctors, the official ordinances and statistical reports, the newspapers and advertisements, the political parties and movements, the Bible and the banter, the classical poetry and of the militaristic songs ”. For example, the two Jews Nachum and Eliser argue in Yiddish . “Look at him, he's a man for the world, he won't trade twenty years with the farmers like me, he is twenty years ahead of his father. , or […], thinks of a horse, a dog, a songbird […] ”. The protagonist Franz Biberkopf himself as well as the other characters are from Berlin , and due to their affiliation to the lower class, the penumbra and the pimp milieu, the language of the characters is interspersed with Red Welsch .

“Book printing, the printing type, to put it calmly, has made literature and all of us mute and has certainly damaged language as a result, living language has penetrated written language inadequately, and so the art of printing apparently had it with us anemia and desiccation of the language in the wake, ”Döblin clarified in his radio essay Literature and Radio from 1929. In fact, like the formula, the pictograms continue the narrative in the medium of the image. The limits of the written language are also demonstrated in the puns and nonsense.

Sarcasm and irony

A basic principle of the novel lies in its grotesque, sarcastic language, which turns again and again and increasingly against the hero. For example, Ida's killing is mediated by physical formulas and nothing less than a whipped cream is the instrument of the murder. At the same time, her death is described meticulously and mechanically without great empathy. Many characters tend to be sarcastic, so a shouter converts the first two verses of the hymn Heil dir in the wreath to "Heil dir im wreath, potatoes with herring tail". Furthermore, the narrative attitude is consistently sarcastic or ironic.

Puns, jokes and puns

Last but not least, the novel contains many puns as well as puns and jokes.

• The first Newton's (Nyuten's) law, which reads: Every body remains in a state of rest as long as no force causes it to change its state (refers to Ida's ribs).
• Kikeriki. There are many varieties of chickens. But if I am honestly asked which one I love most, I answer freely and frankly: roast chickens.
• Let's spread, dear brothers and sisters.
• Tell me oui, my child, that's French, tell me yes, well and also in Chinese, as you like, it doesn't matter, love is international.

interpretation

The figures

Almost all characters are outsiders of civil society, whether they are convicted criminals, criminals, prostitutes, fences, pimps, behavioral disorders, homosexuals, disabled people or Jews and communists.

Franz Biberkopf

Franz Biberkopf, after his purification Franz Karl Biberkopf, is a former cement and transport worker. After killing his girlfriend Ida, he was sentenced to four years in prison, which he served in Tegel. Biberkopf is in his early 30s and taller than average, has blond hair and protruding ears. Its strength does not decrease even with the later amputation of the arm. At times he weighs almost two hundred pounds and is a member of an athletes' club. He also has protruding eyeballs. In the meantime, he has the cover names Franz Räcker and Mr. Klemens. Again and again, Franz is considered good-natured, loyal, peaceful and naive. On the other hand, he is grouchy and often behaves roughly towards women, so after his release from prison he visits Ida's sister Minna and forces her to have sexual intercourse or lets his girlfriend Cilly clean the boots that were a gift from Reinhold in order to win Franz over to the girl trafficking. He also seems to be apolitical, but Biberkopf can easily be misused for political propaganda and, as a salesman, advertises National Socialist propaganda with his Aryan appearance . Towards Reinhold, however, his naivety increases to blind devotion. One trait that is particularly noticeable is the loyalty that Franz shows to his friends, for example he does not denounce the accomplices. Even in the foreword, however, there is talk of a negative development of Biberkopf, who is described as haughty and clueless, cheeky, cowardly and full of weakness. He likes to show off in front of his cronies, but at the same time he is afraid that they might mock him if something unpleasant happens to him. His biggest problem is a recurring indolence . A propensity for alcohol and his complicated relationships with women bring him to prison and the insane asylum.

According to Michael Baum, Franz Biberkopf is "more like a puppet than a hero in a novel". because the figure does not follow everyday needs, nor is its appearance in different places individually motivated. Since a psychological character drawing takes a back seat to individual actions, Baum further formulates: "The Biberkopf puppet corresponds to the sum of the events in which it took part". This gives the Biberkopf figure, despite its remote origin and place of action; As a lumpen proletarian, a criminal as well as a member of a criminal milieu, he makes identification more difficult, the interest of the reader. Wilhelm Michel sees in the novel a "little man's fist, a Don Quixote on Berlin soil". In fact, the relationship between Goethe's Faust and Mephisto serves as a foil for the dependency relationship between Biberkopf and Reinhold.

Reinhold

At the beginning, Reinhold made a sickly impression on Franz, he had a tall, yellowish face and strong horizontal wrinkles on his forehead. In addition, he stutters and drinks only thin coffee instead of alcohol. Reinhold is hypersexual, so he begs Biberkopf that he should take off the women who are tired of him, which Franz does too. After Franz tried to stop the girl trafficking by not letting any other women get to Reinhold from the outset, Reinhold saw it as a breach of trust. For Reinhold, Franz alone is a colossal fool . His behavior towards Franz is marked by sadism, he wants to seduce Sonja in order to humiliate Franz. Unlike Franz, he denounces his partners, for example two of them are arrested during a later break-in. He later kills Mieze after she refuses to have sex with him. It is not only his slim appearance that sets him apart from Franz, but also his cunning, so the stuttering was just a cover, because he gives the command in the getaway car. He is a skilled schemer.

According to Klaus Schröter, Reinhold resembles the figure Mephisto, who combines sophistication and brutality in his character. According to Barbara Becker-Cantarino, the connection between violence and sexuality in Reinhold is a demonstration of masculinity. Kirstin Breitenfellner points out that the character drawings are based on the characteristics of a criminal established by Cesare Lombroso . A non-violent love affair is impossible for him, but the question put before the court at the end, whether his sadism is based on his sexuality, remains unanswered. Biberkopf finds the criminal type embodied by Reinhold attractive, not least because both men share the gesture of conquest. Reinhold despises Biberkopf because of his handicap and wants to punish him: “He sits on the back. You have to crack his bones. The eene arm is not enough for that. ”Despite numerous interpretations, the homoerotic relationship between the two men cannot be determined in research. In prison he had sexual intercourse with a fellow inmate, which suggests bisexuality.

Puss

Sonja, actually Emilie Parsunke, is passed on to Franz Biberkopf from Eva, who is actually also called Emilie. She is still a minor and becomes Franz's girlfriend. The look reminds him of a schoolgirl, and Franz christened her Miezeken because he cannot accept names of others and has not yet had a Marie among his friends. Actually she is only second choice, but Franz later becomes fond of her. Sonja is servile towards Eva. When Eva tells her that she wants Franz to have a child, Mieze also wants to submit to her sexually. Sonja has many admirers who regularly send her letters and a regular patron. Just when Franz wants to show off with Sonja and Reinhold hides in bed to secretly see Sonja, she confesses that she fell in love with a locksmith. This leads to Franz beating her up, and only Reinhold's interference can prevent life-threatening injuries or even her death. Nevertheless, she returns to Franz. The name is an allusion to Sofja Semjonovna , the prostitute in Fyodor Michailowitsch Dostojewski's novel Schuld und Atonement , who is the protagonist Raskolnikov's lover and who sacrifices herself for her alcoholic father and his children from his second marriage.

Eve

Eva is a former friend of Franz Biberkopf, on whose commitment Franz depends. She continues to have sex with Franz and he also impregnates her. Franz lives with Eva and Herbert after his hospital stay, but the relationship breaks up after Mieze's death at the latest. She encourages Franz to claim damages in vain. Her partner Herbert Wischow is a pimp and is also one of Biberkopf's best and honest friends.

Pums and the gang of thieves

Pums pretends to be a fruit dealer, but makes his living as a fence. His people include Reinhold, Karl Matter, Emil and later Franz as well as Waldemar Heller and Franz. Gottlieb Meck, another friend of Biberkopf, trades in Pums fabrics. When Biberkopf meets him for the first time in the presence of Meck, he notices a stocky gentleman of advanced age. He has a "fat, crab-red face" and is mistaken for a cattle dealer by Biberkopf because of his linen coat and boots. The criminal has apparently legalized his assets by participating in fur shops and ironing rooms. Pums is a strict leader. He independently distributes the profit from the stolen goods to his people. He is married. His wife also ignores the interests of the thieves, so a message from Biberkopf ends up in the trash can. According to Ulrike Scholvin, the gang of thieves was built up like a “small capitalist business”. The column does not operate outside of the Berlin criminal milieu, so the members speak of the fact that Biberkopf's injury was a "talk in the club" and that money should be collected for him. The gang consists of different individuals with their own employment histories. Heller is a failed businessman with no work intentions who let his mother put up with him for a long time. He attaches great importance to his appearance. He goes about his job as a thief without hesitation. Emil, who has fought publicly with a gang member who is also called Franz, is lazy. Matter, a plumber by profession, works for Pums as a welder. He explains his criminal activity by a failed patent, which was withheld from him by the company. He uses the profits made from the thieving tours to develop a new model. A hand injury sustained during a break-in attempt and the low level of solidarity among his cronies led Pums to turn away.

Otto Lüders

Otto Lüders, Franz Biberkopf's colleague and apparently the only connection outside the penumbra, sells shoelaces together with Franz. He is Lina's uncle and has been unemployed for two years. He later turns out to be a widow's blackmailer.

The two Jews

The first Jew wears a full red beard; this and his clothes (long coat and black velor hat) allow him to be recognized in public as a Jew. This red one , Nachum, also invites the helpless Franz Biberkopf to a rabbi's apartment, where he immediately tells him the story of a certain Stefan Zannowich . Thereupon a brown , Eliser, tells the story to the end, whereby the luck of the once successful Zannowich is reversed.

Motifs

Tale of paradise

The story of paradise experiences several variations in the novel. In the second book the short retelling of the paradisiacal existence before the fall of man follows . “Once upon a time, two people lived in paradise, Adam and Eve. They were created by the Lord, who also made animals and plants and heaven and earth [...], that was a single joy all day in paradise. ”Analogously, Franz Biberkopf adheres to an orderly, thus paradisiacal life, which is maintained through the employment Lüders should be secured. After Franz Biberkopf had a falling out with former friends in a bar, he left the bar. Here the motif appears again. However, his naivety and talkativeness is his undoing, he has allowed himself to be seduced: “There was a rustling in a tree. A snake, snake, snake stuck out its head, a snake lived in paradise, and it was more cunning than all the animals in the field, and began to speak, to speak to Adam and Eve. ”Lüders exploits Biberkopf's talkativeness and attacks the widow . “His stupidity, boastfulness and carelessness brought him down. This fall into sin calls for further consequences. "Franz Biberkopf's expulsion from paradise took place long ago:" You should be cursed with all your cattle, you should crawl on your stomach. [...] You should give birth with pain, Eva. Adam, the earth shall be cursed for your sake. "

Job

Satan pours the plagues on Job (painting by William Blake )

Franz Biberkopf's career is based on the Old Testament figure of Job . Unlike Job, a godly and morally upright man, the proletarian Biberkopf is a convicted manslayer. Nevertheless, like the biblical Job, Biberkopf is tested, losses are recorded, and the path to knowledge is not free from suffering. Both also assume a world that is benevolent towards them. Far more important is their fixation on their own ego, whereby they resist all knowledge and ultimately only increase their suffering. In the fourth book, under the chapter "Conversation with Job, it's up to you, Job, you don't want", Biberkopf's path in life is anticipated, like Job, Biberkopf must first lose everything until he is cured in the Buch insane asylum.

The death

Death has accompanied Biberkopf since his release. Unlike the distant narrator, he appeals: “Franz, you don't want to hide, you've been hiding for four years, have courage, look around you, hiding will come to an end for once.” Franz Biberkopf saw through death, nevertheless if he turns to him again and again, he reminds the ignorant of the fate of the biblical Job: "How much did Job, the man from the land of Uz, suffer until he learned everything, until nothing could fall on him." In the ninth book he appears Death finally himself, he reveals himself to Biberkopf: "It is time for me to appear at your place, because the seeds are already flying out of the window and you are shaking out your sheets as if you are no longer lying down."

The whore of Babylon

“The great whore, the whore Babylon, sitting by the water. And you see a woman sitting on a scarlet animal. The woman is full of names of blasphemy, and has seven heads and ten horns. It is clothed with purple and scarlet and covered with gold and precious stones and pearls and has a golden goblet in its hand. And on her forehead is a name, a secret: the great Babylon, the mother of all horrors on earth. "

Although Franz was pushed out of the moving getaway car, he continues to succumb to the lure of the big city. The whore Babylon follows Biberkopf, seems to accompany his decline. When the narrator realizes that Biberkopf has become a fence, she pushes forward. She is also happy about Biberkopf's painful memories when he thinks about his injury.

The slaughterhouse as a metaphor of violence

Originally, the slaughterhouse was a symbolic criticism of the big city. Similar to the animals in the slaughterhouse, Biberkopf is driven through the violent city. Biberkopf's failure in terms of its mechanics is tantamount to killing those animals. In addition, the slaughterhouse motif is part of the metaphor of violence. Already in the prologue there is talk of “fight”, “pushes and hits”, “torpedoed”, “brought down”. Franz Biberkopf himself is beaten three times. First he experiences the brutality of his fellow men, Otto Lüders abuses Biberkopf's naivete. Biberkopf later loses his arm after his own people pushed him out of a moving car. The third blow is the loss of his girlfriend Kitty. Like the metaphor of paradise, the slaughterhouse represents the possibilities of human existence.

Epoch assignment

When Berlin Alexanderplatz appeared in 1929, numerous poets had long since distanced themselves from Expressionism and were following a cool, objective and documentary style that was to become characteristic of the New Objectivity . Consequently, Johannes Roskothen points out that stylistic features of Expressionism, such as a personified nature and the demonization and mystification of the city, speak against a clear assignment to the New Objectivity, and that the novel is unprecedented in German literature. Due to the divergence between temporal classification and stylistic features, a classification within the literature of the Weimar Republic is initially satisfactory.

genre

According to Alan Bance and Klaus Hofmann, Döblin was "an author of the mixed genre, evidently in his modernist novel Berlin Alexanderplatz " Sabine Schneider attributes this to Döblin's attempt to adapt the novel to modern times by renewing epic narration.

Bildungsroman

According to Walter Benjamin, Berlin Alexanderplatz is the "last, most advanced stage of the old bourgeois educational novel". While the development of a successful personality maturation is exemplified by a character in the classic Bildungsroman, Biberkopf is only recognizable as an archetype of a modern individual who does not have a fixed character and consequently cannot aim for further development. On the other hand, Biberkopf's desire to remain decent after his release from prison is a serious goal of personality development. According to Wilhelm Vosskamp, the dependence of the character Biberkopf on the collaged city, like his claim to "petty-bourgeois decency", can be classified as an anti-educational novel. Helmuth Kiesel adds that the cathartic healing of the figure through the delusion cannot be brought into harmony with maturation. Jürgen Jacobs and Markus Krause identify a "loose relationship between Döblin's 'Berlin Alexanderplatz' and the tradition of the educational novel", because although the forcibly induced new birth stands in contrast to the further development, ultimately a change in character of the character at the end of the novel cannot be denied.

Military novel

The characters are mainly recruited from the Lumpenproletariat, which is why their living space, including pubs, the brothel, the streets of Berlin, the prison and their criminal and anti-bourgeois lifestyle are described in detail. However, the novel can neither be attributed to the military novel of Zola imprint nor to socialist provenance. The metaphysical exaggeration, which places the departure of a former prisoner in relation to the biblical Job, the appearance of mythological figures such as those of death and the whore Babylon and the showing of the creatures in the form of a rag proletarian do not allow a reduction to realism. In contrast to the melodrama in Zola's naturalistic novels, the character drawing of the manslaughter and the ambivalent narrative attitude of the narrator, who does not shrink from biting ridicule, because he sees in Biberkopf an accomplice and not just a victim of external circumstances. Walter Muschg and Gabriele Sander recognize a further objection to the naturalistic milieu novel in the author's didactic intent. The preference of a lumpenproletarian - after Karl Marx a non-revolutionary group as opposed to the industrial proletariat - as the hero of an epic work sparked in part the left-wing extremist criticism of Döblin.

Social novel

Wolfgang Jeske sees the novel as an example of the continuation of the contemporary novel in the 20th century. The socio-political constellation of the Weimar Republic is expressed in the novel in terms of the history of mentality (striving for wholeness, the question of successful individuation in a fragmenting society) as well as politically (actionism and extremism). Biberkopf is a World War I veteran and suffers from war trauma. After his release from prison, he wants to withdraw to his own existence. His political indifference is reflected in the distribution of right-wing extremist propaganda such as participation in left-wing extremist meetings without being politicized. The final chapter finally makes the political implication clear: "The human being is given reason, the oxen instead form a guild". According to Roskothen, the final scene with Biberkopf on Alexanderplatz for readers after the end of World War II heralds the impending threat at the end of the Weimar Republic.

Detective novel

In the genre of the detective novel, the focus of the narrative is often the solving of a crime. The selected milieu has resulted in an accumulation of numerous crime stories, be it the murder of Ida, Biberkop's rape of Ida's sister Minna, the killing of Mieze by Reinhold and Biberkopf's attempt at revenge such as the serious thefts of Pum's gang, etc. Daniel de Vin pleads for an interpretation of the novel as a "detective novel, if not in the conventional sense"

Romance novel

In his poetological text Comments on the Novel , Döblin criticized the reduction of the plot to a love conflict in the contemporary novel. In retrospect, this can be seen as an attempt to do justice to the subject of love itself in literary terms. In the novel it is dealt with on at least three levels. First in the representation of the erotic relationships within different figure constellations, for example in Franz Biberkopf's numerous sexual and non-sexual relationships with women. Second, in the unconditional display of human sexuality, regardless of whether it takes place consensually, with violence or through financial consideration, as well as the most varied of relationships. Most recently in the montage, in which the love literature of the past is taken up. The Germanist Johannes Roskothen spoke of the love story between Franz and Mieze as "one of the most beautiful love stories in world literature" and the literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki took the similar view that it was "one of the most beautiful German love stories of the twentieth century".

Salvation history

Walter Muschg called the novel a "religious world theater" and the French Germanist Robert Minder, like Uwe Schweikert later, called it a "religious didactic poem", while Albrecht Schöne spoke more cautiously of "the signatures not of a psychological but of a salvation-historical novel". Gabriele Sander sees the Christian history of salvation only as a foil. Sabine Schneider notes that Biberkopf confronts a "life-philosophically influenced death as the master of life" and not a typical figure in Christian salvation history.

“Döblin has placed the main characters from Berlin Alexanderplatz in clear typological references, and this not only incidentally through occasional references to biblical examples, but through a concise visualization of important figures from the history of salvation and the naming of important fictional characters in the course of the Biberkopf storyline the context of salvation history. "

- Helmuth Kiesel : History of literary modernity

Big city novel

The novel went down in German-language literature as the big city novel. Hans Würzner notes that around the year Berlin Alexanderplatz was published, the genre designation did not even exist and that it was based on Zeitroman . The first genre definition was undertaken in 1931 by Gerhard Hermann, who enumerated a metropolitan attitude to life, the representation of the metropolis as a landscape and the occurrence of metropolitan people as characteristics of a metropolitan troma and named Döblin's novel as the youngest representative. Würzner advocates the thesis that focusing on the Biberkopf fable marginalizes the importance of the city and promotes classification as a description of the milieu.

reception

The novel sold 20,000 copies in the first two months, and in 1932 it reached 50,000 copies. The 50th edition was sold by 1933. While the literary innovation of the collage and the coping with the big city were recognized as the subject of modern literature, politically oriented critics particularly stumbled upon Döblin's novel. Walter Benjamin recognized it as "the extreme, dizzying, last, most advanced stage of the old bourgeois educational novel" as well as an "Éducation sentimentale". Conservative critics, in particular, did not like the choice of material, so that they did not shy away from abuse themselves. In spite of all of this, the fiercest critics of the novel were neither left intellectuals nor right-wing cultural revolutionaries, but Die Linkskurve , a party newspaper of the KPD, and the Bund proletarian-revolutionary writers , who, according to Helmuth Kiesel in the novel, organized a “reactionary and counter-revolutionary attack on the thesis of the Class struggle ”. This literary-political approach was intended to be a prelude to the attack on all left-wing bourgeois intellectuals on the part of the extreme left.

Apart from the Roman Wallenstein , Döblin's books were banned and burned during the Nazi era . It was not until 1947 that Schleber Verlag published the novel in West Germany, and in 1955 the book was also published within the GDR. The popularity of the novel led to an equation of novel and author. When Döblin is mentioned, Berlin Alexanderplatz is mentioned first , although the author had already published several novels before his worldwide success. The writer himself commented on the monstrous effect the novel had on the rest of his work: “If you knew my name, you added Berlin Alexanderplatz. But my path was far from over. "

As a modern classic, Berlin Alexanderplatz became the benchmark for subsequent large-city novels in the German language, as well as a style-defining feature for later writers. The Germanist Volker Klotz explained the literary significance of the novel: "Berlin Alexanderplatz is the first and to this day the only significant novel in German that unconditionally makes the contemporary metropolis its cause."

Berlin Alexanderplatz was included in the ZEIT library of 100 books . The literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki included the novel in his canon in 2002 . The English newspaper The Guardian listed the novel among the 100 greatest fictional works.

Film, theater production and audio book

The novel was first made into a film by Piel Jutzi in 1931 under the title Berlin - Alexanderplatz . Heinrich George played Franz Biberkopf. Other famous actors were: Bernhard Minetti , Albert Florath , Hans Deppe and Käthe Haack . In 1979/1980 Rainer Werner Fassbinder shot a television series based on the Döblin story in 13 episodes and one epilogue (approx. 930 min., See Berlin Alexanderplatz (television adaptation) ). It was first broadcast in 1980. Günter Lamprecht is Franz Biberkopf. A lightened, restored version was shown for the first time at the Berlinale 2007 . The entire film was shown in the Volksbühne on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz , with only three 15-minute breaks. In addition, the Süddeutsche Zeitung published a DVD edition of the restored version.

In 1999 the novel was staged in the Maxim Gorki Theater under the direction of Uwe Eric Laufenberg as a four-hour performance with Ben Becker as Franz Biberkopf. Six years later, Frank Castorf put the novel on stage at the Palast der Republik and in 2009 Volker Lösch devoted himself to the novel again at the Schaubühne. In 2016 Sebastian Hartmann staged the narrative at the Deutsches Theater as a passion story in the sense of Döblin's self-interpretation after 1945. Two years later, a performance based on the stage version by Andreas Nathusius took place at the Lübeck Theater . Like Hartmann, Nathusius complied with the construction principle of the novel, while the former pursued chains of association, Nathusius opted for the collage.

The first radio play was worked out with the collaboration of Alfred Döblin and, like the film, was based on the easy-to-convey Biberkopf fable. The story of Franz Biberkopf was only broadcast after 1945. Hannes Messemer read the novel in with a few cuts for the North German Radio. With a playing time of almost twelve hours, it is the longest version. The reduction of the narrative parts to a reader contradicts the polyphony of the text, but the city is not deprived of its role as the most important protagonist. In 2007 the Süddeutsche Rundfunk produced a radio play version. The focus was on the figure constellation and the description of the milieu.

In 2020, Berlin Alexanderplatz was a free film adaptation by director Burhan Qurbani , who relocated the plot to contemporary Berlin.

literature

Text output

• Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf . S. Fischer, Berlin 1929 (first edition).
• Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf. dtv, Munich 1972, ISBN 3-423-00295-6 .
• Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf. Walter Verlag, Zurich 1996, ISBN 3-530-16711-8 .
• Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-10-015550-5 .
• Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf . Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-596-90458-7 .
• Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf . Bibliographisches Institut, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-411-16045-7 .

Audio books and radio plays

• The story of Franz Biberkopf. 78 min., Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft Berlin, 1930. Director: Max Bing . Speaker: Heinrich George , Gerhard Bienert , Ludwig Donath , Hilde Körber , Hans Heinrich von Twardowski a . a. - The broadcast scheduled for September 30, 1930 was canceled at short notice for political reasons. The archived recording was first broadcast on ARD radio at the end of the 1950s.
• The story of Franz Biberkopf. Radio play to Berlin Alexanderplatz , 82 min., Production: SWR / BR radio play and media art / RBB / Patmos publishing house , 2007, ISBN 978-3-491-91244-1 ; Director: Kai Grehn . Performers: Andreas Leupold, Andreas Schmidt, Jule Böwe , Astrid Meyerfeldt , Otto Mellies , Arta Adler, Dieter Mann , Florian Martens , Milan Peschel , Sven Plate , Detlef Bierstedt , Till Hagen , Rolf Zacher , Maria Kwiatkowsky u. a.
• Berlin Alexanderplatz. read by Hannes Messemer . Recording 1967. 10 CDs, Deutsche Grammophon literature.
• Berlin Alexanderplatz. told by Ben Becker , three CDs; 175 min., Patmos Verlagshaus, Düsseldorf 2003, ISBN 3-491-91075-7 .

Secondary literature

• Michael Baum: Contingency and Violence. Semiotic structures and a narrated world in Alfred Döblin's novel “Berlin Alexanderplatz” . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-8260-2419-2 .
• Hans-Peter Bayerdörfer: Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. In: interpretations. Novels of the 20th century . (= Universal Library. No. 8808). Reclam, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-15-008808-9 , pp. 158-194.
• Peter Bekeš: Berlin Alexanderplatz - interpretation . Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-637-88673-5 .
• Ursula Elm: Literature as a view of life - On the historical background of Alfred Döblin's “Berlin Alexanderplatz” . Aisthesis, Bielefeld 1991, ISBN 3-925670-40-8 .
• Sonja Gong: Studies on Alfred Döblin's storytelling using the example of his Berlin novels: “Wadzek's fight with the steam turbine” and “Berlin Alexanderplatz” . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-631-38853-5 .
• Harald Jähner: Narrated, assembled, prompted text. For the construction of the novel “Berlin Alexanderplatz” by Alfred Döblin . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-8204-5276-1 .
• Otto Keller: Döblin's “Berlin Alexanderplatz”. The big city as reflected in its discourses . Lang, Bern 1990, ISBN 3-261-04207-9 .
• Otto Keller: Döblin's assembly novel as an epic of modernity. The structure of the novels The Black Curtain, The Three Jumps of Wang-Lun and Berlin Alexanderplatz . Fink, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7705-1788-1 .
• Volker Klotz: Agon City. Döblin's 'Berlin Alexanderplatz'. In: The narrated city. A subject as a challenge for the novel from Lesage to Döblin. Hanser, Munich 1969, ISBN 3-446-11254-5 .
• Armin Leidinger: Whore Babylon: City Symphony or Attack on the Landscape? Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and the city of Berlin: an approach from a cultural-historical perspective . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8260-4211-9 .
• Matthias Prangel: Materials on Alfred Döblin “Berlin Alexanderplatz” . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1975, ISBN 3-518-06768-0 .
• Gabriele Sander: "factual fantasy". Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf . German Schiller Society, Marbach am Neckar 2007, ISBN 978-3-937384-30-6 .
• Simonetta Sanna: Squaring the circle. City and madness in "Berlin Alexanderplatz" by Alfred Döblin . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-631-37135-7 .
• Christian Schärf: Alfred Döblin's “Berlin Alexanderplatz”. Novel and film on an intermedia poetics of modern literature . Steiner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-515-07955-6 .
• Mira Alexandra Schnoor: The transformation of Franz Biberkopf. Alfred Döblin's “Berlin Alexanderplatz” in a novel, radio play and film. In: Katarina Agathos, Herbert Kapfer (Ed.): Radio play. Authors' talks and portraits. Belleville Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-936298-68-0 , pp. 213-233.
• Mario Slugan: Montage as Perceptual Experience: Berlin Alexanderplatz from Döblin to Fassbinder . Boydell & Brewer, Rochester 2017, ISBN 978-1-64014-005-9 .
• Werner Stauffacher: The Bible as a poetic reference system. To Alfred Döblin's “Berlin Alexanderplatz” . In: Sprachkunst VIII. 1977, pp. 35–40.
• Gabriela Stoicea: Fictions of Legibility: The Human Face and Body in Modern German Novels from Sophie von La Roche to Alfred Döblin . Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2020, ISBN 978-3-8394-4720-8 .
• Wolfram Wessels: The new media and literature. In: (Ed.) Bernhard Weyergraf: Literature of the Weimar Republic 1918–1933 . dtv, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-423-04350-4 .
• Theodore Ziolkowski : Alfred Döblin. Berlin Alexanderplatz. In: Structures of the Modern Novel. German examples and European contexts. List, Munich 1972, ISBN 3-471-61441-9 , pp. 94-126.

Reading aids

• Helmut Bernsmeier: Reading key. Alfred Döblin Berlin Alexanderplatz. Reclam, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-15-015317-4 .
• Bernd Matzkowski: Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. (= King's Explanations and Materials. Volume 393). Bange Verlag, Hollfeld 2013, ISBN 978-3-8044-1793-9 .
• Boris Prem: Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz: content - background - interpretations. Mentor, 2010, ISBN 978-3-580-65805-2 .
• Gabriele Sander: Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. (= RUB. 16009; = explanations and documents ). Reclam, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-016009-X .
• Timotheus Schwake: Just understand German. Alfred Döblin Berlin Alexanderplatz. Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-14-022535-9 .
• Thomas Siepmann: Reading aids. Alfred Döblin Berlin Alexanderplatz. Klett, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-12-922361-4 .

Web links

• Page of the DHM on the novel
• Teaching materials
• Figure lexicon for Berlin Alexanderplatz by Bärbel Schlimbach in the portal Literaturlexikon online
• Info offer for literature lessons
• Döblin's script for the film adaptation
• Berlin Alexanderplatz (1931) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Radio play The story of Franz Biberkopf (1930) on SoundCloud

Individual evidence

1. ^ Sabine Schneider: Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf. In: Sabine Schneider (Ed.): Readings for the 21st century. Classics and bestsellers of German literature from 1900 to today. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3004-4 , p. 49.
2. ^ ^{A b} Helmuth Kiesel : History of literary modernity. Language, Aesthetics, Poetry in the Twentieth Century. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51145-7 , p. 325.
3. ^ Sabine Schneider: Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf. In: Sabine Schneider (Ed.): Readings for the 21st century. Classics and bestsellers of German literature from 1900 to today. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3004-4 , p. 41.
4. ^ Sabine Schneider: Alfred Döblin. Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf. In: Sabine Schneider (Ed.): Readings for the 21st century. Classics and bestsellers of German literature from 1900 to today. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3004-4 , p. 37.
5. ↑ Michael Baum: Contingency and Violence. Semiotic structures and the narrated world in Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-8260-2419-2 , p. 11.
6. ↑ Klaus Müller-Salget: On the origin of Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz. In: Matthias Prangel (Ed.): Materials on Alfred Döblin. Berlin Alexanderplatz . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1975, ISBN 3-518-06768-0 , p. 128.
7. ^ Gabriele Sander: Alfred Döblin and the big city realism. In: Sabine Kyora, Stefan Neuhaus (eds.): Realistic writing in the Weimar Republic . Königshausen, Würzburg 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3390-6 , p. 141.
8. ^ Gabriele Sander: Alfred Döblin and the big city realism. In: Sabine Kyora, Stefan Neuhaus (eds.): Realistic writing in the Weimar Republic . Königshausen, Würzburg 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3390-6 , pp. 142-143.
9. ^ Gabriele Sander: Alfred Döblin and the big city realism. In: Sabine Kyora, Stefan Neuhaus (eds.): Realistic writing in the Weimar Republic . Königshausen, Würzburg 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3390-6 , p. 143.
10. ^ Gabriele Sander: Döblin's Berlin. The Story of Franz Biberkopf. In: Roland Dollinger, Wulf Koepke, Heidi Thomann Tewarson (eds.): A Companion to the Works of Alfred Döblin. Camden House, Rochester 2004, ISBN 1-57113-124-8 , p. 143.
11. ↑ Hans-Peter Bayerdörfer: Ghetto Art? Fine, but 100% real. Alfred Döblin's encounters with Eastern Jewry . In: Gunter Grimm, Hans-Peter Bayerdörfer (Ed.): In the sign of Job. Jewish writers and German literature in the 20th century . Athenäum Verlag, Königsstein im Taunus 1985, pp. 164-165.
12. ↑ Hermann Wiegmann : And again the Thracian smiles. On the history of literary humor. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-631-54727-7 , p. 286.
13. ^ Helmuth Kiesel: History of literary modernity. Language, Aesthetics, Poetry in the Twentieth Century. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51145-7 , p. 325.
14. ↑ Walter Biedermann: The search for the third way. Left-wing bourgeois writers at the end of the Weimar Republic. Heinrich Mann , Alfred Döblin, Erich Kästner (dissertation). Frankfurt am Main 1981, p. 108.
15. ^ Maren Jäger: The Joyce Reception in German-Language Narrative Literature after 1945. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-484-18189-2 , p. 428.
16. ^ Alfred Döblin : Ulysses by James Joyce. In: Wilhelm Füger (ed.): Critical legacy. Documents on the reception of James Joyce in the German-speaking area during the author's lifetime. Amsterdam, Atlanta 2000, ISBN 90-420-0769-9 , p. 212.
17. ↑ Kai Luehrs-Kaiser : "Ulysses" for everyone - forty hours of mess. In: The world . August 1, 2013, accessed on March 11, 2013. The persistence of such claims is shown in the allegation that Ulysses even inspired Döblin to write his novel, although Döblin wrote it as early as 1927.
18. ↑ Joris Duytschaever: Joyce - Dos Passos - Döblin: Influence or Analogy? In: Matthias Prangel (Ed.): Materials on Alfred Döblin. Berlin Alexanderplatz . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1975, ISBN 3-518-06768-0 , p. 149.
19. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Seven Pathfinders: Writers of the Twentieth Century. DVA, Stuttgart / Munich 2002, ISBN 3-421-05514-9 .
20. ^ Friedhelm Marx : Cinema in the novel of the Weimar Republic. In: Wolf Gerhard Schmidt, Thorsten Valk (Hrsg.): Literature intermedial. Paradigm formation between 1918 and 1968 . Gruyter, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-020801-6 , p. 150.
21. ^ Gabriele Sander: Alfred Döblins Berlin Alexanderplatz - a multimedia writing project. In: Wolfgang Lukas (Ed.): Text - Material - Medium. On the relevance of editorial documentation for literary interpretation . Gruyter, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-036325-8 , p. 123.
22. ^ Klaus Müller-Salget: Self-testimonials. In: Matthias Prangel (Ed.): Materials on Alfred Döblin. Berlin Alexanderplatz . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1975, ISBN 3-518-06768-0 , p. 43.
23. ^ Alfred Döblin: My book "Berlin Alexanderplatz". In: Erich Kleinschmidt (Ed.): Writings on life and work . Walter, Freiburg im Breisgau 1986, ISBN 3-530-16640-5 , p. 215.
24. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 9.
25. ^ Helmut Bernsmeier: Reading key. Alfred Döblin Berlin Alexanderplatz . Reclam, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-15-950156-7 , p. 11.
26. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 164.
27. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 519.
28. ^ Hermann Wiegmann: The German literature of the 20th century . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-2972-0 , p. 173.
29. ^ ^{A b} Armin Leidinger: Whore Babylon: City Symphony or Attack on the Landscape? Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and the city of Berlin: an approach from a cultural-historical perspective. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8260-4211-9 , p. 19.
30. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 11.
31. ↑ Jutta Schlich: Fascination and Fascism in Alfred Döblin's "Epic" of Modernism. Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf (1929). In: Matthias Luserke-Jaqui (Hrsg.): German-language novels of classical modernism. Gruyter, 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-018960-5 , p. 281.
32. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 96.
33. ^ ^{A b} Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 105.
34. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 240.
35. ^ Christer Petersen: The postmodern text. Reconstruction of a contemporary aesthetic using the example of Thomas Pynchon , Peter Greenaway and Paul Wühr . Ludwig Verlag, Kiel 2003, ISBN 3-933598-67-2 , pp. 289-290.
36. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, pp. 111-112.
37. ^ ^{A b} Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 148.
38. ^ Gabriele Sander: Alfred Döblins Berlin Alexanderplatz a text made up of texts. In: Marily Martínez-Richter (Ed.): Modernism in the metropolises. Roberto Arlt and Alfred Döblin . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8260-3198-4 , p. 122.
39. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 84.
40. ^ Walter Benjamin : Crisis of the novel. To Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz. In: Collected Writings. Volume III, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-518-28533-5 , p. 232.
41. ^ Peter Sprengel : History of German Literature 1900–1918. From the turn of the century to the end of the First World War . Volume IX. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52178-9 , p. 143.
42. ↑ Peter Bekeš: Alfred Doblin. Berlin Alexanderplatz. In: Klaus-Michael Bogdal and Clemens Kammler (eds.): Oldenbourg interpretations. Volume 74. Oldenbourg 1997, ISBN 3-486-88673-8 , p. 35.
43. ↑ Peter Bekeš: Alfred Doblin. Berlin Alexanderplatz. In: Klaus-Michael Bogdal, Clemens Kammler (Hrsg.): Oldenbourg interpretations. Volume 74. Oldenbourg 1997, ISBN 3-486-88673-8 , p. 58.
44. ^ Gabriele Sander: Alfred Döblins Berlin Alexanderplatz - a multimedia writing project. In: Wolfgang Lukas (Ed.): Text - Material - Medium. On the relevance of editorial documentation for literary interpretation . Gruyter, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-036325-8 , p. 129.
45. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, pp. 51, 106 and 131.
46. ↑ Armin Leidinger: Whore Babylon: City Symphony or Attack on the Landscape? Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and the city of Berlin: an approach from a cultural-historical perspective. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8260-4211-9 , p. 46.
47. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, pp. 207, 208, 257, 273, 307, 393, 401, 508 and 516.
48. ↑ Alexander Honold: The big city as a traumatic memory space. In: Thomas Klinkert, Günter Oesterl (ed.): Catastrophe and Memory Gruyter, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-030755-9 , p. 103.
49. ^ Christer Petersen: The postmodern text. Reconstruction of a contemporary aesthetic using the example of Thomas Pynchon, Peter Greenaway and Paul Wühr. Ludwig Verlag, Kiel 2003, ISBN 3-933598-67-2 , p. 263.
50. ^ Helmuth Kiesel : History of literary modernity. Language, Aesthetics, Poetry in the Twentieth Century. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51145-7 , p. 322.
51. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 23.
52. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 24.
53. ^ Nicolas Pethes: Graphomania and picture writing. Alfred Döblins The two friends and their poisoning as a crime story beyond literature . In: Text and criticism , Sonderband Kriminalfallgeschichten, ed. by Alexander Košenina. Munich 2014, p. 175.
54. ↑ Burkhard Meyer-Sickendiek : What is literary sarcasm? A contribution to German-Jewish modernity. Fink Verlag, Paderborn / Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-7705-4411-0 , pp. 413-483.
55. ^ ^{A b} Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 109.
56. ↑ Michael Baum: Contingency and Violence. Semiotic structures and the narrated world in Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-8260-2419-2 , p. 116.
57. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 149.
58. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 245.
59. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 388.
60. ^ Gabriele Sander: Alfred Döblin "Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf ” . Epilogue to the novel. In: Kindlers Literature Lexicon. P. 527.
61. ↑ Michael Baum: Contingency and Violence. Semiotic structures and the narrated world in Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-8260-2419-2 , p. 209.
62. ↑ Michael Baum: Contingency and Violence. Semiotic structures and the narrated world in Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-8260-2419-2 , p. 210.
63. ↑ Klaus Schröter : Alfred Döblin . Hamburg 1978, p. 106.
64. ^ Barbara Becker-Cantarino: Gender research and German studies. Perspectives from early modern times to modern times . Berlin 2010, p. 124.
65. ↑ Kirstin Breitenfellner: Lavater's shadow. Physiognomy and character in Ganghofer, Fontane and Döblin . Dresden 1999, p. 146.
66. ↑ Kirstin Breitenfellner: Lavater's shadow. Physiognomy and character in Ganghofer, Fontane and Döblin . Dresden 1999, p. 142.
67. ^ Helmuth Kiesel : History of literary modernity. Language, Aesthetics, Poetry in the Twentieth Century. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51145-7 , p. 347.
68. ↑ Ulrike Scholvin: Döblin's metropolises. Remnants and imaginary cities and the travesty of desires . (= Results of women's research. Volume 2). Weinheim / Basel, Beltz 1985, p. 78.
69. ↑ Peter Bekeš: Alfred Doblin. Berlin Alexanderplatz. In: Klaus-Michael Bogdal, Clemens Kammler (Hrsg.): Oldenbourg interpretations. Volume 74. Oldenbourg 1997, ISBN 3-486-88673-8 , p. 74.
70. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 51.
71. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 104.
72. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 122.
73. ↑ Peter Bekeš: Alfred Doblin. Berlin Alexanderplatz. In: Klaus-Michael Bogdal, Clemens Kammler (Hrsg.): Oldenbourg interpretations. Volume 74. Oldenbourg 1997, ISBN 3-486-88673-8 , p. 75.
74. ↑ Peter Bekeš: Alfred Doblin. Berlin Alexanderplatz. In: Klaus-Michael Bogdal, Clemens Kammler (Hrsg.): Oldenbourg interpretations. Volume 78. Oldenbourg 1997, ISBN 3-486-88673-8 , pp. 77-78.
75. ↑ Peter Bekeš: Alfred Doblin. Berlin Alexanderplatz. In: Klaus-Michael Bogdal, Clemens Kammler (Hrsg.): Oldenbourg interpretations. Volume 78. Oldenbourg 1997, ISBN 3-486-88673-8 , p. 75.
76. ↑ Peter Bekeš: Alfred Doblin. Berlin Alexanderplatz. In: Klaus-Michael Bogdal, Clemens Kammler (Hrsg.): Oldenbourg interpretations. Volume 74. Oldenbourg 1997, ISBN 3-486-88673-8 , p. 82.
77. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 18.
78. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 433.
79. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 490.
80. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 269.
81. ↑ Peter Bekeš: Alfred Doblin. Berlin Alexanderplatz. In: Klaus-Michael Bogdal, Clemens Kammler (Hrsg.): Oldenbourg interpretations. Volume 74. Oldenbourg 1997, ISBN 3-486-88673-8 , p. 70.
82. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 288.
83. ^ Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. Novel. Works Volume III. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2008, pp. 331-332.
84. ↑ Armin Leidinger: Whore Babylon: City Symphony or Attack on the Landscape? Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and the city of Berlin: an approach from a cultural-historical perspective. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8260-4211-9 , p. 332.
85. ^ Helmuth Kiesel: History of literary modernity. Language, Aesthetics, Poetry in the Twentieth Century. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51145-7 , p. 338.
86. ↑ Johannes Roskothen: Overrolled. Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz as a modern traffic novel. In: Gerhard Rupp (Ed.): Classics of German literature. Epoch signatures from the Enlightenment to the present. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1999, ISBN 3-8260-1517-7 , p. 217.
87. ^ Gernot Jochheim : The Berlin Alexanderplatz. Ch.links Verlag, Berlin 2006, p. 144.
88. ^ Hermann Wiegmann: The German literature of the 20th century . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-2972-0 , p. 6. Hermann Wiegman lists Döblin's novel in his monograph under The literature of the Weimar Republic 1919–1932 .
89. ^ Alan Bance and Klaus Hofmann: Transcendence and the Historical Novel. A Discussion of November 1918 . In: Steffan Davies, Ernest Schonfield (ed.): Alfred Döblin. Paradigms of Modernism (= Publications of the Institute of Germanic Studies , Volume 95). Gruyter, Berlin / New York, 2009, p. 296.
90. ↑ Sabine Schneider: Deceleration. Epic storytelling in the modern process . In: Gattungs-Wissen: knowledge poetology and literary form , ed. by Michael Bies u. a. Wallstein, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1194-7 , p. 255.
91. ^ Helmuth Kiesel: History of literary modernity. Language, Aesthetics, Poetry in the Twentieth Century . CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51145-7 , p. 343.
92. ^ Jürgen Jacobs and Markus Krause: The German Bildungsroman. History of the genre from the 18th to the 20th century . Fink, Munich 1972, p. 205.
93. ^ Walter Muschg: Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf . In: Manfred Brauneck (Hrsg.): The German novel in the 20th century . CC Buchners Verlag Bamberg 1976, p. 174.
94. ^ Gabriele Sander: Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz . (= RUB. 16009; = explanations and documents). Reclam, Stuttgart 1998, p. 176, ISBN 3-15-016009-X .
95. ^ Wolfgang Jeske: The time and society novel . In: Otto Knörrich (Ed.): Forms of literature in individual representations . Kröner, Stuttgart 1991, p. 448.
96. ↑ Wolfgang Schäffner: The order of the madness. On the poetology of psychiatric knowledge with Alfred Döblin . Fink, Munich 1995, p. 360.
97. ↑ See Döblin's travelogue Reise in Polen : “There is a command and cattle theory for human nature. There are other theories as well. One can also want and think. The law books of all countries are of the same opinion: they make everyone responsible for their actions ”.
98. ↑ Johannes Roskothen: Overrolled. Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz as a modern traffic novel. In: Gerhard Rupp (Ed.): Classics of German literature. Epoch signatures from the Enlightenment to the present. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1999, ISBN 3-8260-1517-7 , pp. 225-226.
99. ^ Daniel de Vin: Berlin Alexanderplatz and the crime in Berlin in the twenties. A preliminary study . In: International Alfred Döblin Colloquia . Marbach am Neckar, 1984 Berlin, p. 143.
100. ↑ Johannes Roskothen: Overrolled. Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz as a modern traffic novel. In: Gerhard Rupp (Ed.): Classics of German literature. Epoch signatures from the Enlightenment to the present. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1999, ISBN 3-8260-1517-7 , p. 217.
101. ^ Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Seven trailblazers. 20th century writer . dtv, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-423-13245-0 .
102. ^ Walter Muschg: Epilogue to the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz , in: Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz. Olten, Freiburg 1964, p. 519.
103. ^ Uwe Schweikert: Alfred Döblin . In: Bernd Lutz, Benedikt Jessing (Hrsg.): Metzler Authors Lexicon . German-speaking poets and writers from the Middle Ages to the present. 3. Edition. Springer-Verlag, Stuttgart 2004. p. 132.
104. ^ Sabine Schneider: Alfred Döblin: Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf. In: Sabine Schneider (Ed.): Readings for the 21st century. Classics and bestsellers of German literature from 1900 to today. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3004-4 , p. 53.
105. ^ Helmuth Kiesel: History of literary modernity. Language, Aesthetics, Poetry in the Twentieth Century. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51145-7 .
106. ↑ Hans. M. Würzner: The big city and the totally flat country. The functionalist significance of the urban novel category at the end of the Weimar Republic . In: Jos Hoogeveen, Hans Würzner (Ed.): Ideology and Literature (Science) (= Amsterdam Publications on Language and Literature , Volume 71). Rodopi Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1986, p. 79.
107. ↑ Hans. M. Würzner: The big city and the totally flat country. The functionalist meaning of the urban novel category at the end of the Weimar Republic . In: Jos Hoogeveen, Hans Würzner (Ed.): Ideology and Literature (Science) (= Amsterdam Publications on Language and Literature , Volume 71). Rodopi Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1986, p. 80.
108. ↑ Hans. M. Würzner: The big city and the totally flat country. The functionalist significance of the urban novel category at the end of the Weimar Republic . In: Jos Hoogeveen, Hans Würzner (Ed.): Ideology and Literature (Science) (= Amsterdam Publications on Language and Literature , Volume 71). Rodopi Amsterdam, Amsterdam 1986, pp. 86-87.
109. ^ Stephan Füssel: Belletristische Verlage. The cultural publishers in the Weimar Republic. In: Historical Commission (Hrsg.): History of the German book trade in the 19th and 20th centuries. Volume 2: Weimar Republic. Part 2. Gruyter 2010, p. 11.
110. ↑ Armin Leidinger: Whore Babylon: City Symphony or Attack on the Landscape? Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and the city of Berlin: an approach from a cultural-historical perspective. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8260-4211-9 , pp. 192–193.
111. ↑ Armin Leidinger: Whore Babylon: City Symphony or Attack on the Landscape? Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and the city of Berlin: an approach from a cultural-historical perspective. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8260-4211-9 , pp. 193-195.
112. ^ ^{A b} Walter Benjamin: Krisis des Romans. To Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz. In: Collected Writings. Volume III, Frankfurt am Main 1972, ISBN 3-518-28533-5 , p. 263.
113. ↑ Armin Leidinger: Whore Babylon: City Symphony or Attack on the Landscape? Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz and the city of Berlin: an approach from a cultural-historical perspective. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8260-4211-9 , p. 197. The critic Emanuel Bin Gorion compared the novel with an overturned garbage can.
114. ^ Helmuth Kiesel: History of literary modernity. Language, Aesthetics, Poetry in the Twentieth Century. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51145-7 , p. 260.
115. ↑ Jutta Schlich: Fascination and Fascism in Alfred Döblin's "Epic" of Modernism. Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf (1929). In: Matthias Luserke-Jaqui (Hrsg.): German-language novels of classical modernism. Gruyter, 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-018960-5 , p. 263.
116. ^ Franke Hamann: Difficult work and difficult life. Wilfried F. Schoeller's biography of Alfred Döblins. In: Frankfurter Hefte. (online at: frankfurter-hefte.de ) (PDF)
117. ↑ Wiebke Porombka: A novel that makes you shudder. Deutschlandfunk , September 11, 2013, accessed on March 12, 2013. The reviewer compares the work of a contemporary author with Berlin Alexanderplatz .
118. ^ Gabriele Sander: Alfred Döblin "Berlin Alexanderplatz. The story of Franz Biberkopf ” . Epilogue to the novel. In: Kindlers Literature Lexicon. P. 528.
119. ↑ Volker Klotz : The narrated city. A subject as a challenge for the novel from Lesage to Döblin . Hanser 1969, p. 372.
120. ↑ booksnews. In: Guardian , May 8, 2002.
121. ↑ Die Zeit wrote in October 1980: “... is not only the longest German television series that has ever existed, and one of the most expensive, it is Fassbinder's greatest and most beautiful, a terrifying and adorable, wild and at the same time extremely disciplined work, and she belongs to the best that has ever been broadcast on German television, produced in German film. ” The horrors of love . In: Die Zeit , No. 42/1980
122. ^ Christian Hörburger: Red pen and reparation - The long history of a radio play: Alfred Döblin's "Franz Biberkopf" . (PDF) Funk-Korrespondenz , Volume 54, No. 26/2007. Bonn 2007 (PDF, 95.6 kB)
123. ↑ The story of Franz Biberkopf . Deutschlandfunk , August 9, 2008, accessed on May 21, 2018.
124. ↑ Reinhard Döhl : Radio play philology? (in section Example 3 ) expresses considerable criticism of the correctness and reliability of the information about the radio play and proves a number of errors; accessed on May 22, 2018.