Goodbye, Berlin

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Christopher Isherwood 1973 in Los Angeles

Farewell, Berlin (English original title Goodbye to Berlin ) is a novel by Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) published in the Hogarth Press in 1939 . The book is dedicated to John and Beatrix Lehmann . Isherwood's foreword dates from 1935, in which he indicates which parts of the book have already been published by Lehmann and by Penguin or by Hogarth.

The book was the template from which the musical Cabaret was created in the 1960s . The short novel is often published together with the novel Mr. Norris rises under the title "The Berlin Stories".

Time magazine counted the Berlin Stories among the best 100 English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005 and justified this with the fact that these two short novels were perfect snapshots of Berlin in the 1930s, where exuberant emigrants dance and party more intensely than it would protect this from the approaching National Socialism. The British newspaper The Guardian included the story in its list of 1000 must-read novels.

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The novel is an autobiographical rendition of Isherwood's time in Berlin in the early 1930s and gives a dense atmosphere to the life situation of different people in the coming Weimar Republic :

"I am a camera with a wide open aperture, passively recording, not thinking"

reads the beginning of the second paragraph of the novel. The frequently quoted sentence gave its name to the play based on the novel.

While in Mr. Norris Isherwood still called the first-person narrator William Bradshaw, Isherwood uses his own name for the first-person narrator here. Isherwood had come to believe that the use of "William Bradshaw" - a name derived from Isherwood's full name, Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood - was a rash evasion.

The novel consists of six short stories that are interrelated and written from the perspective of the first-person narrator Isherwood. In detail it concerns

  • A Berlin Diary (Fall 1930)
  • Sally Bowles
  • On Rügen (summer 1931)
  • The Nowaks
  • The Landauers
  • A Berlin diary (winter 1932/33)

The first-person narrator moves to Germany to work on a novel. He is soon in contact with a large number of very different people: The loving pensioner Miss Schröder, who has to rent more and more rooms in her apartment due to dwindling assets; Natalia Landauer, the wealthy Jewish heiress; Peter and Otto, a homosexual couple who had to come to terms with their sexuality against the background of the National Socialists gradually gaining power and influence, and finally the "divinely decadent" Sally Bowles, a young English woman who appeared in cabarets and an army of Admirers owns. However, none of these admirers is able to get her the coveted film role.

In his autobiography Without Stopping , writer and composer Paul Bowles claimed that Isherwood chose his last name for the character Sally Bowles. Isherwood confirmed this in his 1976 memoir Christopher and His Kind , writing that he appreciated both the sound of the name and the looks of its owner.

Adaptations

Julie Harris in 1952 as Sally Bowles in "I am a camera"

The novel was the basis for the play I Am a Camera by John Van Druten , which was first performed on Broadway in 1951 . Sally Bowles was played by Julie Harris , who received her first Tony Award for it . The play was filmed with little success.

In 1966 the novel was the basis for a musical version, which was performed in 1966 under the title Cabaret . The musical was filmed in 1972 under the direction of Bob Fosse with the same title , it starred among others Liza Minnelli , Michael York , Helmut Griem , Joel Gray and Fritz Wepper .

literature

  • Fryer, Jonathan (1977). Isherwood: A Biography . Garden City, NY, Doubleday & Company. ISBN 0-385-12608-5 .
  • Isherwood, Christopher (1945). "Preface", The Berlin Stories . New Directions Publishing Corporation.
  • Isherwood, Christopher (1976). Christopher and His Kind . Avon Books, a division of The Hearst Corporation. ISBN 0-380-01795-4 (Discus edition).
  • Miles, Jonathan (2010). The Nine Lives of Otto Katz. The Remarkable Story of a Communist Super-Spy . London, Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-82018-8 .
  • Singh, RB (1994). The English Novels During the Nineteen-thirties . Atlantic. ISBN 81-7156-384-8 .

Single receipts

  1. ↑ The Time selection of the best 100 best English-language novels between 1923 and 2005 , accessed on April 20, 2014
  2. ↑ 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read: The Definitive List , accessed April 20, 2014.
  3. ↑ Isherwood: Lebwohl, Berlin , first sentence of the second paragraph. In the original, the frequently quoted sentence is: I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passiv, recording, not thinking.
  4. ↑ Isherwood (1976), pp. 184 to 186
  5. ↑ Christopher and His Kind , p. 60.
  6. ^ John Van Druten: I Am a Camera . Random House, Inc, 1951 (Retrieved October 27, 2013).
  7. ^ John Van Druten: I Am a Camera . Dramatists Play Service, Inc, 1998, ISBN 0822205459 (Retrieved October 27, 2013).