Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf

What a miracle of condensation Doeblin achieved when he packed Fassbinder's 16 hour TV movie into a mere 400 action filled book pages! This grandiose novel (one of my personal top favorites), published in 1929, has been called Germany's first big city novel. Its main protagonist is Berlin. Germany lacks a dominating capital like Paris or London, so no Balzac or Dickens equivalent found a subject there in the 19th century. Berlin's greatest writer of the late 19th, Theodor Fontane, never drops the provincial tone and outlook. (He was likeable anyway, or maybe because of it.) Berlin's career started only, really, when Bismarck founded the 2nd Reich. From the early 1870s to the 1920s, this former village in the sandy flatlands of the Mark Brandenburg became one of the most exciting places in Europe, a center for innovative arts and a hotbed of political trouble. If you are used to think in terms of painters or painting styles when imagining a novel or story or poem, then look at the expressionists of the time: Erwin Schiele, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, George Grosz... If you know their work, you have a fairly good idea of Berlin Alexanderplatz! Just put them in words. One might also call Doeblin's style expressionist; at least, when he produces his own text and doesn't take what he finds in the newspapers or the tram schedule or an advertisement, weather report, company profile, song text... Anyway, Doeblin actively associated himself with expressionism as a literary movement. The novel has aspects of a collage, integrating all sorts of Berlinish details. All this is wrapped around the story of our anti-hero: Franz Biberkopf, ie Beaverhead. (Doesn't that make you think of a popular cartoon series?). Franz is a Lumpenprolet, a petty criminal, sometimes in a job, often unemployed; a mover between worlds. He likes to think of himself as a peaceful man, but tends to explode in violence. Domestic violence of the worst kind has brought him a jail term. After his release he has the best intentions to remain out of prison. He has been a soldier in WW1, and he was involved in the failed revolution in 1918/19. Now he is disillusioned with his past and joins the right wing fringe for a while, without proper convictions. He is probably typical for many lost souls who moved between the political extremes. The situation at the time was quite close to a civil war, with street fights between Nazis and communists, and many assassinations. But the novel is not primarily a political one, it is set in the half-world and the underworld of Berlin's shady end 1920s. Doeblin's understanding of the underlying motivation of the wanderers between the worlds is uncanny. The man was a medical doctor specializing on mental disorders. I think that shows. It would make sense to call the novel a murder book. While the artistic method was obviously a dead-end (nobody writes things like this any more), this one example is pulsating with life. The novel has been compared to Ulysses

This is the best German novel; mordant, dark, hilarious, packed with the fascinations of Modernism and modern urban life... Joycean literary technique applied by a historical realist to the social life in one of the world's great cities at a critical turning point in its history, it's as close as the German novel can get to Rabelais, Brecht, Joyce and Dickens at the same time. Here's to Franz Biberkopf!

If you're looking for simple dialogue, simple characters, and a simple, enjoyable story, then the Hardy Boys should be right up your alley. If you want to be challenged by one of the great novels of the 20th century - expressionism at its most compelling - then settle in with Doblin. I'm a little tired of the carp "stream of consciousness" when it's nothing of the kind. The diversions into slaughterhouse techniques, newspaper ads, etc. all combine to create a visceral rendering of Berlin of the 1920's. That's the point. It's meant to jar, to attack, to disorient. That's it's genius. If you think that might bore you (or be beyond you) don't read it. You won't get it. It's not meant to be an assigment. It's meant to be an experience. If you're up to it, dive in. It'll change the way you read from then on.

Berlin Alexanderplatz is in a sense Alfred Doblins combination of Dostoeovesky and James Joyce. It is the heavy physcological tale of franz biberkopf and his diffcult sometimes surreal life in alexanderplatz. Biberkopf is caught and in ever complex web of trying to leave behind all his old afflictions to lead a better life but as the more he tries to leave his former self the more he trips and reverts back to them. Doblin combines and increable amount of physcological insight similar to Thomas mann and dostoevesky to create a deep somtimes obtuse and complex portrait of the human condition ina diffcult always chaging situations. Doblin skillfully use the interoi monologues in tandom whit his physcological insight to creat a full portrait of both biberkopfs inner and outter world. Doblin has a gritty , sometimes convoluted writting style which compliments his dark tale perfectly. also worked into his tale a number of diverse and complex charater who doblin uses to furhter probe biberkopf dark journey into his mind and soul .Doblins nove is as exhausting becaues of the dpeth and complexity of it themes but rewrards readers who are willing to endure biberkopfs trip and who are willing to engage the way Doblin is will to take of there. A powerful portrait of the human conditon as it is slowly being destoryed is presented in Doblins epic.