Going to the Dogs: The Story of a Moralist

Erich Kastner, a writer in the German Enlightenment tradition perhaps best known as a German poet and author of children's books, wrote a scathing satirical novel about decadence during the Wiemar Republic. Kastner's target is the political, economic, cultural, and spiritual climate of the years preceeding the rise of the Third Reich. He caricatured the times in an effort to awaken his contemporaries to the elements that contributed to the gathering storm. Jacob Fabian, after whom the book is named, is portrayed as a either a passive figure who waits for a return of decency or one for whom there was no place in such a deteriorating society. His life adventures served as Kastner's diagnosis of the diseased soul of Berlin. Fabian's escapades mirrored the interior world of a city seemingly oblivious to what it was doing to itself. He lost his job, sweetheart, and best friend in a series of events which eerily highlights what was truly at stake in such a culture. The suicide of Fabian's friend as a hapless reaction to what was later discovered to be a cruel joke is a metaphor for the heartlessness of the era. I was struck by the books apparant parallels to our own time and found the author's message to be nearly prescient. In his preface to the 1950 German edition he wrote of the moralist's task to defend "lost causes" and to "fight on notwithstanding." Kastner's quixotic writing deserves a fresh reading by Americans given our diseased culture at the end of the twentieth century. While his mood and some of his caricatures will raise the ire of some, the overall impact of the book is ample reward for the tolerant reader.