Käsebier Takes Berlin

by Gabriele Tergit

  Late in the novel, Miermann wonders whether his family’s efforts to assimilate had been worthwhile. After walking past two Galician Jews with long beards and flowing caftans, he turns to ask his wife, “Have we become that much more beautiful, you with your blonde hair and blue eyes, and I with my books on romanticism and classicism?” An inextricable part of Miermann’s—and Tergit’s—German-Jewish identity is his love of Schiller, the liberal Romantic; Heinrich Heine, exiled Jewish poet and father of the feuilleton; and Anatole France, socialist progressive and defender of Zola in the Dreyfus Affair. Tergit believed that liberal thinkers were the spiritual fathers of the Weimar Republic, and remained the conscience of a nation that in the 1930s had lost the measure of things. Quotations from Schiller and Heine intersperse the novel as pointed references to a more civilized, open-minded time.

  Tergit’s Jewish characters might not seem noticeably so to present-day readers, since they are neither portrayed differently nor perceive themselves as different from the German characters. Tergit felt it was not only clear who was Jewish, but worried her portrayals verged on the anti-Semitic. Käte Herzfeld and Reinhold Kaliski, for example, are both Jewish parvenu socialites who turn their social skill into financial success. When Käsebier was reprinted in 1977, Tergit tried to cut the subplot around Kaliski and change Käte’s last name to Brügger or Becker, fearing readers would find these characters unappealing. Her editors convinced her to leave the book untouched, however, leaving us with a picture of the social world of the 1920s in its original color.

  •

  The language of Käsebier is as colorful and varied as the world it portrays. Tergit’s book is not self-consciously experimental, but, as a product of New Objectivity, it easily moves between realism and modernism through its inclusion of fragmentary street scenes, headlines, snippets of songs, advertising slogans, and newspaper articles, as well as extended reflections on architecture, housing, work, and fashion. With each of these comes another register of language and particular vocabulary. Translating the novel meant following Tergit’s shifts from literary language to the most colloquial: a short conversation peppered with slang will be followed by a genteel description of an upscale apartment; the negotiation of a business contract will be interspersed with bawdy humor.

  And, like all natives of the capital, Tergit has a love for Berlinerisch, the German spoken by the city’s inhabitants. Berlinerisch is sometimes crude and often cheeky, like the novel itself. It mixes cosmopolitan sophistication with earthy humor, and includes words from French, Flemish, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Rotwelsch, an argot used by beggars and thieves. Berlinerisch is well known for its creative insults and its characteristic sound, in which hard sounds become soft—“gut” becomes “ jut” (pronounced: yoot)—and soft, hard—“Ich” becomes “Icke.” This translation attempts to convey the zip of Berlinerisch by using a combination of Anglo-American language of the era, everyday slang, and dropped consonants in colloquial speech. I deliberately chose this method over a distinct English dialect (for example, the slang of 1920s New York or London), which could distract from the novel’s geographic focus on Berlin. My goal has been to give an immersive sense of the world Tergit portrayed and try to relay the spark of Berlinerisch with a light hand.

  Contemporary references have occasionally been glossed when they proved too obscure, but sometimes a gloss cannot re-create the same immediacy and urgency. For example, when Käte Herzfeld is asked how her love life is going, she responds somewhat cryptically, “Vertically excellent, so not taking bids on the horizontal”—yet her literal words are, “Vertically excellent, so horizontally crossed-out letter.” “Crossed-out letter,” or “gestrichen Brief,” refers to “-B,” financial shorthand for an exchange rate that has been cancelled because there are only offers but no demand. In a scant six words, Käte makes a sly but self-aware dig at the sexual mores and all-pervasive capitalism of the era. The phrase is gloriously precise and utterly peculiar; it shows Tergit’s journalistic knowledge of the floor of the stock exchange. “Not taking bids” gets us only halfway there, but it is an attempt to uphold the spirit of the phrase, if not its specificity.

  An important term that has no precise English equivalent is Käsebier’s métier: Volkssänger. While the literal translation is “folk singer,” a German “folk song” can include anything from a beer-hall schlager to a hiking song to a military melody or a show-tune. Käsebier conquers the hearts of Berliners because his songs, far from embodying the high ideals of Weimar cosmopolitanism and Bildung, are shallow and nostalgic throwbacks to the song traditions of Wilhelmine Germany, but even simpler, for the unsentimental, industrial present. But while his greatest hits—including “Boy, Isn’t Love Swell?” and “How Can He Sleep with That Thin Wall?”—elicit an easy attraction for Berliners, they are finally too superficial to last in the chaos of the early 1930s. They offer no solutions, just memories. Käsebier’s artistry is genuine, but it, too, gets swept away by events, and Käsebier ends his career in a shabby bar two hours outside Berlin.

  Despite its ebullience and sprightly repartee, Käsebier is ultimately tragic. People lose their homes, their savings, and sometimes their lives. But along the way, the book also revels in the vitality and creativity of the people who made Weimar Berlin into a modern (and modernist) city. None of this was enough to ensure the survival of the liberal republic, of course, something Tergit knew when she was writing the novel. While she understood that this open, cosmopolitan Germany was still an unfulfilled vision rather than a reality, she saw in its spirit the best her country had to offer. It is this spirit that Tergit’s writing upholds—that of Minerva atop the crumbling newspaper headquarters.

  —SOPHIE DUVERNOY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Michael Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1996)

  Ursula Büttner, Weimar: Die überforderte Republik (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2008)

  Modris Eksteins, The Limits of Reason (London: Oxford University Press, 1975)

  Ernst Feder, Cécile Lowenthal-Hensel, and Arnold Paucker (eds.) Heute sprach ich mit . . . : Tagebücher eines Berliner Publizisten, 1926–1932 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1971)

  Peter Fritzsche, Reading Berlin 1900 (London/Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996)

  Bernhard Fulda, Press and Politics in the Weimar Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

  Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: Norton, 2001)

  Diethart Kerbs and Henrick Stahr (eds.), Berlin 1932: das letzte Jahr der ersten deutschen Republik (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1992)

  Siegfried Kracauer and Tom Levin (trans. and ed.), The Mass Ornament (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995)

  Wolf Lepenies, The Seduction of Culture in German History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006)

  Peter de Mendelssohn, Zeitungsstadt Berlin (Berlin: Ullstein, 1959)

  Georg Mosse, German Jews Beyond Judaism (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1985)

  Juliane Sucker, “Sehnsucht nach dem Kurfürstendamm” (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2015)

  Gabriele Tergit, Etwas seltenes überhaupt (Frankfurt a.M.: Ullstein, 1983)

  Gabriele Tergit and Jens Brüning (ed.), Frauen und andere Ereignisse (Berlin: Das Neue Berlin, 2001)

  Hans Wagener, Gabriele Tergit: gestohlene Jahre (Osnabrück: Universitätsverlag Osnabrück, 2013)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Books are never solitary endeavors; neither are translations. I owe a great deal of thanks to those who helped me make Tergit’s world come alive on the page in English. Thanks go to my editor, Edwin Frank, who took a chance on a translator who had yet to cut her teeth. I am grateful for the support of Shelley Frisch and Tess Lewis, who have been kind champions of my work and advisors in times of need. Thanks to the Goethe-Institut and the committee of the Gutekunst Prize, who helped me start my work as a literary translator and have continued to provide s
upport since. A big thank-you to the friends who helped me work out problems and listened to my translational musings: Becky Fradkin, Abby Fradkin, Lois Beckett—your spirit helped me translate many a boozy dinner party conversation. Thanks also to Michael Swellander for his insights on Heine. Matthew Ward kindly helped me figure out some of the curiosities of Tergit’s German and smooth out my English. I am incredibly grateful to Michael Lesley for his voice, ears, and eyes, his creativity, energy, support, and perfectionism—thank you for throwing yourself into this with me, and making Käsebier as good as possible.

  The biggest thanks go to my parents, Petra and Christian Duvernoy, who have been my editors, critics, and living encyclopedias for so many years. For Käsebier, my mother spent hours helping track down the meanings of period terms, deciphering Berlinerisch, and puzzling through countless odd phrases with great patience. My father, as always, pushed me to refine, check, and reflect on my own writing, and made sure my English sounded as close to Tergit’s German as possible.

  I would like to dedicate this book to my grandparents, Hans and Christa Zehetmayer, and Wolf and Eva Duvernoy. They were witnesses to this time, and their stories are always with me. Though their lives, which would lead them to East Germany and Detroit, Michigan, respectively, could not have taken more different paths, they taught me about the complexities and realities of German history. This book is for them.

  KÄSEBIER TAKES BERLIN

  1

  Nothing but slush

  BERLIN’S Kommandantenstrasse—half still the old newspaper district, half turning into the garment district—begins at Leipziger Strasse with a pleasant view over the trees of the Dönhoffplatz, now leafless, and disappears in the neighborhood of factories and workers on Alte Jakobstrasse.

  Oh, Dönhoffplatz! On the right, the Tietz department store: Sale, Sale, Sale! Stiller’s Shoes: “Now Even Cheaper!” Umbrellas! They’re all there: Wigdor and Sachs and Resi. A blind man with newspapers squats in front of Aschinger’s distillery, waiting to snap a little something up. There’s the best store for artificial flowers. Boutonnières for suits in the spring, corsages for balls in the winter. Singers from Stettin! Invariably, a tall skinny one and a little fat one. Pastry shops, perfumes, suitcases, and woolens. So far, so good. The trouble begins on the first floor. Sales are slipping. Everything’s direct. Factory to retailer to consumer. If possible, straight from the factory to the consumer. That’s most of Donhöffplatz.

  But over on the quiet side, almost by Kommandantenstrasse and its tiny, nameless shops, were the editorial offices of the Berliner Rundschau. The wide, long old house was four stories high, its corners topped with two large Greek amphoras. In the middle were two oversize plaster statues of Mercury and Minerva; between them stood a Roman shield. This house didn’t seem to have much business with Mercury these days. Half a floor was empty. It was unclear whether Miermann had joined the newspaper’s editorial staff because he had been seduced by Minerva, with her historical stone tablets, or because there were rose garlands hanging below the windows; either was possible. What was clear, however, was that he had not been enticed by the baroque helmets with ostrich feathers that crowned the windows above, as he disliked military uniforms. A large golden date in the gable proclaimed that this exceedingly genteel house had been built in the year 1868.

  Downstairs was a small café frequented mainly by journalists, which reeked of cigarette smoke and was badly ventilated through a small shaft that let out to the courtyard. The garbage bins sat directly underneath the shaft. The courtyard was so narrow that the sun barely reached the second floor. It was always dark in the café; only a few iridescent tulip lamps and dim electric bulbs lit the place. There were red marble tables, and small wooden chairs with cane backs and no armrests. But the owner was proud of having an intellectual clientele. He came from Vienna and thought highly of journalists. He knew each and every guest, and—more importantly—his articles.

  At the top of the thoroughly worn-out stairs of the house was a glass box emblazoned with the word RECEPTION. In it sat a very young man. Beyond lay the editorial offices.

  Emil Gohlisch, thirty years old, tall, pale, and blond, with extremely red hands, stood by the telephone. The editor, Miermann, some twenty years older than Gohlisch, sat at a desk. He had the breadth of an epic writer and the bleakness of a comedian. His collar permanently flaked with dandruff, and he never thought to wash his hands. He was an aesthete, but not when it came to himself. He somehow managed to pair a green tie with a purple suit, yet could tell just by touch whether a porcelain figure was from the 1730s or the 1780s. His parents had sent him away to apprentice as a salesman, which he couldn’t stand; his training was only useful insofar as it had expanded his horizons. Since he had never gone to grammar school, he couldn’t go to university. That was how he came to an art dealership, but he wasn’t particularly useful there either. He began to write. His family was glad that things hadn’t turned out even worse. Later, when he had made a name for himself—though he was still burdened with debt from earlier days—they even mustered up some pride. His two brothers were rather dull, a doctor and a lawyer who had married money and championed Progress. They never said anything out of keeping, never uttered a phrase that wouldn’t have been said by anyone else in their generation. Gohlisch hung up the phone.

  Miermann looked at the clock. “If my watch is still accurate,” he said, “tomorrow’s Thursday. I don’t have anything for Thursday’s page.”

  “Someone should write about the new cafés sometime.”

  “What use is sometime? Try today! Hic Rhodus, hic salta! Here’s Rhodes, here scatter your salt!”

  “Let’s see if there’s anything.”

  Miermann pulled a yellow folder with manuscripts out of a desk drawer. “There’s a good article on slush, but it’s still freezing. None of these people can write. No one can write a decent story. They don’t have any new ideas.”

  “Someone should write about the bathroom situation in the Berlin schools sometime.”

  “What am I supposed to run as the lead story tomorrow?”

  Miehlke came in. He was the typesetter. Miehlke’s face was completely bare—no hair to be found anywhere on his face or head.

  “G’day, gents. The page’s gotta be out by four thirty, it’s three now. Get to it. I’ve set the long article on the new construction work. If I take that one, the page’ll be full.”

  “That’s far too long,” said Miermann shyly. He was bashful because Miehlke was the man who had once told the journalist Heye—Heye, who wrote the famous front-page editorials—“If you don’t cut this, Heye, I’ll cut twenty lines myself. You won’t believe how fast I can do that, and no one’ll notice.” And when Stefanus Heye smiled, Mielke added, “Maybe you think that one of your readers will notice? Eh, readers don’t notice nothin’, I tell ya. You gents always think something depends on it. Let me tell ya, nothin’ depends on it.”

  “I don’t care,” Miehlke now said. “The paper can’t wait for you and cutting’s better than printing on the margins.”

  Miehlke left.

  “So, what shall we do?” asked Miermann.

  “Well, I’m going to order coffee,” said Gohlisch.

  Old Schröder came in. National desk. He still sported a full beard, a green loden suit with horn buttons, and a wide black bow tie. “Things looked bad in the Reichstag today. I think the government’s collapsing, the Right’s on the rise. Just wait and see, they’ll pass all the taxes that they yelled at the Left over, no one but party members will get work, there will be pogroms, death sentences, and civil war. I know it. We’ll see something, all right; five battleships, subsidies to the German nationalists, we may as well pack up and go home.”

  “I think they also put their trousers on one leg at a time,” said Miermann. “I know for a fact that the nationalists are just as corrupt as everyone else.”

  “But Miermann! You have to admit that—”

  “I never admit anything.”
>
  “Sales taxes, just you wait, nothing but sales and excise taxes until our eyes bulge.”

  “Maybe excise taxes are a good idea?”

  “Miermann!” Schröder cried indignantly, “Be serious!”

  “You ask too much of a man. I’m always supposed to get worked up: against sales taxes, for sales taxes, against excise taxes, for excise taxes. I’m not going to get worked up again until five o’clock tomorrow unless a beautiful girl walks into the room!”

  “I should have been a political columnist. That old judge, now there was a man who knew every position, who had studied the whole state. Now we have a parliamentary system without a parliamentary commentator.”

  Gohlisch got up. “Why bother? Breaking scandals sells more. Connections and a cushy little job. You’ve got a bee in your bonnet with your political commentator and your old judge. Put the headline in Borgis three bold. Here’s the coffee. Are you paying, Miermann, or is it my turn? I’ll pay.”

  “What’s happening with the page?” said Miermann.

  Schröder left. Gohlisch said, “Listen, Miermann, let me tell you a pretty little story. Just recently, there was a man who went from door to door, introducing himself to the Swiss presidents of big companies. He was their compatriot, a representative of Faber, asked them to purchase their supply of Faber pencils from him. So they helped out their countryman, he went to Faber, bought leftovers, and sold crap for good money. One day, the boss asked for a pencil. He sharpened it, thought, hm, when the tip kept breaking off. Eventually, the affair came to light. The countryman was thrown out.

  “You won’t believe,” Gohlisch said, “the things I learned on this trip. In Niedernestritz, the city council wanted to build a new town hall. Someone convinced the old servant he’d get a hundred marks, and the old dodderer, a slightly drunk figure who looks like a character out of Spitzweg,1 went over one night and built a pretty little fire in the basement. He didn’t skimp on gasoline or kindling, so the town hall burned and burned, the firefighters were only called in the morning—the servant hadn’t noticed, after all—he implored them not to use too much water, and the building burned merrily to the ground. But now the servant was only going to be paid fifty marks for his troubles. Naturally, he was very upset, and went to the insurance company to tell them that he’d set the fire and was prepared to go to jail, but he’d never suffered such an injustice as with these fifty marks. The insurance company had already noticed that they were dealing with arson, with a nice, well-made fire. But they hadn’t been able to sell any insurance in Niedernestritz or the surrounding area for the past fifteen years. They were quite pleased with the fire, since once people noticed how nice the new city hall the insurance company was building looked, they all got insured; it was practically raining insurance applications. The insurer was delighted; so was the city council, and everyone was happy.”