15 The infamous German expression of the time was “Stempeln gehen,” which literally means “going stamping”—an expression that referred to the bureaucratic procedure for collecting unemployment money.
16 The Romanisches Café was a gathering place for Berlin’s artists and literati located at Breitscheidplatz. The so-called swimmer’s section was a side room with only twenty tables, at which successful artists sat, while the greater mass of aspiring intellectuals sat in the “non-swimmer’s section,” the main room with about seventy tables.
17 Two news agencies, Wolffs Telegraphisches Büro and Telegraphen-Union.
18 Schwannecke was a small, exclusive locale in which the most successful artists of the time dined. In a 1928 article, Erich Kästner wrote, “There is no clearer means of following the growth of an artist, journalist, or writer in Berlin, than hearing the words: ‘He’s not going to the Romanisches anymore, he’s mostly at Schwannecke these days.’ ”
19 A popular expression that criticizes the bureaucratic willingness of Germans to kowtow to power and bully the weak. Tergit may also be referring to Carl Zuckmayer’s satirical 1931 play Der Hauptmann von Köpenick (The Captain of Köpenick), which explicitly links the well-known expression to bicycling.
20 Refers to Miguel Primo de la Rivera, Prime Minister of Spain from 1923 to 1930, and Aristide Briand, Prime Minister of France for eleven terms between 1911 and 1929.
21 A quote from Friedrich Schiller’s 1801 play, The Maid of Orleans.
22 Heinrich Zille (1858–1929) was a German illustrator famous for his humorous caricatures of the Berlin proletariat. His most recognizable subjects were prostitutes, beggars, and laborers. A “Zillefigur,” or “Zille figure” (as Tergit writes), refers to someone “of the people,” perhaps poor and grotesque in appearance.
23 The Berolina was a statue of a woman with a crown of oak leaves and a chain-mail vest that personified the spirit of Berlin. She was designed by the sculptors Emil Hundrieser and Michel Lock, and stood on Alexanderplatz from 1895 to 1927.
24 At this time, it was common for previous renters to demand a moving fee in exchange for vacating the apartment.
25 Adolf Glassbrenner (1810–1876) and David Kalisch (1820–1872) were humorists who founded the satirical magazines Freie Blätter and Kladderadatsch after the March Revolution of 1848.
26 A semisweet German white wine whose name means “Milk of our Dear Lady” because it was originally made from the vineyards of the Church of Our Lady in Worms.
27 The Kaufhaus Gerson, established in 1849, was Berlin’s first department store. Hermann Gerson was an early adoptee of live modeling, and had attractive female employees model the latest fashions for his clients.
28 Haus Vaterland was once the largest entertainment establishment in the world. Situated on Potsdamer Platz, it had cafés, movie theaters, and themed restaurants with room for a combined seven thousand people.
29 Karlweiss is referring to the Ringbahn, a railway line that runs a circular route around Berlin’s city center and served to demarcate the inner zone of the city from the outer, suburban neighborhoods.
30 “Dank vom Hause Österreichs,” a quote from Schiller’s play Wallenstein’s Death, in which Colonel Buttler, an officer of low birth, sarcastically thanks the imperial Austrian court for thwarting his ambitions to become a nobleman.
31 Richard Tauber was a well-known Austrian tenor who recorded over seven hundred records on the Odeon Record label, starting in 1919.
32 Michael Kazmierczak was a member of the Communist Party of Germany involved in putting down the right-wing Kapp Putsch of 1920, which was backed by General Erich Ludendorff, a towering nationalist figure and war hero of the Weimar Republic.
33 Leihhaus means “pawnshop.”
34 A tuft of Alpine goat hair traditionally worn as a hat decoration in Austria and Bavaria.
35 The Neue Welt was a concert venue and beer garden established in Berlin’s Neukölln neighborhood in 1867, and was expanded into an amusement park in 1910.
36 Sonnenspektrum refers to a fragment of a play written in 1893 by the dramatist Franz Wedekind, which depicts an idyllic brothel.
37 Miss Kohler is referring to a cornerstone of Expressionist drama, Der Sohn (1914), by dramatist Walter Hasenclever. The play begins as a father-son conflict, but becomes a highly charged social critique in which the son rebels and brings about his father’s death.
38 Hans Blüher (1888–1955) was a member of the popular turn-of-the-century German youth movement known as the Wandervogel, or “wandering birds.” The Wandervogel were groups of young men who went on hikes together, held Romantic ideas about nature and man, and rejected bourgeois values. Blüher wrote several important histories of the Wandervogel, including a rather scandalous volume detailing the homoeroticism within the movement.
39 A reference to Henrik Ibsen’s 1892 drama, The Master Builder, in which the protagonist, Halvard Solness, makes empty promises to young Hilda Wangel in order to seduce her.
40 Max, Leo, and Willi Sklarek were brothers who ran a textile and clothing business that furnished clerks and other city officials in Berlin with work clothing. In 1929, it was discovered that they had perpetrated fraud through fake delivery bills and invoices, cheating city government of 2 million marks. This affair turned into a major corruption scandal and brought about the resignation of Berlin’s longtime mayor Gustav Böss, while other officials were tried on corruption charges.
41 The Stahlhelme, or “Steel Helmets,” were a conservative, far-right paramilitary organization founded in 1918. They strongly opposed the Weimar Republic’s parliamentary democracy and integrated with the Nazi party in 1933.
42 The Krantz affair refers to a suicide pact that two young men, Paul Krantz and Günter Schelling, forged with one another in 1927. Only Schelling carried out his end of the pact, killing his friend Hans Stephan before shooting himself; Krantz did not commit suicide, but was charged with unlawful possession of weapons. The case brought about vigorous debates on German youth in the wake of World War I.
43 Fritz Haarmann was a serial killer who picked up young men off the street of Hanover and allegedly killed them by biting through their Adam’s apple, later dismembering and dumping the bodies in the Leine River. He was said to have killed at least 24 men before he was caught by the police in 1924.
44 A quote from Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s fragmentary 1892 play, Der Tod des Tizians (The Death of Titian), which thematizes the divide between life and art, society and artist. This translation is taken from Michael Hamburger, Hofmannsthal: Three Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 38.
45 Max Kruse (1854–1942) was a sculptor and member of the Berlin Secession. Erich Krüger (1897–1978) was a Berlin painter well known for his realist landscapes, nature scenes, and still lifes.
46 Franz Burchard Dörbeck (1799–1835) was a Berlin-based illustrator and caricaturist who became well known for depicting humorous scenes of life in Berlin, notably in series such as Berliner Redensarten (Berliner Sayings).
47 Gohlisch combines quotations from Schiller’s Don Carlos and Shakespeare’s Richard III to provide an oblique political commentary on times to come; the quiet moments that Don Carlos has enjoyed as the Spanish Prince cede to an era of intrigues, plots, and backstabbing that the Duke of Gloucester initiates in Richard III in order to accede to the throne of England.
Käsebier Takes Berlin Page 30
