Migrant Writers: Vienna-Berlin-London 1918-1938
John Warren considers creative trails and the German novel between the wars

'Every dog has its day' they say, and certainly Berlin between the wars was a showcase for dramatists, composers, directors, artists and performers from all over the German speaking world and beyond. The great metropolis - then a city of four and a half million- stands indisputably at the centre of our migrant trail. But Vienna, traumatised by the loss of its empire and shackled by its love of tradition and an innate dislike of 'the new', also contributed greatly to 'Weimar culture'. So many of the actors, filmmakers, theatre directors, and composers of Berlin's glory days were in fact from Vienna or the old Austro-Hungarian empire, and this fruitful commuting will be examined in some detail both at the conference 'Vienna Meets Berlin -Cultural Interaction 1918-1938' (Institute of Germanic Studies, 5 - 7 December), as well as in the day schools on 'film', 'cabaret', 'Jewish Cultural Communities' and 'Women Between the Wars' to be held at various venues during the autumn.

What was happening in the field of German prose writing during these frenetic times? The short answer is a great deal, for some of the biggest hitters were at work: Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Robert Musil, Alfred Döblin, Stefan Zweig, (who recorded the highest sales world-wide of any writer during the 1920s), Hermann Broch and Joseph Roth (now enjoying an English renaissance through the translations of Michael Hofmann), while Heimito von Doderer and the young Elias Canetti were in their formative stages.

Many writers were attracted to Berlin by the opportunities and patronage offered by the great publishing houses and newspapers. From the German provinces came Erich Kästner, Irmgard Keun and Anna Seghers, and from Vienna Joseph Roth, Vicki Baum and Gina Kaus. Nor should we forget Christopher Isherwood with his two Berlin novels, and one Viennese novel apiece by Stephen Spender (Two Deaths) and John Lehmann (Evil Was Abroad), both chronicling the political situation in Austria in the 1930s, novels which can be read alongside Anna Seghers' Rund um den Februar (a very un-Austrian account of the 1934 socialist uprising).

Looking for the 'Berlin' novel of contemporary life, Alexander Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz of 1929 was clearly the most impressive. It was adapted for both film and radio and translated into English in 1931. Less well known is Erich Kästner's Fabian. Die Geschichte eines Moralisten (1931, translated into English the same year), a bitter, witty satire on Berlin life. But it is to the popular novel that we should turn for the full flavour of Berlin life. A good example would be Gabrielle Tergit's bestseller, Käsebier erobert den Kurfürstendamm of 1931, 'rediscovered' by the Arani Press Berlin in 1997. This bright take on Berlin's media, political and business worlds charts the rise and fall of a popular entertainer built up by the media beyond his ability. Tergit was forced into exile and ended her days in the UK, where she lived in Richmond and was secretary of the German overseas section of PEN. Irmgard Keun, another 'immigrant' to Berlin, wrote on the theme of the 'new woman', exposing her characters' dreams in Gilgi -eine von uns, which sold 30,000 copies and was turned into a film, and creating an anti-heroine in her second noveliof 1932.

Of the Austrian novelists who made their way from the Danube to the Spree, Joseph Roth produced several novels which capture the atmosphere and instability of Berlin life - most notably Rechts und Links with the mysterious entrepreneur from the East, Nikolai Brandeis, as an archetypal figure. Vicki Baum came to Berlin to work for Ullstein and soon achieved fame and fortune, first with the feminist novel stud. chem. Helene Willfüer of 1928, and then with her Menschen im Hotel which achieved world-wide success as Grand Hotel and was filmed in Hollywood. Nothing if not thorough, to ensure verisimilitude Baum had worked first as a lab assistant and then as a chambermaid. Her friend and fellow Viennese, Gina Kaus, emulated her success with Die Überfahrt (1932), translated as Luxury Liner in the same year and also filmed (1933).

As to the literary presentation of Vienna, two massive novels dominate the scene: Musil's three-volume Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften and Heimito von Doderer's two volume Die Dämonen, which provides a complex and complete account of life and events in Vienna from 1926 up to the burning of the Justizpalast in July 1927. Viennese bourgeois life is reflected in Roth's late novel Die Kapuzinergruft and Otto Stoessl's Das Haus Erath, as well as in the novellas of Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig and Franz Werfel. For low life in Vienna we should look to Hugo Bettauer, editor of an erotic weekly magazine, and author of several examples of 'Asphalt- or Schmutzliteratur'. The two most famous are Die freudlose Gasse (filmed by Georg Pabst and later translated as Viennese Love in 1929) and Die Stadt ohne Juden (1922), an unfortunately somewhat prophetic work, and an indirect tribute to the positive influence exercised on Vienna's cultural life by its Jewish bourgeoisie. Bettauer himself fell victim to the shots of a fanatical right-wing student who claimed he was protecting public morality.

The one man from whom the great Berlin novel might have been expected was Lion Feuchtwanger, who moved to Berlin from Munich, and whose international success was established by Arnold Bennett's review in the Evening Standard of his historical novel Jud Süss. There were at least 21 editions of this work in the UK alone, and when he visited London in 1926 he was invited to meet the King. Taken ill, he had to be content with a bedside visit from Ramsay MacDonald. After the looting of his Berlin home by the Nazis and his enforced exile, he wrote an account of a Berlin Jewish family set against the National Socialist takeover, Die Geschwister Oppermann (published by the Querido Press in Amsterdam in 1933 and translated into English in the same year), but political events intervened to prevent him from repeating the success of his Munich novel Erfolg in Berlin. It was his transformation of a mediocre play into the successful novel Jud Süss which inspired Arnold Zweig to do the same with a drama he had written in 1921, turning it into one of the great war novels, Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa. But to follow up that line would take us far away from the novel of the metropolis, which is so rich a subject in itself.

John Warren was formerly Head of Austrian and German Studies at the Oxford Brookes University and is now Visiting Research Fellopw there.

'Vienna/Berlin/London -Trails of Creativity 1918-1938' a festival of film, music, 'face to face interviews' and academic conferences organised by the Austrian Cultural Forum will take place at various venues from October through to December (for further details and brochure ring 0207-584 8653).