Going
to Berlin with Christopher Isherwood
In
July 1981 I moved to Berlin even though I knew no one there, had no job
prospects, and could speak very little German. I was excited,
apprehensive, and a little frightened (particularly of German guards in
uniforms). As the train made its way through East Germany my mind was
racing with images of the city I had seen only in my mind.
Those images were not of the divided city of the Cold War but
rather of the last years of Weimar Berlin so vividly and provocatively
portrayed by Christopher Isherwood. I decided to live there because I had
to experience for myself the decadence and despair; I wanted to breathe
the pungent air of the great Prussian city. I did
not expect to find Isherwood’s Berlin intact -- I knew the war
had destroyed so much of the city -- yet I suspected that vestiges of the
prewar, pre-Nazi city were still there if one looked for them.
Passing through the Wall into West Berlin had less effect on me
than speeding past the Grunewald neighborhood where the “Landauers” had lived.
As I disembarked at the seedy Zoo Station and saw the rather ugly postwar
buildings and the ruin of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, I had
difficulty imagining that Isherwood had walked here countless times. The
city must have looked and felt so different then. In fact, my initial days
in Berlin were disappointing. So much had changed. There were several
McDonald’s restaurants on the Kurfürstendamm!
This was not Isherwood’s Berlin after all. Then, one day at dusk I set
out from the city center, walking along Tauentzienstrasse, continuing down
Kleiststrasse, until I arrived at Nollendorfplatz. I was in Isherwood’s
neighborhood. Without consulting my map, I found myself on
Nollendorfstrasse -- the “deep solemn massive street” he observes from
his window on the opening page of Goodbye to Berlin. As I walked on
the wide sidewalk, noting the reflection of the street lamps on the damp
cobblestone pavement, the “weak yellow gleams” emitted from massive
double-paned windows, the chipped facades of the five-story apartment
buildings, the enveloping grayness… I felt Isherwood’s Berlin; or, at
least, my comprehension of it. I stood in front of the door at
number 17 and read the plaque: “In this building lived the
English writer Christopher Isherwood from 1929 until 1933.” I looked up
and marveled that “Sally
Bowles,” “Fraulein Schroeder,” and “Bobby” all lived here.
My Berlin would indeed be colored by Isherwood’s city. I would see the decadence of the “Lady Windermere” club in the behavior of the black-clad habitués of the “Mink”; I would find vestiges of the hammer and sickle in the encircled “A” of the anarchist-squatters on the walls of the murky courtyards in Schoeneberg. A great writer’s words live inside the mind of an attentive reader, providing the material out of which new impressions are perceived. Yes, Isherwood would be with me in Berlin for years to come.