Berlin Stories Read online

  2.

  That the theater is gradually losing its best and most sterling capacities can, to our great chagrin, be gathered from a letter that celebrated actress Gertrud Eysoldt has addressed to us. She informs us that she will soon be opening a corset shop on Kantstrasse at the corner of Joachimstaler Strasse, where she will establish herself exclusively as a businesswoman. What an odd resolve, and how regrettable! The actor Kayssler also intends to abscond, and this for the reason that, as we hear, he feels that under the prevailing temporalities it is more appropriate to stand behind the bar in a pub than portray figurines upon the stage. He’s said to have taken over a little bar in one of the city’s eastern districts that will be opening on May first, and is already looking forward, as several people report, to dispensing beer, washing glasses, preparing sandwiches, serving up kippers, and boot-blacking drunken louts out the door in the wee hours. A crying shame. We, however, deeply regret seeing two so highly admired and esteemed artists betraying their art in such fashion. Let us hope that such conduct does not become a trend.

  3.

  At the Kammerspiele a minor change was instituted at the eleventh hour. The management dressed up the dramaturgical staff in handsome light-blue tailcoats complete with large silver buttons. We declare this attractive, for it strikes us as appropriate. The ushers have been abolished, and the dramaturges—who after all have nothing else to do on performance nights—take the ladies’ coats and show the theater’s patrons to their seats. They also open doors and dispense all sorts of trifling but crucial bits of information. On their legs they now wear long, thick, buff-colored, knee-high gaiters, and they are already quite adept at handing out programs with an elegant bow and offering opera glasses. In the provinces they would also distribute leaflets, but here in Berlin this is unnecessary. In short, no critic shall ever again have cause to wonder what a dramaturge is and what sorts of duties he fulfills. They are now exerting themselves to the utmost, and in future one will have no choice but to leave them in peace.

  4.

  Wishing to rid himself once and for all of the eternal grumbling and the constant reproach that he only ever stages sets rather than plays, director Reinhardt has hit on the idea of, in future, simply having his plays take place before a backdrop of white linens. Naturally his dramaturges couldn’t resist letting the cat out of the bag, and he will be astonished if not indignant to see us trumpeting forth this news today already. White linens! Well, do they have to be snow-white? Could they not be worn, say, for a day and a half by some unknown lady giant from the sideshow? Then the various bits of the set would exude an assuredly ravishing fragrance of thighs that could only do the critics good, as it would cause them to forget where they were sitting and beguile all their sharpest senses. Seriously. Reinhardt’s idea strikes us as quite promising, in other words brilliant. Against the white cloth, the faces and ghostly figures of the actors and actresses will make a strikingly colorful impression. But will Reinhardt also succeed in gaining acceptance for this notion at the Hoftheater?

  1907

  Cowshed

  I went to see Bonn. I beheld him in his famous checked Sherlock Holmes suit. The sight of his tawny leather spats devastated me. But it is far from my intention to make so bold as to speak of Bonn, whom I also learned to admire as Edmund Kean in the play by Dumas. Today, with the kind reader’s permission, I wish to speak of the Cowshed, an artistic singsong and jinglejangle establishment that lies in the northern reaches of our beloved city, Berlin. At the Cowshed, among other things, I met and learned to revere beyond all measure a Swiss girl who figured as a waitress there. There are figures galore at the Cowshed. I myself am a not unpopular, at times even celebrated regular. When I set foot on the premises, which are redolent of an aging, half-dead elegance, the publican gets up from his seat where he is keeping watch and greets me with great amicability by making a thoroughly courteous, suave bow, the significance of which is that I should buy a round of cognac. Oh, the conduct I display here at the Cowshed. It resembles the conduct of a Prince Dolgoroucki, a Count Osten-Sacken, a Prince Poniatowski. I always treat the artistes assembled upon the small triangular stage, which is stuck in a corner as if lost in indeterminacy and incertitude, to a boot. The significance of the term “boot” in localities such as the Cowshed is no doubt unfamiliar to most ladies and gentlemen of a literary bent. A boot of this sort is quite simply a tankard of beer shaped like a lady’s boot, made of glass and holding nearly two liters. The music made at the Cowshed is often ear-rending; nonetheless I do adore it and dream of divinely beautiful things whenever it creeps into my ear to ensnare me with melodies. Invariably I have some refreshment placed upon the fortepiano of the bushy-haired, gasconading lout of a band leader. This amenity, which he loses no time in appreciating and, as for the rest, most artfully guzzling, ah pardon, I mean drinking, consists in nothing other than various glasses of beer. Yes, I do have to say that quite a lot of money exits my pockets at the Cowshed. Excellent interest accrues on the capital thus invested, and this interest takes the form of merriments that give me no end of pleasure. For the most part I am a most cleverly respectable fellow, but at times, at times … when the mood happens to strike …

  1911 (?)

  An Actor

  The Abyssinian lion at the Zoological Garden is most interesting. He’s performing in a tragedy, one that shows him simultaneously languishing and growing fat. He despairs (a nameless despair) and at the same time keeps himself nice and round. He thrives and at the same time is slowly tormenting himself to death. And all of this plays out before the eyes of the assembled spectators. I myself stood for a long time before his cage, utterly incapable of tearing my eyes away from this kingly drama. On a side note, incidentally: I should like to change professions, if this might be done expeditiously and with little effort, and become a painter of animals. I’d be able to paint my fill just of this caged-in lion. Has the esteemed literary reader ever looked closely and with proper attentiveness at the eye of an elephant? It sparkles with primordial grandeur. But hark! What’s that roaring? Ah, it’s our dramatist. He’s his own playwright and his own player. Although he sometimes appears to be quite beside himself, he never loses his composure, for his dignity is inborn. Dignity, then, and at the same time wildness. Just think how beautiful and majestic it is when he sleeps. But let’s have a look at him when he senses the approach of feeding time. He descends to the level of an impatient child, in love with the vision of the approaching feast. Then at least he has something to do: he can tear at fresh meat. He’s so good at eating. How oddly a caged animal like this must know—and to some extent love—his keeper. At rest, how divine he is. He appears to be in mourning, appears to be entertaining quite particular thoughts, and I am tempted to swear that the thoughts he is immersed in are beautiful and sublime. Have you ever let him have a good look at you? Try it, attract his attention sometime. His gaze is the gaze of a god. And then what is he like when he grows uneasy and strides up and down in his prison cell, pressing his princely strength against the walls of his cage. Always up and down. Up and down. For hours on end. What a scene! Up and down, and his powerful tail thrashes the ground.

  1910

  Berlin Life

  Berlin and the Artist

  Elsewhere, in the quiet provinces, the artist can easily find himself surrounded by melancholias. Lost in thought, he sits at the secluded window of his medieval digs, a strange twilight flowing all about him, and without so much as stirring he sends his daydreams out into the sweeping landscape. No one comes. Nothing disturbs his reverie. An inexpressible silence rules the surrounds. In the capital, on the other hand, there is no dearth of disturbances, it’s like a lively warehouse of good cheer, and naturally this is something our man finds beneficial. The souls of artists must always be woken a little from the magic spell in which they lie fettered. Inside almost every artist—certainly in every true one—lies a fairy-tale realm. In the land of fairy tales, however, a great deal of slumbering occurs. One d
oesn’t stir much. Are not today’s German provinces much like a dreaming, slumbering fairy tale? Magdeburg, for instance. Does Magdeburg possess its own self-sufficient and self-assured intellectual life? Not particularly. That’s the problem.

  Berlin, by comparison—how splendid! A city like Berlin is an ill-mannered, impertinent, intelligent scoundrel, constantly affirming the things that suit him and tossing aside everything he tires of. Here in the big city you can definitely feel the waves of intellect washing over the life of Berlin society like a sort of bath. An artist here has no choice but to pay attention. Elsewhere he is permitted to stop up his ears and sink into willful ignorance. Here this is not allowed. Rather, he must constantly pull himself together as a human being, and this compulsion encircling him redounds to his advantage. But there are yet other things as well.

  Berlin never rests, and this is glorious. Each dawning day brings with it a new, agreeably disagreeable attack on complacency, and this does the general sense of indolence good. An artist possesses, much like a child, an inborn propensity for beautiful, noble sluggardizing. Well, this slug-a-beddishness, this kingdom, is constantly being buffeted by fresh storm-winds of inspiration. The refined, silent creature is suddenly blustered full of something coarse, loud, and unrefined. There is an incessant blurring together of various things, and this is good, this is Berlin, and Berlin is outstanding.

  The excellent gentleman from the provinces, however, should by no means imagine that here in the city there are not lonelinesses as well. The metropolis contains lonelinesses of the most frightful sort, and anyone who wishes to sample this exquisite dish can eat his fill of it here. He can experience what it means to live in deserts and wastes. The metropolitan artist has no dearth of opportunities to see and speak to no one at all. All he has to do is make himself unpopular among certain arbiters of taste or else consistently fixate on failures, and in no time he’ll have sunk into the most splendid, most blossoming of abandonments.

  The artist who is crowned with success lives in the metropolis as if in an enchanting Oriental dream. He hastens from one elegant household to the affluent next, sits down unhesitatingly at the opulently laden dining tables, and while chewing and slurping provides the entertainment. He passes his days in a virtual state of intoxication. And his talent? Does an artist such as this neglect his talent? What a question! As if one might cast off one’s gifts without so much as a by-your-leave. On the contrary. Talent unconsciously grows stronger when one throws oneself into life. You mustn’t be constantly tending and coddling it like a sickly something. It shrivels up when it’s too timidly cared for.

  The artistic individual is nonetheless permitted to pace up and down, like a tiger, in his cave of artistic creation, mad with desire and worry over achieving some output of beauty. As no one sees this, there is no one to hold it against him. In company, he should be as breezy, affable, and charming as he can manage, neither too self-important nor too unimportant either. One thing he must never forget: he is all but required to pay court to beautiful, wealthy women at least a little.

  After approximately five or six years have passed, the artist—even if he comes from peasant stock—will feel at home in the metropolis. His parents would appear to have lived and given birth to him here. He feels indebted, bound, and beholden to this strange rattling, clattering racket. All the scurrying and fluttering about now seem to him a sort of nebulous, beloved maternal figure. He no longer thinks of ever leaving again. Whether things go well with him or poorly, whether he comes down in the world or flourishes, no matter, it “has” him, he is forever under its spell, and it would be impossible for him to bid this magnificent restlessness adieu.

  1910

  Kutsch

  Of kutsch it is known that he has three unfinished plays in his armoire, besides which he’s at work on a fourth, using material borrowed from Maupassant.

  Hey there, Kutsch!

  Kutsch finds it distasteful to be so flippantly addressed, he’s distrustful and perhaps has good cause for this, as he is striving for ultimate greatness, and all who strive for greatness aren’t so keen on rubbing shoulders with their fellow man.

  People of this sort are always envisioning a certain far-off something. Such individuals find themselves constantly faced with the necessity that whispers to them: Evolve!—Kutsch needs to evolve, it’s at the top of his list, and this same uncanny force is always tormenting him a little, making him prick up his ears and commanding that he assume a stricken, nervous facial expression.

  He has long, narrow hands, sensitive hands. Certain satirical illustrators like nothing better than to have a go at such hands to exploit them in their drawings. My intention here is to offer up a serious character study, and since this is the case it is crucial to pay very close attention to ensure that no feature appears in exaggerated form.

  Colleague Kutsch!

  This is a word he’s not terribly fond of, he’d prefer not to be anyone’s colleague, he’s a sort of up-high person always tugging his collar up about his ears. When you give his hand a good squeeze, it makes a cracking sound, and when he’s wearing his hat, he has a quite interesting head.

  He’s constantly afraid people might be poking fun at him, but there are certain individuals you cannot faithfully portray without poking a bit of fun.

  One night Kutsch left a hastily penned drama lying in the coffeehouse, on one of those coffeehouse sofas upon which the habitual aesthete is wont to fling himself down to sip coffee and stare into space. Some other fellow found the play, picked it up, put it in his pocket, brought it home, copied it over, completed it, prepared it for staging, and then had it put on in a first-rate theater, where it was a success.

  This one too was based on a story by Maupassant. Yes, indeed. In the work of Maupassant, that loutish peasant from Normandy, great quantities of “Life” are stored away, anyone who’s read him must surely have noticed this.

  Kutsch studies his subject matter rather than life itself; the life he has heretofore experienced still leaves much to be desired. He writes for the papers and reviews books, that’s what he’s experienced, and this, in his opinion, is not particularly striking as experiences go.

  What a shame he wasn’t born in—let’s say for example—the time of Louis XIV in France; surely he’d have shown some of those brilliant scalawags just having their heyday at the time what he was capable of.

  The thing is: Kutsch can do anything, and he wants everything too, but in fact he does nothing at all. He writes critiques of novels because he himself is an epic author through and through; he reviews plays because he himself is thoroughly possessed by the devil of this discipline; and he writes about poetry because he himself ought to have written some poems if only he’d wanted to.

  He’ll be angry when he reads this. I shall say to him: Here, take this! And shall press into his hand the modest, though for him not negligible, honorarium I shall have received for this sketch.

  Sometimes those who poke fun have the extravagant habit of being philanthropic.

  My God, Kutsch is so impoverished, so abandoned by all the world. Keep in mind that he strives only for what is noble and first-rate. He is not merely a person like any other, just as most people are not merely people like any other.

  I, however, most definitely number among the hundred thousand. I am virtually indistinguishable from a household servant, and am glad to be so ordinary.

  Did you catch the undercurrent of vindictive envy?

  Why should I envy Kutsch? On the contrary, I pity him. After all, I’m writing an essay on him, and so I must of necessity feel he is beneath me, since otherwise I could hardly be writing “on” him.

  This ignoble practice of just going and writing about living human beings as though they were dead. And then this Kutsch isn’t even interesting, I hear the reader protest.

  1907

  Fabulous

  The weather was fabulous. On such a splendid day, Kitsch and Kutsch had no desire to stay home, and so they readie
d themselves to go out and then hurried down to the street. Fabulous, this light in the street, Kutsch murmured as the two of them marched vigorously forward, and Kitsch as well said: Fabulous. Soon a plump woman came walking toward them, and at once this woman was declared fabulous by the two promenaders. They boarded the “electric”—how utterly fabulous, Kutsch opined once more, scratching at his youthful beard, riding along like this, and Kitsch lost no time in agreeing emphatically with his companion. A girl with “fabulous eyes” was sitting in the car. Suddenly a light rain began to fall: Fabulous!

  After a while our Kitsch and Kutsch got out again and went to an art salon. The art dealer was looking out the window of his shop, and this nearly appeared fabulous to the two of them, which would have gone like this: How fabulous, the way this fellow is looking out his shop window. But they avoided giving spoken expression to this thought because they sensed it wasn’t right to always go on saying exactly the same thing. Half a minute later they were standing before a Renoir: Simply fabulous! shot out of their mouths. Kutsch once more began to scrape away at his beard with his fingers, but already his colleague had discovered something that was a full ten fables more fabulous than the Renoir, namely an old Dutch artist. Something like this, they said, was more than fabulous, and both of them felt like shouting.

  Then they departed. Outdoors meanwhile a fine crust of snow had fallen, quite fabulous-looking; the snow was so black, a bluish black, it was simply—well, they contained themselves, after all you don’t always want to go on saying exactly the same thing. They ran into a painter. It wasn’t long before the painter was telling them that he knew nothing more fabulous than Paris. Kitsch and Kutsch found it distasteful to go about saying that Paris was fabulous, and soon they were treating this unsuspecting painter and his fee-fi-fo-fum-fabulous Paris with contempt. As soon as they were alone once more, things started right back up again, but they found it appropriate; this time it was a pond. They stood upon a bridge, and there below them lay the pond in all its fabulousness. All at once they spoke of poems by Verlaine—Kutsch clapped his hands and cried: Fabulous. Then Kitsch started smiling. Now he’d figured it out, he said to himself: How base it was to go on fabulousing like that at every paltry opportunity. One minute later he crumpled to the ground, felled by the fabulous sight of a woman’s blue skirt. That blue is magnificent, Kitsch said, getting to his feet again with effort. He’d twisted his ankle. And from this moment on they always used the word magnificent, never again fabulous.