The Fall and Rise of Berlin

• Published in: American conservative (Arlington, Va.) Vol. 18; no. 6; pp. 51 - 54
• Main Author: O'Malley, J.P
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: Arlington The American Conservative LLC 01.11.2019; American Conservative LLC
• Subjects: 20th century; Democracy; Historians; Nationalism; Nazi era; Politics; World War I; Germany; Europe
• ISSN: 1540-966X

First published in 1947, Heinz Rein's Berlin Finale is a novel that centers on a key question British historian Ian Kershaw also asked in his 2011 book The End: Hitler's Germany, 1944-45: why did Germans relentlessly keep fighting until the bitter conclusion of the Second World War when it was abundantly clear that it was only going to bring a prolonged hellish fury of death, destruction, and misery to German cities and the civilian population? [...]the official language of the Communist International (Comintern) during this time wasn't Russian, but German.) When artists from a myriad of countries and cultures pooled their talents together, they proved that brilliant creative projects could surface. Bewildering, quick, and layered with possibilities, the narrative of the book unfolds in this chaotic modernist manner: mixing random street encounters with passages from the Book of Genesis, and city weather reports with last night's confusing violent nightmares- presenting us with characters who attempt to forge some personal future out of the seemingly impersonal circumstances of modern life. [...]the relentless machine-like violent energy of the First World War has its footprints all over Berlin Alexanderplatz: in murderous beatings, in the aggressive street slang of wounded soldiers, in vivid portrayals of Berlin abattoirs where the slaughter of animals is described in bloodthirsty detail, and in the schizophrenic voices that consistently haunt Döblin's central protagonist at every twist and turn his life seems to take.