Eight. Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the ‘20’s by Otto Friedrich (and the next book in the David Bowie Book Club is revealed)

Oren Raab
Oren Raab
Sep 2, 2018 · 3 min read

1972, Harper & Row, 464 pages. Written in English, read in English.

(Medium are making me clarify issues regarding possible affiliate links in my articles so please read this.)

So, history.

You’ve got a fairly good grasp of the main events. A global war, unprecedented in its scope and brutality, on one side, and the impending large shadow of a small, awkwardly moustachioed man on the other side. In between, you’ve heard anecdotes. You’ve heard about people papering their walls with money, because there was nothing better to do with it. You’ve read about the debauchery and the promiscuity of the night life in the city. You have no idea.

Otto Friedrich does. Or, at least, he has done extensive research to cover, in almost five hundred dense pages — with some pictures — the history of the city of Berlin in that crucial time between Germany’s defeat in the world war, and its subsequent political and financial downfall, and the rise to power of the Nazi party. His main thesis, one that is weirdly interweaved in the book in a way that sometimes breaks away from a dry historical narrative of the happenings in Berlin, into a single paragraph about an impactful movie that came out at the time, is that Berlin was a city of many faces, some of which contributed to its development in other areas, and that all of them intertwined into a unique period of time that may never return. Even the cover of the book demonstrates that entanglement — mine depicts Marlene Dietrich sitting on top of a billboard that has a poster of Hitler and Hindenburg, with a background of a George Grosz drawing of a famous street in Berlin at the time. The more modern edition trades Hitler for Goebbels and adds Einstein, Brecht and Peter Lorre for good measure, but the gist is the same — there was more to Berlin in the ‘20’s than a time of recovery from a dark time and an anticipation of an even darker time — although that have been a mindset that has fed into a lot of the other aspects discussed in the book.

And Friedrich tries to cover as many aspects of the city’s history as he can — in addition to the more mundane political and historical facts, he delves into the birth of the Dada and Bauhaus movements, highlights famous musicians and composers who have attended the city at times, talks about the Russian diaspora and the its cultural hub — including a young Nabokov — and details Brecht’s and Weil’s slow arrival at a mutual future that would benefit all of us, among other areas and notable citizens of Berlin.

But he also explains how the overall dire picture contributed to the specific cultural aura of Berlin at that time — how the devastation of Germany, financially and politically, and its unstable government, led to the promiscuity and debauchary that has been portrayed, mildly, in Christopher Isherwood’s stories and their musical adaptation, Cabaret.

Friedrich intersperses a lot of interviews with citizens of Berlin at the time, and it is important to him to indicate what they are and where they live, as this is another important point that contributes to the message Friedrich is trying to convey about how Germany sped into its future in the ‘20’s in Berlin — none of them is mentioned as still living in Berlin, 50 years later.

(The book can be found here.)


Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December. But the days grow short when you reach September.

We still need to finish another book in the David Bowie Book Club this month, and, the gods of randomised book numbers wanted us to read into how Germany’s big ally, then enemy, in the Second World War, became that way — September’s book will be A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1890–1924 by Orlando Figes.

And another thing — while we were researching this book for the David Bowie Book Club, we’ve stumbled upon a podcast that does the exact same thing, and may have even predated Duncan Jones’ attempt. They are here.

Sixty Books

where Oren Raab attempts to read sixty books during 2016, and then write about them.

Oren Raab

Written by

Oren Raab

Musician. Blogger. Programmer. Husband. Father. Awesome (life, I mean. Not me.)

Sixty Books

where Oren Raab attempts to read sixty books during 2016, and then write about them.

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