The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood

First published: 1945; includes The Last of Mr. Norris, 1935; Goodbye to Berlin, 1939

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Suspense and narrative

Time of plot: 1930-1933

Locale: Berlin, Paris, Switzerland, and London

Principal Characters

• William Bradshaw, a young writer
• Arthur Norris, his new friend, a double agent
• Schmidt, Norris’s secretary
• Baron von Pregnitz, a wealthy Berliner
• Schroeder, Bradshaw’s landlady
• Christopher Isherwood, a young writer
• Sally Bowles, a young nightclub singer
• Natalie Landauer, Christopher’s pupil
• Bernhard Landauer, her cousin, a department-store manager

The Work

Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories consists of two popular books, loosely based upon his own experiences in Germany. These books first appeared separately as short novels: The Last of Mr. Norris, essentially a strongly plotted thriller, and Goodbyeto Berlin, a roughly continuous narrative comprising six stories set in the early 1930’s, during Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

The Last of Mr. Norris introduces narrator William Bradshaw (Isherwood’s middle names), a young writer who encounters a bewigged fellow Englishman named Arthur Norris on a train bound for Berlin. As they converse, Bradshaw, despite his companion’s nervousness at the German border, agrees to meet for tea at Norris’s Berlin flat. At the flat, he is briefly confused by two entrances, one marked as an office and the other marked private. Once inside, he sees that the office is separated from the living quarters only by a heavy curtain, a confusing duplicity.

Bradshaw encounters Herr Schmidt, Norris’s sinister secretary, who controls his employer by confronting creditors and doling out Norris’s pocket money. Bradshaw also discovers that Norris, a masochist, enjoys pornography, but he refuses to judge him. Together they spend New Year’s Eve amid Berlin’s notorious nightlife with the wealthy baron von Pregnitz. They also visit a brothel.

Fraulein Schroeder, Bradshaw’s aging landlady, is impressed whenever Norris calls, but other friends advise Bradshaw not to trust him. However, Bradshaw likes him and is stirred when Norris speaks passionately at a communist meeting. Later, they meet with Ludwig Bayer, the Communist Party leader in Berlin, who asks Bradshaw to translate a manuscript into English.

Norris invites Bradshaw to his birthday celebration. In the meantime he pawns his rug for additional funds. Schmidt objects because Norris owes him nine months’ wages and is already five thousand pounds in debt. He refuses to give Norris the cash, and the party is canceled. When Norris’s phone is disconnected, Bradshaw realizes that he has left Berlin, perhaps for Paris. Schmidt follows, seeking his wages.

Bradshaw visits London in the spring of 1932, but when he returns that autumn he finds an economic depression, joblessness, and more Nazi uniforms on the street. Schroeder, noticeably older and thinner, greets him, as does a newly prosperous Norris, who now rents a room from her. Norris is generous, pays his rent promptly, and invites Bradshaw to an expensive dinner with the baron, who has acquired a post in the new government. When Norris arrives late, the baron is obviously offended, but Bradshaw makes a joke, the ice is broken, and the dinner goes well. Afterward, Norris abruptly excuses himself, leaving the other two alone. The baron nudges Bradshaw’s foot, but Bradshaw deflects his advances, and they part politely.

Norris asks Bradshaw to accompany the baron to Switzerland, ostensibly for winter sports but actually to allow Norris and Margot, his connection in Paris, to elicit information from the baron. Over dinner, the baron admits that he enjoys boys’ adventure books and confides his recurring dream of seven youths on an island. After he offers to teach Bradshaw to ski, they encounter a Dutch youth and his uncle, who turns out to be Margot, the Paris connection.

The baron shifts his attention from Bradshaw to the boy, while the uncle and Bradshaw talk at teatime. Then a telegram urges Bradshaw to return to Berlin immediately. Bayer warns that Margot is an unofficial police agent who collects and sells political information and has already sent Norris money from the French secret service. The baron, a politician, now has access to Germany’s secrets. Bradshaw must urge Norris to leave Germany before he is arrested. Norris, it turns out has also double-crossed the Communist Party by gathering and selling information about them. The next day, Norris plans his escape to Mexico.

Needing cash, the baron agrees to sell information to Paris, but police decipher the code and arrest him. He flees, but not fast enough, and after he is cornered he shoots himself. Bradshaw is terrified that he, too, will be arrested and questioned for working with Bayer and for his friendship with Norris. Meanwhile, Norris escapes from Schmidt to Mexico City, then California, then Costa Rica. Apparently, he tries to have Schmidt murdered.

Norris, who primps routinely, employing makeup, powder, and an ever-changing wig, is clearly not who he seems. He is the treacherous double agent, betraying everyone—Bradshaw, the baron, the government, and the Communist Party. In contrast, Schmidt reveals his inner truth openly, without disguise. He is Norris’s negative, an unholy double, and his malice is always visible. He follows Norris relentlessly, blackmailing him, withholding his funds. He and Norris seem inextricably linked forever.

In Goodbye to Berlin, the narrator, another young English writer, is Christopher Isherwood—not the author himself, but “a convenient ventriloquist’s dummy,” who famously describes himself as “a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.” The first four words compose the title of John van Druten’s 1951 play I Am a Camera, which subsequently reappeared as the stage and film musical Cabaret. The stories that follow reveal different facets of life in the doomed Weimar Republic.

“A Berlin Diary (Autumn 1930)” introduces several characters. Christopher is again Fraulein Schroeder’s tenant and, like Bradshaw, he supports himself by teaching English to private pupils. His landlady, however, has metamorphosed. Previously tiny and delicate, Schroeder is now a strong, earthy woman who waddles about, gossiping enthusiastically. She sleeps in the living room behind a screen and rents the rooms in her flat to four other lodgers. To Christopher, a former medical student, she freely complains about her heavy bosom.

Christopher takes careful note of whatever he sees. The narration includes considerable impressionistic detail. He observes the heavy furniture, the smell of the room, the young men in the street whistling for their sweethearts, the three motherly prostitutes on the corner. Little mention is made of politics, but its hostilities are symbolized by the friction between two tenants: the Bavarian yodeler Fraulein Mayr, a loyal Nazi supporter, and the Jewish frau Glanterneck, who lives below.

Sally Bowles is a rebellious young female who sings at a local club. Her story spans the following year. When a mutual friend introduces her, Christopher notes her green fingernails, dirty hands, and heavily powdered face. An English girl, she soon telephones to invite Christopher to tea. They become good friends; she will become an actor, he a novelist. Sally obtains a cheaper room with Schroeder and, happily promiscuous, has an affair with her pianist, who soon abandons her.

Later, Sally and Christopher befriend a wealthy American at the Troika bar. They assume he is serious when he invites them both to travel the world with him, and Sally thinks she is in love. Then he departs Berlin for Budapest without notice, leaving them an indifferent message. When she discovers she is pregnant, Sally asks Schroeder to arrange an abortion. Christopher finally decides to start writing and leaves Berlin for Ruegen Island. While he is gone, Sally moves out and, after another unfortunate deception, disappears.

“On Ruegen Island (Summer 1931)” offers a brief pastoral interval in which Christopher again is more an observer than a participant. He rents a summer house with two others: Peter Wilkinson, a moody, gay, English intellectual, and a German working-class boy named Otto Nowak. These two share a bed but are an uneasy couple. Tensions escalate as the bisexual Otto goes dancing at night with local girls, making Peter jealous. Otto returns to the mainland early, leaving Christopher a note promising to visit him in Berlin.

“The Nowaks,” set in the following winter, somewhat resembles an unfinished draft, with disjointed scenes and a great deal of dialogue. After the British pound is devalued, Christopher visits Otto, seeking a cheaper room in their district. Frau Nowak, a charwoman, politely urges him to live with her dysfunctional family in their leaky attic, and he accepts. She misses the kaiser, while her alcoholic husband supports the Nazis (Otto is a communist). Amid all this, Christopher attempts to write. Finally, he locates a new room and a new job, but just after Christmas he returns to the Nowaks with small presents. Frau Nowak, who has tuberculosis, is now in a sanatorium. Christopher’s tender visit to her is the one of the most effective scenes in this story.

The poverty of the Nowaks is balanced by Christopher’s view of “The Landauers,” which spans the years covered by the book. They are a wealthy, educated Jewish family, owners of a major department store. Natalia Landauer, intelligent and well-read, is his private pupil. She does not wish to attend a university, and would rather travel to Paris to study art and cooking so that she could earn a living if necessary. Her family includes her older cousin, Bernhard, manager of the Berlin store, who invites Christopher to his flat and greets him wearing a kimono over street clothes. Polite but enigmatic, Bernhard speaks intimately of his early life, his sense of alienation, and his love of Asia.

Christopher and Bernhard meet again many months later, and Bernhard looks ill. He is receiving anonymous threats because he is Jewish. Christopher is going to England for the summer, although Bernhard suggests that they both leave immediately for Peking. Christopher assumes he is joking, but when he returns in the fall of 1932, they have lost contact, and he assumes Bernhard is abroad. Meanwhile, the store is surrounded by Nazi storm troopers, ordering customers not to buy from Jews.

Christopher hears his final news of the Landauers while in Prague. Bernhard has died of a heart failure, prompting a man to announce, “There’s a lot of heart failure . . . in Germany these days,” implying that he has been murdered. Natalia and her parents are safe for the moment in Paris.

In the final “Berlin Diary (Winter 1932–33),” the city has become more somber and squalid, “a skeleton which aches in the cold.” Violence is closer to the surface, and fear is infectious. Houses are searched, and people are imprisoned. Hitler becomes chancellor, and the Reichstag burns. Brown shirts and black uniforms attack a young boy in the street and stab him to death as police look on. Berlin is undergoing a terrible transformation, but Fraulein Schroeder, like many others, has adapted to the new regime. In May, Christopher leaves Berlin for good because “Hitler is master of this city.”

The Berlin Stories was originally part of an unfinished novel called The Lost, and Isherwood’s Berlin, at the heart of Germany, remains here a city of the lost, as is Christopher himself. While exploring many levels of the culture, Isherwood offers a compelling, historically accurate portrait of Germany in the 1930’s with surprising wit and humor. The threat of Nazism deepens with the ominous presence of Hitler looming in the background, especially in Goodbye to Berlin, which has been viewed as “more complex and . . . symbolic, denser in texture” than The Last of Mr. Norris. Readers, already aware of the war and the deaths to come, experience the powerful effect of dramatic irony. One critic has called The Berlin Stories “the best rendering of early Hitler Germany we have.”

Bibliography

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