The Birthday King by Gabriel Fielding

First published: 1962

Type of work: Historical expressionism

Time of work: August, 1939, and November, 1941, to July, 1945

Locale: Germany: Bavaria, East Prussia, and Berlin

Principal Characters:

• Ruprecht Waitzmann, the chief research assistant in the Aeronautical Institute and later the director of the Waitzmann Industries Group
• Alfried Waitzmann, his older brother, heir apparent to the Waitzmann business
• Frau Wilhelmina Waitzmann, the retiring chairman of the board (Kommerzienrat) of Waitzmann Industries, the mother of Ruprecht and Alfried
• Baron Nicolas von Hoffbach, a neighbor and business associate of the Waitzmanns, an official in the Berlin Chancellery, and a conspirator against Adolf Hitler
• Carin von Hoffbach, his adulterous wife
• Leo von Hoffbach, his son
• Eva de Luce, Carin’s mother, from Rastenburg
• Onkle Fritz, a member of the board of directors of Waitzmann Industries and a cousin of Ruprecht and Alfried
• Alexandra von Boehling, a guest of the Hoffbachs, a nurse and Ruprecht’s wife
• Felix Grunewald, the commandant of the Albrechtstrasse prison in Berlin
• Gudrun Grunewald, his wife
• Hubertus Grunewald, his son, an official in the Propaganda Ministry

The Novel

The nearly blind Frau Wilhelmina Waitzmann, unable to carry on the enormous responsibilities of running the family business (the Waitzmann Industries Group, a conglomerate that includes pulp and textile mills), tells the board of directors at her residence in Bergedorf, Bavaria, that she intends to surrender responsibility to her firstborn son, Alfried. The decision does not sit well with her other son Ruprecht, who believes that he is worthier of succession than his elder brother.

Ruprecht tells Alfried how he feels, but Alfried, who has recently returned from the United States, where he was running the firm’s branch in Baltimore, taunts him by saying that he will relinquish control tonight, if Ruprecht promises to be “the birthday king for the rest of [his] life, growing nobler and more generous as every year passes.” In fact, Alfried is ambivalent; he wants to marry Ruth Lubbe, who is considering becoming a nun, and, if the wedding goes forth, he will step down. He tells Ruprecht, however, that the final decision will probably not be made for two more years.

A year and a half passes. Ruprecht has managed to get a posting to the headquarters of the Aeronautical Institute in Berlin. He is a frequent visitor to the house of Carin von Hoffbach, whose husband, Baron Nicolas von Hoffbach, is a friend of Ruprecht and is associated with Waitzmann Industries. The real reason for Ruprecht’s visits is his interest in Alexandra von Boehling, whom he met previously, at the Baron’s castle outside Bergedorf. Ruprecht is still unreconciled to having his brother take over the family firm. Carin sympathizes with him—so much so that at a soiree, attended by a Nazi Party official, she implies that Alfried is a danger to the regime. This denunciation results in Alfried’s arrest.

Despite his detention in the Albrechtstrasse prison, Alfried is given special treatment, even being allowed to work during the day at the home of the prison commandant, Felix Grunewald, cataloging the books in his library. This task brings him into contact with the commandant’s wife, whom later he will deliberately antagonize, thus destroying his chances for early release. Because of Frau Grunewald’s prejudicial report to her husband, Alfried is turned over to the SS and is tortured.

With Alfried out of the way, Ruprecht, now married to Alexandra, takes over management of the Waitzmann Industries Group, but he is obliged to do military service, performing a special aerial reconnaissance operation in the Mediterranean to chart the waters off Sicily. The mission aborts, however, and the plane crashes in the sea. Ruprecht escapes with his life and is rescued by some Italian fishermen. When he returns to Bergedorf, he discovers that his associate Nicolas von Hoffbach is involved in a plot to kill Hitler. He tries to get Nicolas’ wife, Carin, to make her husband abandon such a dangerous project, but instead Carin tells Hubertus Grunewald, the son of the prison director, about her husband’s sedition, and Hubertus informs the authorities. Nicolas is arrested and taken to the Plotensee prison in Berlin, where he is tortured and finally executed by strangulation with piano wire.

During the final days of the war, the Soviets are besieging Berlin. Herr and Frau Grunewald consider suicide. Hubertus, to prove that he also sincerely believed in the Nazi regime, decides to join them in death. While his parents crush the cyanide capsules in their mouths, Hubertus spits his out. He then ransacks the house for valuables, hiding them in a protected location in the basement. He burns the house and makes his way into the city to lose himself in the growing mass of refugees.

The war is over. The prisoners of Dachau, where Alfried is imprisoned, are liberated, but Alfried refuses to leave and return to his family; remaining in the camp gives him a sense of purpose. The American commandant finally arranges that he be sent back to Bergedorf, but Alfried’s homecoming is not welcomed by Ruprecht, who fears losing control of Waitzmann Industries. Ruprecht now has a son, to whom he wants to pass on his empire. Ruprecht contemplates leaving Bergedorf and moving into the Communist zone. The political prisoner’s return is viewed as a mixed blessing by the other members of the family as well, none of whom is free from guilt by association with the Nazi regime. Alfried will be a perpetual reminder of their collaboration and complicity.

The Characters

The Waitzmann clan is Catholic, of Jewish ancestry—a fact which makes its position in Nazi Germany somewhat tenuous. The racial dilemma is compounded by a moral dilemma epitomized by the two brothers, Ruprecht and Alfried. Ruprecht, the birthday king, expects all the comforts and advantages of the world to be his by right and has little sense of responsibility beyond that of the comfort and prosperity of his immediate family. He considers himself a part of the traditional German industrial elite and is not interested in becoming involved in politics. For him, the Nazi regime is at worst a nuisance which, with the advent of the war, becomes more threatening only because of its unpredictability. No matter which side wins, however, Ruprecht is determined to endure. After all, business is business. He is happy that the fighting has not led to the destruction of the Waitzmann factories. What damage occurred proved to be beneficial insofar as the bombs cleared away out-of-date buildings, and Ruprecht looks forward to replacing the demolished structures with something more modern.

Alfried shows a somewhat different personality, almost antithetical to the one of his brother. He is troubled by his country’s moral collapse but cannot decide what to do about it: whether to marry his would-be nun and embark on a life of good works or to become head of the family concern and devote himself to the pursuit of making money. “My trouble,” he says, “is that I want everything; all the money I can lay my hands on, a particular woman, a family, and Heaven as well.” Alfried’s ambiguity becomes contradictory. “While I want everything the world has to offer,” he continues, “I’m quite unable to believe in it and while I reject all of the accepted ways to do it I cannot cease to believe in Heaven.” This confusion, the reader is told, has developed because of a vision of an angel Alfried had in his childhood, giving him the sensation of having already lived his entire life. Ironically, his diffidence leads him to take the sins of his family upon himself.

The other characters seem to lack clear definition and, appearing almost as stereotypes, are less well developed as individuals. Thus, Nicolas von Hoffbach represents the fading influence of the old German aristocracy brushed aside by bourgeois entrepreneur and Nazi politician alike. To redeem himself, he decides to give up his life in an effort to assassinate Hitler. In terms of his previous opportunism, however, the act appears gratuitous. So does his wife’s treachery. Carin never seems vicious enough to want consciously to destroy her husband. Her act appears more necessary for purposes of plot than the demands of her own personality.

Another symbol is Felix Grunewald, the new Nazi, a bureaucrat who has, or believes he has, no future outside the regime. Thus, his only choice is to die with it. On the other hand, his son, Hubertus, is a crass opportunist who will run away to fight another day. He will possibly do quite well in the post-Hitlerian Germany. Overall, the characters of The Birthday King are not unlike those found in Gabriel Fielding’s earlier novels, being a collection of self-centered, loveless people living stale, compassionless lives.

Critical Context

The lack of national distinctiveness about the characters in The Birthday King is at once a strength and a weakness, enabling Fielding to downplay the particular and idiosyncratic and to concentrate on the universal. This book is less autobiographical than the others in Fielding’s Blaydon sequence (In the Time of Greenbloom, 1956; Gentlemen in Their Season, 1966), but it nevertheless reflects the author’s own experiences and moral concerns. Just prior to its publication, the author himself underwent his own religious transformation, converting to Roman Catholicism.

The Birthday King was widely praised upon publication, especially in the author’s own country, but also in the United States, where critics usually have less patience for such slow development and lack of straightforward plotting. Fellow Englishman Anthony Burgess found the novel to be Fielding’s best work, “one of the most remarkable novels of the post war era”; other reviewers compared Fielding to Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, and Ivan Turgenev. An American reviewer, J. M. Bauke, called The Birthday King the best novel so far about “the rule of the swastika” and the standard by which “other books on Nazi Germany will be judged.” The novel won several awards, including the W. H. Smith and Son Literary Prize in 1963 for the most significant novel published in England in 1962 and, in the United States, the St. Thomas More Association Gold Medal of 1963 for its distinguished contribution to Catholic literature.

Bibliography

Balliett, Whitney. Review in The New Yorker. XXXIX (May 18, 1963), p. 174.

Bauke, J. P. Review in Saturday Review. XLVI (March 9, 1963), p. 105.

Borello, Alfred. Gabriel Fielding, 1974.

Cavallo, Evelyn. “Gabriel Fielding: A Portrait,” in The Critic. XIX (December, 1960/January, 1961), p. 19.

Corley, Thomas. Review in Commonweal. LXXVIII (May 3, 1963), p. 172.

Grande, Luke. “Gabriel Fielding: New Master of the Catholic Classic?” in World. CXCVII (June, 1963), pp. 172-179.

Hughes, Richard. Review in The New York Times Book Review. XLVIII (April 14, 1963), p. 4.

Newsweek. Review. LXI (May 20, 1963), p. 174.

Pickrel, Paul. Review in Harper’s Magazine. CCXXVI (April, 1963), p. 90.

Price, Martin. Review in The Yale Review. LII (June, 1963), p. 608.

Ricks, Christopher. Review in New Statesman. LXIV (October 12, 1963), p. 497.