Crazy in Berlin by Thomas Berger
"Crazy in Berlin" by Thomas Berger is a coming-of-age novel that follows the journey of Carlo Reinhart, an Army medic in post-World War II Berlin, on his twenty-first birthday. The narrative explores Reinhart's encounters with a diverse cast of characters, including Americans, Germans, and Russians, who expose him to themes of love, chaos, and existential madness. As Reinhart navigates relationships with significant figures such as the idealistic Lieutenant Schild and various women who influence his understanding of romance and normality, he grapples with complex moral and philosophical dilemmas related to his German identity and Jewish heritage.
The novel delves into the complexities of human nature and societal values, often presenting Reinhart's internal conflict as he seeks to define his identity amidst a backdrop of historical trauma and personal loss. Through his comedic yet poignant experiences, Reinhart reflects on the absurdities of life and the weight of his cultural legacy, ultimately revealing the challenges of maintaining integrity in a world marked by corruption and nihilism. This exploration of identity and responsibility continues in subsequent novels, where Reinhart's character evolves, mirroring the struggles of an American character grappling with confusion and despair.
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Crazy in Berlin by Thomas Berger
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1958
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Crazy in Berlin, which opens on Carlo Reinhart’s twenty-first birthday, is Berger’s only remotely autobiographical novel, a coming-of-age tale in which his protagonist learns something about the complexities of the modern world. As an Army medic in Berlin following the end of World War II, Reinhart meets a wide variety of Americans, Germans, and Russians who introduce him to love, chaos, and madness. He spends much of the novel wandering from one lying or misinformed person to another as he acquires some sense of his identity.
The other characters include the idealistic Lieutenant Schild, a Jewish communist who leaks military secrets to the Russians; Lichenko, a Red Army deserter and would-be capitalist harbored temporarily by Schild; Bach, a giant, philosophical invalid who presents a case for anti-Semitism even though he hid his Jewish wife from the Nazis for four years; Dr. Otto Knebel, a former communist, tortured and blinded in a Russian concentration camp, who becomes a fascist after the fall of the Nazis; and Schatzi, a former supporter of Adolf Hitler imprisoned in Auschwitz for his criminal activities and now a cynical Soviet agent. Then there are the three women in Reinhart’s life: Lori, Bach’s wife and Knebel’s twin sister, who represents for Reinhart an unattainable romantic ideal; Trudschen, Lori’s whorish, masochistic, sixteen-year-old cousin, who appeals to Reinhart’s irrational side; and Veronica Leary, a flirtatious, buxom Army nurse, who represents vulgar American normality.
After Schild, betrayed by Schatzi, is abducted by two communist agents, Reinhart attempts to rescue him. He kills one of the abductors, but Schild is murdered by the other. Reinhart, who receives a serious head wound, undergoes six months of therapy in a psychiatric ward. He obtains revenge for Schild by betraying the treacherous Schatzi.
Reinhart tells his psychiatrist that Schild was insane for believing in the King Arthur stories he read as a boy and that he is himself crazy for sharing Schild’s romantic idealism. Reinhart senses that traditional values are without philosophical justification, yet he remains loyal to them in the name of decency and civilized behavior. Constantly musing on what it means to be Jewish, consumed by guilt over his German ancestry, aware of his potential for evil, Reinhart sees all sides to every argument and feels responsible for any injustice. He is on a seemingly endless quest to understand what cannot be understood.
Reinhart’s often comic quest continues in Reinhart in Love, in which he returns to what passes for normality in the United States, finishes college, and marries a shrew; Vital Parts (1970), in which he has become a middle-aged failure at marriage, fatherhood, and business; and Reinhart’s Women (1981), in which he keeps house for his daughter, a successful model, becomes a gourmet cook, and finally loses his grand expectations for himself, shedding his guilt and self-pity in the process. Reinhart has been called one of the most original heroes in American fiction because he embodies so many aspects of the American character in his journey through confusion and despair and because he maintains his integrity and humanity in an increasingly materialistic, nihilistic world. A good-hearted man in a corrupt society, he is a victim of his virtues.
Bibliography
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Chapman, Edgar L. “’Seeing’ Invisibility: Or, Invisibility as Metaphor in Thomas Berger’s Being Invisible.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 4 (1992): 65-93.
Landon, Brooks. Thomas Berger. Boston: Twayne, 1989.
Landon, Brooks. “Thomas Berger: Dedicated to the Novel.” World & I 18 (October, 2003): 208-209.
Landon, Brooks. “Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex.” In King Arthur Through the Ages, edited by Valerie M. Lagorio and Mildred Leake Day. New York: Garland, 1990.
Sinowitz, Michael Leigh. “The Western as Postmodern Satiric History: Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man.” Clio 28 (Winter, 1999): 129-148.
Stypes, Aaron. “Thomas Berger and Sheer Incongruity.” South Dakota Review 32 (Winter, 1994): 34-43.
Wallace, Jon. “A Murderous Clarity: A Reading of Thomas Berger’s Killing Time.” Philological Quarterly 68 (Winter, 1989): 101-114.
Zimmerman, Brett. “The Linguistic Key to Crabb’s Veracity: Berger’s Little Big Man Revisited.” Western American Literature 38 (Fall, 2003): 270-288.