1.
EXILE AND RESISTANCE
Migrants and Refugees in Literature,
History, and Public Affairs
Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-
Swiss Studies
Department of French and Italian
Döblin/Doblin: French citizen since 1936, public
servant 1939/40, officer 1945–1948
Feuchtwanger Memorial Library
Exile and Resistance opening event
with Adrian and Edgar Feuchtwanger

2.
“WITH THE EYES OF A GLOBAL CITIZEN”
“Certainly, today's great novelists prefer to choose Heimat as the matter of their work,
but they see it not only with the eyes of a local patriot, but with the eyes of a global
citizen!” Examples: Buddenbrooks, Berlin Alexanderplatz
Lion Feuchtwanger: Der Roman von heute ist international, 1932
Villa Aurora

3.
DÖBLIN TO FEUCHTWANGER, APRIL 28, 1933
“On May 10 there will be the auto-da-fé, I believe the Jew with my name will also be
present, fortunately only in paper form. They honor me by this. ... how will it be later
on, in 1 year, 2 years, when will the publishing houses also be ‘coordinated’? Abroad,
I can't be a doctor anymore, and why write, for whom? I cannot think about this fatal
chapter.”

4.
ALFRED DÖBLIN – PRIOR WARNINGS
• “the evil man” (Samuel Fischer), “the wonderful fighter” (Walter von Molo): Berlin-
province debate, resistance, literature as “ars militans” or fighting art
• “my illegitimate father” (Bertolt Brecht), My Teacher Alfred Döblin (Günter Grass):
artist’s artist
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner:
Portrait Dr Alfred Döblin, 1912
• Expressionism, Futurism, New Objectivity:
“Döblinism” (Open Letter to Marinetti, 1913)
• The Three Leaps of Wang Lun, 1916
• Berlin Alexanderplatz, 1929
• The Living Thoughts of Confucius, 1940
• Destiny’s Journey, 1949

5.
Döblin in French military coatDöblin in German military coat

6.
ALFRED DÖBLIN IN THE NEW YORK REVIEW
BOOKS CLASSICS
20182016

7.
ADAPTIONS OF BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ
Fassbinder, 1980Heinrich George, 1931

8.
BRECHT TO DÖBLIN, 1938
“I can hardly imagine how someone who wants to tackle the description of
movements of large crowds could do without studying your description technique
groundbreaking in this field. Also for the description of the position of the individual in
mass processes and its development you came up with completely new aspects to
the epic work of art.”

9.
GRASS ON DÖBLIN, 1967
“New in this novel [Wang-lun] and staggeringly revolutionary are the depictions of the
mass scenes: people get in flux, they storm mountains, they become a movable
mountain, the elements storm with them.”

10.
MASSES
• narrative mastery of the masses / crowds
• representation, understanding and communication of the masses / crowds
• “the propper and natural epic figure,” e.g. Troy, Babylon, Berlin, China, Warsaw,
Paris
• masses connected to life: “The earth under the feet of the raging mass begins to
live,” Die Bilder der Futuristen, 1912
• “If I could paint, I would paint ‘Berlin’ as a picture in the manner of the futurist
Severini” (i.e. Gino Severini, Rome, Paris)

11.
Gino Severini: La danse du Pan-Pan au “Monico,” 1911, 1959

12.
• night café in Montmartre
• fragmented surfaces to show several
simultaneous views of a dancer
• different states of movement
• plurality and unity
• accumulation and discharge of energy
in (pre-modern and modern) big city life
• moderated by media: “Pan Pan” love
song – euphoria, Pan – mythology
• the city as repetition of similar elements
• Döblin’s arrival in Berlin in 1888: the
city train as a carousel, repetition of
stations, lights, power lines, streets

13.
„BERLINER AMONG BERLINERS“
• Doctor Döblin, 1917: “Lived only in two cities, Stettin and Berlin, actually only in Berlin
[...]. He hardly made a trip to Basel on his return as a young doctor from Freiburg,
hardly saw Brussels during the World Fair; also a few days Munich happened. He was a
Berliner with a pale idea of other places.”
• “That breathed, pulsed, lived, loved and suffered. That was life. That was my life.”
• battle about regional identity, Heimat
• anti-urban concepts of Heimat, Berlin Alexanderplatz as a main object of anti-urban
sentiments around 1930 (Wilhelm Stapel: The Spiritual Man and his People)
• resistance through an urban concept of Heimat
• “I often called that whole thing ‘Heimat’ and was annoyed about the moles which
undermined the soil of the country, which wanted to build Heimat only around a village
barn with duck pond and a meadow with a grazing cattle herd. According to them,
Heimat had to comprise a mosquito swarm and a pipe smoking farmer.”

14.
BERLIN – CITY OF WORK
• commitment to Berlin as city of work: “productive mass settlement,” “a
tremendous will to work”
• “where everything happens with a tremendous, self-sacrificing tenseness for its
own sake”
• characterized not by cosmopolitanism, but by work and objectivity: “sobriety and
thirty times sobriety,” “almost no longing for pleasure”

15.
PROLETARIAN IDENTITY
• “I took it to my heart that we, that I belonged to the poor. This has determined my
whole nature. I belong to this people, to this nation: the poor.”
• anti-chic sense of community reaching as far as America and China
• Impressions of New York, 1939: “As soon as we set foot on American soil, we are
poor people, proletarians.”
• “We proletarians have barely even gotten to the golden shining synagogue at
Oranienburgerstrasse.”
• Holidays in France, 1926: “To concern yourself with France looks like
cosmopolitism.”
• “St. Moritz, the Riviera is someting for the well-off gentlemen.“ – allusions to
Thomas Mann and Lion Feuchtwanger

16.
DÖBLIN’S TRAVELS
• Warsaw 1924: “lively spirit of the liberated people” (Second Polish Republic)
• Paris 1933–1940, 1953–1957: “Paris was swarming with people, they walked
and ran and shouted and bought, they had a lot of plans, rest was not their
element.” – Babylonian Wandering, 1934
• London 1934
• New York 1939, 1940
• Chicago 1940, 1945
• (Seoul, Yokohama 1941)
• Los Angeles 1940–1945
• San Francisco 1945: re-education journal The Golden Gate (Das Goldenen Tor),
1946–1951

17.
1842 North Cherokee Avenue, 1940

18.
DÖBLIN ON NEW YORK
“a very friendly, soothing, yes: homely picture” – Impressions of New York, 1939
“These busy men and women with countless professions, I know their worries and
problems.” – Destiny’s Journey, 1949
“In London I rejoice over the immense expanse of the city, over the myriad of shops,
the changing types of people. In New York the characteristic rhythm of the traffic, the
inhaling and exhaling of the city: At noon, the skyscrapers empty their offices, and all
mankind, male and female, surges into the cafeterias and bars and they lunch
succinctly, as they did in the morning at breakfast They are standing in pairs, three,
four, one behind the other at the set tables, waiting for their turn.” – Big Cities and
Big City Citizens, 1953

19.
DÖBLIN ON LOS ANGELES
“an area and not a city,” “consisting essentially of gaps,” “basically no crowds,” “One
is a lot and extended in the greenery, but am I a cow?” – letters 1941/43
“Below, a large city laid widely spread. Its houses climbed up to the hills. Flowering
colorful gardens surrounded magnificent villas, garages and blue swimming pools.
Through the manicured avenues cars drove inaudibly in one stream. There were wide
shopping streets through which buses and street cars rushed; chairs and benches full
of people in green parks. Women crossed the boulevard and looked at shiny shop
windows with costumes, shoes, hats, jewelry. It was hot. They spooned ice cream in
the drugstores and threw a penny in the jukebox; the quiet, buzzing jazz music.” –
August 1945

20.
VERSIONS OF COSMOPOLITISM
• cosmopolitism of world government and international law (Suárez, Kant)
• bourgeois-elitarian cosmopolitism (Thomas Mann)
• proletarian cosmopolitism (Döblin)
“The human race, though divided into people and state, has a unity not only as a
species, but also as a moral and quasi-political figure, in that the commandment of
God and of nature, compassion and charity, embraces all human beings irrelevant of
border posts and flags.” – Francisco Suárez: De Legibus, 1612

21.
CRITIQUE OF OUR TIME
• radio series Kritik der Zeit, 1946–1952 at Südwestfunk Baden-Baden
• comments on the UN procedures and on the World Citizen Movement (Garry
Davis, “world citizen no. 1”): “They are representatives of mankind, expression of
the general human mind, alive in every people.”

22.
Thank you for your attention!