More ‘Happy’ People from the Weimar Era

Hermann Kesten: Glückliche Menschen (Happy People), 1931

I think the Weimar Republic years in Germany seem happy in retrospect only when we compare them with what preceded and followed them. Yes, there was a liberation from oppressive moral restrictions and standards, and prostitution and homosexuality were tolerated in places, although officially still illegal, yes, Berlin felt like the capital of intellectual and artistic effervescence (and captured the imagination of foreign writers such as Isherwood), yes, there was a great deal of partying and decadence that was pursued more openly (and democratically, across all social classes) here than in the London of the Bright Young Things or Prohibition Era New York City.

But it was also a city marked by political and social unrest, and the German economy struggled even before the worldwide Great Depression. Crippling war reparations and injured egos led to hyperinflation in 1923, where people saw their lifetime savings wiped out overnight. Incidentally, this was the moment when Kafka chose to move to Berlin at last and had to move flats three times within six months because his rent was becoming too unaffordable. No wonder there was a desperate sense of ‘enjoy the day, for who knows what tomorrow might bring’. It gave birth to a great cynicism that didn’t quite believe in the temporary upsurge of 1926-28. And they were proved right, for the Great Crash in 1929 caused massive unemployment and brought the German economy once more to its knees as investors withdrew their loans.

This chaos is reflected in the literature and theatre of that period: German literature had traditionally eschewed political subjects, but this time it was no longer possible to stand aside. Brecht’s Dreigroschenoper with its bitter refrain ‘Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral’ (First comes grub, then ethics). The unrelenting bleakness of Alfred Döblin’s novel Berlin, Alexanderplatz, Hans Fallada’s Kleiner Mann, was nun? (Little Man, What Now?) or Erich Kästner’s Fabian, in all of which the protagonists struggle with unemployment, poverty and the lure of criminal activities to keep afloat. The women novelists did not avoid political and social commentary either in their novels, as Gabriele Tergit, Irmgard Keun and Vicki Baum demonstrated. And of course the acute observational journalism of Joseph Roth, or the antiwar stance of Erich Maria Remarque were hardly cheery material either.

Reading them in quick succession now, it feels like all of these authors were both describing their times and also warning that this confusion, chaos and desperation could lead to worse. As it most certainly did in Germany just a couple of years later.

So why on earth was I expecting this book by Hermann Kesten to be any different? Did I really fall for that title ‘Happy People’? The blurb was also a bit misleading: ‘Max Blattner and Else Pfleiderer are young and in love, but a lack of material means is preventing them from having a happy future together…’ I suppose I thought that unemployed Max would have some great idea and find a way to make money and prevent Else being married off to a rich businessman who promises to pay off her father’s debts. Perhaps I thought it would be a fluffy bit of escapism like Hans Fallada’s uncharacteristically sweet love story I reviewed last month.

There are indeed some farcical moments: when Else’s father catches the couple in bed, for instance, or the meeting between Max and Krummholz, the businessman her father would like her to marry. But the book starts with a dialogue between the two young people which at first sight seems comically exaggerated, but then ends up colouring the whole atmosphere of the book and foreshadows the outcome. The very first sentence is actually: ” ‘We could just kill ourselves’, she said.’ What follows, however, is the couple’s attempt to find other solutions to their predicament, solutions which involve begging, stealing, blackmail, physical violence, even reluctant attempts at prostitution. A few legal attempts at finding a job too, of course, but needless to say, these are not successful.

Yet the book ends on a supposedly cheerful note: the very last sentence is Max saying ‘We are happy people.’ But the author is cynically toying with us here: he is saying it to someone other than Else – I don’t think this book is likely to be translated into English, so this shouldn’t be too much of a spoiler. Also, the book jumps a few years into the future when he makes this statement, and the author couldn’t have known that by then very few people other than the Nazis and those who believed in them would have described themselves as ‘happy people’ in Germany.

It was a curious little work, with a head-hopping style giving us insight into several of the characters, a style that is now considered deeply unfashionable, but which reminded me very much of the cynical philosophy of the Dreigroschenoper: ‘Nur wer im Wohlstand lebt, lebt angenehm! – Only the wealthy live comfortably. – Doch die Verhältnisse, sie sind nicht so! – But circumstances do not permit it (for us to be generous and kind, or live in peace and harmony). – Die Welt ist arm, der Mensch ist schlecht. – The world is poor, and man is evil.’

In times of economic, political and social turmoil, art often becomes either completely escapist or political: perhaps this explains the cosy crime revival and cats on covers trend in books, and also films like ‘One Battle After Another’, ‘Bugonia’ and ‘Eddington’. Whether they will outlast the times they reflect remains to be seen.