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 German
Expressionist novelist and essayist whose best-know work was BERLIN
ALEXANDERPLATZ (1929), A psychological portrait of an ex-convict
and a complex study of metropolitan environment. The book was adapted
into television play by Rainer Werner Fassbinder in 1980. Döblin's
radical novels, which attempted to extend the expressive means of
the novel beyond its inherited conventional boundaries, reflected
his interest in the scientific approach to the political and social
forces that affect individuals.
"Die Trommel wirbelt hinter ihm. Marschieren,
marschieren. Wie ziehen in den Krig mit festen Schitt, es gehen
mit uns hundert Spielleute mit, Morgenrot, Abendrot, leuchtest
uns zum frühen Tod.
Biderkopf is ein kleinen Arbeiter. Wir wissen, was
wie wissen, wir habens teuer bezahlen müssen."
(from Berlin Alexanderplatz)
Döblin was born in Stettin, Pomerania into impoverished middle-class
family. His father, Max Döblin, was a Jewish merchant, and mother
Sophie (Freudenheim) Döblin. The family moved to Berlin in 1988.
He was educated at the Gymnasium, Stettin (1888, 1891-1900). Between
the years 1900 and 1904 he studied medicine at Berlin University,
then at Freiburg University, receiving medical degree in 1905, but
did not actually practice medicine until 1911. During his student
years Döblin became deeply interested in the philosophy of Kant,
Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. Between the years 1905 and 19011 he
was a journalist in Regensburg and Berlin. He practiced psychiatry
in the worker' district of the Alexanderplatz in Berlin before winning
critical success with his novel DIE DREI SPÜNGE DES WANG-LUN (1915).
It was a depiction of political upheaval in 18th-century China.
The protagonist Wang-Lun is a devotee on non-violent protest who
becomes involved in a bloody uprising driven by a popular will that
is presented as a force of nature.
In literary circles Döblin's name became known through his stories
in the magazine Der Sturm. From about 1908 Döblin was actively
involved in the literary avant-garde of Berlin and he became one
of the founders of Expressionism. Soon, however, he discontinued
his association with the group, and remained outside literary movements.
Rather than to follow the program of Italian futurism, he insisted
that the writer should communicate empirical experience of the world
in ways that were immediate to the senses. Presenting himself as
the champion of radical anti-subjectivism he saw, that the external
world should speak through the written text and any portion of a
text should be viable independently of the rest. In 1920 Döblin
became member of Schutzverband Deutcher Schriftsteller Association
of German Writers and four years later he was appointed president
of the organization. He was a theatre reviewer for Prager Tageblatt
from 1921 to 1924, and a member of the cultural discussion circle
Group 1925 with Bertold Brecht.
During World War I Döblin served as a medical officer in the German
army. In the 1920s appeared Döblin's historical novel WALLENSTEIN
(1920), set during the Thirty Years' War and containing some stark
depictions of human excess and brutality. BERGE, MEERE UN GIGANTEN
(1924), was a dystopian vision of future, in which the machinations
of technocrats lead to confrontation between man and nature.
Berlin Alexanderplatz is a montage novel, in which Döblin
employs multiple viewpoints to create a complex, teeming narrative
that mirrors the disjointed style of life in modern urban areas.
Its interior monologue show the influence of James Joyce. The
protagonist, Franz Biberkopf, a modern Job, a man of strong physique
and limited intelligence, is released from prison and is drawn
into the criminal underworld of Berlin. He falls under the influence
of Reinhold, who murders the prostitute Mieze, with whom Franz
had achieved a measure of stability. After mental and physical
crisis, Franz appears at the end of the novel perhaps understanding
better the forces inside and outside of himself. The action is
confined to a small area centred on Alexanderplatz. Metropolitan
environment in presented in the manuscript of the novel by using
news items and advertisements from newspapers, soldiers' songs,
weather forecasts, election speeches, sex manuals, market reports
etc. Sound effects appear from time to time.
After Nazi takeover Döblin was obliged to leave Germany because
of his socialist views and Jewish ancestry. He had left the Socialist
Party of Germany (the SPD), joining the independent and Communist
Social Democrats. Döblin fled after the burning of the Reichstag
in 1933 with his wife and four children to Switzwerland, narrowly
escaping the Nazis. From 1933 to 1945 he lived in exile in France
and in the United States like Brecht and Thomas and Heinrich Mann.
Döblin's novel DAS LAND OHNE TOD, set in the conflicting cultures
of South America, appeared in 1937-38. In the United States Döblin
worked as a script writer for Metro Goldwyn Mayer (1940-41). He
converted to Roman Catholicism in 1941. In 1948 acknowledged the
influence of Kierkegaard and Spinoza, whom he considered his great
philosophical and moral master.
In 1945 Döblin returned to Europe as a member of the French Ministry
of Cultural Affairs. He served in Baden-Baden, Germany, as an education
officer and published the magazine Das goldene Tor from 1946
to 1951. His novel NOVEMBER 1918, a historically exact account of
German's failed revolution, was published in 1949. He was a cofounder
and vice-president of the literary section of Academy for Science
and Literature in Mainz. Döblin settled in Paris in the early 1950s
- he had become a French citizen in 1936. In 1956 he entered sanatorium
at Freiburg in Breisgau. Before his death Döblin was almost totally
paralysed for many years. His last novel, HAMLET (1956), was an
expression of his hope for a new Europe. It combined a family history,
applying Jungian archetypes to a modern marital crisis, and reflected
the author's Catholic faith. Döblin died on June 26, 1957, at Emmendingen.
Döblin considered creation purely anti-intellectual process - art
is individual, anarchistic, but accumulation of facts and details
also is germane to the modern epic. He attacked in his literary
theories one-dimensional linear plots and dismissed character as
nonessential. In an article about Joyce's Ulysses (1928)
he noted that the book cannot appeal to the masses, who still live
in the old flat fabulation. Döblin's concept of the novel as a free
genre had deep influence on Brecht. In 'Der historische Roman und
Wir' (1936) Döblin stated that the historical novel is the present-day
form of fairy tale - every novel is actually a historical novel.
In a speech in 1950 he expressed his low opinion of the influence
of writers on society: "No tragedy can change anything; no poem
changes anything."
Note: In Berlin after WW I Romanisches Café became the
main meeting place, where met such writers as Bertold Brecht,
Georg Grosz, Franz Werfel, Ernst Toller, Alfred Döblin, Joseph
Roth and Erich Maria Remarque. - The writer Günter Grass has acknowledged
a debt to Döblin in his works.
For further reading: Dimensions of the Modern Novel by
Theodore Ziolkowski (1969); Bibliographie Alfred Döblin by Leo
Kreutzer (1970); Alfred Döblin by Louis Huget (1972); Alfred Döblin
by Klaus Müller-Salget (1972); Alfred Döblin by Wolfgang Kort
(1974); Materialen zu Alfred Döblins 'Berlin Alexanderplatz',
ed. by Matthias Prangel (1975); The Humorous and Grotesque Elements
in Döblin's Berlin by H.S. Schoonover (197); Döblins Montageroman
als Epos der Moderne by Otto Keller (1980); Literarische Trauerarbeit:
Das Exil- und Späterwerk Alfred Döblins by Helmuth Kiesel (1986);
Alfred Döblin by Matthias Prangel (1987); The Berlin Novels of
Alfred Döblin by D.B. Dollenmayer (1988)
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