Goodbye to Berlin is a 1939 novel by English-American writer Christopher Isherwood set during the waning days of the Weimar Republic. The novel recounts Isherwood's 1929–1932 sojourn in Berlin as a pleasure-seeking British expatriate on the eve of Adolf Hitler's ascension as Chancellor of Germany. The work consists of a "series of sketches of disintegrating Berlin, its slums and nightclubs and comfortable villas, its odd maladapted types and its complacent burghers." Isherwood drew many plot details from factual events, and he based the novel's characters on actual persons. Jean Ross, a 19-year-old flapper who briefly shared lodgings with Isherwood, inspired Sally Bowles, one of the main characters in the novel.
During Isherwood's time abroad in Germany, the young author witnessed the country's rapid political and social unraveling. He saw extreme "poverty, unemployment, political demonstrations and street fighting between the forces of the extreme left and the extreme right." Following the Enabling Act that cemented Hitler's power in March 1933, Isherwood fled Germany and returned to England. Afterwards, the Nazis shuttered Berlin's cabarets, and many of Isherwood's friends fled abroad or perished in concentration camps. These events served as the genesis for Isherwood's Berlin stories.
The novel received positive reviews from critics and writers. Anne Margaret Angus praised Isherwood's mastery in conveying the despair of Berlin's denizens and "their hopeless clinging to the pleasures of the moment". She believed Isherwood skillfully evoked "the psychological and emotional hotbed which forced the growth of that incredible tree, 'national socialism'." George Orwell hailed the novel for its "brilliant sketches of a society in decay". "Reading such tales as this," Orwell wrote, "the thing that surprises one is not that Hitler came to power, but that he did not do so several years earlier."
New Directions collected the 1939 novel together with Isherwood's 1935 novel, Mr Norris Changes Trains, in a 1945 omnibus edition titled The Berlin Stories. Critics praised the collection as capturing the bleak nihilism of the Weimar period. In 2010, Time magazine named it one of the 100 best English-language works of the 20th century. The work inspired the 1951 Broadway play I Am a Camera, the 1966 musical Cabaret, and the 1972 film of the same name. According to critics, the novel's character Sally Bowles inspired Truman Capote's character Holly Golightly in his 1958 novella Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Plot summary
After relocating to Weimar-era Berlin to work on a novel, an English writer explores the decadent nightlife of the city and becomes enmeshed in the colourful lives of a diverse array of Berlin denizens. He acquires modest lodgings in a boarding house owned by Fräulein Schroeder, a caring landlady.
At the boarding house, he interacts with the other tenants, including the brazen prostitute Fräulein Kost, who has a Japanese patron, and the decadent Sally Bowles, a young English flapper who sings tunelessly in a seedy cabaret called "The Lady Windermere". Due to a mutual lack of funds, Christopher and Sally soon become roommates, and he learns a great deal about her sex life as well as her coterie of "marvelous" lovers. When Sally becomes pregnant after a tryst, Christopher facilitates an abortion, and the painful incident draws them closer together. When he visits Sally at the hospital, the hospital staff assume he is Sally's impregnator and despise him for forcing her to have an abortion.
During the summer, Christopher resides at a beach house near the Baltic Sea with Peter Wilkinson and Otto Nowak. Peter has spent years in therapy when he meets the 16-year-old Otto, who assures Peter that he can cheer him up more than a therapist can and for less money. Peter is in love with Otto and is possessive over him; Otto appears to be bisexual, but it is clear that he prefers the girls he dances with in the town to Peter. Otto demonstrates little affection for Peter and increasingly desires independence, making Peter jealous and unhappy. Eventually, the two split: Otto escapes back to Berlin and Peter returns to his native England. Christopher too returns to Berlin.
During this time, Christopher meets teenage Natalie Landauer whose wealthy Jewish family owns a department store. After the Nazis smash the windows of several Jewish shops, Christopher learns that Natalie's cousin Bernhard is dead, likely murdered by the Nazis. Ultimately, Christopher is forced to leave Germany as the Nazis continue their ascent to power, and he fears that many of his beloved Berlin acquaintances are now dead.
Major characters Christopher Isherwoodan English writer who visits Berlin and becomes entangled in the lives of various locals. The character is based upon the author. Isherwood specifically relocated to poverty-stricken Berlin to avail himself of underage male prostitutes,: "It was Berlin itself he was hungry to meet; the Berlin Wystan had promised him. To Christopher, Berlin meant Boys. At school, Christopher had fallen in love with many boys and had been yearningly romantic about them. At college he had at last managed to get into bed with one." and he was politically indifferent about the rise of fascism. Jean Ross claimed that Sally Bowles' political indifference more closely resembled Isherwood himself and his hedonistic male friends, many of whom "fluttered around town exclaiming how sexy the storm troopers looked in their uniforms". Ross' opinion of Isherwood's political indifference was confirmed by Isherwood's acquaintance W. H. Auden who noted the young Isherwood "held no [political] opinions whatever about anything". Sally Bowlesa British cabaret singer with whom Christopher briefly shares a small Nollendorfstrasse flat. She has a number of sexual liaisons, becomes pregnant, and undergoes an abortion. The character was based upon 19-year-old flapper Jean Ross. Like Ross, Sally attended the exclusive Leatherhead School in Surrey, England, and she hailed from a wealthy family. According to Isherwood, Sally should not be either viewed or interpreted as "a tart." Instead, Sally "is a little girl who has listened to what the grown-ups had said about tarts, and who was trying to copy those things". Fräulein Schroedera plump German landlady who owns the boarding house where Christopher and Sally reside. The character was based upon Fräulein Meta Thurau. According to Isherwood, Thurau "was tremendously intrigued by [Jean Ross'] looks and mannerisms, her makeup, her style of dressing, and above all, her stories about her love affairs. But she didn't altogether like Jean. For Jean was untidy and inconsiderate; she made a lot of extra work for her landladies. She expected room service and sometimes would order people around in an imperious tone, with her English upper-class rudeness".
Otto Nowaka handsome, gamine teenage boy whose family hosts Christopher after he returns from his vacation on the Baltic Sea. Otto was based on bisexual teenager Walter Wolff who had been born in eastern Germany prior to its transfer to Poland after the Treaty of Versailles.: "He was principally heterosexual, but he enjoyed sex wherever he found it and was easily aroused by Isherwood's physical infatuation with him." Unwilling to become Polish citizens, Walter and his family moved to the Berlin slums after World War I. Although irrepressibly merry, Wolff was described by Isherwood as an incorrigible narcissist who cared little about the feelings of the men and women who pursued him. Peter Wilkinsonan English expatriate who sexually pursues Otto Nowak and then departs Germany due to Otto's flirtations with other men. The character was partly based on William Robson-Scott, a lecturer in English at Berlin University. Robson-Scott "was at this time homosexual and, according to Isherwood, occasionally paid boys to beat him." As three family members had died before he turned 15-years-old, Robson-Scott was "deeply apprehensive about life, believing that if one loved somebody the natural consequence of this would be their death." Natalie Landaueran earnest young Jewish woman whose affluent family pays Christopher for English lessons. Natalie's cousin Bernhard is murdered, presumably by Nazi street thugs. The character was loosely based on Gisa Soleweitschick.: As the Nazis seized power, Gisa Soleweitschick "left Berlin to continue her studies in Paris". According to Soleweitschick, her mother had discerned quickly that Isherwood was "not interested in girls" and, accordingly, she trusted him as her daughter's unchaperoned companion. However, Gisa herself did not realise that Isherwood was gay, and she attributed his lack of sexual advances to his "fine English manners." Klaus Linkean itinerant musician who impregnates Sally and is based upon Peter van Eyck. Although some biographers identify van Eyck as Jewish, others posit van Eyck was the wealthy scion of Prussian landowners in Pomerania. As an aristocrat, he was expected by his family to embark upon a military career but he became interested in jazz as a young man and pursued musical studies in Berlin. Clivea wealthy playboy based upon American expatriate John Blomshield who inspired the enigmatic character of Baron Maximilian von Heune in the 1972 film adaptation.: "Although married, Blomshield was entirely homosexual and had the sort of unlimited funds that enabled him to enjoy the city in a way Isherwood never could. He was also generous, and decided that Isherwood, Spender and Jean Ross should be given a taste of the high life. 'He altered our lives for about a week,' Spender recalled—a week Isherwood re-created in Goodbye to Berlin, where Blomshield inspired the character of Clive, the rich young man who takes up, treats and then unceremoniously dumps Chris and Sally." According to contradictory sources, Blomshield sexually pursued both Isherwood and Ross for a short while in Berlin, and he invited them to accompany him on a trip abroad to the United States. When they had agreed to go, he then abruptly disappeared without saying goodbye.: "... the American thrilled them by inviting them to come with him to the States and then dashed their hopes by leaving Berlin abruptly, without saying goodbye." Blomshield bluntly terminated his relationships in the same manner that Clive ends his affair with Sally.
Biographical context
Sojourn in Berlin The autobiographical novel recounts writer Christopher Isherwood's sojourn in Jazz Age Berlin and describes the pre-Nazi social milieu as well as the colourful personalities he encountered. At the time, acquaintances described a young Isherwood as indifferent to the growing spectre of fascism, and he had moved to Berlin in order to avail himself of boy prostitutes and to enjoy the city's orgiastic Jazz Age cabarets.: Isherwood frequented "the boy-bars in Berlin in the late years of the Weimar Republic.... [He] discovered a world utterly different from the repressive English one he disliked, and with it, the excitements of sex and new subject matter."
While residing in the city, Isherwood socialised with a blithe circle of expatriates that included W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Edward Upward, and Paul Bowles. As a gay man, he also interacted with marginalised enclaves of Berliners and foreigners who would be at greatest risk from Nazi persecution.