Paul Sullivan and Marcel Krueger trace the modern history of the German capital through its literary protagonists…
By the end of the eighteenth century, Prussia already had some 200 clubs and societies dedicated to reading and writing, alongside a burgeoning selection of bookshops and literary cafes. Berlin, Prussia’s capital at that time, had its own prominent literary scene, spanning societies like the Wednesday Club, a private club for high-profile society members, prominent local print publications like the Berlinische Monatsschrift (Berlin Monthly) and resident writers and poets such as Karl Wilhelm Ramler, Christoph Friedrich Nicolai, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Moses Mendelssohn.
Much of the literary activity around this time was connected directly to the Prussian State, in that the writing published and ideas discussed tended to come from noblemen, professors and civil servants. In this sense it was not particularly anti-establishment—but as the reading public grew and more nuanced social strata began to emerge, different types of literature developed, ranging from more upper class and critical (so called ‘autonomous’) publications to more egalitarian formats for the masses, often described as Trivialliteratur.
Another major literary network of the time, though, were the more independent literary salons that brought together an independent array of writers, artists, scientists and thinkers. The Berlin salons emulated the already-established French formats—both the aristocratic and more modest bourgeois versions—and were similarly instigated and hosted by female intellectuals, often of Jewish heritage, such as Rahel Levin Varnhagen (1771-1833), Sara Levy (1761-1854) and Henriette Herz (1764-1847), as well as non-Jewish intellectuals and artists like Bettina von Arnim (1785-1859) and court lady Karoline Friederike von Berg (1760-1826).
Usually held in private homes, these salons became intimate forums for discussing the artistic and social issues of the day, facilitating new forms of literature such as cultural and travel works inspired by German Romanticism to the politically-charged poems and writings of the Vormärz era—Heinrich Heine’s anti-establishment poems of the 1840s, for example. Many of these Republican ideals directly informed the demands fought for in the German Revolutions of 1848-1849.
“Social questions were discussed even at tea parties. The Political leaning at these tea parties is socialist, in that members of the gathering prefer to talk and debate how the substance and form of life could be improved. The female sex especially long for liberation from the bonds of tradition, fashion, convention. Among all the women of this type in Berlin who enjoy a public reputation, Bettina von Arnim is indisputably the chief and most prominent. It is generally known, even to the court, that her soirees have the character I just described. She is left in peace because she is held in universally high regard here, and no fault can rightly be found in her.”—1847 Prussian surveillance report on von Arnim
After the failed revolutions, official censorship and control squashed this culture of politicised writing, at least in public, leading to a period of more conventional literature characterised by non-political, often late-Romantic themes such as historical fiction and country life. The first internationally known Berlin-based writers—the Brothers Grimm, Heinrich von Kleist, E.T.A Hoffmann, Adelbert von Chamisso—are well-known for exactly these broader themes rather than writing, say, about the social and daily life of the Prussian Hauptstadt.
It was with the rise of so-called realist writers such as Gerhart Hauptmann, Gottfried Keller, Theodor Fontane and Wilhelm Raabe that the social realities of the city—mass culture, accelerating modernisation—began to be addressed. Raabe was one of the first to engage with Berlin’s increasingly urbanised surroundings in Die Chronik der Sperlingsgasse