Dunja Medakovic channels Sven Regner’s famous novel to explore her East Kreuzberg neighbourhood…
It’s been twenty years since Sven Regener published his debut novel Herr Lehmann (Berlin Blues in the English translation), about a barman facing his 30th birthday and growing pressure to do something “more” with his life in Berlin at the tail end of the eighties. The laugh-out-loud book, a phenomenon so rare in the German literary landscape, was an instant success. It sold a million and a half copies, was followed by a film version and two prequel novels, and remains a staple of the Berlin oeuvre.
Reading Herr Lehmann a decade ago as a fresh-faced resident of Kreuzberg, the neighbourhood where the majority of the novel takes place, I was struck by how much the book didn’t want me to like it. Like Kreuzberg itself, Herr Lehmann, armed with bundles of sarcasm and oozing resignation, hates on newcomers, the police, bar owners, parents calling at 10am, people having breakfast, swimming pool goers, Star Wars, anything popular, anyone sensible, sober or reliable, anywhere other than Kreuzberg and additionally whatever’s on the agenda in that particular moment.
But no matter how much it mistreats them, a certain kind of person, maybe a person very much like Herr Lehmann himself, has always felt Kreuzberg’s incredible pull, ultimately personifying the mantra Kreuzberg bleibt unhöflich (“Kreuzberg stays rude”) and prescribing to its arm aber sexy (“poor but sexy”) kind of magic.
And in Herr Lehmann’s time the neighbourhood surely was “arm”. After the Second World War, Kreuzberg was one of the city’s poorest areas, due to regulated and cheap housing that made it attractive to immigrants, students and artists. In 1961, the Wall sprung up on three sides around Kreuzberg’s area SO36, which over time became known for riots and squats and as the centre of the German counterculture. Many of the young residents of Kreuzberg were also evading the West German national conscription, which in West Berlin was possible to do with impunity. Herr Lehmann too faces accusations of this kind:
“”I’ve lived here since 1980,”‘ she mimicked. ‘Do you get a medal for it, or something? Types like you only come here to get out of doing their nation…