What better time to revisit the works of Berliner Kurt Tucholsky , the great Jewish satirist, journalist and individualist? First printed in English translation in , Germany? As the city of his birth and hearth of Prussian officialdom, Berlin is often present. Seen in tandem with other forms of self-imposed exile such as his disassociation not only from his own Jewish heritage he wrote of himself as a Jew without religion but also from Germany, the country he left in but continued to love and criticise, the burden of alienation proved overwhelming.
Chronic sickness, isolation and despair at developments he had foreseen but failed — as he saw it — to prevent led to his suicide in Sweden in Does sex sell?
German novelist Norman Ohler immersed himself in archives in Germany and the US and dug up evidence that German society during the Third Reich, from the Nazi leadership and the military to broad swathes of the civilian population, was using and abusing Pervitin, a legal methamphetamine.
The drug, basically crystal meth in pill form, was produced by the tens of millions in the Temmler factory in Berlin. Accounts of generals, tank commanders and fighter pilots suggest that Pervitin allowed soldiers to stay awake, alert and fearless for days on end. Ohler believes meth use in the military played a decisive role in the Blitzkrieg victories at the beginning of World War II. Here since , Hockenos has experienced a great deal of what his book sets out to chronicle: the great divided city, the Island of West Berlin, reunification and the wild s.
Next he jumps the Wall to detail scenes in East Berlin before tying everything together for the post-reunifi cation years. An ambitious project to be covered in a scant pages. A long, lazy afternoon of swimming in crystal-clear water, sunbathing on soft green grass and picnicking under leafy trees, totally unimpeded by crowds, overpriced concessions, train strikes, stiflingly hot tram rides, dead fish smell, freak thunderstorms, wasps, portable speakers… okay, pretty much any Berlin lake day is guaranteed to have at least one of those things.
