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Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood
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Goodbye to Berlin (original 1939; edition 2016)

by Christopher Isherwood, George Grosz (Illustrator), Frank Whitford (Foreword)

Series: The Berlin Stories (2)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
2,093497,619 (3.72)141
First published in 1939, this novel obliquely evokes the gathering storm of Berlin before and during the rise to power of the Nazis. Events are seen through the eyes of a series of individuals, whose lives are all about to be ruined.
Member:drasvola
Title:Goodbye to Berlin
Authors:Christopher Isherwood
Other authors:George Grosz (Illustrator), Frank Whitford (Foreword)
Info:Folio Society, 2016
Collections:Your library
Rating:
Tags:Folio Society, Fiction

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Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood (1939)

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English (38)  Catalan (3)  Spanish (2)  German (1)  Italian (1)  Swedish (1)  Portuguese (Portugal) (1)  Dutch (1)  French (1)  All languages (49)
Showing 1-5 of 38 (next | show all)
Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin is a collection of some connected short stories about how Isherwood, once an outsider English teacher living in Berlin, became involved in several people who were threaten by the rise of the Nazis. His friendship began in some simple and subtle way, yet some ended in melancholic realization.

As time went away, the lives of people in Isherwood's circle were getting robbed by the Nazis, as well as Berlin crashed from once a center of culture and fashion with its Golden Twenties into a depressing town doomed with its citizen only be able to acclimatizing themselves with the natural law.

"The political moral is certainly depressing, these people could be made to believe in anybody or anything."

"Only a week since I wrote the above. Schleider has resigned. The monocles did their stuff. Hitler has formed a cabinet with Hugenberg. Nobody thinks it can last till the spring."

"She is merely acclimatizing herself, in accordance with a natural law, like an animal which changes its coat for the winter. Thousands of people like Frl. Schroeder are acclimatizing themselves. After all, whatever government is in power, they are doomed to live in this town."

"The sun shines, and Hitler is master of this city. The sun shines, and dozens of my friends -- my pupils at the Workers' School, the men and women I met at the I. A. H -- are in prison, possibly dead."

Interestingly, Isherwood describing his characters with queers way of thinking, making them interesting each of their own. He described two women, Sally Bowles and Natalia Landauer, with a great admiration and care, yet in an extreme subtleness, he told his readers that he had no sexual attraction towards them.

One of the character who attracted Isherwood was Bernhard Landauer, the Jews-Prussian man, wealthy and always mocking Isherwood's logic English thought with absolute sarcasm. Yet the more we delve to their story, the more we see how the attracted each other. Sadly, their fate put their life in a different road.

'Bernhard Landauer, beware. We are going to settle the score with you and your uncle and all other filthy Jews. We give you twenty-four hours to leave Germany. If not, you are dead men.'

"The Nazis may write like schoolboys, but they're capable of anything. That's just why they're so dangerous. People laugh at them, right up to the last moment…"

Initially, Isherwood came from British to Berlin to search freedom. It was ironically being asked by Herr Landauer with the discussion about Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde. For Isherwood, Berlin was land of freedom so even though he would be lonely, he chose to live there.

In his eyes, Berlin was perfect. They tolerate queer and glamorous lifestyle, they tolerate communist movement, and they tolerate Jewish business. The Nazis and Adolf Hitler changed them all. Isherwood even told about how this propaganda was being told to Berlin's citizen, making Jews the wrong side in trade. The saddest part of all was how fast the society believed all those lies.

George Orwell was right, reading Goodbye to Berlin is like reading a brilliant sketches of a society in decay.
( )
  awwarma | Jan 24, 2024 |
Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin is a collection of some connected short stories about how Isherwood, once an outsider English teacher living in Berlin, became involved in several people who were threaten by the rise of the Nazis. His friendship began in some simple and subtle way, yet some ended in melancholic realization.

As time went away, the lives of people in Isherwood's circle were getting robbed by the Nazis, as well as Berlin crashed from once a center of culture and fashion with its Golden Twenties into a depressing town doomed with its citizen only be able to acclimatizing themselves with the natural law.

"The political moral is certainly depressing, these people could be made to believe in anybody or anything."

"Only a week since I wrote the above. Schleider has resigned. The monocles did their stuff. Hitler has formed a cabinet with Hugenberg. Nobody thinks it can last till the spring."

"She is merely acclimatizing herself, in accordance with a natural law, like an animal which changes its coat for the winter. Thousands of people like Frl. Schroeder are acclimatizing themselves. After all, whatever government is in power, they are doomed to live in this town."

"The sun shines, and Hitler is master of this city. The sun shines, and dozens of my friends -- my pupils at the Workers' School, the men and women I met at the I. A. H -- are in prison, possibly dead."

Interestingly, Isherwood describing his characters with queers way of thinking, making them interesting each of their own. He described two women, Sally Bowles and Natalia Landauer, with a great admiration and care, yet in an extreme subtleness, he told his readers that he had no sexual attraction towards them.

One of the character who attracted Isherwood was Bernhard Landauer, the Jews-Prussian man, wealthy and always mocking Isherwood's logic English thought with absolute sarcasm. Yet the more we delve to their story, the more we see how the attracted each other. Sadly, their fate put their life in a different road.

'Bernhard Landauer, beware. We are going to settle the score with you and your uncle and all other filthy Jews. We give you twenty-four hours to leave Germany. If not, you are dead men.'

"The Nazis may write like schoolboys, but they're capable of anything. That's just why they're so dangerous. People laugh at them, right up to the last moment…"

Initially, Isherwood came from British to Berlin to search freedom. It was ironically being asked by Herr Landauer with the discussion about Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde. For Isherwood, Berlin was land of freedom so even though he would be lonely, he chose to live there.

In his eyes, Berlin was perfect. They tolerate queer and glamorous lifestyle, they tolerate communist movement, and they tolerate Jewish business. The Nazis and Adolf Hitler changed them all. Isherwood even told about how this propaganda was being told to Berlin's citizen, making Jews the wrong side in trade. The saddest part of all was how fast the society believed all those lies.

George Orwell was right, reading Goodbye to Berlin is like reading a brilliant sketches of a society in decay.
( )
  awwarma | Jan 24, 2024 |
I enjoyed this book just as much as [b:Mr Norris Changes Trains|705163|Mr Norris Changes Trains|Christopher Isherwood|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1320426661s/705163.jpg|1473499]. It lacks the persistent sense of foreboding that characterises the earlier book, but it makes up for it by more clearly showing the poverty and social decay that existed in Berlin during the rise of the Nazis. The desperation of all the characters is clear as they cope with the consequences of long term social and economic collapse. The final couple of stories then emphasise the terrifying rise of the Nazis with remarkable acuity.

Isherwood creates a narrator who is engaged and expresses his own emotions, but refuses to judge or sensationalise what he sees. So when he states that he "shuddered in disgust" or similar, it is never quite clear that the disgust is justified, merely that this was his reaction. It is left to the reader to decide how to respond. Of course, the result is that all the emotions are felt much more keenly by the reader because they own them. Add to this the vividness of the descriptions and the expert characterisation and reading the book is a wonderful experience. ( )
  robfwalter | Jul 31, 2023 |
A little too slow moving for my current mood, which made me feel disconnected from the characters. The most interesting bits were at the end, where the author puts in some of his actual diary entries from 1932-33 and which describe the small acts of public violence and hatred, and how ordinary citizens responded to them. ( )
  blueskygreentrees | Jul 30, 2023 |
Here’s another semi-autobiographical book that I’ve read this year. You might have read my review of A Single Man, which I really enjoyed. The first time I’d actually heard of Isherwood was during a creative writing class when we were tasked with creating accurate descriptions of characters, and we were given an excerpt from this book to read – the part when Christopher meets Sally for the first time. I resolved to read it one day after that, and I am glad I have.
Goodbye to Berlin is an account of Isherwood’s time in Berlin, told through a mostly fictional way but including elements of his real life within it. There are many parts of it that are incredibly historically accurate, seeing as he did actually live through Germany as it transitioned into the Nazi Germany of World War Two. But there are elements of it, such as his own personal life, that are fictionalized. The reason, apparently, was because of his homosexuality, and he didn’t want to shout it from the rooftops that he was gay, so he kept that part on the downlow, although there are some mentions of spending time in a night club that could very well have been a gay bar. There is also a very explicit mention towards the end of the book of a club in which queer men gather to watch drag acts.
There isn’t a lot to the story plot wise – it is mostly just travel writing, Isherwood talking about his time in Germany and how he lived as a private English tutor and as he witnessed the way that the country changed very slowly. It details his holidays, his friendships, his acquaintances, his various living situations, and everything else that he comes across in those years that he lived in Berlin, all neatly packaged into six ‘chapters’ of the book that deal with one significant character or event at a time. Mostly, however, the story is painted by the spectacular characters that he introduces – Otto, Sally, Fritz, and many others.
What I really liked about this book, from the perspective of somebody reading it in the twenty-first century, is how if you pay attention, the signs of a Nazi Germany slowly rising are all there. And it also makes you more aware of what the real situation, on the ground, was like. Nazism didn’t take over overnight, and it wasn’t a radical change. It started with a few remarks here and there, an election won, and then slowly the Nazi party took the power they wanted. And Isherwood, living in the time when it’s all happening, clearly shows how it manifests itself. There are various remarks about Jews being ostracized and Jews being liked but also having snide remarks being made about them. The people, the commoners, were not all as racist as history might have painted them – most of them were not aware of the atrocities that would happen. Isherwood does a fantastic job of illustrating that, especially when you remember while reading that these were the people he hung around, and these were the people he spoke to on a daily basis. He knew these people, and he knew that they were not full of hatred, but simply misguided as a lot of people are even today.
Overall, I’d give this book a 3/5, for the simple reason that I myself am not a massive fan of travel writing, but I really did enjoy the historical insight that I got from reading this book.
( )
  viiemzee | Feb 20, 2023 |
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» Add other authors (68 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Isherwood, Christopherprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Cumming, AlanContributorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Grosz, GeorgeIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Meisal, AnnCover artistsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Toorn, Willem vanTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Whitford, FrankForewordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Dedication
Information from the Dutch Common Knowledge. Edit to localize it to your language.
To
John and Beatrix Lehmann
First words
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From my window, the deep solemn massive street.
Quotations
[Sally Bowles] sang badly, without any expression, her hands hanging down at her sides ... Her arms hanging carelessly limp.
"You see those ink-stains on the carpet? That's where Herr Professor Koch used to shake his fountain-pen. I told him of it a hundred times. In the end, I even laid sheets of blotting-paper on the floor around his chair."
"Would you like a Prairie Oyster?" ... [Sally] broke the eggs into the glasses, added the [Worcester] sauce and stirred up the mixture with the end of a fountain-pen.
The children sing as they march - patriotic songs about the Homeland - in voices shrill as birds.
Most of the Baabe boys are Nazis. Two of them come into the rsetaurant sometimes and engage us in good-humoured political arguments. They ell us about their field-exercises and military games. / "You're preparing for war", says Peter indignantly.... "Excuse me," one of the boys contradicts, "that's quite wrong. The Fuhrer does not want war. Our programme stands for peace, with honour. All the same ..." he adds wistfully, his face lighting up, "war can be fine, you know" Think of the ancient Greeks!"
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First published in 1939, this novel obliquely evokes the gathering storm of Berlin before and during the rise to power of the Nazis. Events are seen through the eyes of a series of individuals, whose lives are all about to be ruined.

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Une famille très pauvre,
une danseuse de cabaret,
une riche famille juive
(Tiercelin)

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