Doeblin in Exile (1)
During his 12 years in exile, unable to practice medicine, bereft of income from his writings, and in 1940 again a desperate refugee, Döblin continued to produce major works despite uncertain publication prospects and lack of interest from U.S. publishers in bringing out English translations.
Twelve years in exile
I plan to put together several posts focused on Döblin’s 12-year exile from the Berlin that had formed the background of his life and creativity over nearly half a century.
During those 12 years in exile Döblin continued, under continual economic stress and often difficult circumstances, to produce substantial and important works, including three very large epic fictions (Babylonische Wandrung, the trilogy later known as Amazonas, and the four-volume November 1918) as well as a more social-realist novel Pardon wird nicht gegeben (Men without Mercy). All this despite the loss of a German-speaking environment, forced retirement from his medical practice, and the constant underlying uncertainty of day-to-day living and the longer-term future.
Having escaped to the USA from the German invasion of France, while in California he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1941, a decision that dismayed some and would reshape how he looked back on his previous career. His negative comments on some of his earlier (pre-Christian) works, made after his return to Germany in 1945, coloured the critical reception of those works as they began to re-emerge in new editions from 1961 onwards.
This post covers Döblin’s escape from Germany, and the strange mood of liberation that infused the writing of yet another epic fiction all through 1933.
Premonitions of exile
When Döblin fled Germany– on 28 February 1933, the day after the Reichstag fire – having been warned by several friends of his impending arrest (he was of Jewish origins, a troublesome opponent of all extremisms, and a decadent Modernist writer, hence a prime target of the Nazis) he thought for a while that it would be a temporary interruption to his Berlin life. The Nazis had been installed in government a mere four weeks earlier, and seemed at this point by no means destined to last.
Yet underlying Döblin’s assumption of a temporary hiatus was a premonition of exile that had been brewing through the later years of the Weimar Republic, as politics descended day by day into extremism, factional infighting, slogans and street fights, and sensible debate became ever less feasible. Looking back 12 years later he wrote: “Already for a long while things had grown unbearable in that country. The confusion, lack of a sense of direction, the torpor.” After a lecture tour of Switzerland the year before, he had written to a friend: “But I have a dark premonition that I shall come back this year once more to Switzerland.”
Later in 1932 Döblin had one of those visions of the kind that had previously provided the fertile seed of an epic work of fiction (the Swedish fleet sailing across the Baltic to ignite a new phase of the Thirty Years War: Wallenstein; Shiva’s realm of the dead: Manas). Now, in late 1932, he saw an ancient mouldering god come down to Earth to atone for his sins by becoming human.
He went into exile just a few months later “carrying this book” – given his usual rapid composition, he probably had a substantial sheaf of handwritten MS by this point.
Döblin on his first year of exile
After the War, Döblin published three accounts of his first exile year. The first, titled ‘Departure & return’ appeared in the Badische Zeitung on 22 Feb 1946, and was reprinted in several other papers:
…Was I really now outside, or simply waiting? I didn’t know. I wasn’t too bothered. My wife saw the actual situation, she knew she had taken leave of domesticity, the children had been torn away from everything, the mountain of cares, the clouds of uncertainty – she wept a great deal – on the other hand (what could I do against myself?) I was elated. Yes, elated. How so? In those months I had with me lines from Schiller’s ‘The Diver’(Der Taucher): “It was his salvation, it dragged him to the surface.”
What was my salvation? Oh, in Germany everything, not just politically but also intellectually, had become unbearable. It was as if the political confusion, the stagnation had seized hold of the intellect and crippled it. I struggled with it from my position. Finally, at the end of 1932, an image settled on me that would not let go: an ancient mouldering god, close to complete disintegration, leaves his abode in heaven and in order to renew himself and atone for his ancient sins flies down to Earth, to humanity, he once the god and ruler, now a human like anyone else. It was a foreboding and anticipation of exile. Yes, exile, the cutting loose, the isolation, the exit from the cul de sac, this downfall and sinking seemed to be my ‘salvation’. It sang within me: “It dragged him to the surface”. I had no defence against it. I was in a uniquely elevated mood (which also took hold of the book, on which I toiled the whole year.
In his autobiographical account of the exile years – Schicksalsreise (Destiny’s Journey) – published in 1948 but probably completed in 1946, Döblin writes in similar terms:
I’d left Germany 12 years before. Already for a long while things had grown unbearable in that country. The confusion, lack of a sense of direction, the torpor. From my position I struggled against stagnation. In 1932 a remarkable image came to me, I had no idea of its significance: an ancient mouldering God leaves his heavenly abode before final dissolution sets in; a murky penal sentence he can’t evade forces him down to Earth. He must atone for his ancient sins. And so he wanders through the hot land, among the ruins of temples where once he had been worshipped. What was this? Only as I wrote Babylonische Wandrung did it become clear: it was a sense of my own lost situation. It was a sense of guilt, much guilt, great guilt. It had become unbearable, and the urge to run away never slackened. It was an order to break away. It emerged as the ghost of the mouldering Babylonian god. It was a premonition of exile, and much more.
But how did my consciousness receive this image? How did I manipulate it? Happily, in high spirits, proudly! My god Conrad had no desire to atone, held his ground to the end, remained in the mire and would not atone. A proud word accompanied me out of it, from Schiller’s ballad ‘The Diver’. I was mocking the deeper experience already in me, and the image in which this deeper experience spoke I used for a long time only in play.
Yes, I was free when I left. I fled, I thought of it as just fleeing from a cage.
Two years later, a Festschrift was organised to celebrate Döblin’s 70th birthday. His contribution was a piece he called ‘Epilogue’. His recollection of his state of mind in 1933 has now changed significantly:
To run this problem to earth, to get behind the secret of a breakdown and what leads to it, I now set in motion a man similarly comfortable in his body, but this time excessively arrogant, a Babylonian god. I tried to force him to yield. This god “Conrad” was burdened with crimes, a much more serious criminal than Franz Biberkopf, the simple transport worker from Berlin. But he was even less inclined to work on and with himself.
This book, Babylonische Wandrung, makes a shocking mockery of the idea of sacrifice in Alexanderplatz. The god Conrad has not the slightest thought of atoning, he never even acknowledges that he has abdicated, lost his throne, and he maintains this stance throughout. I’ve no idea how my plan skidded away from me as I wrote. A mischievous imp played a trick on me. It was a setback. I struggled with his comings and goings.
So I went into exile in 1933 carrying this book. It got me no farther, and indicated a resistance, an obstacle and rigidity in me. It’s as if I felt something coming close, and barricaded myself against it.
In this third post-War account, Döblin is clearly setting us up to respond positively to his conversion to Christianity. In the accounts written in 1946 he had not found it necessary to do this.
Baden in SW Germany was in the French zone of occupation. Döblin (who with his family had become naturalised French citizens in October 1936) was serving as a French Army officer in the zone. His duties included censorship.
Reprinted in Zwei Seelen in einer Brust: Schriften zu Leben und Werk, pp. 304-21, preceded by an earlier MS version found posthumously among Döblin’s papers. The MS version does not include the second paragraph quoted here.
