First Look Back #2
This second excerpt from Döblin’s 1928 autobiographical reflections ‘A First Look Back’ provides an intimate and touching picture of his siblings and mother following the disaster that struck when his father absconded from the family in 1888.
FAMILY MATTERS – More excerpts from ‘A First Look Back’
See here the first excerpts relating to the family catastrophe.
- …and he had a sister
The man of whom I was speaking had a sister, who was in many respects his complete opposite. She was of the same stern species as his parents. This woman would have suited him superbly. She was called Henriette (remarkable, another Henriette), and had a husband, a very soft man, goofily active, lots of good cheer and heart. As far as I could see he didn’t enjoy life with her. She was hellishly clever. At home she wore the trousers, sturdy and brisk. When she died of a heart attack, not yet old, it happened quite fast and unexpectedly, the husband married again with hardly a pause. He lived on in bliss. If ever he had dared to abscond! She would have hauled him back from the North Pole, from the Fiji Islands, from the Cape of Best-ever Hope, back to her loving breast.
2. Respect to those who deserve it
I recall my mother as a woman who remained respectable into her old age. She paid great attention to her appearance, even during her last illness had her hair done, kept spick and span. She had a great warmth for her children, and later for her grandchildren. Dealing with laundry and underwear was a passion for her. She wasn’t very clever, her sister was much cleverer. The level of schooling attained in her family was generally not high. She was born in Samter, in the province of Posen, where her father, whom I recall as a little man with a white cravat, was a small tradesman, village trader in materials. His children spoke German, but also Polish and an already somewhat weakened Yiddish. When my mother wrote to relatives, she preferred to use Yiddish letters that looked like Turkish or Arabic; I never saw my father do so. Anyway, he came from Posen as well, the actual town of Posen. My mother grew up in Samter, her brothers left early, around 1865, for Breslau and Berlin, and became prosperous timber merchants, the firm is flourishing to this day. In exile in Berlin, we children and the housework kept my mother busy from morning till night. For a while she rented out a room. She did the laundry herself, she couldn’t abide having a maid. She was brave and spry. You can’t remain very unhappy for long. She had a curiously sceptical and resigned view of life. Her mottos betray a regrettably close acquaintance with existence: “It hits me like a house falling on my head.” And the more soothing phrases: “As you wish” and “It was always so, and will always be so.” She could declaim magnificently, and we still know by heart the wonderful poem she used to recite on homely evenings. You must speak it out loud, with heroic gestures, that’s how to drill it into your soul:
»Geh, Meister, nimm mich auf zum Schüler, Come, Master, take me as your pupil
Ist’s einem Ernst, so ist es mir; If anyone’s serious, then it’s me
Ich werde nicht nach Wochen kühler, I won‘t cool off after a few weeks
Mich treibt nicht eitle Ruhmbegier; I’m not driven by vain thoughts of glory
Nach andern, o! nach schönern Reizen To other, oh much lovelier delights
Verlangt’s allmächtig meinen Sinn! My mind has an almighty yearning!
Drum, Meister, will ich Maler werden That’s why, master, I would be a painter.
That’s all I remember. And anyway I’m overtaken by emotion. All I know is it ends in colossal sorrow with the words:
Vom Liebchen auf das Leichenbett Of the dear girl on her deathbed.
3. On the fate of an uprooted family
The eldest son, Ludwig, was a huge success. He was of true mercantile stock, with his mother’s family feeling and the musical inclinations of his father. He became the family’s provider, a second father. He joined the ‘timber uncles’ in their business, achieved independence, and left the family only when he married . On him fell the heaviest burden thrown off by the family’s absconding founder, and he bore it brilliantly.
We younger ones attended parochial schools in Berlin, only I reverted after three years to a Gymnasium. In all of us the father’s blood beat strongly. Hugo, the second son, endured only a brief career in business, then had to go into the theatre. The lusty lad quickly fell in love with the daughter of his teacher – Paul Pauli, who played Baumert in the 1893 premier of Hauptmann’s ‘Weavers’ – and in 1901 married the girl, who was called Martha. He became well known on the Berlin stage and in film.
The youngest brother, Kurt, harboured a passion for music, you could never drag him away from the piano, and he became an outstanding pianist. But as there was no prospect of formal training, he stayed in business. In the end he joined his eldest brother’s firm.
Sister Meta is dead already. In 1919 she was hit by grenade shrapnel during the unrest in Lichtenberg as she stepped out one morning to fetch milk for her small children. She managed to climb the stairs with the shrapnel inside her – she had no idea what had happened to her – and then just lay there. On the bed they found blood on her coat. She lasted one more day.
At the time I was not far from her in Lichtenberg, and lived through the Putsch and the cruel, outrageous, shocking things that accompanied the conquest of Lichtenberg by White troops. Around the same time, when in our district the grenades and trench mortars of the liberators were demolishing entire buildings, when many sat in cellars and then, horribly, when many were shot at the little Lichtenberg cemetery in Möllendorf Strasse – you had to see the corpses lying there outside the school, men with caps over their faces, to understand what class hatred and a spirit of vengeance mean – at around the same time the rest of Berlin was dancing away merrily, there were balls and newspapers. Nothing stirred as this was going on in Lichtenberg, and the many tens of thousands of workers in Berlin all kept silent. That was when I saw how necessary it was that this revolution should be repulsed. I am opposed to incapability. I hate incapability. These people were incapable of taking action. You have to declare a break with wimps, idiots and phrasemongers. That’s how it went then, and whoever declared a break, whether coming from the Left or the Right, I was on his side. It was around this time – I have to keep on about it – that one midday the entire Siegesallee, Bellevue Strasse, Potsdamer Platz were stuffed full of demonstrators marching. Whoever saw these masses of people, trucks carrying machine guns alongside them, thousands of strong men, and this mass, these workers, did nothing but scream Up with and Down with, and another huge mass of workers drew close to them going in the other direction, also singing the Internationale and screaming Down when the others screamed Up – whoever experienced this will know the repugnance I felt for such a miserable “revolution”. As alien and detestable as I found the White troops, I retreated and said firmly: this is good, better than that lot over there. Here a righteous judgement is being carried out. Either they know what a revolution is, and they make revolution, or they deserve a rod for their backs because they are merely playing at it.
I meant to speak of my sister. That dreadful morning, when the firing approached from the Warschauer Brücke, I was unable to go to her. The heavy artillery fire in the Frankfurter Allee was too strong. She was quickly carried to a nearby surgical clinic. When signs of internal bleeding showed, they made another incision. In vain. A major vessel had been severed, she died under anaesthetic. My mother was seriously ailing at the time, she lived with her eldest son in Lichtenberg. When I came to their apartment with my sister’s husband, my mother heard my brother’s painful sobs at the news. The illness had made her face rigid, but her hands and head shook more strongly. She said at once: “She’s dead.” And then: “Why her and not me.” My sister had not had a very good time at home. She had grown up with the crazy bourgeois ideal: “Thou shalt, must and wilt get married.” Though we had nothing, we made every effort to avoid placing her in a job. No thought was more alien to the family than that the daughter should simply earn money like everyone else and stand on her own feet. So my sister went here and there and for a long time didn’t marry. My eldest brother made huge sacrifices to provide a dowry from his business. The man she married was a dubious character even before the wedding. She was warned, but wanted to get away, she wanted her own household. A brief bad marriage. The man had taken her for her money. A year or two later came the divorce. For some years the woman lived alone with her furniture, then – it couldn’t go on forever, once again the only solution was marriage – so she married again, an artisan, a very simple tidy man. She went with him to Constantinople, then Antwerp. We visited her there once. She had taken on two children from the man’s first marriage – he was a widower, and because they were poor and had nothing they had four more children. Earlier, at home, she and her no less passionate and solid mother had often danced lively dances. Later the daughter, this much-tested woman of experience, was her closest confidant. Her fate was as heavy as my mother’s, but she faced it just as bravely and was not broken. In October 1914 Antwerp was attacked and occupied by the Germans. She lived with her children through the siege and the gunfire, then right after Antwerp fell returned to Germany in a great transport.
Although she had lots of troubles she was always good-humoured and gave advice right and left and was much loved. Her end suited her image nicely: death while fetching milk for her little children. The children have grown up well, they go to school and look! even the daughters are already independent, stand on their own feet, though still young. They are all doing well. I say this as a quiet thought that she herself can hear.
4. My mother’s life ends
We moved from Blumen Strasse to Landsberger Strasse near Friedrichshain, then to the quite new Marsilius Strasse opposite the factory, to the fourth floor – I could look out towards Blumen Strasse onto the yard of my parochial school. Then came Grüne Weg (‘Green Path’), where we were honoured to receive a visit from the old Hamburg gentleman . The family slowly emerged from the status of beggars, mainly through the toil of my eldest brother. We lived in Wallnertheater Strasse, followed eldest brother when he made himself independent, to gloomy Markus Strasse, and later farther east to Memel Strasse by the Warschauer Brücke. Gradually the family melted away. First to leave the nest was Hugo, the actor; he married very young, and my mother’s first grandchild came from him. Then eldest brother married, and there were three of us left with mother. Then came my sister’s marriage, and I left to pursue my studies. Until shortly before her end my youngest brother was still with her.
Around 1908 the life of my mother, who was already over sixty, took a happy turn. A bright beam of light fell over her life: she inherited a large amount from one of her brothers. From that moment on she was economically independent and well-to-do. It was in her nature to give to us as much as she was able. Now she went to summer resorts, made little trips, once even to Antwerp to see my sister. But even at that time there were puzzling signs that not all was well. Her right arm trembled, her right hand trembled, and there was a remarkable twitching in the arm, which would not relax even with rubbing, electric shocks and massage. It was 1910. I brought her to my superior at the time at the Urban Hospital, Albert Fränkel. With a shake of the head he said it was a nasty business, better keep an eye on it. Half a year later it was clear: the arm had grown stiffer, she could no longer do her own hair, the tremor in the fingers had a strangely rhythmic character, the pill-rolling between thumb and index finger. It was the early stage of the shaking palsy, paralysis agitans . Which then proceeded on its slow heavy dreadful, slow heavy lamentable way. Slowly in the right leg tension, stiffness and hardness set in, and passed into the left leg. The head started shaking, the facial muscles became notably stiff. She had no idea what was wrong with her. They said: It’s your nerves. And she said: Yes, it was no surprise given all that lay behind her, long years of toil, alone with five children, then letting to sub-tenants and doing the laundry herself. I took her to Wiesbaden, she improved, but it was all deception. 1914, end of July, amid the din of war alarms, I took her to Öynhausen. The stations were full of soldiers, on the way back many bridges had sentries posted. I travelled with Russians anxious to get home. In Berlin I could hardly squeeze out of the train as heaps of humanity stormed their way into the carriage. But Öynhausen was not good for the old lady, the baths weakened her. I still recall how she visited me later in the Frankfurter Allee, October 1914 on the birthday of my eldest, Peter. She brought presents, it was slow going up and down the stairs.
At the end of 1914 I joined up, for two years I didn’t see her, my leaves were taken up with my own ailments. Then I came to Lichtenberg, where she was living with my youngest brother. What a sight. I climbed the stairs. I knew she had a nurse. I rang, no one answered. I rang and knocked. Then a door opened inside, and very slow dragging steps could be heard. The chain was lifted, and there she stands. It’s her, “Granny”. Her hair is snow-white and sparse. It hasn’t been combed today, it hangs about her ears. The woman is so small, so small. She stands stiffly, rounded back bent forward, the illness has pressed her head down onto her chest. She holds her hands like little paws close to her body. A sad sight, so sad, as if pleading from below. There were big bags under her eyes, yellow spots on the eyelids. She stands there at the door. “It’s you, Fritz. Why do you never visit?” A monotonous, gently quavering voice, the old sound is there but broken. I led her slowly back into the parlour, the nurse had gone shopping, I sat her in a chair. I spent that leave with her. Though outwardly she was so changed, pressed by the illness to the ground, she still had her old habits and her nature of a housewife, calculating, and a mother, worrying; everything gone senile. She liked to hear stories, even laughed sometimes. She was immobile as a stick, had to be sat down, fed and washed. But once set on her feet she could take her little steps, though if she fell she couldn’t get up by herself. The war ended, we were all there again, visits came from this one, that one. She moved in with my eldest brother, during the bombardment of Lichtenberg she was carried down to the cellar.
I shall say nothing of what happened that final year when she could no longer sit, became bedridden. Anyone familiar with this disease knows: the song has ended. They lie in their helplessness like a stone just where they’ve been placed, and their flesh succumbs to bedsores. So there she lay during her final year in her room – my brother had moved with her towards the Tiergarten – tended by the nurse, a skeleton with rigid limbs but still with the unmistakably dear suffering features of our mother. That was her thin white skull. Her gaze. She didn’t suffer greatly. Those who saw her suffered more. There’s morphine, and even stronger stuff. I attended to her along with others. Sometimes we sat her up, she was like a doll made all of one piece, covered horribly in wounds at the hips, the heels, shoulders, the dreaded bedsores. Mostly she was alert, but also very confused, from the creeping wound-fever, painkillers, senile delirium. Until peace came and the soul received a mercy and left the body.
She lies in Weissensee beside her daughter. On her gravestone we had these words inscribed: Love never ceases.
5. Report on a member of the family
We have the honour to present a member of the family, Alfred Döblin, resident in Berlin, the second youngest son of the family. We provide several pictures of him, as well as a palm print. He was born in Stettin on 10 August 1878 as the son of the above-named Max Döblin and his wife Sophie, née Freudenheim.
Height 160 cm. Weight unclothed 114 pounds. Chest, expanded: 92 cm, relaxed: 86 cm. Skull circumference 58.5 cm, length 22 cm, width 16 cm. He has hereditary extreme short-sightedness and astigmatism.
Facial tone mostly pale, visible mucous membranes strongly bloodshot, musculature weakly developed, almost no fatty deposits. Pupil reflexes to bright light and close focusing are normal, knee and Achilles tendon reflexes notably enhanced. Hand pressure on both sides good, no abnormalities of motor strength. No swaying when eyes are closed, no tremor in the hands. Normal skin sensitivity to pricking and touching. Pharyngeal reflex present. Thoracic and abdominal organs show no findings.
The face is narrow, hair dark brown in good quantity, mixed with gray, the eye colour is gray-blue. The mouth has a prominent overbite, apparently hereditary in the family, like the short-sightedness. The gum is high. Dentition is lacking: the upper left canine, first upper right molar, wisdom tooth lower left and upper right.
The bone structure is gracile. The subject belongs overall to the slim active type, which Kretschmer assigns to the schizoid rank.
The nose is characteristically large, also long, in profile lies in line with the receding forehead which, bending away at the front, is that of a Jew. Ethnologically he is no pure type, there are Nordic acclimatisation influences, evident in the dolichocrany, the eye colour and the colour of the head hair, which in his youth was flaxen and only later darkened. Several of the subject’s children exhibit Nordic assimilation more clearly.
Döblin here provides a handwriting analysis by Dr Max Pulver[x] of Zurich, and a palm-reading by one Frau Marianne Raschig, who had not previously met him.
COMING NEXT: School Days. Part 3 of ‘A First Look Back’
The verse, somewhat misquoted, is from the Austrian Johann Gabriel Seidl (1804-1875): ‘The first picture and the last’.
Hugo (1876-1960) secretly attended acting lessons from 1891, then appeared on various Berlin stages (including alongside Max Reinhardt). From 1930 to 1933 he conducted the first talking-film school in Berlin. He wrote songs, poems, novellas, essays and film scripts.
Born 1880, deported to Auschwitz 1940.
After a brief first marriage, Meta married a Russian, Bernhard Goldenberg,a decorator by profession, in London. They lived in Istanbul, then in Antwerp, returning to Berlin in 1914.
The Spartacist-inspired Lichtenberg uprising in March 1919 was violently suppressed with heavy artillery and many summary killings. See Döblin’s June 1919 eyewitness account (as Linke Poot) in the essay ‘On Cannibalism’ (The Brooklyn Rail, March 2019)
Alfred was living at 194 Frankfurter Allee, Meta and her husband at 278.
By volunteering, Döblin could expect a professional salary. Had he waited to be called up, he would have had only a soldier’s daily pay.
Ernst Kretschmer (1888-1964), psychiatrist, founder of ‘constitution typology’.
[x] Max Pulver (1889-1952): Swiss Expressionist poet and dramatist, later turned to graphology. He wrote a newspaper article on Döblin, timed for an evening of readings in Zurich in 1927.
