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Well done. The English speaking world is waking up to the genius of Doeblin and you are making a huge contribution to this.

Your efforts are not going unnoticed & were passed onto me by my friend Iain Bamforth. Bon Courage!

This is very exciting. And I thank you for your difficult and pioneering work.

When will it be published?

The comment below reached me via a personal email. The writer kindly gave permission to post it here.

From Dr Isabelle Weiss :

“What’s missing in German Literature?” is a rather provocative question. I do hope that Dr. Lembert may be granted a few more years in Berlin to provide the answer before he sits down to write the definitive ethnography of German literature and culture.

In the first instance perhaps the question highlights the strange phenomenon that Döblin’s work did not receive the interest that it deserved, neither before the war nor after. Before, at least his name was known to readers of newspapers and magazines, where his texts were published regularly, but after 1945 he had become a stranger in Germany, not wishing to return. Literary tastes by then had moved on, or rather a “Schlussstrich” had been drawn: “Stunde Null”, “Trümmerliteratur” or “Kahlschlag” had arrived. Gruppe 47 had their own ideas about what constituted worthwhile writing; their objective was to clean up the language of propaganda, anything “baroque” and elaborate was suspect. Döblin and Albert Vigoleis Thelen did not fit into their straitjacket and were ostracized. Döblin disappeared from public awareness and died more or less in obscurity, only to be re-discovered to some degree in 1978 (his 100th anniversary) when some of his books were re-published, and thanks to Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s TV series Berlin Alexanderplatz. Thelen never even had a chance.

Günter Grass acknowledged Döblin as his “teacher”, and W.G. Sebald wrote his PhD thesis on him, though subsequently became more and more critical of him. On another note it is perhaps interesting that Sebald appears to be less known in Germany than he is in the UK, and the Spiegel’s bestseller list often contains more books written in English than in German. One detects a certain unease in the reading public’s relationship to writings and authors in their own language – but that is the subject of a different debate.

Perhaps Dr. Lembert is troubled by the fact that while in the original Weimar there was a select circle of outstanding literary figures, Goethe, Schiller, Klopstock, Wieland, Humboldt, who were in constant contact with each other, during the Weimar Republic there was a multitude of playwrights, poets and writers who had little in common and pursued each their own goals. Kafka, Gerhardt Hauptmann, Robert Walser, Hermann Hesse … were all engaged in their own pursuits, and not corresponding with each other. While they were all writing in German, they lived in geographically different places, they drew their inspiration from very diverse sources and obsessions. Perhaps for that reason the impact on their readers was also rather limited in scope and did not create a sense of unity in the new Republic. Perhaps Gerhardt Hauptmann with his early attempt at social protest had the best chance of rallying people around him and becoming the voice to be heard. Sadly in later years, he lost that initial appeal. And Thomas Mann was perhaps too complex and too conservative a personality to provide cultural leadership and a unified vision.

But do we have this in other culture? Do we need it, whatever it is?

Isabelle Weiss

Thank you so much for all your work here, Chris.

As my introduction to Alfred Doblin, I read the two English-language volumes of the 1918 sequence recently and found it a stunning piece of work. Your translation of “Revolutionary Days in Alsace” was a fascinating companion to the early chapters of the novel.

I have also read “Tales of a Long Night”, (which really needed some commentary !) and am looking forward to starting your translation of “Wallenstein” soon.

I would be very interested to know how much material is omitted from the two English-language volumes of the 1918 sequence. I gather three volumes are reduced to two in English but also that a first volume of the tetralogy is not translated at all.

I look forward too to the two volumes coming from Galileo later in the year.

Thank you again. I hope you are keeping well in the current pandemic.

Chris, you are doing justice to Döblin in English way more than anyone else out there. Hope you set your sights on Wadzek or Babylonische Wandrung next!

Awesome job!

From Kevin Pinkerton:
Thank you for translating these works, and for making them accessible to Anglophone audiences. I have been interested in Döblin for years and only now, thanks to you, can I read…beyond Alexander Platz, as it were.

Cheers, you wonderful person.