Month: March 2023

By Cosmo Adair.

Hitherto, the television has had little to say about Weimar Germany. Given the period’s well-recognised influence on film (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Metropolis, etc.), this is somewhat surprising. Especially since it’s such a beguiling period, abounding in themes and tensions of significant artistic promise: be that the sheer decadence of the nightlife, the Cabarets and the Avant Garde; or else the pervasive angst, shellshocks, and nostalgia all evoked by the pernicious ghosts of the Second Reich and the Great War, and then the umbrella under which each of these exists in the historical imagination — what we now perceive to be the Nazi Party’s inevitable rise to power. To exist in that period was to follow a frantic compass with a myriad of poles — the Social Democrats, the Communists, the Freikorps, the Stab-in-the-Back, the Nazis, the Imperial Nostalgics, straight Conservatism, and apathetic decadence. Each of these, it seemed at the time, had a claim on the narrative — but only one of them prevailed. 

But now, courtesy of Sky Deutschland, it’s finally on our screens in all its excess, dirt, and beauty, its violence, anxiety and utter joie de vivre. Let me present to you, Babylon Berlin, the highest budget show in the history of German Television and at the time of its first release in 2017, the highest outside of the English speaking world. It should have been financial suicide; it came before the subtitle-craze, which can — I propose— be traced back to Alfonso Cuaron’s 2018 Roma, and its list of Oscar nominations. It not only led the subtitle-craze, but also became the cornerstone of a surge in the English-speaking world’s interest in German film and television: which has climaxed now with All Quiet on the Western Front, which has swept through this awards season like the blitzkrieg. 

The protagonist of Tom Tykwer’s glitzy adaptation of Volker Kutscher’s detective novels is Gereon Rath (played by Volker Bruch). Part of his success as a character is that he’s a bit of an Everyman figure — not in himself, overly interesting. Gereon is probably upper-Middle-Class; he’s a detective, but his father’s a politician. His politics seem to lie somewhere in between the Social Democrat and the Conservative. Crucially, he is shell-shocked, which means that from the very beginning of the series, the social effects of the Great War loom over. 

In Gyorgy Lukacs’ theoretical work The Historical Novel, he insists that it’s ‘everyman’ roles like this which ensure an effective historical reconstruction: such characters, who interact with everyone aren’t overly intrusive, are capable of “presenting the totality of certain transitional stages of history.” Such characters become centres around which things happen, without forcing their own interpretations onto the reader or, in this case, the audience. This is certainly true of Gereon, and it’s why the plot is so successful. 

His female co-star, Charlotte Ritter (played by Liv Lisa Fries) is a much more beguiling character: a prostitute and police-copyist, turned detective, who adores Berlin’s infamous nightlife as well as solving crimes. Fries performs with gusto — and, I dare say, is the series’ most talented actor. She has a wonderful, affectedly naive pout and innocently flirtatious manner, which not infrequently helps her gain inside knowledge and get out of trouble. That Charlotte could have been a prostitute and become a police detective seems to show how, in Weimar Berlin, such things were perfectly normal and had very little stigma attached. 

Herein lies Babylon Berlin’s effectiveness. It never feels as if it has a political point to score or a moral judgement to make on the past. There’s no tedious alignment of contemporary Populism to the Nazis, and none of the characters are so prescient as to foresee the mortal danger that the rise of the Nazis poses until it’s too late. In the first season, Hitler is mentioned only twice; the perceived danger is the Communists, something which blindsides many in the Establishment from the threat of the Nazis. But the Nazi presence rises and with such subtlety that we hardly notice it. By Season 4, set in 1930, they’re noisy and unavoidable; even when they’re off-screen, their presence is unavoidable. This is how it probably felt at the time. Equally, the series shows how decent people can be swept up by the Nazi influence: be that in the form of Fred Jacoby, the homosexual Journalist, or Gereon’s nephew, Moritz. Fred needs work, having been laid off after the Wall Street Crash, and the Nazi paper is the only one doing well at the time. Of course, we all say that we prioritise our values over everything else; but when the reality of money and living come into play, how many of us would, really, stay true to them? And then, in the case of Moritz, we see how to a young boy, whose father had died in the Great War, the camaraderie and excitement of the Hitler Youth’s Dangerous Book for Boys style of indoctrination appeared to be much more exciting than anything else on offer. 

It’s an excellent show. It’s informative in a way that so many historical dramas aren’t. It reconstructs an entire society—and the audience, somewhat voyeuristically, can watch this world unfold whilst fully aware of what happened. Which is perhaps what gives it its unique atmosphere. And, to the lazy TV-viewer (hands in pants, scrolling on their phone, eating crisps etc. — which can sometimes be, I hate to confess it, me), watching something in Subtitles means you can’t afford to lose concentration.