The Depiction of Everyday Life in the City in the Novels at the Turn of the 1920s and 1930s: The Case of Berlin

This master's thesis attempts to present the literary conception of a modern pulsing German metropolis at the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s in three significant novels of that time: Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz. Die Geschichte vom Franz Biberkopf (1929), Kästner's Fabian. Die Geschichte eines Moralisten (1931) and Keun's Das kunstseidene Mädchen (1932). Attention is paid, on the one hand, to the picture of a babbling city, the presence of technology, new means of transport and advertising in the streets. Most importantly, however, the thesis gives an insight into the social situation of that time, i.e. the issues of everyday life in a metropolis which can be summarized, in the words of the personae, under the term "hard times" - unemployment, criminality or the politicisation of inhabitants in the years before the Nazi seizure of power. In addition, the thesis covers likewise the situation of the new social stratum of employees, the fates of women and an outline of cultural, entertainment and media industry in Berlin. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org