Corinna J. Heipcke (Guildford) p.45-61
2003 Issue 1
Abstract
The Berlin-hype that followed reunification has not gone unnoticed in the literary world. In the late 1990s, critics increasingly identified so-called ‘Berlin-Romane’. The term raises great expectations because it reminds readers of Berlin Alexanderplatz, Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel dealing with urban life under modern conditions as it could be experienced at the time in several big cities all over the world. In relation to the new Berlin-Roman, despite keeping the genre-term, critics demanded something more than Berlin as mere setting, looking as well for depictions of Berlin as the site and symbol of ‘something German’. Their expectations, I argue, were therefore paradoxical: it is difficult on the one hand to write a Berlin-Roman in which Berlin is a site of a urbanism as it can be found in many cities, and on the other hand becomes the symbol of an exclusively German condition (whatever that may be). So the quest for the exemplary new Berlin-Roman was bound to be frustrated. Looking at two novels from the late 1990s that were hailed as Berlin-Romane when they were published, it becomes obvious that – despite their merits – neither of them meets these paradoxical expectations, thus suggesting that the new Berlin-Roman is a paradoxical genre in itself.