Christopher Isherwood’s semi-autobiographical novel Goodbye to Berlin highlights the decadent culture of Berlin’s nightlife in the late 1920s and early 1930s, juxtaposing the culture of creativity, artistry, and relaxed social norms that characterized Germany’s urban scene in the years before Hitler’s rise to power. During the early part of his time in Berlin, Christopher and his friends constantly go out to nightclubs, drinking and partying late into the night. Christopher and Sally spend their days talking about art and seeking ways to maximize this pleasure-filled life by finding wealthy patrons and, in Sally’s case, lovers. In this way, they reject a conventional life of domesticity. This party culture categorized Berlin during the Weimar Republic, when Germans embraced international Jazz Age influences and relaxed social policies ushered in by the new Republic regime.
Though Christopher himself enjoys this culture, the novel takes a critical look at some of the characters’ political indifference toward the rise of fascism. Eventually, after the economic instability within the era caused massive frustration and devastation for Germans, the fascism of the Nazi party came to replace the relaxed social policies of the Weimar Republic. After Hitler takes over Germany, when Christopher and his friend Fritz Wendel take a farewell tour of the Berlin dives where they spent their nights, they find the nightlife culture to be a shell of its former grandeur. The Berlin that drew artists to create has died, squashed by the antisemitic, homophobic fascism that promised to restore Germany to its former economic glory. In this way, the novel mourns the loss of a vibrant and indulgent culture to fascism. At the same time, Goodbye to Berlin serves as a cautionary tale, subtly critiquing how Berlin’s pre-war decadence causes many of the novel’s party-going, free-spirited characters to be politically indifferent. In retrospect, then, the novel seems to suggest that Berlin’s decadent pre-war culture enabled many to deny or downplay the looming threat that fascism posed to their society and to the world at large.
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Decadence Quotes in Goodbye to Berlin
Sally’s German was not merely incorrect; it was all her own. She pronounced every word in a mincing, specifically “foreign” manner. You could tell that she was speaking a foreign language from her expression alone.
“Somehow, when people have cash, you feel differently about them—I don’t know why.”
We went to the little cinema in Bülowstrasse, where they were showing a film about a girl who sacrificed her stage career for the sake of a Great Love, Home, and Children. We laughed so much that we had to leave before the end.
[Clive] had about him that sad, American air of vagueness which is always attractive; doubly attractive in one who possessed so much money. He was vague, wistful, a bit lost: dimly anxious to have a good time and uncertain how to set about getting it. He seemed never to be quite sure whether he was really enjoying himself, whether what we were doing was really fun.
We had nothing to do with those Germans down there, marching, or with the dead man in the coffin, or with the words on the banners. In a few days, I thought, we shall have forfeited all kinship with ninety-nine per cent of the population of the world, with the men and women who earn their living, who insure their lives, who are anxious about the future of their children. Perhaps in the Middle Ages people felt like this, when they believed themselves to have sold their soul to the Devil. It was a curious, exhilarating, not unpleasant sensation: but, at the same time, I felt slightly scared. Yes, I said to myself, I’ve done it, now. I am lost.
“I don’t know what it is… You seem to have changed, somehow…”
“How have I changed?”
“It’s difficult to explain… You don’t seem to have any energy or want to get anywhere. You’re so dilletante. It annoys me.”
Seen thus, alone and off his guard, he seemed rather pathetic: he looked shabbier and far younger—a mere boy. I very nearly said: “He isn’t here.” But what would have been the use? They’d have got him anyway. “Yes, that’s him,” I told the detectives. “Over there.” They nodded. I turned and hurried away down the street, feeling guilty and telling myself: I’ll never help the police again.
Last night, Fritz Wendel proposed a tour of the “dives.” It was to in the nature of a farewell visit, for the Police have begun to take a great interest in these places. They are frequently raided, and the names of their clients are written down. There is even talk of a general Berlin clean-up.
I catch sight of my face in the mirror of a shop, and am horrified to see that I am smiling. You can’t help smiling, in such beautiful weather. The trams are going up and down the Kleistrasse, just as usual. They, and the people on the pavement, and the tea-cosy dome of the Nollendorfplatz station have an air of curious familiarity, of striking resemblance to something one remembers as normal and pleasant in the past—like a very good photograph.
No. Even now I can’t altogether believe that any of this has really happened…
