Chicago Alexanderplatz: Alfred Döblin's Wallenstein Part 1

Please join us in an Alfred Döblin seminar over the next two years where we will try to tackle and read all of Alfred Döblin's writings.

Chicago Alexanderplatz is a subgroup of Modernist Fiction that will inaugurate a new series of Meetups dedicated to German Literary Modernism and exploring the life and work of Alfred Döblin, author of the 1929 German Modernist Classic—Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Alfred Döblin is widely known for only this one novel, which has overshadowed all his prior and subsequent work. In recent years, there has been a renaissance of sorts in the reception of Döblin in English, thanks to the pioneering new translation of Berlin Alexanderplatz by Michael Hofmann published by NYRB Classics in 2018, and the launch of Beyond Alexanderplatz by the translator Chris Godwin, a website dedicated to exploring Döblin’s lesser known work and nonfiction.

In this meetup we will discuss his 1920 novel Wallenstein over the course of six Meetups. For this Meetup please read Book 1: Maximilian of Bavaria.

Wallenstein is a 1920 historical novel by German author Alfred Döblin. Set in Central Europe during the Thirty Years War, the novel's plot is organized around the polar figures of Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, on the one hand, and Albrecht von Wallenstein, on the other. Döblin's approach to narrating the war differed from prevailing historiography in that, rather than interpreting the Thirty Years War primarily as a religious conflict, he portrays it critically as the absurd consequence of a combination of national-political, financial, and individual psychological factors. Döblin saw a strong similarity between the Thirty Years War and the First World War, during which he wrote Wallenstein. The novel is counted among the most innovative and significant historical novels in the German literary tradition. In large part, contemporary critics found the novel to be difficult, dense, and chaotic—a reception Döblin discussed in his 1921 essay "The Epic Writer, His Material, and Criticism"—yet writers such as Lion Feuchtwanger, Franz Blei, and Herbert Ihering praised Wallenstein for its formal innovation, poetic language, epic scope, and bold departure from other German writing of the time. Despite the novel's difficulty, the critical consensus was that Wallenstein was a major achievement and confirmed the promise seen in Döblin's earlier historical novel, The Three Leaps of Wang Lun.

"...Blind men in the Hohe Markt, eyes put out for coining, perjurers lacking a hand, men lacking tongue nose ears in groups outside the churches, rattling their bowls and tin cups. Students with dagger and bandolier at the Lampel-hall, Rose-hall, walking earnestly along or looking for fun at the expense of some apprentice-boy. A swell on horseback, jewelled hand behind the back, draped in English cloth, attended by a mounted retinue. Swishing down a sunbaked alley in his purple cassock, a bishop, skullcap on the tonsured head, girdle trailing him from a doorway. City guards dragged halberds through the dust and muck, took up position at wells, played dice, looked for a quiet spot. In houses dives cellars a mingled throng of raucous silent sickly people, householders stewards cellarmen kitchen-boys sweeps cutlers goldsmiths tailors tinsmiths calendar-makers brewers’ apprentices vagrant youths merchants clerks candlemakers huckster-women, widows on the lookout for a catch, dragoons averse to service, rogues who found life in a blind alley to their liking, cattle-dealers boxing peasant ears, parchment-makers leatherworkers hide-dealers knife-grinders pimps in neck-irons, swift gaunt Jews, advocates commissioners, crying infants in sand, itinerant booksellers from Saxony Bohemia with illustrated pamphlets in trays hung around the neck."

Online PDF Links:
https://beyond-alexanderplatz.com/wallenstein-revised-2021/