1907
Berlin W
It seems that everyone here knows what is proper, and this produces a certain frostiness, and it furthermore seems that everyone here is able to stand his ground from within his own person, and this produces the equanimity that newcomers admire. Poverty appears to have been banished to the districts that border the open fields, or else packed away in the somber, dark interiors of tenements that are blocked from view by the stately residences facing the street as if by massive bodies. It seems as if humanity has stopped heaving sighs here and has begun once and for all to rejoice in its own existence and life. Appearances are deceiving, though: all this elegance and splendor are but a dream. But perhaps the squalor too is only illusory. As for the elegance of Berlin’s western districts, it would appear to be characterized by liveliness, though this liveliness is somewhat spoiled because it cannot be cultivated in peace. Everything here, by the way, is caught up in an endless process of cultivation and change. The men are just as modest as they are unchivalrous, and this is something one can feel quite happy about, for chivalry is always three-quarters inappropriate. Gallantry is exceptionally idiotic and impertinent. Accordingly, one seldom witnesses maudlin scenes hereabouts, and when some delicate adventure unfolds, you never even notice, which after all is what constitutes its gentility. Nowadays the world of men is a world of commerce, and a person who is obliged to earn money has little or no time for flamboyantly refined behavior. This explains the brusque tone of voice one often hears. Generally speaking, there is much to be amused by in Berlin West; here you find the most delightfully, sweetly laughable lives you might dream of. Take for example the dame arriviste, a feminine force of nature, naïve as a small child. I personally esteem her greatly because she is both so voluptuous and so droll. Or the “little girl from the Kurfürstendamm.” She resembles a chamois, and there is much in her that is sweet and good. And here we have the worldly graybeard. Only a very few specimens of this caliber, well versed in savoir vivre, are still sauntering about. The type is dying out, and I find this a tremendous pity. Recently I saw just such a gentleman, and he looked to me like a vision from a vanished age. And here we have something quite different: the rural homesteader who’s made good. He hasn’t yet divested himself of the habit of gaping as though he were astonished at himself and the good fortune he’s plopped down in. He behaves in much too decorous a way, as though he were afraid of revealing his origins. And then we have the very, very severe madam from the age of Bismarck. I am an admirer of severe faces and good manners that have left their mark on the very essence of a person. In general I am moved by age, both in buildings and human beings; by the same token, I find things that are fresh, new, and young no less enlivening; and there’s plenty of youthfulness to be found here, and the West does seem to me quite healthy. Must a certain portion of health preclude a certain portion of beauty? By no means! The lively, in the end, is the most beautiful. Well, hmm, perhaps I shall now do a bit of tail-wagging and scraping and flattering; for example with the following sentence: The local women are beautiful and charming! The gardens are tidy, the architecture errs perhaps on the side of the drastic, but what of it? After all, everyone these days is convinced that we are bunglers when it comes to the grandiose, stylish, and monumental, and probably this is because the desire is all too alive within us to possess or produce style, grandeur, and monumentality. Desires are terrible things. Our era is most decidedly an era of sensitivity and righteousness, and this is in fact quite nice on our part. We have public welfare organizations, hospitals, homes for infants, and I like to imagine that this too is worth something. Why should we want everything? Just think of the shivers sent down spines by Fredrick the Great’s wars and his — Sanssouci. We have few contradictions; this demonstrates our longing for a clear conscience. But now I swerve rather badly from my theme. Is this permitted? There is a so-called Old West Berlin, a newer West (the area around the Gedächtniskirche), and a very new West. The middle one is perhaps the nicest. Certainly one finds the most and greatest elegance on Tauentzienstrasse; the Kurfürstendamm is delightful with its trees and calashes. With great regret I see that I have now bumped against the frame delimiting my essay, leaving me with the tragic conviction that many things I most definitely wished to point out have gone unsaid.
1910
Tiergarten
Strains of regimental music are drifting over from the zoological garden. You stroll along like this, unhurried as you please. Is it not Sunday, after all? How warm it is. Everyone seems astonished to find it suddenly so bright, so clear and warm, as if touched by a magic wand. Warmth alone can give things color. The world in all directions is like a smile, it’s enough to put you in a feminine frame of mind. How glad I would be (almost) to be carrying a baby in my arms, playing the role of a devotedly solicitous serving girl. What a tender mood this just-beginning, heart-beguiling spring inspires. I could practically be a mother, or so I imagine. In the spring, it seems, men and manly deeds suddenly become so superfluous, so foolish. No deeds now! Listen, linger, remain rooted to the spot. Be divinely touched by something slight. Gaze into this blissfully sweet, childhood-like green. Ah, Berlin and its Tiergarten are so lovely just now. The park is overrun with people. The people are dark moving spots in the delicate, fleeting sun-shimmer. Up above is the pale-blue sky that touches, dreamlike, the green that lies below. The people walk softly and indolently, as if they feared they might otherwise slip into a marching step and act coarsely. There are said to be people to whom it would never occur — or who might be too prim — to sit on a bench in the Tiergarten on a Sunday. Such people are robbing themselves of the most enchanting pleasure. I myself find the crowd on a Sunday in all its obvious, harmless Sunday pleasure-seeking more significant than any journey to Cairo or the Riviera. Hardness becomes obliging, rigidity dulcet, and all lines, all commonplaces blur dreamily together. A universal strolling like this is ineffably tender. The walkers lose themselves — now one by one, now in graceful, tightly knit clusters and groups — among the trees whose high branches are still breezily bare, and between the low bushes that constitute a breath of young, sweet green. The soft air trembles and quivers with buds that seem to sing, to dance, to hover. The image of the Tiergarten as a whole is like a painted picture, then like a dream, then like a circuitous, agreeable kiss. Everywhere one is lightly, comprehensibly enticed to gaze and linger. On a bench beside the shipping canal, two nannies are sitting in their imposing snow-white caps, white aprons, and bright red skirts. Walking, you find yourself satisfied; sitting, you are perfectly calm and gaze with composure into the eyes of the figures walking past. These include children, dogs being led on leashes, soldiers with their girls on their arms, beautiful women, coquettish ladies, men who live, step, and stroll all alone, entire families, bashful lovers. Veils are streaming in the air, green ones, blue ones, and yellow. Dark and light clothing passes in turn. The gentlemen are for the most part wearing those unavoidable, uninspiring stiff hillock hats of medium height upon their cone-shaped heads. You feel an urge to laugh while remaining solemn all the while. Everything is simultaneously droll and sacrosanct, and this makes you feel solemn like all the others. Everyone is displaying the same appropriate, mild solemnity. Is not the sky doing the same with its expression that appears to be saying: “How marvelous I feel”? Now, like friendly specters, wind-like shadows flit through the trees and across the sunlit white paths, and going where? No one knows. You can scarcely see it, that’s how delicate it is. Painters draw our attention to such tidbits. At a certain gentle distance, red-wheeled hackney cabs are rolling through the mild green fabric, as though a red ribbon were gliding through a bit of delicate female hair. Everything is emanating womanliness, everything is bright and balmy, everything is so wide, so transparent, so round, you turn your Sunday head in all directions to fully relish this Sunday world. It’s really the people that comprise it. Without the people, you wouldn’t see, notice, or experience the beauty of the Tiergarten. What’s the crowd like here? Well, it’s a mixed bag, all sorts of people tumbled in together, the elegant and the simple, the proud and the humble, the gay and the grim. I myself, by my very presence, add to the colorfulness of the scene and contribute to the mix. I’m certainly enough of a mixture myself. But where is the dream? Do let’s take one more look at it. Upon a roundly arched bridge many people are standing. You stand there yourself, leaning lightly and in the best of spirits against the railing to gaze down into the delicately blue, glimmering warm water where boats and skiffs, filled with people and adorned with little flags, drift quietly about as if drawn on by good premonitions. The ships and gondolas shimmer in the sunlight. Now a piece of dark velvet-green breaks from the brightness, it is a blouse. Ducks with colorful heads are swaying upon the ripples and quiverings of water that sometimes shimmers like bronze or enamel. How splendid it is the way the field of the water is so narrow and circumscribed and yet so packed with gliding pleasure boats and hats in all the colors of joy. Everywhere you look, a lady’s hat gleams and bursts from the bushes with red and blue and other pleasures for the eye. How simple it all is. And where should one go now? To a coffeehouse? Really? Can one really be so barbaric? Indeed, one can. Such things a person does! How lovely to be doing something that another person is doing as well. And how lovely the Tiergarten is. What resident of Berlin could fail to adore it?