SHARE
COPY LINK

LITERATURE

New novel gives weight to being a Jewish expat in Berlin

American author Michael Levitin's 'Disposable Man' is based largely on his time in Berlin - in which the marriage of past and present leads to a surprise discovery.

New novel gives weight to being a Jewish expat in Berlin
Author Michael Levitin. Photo: Clara Rice

Like many millennials and men of his generation, the fictionalized Max Krumm lingers through life, simultaneously uneasy and comfortable in his indecisiveness.

Berlin provides the perfect backdrop for his existential angst. It’s a city filled with disquieting memories of his Jewish ancestors who came before him. But it also offers the American expat a recluse from reality, as he spends his days picking up the odd writing assignment and kvetching with his Kumpeln (buddies).

“The Prenzlauer Berg man has thrown away his sword and all of the edges it implies,” writes author Michael Levitin, who penned the Disposable Man lightly based on his own time living in the Kiez from 2004 to 2009. “He lives with comfort and predictability now; he lives a life that is handed to him rather than one he formerly imagined he might seize.”

Levitin’s recently released Bildungsroman (coming-of-age novel) might be a compact 181-pages, but it tackles hearty subjects such as reclaiming one’s manhood, what it means to be Jewish in modern-day Germany and the ever-existential search for meaning.

Rykestraße, one of Prenzlauer Berg's main streets. Photo: DPA

'More than just another tribute to the past'

These themes are intensified through interwoven stories of Krumm’s family spanning over a hundred heavy years – including several true tales which were recounted to Levitin by family members.

“I was inspired to write this book because of all of the stories I heard growing up,” journalist-turned-author Levitin, 43, told The Local. “But it really took living in Berlin and [finding] something contemporary as a way to anchor this as more than just another tribute to a person’s past.”

The surprising story which centres the book is a true one: from a Siberian work camp, Krumm's great-aunt sends a postcard to Einstein, simply addressed “Albert Einstein, USA”, with a request for new boots to stay warm. To her astonishment, it is honoured.

The other historical stories in the book speak to barely surviving against the odds – and provide an even more impactful contrast to Krumm’s dallying daily life. His grandmother would have never left Berlin had the Nazis not forced her out. Yet Krumm can’t seem to leave, even when he wants to.

“For people who are wondering where their place of landing is going to be, [Berlin] is not a place that forces that decision,” said Levitin, who now calls California home with his wife and young daughter.

Krumm hits his lowest point after his German wife leaves him for a lover and feeling, well, disposable. The bitterly cold months during winter in a crumbling Altbau apartment only magnify his misery, which he downs in drinks with a group of other meandering expat men.

Prenzlauer Berg's Schwartz Pumpe, one of Krumm and co's favourite hangouts. Photo: Rachel Stern

'Berlin has strong significance'

Yet it’s the presence of history – specifically finding a family keepsake – which catapults Krumm out of casual indifference. He follows the footsteps of his predecessors in present-day Poland and ultimately Lithuania, piecing together the past in a powerful stream-of-consciousness ending.

Krumm’s final trip “was a metaphor for taking the next step forward, about the end of youth, about how you cannot sustain and go on forever in this kind of limbo,” said Levitin.

That’s where the past and present connect, with Berlin having brought back people of Jewish heritage who are simultaneously drawn to – and disgusted by – the city’s history. For Levitin, the capital continues to carry an especially strong significance.

“In a way all of our families can say they are connected to Berlin in the sense that it forced the diaspora. Berlin’s activities created modern Jewry.”

We see the strongest example of this in flashback, as a teenager Krumm asks his elderly grandfather Abram if he’s scared of death. He replies that  “Death is not a period, it’s just a comma.”

Only due to living in Berlin – and letting himself leave it – does Krumm really understand what he meant.

Levitin will present and read from Disposable Man on Thursday, June 6th at 8:30 p.m. at Berlin's Z-Bar.

This article was updated on June 4.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

HISTORY

‘Lost’ manuscript of pro-Nazi French author published 78 years later

A book by one of France's most celebrated and controversial literary figures arrives in bookstores this week, 78 years after the manuscript disappeared

'Lost' manuscript of pro-Nazi French author published 78 years later

It is a rare thing when the story of a book’s publication is even more mysterious than the plot of the novel itself.

But that might be said of Guerre (War) by one of France’s most celebrated and controversial literary figures, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, which arrives in bookstores on Thursday, some 78 years after its manuscript disappeared.

Celine’s reputation has somehow survived the fact that he was one of France’s most eager collaborators with the Nazis.

Already a superstar thanks to his debut novel Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Celine became one of the most ardent anti-Semitic propagandists even before France’s occupation.

In June 1944, with the Allies advancing on Paris, the writer abandoned a pile of his manuscripts in his Montmartre apartment.

Celine feared rough treatment from authorities in liberated France, having spent the war carousing with the Gestapo, and giving up Jews and foreigners to the Nazi regime and publishing racist pamphlets about Jewish world conspiracies.

For decades, no one knew what happened to his papers, and he accused resistance fighters of burning them. But at some point in the 2000s, they ended up with retired journalist Jean-Pierre Thibaudat, who passed them – completely out of the blue – to Celine’s heirs last summer.

‘A miracle’
Despite the author’s history, reviews of the 150-page novel, published by Gallimard, have been unanimous in their praise.

“The end of a mystery, the discovery of a great text,” writes Le Point; a “miracle,” says Le Monde; “breathtaking,” gushes Journal du Dimanche.

Gallimard has yet to say whether the novel will be translated.

Like much of Celine’s work, Guerre is deeply autobiographical, recounting his experiences during World War I.

It opens with 20-year-old Brigadier Ferdinand finding himself miraculously alive after waking up on a Belgian battlefield, follows his treatment and hasty departure for England – all based on Celine’s real experiences.

His time across the Channel is the subject of another newly discovered novel, Londres (London), to be published this autumn.

If French reviewers seem reluctant to focus on Celine’s rampant World War II anti-Semitism, it is partly because his early writings (Guerre is thought to date from 1934) show little sign of it.

Journey to the End of the Night was a hit among progressives for its anti-war message, as well as a raw, slang-filled style that stuck two fingers up at bourgeois sensibilities.

Celine’s attitude to the Jews only revealed itself in 1937 with the publication of a pamphlet, Trifles for a Massacre, which set him on a new path of racial hatred and conspiracy-mongering.

He never back-tracked. After the war, he launched a campaign of Holocaust-denial and sought to muddy the waters around his own war-time exploits – allowing him to worm his way back into France without repercussions.

‘Divine surprise’
Many in the French literary scene seem keen to separate early and late Celine.

“These manuscripts come at the right time – they are a divine surprise – for Celine to become a writer again: the one who matters, from 1932 to 1936,” literary historian Philippe Roussin told AFP.

Other critics say the early Celine was just hiding his true feelings.

They highlight a quote that may explain the gap between his progressive novels and reactionary feelings: “Knowing what the reader wants, following fashions like a shopgirl, is the job of any writer who is very financially constrained,” Celine wrote to a friend.

Despite his descent into Nazism, he was one of the great chroniclers of the trauma of World War I and the malaise of the inter-war years.

An exhibition about the discovery of the manuscripts opens on Thursday at the Gallimard Gallery and includes the original, hand-written sheets of Guerre.

They end with a line that is typical of Celine: “I caught the war in my head. It is locked in my head.”

In the final years before his death in 1961, Celine endlessly bemoaned the loss of his manuscripts.

The exhibition has a quote from him on the wall: “They burned them, almost three manuscripts, the pest-purging vigilantes!”

This was one occasion – not the only one – where he was proved wrong.

SHOW COMMENTS