Berlin Stories

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The young Swiss writer Robert Walser moved to Berlin in the summer of 1905, at the age of twenty-seven. He’d just published his first book, the outlines of a successful literary career were beginning to unfold before him, and the moment seemed ripe to leave behind the relative peace and safety of his native land for the stimulation and excitement of the German capital. Then as now, Berlin was the destination of choice for young German-speaking writers eager to tap into the pulse of the avant-garde, and his brother Karl, who’d made the move several years before and quickly established himself as the city’s foremost stage-set designer, had been encouraging Robert to join him. Karl’s celebrity secured his younger brother entry into the most exclusive artistic circles, where he met actresses and painters, theater directors and publishers, some of whom took an interest in him.

Berlin in those days was hopping. The city had undergone a period of intense growth in the final decades of the nineteenth century — its population swelled to two million by 1900—and was the site of one of the liveliest high societies in Europe. While factories had bred slums in the city’s northern and eastern districts, the elegance of several of its neighborhoods rivaled that of Paris, though Berlin was more densely packed than the French capital with its brightly lit Grands Boulevards. But Berlin had splendid avenues of its own: Unter den Linden to the east, lined with a double row of the linden trees it was named for, and the swank Kurfürstendamm to the west, as well as a capacious park called Tiergarten, a former hunting ground full of well-tended serpentine paths for Sunday strolls.

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