Translated from the German by Kathie von Ankum
I had meant to read The Artificial Silk Girl back in the summer for Women in Translation month, but as usual I had more books than I could possibly read. However, it meant I had the perfect book to read at the start of #Germanlitmonth. I remember seeing several glowing reviews of this book from other bloggers, and I can see why they liked it so much. Irmgard Keun’s classic takes us back to a time and place that many still finding fascinating, maybe as much because of the times that followed it.
An evocative portrait of the roaring Weimar Berlin of the 1920s/30s – it is also a wonderfully poignant story of a quirky, radical young woman, whose voice I found immediately captivating. The Artificial Silk Girl was Irmgard Keun’s second novel – banned by the Nazis it had been an instant best seller when it was first published. With the Nazis coming to power in 1933, this novel depicts life just before that tumultuous time.
“And I think it will be a good thing if I write everything down, because I’m an unusual person. I don’t mean a diary — that’s ridiculous for a trendy girl like me. But I want to write like a movie, because my life is like that and it’s going to become even more so. And I look like Colleen Moore, if she had a perm and her nose were a little more fashionable, like pointing up. And when I read it later on, everything will be like at the movies — I’m looking at myself in pictures.”
Our narrator is Doris – living in a mid-sized German town in 1931, working in an office for a boss she loathes but must flirt with to keep on the right side of. She is barely able to keep up with her duties, commas being a particular stumbling block. What little money she earns doesn’t last long; she hands over most of it to her hard drinking father. She manages to buy herself a new green hat – but Doris longs for the finer things in life – she is quite conscious of her own good looks and feels she must somehow become a star.
Doris is a fabulous creation, there is a streetwise vulnerability about her, on one level she understands the pitfalls of the world for a young woman, on another level she is heartbreakingly naïve and ripe for great hurt and disappointment. The reader is in her corner from the start, looking for the same happy ending as Doris herself.
Life has already been something of a disappointment for Doris – romance has been a let-down so far. Doris had had her hopes pinned on Hubert, but Hubert married someone else. She does manage to secure some extra work with a theatrical company, upgrading to a part with one speaking line by artifice, Doris wants more than this. There is nothing much left for Doris in her hometown.
When she is finally, and inevitably sacked from the job she is so ill suited for, Doris takes a night train to Berlin, where she hopes she can make it in the movies. Wearing a stolen fur coat, she spots in a cloakroom and wants for herself, she leaves her disappointments behind her and sets out with optimism. The coat is a kind of talisman for Doris, she feels it will bring her luck, or at least make her look the part.
“They have courses teaching you foreign languages and ballroom dancing and etiquette and cooking. But there are no classes to learn how to be by yourself in a furnished room with chipped dishes, or how to be alone in general without any words of concern or familiar sounds.”
What she finds in Berlin however is not the fame and fortune she craves, but a world of seedy bars and seedier men, a world where the options for women are limited and unattractive. Staying in a series of temporary rooms, she is often hungry. Doris resorts to increasingly desperate measures in order to survive. She has lots of encounters with men, using her looks to get drinks or meals. Yet, there is an obvious goodness in Doris, she is wonderfully sympathetic to a blind neighbour, and deep down she wants a boyfriend who will last longer than a day or two and care for her. She understands, as so many women before her, how the rules for men and women differ.
“If a young woman from money marries an old man because of money and nothing else and makes love to him for hours and has this pious look on her face, she’s called a German mother and a decent woman. If a young woman without money sleeps with a man with no money because he has smooth skin and she likes him, she’s a whore and a bitch.”
In Keun’s portrait of Berlin at this time, there is a slight foreshadowing of the days to come. In the dissatisfaction and selfishness of certain characters and in the poverty, we see something of the troubles that swept through Europe in the 1930s.
Doris’s voice is honestly matter of fact, she’s quite sarcastic and a little bit ditzy, but enormously likeable. This was my first novel by Irmgard Keun by I am sure it won’t be my last.
I’m so glad you enjoyed this. As you say, a wonderfully evocative portrait of Weimer-era Berlin, and Doris is indeed a fabulous creation. I couldn’t help but be reminded of some of those early novels by Jean Rhys with their heroines desperately searching for a little warmth and affection in seedy, unforgiving cities…
Oh yes, so evocative. Doris was quite like some Jean Rhys heroines. It is that search for happiness that is so heartbreaking.
That sounds like an excellent and interesting read; I’m glad you got to it, even if not in the month you intended to!
Yes a good read, I was delighted I could join in with #Germanlitmonth which was completely accidental because I had forgotten about it.
Yes, that was very handy! Good work!
This sounds so good.
Glad you think so.
This sounds wonderful. I really like the Weimar setting and like Jacqui, I was reminded of Jean Rhys. Your edition is very pretty too!
The weimar setting was a particular draw for me. I love the cover image on this one.
Your very elegant post brought to my mind my experience with this novel during German Literature Month In 2015
Ever since I read Ostend, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and the Summer Before the End by Volker Weidermann earlier this month in which he talked about German writers on holiday in Ostend, Beligum I knew I needed to read a work by Irmgard Keun. In this work I learned of the romance between Irmgzrd and Joseph Roth. To me Roth came across as trying to turn her into an enabler for his alcoholism.
Irmgard Keun (born 1905 in Berlin, died Cologne 1982) is widely considered the best female novelist of the Late 1930s in Germany. Her work was banned as subversive by the Gestapo for her satirical portrayal of the impact of hyper-inflation and the creeping evil embodied in the rise of Nazi Germany which brought on a destruction of much of normal morality. She actually was crazy/brave enough to sue the Gestspo for banning her work, of course she lost. Some have called her work “Sex and the City Berlin style circa 1935”.
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The story is narrated by twenty year old Doris, her father is an alcoholic, her mother was “hot in her day”. Doris world as a typist, living in a small town. She has to fend off the advances of her boss while still making him think she might give in to his dubious charms. He ends up firing her with a one month severance. She gives part of the money to her mothermand leaves for the big city of Berlin, figuring she can live off her charms. Doris is fascinated by Berlin. She is on a man hunt, Hoping for a suger daddy. Gradually she is overtaken by the miasma of corruption creeping over Berlin and dates turn into tricks.
The Artificial Silk Girl is not a “heavy read” like The Death of Virgil or a work of genius like We all Die Alone by Hans Fallada but for sure it gave me a feel of what it must have been like to be broke, young, female, pretty and without a family or any real friends in the early days of Nazi Germany. Slowly it becomes a city of whores, johns, pimps and assorted passeers by on Alexanderplatz.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts about this novel. You clearly got a lot from it.
Lovely post, Ali. Keun is a wonderful writer, isn’t she, and really captures the seediness of Weimar Berlin. The rules for women and men were definitely so different, and I think I might need a woman’s voice as a bit of an antidote after Berlin Alexanderplatz!!
Keun is certainly a writer I should read more by. Hope your Berlin Alexanderplatz reading is gong well, I can imagine needing a palate cleanser of sorts after though.
Yeah – I most *definitely* will….
I bought this novel after thoroughly enjoying Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, as I read that Keun’s heroine compares favorably to Lorelei Lee. Although I still have it TBR, I’m looking forward to reading it, particularly after reading your delightful review.
Yes, I had seen other readers linking the two novels. I haven’t read Gentlemen prefer Blondes, but I think it will be going on my wishlist.
I scurried off to add this to my TBR, only to see that I’d added it in 2012 (and, as is often the case, haven’t done a thing about actually reading it). Then I thought maybe I’d added it after Mel read it (his long comment above made me check out that possibility) but, no. Anyhow, now I REALLY want to read it. Hah.
Lol, I do that sort of thing all the time. I’m glad you want to read it still.
[…] The Artificial Silk Girl (1932) by Irmgard Keun was the perfect read for #Germanlitmonth. An evocative portrait of the roaring Weimar Berlin of the 1920s/30s – it is also a wonderfully poignant story of a quirky, radical young woman, whose voice I found immediately captivating. The Artificial Silk Girl was Irmgard Keun’s second novel – banned by the Nazis it had been an instant best seller when it was first published. With the Nazis coming to power in 1933, this novel depicts life just before that tumultuous time. […]
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