From a sexual Mecca to the City of Doom - Signs of a lost society in selected novels by Christopher Isherwood (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Didactics - English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,3, University of Münster, language: English, abstract: On his first visit to Germany, Bremen, Christopher Isherwood stayed with his uncle Mr. Lancaster. As described in his novel Down there on a Visit it was this uncle that persuaded him to return to Germany, namely Berlin. "Is Berlin so bad?", I [Isherwood] asked, trying not to sound too interested. "Christopher - in the whole of Thousand Nights and One Night, in the most shameless rituals of the Tantra, in the carvings on the Black Pagoda, in the Japanese brothel-pictures, in the vilest perversions of the oriental mind, you couldn't find anything more nauseating than what goes on there, quite openly, every day. That city is doomed, more surely than Sodom ever was. [...] And then and there I made a decision - one that was to have a very important effect on the rest of my life. I decided that, no matter how, I would get to Berlin just as soon as ever I could and that I would stay there a long long time." 1 Norman Page wrote in 'Auden and Isherwood. The Berlin Years' how the German capital became the "the most exciting city in Europe, perhaps in the world, for anyone sympathetic to experiment and innovation in a wide variety of art forms, high and popular, pure and applied: a vital city that in a surprisingly short time had become a magnet for gifted young artists and artistes." 2

After Isherwood left London by the afternoon train for Berlin on March 14 th , 1929 he moved in a room next to the Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Science - and thus did take a close look at the famous Berlin 'decadence'. But not only did Isherwood explore his own sexuality while being in Germany throughout the years 1929 to 1933. He also observed a good deal about the changes that were happening in the capital: the political turmoil and the beginning of what later became the darkest of Germany's historical chapters. Especially in his Berlin novels Goodbye to Berlin 3 and Mr.. Norris Changes Trains 4 does Isherwood describe the change from a sexual Mecca to a city of doom 5 . Traces of this change can also be found in Down there on a Visit 6 , Exhumations 7 and Christopher and his Kind 8 . This term paper will take a look at all these novels. How is the downfall of a society portrayed?