Analysing the Comic Book 'Berlin: City of Stones'

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One Turnip, Many Recipes

2016

A war is a gestaltic centrifuge, in which all individuals exist in a single space in groups of collective identities, but once the centrifugal force takes charge, the power lies beyond the control of the participants, and collectives fragment, making the identity of the individual, when the force stops, seem more tangible than that of the collective.

One stone at a time, tiny limbs carry. A branch, some mud, sticks, and leaves, all gather at a river bank. Whispers and the sound of hustling feet fill the air. One stone, and on top of that another is placed. The clutter gains form, as the beavers heave the materials with collective struggle, over the river. In a single night, inconspicuously, a shelter is formed, which protects them from predators. Though, being in the middle of a flowing river, it may not be completely immune to disaster.

Berlin: City of Stones, Book 1, a comic book created by Jason Lutes, was published in the year 2001. It is the first book in the trilogy, of which the second book is City of Smoke, and the third book, City of Light is yet to be published. The series is a story set in Berlin, Germany, in the time of the Weimar Republic, between WW I and WW II. Since the trilogy is not complete, for the purpose of this paper, only Book I shall be discussed. The story of the comic maintains a certain distance from the frequently named figures in History books, since Jason Lutes wanted to build a story about the daily lives of those who as individuals were never mentioned in relation to the war, but at the core were the ones who worked to improve conditions in their own ways, and still bore the pain of destruction. [1] An artist, Marthe Müller is new to Berlin, and is moving to the city to do a course in fine arts. She gets introduced on the train to a writer, Kurt Severing, who offers her all the help he can, when they arrive in Berlin. Marthe is overwhelmed by the people and the sounds of the city, which is conveyed in the comic through handwritten notes about her observations during her stay. Soon, Marthe and Kurt coincidentally meet again, and in the winter break, when all of Marthe’s friends have left for their homes, Marthe moves in with Kurt, and they enter a physical relationship. Anna, a friend of Marthe’s has fallen in love with her, but when she returns after the vacation, Marthe tells her about Kurt, after which Anna grows a little distant from Marthe. She soon gets into a relationship with another girl. There is also a family which is separated due to different political ideologies. The mother, Gudrun, takes along with her, her two daughters, and survives by doing physically intensive jobs, and continuously searches for new ones. She believes in the struggle by the Red Front-Fighters, while the father supports the Social Democratic

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1. Michael C Lorah. “Interview: Jason Lutes Talks the Final Days of “Berlin”,” last modified July 28, 2015, http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/interview-jason-lutes-talks-about-the-final-days-of-berlin.
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Party of Germany, and gets his son enrolled in the training under the Nazis. Gudrun participates in the celebration of International Workers’ Day on May 1, 1929, or May Day. As the Social Democrats come out on the streets against the Red Front-Fighters, and the police steps in with a ban on all such activities on the day, the city is in chaos. In the shootings, Gudrun dies, and as she loses consciousness, the images of her intimate times with her husband appear, and then gradually disappear.

Jason Lutes is an American comic artist, born in 1967, who got introduced to Bande Dessinée at the age of nine, on his trip to France. [2] Like many Franco-Belgian comics, for example, those of Hergé, Lutes’ layout is simple, which highlights the content, the words and the images. The realistic illustrations make a connection for the readers between fiction and reality.

We, as readers, know that the characters live in a time between the two world wars, and we are aware of the genesis and consequences of the political situation that is being sculpted in the story, thus we weave the fictional tale into the history we know. Lives of these characters can become a part of a discourse, on Berlin in the period of the Weimar Republic, or even probably on the study of the people of a nation involved in a war. Every person is a part of a role play, for which they have to choose to walk left, or march right. They have to be comrades of one, and enemies of the other, but all of them experience love, hunger, fear, and happiness. Individual identity might get affected by the social identity, and vice versa, but worldly matters are always secondary. What could be made for lunch today? Did our walks together mean something? Did I forget my toothbrush? Did I upset him? Will my mother be able to fight it this time too? Is the café on that street? Marthe writes,

“Immigrant, housewives, beggars, and Jews; they could not be more different from me, but I imagine a higher force that binds us into a greater, unified whole.” [3]

One will even consciously blind oneself of the surrounding chaos, if one needs to find personal peace. Gudrun and Marthe are two characters in the book, who are in constant movement, searching for stability. Her children’s happiness, and a full stomach is all that Gudrun wants, and Marthe is looking for who she is and can be, and where she can feel comfort in the bustle of the city. After a whole day’s work on a complex web, and making its territory larger, there is one centre that at the end of each day the spider comes back to.
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2. “Jason Lutes,” accessed March 28, 2016, https://www.drawnandquarterly.com/author/jason-lutes.
3. Jason Lutes. Berlin: City of Stones (Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, 2001), 100.

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Roland Barthes, in his book Mythologies, discusses Charlie Chaplin and Bertolt Brecht in relation to the poor and the proletariat. He elaborates on his mention of the 1936 film Modern Times, directed by Charlie Chaplin,

“Now Chaplin, in conformity with Brecht's idea, shows the public its blindness by presenting at the same time a man who is blind and what is in front of him. To see someone who does not see is the best way to be intensely aware of what he does not see.” [4]

All the characters in the story, if seen detached from our knowledge beyond those of the characters’, are living each day to survive. Whatever is on people’s minds, as shown in the book through thought bubbles of passers-by, is not the worry about the nation, or the possibility of another war. The impact of the comic increases in magnitude, when we watch all characters live their lives being bothered less about national worries, and more about personal needs, oblivious to the future, when we are aware of it.

During the years of the Weimar Republic, worker conditions post-war were not comfortable. Germany was declared responsible for starting WW I, under Clause 231, the War Guilt Clause, in the Versailles Treaty of 1919. It had to incur the financial loss from the war. Therefore, in 1923, Germany was in a state known as hyperinflation. The bread that costed 163 marks in 1922 costed 200,000,000,000 marks in November 1923. [5] It was during this period, that in art, a post-expressionist movement emerged. It was called New Objectivity. Barthes mentions Brecht, who was a German theatre director, playwright, and poet. Brecht’s work can be seen as an offshoot of this movement. Expressionistic art had the aim of portraying images with considerable distortion in their physicality, and the reality was shown through emotions, and the mood of the art style, while New Objectivity focussed on depicting a harsh view on the socio-political climate of the time, keeping the viewer emotionally distant from the art. This was called the Alienation Effect. New Objectivity hoped to create not just a mild emotional response in the viewers, but strike a trigger to motivate people to act, and make a change.
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4. Roland Barthes. “The Poor and the Proletariat,” in Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: The Noonday Press, 1972), 39.
5. Clive N Trueman. "Hyperinflation and Weimar Germany," accessed March 30, 2016, http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/weimar-germany/hyperinflation-and-weimar-germany/.

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This movement is talked about in the comic, as the female protagonist studies Art at a university in Berlin. She does not understand their method of teaching art, and finds that she is happier sketching through her observations. She does fast sketches of portraits of those who she passes by. She says,

“I don’t feel too strongly about any of it. Just trying to record what I see.” [6]

This distance from emotions and the need to record observations was characteristic of the rising post-expressionist thought. The political atmosphere escalates, and relationships evolve, as the seasons shift. As December arrives, and with it the snow, Marthe writes,

“Edges are blunted, open spaces blur into their surrounding obstacles; the snow mitigates and unifies. Overnight, the laws of perspective have been rendered useless.” [7]

The comic is written through the eyes of the characters in it, including those who appear just on a single panel. Therefore, the development of new perspectives, on the world and its ways, in the minds of the people of Weimar Germany, trickles down into the work of Jason Lutes. He has shown through this comic the effects of the war on the people of Germany, the power of the masses, and the consequence of the existence of clashes between nationalistic, social, democratic and communist philosophies. He has done this by including speeches and mass gatherings in the book, and maintaining an atmosphere of tension in the area of politics and society.

Pamela Katz, in her book The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the Brink, writes,

“In order for contemporary drama to remain relevant, it had to abandon the concept of the individual and instead focus on the situation of the masses of men.” [8]

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6. Lutes. Berlin, 8.
7. Lutes. Berlin, 111.
8. Pamela Katz. “Chapter 1: The First Encounter,” in The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the Brink (New York: Penguin Random House, 2015).

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People were required to be a part of the masses, for there to be a revolution. Since Brecht created his theatre not just for entertainment, but for impact on reality, as was his idea of New Objectivity, his drama needed to be focused on the masses. The war had divided people, but into groups. During, and just after the war, each individual could have had thoughts that would have been wanted to be spoken aloud, but war and loss can leave people more in need for support from others, for being able to strongly believe in an idea. Weimar Germany saw the growth of many groups, like the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Communist Party of Germany, and the Red Front-Fighters, a non-party organization which was a supporter of the Spartacus League. Large congregations of believers working for a common cause were led by powerful and influential orators, which increased each participating individual’s confidence. Some would have found a path to be able to act on their philosophies, and turn their theory into practice, while others might have been lured into finding an illusory justification for their thoughts. Whichever way it might have been, through the masses rose the individuals. When one got a companion in speech, one became a better spokesperson, soon able to move ahead independently. Berlin, in the 1920s, witnessed the birth of several individuals.

Guitar, clarinet, trombone, violin, drums, and vocals, all possess different qualities of sound. Like the jazz in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, Berlin was filled with echoes of voices, each with its own tone and intensity. There were various subjects to debate upon, identity being one of the themes explored in the comic. Be it a Jewish German, a Red Front-Fighter wife of a Nazi husband, or a woman in love with a woman, there were many existing beliefs and social constructs that after the war were deconstructed, and questioned, especially in Berlin, which was one of the most liberal cities in Germany, with respect to art, culture, and sexuality. In the 2014 book Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity, written by Robert M. Beachy, it is mentioned that there were thirty homosexual periodicals in Weimar Germany at one time, and homosexuality was recognized as being natural. Also, transsexuality was included in scientific studies in Berlin, and the first ever male-to-female surgery was undertaken there. [9] This was also the time when some films were released in Germany involving homosexual relationships, but they were later banned in Nazi Germany.

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9. Caroline Howe. “Berlin was a liberal hotbed of homosexuality and a mecca for cross dressers and transsexuals where the first male-to-female surgery was performed - until the Nazis came to power, new book reveals,” last modified November 25, 2015, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2847643/Berlin-liberal-hotbed-homosexuality-mecca-cross-dressers-transsexuals-male-female-surgery-performed-Nazis-came-power-new-book-reveals.html.

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The 1919 film ‘Different from the Others’ directed by Richard Oswald, the 1931 film ‘Mädchen in Uniform’ (Girls in Uniform) directed by Leontine Sagan, and the 1933 film ‘Anna and Elisabeth’ directed by Frank Wisbar are examples of cinema that included homosexuality in one form or another. In music, Jazz was becoming popular, and entertainment, which was a luxury for a long time, was getting affordable by many, as the years of war were getting distant. Survival was still priority, but time for pleasure was now possible. The1930 silent film ‘People on Sunday’, directed by Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Fred Zinnemann, Curt Siodmak, and Rochus Gliese shows young members of the working class, who continue with their jobs, but wait for Sundays.

The interesting aspect of the comic Berlin: City of Stones is that it not only deals with the political status of Weimar Germany, but also incorporates in it all these strands, of identity, culture, ideologies, and art movements of the time, recreating the essence of that time through his techniques of storytelling. Also, Jason Lutes makes this possible without making the themes extremely specific to the interwar period, which allows the book to not be imprisoned by time, or national boundaries. It tells the story of a certain era and society, but it was relevant even in the year 2001, the year of its publication, and is still not just a chronicle of history, but documentation of the present. The book is based on historical events, but is a work of fiction. The characters and their stories might be inspired by reality, but are created by Jason Lutes. Fiction that blends with History in a way builds a new perspective on the past. [10] History is nothing but selected portions from various versions of truth. We see only that which permeates through, into our world, but that which lies residual on the other side is what a storyteller searches for, and gives dimension to in our world. This is what makes History so contemporary. It is created in the present, and inspired from it.

In this book, there is a clever method used to create a bridge for a time difference of around eighty years, between the 1920s and the 2000s. This book has a very contemporary feel to it, even though the story is set in the late 1920s. In the United States of America, to where the author belongs, and also in the rest of the world, the idea of individualism has been on the rise. It is the upbringing in such a context that has probably led Jason Lutes to include the voice of the individual in the comic. This idea of the individual being important belongs to this time, and not to the time of the setting of the story, but the way this voice has been represented is consistent with that time. The use of thought bubbles and diary entries generate a sense of

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10. Aaron David Lewis. “Berlin: City of Stones, Book I,” accessed March 29, 2016, http://www.popmatters.com/review/berlin-city-of-stones/.

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confinement of the inner expression, despite the fact that it exists and proliferates in everyone. Also, due to the kind of media that recent generation have been exposed to, there is a need for a certain pace in a story, and an intensity that grows in magnitude as the plot progresses. Barthes in his book ‘Mythologies’ writes,

“Brecht alone, perhaps, has glimpsed the necessity, for socialist art, of always taking Man on the eve of Revolution, that is to say, alone, still blind, on the point of having his eyes opened to the revolutionary light by the 'natural' excess of his wretchedness.” [11]

Berlin: City of Stones illustrates eight months, from September 1928 to May Day, 1929. The change in seasons, and the division of the book according to the progression of time, controls the pace of the story. Initially it moves gradually, as the months change, and winter arrives, but as the political atmosphere grows tense, and the snow melts, the temperature increases. The book then, from being split into months, on May Day, becomes an hourly account of the developments in the story, leading to a final culmination of events, and the death of Gudrun.

Mark William Roche, in his book ‘Tragedy and Comedy: A Systematic Study and a Critique of Hegel’ writes in reference to one of Brecht’s earlier works in Theatre, A Man is a Man. He analyses the meanings generated from the performance, which according to him, articulates the dynamic nature of people’s identities. He believes that the play shows the inevitability of the surfacing of a new identity in a person, with a change in the surrounding environment. [12]

The identity and the relevance of the characters in this comic change as the story proceeds, but they also change in reality, as the years pass by. The socio-political climate of the present and the cultural background of the reader determine the way the story is perceived. This book, in a way becomes a reminder about the magnitude of the loss that is generated out of a war due to unacceptability of differing ideologies.

As mentioned earlier, the non-specific nature of the lives and struggles of the characters in the book makes the atmosphere of the story quite relatable to the situation in the world around the time of the publication of this book. Wars due to differences in political and religious positions, movements for workers’ rights, and also the Gay pride struggle for attaining a status equal to that of any individual, and being able to survive with dignity, are all

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11. Barthes. Mythologies, 39.
12. Mark William Roche. “Tragedy and Comedy: A Systematic Study and a Critique of Hegel” (New York: State University of New York Press, 1998), 172.

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examples from the environment that we live in today. They are not very different, in terms of impact on human life and psychology, from the time of Weimar Germany. The magnitude may vary, but differences of perspective will always be present, on one subject or another.

A worker strike in a hospital, a teaching union rally, and a rail engineering staff strike, all in London, a Scottish museum staff and French air traffic controllers’ strike, and the German Amazon staff, the Italian IT staff, and Cypriot dockers’ go on strike. These are protests that are just from Europe, on a single day. [13] These non-cooperative movements were for better pays, and against certain proposals by the government, like the privatisation of certain establishments. There may not be another world war, as several individuals have risen to be strong, after being oppressed, and it is difficult for powerful independent people to defeat each other, but on a smaller scale, many wars exist.

When the soil is fertile, the air is cold, and the world is in hibernation, in a niche somewhere, a shoot wriggles out of the ground. It comes out of hiding, and ensuring safe conditions, calls out to its comrades. Tiny leaves, with a few weeks of endurance tests, grow in power, and in number. While out on the streets there is an uprising, under the streets, the root of the spectacle becomes robust. It feeds the uprising, and in turn secretly increases its own authority underground. Getting a better clasp in the soil, it starts to mature, and thus changes colour. Over the white, a purple colour descends, and the activity above the ground gains velocity. The turnips tick [14] and ripen [15]. Comrades on the streets spread out and battle those from the other streets. The force above uproots the entire foundation down below, only to realise that all are turnips underground. The abundance of turnips and the lack of any opponents leaves the world with only one choice to be able to justify the conflict, and that is, to pickle some turnips, fry some, roast some, and to just leave the remaining raw. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
13. “Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East and Africa,” accessed March 30, 2016, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/03/25/ukla-m25.html.
14. Turnip was the name given to a kind of early 19th Century watch, which was bulky, and had a thick case.
15. The Blockade of Europe lasted from 1914-1919, during WWI, which restricted the transport of goods into the countries which were a part of the Central Powers, including Germany. Food was a part of these goods. So, after the potato crop failed in 1916. Turnip was introduced as an alternative, but it was almost all that people got. The winter of 1916-17 is known as the Turnip Winter.

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Bibliography

1. C Lorah, Michael. “Interview: Jason Lutes Talks the Final Days of “Berlin”.” Last modified July 28, 2015. http://www.comicbookresources.com/article/interview-jason-lutes-talks-about-the-final-days-of-berlin.
2. “Jason Lutes.” Accessed March 28, 2016. https://www.drawnandquarterly.com/author/jason-lutes.
3. Lutes, Jason. Berlin: City of Stones. Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly, 2001, 100.
4. Barthes, Roland. “The Poor and the Proletariat.” In Mythologies. Translated by Annette Lavers. New York: The Noonday Press, 1972, 39.
5. N Trueman, Clive. "Hyperinflation and Weimar Germany." Accessed March 30, 2016. http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/modern-world-history-1918-to-1980/weimar-germany/hyperinflation-and-weimar-germany/.
6. Lutes. Berlin, 8.
7. Lutes. Berlin, 111.
8. Katz, Pamela. “Chapter 1: The First Encounter.” In The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the Brink. New York: Penguin Random House, 2015.
9. Howe, Caroline. “Berlin was a liberal hotbed of homosexuality and a mecca for cross dressers and transsexuals where the first male-to-female surgery was performed - until the Nazis came to power, new book reveals.” Last modified November 25, 2015. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2847643/Berlin-liberal-hotbed-homosexuality-mecca-cross-dressers-transsexuals-male-female-surgery-performed-Nazis-came-power-new-book-reveals.html.
10. David Lewis, Aaron. “Berlin: City of Stones, Book I.” Accessed March 29, 2016. http://www.popmatters.com/review/berlin-city-of-stones/.
11. Barthes. Mythologies, 39.
12. William Roche, Mark. “Tragedy and Comedy: A Systematic Study and a Critique of Hegel.” New York: State University of New York Press, 1998, 172.
13. “Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East and Africa.” Accessed March 30, 2016. http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/03/25/ukla-m25.html.
14. Marks, Ben. “Jonathan Snellenburg Ticks off the History of Watches and Clocks.” Accessed March 31, 2016. http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/an-interview-with-vintage-watch-and-clock-expert-jonathan-snellenburg/.
15. Davis, Belinda. “Food and Nutrition (Germany).” Accessed March 31, 2016. http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/food_and_nutrition_germany.