Goodbye to Berlin


Goodbye to Berlin is a 1939 novel by Christopher Isherwood set in Weimar Germany. It is often published together with Mr Norris Changes Trains in a 1945 collection called The Berlin Stories.

Background

The novel, a semiautobiographical account of British author Christopher Isherwood's time in 1930s Berlin, describes pre-Nazi Germany and the people he met. It is episodic, dealing with a large cast over a period of several years from late 1930 to early 1933. It is written as a connected series of six short stories and novellas. These are: "A Berlin Diary ", "Sally Bowles", "On Ruegen Island ", "The Nowaks", "The Landauers" and "A Berlin Diary ".
After moving to Germany to work on his novel, Isherwood moves around the city frequently and soon thus becomes involved with a diverse array of German citizens: the caring landlady, Frl. Schroeder; the "divinely decadent" Sally Bowles, a young Englishwoman who sings in the local cabaret and her coterie of admirers; Natalia Landauer, the rich, teenage Jewish heiress of a prosperous family business; Peter and Otto, a gay couple struggling to accept their relationship and sexuality in light of the rise of the Nazis. In his 1976 memoir based on this period of his life, Christopher and His Kind, Isherwood writes that "He liked to imagine himself as one of those mysterious wanderers who penetrate the depths of a foreign land, disguise themselves in the dress and customs of its natives and die in unknown graves, envied by their stay-at-home compatriots".
The book, first published in 1939, highlights the groups of people who would be most at risk from Nazi intimidation. It was described by contemporary writer George Orwell as "brilliant sketches of a society in decay". In her book Anti-Nazi Modernism, author Mia Spiro remarks that "Despite that which they could not know, the novels that Barnes, Isherwood, and Woolf wrote do reveal the historical, cultural, political, and social conditions in 1930s Europe that made the continent ripe for disaster". In his autobiography Without Stopping, the author and composer Paul Bowles suggests that Isherwood, whom he met in Berlin, may have borrowed his surname for the character Sally Bowles. Isherwood confirms this in his 1976 memoir Christopher and His Kind, writing, " liked the sound of it and also the looks of its owner."

Adaptations

The novel was adapted into a Broadway play called I Am a Camera by John Van Druten. It was a personal success for Julie Harris as the insouciant Sally Bowles, winning her the first of her five Tony Awards for Best Leading Actress in a play, although it earned the infamous review by Walter Kerr, "Me no Leica." The title is a quote taken from the novel's first page. The play was then adapted into a less successful film, also called I Am a Camera, featuring Laurence Harvey, Shelley Winters and Julie Harris, with screenplay by John Collier and music by Malcolm Arnold.
The book was then adapted into the Tony Award-winning musical Cabaret and the film Cabaret for which Liza Minnelli won an Academy Award for playing Sally. Bob Fosse directed the movie and won the award for Best Director.