White Collar Workers, Mass Culture and 'Neue Sachlichkeit' in Weimar Berlin

This text concentrates on three novels set in the rapidly-changing white-collar milieu of Berlin during the Weimar Republic. All three novels are concerned with the disarray, anguish and tension of commercial "Angestellten" - figures who are involved in selling, advertising and other growing consumer-oriented industries. Focusing on the socially critical import of the narrative and characterization, it is argued that the everyday experience of the protagonists is shaped by commercial influences - on their jobs, places of entertainment and private and public relationships in very subtle but nonetheless powerful and often damaging ways. The study not only emphasizes connections and parallels between the novels which have frequently been overlooked, but, by examining contemporary developments in the Berlin entertainment world, the commercial ethos and the architecture of Neue Sachlichkeit, it also sets them in an interrelated context, yielding new perspectives on the relationships between the novels and the society and culture of Weimar Berlin.