The Tippel Pub
The Tippelkneipe, or Tippel Pub (on Linienstrasse), is where panhandlers and street sweepers go to drink. Panhandlers wear baggy clothes, with plenty of room in them for “stray merchandise.” They’re all thin and frozen; they feel the cold in every pore. The heat of ten African summers wouldn’t be enough to thaw them out. It can’t be easy, being a panhandler.
They play cards. On the table the grimy bits of cardboard make a noise like muffled slaps.
Fred and Karlchen are not panhandlers. It’s nice of them to be sitting here at all. By the grace of God, they don’t need to be here. Fred and Karlchen: They must make a couple of hundred marks a day.
Fred and Karlchen work in the west. As lightbulb specialists. Only expensive houses.
The passages in these expensive houses often have electric light. Karlchen will hop up on Fred’s shoulder and unscrew the bulbs. There are a couple of businesses on Elsasser Strasse that will pay four to six marks apiece for bulbs. The electricians don’t ask where the bulbs come from. Electricians are not curious people by nature.
Now do you see that it’s nice of Fred and Karlchen to spend their time here? Playing skat with panhandlers?
It’s very quiet in the Tippel Pub. An old dog is stretched out in front of the iron stove. The smack of the cards doesn’t bother him in the least. It’s a dog’s life for me! he thinks.
Gipsdiele
So called because it’s on Gipsstrasse. If only everything in life were as straightforward!
I like it very much in the Gipsdiele. It’s a cosy sort of place, small and tight, and the man behind the bar — who looks like a little costume-party beer barrel that somebody’s stuck a head on — occupies a substantial portion of it himself. He doesn’t leave much room for the other twenty or so people here.
I have a lot of old friends here. There’s Big Max, the plasterer (his day job, anyway); Grete, whose real name is Margot; Little Bertha, Else (no surname); and finally Annie — Annie from Silesia, as opposed to Bavarian Annie.
It’s important not to get those two mixed up. Bavarian Annie has her turf next to Schönhauser Tor, and is never seen around here. Besides, she’s only been back for a week. She claims she was banged up in prison, but I don’t believe her. I’m sure she was banged up another way, as Max says, and is back from the hospital but is embarrassed to say so.
Annie from Silesia is counting her money. When I look across at her, she stops. I don’t know why — I’m not going to tell anyone.
Someone’s set down his cigar box and orders a couple of kümmels. The order and the setting down of the box have made a big hole in the general conversation: There’s silence for a moment. A man wearing a hotel porter’s visored cap is racking his brain: Now, what was he in for?
Max says to the man in the cap: “I need a woman and a claw-jimmy.” The claw-jimmy won’t be a problem. As early as tomorrow. But a woman — apparently that’s not so easy.
In case of any misunderstanding, Erna screeches: “I’m spoken for!” Erna loves Franz. Erna got a gold filling a week ago, and she hasn’t stopped laughing since. She can’t just let her mouth hang open like a hungry crocodile’s! Oh, no! So if the world is to see her gold filling, Erna will just have to laugh. Erna laughs at the saddest things.
Franz is big and wide and has just walked in. For a moment or two, he completely fills the little bar with his personality. He radiates authority. All the pimps shrivel up and dwindle away like rubber balloons.
Erna gets a poke in the ribs that sends her sprawling along the bench. But Erna laughs. .
Neue Berliner Zeitung—12-Uhr-Blatt, February 23/28, 1921
7. With the Homeless (1920)
The Declaration
Case No. . P. B.
Was heard by the court in Berlin, on. . 1920.
Mr. [No Name] was instructed to find himself alternative accommodation within five days, failing which, notwithstanding the most strenuous efforts on his behalf to do so, he would be punished for making himself homeless. The appellant was further warned that in accordance with #361, subsection 8, of the Criminal Law of the German Empire, such punishment will consist of up to six weeks in prison, and, in accordance with #362 ibid., transferral to the police authorities, for placement in a workhouse.
approved and signed.
Signature of the homeless man in question.
Signature of the police case worker.
Here is to be found the true cause of the Homeless Revolt of two days ago in Fröbelstrasse. The rioters were for the most part young people, egged on by a somewhat colorful individual from East Prussia. The young homeless held a meeting in Weissensee, and decided to storm the shelter. An official who tried to placate them was so badly beaten that he ended up in hospital. The police were called. A few of the miscreants have already been taken into custody. It is unlikely that they will all be caught.
The document quoted above is the so-called declaration, which has to be signed by anyone entering the homeless shelter on Fröbelstrasse. The German in which this philanthropical document is couched corresponds to the philanthropy it expresses. The youthful quasi revolutionaries certainly did not rise up because they were critical of deficiencies in its style or its humanitarian mission. They just wanted to let off steam — to prove they were people “to be reckoned with,” and, broadly, to remind themselves (and others) of the existence of the republic. But the physical expression of their indignation would be understandable (though not condoned), if it were just that, honest indignation and not a result of the unscrupulous conduct of an unethical individual. “Failing which”—and if someone were unable to prove that despite all his endeavors he had not found himself an abode — is six weeks in prison really appropriate punishment for that? Is punishment appropriate at all? Isn’t it rather the case that finding accommodation within five days in Berlin these days should be taken as proof of criminality? This is an old and musty decree, and it is finally on its way out. Though only after a conscientious and humane official has found himself the victim of violence unleashed in those whom the law has left with no other option.
The Building
Red brick. The chill uniform of stern durability in which our state institutions, hospitals, prisons, schools, post offices, and churches show their character. A garden’s autumnal colors are a vain effort to lend a pleasant or stirring aspect to what remains, all too evidently, a state enterprise. The building remains brick red, and looks as though it’s been plonked down in the middle of nature. Fröbelstrasse, by the way, is in a part of Berlin where that brick-red atmosphere tends to dominate. On the right a board fence rings a bit of — hardly — open ground, and further on, a caravan, evidently the property of tinkers. Prenzlauer Allee owes its alluring name to the presence of a few scrawny trees, sprung from the stones of a city precinct, trees not by nature but by municipal decree. Then the hospital at the front, the shelter for the homeless at the back. At the entrance the police have a pleasant greeting for all those merely going by. The corridors are bare, their faces pancaked over with official white. The chief inspector, a large, kind, fair-haired man, is full of understanding because he has seen so much already. All the officials wear humanity under their uniforms. Anyone called upon to supervise misery will view criminality differently. All state officials should be required to spend a month serving in a homeless shelter to learn love.