In six frenetic weeks Gabriele Tergit wrote her first novel, which made her famous at a stroke in 1931. Contemporary literary critics praised it as the "ultimate big-city novel" and attested to the author's powers of observation and the social commitment of an Emile Zola.
Now the novel has finally been reissued in an annotated new edition by Schöffling Verlag! "Käsebier erobert den Kurfürstendamm" tells of the rise and fall of the folk singer Käsebier, whom a newspaper reporter discovers in a cheap music hall. To make an impression on his editorial staff, he pushes him up to megastar status. Real estate agents and speculators latch on to the quick fame, the bored ladies of good society make a pilgrimage to the performances, and Käsebier is marketed without restraint. Parallels to today keep intruding...
Gabriele Tergit, Germany's first female court reporter, is not only a relentlessly accurate but also compassionate observer. Pointed and highly comic dialogue, along with precise descriptions of social milieus - from dance girls to building contractors to media moguls - are what make her novel so appealing. Her own profession comes under particular scrutiny: Berlin journalists, hounded in the city's political and social turmoil, searching for ever new sensations. And in doing so, they become ever more unscrupulous...
Central, therefore, to Tergit's critique of the modern advertising machinery and pop culture she hates, which is over the dead bodies. In Tergit's view, Joseph Goebbels then perfected and perverted this in the Third Reich with his propaganda. Again, the parallels to today's populism are within reach and make this book so important for our time as well!
Jo van Nelsen, himself a singer and presenter in German vaudeville and an accomplished connoisseur of the twenties, will read the smartest passages from this great period novel and play hits of the 1920s from his red suitcase gramophone in between. Fun you won't want to miss.
More information about this event: http://www.frankfurter-buergerstiftung.de/node/2538
