November 1918: A German Revolution: Analysis of Major Characters

Author: Alfred Döblin

First published: November 1918: Eine deutsche Revolution, 1948–1950; first complete edition (including the novel Burger und Soldater, which was originally published in 1939), 1978 (English translation, 1983): Verratenes Volk, 1948, and Heimkehr der Fronttruppen, 1949 (translated as A People Betrayed and The Troops Return, respectively, in A People Betrayed: November 1918, A German Revolution, 1983); Karl und Rosa, 1950 (Karl and Rosa: November 1918, A German Revolution, 1983)

Genre: Novel

Locale: Berlin and the Weimar Republic

Plot: Social

Time: November, 1918, to the late 1920's

The author, who introduces, comments on, and ties together developments in Germany at the end of World War I and afterward. Berlin is the focal point, but events in Strasbourg, Paris, the German military headquarters in Kassel, and elsewhere are woven into the intricate story. The story traces the thoughts and actions of political figures, revolutionaries, military officers, financial opportunists, and ordinary individuals in the tense period following the establishment of a shaky, moderately left-wing republic and the armistice through the crushing of the Spartacists. The frustration of President Woodrow Wilson and his hope for a just peace without victors is also described. Finally, through Friedrich Becker, the author berates the postwar Weimar Republic. According to him, there was no real attempt to come to grips with the causes of war, and he predicts the rise of a new paganism, characterized by strength and cunning.

Hilda, a striking twenty-one-year-old blond who serves as a nurse in a German military hospital in Alsace. After the armistice, she is unwilling to renew her relationship with her prewar lover, the artist Bernhard. When she leaves for Berlin to find Friedrich Becker, one of her former patients with whom she had fallen in love, Bernhard hangs himself. She finds Becker improved physically but undergoing a deep mental or spiritual crisis. He, too, had attempted to hang himself. Regarding herself as the source of Friedrich's torment, she decides that she must leave him and takes a job at a suburban Berlin hospital. The image of Hilda, a devoted Catholic, falling on her knees in Friedrich's presence and praying becomes for him a redemptive example. Ignored by Friedrich, she responds to the love of Johannes Maus. They become engaged, marry, and eventually settle in Karlsruhe with their child. Becker, during his later wandering, surprises the couple with a short visit. Hilda, who still loves him deeply, is distressed by his appearance but inspired by his somewhat crazed religious intensity and ominous predictions for the future.

Friedrich Becker (FREE-drihkh), a doctor of philology and a former teacher who, as a wounded German officer, was nursed by Hilda. After prolonged hospital treatment, Becker returns to his mother's apartment in Berlin, where his spinal wound continues to heal. As Becker grows physically stronger, however, he suffers a mental collapse brought on by deep feelings of guilt for having participated in the war as an officer. He goes through a desperate struggle with the Devil, who appears to him in the form of a mysterious Brazilian, a lion, and a rat. Despairing, Becker then attempts suicide. Through a religious vision, prompted by Hilda's example, Becker finds salvation and peace in the image of the crucified Christ. To the dismay of his friend, Johannes Maus, Becker pleads that peace can be found only through religious transformation. Returning to his teaching post for a trial period, Becker antagonizes the conservatives by asserting, as he discusses Sophocles' Antigone, that unwritten divine law transcends the law of the state. When he attempts to rescue Heinz Riedel, Becker, inspired by the helplessness and misery of the workers, joins the Spartacists in the defense of the police station. Wounded, he refuses Maus's attempt to exonerate him, but with the help of Hilda he is rescued from execution at the Moabit Hospital. After three years in prison, he returns to teaching, but his uncompromising idealism creates problems. Unable to satisfy his spiritual hunger and to escape the demands of his personality with women and money, he takes to the road as a wanderer. After years of inciting the poor to revolt and calling Christians to task, he once more falls into the hands of the Devil. The Devil slips the soul of a depraved bargeman into Becker's breast. Becker finally finds peace from his struggles with the Devil and this corrupt soul. As he lies dying from a gunshot he received while attempting a robbery, he is rescued by Antoniel, his guardian angel.

Becker's mother, a widow in her fifties. Her Christian commitment and her self-sacrificing concern for others are shared by her son.

Johannes Maus (yoh-HAHN-nehs mows), Becker's simple and honest fellow officer and friend, who recuperated with him in the Alsatian hospital. Maus had fallen in love with Hilda. He longs for her and feels guilty for forcing himself on her just before leaving the hospital. His alienation from post-war German society and desire to be useful to the world are directed toward political radicalism by an old friend, Karl “Big” Ding. His disappointment that his friend Becker does not support his radicalism is compounded by Hilda's preference for Becker. Although Maus angrily rejects Becker's new religious outlook, he does rethink his decision to join the Spartacists. He opts, instead, for the counterrevolutionary Frei Korps unit that is being organized by General Marcker. At the urging of Hilda, he helps Becker gain access to the besieged police station. Uncomfortable with the military after the experiences of January, 1919, Maus leaves the army and studies engineering.

The Director, a cultured classicist in his fifties, in charge of Becker's old school. Becker attempts to persuade the Director, whose fondness for young men is creating scandal, to end his relationship with the student Heinz Riedel. After the Director is fatally beaten by the boy's father, Becker, in spite of public pressure and threats to his career, defends the claim of the dead to be remembered and arranges the burial.

Heinz Riedel (hints REE-dehl), a blond student who is the favorite of the Director. Becker befriends him. After his father's arrest, Heinz is allowed to stay with Becker and his mother. Becker takes him to the dying Director and with him buries the man. When Heinz is disowned by his mother for refusing to help his father's case by exaggerating his intimacy with the Director, he takes to the streets. Becker eventually locates him with the Spartacists in the besieged police station. Heinz, after recovering from his wounds, goes on to fight and die in a Communist insurrection in central Germany.

Friedrich Ebert, the squat, portly, goateed, forty-seven-year-old leader of the moderate Majority Socialists, or Social Democrats, who take over the German government from Chancellor Prince Max of Baden on November 9. He temporarily cooperates with the more left-wing Independent Socialists but is determined, with the aid of the army, to prevent a radical social revolution from engulfing Germany. He gives lip service to the idea of socialism but is a thorough reformist. He believes that the restoration of prosperity and the maintenance of national unity against the Allies can be accomplished only with the support of the bourgeoisie. He is determined to free himself from any dependence on the Council of People's Deputies, to sabotage and abolish the revolutionary All German Congress of Councils, and, ultimately, to base the authority of the government on an elected constituent assembly. When the Constituent Assembly meets on January 19, after the Spartacists have been brutally crushed, Ebert is chosen as president of the German Republic.

Philip Scheidemann (SHI-deh-mahn), Ebert's assistant in the Social Democratic Party, who, to the dismay of Ebert, proclaims a republic on November 9 to prevent the radical Spartacists from seizing the initiative.

Woodrow Wilson, the tall and frail sixty-two-year-old United States president, whose uncompromising vision of a just peace becomes the victim of his own self-righteous ego, the legitimate concerns and acquisitive desires of the vengeful Allies, and the vicissitudes of domestic American politics.

Karl Liebknecht (LEEB-knehkt), who with Rosa Luxemburg leads the radical leftist Spartacist League and the newly formed German Communist Party. Liebknecht believes that Ebert is betraying the revolution, but he is afflicted with doubt and hesitates to initiate a revolutionary uprising. Bolshevik agent Karl Radek is appalled by Liebknecht's reluctance to be responsible for bloodshed and his tendency to substitute endless words for decisive revolutionary action. Liebknecht doubts whether the German workers are in favor of revolution but fears that, unless the Spartacists act, any revolutionary possibilities will be lost to the counterrevolutionaries. Liebknecht, carried away by his emotions and without the support of Luxemburg, on January 6 forms a Provisional Revolutionary Committee that declares Ebert's government deposed. Liebknecht fails to provide dynamic leadership. His dispirited supporters melt away or are crushed by the armed forces of the anti-Spartacists. He, along with Rosa Luxemburg, is betrayed by his courier, Werner, and the two revolutionaries are murdered by their military captors.

Rosa Luxemburg (LEWK-sehm-buhrg), a small, graying, forty-seven-year-old revolutionary leader who is opposed to terror and to dictatorship even in the name of the proletariat. While Luxemburg is in prison for antiwar agitation, the spirit of Hannes Düsterberg, her friend who was killed on the Eastern Front, takes control of her and torments her. Her mental anguish, replete with hallucinations of Hannes, Satan, and a cherub, continues until her death. Her anguish is compounded by her realization that a proletarian insurrection is premature and fated to be crushed in a bloodbath. After her captors crush her skull and shoot her, they dump her body in the Landwehr Canal.

General Groener (GREH-nehr), the quartermaster general (second in command) of the German army. This pragmatic South German from Württemberg replaces General Ludendorff when Ludendorff is forced to retire. On November 9, Groener contacts Ebert by means of a secret telephone line to the chancellery in Berlin and agrees to support Ebert against the radical left, the Spartacists, if Ebert will protect the integrity of the army. Despite feelings of distaste and the misgivings of other officers, Groener sees no acceptable alternative to working through Ebert.

General Oskar von Hindenburg, the massive, bristly, white-haired, and amply mustached seventy-year-old field marshal and chief of staff of the German army. He holds his quartermaster, General Groener, responsible for the army's necessary withdrawal of its support from the kaiser on November 9. Hindenburg finds the necessity of working with Ebert completely distasteful.

Gustav Noske (NOHS-keh), a tall, lanky, low-browed, right-wing Social Democrat who quiets the revolt in Kiel and agrees to play the “bloodhound” as Ebert's minister of war. Noske works with the military to organize the brutal suppression of the disorganized Spartacist rising.

Minna Imker (MIH-nah IHM-kehr), a slight, hardworking, radical worker in her twenties who has her hair cut because it is discolored by chemicals used in the armaments industry. She helps to persuade her brother Ed, who has just returned from the war, to join the Spartacists. She is killed when the military attacks the Spartacists, who have seized the police station.

Herr Wylinski (vih-LIHNS-kee), a pleasure-loving and womanizing former Russian socialist who develops business interests to cover and finance his revolutionary activities. He becomes disenchanted with the Bolshevik regime and immigrates to Germany, where he is the politically connected center of a profitable network of financial manipulators. The austere Finsterl and the playboy Willi Finger are his shady associates. Wylinski appropriates a dyed-blond, somewhat exotic beauty, Toni, from Herr Motz, the assistant to another shady character, Herr Brose-Zenk, alias Schröder.