Culture | A respectable man

The real resonances, and warnings, of Weimar Germany

“Berlin Alexanderplatz” suggests its sharpest lessons lie not in its extremes but in the mundane

|BERLIN

Berlin Alexanderplatz. By Alfred Döblin. Translated by Michael Hofmann. NYRB Classics; 480 pages; $18.95. Penguin Classics; £14.99.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “A respectable man”

The threat to world trade

From the March 10th 2018 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

More from Culture

Kieran Culkin as Benji and Jesse Eisenberg as David in "A Real Pain"

Witty and wise, “A Real Pain” is a masterpiece in a minor key

Jesse Eisenberg’s deceptively slight film asks big moral questions

People walk in the foreground holding phones. A Huawei Technologies Co. store in Shanghai, China.

Now it’s all about TikTok. But Huawei led the way

The Chinese telecoms firm was the first to raise America’s hackles


An illustration of a stack of books that make up the American flag.

Want to spend time with a different American president?

Five presidential biographies to distract you from the news


Los Angeles has lost some of its trailblazing architecture

How will it rebuild?

What firms are for

The framework for thinking about business and capitalism is hopelessly outdated, argues a new book