Transcript

[TRAIN RUMBLING]

NARRATOR: Many of those drawn to Berlin during the 1920s made a beeline for Schoeneberg, then, as now, the gay centre of the city. One was a young Englishman named Christopher Isherwood. He lived at Number 17 Nollendorfstrasse, and it was here that he wrote the tales of his experiences. Published in the book Goodbye to Berlin, they later became the film Cabaret.

So this was the flat, second floor on the left-hand side, and all the characters here, all the tenants, immortalised in Cabaret. Sally Bowles in this room, Fraulein Schneider, the German landlady, over there, Fraulein Kost, the German prostitute, over there. And here, Christopher Isherwood.

READER: From my window, the deep, solemn, massive street. Cellar shops where lamps burn all day, under the shadow of top-heavy balconied facades. The whole district is like this -- street leading into street of houses like shabby monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and secondhand furniture of a bankrupt middle class.

NARRATOR: Isherwood saw Berlin as a powder keg waiting to explode. Hyperinflation had bankrupted the city, creating a population of destitute millionaires. Goebbels's Nazi militias were on the up and up, out on the streets, openly picking fights with communist gangs. As Isherwood and his friends drank and danced the night away:

READER: Berlin was in a state of civil war. Hate exploded suddenly, without warning, out of nowhere. Knives were whipped out. Blows were dealt with spiked rings, beer mugs, chair legs, or leaded clubs. Bullets slashed the advertisements on the poster columns, rebounded from the iron roofs of latrines. In the middle of a crowded street, a young man would be attacked, stripped, thrashed, and left bleeding on the pavement. In 15 seconds it was all over, and the assailants had disappeared.

[SHOUTING]