Nabokov’s places in Berlin /
Набоковские места в Берлине
Nabokov’s places in Berlin are numerous and are well documented (present data is based on Zimmer, Nabokovs Berlin; Boyd, Russian Years; and Urban, Blaue Abende in Berlin). His first literary engagement in the German capital took place in April 4, 1923 (a public reading at Schubertsaal, Bülowstrasse), just three years before a similar gathering was to happen in the novel.
The characters of The Gift live and breathe in the atmosphere of contemporary Berlin. When Shirin arranges to meet Lishnevski about some business in the Zoological Garden and when, after an hour’s conversation, Lishnevski casually directs his attention to a hyena in its cage, “it transpired that Shirin had hardly realized that one keeps animals in a zoological garden, and glancing briefly at the cage had remarked automatically: ‘Yes, the likes of us don’t know much about the animal world,’ and immediately continued discussing that which particularly disturbed him in life: the activities and composition of the Committee of the Society of Russian Writers in Germany” (G316). The famous Zoological Gardens, known as the “Zoo,” were the first of their kind in Germany, created in 1841–44 by Heinrich Lichtenstein, an explorer of Africa, with the assistance of the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia donated his pheasantry and his menagerie, and up until World War II its stock of animals was one of the largest in the world; restaurants and banquet rooms in the Zoo were a centre of Berlin social life.
1. Berlin Zoo.
2. Nestor- and Paulsborner Strasse, early 1930s.
3. Nestor- and Paulsborner Strasse today.
According to Dieter Zimmer, in 1943 the whole corner building on Nestor- and Paulsborner Strasse was destroyed by bombs down to the second floor. Vladimir and Véra had lived on the third. It had been rebuilt in 1952. A plaque with Nabokov’s name was added on the facade in 1999.
4. Berlin City U-Bahn
The importance that Nabokov places on maintaining some resemblance to reality, be it topographic markers or Fyodor’s émigré counterparts, is a question that has been addressed by Monica Greenleaf. She notes that, while Nabokov may treat émigré society “with undisguised disdain and mockery, he is still addressing readers who can recognize the street names and shops, the rented rooms and shabby culturedness of émigré Berlin” (Greenleaf 141).
5. Potsdamer Platz
In addition to the recurring biographical details taking place at fictitious addresses, there are in the novel numerous recognizable objects and architectural landmarks from everyday Berlin setting. The reader of The Gift should be made aware of their function: Nabokov is not interested in reconstructing merely a contemporary city, but rather its urban legends – discernible like a tender lining underneath a tawdry canvas.
6. Alexanderplatz, 1904.
The Vaterland, where Zina is to meet her mother for lunch, was a restaurant located at Potsdam Square (Potsdamer Platz), in the heart of Berlin. It was identifiable by a traffic tower with a clock in the very center of the square; from the top of this tower a policeman (and later Germany’s first traffic lights, installed in 1924) controlled the flow of traffic. Numerous hotels and cafés attracted people to Potsdam Square, but a true magnet for tourists was the “Haus Vaterland” (House of the Fatherland), a restaurant and a variety theater. It could seat two thousand after a major renovation in 1927–28 by architect Carl Steel Urach, making it the largest restaurant in Europe. For Marianna, therefore, inviting her daughter to such a fashionable place before her impending departure is a symbolically generous gesture; Fyodor does not earn the same invitation because Marianna is not intending to waste money for an expensive lunch on her dubious tenant whom she, presumably, will never see again.
7. Vaterland, Kempinsky.
Nabokov loved the urban poetry of the Berlin streets despite the city’s technocratic mess (“straight from the hothouse paradise of the past, [Fyodor] stepped onto a Berlin tramcar”; G80). Fyodor observes the tram-riding routine as a picture of nearly epic scale: “The tram came out on the square and, braking excruciatingly, stopped, but it was only a preliminary stop, because in front, by the stone island crowded with people standing by to board, two other trams had got stuck, both with cars coupled on, and this inert agglomeration was also evidence somehow of the disastrous imperfection of the world in which Fyodor still continued to reside” (G84). Similarly, Joseph Rothdescribes the city’s main artery in his essay “The Kurfürstendamm” (1929): “I envy the streetcars, which are allowed to glide coolly and briskly over the strips of lawn that have been laid in the middle of the thoroughfare. They have been laid expressly for them, as if they were wild animals brought to Berlinfrom their lush green homes and, like the animals in the Zoologischer Garten, had to be offered a pathetic suggestion of their habitat… Strips of asphalt run parallel to the streetcar lines and lawns, and down these omnibuses and cars clatter, causing traffic jams. Often they enlist help of traffic lights, which alternate automatically among red, yellow, and green without any visible cause” (Roth 147).
8. Trams, 1925.
Image 1: Bundersarchiv. Photo: A. Frankl (ca. 1930-39).
Images 2 and 3: Courtesy of Dieter E. Zimmer.
The Editor is grateful to Dr. Zimmer for generously allowing to reproduce some of his photographs here.
See the complete version in the following edition: Zimmer, Dieter E. Nabokovs Berlin. Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, 2001.