On the Tracks of the Removed War. Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin

Alfred Döblin had the opportunity to have (almost) direct experience of the Great War and, above all, of the traumatic consequences of injuries and shocks caused by matériel-based trench warfare. The literary response to these experiences was that of conferring a personal voice to the traumatized within their narrative universe, of asserting their viewpoint within the context of a general tendency towards removal. What the war has caused is merely the other side of a much more general process of transformation of the human in the world of industrial labour and in the social reality of modern European metropolises. In the heart of a Berlin in profound and rapid transformation, in Alexanderplatz, Döblin finds a huge sounding board for his research on the effects and consequences of a devastating epochal experience.