Gilgi (26 page)

And nothing changes in the remainder of the narrative. When Gilgi is preoccupied after visiting Hertha, and Martin worries that she no longer loves him, she asks herself: “Why don’t I have any words—for Martin—or for myself, either?” (
this page
); and when Martin’s possessiveness flares again as she explains why she is giving Frau Greif’s rings to Hans and Hertha, Gilgi feels “more and more of her words […] sliding back inside her” (
this page
–
this page
).

However, there are few indications that, if Gilgi were
ever to articulate her thoughts and feelings more clearly, Martin would listen to her. When Gilgi leaves the Krons and goes to Martin’s apartment, she is still debating aloud whether to live there or in her attic room when he—“ignoring these words completely” (
this page
)—starts unpacking her suitcase. On a subsequent occasion when Gilgi talks to Martin in bed, it turns out that “he’s asleep” (
this page
). And in the conversation about Frau Greif’s rings mentioned above, Martin’s interpretation of Gilgi’s sympathy for Hans is shaped by jealousy: “So this is what I understand now—an old boyfriend of yours was here, and you concealed that from me” (
this page
). Martin’s failures to listen to Gilgi are paralleled for most of the narrative by Pit: for instance when she seeks him out after her first encounter with Fräulein Täschler, but he delivers a political monologue while she waits in vain “for a moment when she can interrupt him and tell him about the things which are more important to her, and have more to do with her, just now” (
this page
), or when he refuses to discuss her relationship with Martin because he is attracted to her himself: “Why are you telling me this—you! That’s why you came to me—that’s why … just to tell me …” (
this page
). It is also worth noting that Gilgi’s relationship with Martin meets with blank incomprehension and uncompromising rejection from the Krons: Frau Kron can only account for it by wailing that “some man has hypnotized you” (
this page
), and Herr Kron can only deal with it by “laying down the law” (
this page
) and forbidding Gilgi the house, leaving her to conclude that “there just isn’t any common ground” (
this page
) between her and her adoptive parents. But those in the older generation who claim to empathize with Gilgi and her peers leave her unmoved, as she complains to Martin
about “those old people who have thrown themselves into the new era. The ones who write about sport-oriented modern youth, driving cars, short skirts, short hair, and jazz, and have an amazing ability to hit the nail right next to the head” (
this page
).

Gilgi’s recurring struggle to express herself adequately, Martin’s and Pit’s repeated failure to listen properly, the Krons’ complete inability to understand her unconventional morality, and other older people’s misguided belief that they do understand “the new era” indicate one important reason for the great drama of Gilgi’s life in Cologne and the obvious uncertainty of her prospects in Berlin. Gilgi’s identity as a New Woman seems highly colored and somewhat unrealistic because neither she nor the society around her has yet fully assimilated that identity intellectually, has yet fully described it verbally, or has yet reached the point where the language required to discuss it has become “everyday words.” The melodramatic element in
Gilgi, One of Us
reflects and underlines how significant personal challenges and vigorous social controversies are associated with Gilgi’s claim to emancipated femininity, rather than (as Tucholsky suggested) unwittingly betraying Keun’s inexperience as an author. After all, Keun asserts the legitimacy of popular artistic styles when Gilgi, bored while attending a classical concert with Martin, muses that: “Literature, music, painting—it’s a funny thing, art. One person’s Rubinstein—is another’s dance-band leader, one person’s Rembrandt—is another’s commercial artist. What can you do?” (
this page
). And for evidence that Gilgi was a highly unsettling character for the society in which she lived, we need look no further than how the film version of her story changed the ending
to foreclose her vision of a consciously chosen and self-supporting unmarried motherhood.

The most visible obstacle to Gilgi’s development as a New Woman is the attitudes of men. Martin demeans her not only by ignoring what she says and suspecting her motives for helping Hans, but also by addressing her constantly as “little Gilgi,” by remarking patronizingly that “there are less intelligent and less sensitive people than you” (
this page
), by regarding her as a “doll” (
this page
) which he can manipulate physically and dress in clothes of his choosing, and by urging her to leave Cologne with him because “when we’re somewhere else you’ll belong to me more than you do here” (
this page
). Martin’s, Pit’s and Herr Kron’s condescending treatment of Gilgi is paralleled by other men’s treatment of other women: by Gilgi’s unnamed father, who “disappeared” (
this page
) when he made her mother pregnant; by Fräulein Täschler’s unnamed fiancé, who “got a thousand marks out of me” (
this page
) before she broke off the engagement; by Herr Greif, who gives his wife jewelry “every time he cheats on me”; by Frau Greif’s lover Diddy, who says—“speak[ing] with boyish resentment and charming exasperation, like an operetta tenor who’s dissatisfied with his salary” (
this page
)—that he will continue to see her after he marries another woman whose father “is taking me into the business” (
this page
); and perhaps even by the impoverished and hard-working Hans, who cannot understand the exhausted Hertha’s loss of sexual appetite: “I disgust you, you don’t love me anymore” (
this page
). Of course, Gilgi’s spirited handling of sexist and patronizing men provides some of the novel’s most vivid moments, particularly when she contrives with Olga to divert Herr Reuter’s sexual advances (see
this page
–
this page
), and
when she tells the doctor who diagnoses her pregnancy that she doesn’t want the child:

But Gilgi reacts against Martin’s sexism and patronage not by outwitting him as she did Herr Reuter, nor by challenging him as she did the doctor, and not even by asking him to alter his behavior in any particular (“wanting to change someone else just means making life difficult for yourself and for them”). She simply leaves him, with great reluctance, and with a vague hope that one day “he’[ll] come to me and be proud and happy.”

I would interpret this glaring anomaly in Gilgi’s thoughts and actions—which I believe reveals Keun’s view about the New Woman’s immediate prospects—by examining how Gilgi’s situation is replicated in Olga’s. Olga is a different kind of New Woman from Gilgi, because she is much less career-oriented: “When she needs money, she works; when she has money, she travels” (
this page
). She is also different because she leads a bohemian existence largely beyond the realm of “everyday words” in which Gilgi struggles; indeed, Olga sometimes communicates with Gilgi non-verbally (see
this page
and
this page
–
this page
), and she luxuriates in the escape from the problems inherent in
words which is afforded by her visits to Majorca: “The people there talk a language that I don’t understand. Can you imagine, Gilgi, how magical it is to hear just a melody of words, without understanding all the nonsense that lies behind them?” (
this page
–
this page
). However, Olga is very like Gilgi in having experienced a relationship with a possessive man, Franzi, whom she married, whom she left after six months because he was “as jealous as a touring-company Othello” (
this page
), whose story she has told Gilgi “a hundred times” (
this page
), and whose photograph she “slobbers on” (
this page
). Thus there is a profound tension in
Gilgi, One of Us
between how (on one hand) the characterization of the male figures suggests that if the New Woman is to find a settled and undramatic place in her society, then that society will need to produce a New Man, and how (on the other hand) Gilgi barely recognizes Martin’s sexism, Olga fights Franzi’s sexism and fails, and both the white-collar and the exotic New Women still feel attracted to the unsatisfactory lovers whom they left. This tension indicates that Keun had little confidence that—and little idea how—the Weimar Republic’s New Men could emerge anytime soon.

This is the first complete English translation of
Gilgi, eine von uns
. I have followed the first edition of 1931. My three major challenges were the novel’s strong links with the era in which it was written, Gilgi’s use of the German pronoun “man,” and other characters’ use of
Koelsch
, the Cologne dialect.

Gilgi, eine von uns
is a novel of its era—the late Weimar
Republic—firstly in the general sense that it is set explicitly in 1931 (see, for example,
this page
), and that it refers to things which were common at the time but have been largely superseded today, such as gramophones, typewriters, and of course Gilgi’s professional skill of stenography. With this in mind, I have endeavored to use only vocabulary appropriate to the era, such as “talkies” (
this page
) for “Tonfilm.”
Gilgi, eine von uns
is also—and, for the translator, more challengingly—a novel of its time in its numerous topical references: most frequently to popular songs, but also to contemporary personalities, public events, advertising slogans, and so on. As the song references in particular often resonate with the wider story, I have translated them fairly literally in order to preserve any wider resonance. The best example of this is the line from the song “Reich mir zum Abschied noch einmal die Hände” / “Good Night” which I mentioned earlier.

The German “man” (like the French “on”) is an ungendered, third-person pronoun used for making impersonal, generalized statements, and it is most often translated in English by “one” or a non-specific “you.” Gilgi uses “man” constantly when talking and thinking about herself, which creates the impression that she finds her feelings and ideas confusing or even unwelcome; this aligns with the problems about “words” which I discussed previously. Given that repeated use of the English pronoun “one” tends to sound artificial, I have usually translated Gilgi’s “man” as “you,” as if she is apostrophizing herself, although this meant that occasionally I had to paraphrase a “you” when Gilgi was actually addressing someone else.

Koelsch
is spoken intermittently throughout the narrative, most conspicuously by Fräulein Täschler, but to a
limited extent also by the Krons, and by very minor characters such as some of the Carnival revelers. As attempting to render all these characters’ words in some variety or dialect of English (New York slang, Cockney, Australian English, or anything else) would have been grotesquely inappropriate, I have limited myself to marking
Koelsch
with some non-standard pronunciations (“Jilgi,” “twenny-one,” and so on), and with a few malapropisms, most obviously “cheese lounge” (
this page
) for Fräulein Teschler’s “Scheselonk.”

I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Andrew Bonnell (University of Queensland, Brisbane), who enlightened me about some of the novel’s more obscure topical references; to Dr Stephan Atzert (University of Queensland, Brisbane), who clarified various linguistic points for me; and to the Mac/Eddy Club (the Jeanette MacDonald / Nelson Eddy fan club, New York), which I consulted about “Good Night.” Any deficiencies in the foregoing translation of
Gilgi, eine von uns
are entirely my responsibility.

Keun’s interview with Jürgen Serke is in his
Die verbrannten Dichter: Berichte, Texte, Bilder einer Zeit
(Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1980). The translation is my own.

The quotations from
Forward
are taken from the section on the serialization of
Gilgi, One of Us
in Stefanie Arend and Ariane Martin’s
Irmgard Keun 1905/2005: Deutungen und Dokumente
(Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2005). The translations are my own.

The letters from the German Book Trade Association to Universitas, from the Opole police to the Berlin Gestapo, and from the Reich Office for the Promotion of German Literature to the Berlin Gestapo are in the files of the “Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR” of the Federal Archive in Lichterfelde, Berlin. The first letter is in the file R55/684, and the other two letters are in the file R58/914. The translations are my own.

Kurt Tucholsky’s review of
Gilgi, One of Us
appeared (under his pseudonym “Peter Panter”) in
Die Weltbühne
on February 2, 1932. The translation is my own.

Ritta Jo Horsley’s article about “Gilgi’s crisis of language” is “ ‘Warum habe ich keine Worte?… Kein Wort trifft zutiefst hinein’: The Problematics of Language in the Early Novels of Irmgard Keun.”
Colloquia Germanica
23 (1990), 297–313.

Geoff Wilkes

University of Queensland

Brisbane, Australia

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