Word: biberkopf
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Dates: during 1931-1931
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Like Ulysses, Alexander platz is a many-charactered merry-go-round with one unheroic central figure bobbing through the realistic din. Not less topical than Ulysses, Alexander platz is more sordid, more sentimental. Herr Doblin's Dublin is Berlin: his hero one Franz Biberkopf, denizen of the city's lesser deeps. Just released from Tegel Prison after serving four years for killing his harlot-mistress, Biberkopf in tends to go straight, shake off the crooked company he kept before. He sells news papers, manages respectability for a while. Then he runs into his evil genius, one Reinhold...
...first suspicious because Biberkopf apparently bears him no grudge for the loss of his arm, then contemptuous, Reinhold meets Mieze, plans to take her away from Biberkopf to complete his humiliation. When Mieze will have none of him, Reinhold murders her. Biberkopf is suspected of the murder; he hides, disguises himself, but the police catch him. Bewilderment at his bad luck has addled his wits; he is taken, not to jail this time, but to an asylum. There Death throws him but cannot quite keep him down. When Franz Biberkopf emerges from the shadow of death, and the threat...