It is not hard to understand why Isherwood moved to Berlin. Isherwood is immediately drawn to Bowles, and she to him their platonic friendship a sharp contrast to Bowles’ many lovers. Whimsical, flamboyant, stylish, promiscuous and dreamy (and not overly talented despite her ambitions), she is symbolic of the free-spirited Jazz Age in Berlin that flourished in Weimar-era Germany before the Nazis snuffed it out. Isherwood notices her emerald green nails, her nicotine tainted hands and “very large brown eyes”.īowles was based on the 19-year-old cabaret singer Jean Ross. At intervals they exchanged grins of delight or joyfully pinched each other, with simultaneous exclamations of ssh Goodbye to BerlinĪnother is the flamboyant American singer and wannabee actress Sally Bowles whom Isherwood meets one evening, early in October, dressed in black silk, with a small cape over her shoulders “and a little cap like a page boy’s stuck jauntily on one side of her head”, Another is fellow lodger Frl Mayer, a musical hall yodler, actress, proud Bavarian and “ardent Nazi” whose natural enemy is Frau Glauterneck, the Galician Jewess who lives in the apartment below theirs.Ĭoming into the living room yesterday morning, I found Frl Schroeder and Frl Mayer lying flat on their stomachs with their ears pressed to the carpet. Instead, she “sleeps in the living room, behind a screen, on a small sofa with broken springs”.įrl Schroeder is just one of the many eccentric and colourful characters Isherwood brings to life on the page. Such is her poor financial situation, that Frl Schroeder has had to take in five lodgers, leaving her without a room of her own. She calls Isherwood “Herr Issyvoo” and takes a keen interest in his life, and that of her other lodgers. The flat is owned by Fräulein Schroeder, who was once fairly well off but like so many other Germans has fallen on hard times.

Beginning in Autumn 1930, we find Isherwood living in a “large, dingy flat” above a busy street of shops, where prostitutes gather beneath his window.

Author goodbye to berlin