Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame

Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame is a 1928 tango identified in the novel’s notes by its lyricist, Ralph Erwin, and composer, Fritz Rotter. The reference gives the title a precise place in contemporary popular music; the novel’s broader soundscape, meanwhile, sets commercial entertainment beside the rhythms of Berlin street life.

Identification and Attribution

The accompanying note dates the tango to 1928 and credits Ralph Erwin with the words and Fritz Rotter with the music. This is the concrete information attached to the title: it establishes a work, a year, and its creators, rather than providing lyrics or describing a performance.

Popular Entertainment in Berlin

Elsewhere, the novel makes public entertainment tangible through a cinema on Münzstrasse. Its poster advertises a six-act film, admission costs 60 pfennigs, and inside a Wurlitzer plays while a crowded audience watches and laughs. The scene presents amusement as a shared, noisy urban experience, but does not identify the tango as part of the cinema’s program. At the Neue Welt, a band in Tyrolean costume plays a drinking song amid merry-making. That episode offers another specific image of music circulating in public leisure; the song described there is not identified as Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame. Keeping the two references distinct matters: the novel’s wider musical environment supplies context for the tango’s period, not evidence that this particular song is performed in either scene.

Music Beside the City’s Rhythms

Popular entertainment occupies a city also marked by movement and construction. At Alexanderplatz, tram routes cross a square torn up for the underground railway, while spectators gather to watch a pile driver repeatedly drive a pile into the ground. Set beside the cinemas and dance venues, these scenes bring together commercial leisure, transport, labor, and public spectacle. The tango’s dated bibliographic note belongs to this contemporary cultural world, although the text does not specify how or where the song is heard.