Paris Commune

The Paris Commune is invoked only indirectly in the supplied text, through a footnote identifying a song’s musical source as a song of the Commune. The reference gives the historical event a place in the book’s field of popular and political song, but supplies no account of the Commune itself—no date, participants, actions, or consequences. Its significance here lies in that limited, musical allusion, set against extensive scenes of everyday life in modern Berlin.

The Musical Reference

A footnote attached to the song “Des Volkes Blut verströmt in Bächen” identifies its words as originating with Boleslaw Czerwienski in 1881 and notes that Rosa Luxemburg reworked them. It then names the music as that of a song of the Paris Commune, “Le Drapeau rouge,” translated in the note as “The Red Flag.” This is the text’s explicit connection to the Commune. The note establishes a chain of transmission among a song, its words, and its music, but does not elaborate on the historical circumstances behind the song or describe the Commune as an event in the narrative.

The Reference and the Berlin Setting

Elsewhere, the book’s attention is directed toward Berlin’s streets and infrastructure. At Rosenthaler Platz, a passage lists tramway 68’s route through stations, districts, and an asylum, then gives public-transport fares and concession categories. At Alexanderplatz, streets are being torn up for the underground railway, with pedestrians crossing on planks and tramcars moving through the square. These details register the city as a network of routes, services, construction, and daily movement. They provide a contemporary urban setting for the book’s many public scenes, but the text does not present them as consequences of, or direct commentary on, the Paris Commune.

Construction is also rendered as public spectacle. Outside Aschinger’s, a pile driver repeatedly drives a rail into the ground; people stop to watch the operation, and the machine’s work proceeds through a repeated sequence of chain-pulling, steam, and impact. The scene places collective attention on labor and mechanized change. Its force comes from the visible rhythm of the work, not from any stated historical parallel with the Commune.

Public Entertainment and the Crowd

The book also records popular amusements as part of the city’s shared life. In a crowded cinema, Franz Biberkopf watches a film amid a predominantly male audience, red-covered ceiling lamps, a yellow piano, and the continuing noise of a Wurlitzer. The audience laughs together at the scenes on screen, and Franz takes pleasure in being among people enjoying themselves. At the corner of Münzstrasse, another cinema advertises a six-act story and a 60-pfennig entrance fee. These sharply particular details show entertainment as a commercial and collective urban experience.

A different public scene unfolds at the Neue Welt in Hasenheide, where visitors move toward a gathering with a band in Tyrolean costume. The band plays a drinking song whose refrain promises temporary release from sorrow and pain. At Dobrin’s coffee shop, meanwhile, laughter and a storyteller’s performance organize the attention of people gathered around a table. The song associated with the Paris Commune belongs to this broader textual presence of music and popular performance, although the book does not explicitly place it in any of these scenes.

Sound, Time, and the Limits of the Allusion

Sound repeatedly marks ordinary time in the Berlin passages: the Wurlitzer fills the cinema, the pile driver sets a worksite’s pulse, and songs accompany a leisure gathering. In a quieter scene, Franz sits by a window while Cilly sleeps; after hearing bells that stop before he can identify their source, he checks the daily paper and goes out to look for news. The bells prompt expectation without supplying an explanation, while the newspaper and the city’s transport and entertainment networks connect private time to public life.

Against this dense urban backdrop, the Commune remains a brief textual and musical reference rather than a developed historical subject. The footnote preserves its link to a song, while the surrounding scenes attend to the changing city, the routines of work and travel, and the crowds assembled for entertainment. Any further account of the Commune’s history or its direct influence on these scenes would go beyond what the text establishes.