NIGHT LIFE IN BERLIN — The City That Never Sleeps

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 421, 4 January 1933, Page 2

NIGHT LIFE IN BERLIN — The City That Never Sleeps

IN THE intervals of inquiring into the political situation in Germany by day I bave been studiousiy observing how Berlin conducts itself by nigbt, writes Robert Bernays, M.P., in the "News-Chronicle." Let me say at the outset 1 am the worst possible man for such an investigation. In London my very presence can reduce the most hilarious party to the deepest gloom. I am in a perpetual condition of wanting to go home when the rest of the party are loudly asserting that "the evening.has not - yet begun." When hospitable friends therefore suggested personally conducted tours of Berlin cafes I feared the worst. At first I thought that it had come. The tour did not begin until an hour when I had hoped it might be ending. Berlin nigbt „life does not really begin apparently until the next morning. But I must confess that from the moment we started, about midnight, my yawns ended. For . Berlin night life, unlike any other night life l have seen, is night life, and it iS' enjoyed by German people. It is not night club life invented for the tourists. I have seen night clubs in Sydney and New York, Bombay and Honolulu, Constantinople and Winnipeg, and for all tbe variety there was in them I might never have left London. But the Vaterland Haus, our first house of call, has to be seen to be believed. It is an immense glass house built tier on tier, rather like a design for the jacket of an Aldous Huxley novel. On each floor there are two restaurants, each representing a country- and decorated like a Drury Lane conception of it. Thus in search of a Bath bun you find yourself in a Texas bar, not merely with cowboys and wood logs, but complete to the last Hollywood detail with pictures of President Lincoln on the wall. 'We moved to the floor below for coffee and had it presented to us by girls in peasant dress before a backcloth of mountains and forests, to !the tune of "Auf Wiedersehen," played Iby an orchestfa arfayed like mem-

bers of the chorus of "White Horse Inn." Arthur Collins himself could not have staged better the storm over the Rhineland, with thunder and lightning, followed by the sun and a rainbow, j which we found taking place througb the door opposite. This last entertainment we were allowed to witness without even the purcbase of a roll and butter. After this it seemed quite tame to go on to places where every table was equipped with a telephone so that one could talk across the roorn and be heard ahove the blare of the band, or where one could eat sandwiches round

a lily pon(j with trees and real birds in tbe branches. But it is not only tbe middle class that can have its fun at night; it is all classes. Our next stopping place was completely different — wooden tables and chairs and bare walls. It was the meeting place of old-fasliioned Bohemia. Einstein plays chess there, very badly, I was told. He achieves his real snccesses at a game called "Go," which has been known to take seven years to finish. We plunged into working class Berlin. Tliough it wus between 2 a.m.

and 3 a.m., the cafes were as M as noisy as in England four h-H earlier. The talk was all of polilisM and at times it flared up into an brawl. Political feeling runs so in these days that it is regarded (S highly unsafe for either ConimudteB or Nazis to stray outside their cr-H political cafes. The hatreds o£ lems and Hindus hardly rival the^B tagonisms of political parties in &S many to-day. Here, too, I was brought rigMGM against the agonising poverty o£ W lin. I met men who admitted-sj^B their appearance was a witness to truth of their words — that they not eaten meat for a month. ^ L^B pleasant custom of some cafes to IlK vide rolls of bread.free of charge, the salt and the mustanl in EngSM| restaurants. Thus the purcliase glass of beer gives the right to fVB bread, and thousands of unempki^^B exist for weeks ori no other diet.fi They will sit half the day and^K the night sipping their one beer. But they will see more drar^B than in any kinema. The barman will be quite Russian aristocrat wlio will be suaded to describe tbe orgies ot'^H Revolution, and before the eveni^^B out an ex-Prussian ofiicer, imagiJ^B himself back in the gay arrogant of pre-war militarism, will be lenging for some fancied slight neighbour to a duel. At three o'clock the cafes close, night life does not close with tt^B There are cafes which open only^-^K the rest have closed down. TinM^K suggested that 3 o'clock in the ing was not an unreasonable tine^B go to bed, but my friends Fere adamant as the Government during an all-night sitting. I it throngh. In six hours I had seen at three facets of contemporary — the liectic gaiety that accomP^^p and followed the Inflation, the able courage of starving men, anjb'^K murderous violence of party The problem that remains swered is: When does Berlin