The Artificial Silk Girl

Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity, arose in Germany during the Weimar period as a reaction against expressionism. Seen in literature as well as in art, the style is restrained and grounded in realism. It often had satirical elements that poked fun at prominent Weimar figures.

The Weimar period, founded following Germany’s defeat in World War I and the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, was a disorganized and economically challenging time for the German people. Monarchy, rough and tumble of parliamentary elections, and the challenging economic conditions caused by the Treaty of Versailles had left the country in disarray. The uncertainty of the Weimar period and the additional blow of the Great Depression fostered a wave of populism and nationalism that would help lead to the rise of the Nazi party.

Doris’s story is told in first person; as the narrator and also the protagonist, her point of view is autodiegetic. Furthermore, the novel is semi-epistolary, meaning that the reader follows Doris’s thoughts through the documents she writes in the form of her journal. As the novel progresses, the flow becomes more of an inner monologue interspersed with thoughts written down in the journal. Doris explains that she wants to write her story as if it is a movie. Thus, the narration, the descriptions of landscape, characters, etc., are her attempt to follow the style of a 1920s film.

Doris’s animosity toward those with education and those of a higher social class than herself is shown in scenes set at the local theater, where she works as an extra after losing her stenographer job. Doris has contempt for the girls from the drama school because they have access to higher education, whereas Doris only possesses the bare minimum. Also, the drama girls are paying to be in the play, which Doris finds odd. Mila von Trapper, who has a haughty personality, represents the aristocracy, even though the class of nobles has mostly ceased to exist in Germany by 1931. The German von, or “of,” indicates that Mila is of the Trapper family, a mark of noble birth.

After the aristocracy in Germany and Europe crumbled away following the end of World War I, Adolf Hitler needed a new villain against whom to direct Völkisch anger (the Völkisch movement was a nationalist movement devoted to the idea of a singular German ethnic identity). He turned economic inequality into a race-driven message by equating the business class with the Jewish people, saying they were trying to profit at the expense of “real” Germans. Doris may not understand those nationalist sentiments and her date’s anti-Semitic attitude, but she is not immune to populist resentment that characterized Germany at the time.

Doris’s lack of knowledge concerning politics and current events helps the novel maintain a distance from the tumultuous political events of the early 1930s, but Chapter 1 gives a glimpse into the environment during Doris’s date with the industrialist. She doesn’t glean from their conversation that he has political leanings toward the Nazi party; she jokes that she is Jewish on account of her curly chestnut-colored hair. In essence, by equating chestnut hair color to Jewishness and stating that a person remains who they are before any sort of label is attached to them, Doris attempts to reduce the negative associations that were attached to Jews to mere semantics: “And you are exactly the way you were before, but just one word has supposedly changed you” (30).

The Artificial Silk Girl was published in 1932 and set in 1931, a time when having sex outside of marriage with multiple partners tended to be looked down on, particularly for women. Within the opening pages, Doris unabashedly makes clear that she is sexually active. Her relationship with the hypocritical Hubert and the other men ties into two major themes shows the shakeup of gender norms in the early 20th century and how it affected views of love, sex, and marriage.

The play in which Doris works as an extra is Wallenstein’s Camp (Wallenstein’s Lager), which is a drama written by Friedrich Schiller. Wallenstein (Albrecht Wenzel Eusebius von Waldstein) was a prominent Bohemian general during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). Many stories similar to Schiller’s drama were derived from Wallenstein and his military camp. The two oldest and most prominent were Grimmelshausen’s picaresque novel featuring a prostitute named Mutter Courasche and Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children) by the renowned German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. In these works, prostitution and war stand front and center; the notion that women will turn to prostitution because of the deprivations and ravages of war has been a theme in German literature for centuries. Keun, by featuring Schiller’s drama and its presentation of prostitution, points out that what is happening to Doris and other women in Weimar Germany is, sadly, nothing new. 

Further symbolism presents itself in the piece that Mila enacts in order to display her theatrical abilities to the other women, namely the scene of Judith and Holofernes. The scene is derived from the story of Judith (usually found in the Apocrypha), in which Judith decapitates the Assyrian general, Holofernes. The implications of a woman cutting off the head of a powerful male general is the opposite of Doris’s tale and her experiences throughout the book. Doris (and several of the other female characters) struggle against the restrictions of a male-dominated society and are, in a way, attempting to gain further financial and social independence. 

Always obsessed with appearance, Doris steals the ermine coat because she wants to look as good as she can for her former boyfriend and lover, Hubert. She places herself in danger of being arrested, or at least fined and reprimanded, and humiliated socially, all to try and win him back. As soon as she discovers that Hubert has been dumped by the Munich girl and has lost his future prospects, her feelings toward him rapidly grow cold. He appears to her as a photograph, a shadow of his former self. Despite his lack of luster, Doris does attempt to keep them together: “Hubert, you don’t have anything, I don’t have anything, that’s enough—let’s make something out of nothing together” (41). Hubert, who desires socioeconomic advancement as much as she does, is disappointed by the lost opportunity afforded by the Munich love interest. Doris has held out hope for love until this point in the novel, notwithstanding the use of her sexuality and beauty to manipulate men into giving her what she wants. This break with Hubert is the final straw. She keeps the pilfered coat and leaves for Berlin, where she is more determined than ever to make it as a star.

Readers unfamiliar with German culture may find some of the novel’s English translation confusing. For example, Doris says, “I had a good day today, because it was my last one and getting paid just does one good” (5). The literal translation from German sounds as though Doris has quit her job, or was fired, and has her severance pay; this becomes confusing when she retains her job and only gets fired later on. In German, “last one” refers to the last day of the month, which is when Germans receive their paychecks. Germans are paid once a month, almost without exception.

In an additional discrepancy between the original German and the English translation, the translator omits Doris’s age. In the original German, Doris provides her age in the paragraph where she gives her name, says that she is a baptized Christian, and states that the year is 1931 (5).