Where is the proletariat in Babylon Berlin?
I love this drama but there’s a missing character….
Note: This article contains some plot spoilers for Season 4 of Babylon Berlin.
I just rewatched the Season 4 of Babylon Berlin. Dramatically it’s one of the best seasons yet, because one of the most basic tensions in the narrative arc is resolved; and some of the good guys (and girls) escape their doom … for now.
But I was left asking: where, in this drama, is the working class?
Nazism’s avowed raison d’etre was to crush the German labour movement and avenge the alleged “stab in the back” delivered by the November 1918 revolution.
A combined total of 13 million working class voters remained loyal and active supporters of either the social-democratic SPD or communist KPD during the last four years of the Weimar Republic. Amid a deep economic crisis it was fear of socialism — or as Wilhelm Reich put it “fear of freedom” — that triggered the fascist radicalisation of middle-class voters.
When Hitler campaigned on the slogan “End It Now!” he meant the democratic system which had politically empowered the working class.
So it’s weird not to see dramatised the thing that’s driving the fear.
