Blood Brothers - Ernst Haffner

 BLOOD BROTHERS - ERNST HAFFNER

There are other things to do besides reading a book, of course. There are games to play, TikTok to watch, Twitter to follow, Netflix to view. There's shopping to be done, places to go and people to see. There's drugs to take. Who's got the time to read a book nowadays? Especially when there's a hundred other things that flash and bleep in 40 different colors to entertain and provide some sort of light relief.

As enjoyable as all these things are, however, and not to denigrate them at all, I take the side of the angels and say the book is better. I take the side of Patti Smith who once said "Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book."

To read a book is to enter into a relationship. It demands commitment. It's not an instant hit. It's not a shot of Vodka to down in one go. It's not the mindless act of scrolling nor a tip-toe through the tulips. It's not a paddle along the shoreline and a dipping of toes. No, it's more a swim out into the ocean or sometimes even a deep sea dive. It's immersion. It's submersion. It's entry into another world and all which that entails. If a book is a gift of life, then to read is to live and then some.

And so to Blood Brothers, by Ernst Haffner, a book that most people would probably pick up and not know what it might actually be about. The premise, however, is the key and the invite to enter. Blood Brothers is the only known novel by Ernst Haffner, a German journalist and social worker who disappeared during World War II. Originally published in 1932, Blood Brothers was banned by the Nazis a year later, and then thrown onto their book-burning pyre. All records of Haffner subsequently disappeared in the 1940s and his fate during the war remains unknown.

Written in a peculiar documentary style, Blood Brothers tells the story of a gang of homeless teenagers in Berlin on the eve of Hitler's rise to power. It's the story of an underworld where petty crime and prostitution - both male and female - is a way of life and but a means to survive the cold and the hunger of the city. It's the story of underground bars and makeshift hostels where extreme poverty is just a spit away from decadence and wealth. It's the story of gang loyalty, friendship, pickpocketing, teenage prostitution, and snatches of hope and happiness before the increasing encroachment of German authoritarianism. 

Blood Brothers is like Oliver Twist but without the Fagin figure. It's like Once Upon A Time In America but without the leap into adulthood. It's like Jean Genet's 'The Thief's Journal' but without so much of the gay sex. It's like Cabaret but without the music. It's like Lord Of The Flies but without the pig's head.

Blood Brothers is strange and somewhat unique in its depiction of pre-war Germany and of Berlin in particular. Interestingly, the Berlin it depicts has direct links to the Berlin of the 1980s where another kind of underworld once flourished as represented by the likes of Christiane F, David Bowie, and the impoverished yet creative squat culture caught in the twilight world between Western capitalism and Eastern communism before gentrification won out.

Blood Brothers is very much a book worth reading.

John Serpico