The Hustler: The Story of a Nameless Love From Friedrichstrasse (36 page)

Following publication of the novel, Hirschfeld himself reviewed the book in the
Mitteilungen
(in no. 5, January/February 1927, p. 34, where there is also an indication that the book was sold by the Scientific Humanitarian Committee.):

“This seventh book in the series of Sagitta’s works on the ‘nameless love,’ in its perfectly formed language and in its deep psychological content, is a worthy addition to its predecessors. Less so perhaps in its choice of title, but this scruple against a hitherto unliterary word disappears as soon as one reads with what mastery Sagitta even here again understands how to bring humanly closer people and their circumstances, whose existence and essence the majority stand opposite with such lack of understanding.

“In the middle point of the narrative stands the emotional connection between the young bookseller Hermann Graff, extremely finely sketched in his mixture of bitter holding back and passion (here the excursion to Potsdam deserves to be given special mention), and the teenage runaway ‘Gunther,’ who is called in his circle by the significant name ‘Chick.’ It is he from whom the book takes its title. Their experiences are played out in the well-known Berlin background: Passage—Friedrichstrasse—Tiergarten—Tauentzien—Adonis Lounge—their regular bar by the Stettiner Bahnhof—Moabit etc.; all are drawn by the brush of a genuine artist so true to life that many details come to light that ordinarily escape the superficial observer—and unfortunately even most professional observers are only superficial onlookers. But however great the admiration this ‘milieu description’ deserves, I believe we would not be doing the author and his work justice if we did not place in the foreground the misunderstood and persecuted love of the older man for the younger in its infinite tragedy, tragic not only for the lover, but also for the beloved, who does not understand its magnitude—from his upbringing, too, is unable to understand it (here the claim of his discoverer and patron Arthur Klemke, called ‘the refined Atze,’ is especially worth noting: ‘If one of them would once fall in love with me, I would really take advantage of him!’), but also tragic for humanity, which loses the value that it too could gain from this love, if its humanitarian and fostering, pedagogical and productive character would be evaluated in an unprejudiced way.

“Hermann Graff is spared nothing from the fate of a homosexual: ‘Either I am a criminal or the others are, who have made these laws and enforce them,’ he once cries out with very understandable bitterness. But Chick, too, comes back from his flight out of the home nest with clipped wings—not through his friend’s fault. It is a sign of the poverty of our time, which prefers not to hear the truth, that this book written with such beautiful humanity can only be ‘privately published’ by its author.”

Hirschfeld’s generosity is evident in this review, but especially noteworthy is his rare statement of the value of man-boy love in its “humanitarian and fostering, pedagogical and productive character.”

Here, perhaps, is the place to explain the “hitherto unliterary word” of the title of Mackay’s novel
Der Puppenjunge.
Not that it ever became a “literary” word: “Puppenjunge”—or, in its primary spelling, “Pupenjunge”—was a slang word for a male prostitute and its use was almost entirely confined to the early years of the twentieth century. (The more common slang word was “Strichjunge,” which is found already in Magnus Hirschfeld’s
Berlins drittes Geschlecht
of 1904 and is still used.) It is so defined, for example, in the standard dictionary
Deutsches Worterbuch
(edited by Lutz Mackensen, 10th edition, 1982), where only the spelling “Pupenjunge” is given. That this was its primary spelling is seen in Mackay’s novel, for every occurrence of the word in the text of the novel is spelled with a single-p. Only in the title is the word spelled with a double-p. The reason is this: Whereas the title suggests a derivation from “Puppe” (doll) and “Junge” (boy), the actual derivation is from “Pup” (fart). Clearly Mackay did not want to display this in the title and so chose to put the euphemized spelling there. (“Pupe”—a short form of “Pupenjunge”—was also used. It occurs once in Mackay’s novel.)

Since my English translation of the novel was meant primarily for American readers, I chose the corresponding American slang term “hustler” for the title. This term is ambiguous, but the subtitle of the book immediately told which meaning was intended—just as it immediately told the reader of Mackay’s original book that it was not about a “boy doll.” (A search of the Internet for “Puppenjunge” in November 2001 found references to this novel and a number of sites selling dolls, distinguished as
Puppenjunge
= boy doll or
Puppenmadchen
= girl doll.) Other English-speaking countries have other slang words for a male prostitute. For example, Wayne Dynes has noted in his
Homolexis: A Historical and Cultural Lexicon of Homosexuality
(New York: Gay Academic Union, 1985), under the heading “Hustler”: “In nineteenth-century England, male prostitutes were called
rent
or
renters.
In London today the term
dilly boy
occurs, since Picadilly Circus is a major pickup center.” Although the slang word “hustler” is currently (in the United States) giving way to the more “politically correct” term “sex worker,” I have kept the title
The Hustler.
(An extensive list of gay slang can be found on the Internet at:
http://www.hurricane.net/

~wizard/19.html.)

We may also note the word “Pupentisch,” used by Mackay for the regular table of the hustlers at Uncle Paul’s pub. He says in the novel that the proprietor “tolerated the name.” I have given it as “Hustler Table,” but the name also suggested, of course, “farting table.”

As noted (above) by Christopher Isherwood, Mackay’s description of Berlin’s sexual underworld in the 1920s is “authentic.” How was this authenticity achieved? Mackay’s good friend Friedrich

Dobe (in a memoir written in 1944, when Dobe was sixty years old, but only published in 1987) relates at length how Mackay prepared to write the book:

“This book, in construction, in thickening and unraveling the plot, probably the most mature artistic achievement of Mackay, is at the same time one of the truest books ever written. I accompanied the author, at times also with Dr. Hartwig, in all his study trips through Berlin for it. I saw what he described and observed himself. In the course of the year 1924 we systematically visited what in the Berlin vernacular were called “queer” [schwul] bars by following the advertisements in the magazine
Die Freundschaft—
and indeed with such thoroughness that not a single one was left out, however difficult they often were to find. The scene with the policeman is literally true. It happened under the “Bulow curve” (the elevated in Bulowstrasse), where we were looking in vain for the Dede Restaurant; Mackay asked the policeman in his amiable fashion, and I still see today the indignant motion of his hand with which he showed us the way!

“The Adonis Lounge, which plays the principal role in this book, actually existed under another name exactly as Mackay described it. To be sure, there was also a real Adonis Lounge—if I’m not mistaken, in Berlin South in Alexandrinenstrasse. The bar described by Mackay was actually named Marienkasino and was found in Marienstrasse, not far from the eastern end of the north side and not too far from the Friedrichstrasse Train Station. Mackay described the life there very exactly: the rooms, the old proprietor whom they called “Father” (Mackay too!), the boys—they all existed and I myself saw and recognized them repeatedly. Even the refined Atze lived and sat at a table with me. Only the principal persons of the story, Hermann Graff and his beloved, the boy Gunther, are free creations of Mackay.

“In the summer and fall of 1924 the author made no appointments: ‘You can find me as often as you wish, always from six o’clock on in the Marienkasino!’ And I followed his word as often as I could, as did Dr. Hartwig. There Mackay sat then in the back room at the head of a long, narrow table with his back against the wall and around him two, three, four, and even more boys. He ordered sausage sandwiches, cigarettes, and beer for them and let them talk, talk, talk. There was only one thing that he did not tolerate: that erotic things should be dragged in the dirt. Since the boys soon noticed that he wanted nothing further from them, they were glad to have his friendship, and the author was truly able to plumb the depths of that part of the population that frequented there. He never took notes, but only sat there among the flock of “lost sheep,” pleasantly laughing along with them, at times also consoling and helping. They, of course, had no concept of why he came, but accepted him as a welcome diversion and as a contributor of many welcome gifts. Dr. Hartwig, differently organized than Mackay, got close to individual boys that he liked and could therefore relate to the author many additions to what was heard at the open table.

“Unfortunately the Marienkasino was later closed by the police, not for reasons of morality, but because the destructive traffic in cocaine had crept in there, which of course completely ruined many of the boys. Today there is a so-called ‘respectable’ bar there” (Friedrich Dobe,
John Henry Mackay als Mensch: Auf Grund langjahrigen, freundschaftlichen Verkehres,
Koblenz: Edition Plato, 1987, pp. 78-80).

In his realism, Mackay even put himself into his description of the Adonis Lounge: “Guests were seldom here at this time. Only a singular-looking man, who was said to be an author and to write for the newspapers, was often already here, sitting among the boys and chatting with them—nice, intelligent, and interested in them. One saw from his clever and serious face that he must have gone through a lot.”

Another bit of realism that would have resonated with contemporary readers of the novel is Mackay’s mention of films. As Friedrich Dobe reported: “After his midday meal he took a walk, either through the streets of Berlin or outside the gates of the city, mostly in the direction of Potsdam. With this he united his daily swim. If he became tired on the street, then he sat down to rest in a cinema. In this way he saw nearly all the films ever presented, without really being interested in them. He only looked for them in order to relax and rest. Yet he knew well how to value good films and constantly notified me of them, since I did not have so much time”
(John Henry Mackay als Mensch,
p. 21). An example of such a good film is the one that Hermann and Gunther saw on Gunther’s birthday, which moved Hermann so much, but caused Gunther to say, “But none of that is really true.” This was surely the 1913 documentary by Herbert G. Ponting,
Scott’s Antarctic Expedition,
which the French film critic Georges Sadoul called “the first great documentary film” (in his
Histoire de l’Art du Cinema des origins h nos jours
[1915]; that documentary was later eclipsed by Ponting’s 1933 film
90 Degrees South: With Scott to the Antarctic).
Ponting was on the tragic expedition of Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole in 1911-1912. According to his journal, Scott and a couple of his companions reached the South pole in January, only to discover that the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had been there a month earlier. Scott’s party did not survive the return trip.

Mackay must also have been well acquainted with the films of Harry Piel, which appealed so much to Gunther. Harry Piel (18921963) was the German film actor, director, and producer who introduced the “sensational” film to Germany. He produced or acted in over one hundred of them and was said officially never to have had a stunt double. Piel (who was married to the actress Dary Holm and appeared with her in all of her films) directed Marlene Dietrich in the 1927 comedy
Sein grosster Bluff
(His Greatest Bluff), in which he played the leading man—and his twin.

Apropos film: One of the more striking images in Fritz Lang’s
Metropolis
of 1926 (the year of Mackay’s novel) is the picture of the underground factory as a Moloch that devours the workers. A similar image is in Mackay’s description of the Passage at the beginning of Part Three: “a Moloch sucking in and spitting out, spitting out and sucking in—crowds, crowds of people, always new crowds.” Mackay had already used this image in 1902 in his short story “13bis rue Charbonnel” in his description of the entrance to a state-run brothel in Paris: “And as Grillon stared and stared across the way, he saw everything that this door sucked in and spit out: elegant ladies and gentlemen of all ages; very young lads, mere street-boys, and little girls; women in feather hats and simple citizens who appeared to be honest shopkeepers and civil servants—they all went in and out there, coming by foot and by carriage, and disappeared inside” (in
John Henry Mackay: Shorter Fiction,
Xlibris, 2000, pp. 131-132).

As an aside: Mackay, who tried unsuccessfully to have
The Swimmer
made into a film—and also thought that his thriller
Staatsanwalt Sierlin: Die Geschichte einer Rache
(1928; District Attorney Sierlin: The Story of a Revenge) would make a good film—would probably have been pleased to know that a film script has been written for
Der Puppenjunge.
Unfortunately, its author, the filmmaker Wieland Speck (whose
Westler: East ofthe Wall
was named Best Feature Film, San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, 1986), was unable to find a producer for it (see
Magnus
[Berlin], October 1993).