Germany, begin thirties. Election is followed by election. The country is hardly to rule.
On the street communist and fascist factions are fighting for power. A growing number of
people is giving in to the intimidation and rhetoric of Adolf Hitler's N.S.D.A.P. This
party plays amongst others on the existing fear to loose everything that was build with
hard labour. It hammers on the fact that moral decay ("Entartung") is one of the main
causes of the insecure situation. At the same time the party appeals to the sentiments with
a reference to the past when everything was good and clear (Romantics). The reaction is
gaining power, and turns against everything that could undermine norms and values.
Thus falls the eye on the novel "Die Tigerin" ("The Tigress") by Walter Serner.
The reaction demands an appearance-stop. Reason: glorification of crime and many
explicit passages.
The story "The Tigress" with the subtitle "a strange love story" is about the
"love" between the prostitute Bichette, nicknamed the tigress because she is untamable,
and the swindler Fec.
They both want to have nothing to do with love. The only thing they want is to
satisfy their own pleasures. Because they can go along very well, they agree on a pact,
make fun and screw each other like they were in love. When an ex-lover of Bichette becomes
a serious threat for both, they choose to flee to Nice. Where they are killing time with
lifting the nouveau rich. When they get bored by the small circle of people they move in
they plan a big thing. But when they hit the jackpot the tigress disappears with the
money. Fec follows her trace and finally tracks her down.
In a apotheose full of conversation art and psychology of the highest level Fec
thinks to win Bichette back. On the moment of his victory, Bichette seems to give in, he
is hit by a bullet that Bichette's ex-lover had meant for Bichette. Directly after the deadly
shot the murderer is seized by the police. The event makes Bichette the talk of the town.
The more because so it seemed Fec was a very much sought after swindler. It makes
Bichette so wanted that after a short time she manages to hook a millionaire. Whom she
dumps after a short while, but that another story.
On the surface the story seems to be not more than a glorification of a flat love in
a criminal environment. But who manages to read through the hornyness sees that there is
more.
The main subject in the book is the game that Fec and Bichette play. Both get into
a game in which once the first challenge is accepted there's no way back without someone
losing his face. For both love is out of the question. Love has something to do with rest,
of a sacrifice to be made to the other. In this case it's something different, something less
dull, something that could be called seduction. In this situation both poles don't melt
together, as with love, but they stay in duality: it's about the satisfaction of both poles
separately. A satisfaction that again and again has to be found by challenging the other, so
that the other has to show himself. Has the other shown himself he than has to disappear,
and it is his turn to challenge the other.
The first step in the game is made "unmeant" by Fec, because he negates the
tigress, who is used to be the center of attention. She cannot bear this and therefore tries
to seduce Fec. The last one conscious of what is played, takes the challenge and both
enter a spiral of seduction.
More and more the challenging takes on horrible forms. Fec seems to want to
push the game, of which both know the rules but never speak them out, the farthest. At a
certain moment the game becomes for Bichette so unbearable that she, with good feeling
of timing, leaves.
Fec is stirred so much by this action, that he must follow the tigress. When he finally
finds her, his goal is just to bind her and then of course leave her. In a dialogue of 40
pages, the swindler is getting Bichette where he wants by cleverness and high level
psychology, but he forgets to play to game till the end -does he really love Bichette?
The moment Fec and Bichette seem to find each other, the moment he doesn't play
anymore, fate strikes. A fate that awaits everybody who's clinging too much to somebo-
dy. Fec, who really wants to keep Bichette, gets the bullet. It's logical that the Fascists
wanted to forbid the book and not only because it was propaganda for low pleasures or
the way it described crime as paying. No, the Fascists must have forefelt something of the
enormous threat that the immoral game of seduction could have been for their romantic
ideal, with values of faith and loyalty, upon which they build their ideology.
A prohibition of the book could yet be stopped by Serner's publisher and some
famous German writers i.e. Alfred Doblin (Berlin Alexanderplatz). The fuzz the whole
affair made was the reason that it became the first book by Serner that sold quite well.
But some years later (1933) "The Tigress" and all other works from his hand would still
be forbidden and disappeared into the flames.
At that moment the writer has already disappeared. In 1929 nor his best friends
nor his publisher knows to locate him. They are convinced that he went on living the life
he so passionately described in his stories. Rumors had it that he had become a pimp or a
international womentrader. Conclusions that didn't come out of the air, but that had as
much to do with his anarchistic stories as with his turbulent life.
Walter Serner is born in 1886 under the name of Walter Seligman out of assimila-
ted Jewish parents in the Tsjech town Karlsbad. His father is owner of a local newspaper
and sends him to the best schools in town. There he is soon confronted with the omnipre-
sent anti-semitism that thrives in Eastern Europe. In spite of the fact that his parents are
totally assimilated he still is seen as a Jew. This leads to the fact that already in his early
years he doesn't feel at home in his place of birth and develops a desire towards motion.
A desire to which he can finally give in when he goes to study laws, with a big financial
support of his parents, in Vienna.
After having studied law for some semesters he interrupts his study to travel
through Germany. He gets to know the night life in Munich and Berlin. And in the last
city he joins a group of young German intellectuals that came to the conclusion that there
was something completely wrong with the world. In the magazine "Die Aktion" ("The
Action") this group (i.e. Heinrich and Thomas Mann) tried to find alternatives for a, in
their eyes, rotten art that only confirmed the status quo.
When after 3 years his parents threaten to stop their financial support, the young
Seligman decides to finish his study in laws. Not long after his promotion he changes his
name into Serner and moves to Berlin. Where he directly abuses his title: he writes an
attest whereby he declares a deserter called Franz Jung unhealthy. Through this note it is
for the last one possible to stay out of prison. When the authorities discover the fraud both
have already disappeared.
Serner finally pops up in Zurich(1915) where he participates in the magazine
"Mistral." The third and last issue even appears under his supervision, as is shown by
the content of the articles.
"The world is boring, this fact is just as undisputable, as unknown," he writes
in the opening article: "Der Langeweile und der Krieg." ("Boredom and War")
"Because nobody can deal with boredom," he follows, "everybody is already happy
when someone stages a spectacle. For that reason many go to the frontline so easily;
others baptize themselves to a religion, because they do not what to do with their lives;
and it is others who can amuse themselves a little better who stage the spectacle."
Serner, dispossessed as he is, sees stronger then most how easy people can be made
enthusiastic for a cause and are willing to die for it. The reason for him is clear:
boredom. Most people really do not know what they are doing, their lifes are dull, and
therefore they are easy victims of ideas like Nationalism and anti-semitism.
Against this alienation Serner puts a radical form of subjectivity. Where the point
is not what you are, but what you want. Because especially if you're not honest with your
wishes and desires you'll be an easy target for swindlers. The result is that you'll be
continuously hiding for yourself and only can go along with the game of corruption and
hypocrisy that the world plays with you. So that you'll become an easy target of that
same world. Therefore be always conscious of what you want, and don't let them put
an identity on you, stay in motion, and disappear when you come to a point of inertion.
In short play with the world and do not let the world play with you.
In Zurich he practises his philosophy. He not only manages to change rooms over
20 times in a short period; his best friends, and even the police who watches him closely,
do not, because of all his change and disappearance tricks, discover what he really is.
After "Mistral" Serner founds, still in the same year, his own magazine "Sirius,"
to which except a number of now totally forgotten artists, Picasso and Hans Arp also
participated.
"Sirius" is already extinguished when Serner in 1916 emerges in circles of dada.
Some quotes of friends makes his position within the group clear. Hans Richter: "He was
the great cynic of the movement, the total anarchist, an Archimedes, who puts the world
out of his joints and when this was done, let it hang. He was in much ways, more than
Ball(idealist) and Tzara(realist) the incarnation of the everywhere visible revolution in
her, today people would say, most existential form. Or Christian Schad: "It was Serner
who sprinkled with ideas, it was he who gave dada it's ideology."
From the start Serner is an active member of dada, although he avoids the Cabaret
Voltaire because to his own sayings: "Theater corrupts my play." Still he provides dada
with a number of his nihilistic ideas, i.e. idealism as swindle, identity as danger and
boredom as the cause of everything. But when after WW1 the artists go home and Serner
wants to put his ideas for once and for all on paper, it is Tzara who wrote in no time
THE DADAISTIC MANIFESTO and sent it to the right people.
When Tzara's plagiarism is discovered in 1921 both Picabia and Breton (the later
surrealists) turn their backs on him. At that time Serner has already broken with dada, but
not with it's ideas.
The same year appears Serner's already in 1917 written dadamanifesto "Letzte
Lockerung" ("All Brakes Loose") by which all other dadawritings look pale. "Serner's
"Letzte Lockerung" is the definitive last word about the dadaistic philosophy of life," is
Hans Richters opinion in his autobiography "Art and Anti-Art." Because Serner had
already enough of the swindlers of Dada who also were "trapped by the trap of their
intellect" and narcotized themselves with the pleasure of fame," he consequently changed
the word dada by the word rasta (swindler) in his manifesto.
The "Letzte Lockerung" is not a normal writing, it's a work that shows what is
possible with language and by which the reader is shown "the real" value of words. In
this writing Serner eschews no opportunity to strengthen his message. It is larded with
wordgames, soundgames, neologisms and next to it it is full of surprising turns and
philosophical theses that have as subject the bankrupt of all philosophies of life. Even an
anarchist is not more than "a victim of the bankruptcy of the spirit."
In the beginning of this "manifesto" the reader becomes dizzy by the onconventio-
nal manner by which the sentences, or better thesis, are put together.
"The last disappointment? When the illusion seems to be free of illusions
(sultriest vanity manoeuvre to act dumber and worser than one wants to be, to frown
vanity, to do if one is not idle. Fails terrible. The top of naivety? If somebody in one
smash wants(OGODDDDDD) to experience the truth. At last a box on the ear is not
more than a desperate contact effort. Also unreal tears often work realer than real ones.
Two jest questions? No! two handcuffs."
The further you get, the more you get the idea that the whole is very intelligent
constructed. Everything has to do with everything, and not. Every sentence undermines
the next. "Philosophies of life are soundmixes. Every rules is a exception. Thoughts are moods."
Slowly everything becomes unsettled and the syntaxis begins to dissolve, until
there's nothing more than laughter: "Brouhaha... haha... ha..."
After reading this manifesto there's only one conclusion left: all ideas are invented
by man, and because it are human constructions everybody can easily strike them out. This
sort of insight gives not only spiritual freedom, but it can also contribute to a healthy sort
of relativism.
After he knocked down all idealisms with his "Letzte Lockerung," he begins to
apply himself more and more to the writing of short stories. These stage nearly with
exception in a criminal sphere in which only one law rules: self-interest. The aim of the
leading player is no longer a middle class ideal, a goal means for him somebody who can
be stripped.
It is a world in which people only want to satisfy there pleasures, a world in
which people are shamelessly conceited and in which only the smartest survives. The
smartest is of course he "who has no scruples and hasn't any longer the feeling that he is
somebody." It's the person that changes as easy clothes as names and who always keeps
in mind the "Schlussnummer" from the "Handbrevier fur Hochstapler" ("Handbook for
Swindlers") "that the world wants to be cheated and becomes terrible mad when you
don't go along with this game."
Especially in this new starting period the stories have an atmosphere of unconcerned
anarchy, and in which is played again and again on the false consciousness that pulls
someones leg and by which people who think they are something are the victims. As for
example in "The Memorative Dialogue" in which a man who thinks of himself as an genius,
is shown by an unknown man, who catches the other while peeping in a window, what the
word geniality really means. When at the end of the discussion the peeper has been made
so curious by the unknown man that he asks him his name, the unknown man pulls down
his trousers and pisses his name in the sand and leaves. The peeper is so dazzled by this
action, that only after a while he looks in the sand where he only can recognize a C and a m.
Step by step Serner introduces European underworld slang in his stories, which strengthens
the suspicion that he moves in criminal circles. His "Criminal Geschichten" (Crime Stories)
give however not only an insight in the underworld language of the twenties, in which a
"Demimondaine" is a prostitute and "Locker" ("loose") means something as mean,
also it gives a clear insight in the working a the criminal brain.
Hunted and constantly on the move for a police that is following him real or only
in his mind, Serner seems to become paranoid. Something which also can be traced back
in his stories. The atmosphere is becoming more and more grim and the ruling moral
(often represented by a police officer) becomes smarter. The full of life swindle and the
mastering of situations are replaced by the liquidation of the enemy. As i.e. in "The Gang
of Kaff" which is about the horrible elimination of a police officer who had once put the
criminal Kaff behind bars. From the description of how the officer is caught and the
hyperrealistic description on the end of the story where the officer gets a bullet through
his head one can feel the pleasure.
Finally Serner puts all his practical experience in "Guide for Swindlers"(1928).
The writing is a guide for as the subtitle says "Swindlers and those who want to be"
and covers 591 golden rules.
Although it appeared in a time the Serner's work showed signs of paranoia, most
rules breath the airiness of the older work. This gives the impression that Serner worked
on it for a longer period. Who knows the other work of Serner can conclude only one
thing: it is a practical work out of the theoretical manifesto "Letzte Lockerung."
Rule 1: "Everybody is slave of his habits, if you're conscious of this it won't be
difficult to control people."
Rule 42: "Who wants to rule people, never may let them stagger."
Rule 312: "Know to appreciate the suggestive working of the color of a tie, the air
of perfume and especially of the weather."
Rule 366: "If you have come so far that it is as easy to change appearance as
personality that you have to keep in mind that you don't mistake your role, than your are
what you have to be."
The message is clear, who isn't at anytime ready to metamorphose, who isn't ready
to get the chances he is offered or to speak with Serner's words: "who isn't constantly
engaged to plan tricks, has to forget swindling."
When in 1928 he asks in a letter to his publisher how his books sell it seems that
he already has given up a career as writer. A short time after this writing he disappe-
ars. His friends think that he devoted himself to crime. A myth that will stand until
Serner fanatic and philologist Thomas Milch is involved in the seventies with the case
Serner. He knows to uncover that Serner choose for the most improbable variant: a
marriage with his old girlfriend Dorathea Herz and a middle class life as a teacher in
Prague. It Looks like the radical choice of Arthur Rimbaud, who also choose to be a
upright citizen, only with this exception that Serner was unfindable even for his best
friends.
The trace of Serner seems however to stop finally in Prague begin forties, until
Milch discovers in the early eighties proof of his transportation to concentrationcamp
Theresienstadt. On 12 august 1942 he is put on transport and disappears, destiny
unknown.
On that moment it appears that Serner's history can't be seen apart from the
history of a whole generation of prewar and especially assimilated Jews. Even stronger
Serner's life and work appear to be interwoven with that history, in the sense that his life
and the life of his partners in fate was characterized by being constantly on the move
because a standstill often meant a big danger. To be not alert, a breathpause or a small
hesitation could at a certain point even mean death.
Serner searched for a way out of this position. And it is this quest that makes him
so interesting. Instead of choosing a career as lawyer, through which he possibly
would have survived by manipulation and hypocrisy. He choose another another way.
A way that made it possible for him to realize his desires.
Desires that he didn't base on one or other ideology, but based on his will. A will
that searched for pleasure. Soon he discovered that to reach this aim it was necessary to
play with identity, because with a bound identity you not only became a victim of
yourself but also of your surroundings.
To metamorphose constantly was the reason that you didn't freeze, that you stayed
untouchable for a world that again and again tried to get a grip on you by telling you who
and what you were. And thus tried to block your desires. While it was Serner's aim to
realize the last, and thought of it as a stupid action to block them through an identity, a
moral, etc. That was the reason why Serner didn't see something wrong in swindle.
Shameless deceit meant for him real honesty. And if everybody would deceit
everybody openly the relation between people would become really honest. In other words: if
everybody would play openly false the world would look better. With this point of view he
thought to have found a way out, by which he used his own life as a big means of
propaganda. With all this honesty he stayed however, as Hans Richter had observed: "an
idealist in a world full of pragmatists, and thus could only realize a small part of his
wishes and desires. He was so naive that he thought he could find supporters for his
cause in the world of art, but this seemed to be a idle hope. And it isn't astonishing that
after he turned his back to the artworld, that used his ideas like a new kind of washing
powder, he glorified the world of criminals(in which everybody deceits everybody). In this
world he became a hunted man, and without the possibility of intellectual communication,
he hardly managed to stand his man. In the end he chose for a life he not only detested,
but he also had warned for.
A choice that finally became his fate. Because in the end he was lulled asleep by
the life he let in Prague, he discovered to late what was really going on in Europe, and
didn't manage to escape, as so many of his brothers in fate, the German destruction
machine.
The irony of fate is that Serner's life ended the same way as Fec's, who also
sinned against his own rules, and, because he wanted to hold on to something, was paying
with his life.
Literature:
Das Gesamte Werk (11 volumes). Edited by Thomas Milch.
Verlag Klaus G. Renner, 1979-1992
