The Plot Thickens in the Weimar Republic

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It seems like we’re living in a time when, at least among Western democracies, neither the far left nor the far right is far from the mainstream. But what would it be like if things got just a tad worse? If you’re interested in pursuing this thought further, watch Babylon Berlin. The third season just began airing in Europe, but the first two seasons are on Netflix in Canada. Babylon Berlin is a costume drama that verges on the territory of alternate history. The story is set in the Weimar Republic, the period often described as the prelude to World War II. In this setting, Hitler is not yet a household name. Communists are still a threat. The music and the nightlife bedazzle, if only so you temporarily forget about issues creeping in from the margins. For historical fiction, this is a context full of possibilities. It is a kind of Germany seldom explored on screen. In many ways Babylon Berlin reminded me of Michael Chabon’s novel The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which is alternative history set in a world in which Jewish refugees settle in Sitka, Alaska, after the war. As in The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, the protagonist of Babylon Berlin is a detective, or at she least acts like one. And just as in Chabon’s story of two Yiddish detectives moving through a curious landscape—one that blends Tlingit culture, the American frontier and Yiddish slang—the detective plot in Babylon Berlin is an excuse to carry the audience into an altered world of different possibilities. Detectives, after all, are investigative by nature. They drive the story on their own, exposing in an organic way a world in all its contradictions and disparities, but also its redeeming qualities. And though the detectives of Babylon Berlin have their own personal story arcs, there are far more interesting possibilities to explore in the backdrop of the Weimar Republic.