Käsebier Takes Berlin

Fake news in Weimar Berlin: a blistering classic satire of journalism, lies and celebrity, in English for the first time

In Berlin, 1930, the name Käsebier is on everyone's lips. A literal combination of the German words for "cheese" and "beer," it's an unglamorous name for an unglamorous man – a small-time crooner who performs nightly on a shabby stage for labourers, secretaries, and shopkeepers. Until the press shows up.

In the blink of an eye, this everyman is made a star: one who can sing songs for a troubled time. All the while, the journalists who catapulted Käsebier to fame watch the monstrous media machine churn in amazement – and are aghast at the demons they have unleashed.



Gabriele Tergit (1894–1982), born Elise Hirschmann, was a German novelist and reporter. She began writing newspaper articles in the early 1920s under the psuedonym Tergit and eventually became a court reporter for the Berliner Tageblatt. She rose to fame in 1931 with the success of her first novel, Käsebier Takes Berlin. In 1933 she narrowly evaded arrest by the Nazis, fleeing first to Czechoslovakia and then to Palestine before settling in London with her husband and son. There, she worked on her colossal novel of generations of German-Jewish life, The Effingers (1951), and acted as secretary of the PEN Centre for German-language writers abroad.