Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine

Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine (Wadzek's Struggle with the Steam Turbine) is a 1918 comic novel by the German author Alfred Döblin. Set in Berlin, it narrates the futile and often delusional struggle of the eponymous industrialist Wadzek against Rommel, his more powerful competitor. In its narrative technique and its refusal to psychologize its characters, as well as in its vivid evocations of Berlin as a modern metropolis, Wadzeks Kampf mit der Dampfturbine has been read as a precursor to Döblin's better-known 1929 novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. Plot As the novel opens, Wadzek, owner of a factory that produces steam engines, is locked in a struggle with his more powerful rival Rommel, whose much larger company manufactures turbines. He can be seen as representing a new type of entrepreneur, more technologically advanced and less scrupulous than Wadzek. Losing value, the stock of Wadzek's company is being bought up by Rommel; in desperation, Wadzek teams up with Schneemann, an engineer working at one of Rommel's factories, to thwart his company's takeover by Rommel. This effort includes the misguided theft of some of Rommel's business correspondence. Fearing legal retribution for this theft, Wadzek, accompanied by Schneemann, flees with his wife Pauline and daughter Herta to his house in Reinickendorf, where the two men fortify the house in delusional preparation for a siege that never comes. Financially and spiritually broken, Wadzek returns to Berlin and with Schneemann attempts to turn himself in at a police station, where they learn that no warrant has even been issued for their arrest. There follows a temporary reconciliation with his estranged family and the first attempts to begin a new career in education—Wadzek would instruct his students in a new, moralistic and humane approach to technology. However, after walking in on an erotically and exotically charged debauch held in his own parlor (the aftermath of an African-themed birthday party Pauline held with her two new friends from Reinickendorf), Wadzek suffers a further breakdown. The novel ends aboard a ship bound for America, Wadzek eloping with Gaby, an old acquaintance and erstwhile lover of Rommel's, to begin a new life. Stylistic and thematic aspects The novel, originally conceived by Döblin as a novel in "Kino-Stil" ("cinematic style"), is characterized by rapid shifts of perspective and the increasingly sophisticated use of montage.