page_title: Alfred Döblin
section_title: 1900–1914: University years and early career
hierarchical_section_title: Alfred Döblin / Life / 1900–1914: University years and early career
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Alfred Döblin, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 1/4 in. (50.8 x 41.3 cm). Courtesy of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Association Fund Deutsch: Bildnis Dr Alfred Döblin
context_page_description: Bruno Alfred Döblin was a German novelist, essayist, and doctor, best known for his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz. A prolific writer whose œuvre spans more than half a century and a wide variety of literary movements and styles, Döblin is one of the most important figures of German literary modernism. His complete works comprise over a dozen novels ranging in genre from historical novels to science fiction to novels about the modern metropolis; several dramas, radio plays, and screenplays; a true crime story; a travel account; two book-length philosophical treatises; scores of essays on politics, religion, art, and society; and numerous letters—his complete works, republished by Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag and Fischer Verlag, span more than thirty volumes. His first published novel, Die drei Sprünge des Wang-lung, appeared in 1915 and his final novel, Hamlet oder Die lange Nacht nimmt ein Ende was published in 1956, one year before his death.
  Born in Stettin, Germany, to assimilated Jews, Döblin moved with his mother and siblings to Berlin when he was ten years old after his father had abandoned them.
context_section_description: After receiving his Abitur in 1900, Döblin enrolled at Friedrich Wilhelm University (now Humboldt University of Berlin) and began studying general medicine. In May 1904 he moved to Freiburg im Breisgau to continue his studies, concentrating on neurology and psychiatry. He began his dissertation ("Disturbances of memory in Korsakoff's Psychosis") in the winter semester of 1904–1905 at the Freiburg psychiatric clinic. His dissertation, completed in April 1905, was published that year by Berlin's Klett Verlag. He applied for assistantships in Berlin and in Stettin, where he was apparently turned down on account of his Jewish origins, before taking a short-lived position as assistant doctor at a regional asylum in Regensburg. On 15 October 1906 he took up a position at the Berlin psychiatric clinic in Buch where he worked as an assistant doctor for nearly two years. He then transferred to the city hospital "Am Urban," where he dedicated himself to internal medicine with a renewed interest. He opened his first private practice in October 1911 at Blücherstrasse 18 in Berlin's Kreuzberg neighborhood, before moving the practice to Frankfurter Allee 184 in Berlin's working-class east.
  While working in Buch he met Friede Kunke, a 16-year-old nurse from a Protestant background with whom he became romantically involved.  In the spring of 1909 he began seeing the 21-year-old Erna Reiss, a medical student and daughter of a wealthy Jewish factory owner. Despite his continued involvement with Kunke, at the urging of his family he was reluctantly engaged to Reiss on 13 February 1911 and married her on 23 January 1912; his older brother Hugo and Herwarth Walden served as best men. During the early part of his engagement to Reiss, he had been unaware that Kunke was pregnant: their son Bodo was born on 14 October 1911 and was raised by his grandmother, Elise Kunke, in Schleswig-Holstein following Friede's death from tuberculosis in 1918. Until the end of his life, Döblin maintained loose contact with Bodo, and his treatment of Friede became a lasting source of guilt. Döblin's first son with Erna Reiss, Peter Döblin, was born on 27 October 1912, and was baptized a Protestant.
  During his studies in Berlin, Döblin had written his second novel, Der Schwarze Vorhang (The Black Curtain). The novel portrays the developing sexuality of its protagonist, Johannes, and explores the themes of love, hate, and sadism; in its use of literary montage, The Black Curtain already presages the radical techniques that Döblin would later pioneer in Berlin Alexanderplatz.  Introduced by a mutual acquaintance, Döblin met Georg Lewin, a music student better known as Herwarth Walden, who founded the Expressionist journal Der Sturm in 1910. Der Sturm, modeled after Karl Kraus's newspaper Die Fackel (The Torch), would soon count Döblin among its most involved contributors, and provided him with a venue for the publication of numerous literary and essayistic contributions. Through Walden Döblin made the acquaintance of poet Else Lasker-Schüler. At regular meetings at the Café des Westens on Kurfürstendamm or at the wine bar Dalbelli, Döblin got to know the circle of artists and intellectuals that would become central to the Expressionist movement in Berlin, including Peter Hille, Richard Dehmel, Erich Mühsam, Paul Scheerbart, and Frank Wedekind, among others. In October 1911 he met the painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, who painted several portraits of Döblin between 1912 and 1914 and illustrated some of Döblin's literary works. Döblin's early novel Der Schwarze Vorhang was published in Der Sturm, and in November 1912 the Munich publishing house Georg Müller published his collection of novellas under the title Die Ermordung einer Butterblume und andere Erzählungen. In May 1913, he completed his third novel The Three Leaps of Wang Lun (Die drei Sprünge des Wang-lun). Published in 1916, this historical novel about political uprising in 18th-century China was a literary breakthrough for Döblin, earning him literary acclaim, public recognition, and the prestigious Fontane Priz
caption: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's portrait of Alfred Döblin
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