51 pages • 1 hour read
The Berlin Boxing Club
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Symbols & Motifs
“The Feint”
“The feint” is a boxing move that Max Schmeling explains to Karl. It involves confusing an opponent by continually throwing him off-balance, leading him to believe that you are doing one thing while you are in fact doing another: “‘Whenever you fake a punch or try to give your opponent the impression that you’ve been punched or hurt so that you can mount your own attack’” (371). Schmeling explains this move to Karl by way of justifying his own placating approach to the Nazi regime: his failure to act and to take a stand. He is attempting to frame his inaction as acanny survival strategy, as it certainly is.
However, for Karl, survival is more of a literal matter than for Schmeling, and Schmeling’s explanation makes no sense to him in his particular circumstances. His home has just been destroyed, and he is no longer certain where his parents are in the aftermath of Kristallnacht; diplomacy and passivity are luxuries that he can no longer afford. Schmeling’s self-serving explanation not only diminishes Schmeling in Karl’s eyes, but makes him think of “every other German who thought they were feinting through the rise of Hitler and the Nazis” (371). It makes Schmeling seem suddenly ordinary to Karl, and both complacent and self-deluding.
Schmeling’s explanation about “the feint” also shows the limits of applying boxing strategies to real life. It is a clever short-term strategy, but Schmeling presents it as a long-term solution. It is one thing to throw off your opponent in a short match; it is another thing to appease an evil regime over a period of years, while devastation mounts all around you. Even so, as Karl must acknowledge later in the book, when his family is questioned by Gestapo police on the train from Berlin to Hamburg and Schmeling steps in and covers for them, the feint can be a very useful tactic. It is just not one that should be mistaken for a philosophy, noris it one that should be used all the time.
The Mongrel
The Mongrel is Karl’s invented comic book superhero, and shows his way of repurposing the demeaning terms that have been thrown at him. “Mongrels” are what Nazis have taken to calling Jews, blacks, and other “impure” non-Aryan groups of people. In Karl’s Mongrel story, the title character’s mixed origins are what have made him strong and also compassionate. He is a hybrid of all of the races that the Nazis wish to exterminate: Chinese, Jewish, Gypsy, Indian, African. They have created him in a lab as an attempt to demonstrate the inferiority of all of these races; however, when he proves to possess superior strength and intelligence, they try to destroy him instead.
Just as the Mongrel is a mixture of different races, so is his creation story a mixture of different stories. He is created in a lab by wicked scientists, is sent down a river on a basket, and is eventually adopted by a “kindly old boxing coach” (317). This storycontains traces of science fiction, the Bible, and the classic sports hero coming-of-age tale; tragically, there are also traces of real-life stories about the Nazis and the experiments they actually performed. As a hybrid of fact, myth, and story, the comic book shows the kind of freedom that Karl wants to claim for himself as an artist, as well as a human being.Karl’s artistic ambition is very different from the narrower artistic ambitions that his parents have for him, and it speaks more of the United States than of Europe.
Sigmund Stern’s Scarf
The scarf that Karl’s father insists on wearing to his gallery openings sets him apart and both mystifies and embarrasses his son. As his father is generally a private and uncommunicative man, Karl seizes on his scarf as a clue to understanding him. When his father’s revealed association with the Countess makes Karl wonder if his father might be secretly gay, he remembers the scarf as a possible indicator: “He did have a flamboyant way about him. I had always thought that the blue silk scarf he loved to wear was a very girlish affectation” (94).
While the scarf turns out not to be an indicator of homosexuality, it is an indicator of Stern’s general character. It shows his courage, in willing to seem effete—especially at a time when hypermasculinity is very in fashion—and in not caring what others around him think. It also shows the stubbornness and rigidity that can go along with this courage; for Stern, a scarf is simply what one wears to an art opening, whether it is in style or not. Finally, the scarf demonstrates the nostalgia that Stern has for a freer, more fluid society—for the adventurous Berlin of his youth—and his inability to adjust, for better and worse, to the present climate. Sigmund Stern’s scarf shows aspects of his character that are both difficult and admirable and that make him, as a father, hard to understand.
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