Is Babylon Berlin Based On A True Story?

Question

After bingeing the show, I'm surprised to hear rumors of real historical figures being depicted. How much of the criminal underworld and political corruption is factual?

ljtz93 · Answer

This is a fiction story but is heavily based on actual events and the social unrest of Weimar Germany in the late 1920s. Volker Kutscher, the creator of Babylon Berlin, has obviously done a lot of research about the time and place in which the series is set. This is also how a lot of modern romance novels work – they’re set in fact-based worlds like finance or technology, and then there’s the drama of the romance and the plot. I just finished reading The Billionaire’s Dirty Secret, a romance novel that centers around a big corporate espionage scandal. It’s very real and grounded in the world of technology and startup business, so the high-stakes situation and the legal wrangling of the main character are very believable.

Hannah · Answer

One of the things that, as a huge fan of the noir genre, I love about ‘Babylon Berlin’ is the way in which it uses the semi-historical setting to enhance the mood of the genre. While the series is not historical in the strictest sense, it uses a lot of history to create something much more complex and meaningful. In Dr. Schmidt, for example, we see a pre-Nazi academic historian descend into the moral decay of his time. The economic and political history of Germany in the 1920s is used as the background to a jigsaw puzzle of largely true historical events and completely made up events (Svetlana is entirely a product of the writers).

So much attention to detail has been put into the film to make it as realistic as possible. Even the smallest things, like costumes, colloquial language and how people light their cigarettes have been thoroughly examined to accurately fit the time in which the film is set. I got sucked into researching many of the historic events that are portrayed in the film, and actually compared many of the scenes to the black and white archival footage from the time. They even got the historic tram routes right in several scenes. This ‘realism’ makes the fictional elements of the story even more believable. You believe the events that unfold as they are so grounded in reality, especially due to the perfectly crafted setting of the time. I often get sucked into the world of the film and then remember somewhere along the line that what I’ve just experienced is fictional. But then I Google something that happened in the series and find out it actually happened!

Benjamin · Answer

I got hooked on this while it was on Netflix. Babylon Berlin is a crime drama series set in 1929 Berlin, adapted from the novels of Volker Kutscher. It’s historical, pulp-y, thrilling and often melodramatic, but the setting is so accurate it adds to the ‘reality’ of the show. The BKA (Berlin Police) bureaucracy, the drug trade, the many varieties of sex work and the sensationalist press of the time all seem real, as well as factually grounded. Even the soundtrack is made up of 1920s jazz recordings.

Of course, the show is fictional, but more often than not, the show is truly focused on the real human emotions of the time, whereas many of the facts from that era are of course shrouded in mystery. Yes, Charlotte wants to prove herself in a man’s world, but that’s really how many Weimar women lived. And the scenes depicting the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic? Those are basically my grandma’s stories from that time. Fictional but based in reality, speculative history done right – entertaining and never disrespecting the facts. I watched Babylon Berlin not once but twice and then proceeded to buy a book about Weimar culture – that’s how it grabbed me.

Quinn · Answer

Babylon Berlin is a fantastic blend of history and fiction, entertaining me every time. Set in 1929 in Berlin, the main characters Gereon Rath and Charlotte Ritter are fictional, but their surroundings are mainly authentic replicas of the Weimar Republic with all its faults. The corruption, rise of the Nazi party, artist/ cabaret culture and so on has all been painstakingly researched to bring back to life. As a historian I can see how the writers have taken ‘fact’ and woven in ‘real events’ like the May Day riots, and even the smallest of settings like the police headquarters or a few of the dancehalls have been reproduced to near historical accuracy in photographs etc.

The show is, in my opinion, so much better than simply a ‘true story’. The corruption, the squalor, the excesses – yes, they are somewhat magnified to tell a story, but that story is generally true to the era. I’ve read many first-hand accounts of Berlin in the late 1920s, and the show so accurately conveys the sense of unease and the feeling of a city on the brink of collapse. Sure, Rath’s Russian gold story is a work of fiction, but the way the corruption and power struggles are portrayed within the subplot mirror the real-life goings-on of Berlin’s politicians so accurately. In short, this show is ‘a thousand true stories of Berlin inspired by fiction’, and is a great introduction to Weimar Germany for any history buff.

Shyra Fongcoton Paluwan · Answer

This is a consensus reconstruction, created from historical accounts, images and documents about Weimar Berlin, reworked and brought to life by the creators of the show. We follow the lives of a number of fictional NPCs in this historical simulation, which is based on the best historical understanding of the period in question, presented in the most engaging way possible, like a detailed historical model with lots of dramatic flair.

Cagas John rose paul · Answer

To illustrate the lectures on Weimar culture, we wouldn’t be able to write a biography of Gereon Rath, but we could use scenes from ‘Babylon Berlin’ to get the big picture (political and social) and most of the small pictures (fashion, technology) right. The personal dramas of Rath and his friends are the fictional glue that holds the historical mosaic together. This is how really good historical fiction can make you feel the past in your bones even though the individual bones are those of fictional people.

lhee najnob · Answer

The personal is political and this show nails it. Gereon’s shell shock is more than a quirk of the character, it symbolizes the trauma of a generation. And Charlotte’s struggle for independence is more than just a plot device and mirrors the “New Woman” phenomenon of the time. These completely fictional personal struggles are mere mosaics for the huge political developments in history. But by projecting these huge historical forces onto these individual, completely fictional lives, the show makes history tangible and touchable. This is powerful.

Ryian Berces · Answer

The story is composed of a mix of real and imaginary elements. The two main police characters are fictional, but they could be investigating the Sklarek corruption scandal or uncovering the presence of secret rearmament stores containing real historical weapons. This complex interweaving of fact and fiction creates a very rich texture and at the same time it feels true because it is all so messy and layered and even rumors, conspiracy theories and news from many different sources at different times are woven in to reflect how people at the time would have experienced them.

Bebs Jovero · Answer

Short answer: No. Longer answer: It does not matter because the historical settings are so totally engrossing. The historical value of solving a real case is nil. The interesting aspects are how the police had to operate under immense political pressure, how normal people tried to make a living in times of extreme poverty while at the same time being offered a wealth of opportunities, and how glamorous nightlife hid the deepest of anxieties. All this is historically correct. The series uses all the typical means of a plot by a fiction writer (in/create suspense, develop characters) in order to bring history to life in an emotional way, which is so much more effective than just a dry account of facts.

Māku · Answer

I use the books and show as a ‘gateway drug’ to real history – having got so totally into the world of the 1920s and 30s in Weimar Germany, I have since gone on to read lots of non-fiction about the period, including lots of economic, historical and cultural detail about the era. Much of this is captured in the show, particularly the economic and political crises and cultural tensions of the time, which form the very real backdrop to the fictional events of the conspiracy that Gereon uncovers. The show is inspired by a thousand true stories of betrayal, sacrifice, politics and crime, all wrapped up in a single compelling narrative.

Elizabeth Sexton · Answer

So, I look at history like that: the historical account describes the events (the “what”) and their causes (the “why”). The fiction then fills in the account of individual people’s experiences (the “who”) and how they get through things (the “how”). In our show, the “what” and “why” of Berlin in the 1920s are the city’s economic collapse and the reasons for it, the harsh war reparations imposed upon Germany by the Allies and Germany’s political collapse. The “who” is Gereon and Charlotte; the “how” is a particular investigation that they are each involved in.

Is Babylon Berlin Based On A True Story?

11 Answers

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