The Berlin Boxing Club

“The word ‘fight’ stung my ears almost as badly as the word ‘Jew.’”

Karl learns how to fight the hard way: by being attacked. His new passion for boxing arises out of a desire to defend himself against bullies, on the one hand, and to emulate these bullies, on the other. The appearance of toughness and masculinity is very much valued among Hitler and his followers; Karl wishes to beat boys like Gertz Diener at their own game. 

“‘The time for pretty pictures of flowers and kings has passed,’ my father explained. ‘Art needs to show life, real life, in all its wonders and horrors.’”

Karl’s father’s idea of great art has been formed by his experience in World War I, and is at odds with his fastidious persona. While he appears refined and civilized, he most values art that is blunt and impolite: art that shows “real life.” This is the inverse of the totalitarian regime under which he lives, in which the only acceptable art is insipid and “pretty,” even while barbarism is widespread. 

“As long as you fight back, there’s no shame.”

Max Schmeling makes Karl think about fighting in a slightly different way. The idea that there is honor simply in defending yourself, even if you don’t win a fight, gives him greater courage, which in turn makes him a better fighter. 

“‘A great fighter has plenty of artistry,’ Max countered.”

In addition to boxing, Max Schmeling is important to Karl because he gives Karl a broader definition of art, and of being an artist, than the one his parents have given him. As cultivated as his family is, they have their own brand of snobbishness and narrowness; they look down on art forms like boxing—and like cartoons, which are also important to Karl—as lowbrow entertainment, rather than real art. 

“‘She just looks so perfect. She’s the opposite of me.’”

Hildy has internalized the anti-Semitism around her in a different way than Karl has. Because she looks more Jewish than Karl does, and perhaps also because she is a girl, she has had to cope more than he has had to with feeling ugly and wrong. This coping will, in turn, give her a different sort of strength than Karl has, one that has more to do with emotional honesty than with physical courage. 

“‘I learned everything I needed to know about politics and religion during the war,’ my father said. ‘They’re all worthless.’” 

Karl’s father’s religion is art, rather than politics and actual religion. Yet just because he wants nothing more to do with these entities does not mean that he, or his family, can escape them. His attitude is understandable but also unrealistic and even dangerous, given the political climate surrounding him. 

“After Adolf Hitler, he was probably the most admired man in Germany.” 

Max Schmeling’s celebrity presents complications for him, which will grow clearer to Karl later on. He must appease men like Adolf Hitler, even if he dislikes their policies; he also must keep winning fights to stay in these men’s good graces. His situation is much more restricted than it seems at first, and some of that restriction is mental. It is difficult for him to see beyond the luxurious cage of his celebrity because he is so occupied with maintaining it. 

“‘Perhaps he did, but only after he was beaten and pushed,’ my father said. My mouth fell open in surprise that he’d known the truth all along.” 

Karl’s father pays more attention to him than he lets on, and is also more aware of the world of fighting than he lets on; both of these things will become clear to Karl later in the novel. His remoteness stems from a desire that Karl be independent. He is a principled man in a way that frequently makes him seem contrarian and difficult, and that gets in the way of his communication with his son. 

“‘Art should elevate humanity. It should be more than just pie in the face of nonsense.’” 

Karl’s father’s dislike of comics as an art form—his refusal to think of them as an art form at all—means that he fails to see the seriousness of Karl’s comic strip drawings. Though his Winzig und Spatz drawings are meant as entertainment, they are also a way of thinking about his situation as a Jew in Nazi Berlin. If they were paintings, rather than comic strips, his father would probably approve of them. 

“It seemed like overnight most German boys were decked out in some form of Nazi regalia. The Hitler Youth uniforms filled me with envy rather than fear. What boy wouldn’t want to wear a military uniform?” 

Karl comes from a family of proud individualists, which is perhaps one reason why he sees the appeal of military uniforms, even those of the Hitler Youth. His own father is a self-declared pacifist, and his only dictum is that one must think for oneself. A reality that his father does not acknowledge, and that totalitarian regimes such as Hitler’s feed on, is that there can be something seductive in belonging to a herd and having a ready-made sense of purpose and heroism. 

“Despite how much stronger I had become, I could barely get my arm to hold the salute.” 

Karl has taken up boxing in large part so that he can face down Nazi-affiliated bullies like the boys in his school. Yet when he is forced to do the Hitler salute at his school assembly, he realizes that no amount of physical strength will stop him from feeling intimidated or make it any easier to assume the posture of the enemy. He must become more resourceful mentally as well. 

“It was risky enough being Jewish, but associating with homosexuals would put us at even greater risk.” 

While Karl does not yet realize it, the Countess will become an important person for him to know, the very opposite of a hindrance. Her strength and courage, moreover, come from being socially and politically shunned and persecuted, and choosing to remain herself. 

“I had often heard people talk about a punch ‘connecting,’ and I finally understood what that really meant.” 

Boxing is more than a form of combat and self-defense for Karl; it is also a way of “connecting” to himself and others. The boxing club gives him a sense of ritual and community at a time when he is generally excluded and marginalized. This passage also shows that boxing is a much finer and more precise endeavor than it looks to be from the outside; the elation that Karl feels here is like that of any artist experiencing a breakthrough. 

“‘Name-calling is a part of fighting,’ he said. ‘The weakest punches are thrown with the tongue […]’”

The verbal hazing Karl is subjected to at the Berlin Boxing Club is a backhanded form of support (although some of the older boxers, such as the anti-Semite, Willy, are more sincere in their nastiness than others). It teaches Karl to be tougher mentally as well as physically, and to better face down the prejudice he experiences outside the club. 

“In fact I noticed that all Max ever talked about at the club was boxing. He never revealed anything about his personal life or his politics.”

Karl has a mentor in Schmeling, but a guarded and cautious one. While Schmeling does not join in with the anti-Semitic banter at the club, he does not argue with it, either. Because of his stature at the club, he is able to get away with seeming politically neutral. His neutrality is initially a relief to Karl, who himself wishes to get away from the ugly political reality outside the club and to be nothing but a fighter for a while. When Karl discovers later on that there is no escaping the Nazi regime for someone like him, his mentor’s refusal to take a stand becomes more problematic.

“‘In boxing there are rules…I may get beat, but at least I’ll always have a fair chance of winning. The rest of the world isn’t always like that.’”

Karl is trying to explain the appeal of boxing to his girlfriend, Greta: it may be violent, but there is also an orderliness and a ritual to it that make it seem predictable and safe. It is a sanctuary for him, in much the same way that the Catholic Church is for members of Greta’s own family. Yet even this apparent sanctuary will eventually become unsafe for Karl, as his fights are infiltrated more and more by Nazi ideology. 

“‘Go on. They burn books. So can we. Throw it in.’”

This moment, when Karl makes Hildy throw her anti-Semitic textbook into the furnace, is a significant one. It is a rare moment when Karl makes an angry, defiant gesture that has nothing to do with boxing and straightforwardly acknowledges the destructiveness of the Nazi regime. He is referring to the Nazi practice of burning all books, most especially those by Jewish writers, of which they do not approve. 

“They were tough Jews, so different from the sniveling caricatures that I was seeing in the Nazi press all around me and the religious Jews, like Herr Greenberg, that I had been exposed to in my life.”

It is important and validating for Karl to see American Jewish boxers, men such as Barney Ross and Bob Olin, who appear strong and forceful and obviously Jewish. As American comic books do, it makes the United States seem like a freer and more accepting society to him. 

“I realized he was listing the Jewish students in alphabetical order and that I was next. Unless by some miracle the new laws exempted me.”

Principal Munter is announcing the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws, which institutionalize the identifying and targeting of Jews. Little by little, Karl is being reduced to his Jewish identity and losing what residual rights and protections he has. He is about to be kicked out of his school, along with all of the other Jewish students.

“My strength had increased, but had my bravery?”

Karl, along with another Jewish student, Benjamin, are chased out of their school by other students, who have been tacitly encouraged by their principal. Karl is able to outrun the students, but Benjamin is not, and Karl sees the other students fall on him from a safe distance. His failure to defend Benjamin is an indication of the difficult decisions that a Jew in Nazi Berlin must make in order to survive. 

“[…]the fact that I was now the keeper of my father’s secret made me feel closer to him than I ever had.”

Karl discovers much about his father from Bertram Heigel/the Countess; among other things, he learns some of the reasons for his father’s reticence and secrecy. Therefore, in keeping his own new knowledge a secret from his father, he feels strangely bonded to him. 

“‘True or not, there is a scandal. There are party members living in this building. I don’t want any trouble. No one wants any trouble.’”

While he is kicking the Stern family out of their own apartment, their landlord, Dirks, is also tacitly acknowledging that he knows that this “scandal” might well be fabricated. That is, he is acknowledging that they now live under a regime in which facts and fairness are irrelevant, a regime that relies solely on intimidation, coercion, and force. 

“I needed to see more red.” 

For the first time in a boxing match, Karl allows his anger to get the upper hand. While he beats his opponent, he also loses his self-control and his strategy, so the match is a failure in his own eyes and in the eyes of his trainers. The “seeing red” is an allusion not only to the blood that he wants to see on his opponent—who is a Hitler Youth member—but to the signature red of the Communist Party; Karl’s beloved uncle Jakob, a onetime Communist Party member, has just died in Dachau because of his allegiance to a subversive organization.