Gilgi, One of Us by Irmgard Keun

I’ve read a few novels and texts before from Weimar Germany, and they all tend to leave me feeling the same as (I think) we all used to feel around 1997 – 2015: there is an acknowledgement that, yeah, sure, there are some bad eggs, some bad apples, some bad dickheads, about, sure, but the majority, the wise, sensible, smart, majority, will never let those prix (that’s a new spelling of “pricks” I’m trialling (rather than a reference to a French prize)) take over… but of course, we all know what happens next, and I suppose there is likely a pattern that repeats and will continue to repeat amongst our rancid society: it is when the most people feel the most dully content that the machinations of the malcontents finally begin to rile up those who have been – or (tbh it’s very often this) feel like they have been – overlooked…

Gilgi, One of Us was Irmgard Keun’s first novel, a bestseller published in 1931 when she was in her mid-twenties (as Gilgi, einer von uns; this Penguin edition contains a 2013 translation by Geoff Wilkes), and is about a young woman navigating a few personal crises on and just after her twenty-first birthday.

Gilgi is from a solid middle class family (“comfortable” rather than “fancy”) and part of the community – her father is on the panel that organises Cologne carnival – and she has a steady day job and also studies multiple foreign languages every evening in order to improve her “prospects”. She has a reasonably good social life too, though, with a sufficient amount of friends and lovers (certainly more than I have of both, but I have about as few as it’s possible to be without being genuinely malicious (I’m not malicious, I’m just mentally ill (which does of course push people away but I think I’ve annoyed rather than repulsed people away, but I don’t know?))), though none of whom are significant enough to distract from her staid and very Protestant work ethic type ambitions.

She gets a second job in the evenings, she saves money, she is told by her parents that she is adopted and she tries to find her real mother, her sexiest friend Olga (who Gilgi previously got to seduce away the advances of her boss) introduces her to a man, Martin, who she falls in love with and cannot bear to be apart from, to the point where she loses her job, gives up her classes and ends up living as a maid-slash-live-in-lover in the weird apartment that a friend of Martin’s has offered him rent-free for a period.

Martin is failed near-aristocracy; he doesn’t have any money except what he can get by borrowing, pawning or theft, he wrote a couple of successful books ten years ago and lives off their reputation (though not their royalties – they weren’t that successful) and he travels and he wanders and he flaneurs about. Honestly, though Keun makes his life sound more interesting than anyone else in the book, she never depicts him in a way that makes him seem particularly charming. Gilgi’s attraction to him, though, does make sense – although he doesn’t offer any of the stability or professional meaning she claims to want, his total disinterest and disavowal of bourgeois social norms (he doesn’t pay his debts! He doesn’t wake up before noon! He doesn’t drink responsibly! He buys things on credit! He doesn’t have a job! He doesn’t aspire to having a job! He wants to enjoy his life not suffer in misery!) means he very much is a unique and compelling character to her. The real panic begins when she gets pregnant and decides to not tell him, not get an abortion and instead move to Berlin alone. Also the text implies – but doesn’t state – that Martin might also be shagging her biological mother and might also be her own biological father, though maybe this implication isn’t actually in the text and I just extrapolated it because I’m a sick freak/a normal person from the bits of middle England so middle England that I expect incest subplots in every text I read even when they’re not intentionally put there.

Gilgi, One of Us is an engaging text that explores questions around bodily autonomy and ambition, around social responsibilities and the implicit as well as the explicit requests and demands put upon women, which really aren’t that different between Weimar Germany and now. One can pretend that things are “better” now, due to the wider availability of contraception and safe and legal abortion services, but in reality the extreme right wing is as much in ascendancy as it was then, and global capitalistic structures have barely changed at all – if anything, the divisions between rich and poor are more entrenched now than they were then, the potential for equitable economics is as much a fantasy as it was a century ago.

–///–

Some context-free lines that I enjoyed:

“Times are tough. No-one likes being what they are. No-one likes doing what they do “

“She’s made a mess of her life, but when she was starting out, at least, she had an equal chance. Or maybe she didn’t?”

“you’ve kissed away the firmness in my legs”

“it – will – never – get – better again, Gilgi – I can feel that it will never get better again.”

---

---

Thank you so much for reading TriumphoftheNow.com! If you like what you’ve read, please subscribe, share and order one of my books. If you love what you’ve read, why not order me something frivolous and noisy from this Amazon wishlist or make a quick donation via my ko-fi page?

I’m currently focusing on parenting and creative practice, so small donations are appreciated now more than ever!

DONATE 0.5GBP per MONTH TO TRIUMPHOFTHENOW.COM!Submitting form

---

scott manley hadley aka SOLID BALD live

Here’s a video of me recently performing at the prestigious (it has a Wikipedia page) comedy night, Quantum Leopard. Listen to how much fun the crowd is having. You could have that much fun, too!

Forthcoming gigs include the following – there may/will be others:

21st January 2026, 1pm: Dr Mew’s Sci-Fi Cabaret, Etcetera Theatre, Camden

18th February 2026, 7.30pm: Laughable, Wanstead Library

26th February 2026: Mirth Control, Bexhill-on-Sea

12th March 2026: BALD PERSONALITY DISORDER 30 MIN WIP at Glasgow International Comedy Festival

26th March 2026, 7.30pm: Comedy @ Cosmic, Plymouth

Various Dates, May 2026: BALD PERSONALITY DISORDER FULL LENGTH WIP at the BRIGHTON FRINGE