The Berlin Boxing Club

Karl Stern, the narrator of this novel, is a teenage boy living in Berlin in the years just before World War II. He comes from a cultivated Jewish family and has been raised to have a cosmopolitan outlook. He and his family have always considered themselves to be German first and Jewish second, which is why the rise of Hitler and the increasing normalization of anti-Semitism come as such a shock to them. Karl is also aware he does not look especially Jewish, which makes his public outings more and more fraught and anxious as more and more rights are stripped away from Jews.He is never sure whether or not he will “pass” as a full German citizen.

Karl’s two main influences are his father and his boxing coach, and they represent two different sides of his nature. From his father Karl gets his sensitivity and his love of art, which is a source of embarrassment for him, as much as pride, especially given the increased demonization of artists and intellectuals in his city. At the beginning of the novel, he wants to emulate Max Schmeling, his boxing coach, more than he does his father; Schmeling is as adored and popular a figure in Nazi-era Berlin as his father is a shunned and marginal one, and Karl sees in Schmeling a way to be both a fighter and an appeaser: a way to defend himself without drawing mockery on himself.