What shows in these lines is of course not misogyny, but hatred of a home presided over by a dominant mother-figure, such as he himself had grown up in from the age of fifteen, when his father had died. As much as Rosa Bertens, the above portrait, as he told his second wife, was of his mother. So also is that of Frau Adriani, and it is she – with her taunts of ‘Why don’t you get married?’ – who is at the root of the instability and impermanence of his marriages and other relationships. Tucholsky was far too good a student of Freud (who, with Strindberg and Hamsun, was one of his gods; he kept a photograph of him in his study) not to be aware of the implications of a poor relationship with his mother. By chance, this aspect too now looks modern: very few adjustments have to be made when one reads about the Princess and her ‘Peter’. There is in their relationship hope and affection and sex and companionship, but nothing necessarily, unconditionally, formally binding. Will and inclination hold them together. They are not an entity, but two individuals, equal and independent, now adult, now childish, sometimes worried but never solemn. Their future (together) is uncertain. All the more reason, then, for them to make the most of their five weeks together, to talk and act and enjoy.

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