Summary
Acoustics play an increasingly important role in current debates in the domain of the cultural studies. Up to now, it have been the sounds themselves that have attracted most attention rather than their aural perception. Taking Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929) as an example, this paper examines the explicit verbalisation of hearing that is captured in German by the verbs ›hören‹, ›horchen‹ and ›lauschen‹. A quantitative comparison of the novel with Theodor Fontane’s Effi Briest (1895) leads us to assume that the frequence of verbs in the semantic field of ›hearing‹ are subject not only to the author’s creative choice but also to universal linguistic rules. In Berlin Alexanderplatz the sounds the characters explicitly hear are created by human beings. Only rarely are sounds heard that do not originate from people. The city itself is, so to speak, unheard. Among the meanings ›hearing‹ generally can have, in Berlin Alexanderplatz those are most striking that Roman Jakobson described as phatic and conative functions of language. Aural perception and visual perception are linked to each other. However, they can also open up different areas of experience. Hearing unlocks an ›inner‹ world that in the course of the text corresponds with pain and death. This ›inner‹ world of hearing tends to be open only to Franz and Death. Seeing unlocks an ›outer‹ world that corresponds with action and, especially at the end of novel, with collectivisation and war.