Items related to Every Man Dies Alone
"The greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis."-Primo Levi
This never-before-translated masterpiece-by a heroic best-selling writer who saw his life crumble when he wouldn't join the Nazi Party-is based on a true story.
It presents a richly detailed portrait of life in Berlin under the Nazis and tells the sweeping saga of one working-class couple who decides to take a stand when their only son is killed at the front. With nothing but their grief and each other against the awesome power of the Reich, they launch a simple, clandestine resistance campaign that soon has an enraged Gestapo on their trail, and a world of terrified neighbors and cynical snitches ready to turn them in.
In the end, it's more than an edge-of-your-seat thriller, more than a moving romance, even more than literature of the highest order-it's a deeply stirring story of two people standing up for what's right, and each other.
Hans Fallada was one of Germany's best-selling authors-ranking with Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse-prior to the rise of the Nazis. But while those writers fled Germany, Fallada stayed. Refusing to join the Nazi Party, he suffered numerous difficulties, including incarceration in an insane asylum. After the war, he wrote Every Man Dies Alone based on an actual Gestapo file. He died just before its publication in 1947.
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About the Author:
Hans Fallada was an internationally bestselling German writer who, unlike his peers Mann and Brecht, remained in Germany after the Nazi take-over. After one of his books was made into a Hollywood movie with a Jewish producer, he was prevented from publishing abroad. At war's end he was incarcerated in an insane asylum, and died soon thereafter.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Chapter One
Some Bad News
The postwoman Eva Kluge slowly climbs the steps of 55 Jablonski Strasse. She’s tired from her round, but she also has one of those letters in her bag that she hates to deliver, and is about to have to deliver, to the Quangels, on the second floor.
Before that, on the floor below, she has a Party circular for the Persickes. Persicke is some political functionary or other — Eva Kluge always gets the titles mixed up. At any rate, she has to remember to call out “Heil Hitler!” at the Persickes’ and watch her lip. Which she needs to do anyway, there’s not many people to whom Eva Kluge can say what she thinks. Not that she’s a political animal, she’s just an ordinary woman, but as a woman she’s of the view that you don’t put children in the world to have them shot. Also, that a home without a man is no good, and for the time being she’s got nothing: not her two boys, not a man, not a proper home. So, she has to keep her lip buttoned, and deliver horrible field letters that aren’t written but typed, and are signed ‘Regimental Adjutant’.
She rings the bell at the Persickes’, says “Heil Hitler!” and hands the old drunk his circular. He has his party badge on his lapel, and he asks: ‘Well, so what’s new?’
She replies: “Haven’t you heard the special report? France has capitulated.”
Persicke’s not content with that. “Come on, Miss, of course I knew that; but to hear you say it, it’s like you were selling stale rolls. Say it like it meant something! It’s your job to tell everyone who doesn’t have a radio, and convince the last of the moaners. The second Blitzkrieg is in the bag now, it’s England now! In another three months, the Tommies will be finished, and then we’ll see what the Fuhrer has in store for us. Then it’ll be the turn of the others to bleed, and we’ll be the masters. Come on in, and have a schnapps with us. Amalie, Erna, August, Adolf, Baldur — let’s be having you. Today we’re celebrating, we’re not working today. Today we’ll wet the news, and in the afternoon we’ll go and pay a call on the Jewish lady on the fourth floor, and see if she won’t treat us to coffee and cake! I tell you, there’ll be no mercy for that bitch any more!”
While Mr. Persicke, ringed by his family launches into increasingly wild vituperative and starts hitting the schnapps, the postie has climbed another flight of stairs and rung the Quangels’ bell. She’s already holding the letter out in her hand, ready to run off the second she’s handed it over. And she’s in luck: it’s not the woman who answers the door — she usually likes to exchange a few pleasantries — but the man with the etched, birdlike face, the thin lips, and the cold eyes. He takes the letter out of her hand without a word and pushes the door shut in her face, as if she was a thief, someone you had to be on your guard against.
Eva Kluge shrugs her shoulders and turns to go back downstairs. Some people are like that; in all the time she’s delivered mail in the Jablonski Strasse, that man has yet to say a single word to her. Well, let him be, she can’t change him, she couldn’t even change the man she’s married to, who wastes his money sitting in bars and betting on horses, and only ever shows his face at home when he’s skint.
At the Persickes’ they’ve left the apartment door open, she can hear the glasses and the rowdy celebrations. The postwoman gently pulls the door shut and carries on downstairs. She thinks the speedy victory over France might actually be good news, because it will have brought the end of the war nearer. And then she’ll have her two boys back.
The only fly in the ointment is the uncomfortable realization that people like the Persickes will come out on top. To have the likes of them as masters and always have to mind your p’s and q’s, that doesn’t strike her as right either.
Briefly she thinks of the man with the bird face who she gave the field post letter to, and she thinks of old Mrs. Rosenthal up on the fourth floor, whose husband the Gestapo took away two weeks ago. You had to feel sorry for someone like that. The Rosenthals used to have a little haberdashery shop on Prenzlauer Allee. That was Aryanized, and now the man’s disappeared, and he can’t be far short of seventy. Those two old people can’t have done any harm to anyone, they always allowed credit — they did it for Eva Kluge too when she couldn’t afford new clothes for the kids — and the goods were certainly no dearer or worse in quality than elsewhere. No, Eva Kluge can’t get it into her head that a man like Rosenthal is any worse than the Persickes, just by virtue of him being a Jew. And now the old woman is sitting in her flat all alone, and doesn’t dare go outside. It’s only after dark that she goes and does her shopping with her yellow star, probably she’s hungry. No, thinks Eva Kluge, even if we defeat France ten times over, it doesn’t mean there’s any justice here at home...
And by now she’s reached the next house, and she makes her deliveries there.
In the meantime shop foreman Otto Quangel has taken the field post letter into the parlor and propped it against the sewing machine. “There!” he says, nothing more. He always leaves the letters for his wife to open, knowing how devoted she is to their only son Otto. Now he stands facing her, biting his thin under lip, waiting for her smile to light up. In his quiet, undemonstrative way, he loves this woman very much.
She has torn open the envelope, for a brief moment there really was a smile lighting up her face, and then it vanished when she saw the typed letter. Her face grew apprehensive, she read more and more slowly, as though afraid of what each next word might be. The man has leaned forward and taken his hands out of his pockets. He is biting his underlip quite hard now, he senses something terrible has happened. It’s perfectly silent in their parlor. Only now does the woman’s breathing come with a gasp.
Suddenly she emits a soft scream, a sound her husband has never heard from her. Her head rolls forward, bangs against the spools of thread on her sewing machine, and comes to rest among the folds of sewing, covering the fateful letter.
In a couple of bounds Quangel is at her side. With uncharacteristic haste he places his big, work-toughened hand on her back. He can feel his wife trembling all over. “Anna!” he says, “Anna, please!” He waits for a moment, and then he says it: “Has something happened to Otto? Is he wounded, is it bad?”
His wife’s body continues to tremble, her mouth doesn’t make a sound. She makes no effort to raise her head to look at him.
He looks down at her hair, it’s gotten thin in the many years of their marriage. They are getting old; if something serious has happened to Otto, she will have no one to love, only him, and there’s not much to love about him. He doesn’t have words to tell her ever how much he feels for her. Even now he’s not able to stroke her, be tender to her, comfort her a little. It’s all he can do to rest his heavy hand on her hair, pull her head up as gently as he can, and softly say: “Anna, will you tell me what’s in the letter?”
But even though her eyes are now very near to his, she keeps them shut tight, she won’t look at him. Her face is a sickly yellow, her usual healthy color is gone. The flesh over her bones seems to have melted away, it’s like looking at a skull. Only her cheeks and mouth continue to tremble, as her whole body trembles, caught up in some mysterious inner quake.
As Quangel gazes into this so familiar, and now so strange face, as he feels his heart pounding harder and harder, as he feels his complete inability to afford her the least comfort, he is gripped by a deep fear. A ridiculous fear really, compared to the deep pain of his wife, but he is afraid that she might start to scream, scream louder and wilder than she did a moment ago. He was always one for peace and quiet, he didn’t want anyone to know anything about the Quangels at home. And as for giving vent to feelings: no, thank you! But even in the grip of his fear, the man isn’t able to say any more than he did a moment ago: “What is it in the letter? Tell me, Anna!”
The letter is lying there plain to see, but he doesn’t dare to reach for it. He would have to let go his wife’s head, and he knows that this head — there are two bloody welts on it from the sewing machine — would only slump once more. He masters himself, asks again: “What’s happened with Ottochen?”
It’s as though the pet name, one that the man hardly ever used, recalled the woman from the world of her pain back into life. She gulps a couple of times, she even opens her eyes, which are very blue, and now look bled white. “With Ottochen?” she says in a near whisper. “What do you think’s happened? Nothing has happened, there is no Ottochen any more, that’s all!”
“Oh!’ the man says, just a deep “Oh!” from the core of his heart. Without knowing what he’s doing, he’s let go his wife’s head, and has reached for the letter. His eyes stare at the lines, without being able to decipher them.
Thereupon the woman grabs the letter from him. Her mood has swung round, furiously she rips the piece of paper into scraps and shreds and fragments, and she shouts into his face: “What do you even want to read that filth for, those common lies they always write? That he died a hero’s death for Fuhrer and Fatherland? That he was an exemplary soldier and comrade? Do you want to...
Some Bad News
The postwoman Eva Kluge slowly climbs the steps of 55 Jablonski Strasse. She’s tired from her round, but she also has one of those letters in her bag that she hates to deliver, and is about to have to deliver, to the Quangels, on the second floor.
Before that, on the floor below, she has a Party circular for the Persickes. Persicke is some political functionary or other — Eva Kluge always gets the titles mixed up. At any rate, she has to remember to call out “Heil Hitler!” at the Persickes’ and watch her lip. Which she needs to do anyway, there’s not many people to whom Eva Kluge can say what she thinks. Not that she’s a political animal, she’s just an ordinary woman, but as a woman she’s of the view that you don’t put children in the world to have them shot. Also, that a home without a man is no good, and for the time being she’s got nothing: not her two boys, not a man, not a proper home. So, she has to keep her lip buttoned, and deliver horrible field letters that aren’t written but typed, and are signed ‘Regimental Adjutant’.
She rings the bell at the Persickes’, says “Heil Hitler!” and hands the old drunk his circular. He has his party badge on his lapel, and he asks: ‘Well, so what’s new?’
She replies: “Haven’t you heard the special report? France has capitulated.”
Persicke’s not content with that. “Come on, Miss, of course I knew that; but to hear you say it, it’s like you were selling stale rolls. Say it like it meant something! It’s your job to tell everyone who doesn’t have a radio, and convince the last of the moaners. The second Blitzkrieg is in the bag now, it’s England now! In another three months, the Tommies will be finished, and then we’ll see what the Fuhrer has in store for us. Then it’ll be the turn of the others to bleed, and we’ll be the masters. Come on in, and have a schnapps with us. Amalie, Erna, August, Adolf, Baldur — let’s be having you. Today we’re celebrating, we’re not working today. Today we’ll wet the news, and in the afternoon we’ll go and pay a call on the Jewish lady on the fourth floor, and see if she won’t treat us to coffee and cake! I tell you, there’ll be no mercy for that bitch any more!”
While Mr. Persicke, ringed by his family launches into increasingly wild vituperative and starts hitting the schnapps, the postie has climbed another flight of stairs and rung the Quangels’ bell. She’s already holding the letter out in her hand, ready to run off the second she’s handed it over. And she’s in luck: it’s not the woman who answers the door — she usually likes to exchange a few pleasantries — but the man with the etched, birdlike face, the thin lips, and the cold eyes. He takes the letter out of her hand without a word and pushes the door shut in her face, as if she was a thief, someone you had to be on your guard against.
Eva Kluge shrugs her shoulders and turns to go back downstairs. Some people are like that; in all the time she’s delivered mail in the Jablonski Strasse, that man has yet to say a single word to her. Well, let him be, she can’t change him, she couldn’t even change the man she’s married to, who wastes his money sitting in bars and betting on horses, and only ever shows his face at home when he’s skint.
At the Persickes’ they’ve left the apartment door open, she can hear the glasses and the rowdy celebrations. The postwoman gently pulls the door shut and carries on downstairs. She thinks the speedy victory over France might actually be good news, because it will have brought the end of the war nearer. And then she’ll have her two boys back.
The only fly in the ointment is the uncomfortable realization that people like the Persickes will come out on top. To have the likes of them as masters and always have to mind your p’s and q’s, that doesn’t strike her as right either.
Briefly she thinks of the man with the bird face who she gave the field post letter to, and she thinks of old Mrs. Rosenthal up on the fourth floor, whose husband the Gestapo took away two weeks ago. You had to feel sorry for someone like that. The Rosenthals used to have a little haberdashery shop on Prenzlauer Allee. That was Aryanized, and now the man’s disappeared, and he can’t be far short of seventy. Those two old people can’t have done any harm to anyone, they always allowed credit — they did it for Eva Kluge too when she couldn’t afford new clothes for the kids — and the goods were certainly no dearer or worse in quality than elsewhere. No, Eva Kluge can’t get it into her head that a man like Rosenthal is any worse than the Persickes, just by virtue of him being a Jew. And now the old woman is sitting in her flat all alone, and doesn’t dare go outside. It’s only after dark that she goes and does her shopping with her yellow star, probably she’s hungry. No, thinks Eva Kluge, even if we defeat France ten times over, it doesn’t mean there’s any justice here at home...
And by now she’s reached the next house, and she makes her deliveries there.
In the meantime shop foreman Otto Quangel has taken the field post letter into the parlor and propped it against the sewing machine. “There!” he says, nothing more. He always leaves the letters for his wife to open, knowing how devoted she is to their only son Otto. Now he stands facing her, biting his thin under lip, waiting for her smile to light up. In his quiet, undemonstrative way, he loves this woman very much.
She has torn open the envelope, for a brief moment there really was a smile lighting up her face, and then it vanished when she saw the typed letter. Her face grew apprehensive, she read more and more slowly, as though afraid of what each next word might be. The man has leaned forward and taken his hands out of his pockets. He is biting his underlip quite hard now, he senses something terrible has happened. It’s perfectly silent in their parlor. Only now does the woman’s breathing come with a gasp.
Suddenly she emits a soft scream, a sound her husband has never heard from her. Her head rolls forward, bangs against the spools of thread on her sewing machine, and comes to rest among the folds of sewing, covering the fateful letter.
In a couple of bounds Quangel is at her side. With uncharacteristic haste he places his big, work-toughened hand on her back. He can feel his wife trembling all over. “Anna!” he says, “Anna, please!” He waits for a moment, and then he says it: “Has something happened to Otto? Is he wounded, is it bad?”
His wife’s body continues to tremble, her mouth doesn’t make a sound. She makes no effort to raise her head to look at him.
He looks down at her hair, it’s gotten thin in the many years of their marriage. They are getting old; if something serious has happened to Otto, she will have no one to love, only him, and there’s not much to love about him. He doesn’t have words to tell her ever how much he feels for her. Even now he’s not able to stroke her, be tender to her, comfort her a little. It’s all he can do to rest his heavy hand on her hair, pull her head up as gently as he can, and softly say: “Anna, will you tell me what’s in the letter?”
But even though her eyes are now very near to his, she keeps them shut tight, she won’t look at him. Her face is a sickly yellow, her usual healthy color is gone. The flesh over her bones seems to have melted away, it’s like looking at a skull. Only her cheeks and mouth continue to tremble, as her whole body trembles, caught up in some mysterious inner quake.
As Quangel gazes into this so familiar, and now so strange face, as he feels his heart pounding harder and harder, as he feels his complete inability to afford her the least comfort, he is gripped by a deep fear. A ridiculous fear really, compared to the deep pain of his wife, but he is afraid that she might start to scream, scream louder and wilder than she did a moment ago. He was always one for peace and quiet, he didn’t want anyone to know anything about the Quangels at home. And as for giving vent to feelings: no, thank you! But even in the grip of his fear, the man isn’t able to say any more than he did a moment ago: “What is it in the letter? Tell me, Anna!”
The letter is lying there plain to see, but he doesn’t dare to reach for it. He would have to let go his wife’s head, and he knows that this head — there are two bloody welts on it from the sewing machine — would only slump once more. He masters himself, asks again: “What’s happened with Ottochen?”
It’s as though the pet name, one that the man hardly ever used, recalled the woman from the world of her pain back into life. She gulps a couple of times, she even opens her eyes, which are very blue, and now look bled white. “With Ottochen?” she says in a near whisper. “What do you think’s happened? Nothing has happened, there is no Ottochen any more, that’s all!”
“Oh!’ the man says, just a deep “Oh!” from the core of his heart. Without knowing what he’s doing, he’s let go his wife’s head, and has reached for the letter. His eyes stare at the lines, without being able to decipher them.
Thereupon the woman grabs the letter from him. Her mood has swung round, furiously she rips the piece of paper into scraps and shreds and fragments, and she shouts into his face: “What do you even want to read that filth for, those common lies they always write? That he died a hero’s death for Fuhrer and Fatherland? That he was an exemplary soldier and comrade? Do you want to...
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- PublisherMelville House
- Publication date2009
- ISBN 10 1933633638
- ISBN 13 9781933633633
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages544
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