A Stranger in My Own Country

by Hans Fallada

  50. Identity unknown.

  51. The Reich Chamber of Literature was one of the seven sections of the Reich Chamber of Culture established by Joseph Goebbels in November 1933. It claimed to be a ‘professional association’ for writers. From 1934 every writer who wanted to publish had to be a member of the RCL. Fallada’s claim that he was never a member of the RCL is incorrect: membership card No. 841 in the name of Rudolf Ditzen/Hans Fallada was issued on 11 July 1934 by the Reich Chamber of Literature in Berlin. See Hans Fallada. Sein Leben in Bildern und Briefen, Berlin 1997, p. 125.

  52. Paul von Hindenburg’s memoirs Aus meinem Leben were published in 1920 by Hirzel Verlag in Leipzig; the Swedish translation Ur mitt liv came out in 1920, published by Bonniers (not ‘Bonnier’) in Stockholm.

  53. Identity unknown.

  54. Identity unknown.

  55. Identity unknown.

  56. Identity unknown.

  57. In his comments on the ‘Jewish’ physiognomy (later Paul Mayer is described as ‘a little, degenerate Jew weighing barely 35 kilos, and grotesquely ugly’), on the ‘different’ attitude of the Jews to money and on the ‘difference in blood’, Fallada draws on the same anti-Semitic stereotypes that were being peddled by the Nazis in their inflammatory pamphlets and caricatures. In this respect the Prison Diary is a document of its times – alarmingly so. Fallada gives a forthright account of the change he underwent after the Nazis took power. He sees the behaviour of the victims as a confirmation of anti-Semitic prejudices. Fallada claims not to be a ‘victim’ or adherent of Nazi propaganda, yet the Prison Diary shows the extent to which he had internalized anti-Semitic arguments. In the 1945 typescript Fallada revised and ‘corrected’ these passages; see note 59.

  58. Lore Soldin; cf. note 26.

  59. The anti-Semitic stereotype of the Jews’ greed for money was revised by Fallada in the version of the text he edited for publication (the 1945 typescript). He adds the following explanation: ‘That was my first impression at the time, perhaps influenced after all by the constant Nazi propaganda pointing out that the Jews were a quite different (and of course inferior) race of people. Later I reflected further on these matters, and it eventually dawned on me that for one thing there were many among my many Jewish friends who thought and felt exactly as I did. And on the other hand it occurred to me that there were also thousands, tens of thousands of my own race, the so-called Aryans, who were prepared to put up with anything for the sake of money, who not only endured humiliations but were also willing to commit any crime if there was money to be made – witness the good old Sponars, Aryans through and through. There really is something very insidious about the odious form of propaganda practised by Mr Goebbels. Repeating the same old thing in every speech, month after month, year after year, over and over again! In the end the poison seeps into even the healthiest of bodies, and if you don’t recognize that, and don’t fight against it, you are lost.’ (Hans Fallada, Der unerwünschte Autor. Meine Erlebnisse während zwölf Jahre Naziterror. Typescript 1945, Hans Fallada Archive, Neubrandenburg, p. 82)

  60. Paul Mayer (1889–1970) was a publishing editor at Rowohlt Verlag from 1919 to 1936, and oversaw the publication of Fallada’s early novels, including his global best-seller Little Man – What Now? Mayer emigrated to Mexico in 1938, returning to Germany in 1948.

  61. Cf. notes 27 and 33.

  62. Cf. note 11. At the beginning of the 1930s Rowohlt Verlag was two-thirds owned by Leopold Ullstein. Ullstein Verlag was expropriated on 30 June 1934 as a ‘non-Aryan concern’ and taken over by the pro-Nazi Cautio Treuhand GmbH, which sold it on to Eher Verlag, the central publishing house of the NSDAP.

  63. In the 1945 typescript this passage has been rewritten. Fallada revised the notion that it was the Jews themselves who had ‘erected this barrier between themselves and other nations’. The later version reads: ‘During that time I came to understand that in the hour of danger a Jew feels closer to another Jew, however much they disagree and differ, than to his friend of non-Jewish blood from happier days. I must admit that at first I was shocked by this discovery, and I observed our dear Paul Mayer with sadness and disappointment. The fact that he shared secrets with an empty-headed man-about-town like Leopold Ullstein, secrets which he kept from me, his loyal friend – I found this very hurtful. It took a while for me to realize that what had now happened was exactly what the teachers in the jail in Fürstenwalde had predicted: in their hour of danger the Jews of every country stuck together, and a huge wave of national feeling swept through world Jewry. They were right to view us as outsiders: we were outsiders. The danger that constantly threatened the Jews did not affect us. Their cares were not our cares. We could be outraged, horrified by the vile behaviour of the Nazis, we could have the most profound sympathy for our Jewish friends, but as for helping them, there was absolutely nothing we could do. And they didn’t need our pity. After all, we belonged to a nation that had elected the Führer with 95 per cent of the vote, and vociferously applauded all his measures – why should the Jews, whose lives were constantly in danger, believe that we happened to belong to the other 5 per cent who had rejected him? Especially as there was no shortage of people who immediately set about exploiting the plight of the Jews. Jewish property was expropriated at ludicrous valuations and then flogged off at even more ludicrous prices to the upstanding Party followers and all the parasites who fell greedily upon these spoils.’ (Hans Fallada, Der unerwünschte Autor. Meine Erlebnisse während zwölf Jahre Naziterror. Typescript 1945, Hans Fallada Archive, Neubrandenburg, p. 85.) At this point in the typescript Fallada interpolated a story about the Jewish features editor Monty Jacobs (pp. 85f.). Through such additions, corrections and explanations he sought to underline his pro-Jewish attitude in 1945.

  64. See note 48.

  65. The political caricature De Podenas – Mr Pot de Naz by Honoré Daumier (published in La Caricature in 1833).

  66. Robert Ley (1890–1945) was made head of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF – German Labour Front) in 1933, when Germany’s trade unions were broken up and replaced by the DAF, which now represented all ‘German workers of brain and brawn’. Walther Funk (1890–1960), who had been editor of the Berliner Börsen-Zeitung until 1931, became Minister for Economic Affairs in 1938 and President of the Reichsbank in 1939. For Julius Streicher, see note 38.

  67. Peter Suhrkamp (1891–1959) studied German language and literature after the First World War and worked part-time as a teacher. In 1929 he gave up teaching and moved to Berlin, where he worked as a freelance contributor to the Berliner Tageblatt and the monthly magazine Uhu published by Ullstein. In 1932 he joined the staff of S. Fischer Verlag, initially as the editor of the journal Die Neue Rundschau. In 1936, two years after the death of Samuel Fischer, he bought up the share in the Fischer publishing business that Gottfried Bermann Fischer was not able to transfer when he went into exile in Vienna. Suhrkamp ran the publishing house until April 1944, when he was arrested by the Gestapo for high treason and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After the war Suhrkamp was granted the first publishing licence in Berlin by the British military government. He collaborated initially with Bermann Fischer, but they parted company in 1950 and Suhrkamp set up his own eponymous publishing house. Carl Zuckmayer gives the following assessment of Suhrkamp’s conduct during the Nazi period: ‘There is absolutely no question that Suhrkamp ever approved, supported or endorsed anti-Semitic measures or tendencies, nor did he exploit the plight of others, but rather took on a highly complicated and difficult task.’ (Carl Zuckmayer, Geheimreport, Göttingen 2002, p. 22) The factually untenable accusations that Fallada levels against Peter Suhrkamp here owe a great deal to personal antipathy. This dates back to the summer of 1933, when Suhrkamp successfully negotiated an end to the difficult situation in Berkenbrück on Fallada’s behalf. Fallada felt that Suhrkamp had treated him like a schoolboy: ‘It was a case of once a teacher, always a teacher with him, and he could be really acerbic and downright scathing when playing
that part.’ Then Suhrkamp wrote a review of Once We Had a Child in which he criticized the ending, which Fallada particularly liked. Rowohlt often sought Suhrkamp’s opinion, and in a letter to Fallada of 4 March 1935 he passed on Suhrkamp’s view that the title of the new novel Und wenn der letzte Schnee verbrennt [Even If the Last Drop of Snow is Burned] was too frivolous. It had also been suggested that Fallada could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he had made a few judicious cuts to the two previous novels (Once We Had a Child and Once a Jailbird). This kind of intervention led Fallada to suspect that Suhrkamp was trying to drive a wedge between him and Rowohlt. On 6 March he informed his publisher that he wished to have nothing more to do with Suhrkamp, and would not tolerate any further interference in his work. This personal animosity was evidently still there in 1944, when it found expression in the malicious gossip about Suhrkamp the ‘legacy-hunter’.

  68. The novels of the French writer Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880): Madame Bovary (1857), Salambo (1862), La Tentation de Saint Antoine (1874). Flaubert was a celebrated perfectionist, who took five years to write Madame Bovary, four years for Salambo and twenty-five years for La Tentation de Saint Antoine.

  69. The monthly magazine Uhu put out by Ullstein Verlag from 1924 to 1934 published Ein Mensch auf der Flucht [A Man On the Run] in 1931 (Vol. 7, No. 12, pp. 43–51); Gegen jeden Sinn und Verstand [Against All Reason] in 1932 (Vol. 8, No. 8, pp. 39f.); Mit Metermass und Giesskanne [With Ruler and Watering Can], also in 1932 (Vol. 8, No. 10, pp. 25–34); and Fünfzig Mark und ein fröhliches Weihnachtsfest [Fifty Marks and a Happy Christmas] in 1933 (Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 23–38 and 104–6).

  70. Eva Schubring (1903–1994), who was working as foreign correspondent of the Vossische Zeitung in 1932. In 1934 she married the writer Ottfried Graf Finck von Finckenstein (1901–1987).

  71. Emil Jannings (real name Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz, 1884–1950) returned to Germany in 1929 after a successful period in Hollywood, where he had won the first Oscar awarded to an actor. In 1930 he took on the role of Professor Unrat in the film of the novel The Blue Angel. He stayed in Germany throughout the Nazi years; after 1933 he collaborated on a number of propaganda films and was honoured by the regime, becoming ‘Staatsschauspieler’ [National Actor] in 1936 and Reich Senator in 1938.

  72. Friedrich Kroner (1865–1932).

  73. Samuel Fischer (1859–1934).

  74. Cf. note 67. Since 1932 S. Fischer Verlag had been run by Brigitte and Gottfried Bermann Fischer. In 1936 Bermann Fischer emigrated to Vienna, taking part of the publishing business with him. In 1938 he moved to Stockholm. The remaining part of the business in Berlin was managed by Peter Suhrkamp on behalf of the family. The challenging task of keeping the prestigious publishing house intact during the Nazi period led to quite a few misunderstandings and misinterpretations. The ‘legacy hunter’ accusation was the subject of widespread rumour. In Fallada’s account the hand of the literary artist is unmistakable. He uses the relationship between Suhrkamp and Samuel Fischer to tell a story, inventing scenes, bringing them vividly to life, and treating the persons involved as characters in a work of literature. Each episode serves to create tension and drive the action forward.

  75. The poem Üb immer Treu und Redlichkeit . . . (1775) by Ludwig Hölty was set to music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1791.

  76. Mark 8, verse 36 [quoted here in the Authorized Version].

  77. Brecht left Berlin with his family on 28 February 1933 and fled in the first instance to Vienna via Prague, then on to Switzerland and Denmark. This account of how Peter Suhrkamp helped him to escape is not supported by any evidence.

  78. The book of memoirs Our Home Today, published in 1943.

  79. The property at Büdnerei 17, described by Fallada in a letter to his parents (25 October 1933) as ‘a plain, simple country house’, was on the edge of the remote fishing village of Carwitz in Mecklenburg, where Fallada lived from October 1933 to December 1944.

  80. A fictional name for Carwitz, possibly suggested by the famous windmill [German: Mühle] at the entrance to the village.

  81. Between 1928 and 1935 Franz Fein translated eighteen books from English for Rowohlt Verlag. With the exception of Halliday Sutherland these were all books by American authors: Sinclair Lewis (8), Knickerbocker (5), Floyd Gibbons (1), Joseph Hergesheimer (1), Edward Albert Filene (1), William Faulkner (1).

  82. The American writer Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. His novels from 1928 to 1934 were published in German translation under the Rowohlt imprint. Franz Fein translated Elmer Gantry (1928), Mantrap (1928), The Man Who Knew Coolidge (1929), Dodsworth (1930), Our Mr Wrenn (1931), The Trail of the Hawk (1933), Ann Vickers (1933), Work of Art (1934).

  83. The book Die schlimme Botschaft by Carl Einstein (1885–1940) was published by Rowohlt Verlag in 1921.

  84. Rowohlt published the three collections of poems Allerdings (1928), Flugzeuggedanken (1929) and 103 Gedichte (1933).

  85. Anton Kippenberg (1874–1950) ran the Leipzig-based Insel Verlag from 1905 until his death. He formulated his publishing program in a letter to Hugo von Hofmannsthal of 1 December 1906: ‘To serve the cause of world literature in the Goethean sense, to match the form of a book to its content, to raise awareness of the art of the book and even of the book as luxury object, and to publish little in the way of contemporary literature, limited as far as possible to works that promise to endure.’ (As quoted in: S. Binder, review of Anton Kippenberg. Der Briefwechsel mit Julius Petersen 1907–1941, in: Goethe-Jahrbuch, Vol. 119, edited by Jochen Golz and Edith Zelm, 2002, p. 294.)

  86. In the 1945 typescript this passage has been revised and extended. The changes show Rowohlt in an even more positive light. In the typescript, for example, he is no longer presented as a ‘gambler’, and his ‘waywardness’ is toned down; the fact that he publishes American writers is emphasized instead. It is quite possible that Fallada was trying to do Rowohlt a good turn here, since his old publisher was facing a denazification tribunal in May 1945. The revised passage reads as follows: ‘In Germany it was never seen as one of the top-ranking publishing houses. The publishing director, Rowohlt himself, was much too wayward for that. He never followed a clear, straight line with his publishing program, as Dr Kippenberg famously did with his Insel Verlag; instead Rowohlt, who always liked to be around people and needed the company of other people, was always much more attuned to current social trends. He had a unique instinct for finding the book that people were waiting for, often without realizing it themselves. So for all the apparent waywardness his publishing house did have a guiding sense of purpose, bringing out more and more books over the years that reflected the contemporary zeitgeist. The fact that Rowohlt always sought to promote foreign novelists as well as German ones is entirely consistent with that aim. Ideally he wanted foreign authors who did not tread the conventional path, but who were themselves contemporary in a higher sense. So for example he published – often at great sacrifice – the work of American authors who seemed to him (and not only to him) to sound an entirely new note, such as Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe and Faulkner. He knew that these men would never be widely read by the German reading public, but he published them anyway, despite this, or perhaps because of it. He was never the kind of man who wanted to turn a publishing house into a purely money-making enterprise: instead he was always prepared to reinvest the profits from a current best-seller in an author who was only ever likely to make a loss for him.’ (Hans Fallada, Der unerwünschte Autor. Meine Erlebnisse während zwölf Jahre Naziterror. Typescript 1945, Hans Fallada Archive, Neubrandenburg, pp. 121f.)

  87. The novel was written between July 1936 and May 1937, and represents a return to the realism of A Small Circus and Once a Jailbird. The story takes place in 1923/24 in Berlin and on a country estate east of the river Elbe. The novel deals with the effects of inflation, the ‘desperate plight of a desperate people’. Wolf among Wolves became an unexpected success on its publication in September 193
7: the first edition (10,000 copies) had sold out by mid-November. The Nazi authorities saw the novel as a critique of the hated Weimar Republic, which ensured it would be well received. The reading public was pleased to have another ‘genuine Fallada’, which promised to be an entertaining but challenging read.

  88. Illegal paramilitary organizations that were encouraged, and in some cases actually operated, by the official German Reichswehr, in defiance of the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919. They were opposed to the Weimar Republic. The Black Reichswehr plays only a background role in Wolf among Wolves; its representative, Lieutenant Fritz, is depicted as a ‘cold adventurer’.

  89. The novel portrays a range of different social milieus. The featured characters include prostitutes, criminals, drug addicts and gamblers.

  90. After the departure of Paul Mayer, Friedo Lampe (1899–1945) was hired in 1937 to replace him. He worked as a publishing editor at Rowohlt Verlag until 1939; his novels Am Rande der Nacht (1933) and Septembergewitter (1937) were also published by Rowohlt.

  91. The biography Adalbert Stifter by Urban Roedl (real name Bruno Adler, 1889–1968) was published by Rowohlt Verlag in 1936. The book led to a ban on Ernst Rowohlt practising his profession as a publisher, on the grounds that he had allowed Jewish authors to carry on working under cover.

  92. Clara Ploschitzki (no biographical data available) had been Ernst Rowohlt’s secretary since the publishing business was first established in Leipzig. At his denazification tribunal Rowohlt claimed his Jewish secretary had worked for him for twenty-five years before he was forced to let her go in 1936 (?). (Ernst Rowohlt, Memorandum, in: Hans Fallada, Ewig auf der Rutschbahn. Briefwechsel mit dem Rowohlt Verlag, edited by Michael Töteberg and Sabine Buck, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2008, p. 417)