A Stranger in My Own Country

by Hans Fallada

  93. The‘ReichPogromNight’,morecommonlyknownas ‘Reichskristallnacht’, on the night of 9/10 November 1938.

  94. The headquarters of the Berlin police from 1890 to 1945, the office building on Alexanderplatz was increasingly used by the Gestapo after 1933. It also served as the central collection point for prisoners from all over the Reich, who were then taken from here to the Gestapo headquarters at Prinz Albrecht Strasse 8 for interrogation or transported straight to a concentration camp.

  95. Gustav Kilpper (1897–1963), managing director of the Nazi-controlled Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (DVA). Following its takeover by DVA on 1 January 1939, Rowohlt Verlag remained in existence initially as a subsidiary; until it was closed down on 1 November 1943 it was run by Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt, the eldest son of Ernst Rowohlt. The last book to be published under the Rowohlt imprint was Fallada’s Our Home Today (1943). Nothing of Fallada’s was ever published by DVA.

  96. Fallada’s debut novel The Young Goedeschal (1920), which he had given to Rowohlt in 1919 (not 1918, as stated here), was not ‘lost’; Fallada thought the book a failure, and consequently disowned it.

  97. Rowohlt Verlag used green envelopes for its correspondence.

  98. Here Fallada is mistaken: Ernst Rowohlt did not return from Brazil until December 1940.

  99. Ernst Udet (1896–1941), German First World War fighter pilot, on whom Carl Zuckmayer’s play Des Teufels General was based; in the 1920s and early 1930s he played parts in a number of films with an aviation theme, including (alongside Leni Riefenstahl) Die weisse Hölle von Piz Palü [The White Hell of Pitz Palu] (1929) and S.O.S. Eisberg [S.O.S. Iceberg] (1933). In 1935 Göring made him a colonel in the newly established Luftwaffe. Udet was appointed Inspector of Fighters and Dive-Bombers, and in 1939 he became the Director of Air Force Ordnance; in 1940 he rose to the rank of Colonel General. After the failures of the Luftwaffe air offensive against Britain, and the resulting accusations levelled by Hitler and Göring, Udet took his own life. Nazi propaganda presented his death as a flying accident. Rowohlt, who had also trained to be a pilot, had got to know Ernst Udet during the First World War.

  100. The correct dating is 1927.

  101. Cf. note 35.

  102. Carl Froelich (1875–1953), film director and pioneer of German film, founded Froelich-Film GmbH in 1920. He was one of the most highly regarded film directors in the Third Reich. He was appointed a professor in 1937 and president of the Reich Chamber of Film in 1939.

  103. Erhard Milch (1892–1972), German army and air force officer (appointed Field Marshal General in 1940), served from 1933 to 1945 as secretary of state at the Reich Air Ministry and Inspector General of the Luftwaffe; following the death of Ernst Udet in November 1941, be became Director of Air Force Ordnance until July 1944. His Jewish ancestry is debated to this day. The rumours current at the time are also recorded in Victor Klemperer’s published diaries; in the entry for 18 October 1936 we read: ‘And Marta talked about Milch, the air force general, who had a Jewish father and an Aryan mother: he claims he was the offspring of his mother’s adultery with an Aryan.’ (As quoted in: Victor Klemperer, The Klemperer Diaries 1933–1945, abridged and translated by Martin Chalmers, London 2000, p. 189.) Göring is said to have remarked, à propos Milch: ‘I decide who is a Jew!’

  104. Ernst Alfred Schmidt (1895–1943); the nickname is an acronym, derived from his birthplace Schlegel in eastern Germany, close to the Czech-Polish border: Schmidt aus Schlegel [Schmidt from Schlegel]. After the First World War, from which he returned a convinced pacifist, Sas trained as a music teacher, and in 1929 he found a full-time job teaching in Leipzig. At the beginning of the 1930s he joined the KPD, and was arrested by the Gestapo for the first time in 1933. In 1934 he moved to Berlin, where he set up a private music school close to the Kurfürstendamm. Here he made contact with the resistance group around Hanno Günther, and in the autumn of 1941 he was arrested along with other members of the group. Released in March 1942, he was arrested again in July. On 9 October 1942 he was sentenced to death for plotting high treason, and executed on 5 April 1943 in Plötzensee. Fallada met Sas in 1937 through the actress Marga Dietrich (1897–1978), with whom he had been on friendly terms since the stage adaptation of A Small Circus by her first husband, Heinz-Dietrich Kenter (1896–1984), in 1931. Marga Dietrich had been Sas’ live-in partner since 1934. (See Manfred Kuhnke, . . . dass ihr Tod nicht umsonst war!, Neubrandenburg 1991, pp. 51–5.)

  105. Marga Dietrich; see previous note.

  106. The letter that Fallada apparently planned to incorporate into his manuscript later reads as follows: ‘My dearest, the letter that will reach you via the prison authorities is written. I’ve also written one to Schlegel, which is just as much for you as the one to you is for the folks in Schlegel. I just want to tell you about my great love for you, how it makes me so happy at this particular time, and that I now bequeath that happiness to you, to be with you at all times on your journey through life, and eventually, some day, far in the future, in your final hour. May my love be so great and powerful that, after a short time of tears, it enfolds you all the days of your life, protecting you, bearing you up, warming you: for ever and ever and ever. I saved some bread from breakfast and the bigger half I have just eaten, slowly. The other half I shall send to you. Our wedding breakfast. (People get married by proxy, after all, so why not this?) Eat as I have eaten, so that I am as much in you as you were in me when I ate: then get on with your life and grab it with both hands! For the real purpose of my life (so it seems to me at least, although at this moment it no longer matters to me) remains unaccomplished. I’m only going to be leaving this body now (not this world!!!), at the very most we would have had maybe 30 years together. It has been my privilege that the shortness of my days has been more than made up for by the richness of my life (and never forget, it was your love that made this possible). You now remain behind. Whatever befalls you, whatever makes you happy, joyful, strong, good and reverential in the face of life, people and the unknowable: in all this I will be coming to you and I will be present with you: in music, paintings, books, in our kindly Mother Nature, in the strivings, errings and attainments of the human heart’s desire. Do not grieve for longer, or more deeply, than is natural. There is no reason why you should. Think of it this way: I am no longer flesh and blood, and therefore not usurping anyone else’s place. The time has come. Be good to Sas by being good to those around you. I kiss you, my one and only wife, in fondest love! sasil.’ (Reproduced in: Volker Hoffmann, Der Dienstälteste von Plötzensee. Das zerrissene Leben des Musikerziehers Alfred Schmidt-Sas (1895–1943), Berlin 2000, pp. 230f.) It was through his close friendship with Marga Dietrich that Fallada learned about the letters and poems that Sas had written in his death cell.

  107. This defamation of German émigré authors, which serves first and foremost to justify Fallada’s own decision to remain in Germany, contains the central argument of ‘inward emigration’, which was wheeled out after 1945 in the increasingly bitter argument between ‘those who had stayed behind’ and the ‘émigrés’. So for example Frank Thiess (1890– 1977), who famously clashed with Thomas Mann on the issue, claimed that it had been a great deal harder to live through the ‘German tragedy’ in Germany than to pass comment on it from the ‘boxes and orchestra seats of other countries’.

  108. Pseudonym of the illustrator and cartoonist Erich Ohser (1903–1944); the ‘Father and Son’ comic strip stories, which appeared in the Berliner Illustrirte between 1934 and 1937, made him famous.

  109. Ohser drew some 800 cartoons for the National Socialist weekly Das Reich between its launch in May 1940 and his arrest in 1944. He did not align himself with the policies of the Nazi regime.

  110. The cartoon was first published in 1972 as the illustration for February in the literary calendar put out by the East German publisher Aufbau Verlag. In 1993 it featured on a commemorative stamp issued by the German Post Office to mark the centenary of Fallada’s birth, and has r
emained one of the best-known portraits of the writer ever since. (See Manfred Kuhnke, Der traurige Clown und der Elefant auf dem Seil. Hans Fallada und e.o. plauen, Neubrandenburg 2003.)

  111. Eugenie Marlitt (1825–1887), a popular novelist who wrote entertaining stories for the illustrated family magazine Die Gartenlaube. Her most successful novel was Das Geheimnis der alten Mamsell (1867).

  112. Erich Ohser and his friend Erich Knauf were reported to the Gestapo by Captain Bruno Schultz and his wife Margarete. On the morning of 28 March 1944 Ohser and Knauf were arrested. Erich Ohser took his life in unexplained circumstances during the night of 5 April in the Alt-Moabit detention centre. Erich Knauf was condemned to death on 6 April 1944 by Roland Freisler, president of the People’s Court, and beheaded on 2 May 1944 in Brandenburg prison.

  113. Fallada inserted three of these ‘separate entries’ into the Prison Diary, on 30 September, 5 October and 7 October. In these pages he writes about his situation in the prison, about his cellmates and the notes he is now writing.

  114. The correspondence with Friedrich Hermann Küthe began in March 1933: the unemployed librarian wrote to the author he so admired and asked for a portrait photograph. Although the correspondents never met in person, and always addressed each other formally as ‘Mr Fallada’ and ‘Mr Küthe’, their correspondence from the years 1933 to 1946 suggests a relationship of closeness and trust. They discussed books, and Fallada had words of encouragement for his unemployed pen-friend. In 1940 Küthe, now serving with the army in France, sent silk stockings and sweets to Carwitz. In 1943 he was seriously wounded on the Eastern front and spent some five months in a field hospital in Chemnitz. The letter that reached Fallada in the prison at Neustrelitz-Strelitz does not appear to have had any negative consequences for Küthe. The bundle of letters is kept with Fallada’s literary estate in the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

  115. The story was first published in: Hans Fallada, Drei Jahre kein Mensch, Berlin 1997, pp. 109–13.

  116. The nurse Friedrich Holst (born 1900). He accompanied Hans Fallada to Carwitz on 8 October 1944.

  117. As part of the drive to align the film industry with National Socialist ideology, Tobis AG was taken into state ownership in 1935. Tobis star Emil Jannings became a member of the supervisory board in 1937, and he used this position to further his own career. Fallada signed the contract with Tobis on 12 November 1937 and delivered the manuscript on time on 28 February 1938.

  118. This is incorrect: Fallada is confusing Rudolf Virchow with Robert Koch. Koch’s life was made into a film in 1939 by Hans Steinhoff under the title Robert Koch, der Bekämpfer des Todes; Emil Jannings took the title role, Werner Krauss played Rudolf Virchow.

  119. See note 102.

  120. Jannings played the village judge Adam in the film version of Kleist’s Der zerbrochene Krug. The film’s premiere took place in Berlin on 22 October 1937.

  121. The Hotel Kaiserhof, which opened in 1875 as Berlin’s first luxury hotel, was located at Wilhelmplatz 3/5, across from the Reich Chancellery in what was then Berlin’s government district. In the 1920s the hotel’s owners sympathized with right-wing nationalist organizations and made their premises available to anti-republican groups. In 1931 Hitler had a meeting in his suite with leading German industrialists, and in 1932 he moved into the hotel permanently. During the election campaign the upper floor of the Kaiserhof became the provisional party headquarters of the NSDAP. Other Nazi functionaries were also living in the hotel. In April 1935 Hermann Göring held a lavish wedding reception at the Kaiserhof when he married his second wife Emmy. Joseph Goebbels’ memoirs dealing with the ‘time of struggle’ leading up to the takeover of power were entitled: Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei [From Kaiserhof to Reich Chancellery]. In November 1943 the Kaiserhof was completely destroyed in a British bombing raid.

  122. Joseph Goebbels; as a child he fell ill with osteomyelitis, which caused his right lower leg to atrophy and left him with a club foot. At around 165 cm he was also relatively short. Abroad, and on the street in Germany, people openly lampooned his physical handicap; Goebbels was mocked as ‘the Teutonic dwarf’ and ‘Humpelstiltskin’.

  123. The fictional character Gustav Hackendahl is based on the Berlin horse-drawn cab driver Gustav Hartmann (1859–1938), who was nick-named ‘Iron Gustav’ for his opposition to motorized taxis. He became a celebrity in 1928, when he took his horse-drawn cab from Berlin to Paris and back. Jannings was much taken with Fallada’s manuscript, since it offered him a meaty role as the eponymous cab driver. However, Goebbels insisted on changes to the text: he wanted Fallada to continue the story up until the time the Nazis came to power. Fallada agreed and wrote a new ending that satisfied the Propaganda Minister. The film project was approved by Goebbels, but fell foul of Alfred Rosenberg’s objection to any involvement of Hans Fallada in a German film project. When the novel appeared in 1938, it was savaged by the National Socialist press.

  124. The American film Cavalcade (1933) directed by Frank Lloyd, based on the play of the same name by Noel Coward, won three Academy Awards in 1932/33, including Best Film and Best Director. The film was also a big hit in Germany in the 1930s.

  125. The Carl Froelich Film Studio was incorporated into the Ufa concern in October 1937. A power struggle ensued between Carl Froelich and the head of production at Ufa, Ernst Hugo Corell. In 1939 Corell was fired.

  126. The actress and chanteuse Gussy Holl (Auguste Marie Holl, 1888– 1966) had been married to Emil Jannings since 1922. In the 1920s Kurt Tucholsky and Walter Mehring wrote chansons for her, which she performed in the Berlin cabaret ‘Schall und Rauch’. Gussy Holl was the third wife of Emil Jannings.

  127. On 12 September 1935 Fallada was officially declared an ‘undesirable author’. From now on his works could only be published in Germany, and foreign translation rights could no longer be granted. On 4 December 1935 his ‘undesirable’ status was revoked.

  128. The screenwriter and author Thea von Harbou (1888–1954), who wrote screenplays for Carl Froelich in 1935 (Ich war Jack Mortimer) and for Emil Jannings in 1937 (Der zerbrochene Krug). On 23 July 1938 Goebbels noted in his diary: ‘Long discussion with Jannings. I pointed out all the weak points in his film script. He cut up rough, but then calmed down. The ending will be completely revised and given a more positive twist.’ That same afternoon a meeting took place in Jannings’ lakeside house at St. Wolfgang, at which Thea von Harbou and Goebbels were present: ‘Further protracted debate about the film. With Jannings, Krause, K. . ., Mrs Harbou. The discussion became quite heated. But in the end everyone came round to my point of view.’ The film project under discussion can only have been Iron Gustav, because Fallada was told on 28 July that Goebbels had approved the project in principle and was only insisting on one change: a new ending. (Joseph Goebbels, Tagebücher. Vol. 3: 1935–1939, Munich/Zurich 1992, p. 1240)

  129. The novel, which is a plea for reform of the justice system and more humane treatment of criminals, prompted the first furious attacks on Fallada in 1934 by the Nazi-controlled press.

  130. Fallada was caught in the middle of the power struggle between Goebbels and Rosenberg to control literary policy. As early as January 1938 a savage review of Wolf among Wolves appeared in Bücherkunde, the official organ of the ‘Rosenberg Office’ for the ‘cultivation of literature’. In October 1938 Rosenberg succeeded in blocking the film project with Fallada, which had the support of Goebbels (cf. note 123). In a letter to his mother of 17 October Fallada says that a spokesman for the ‘Rosenberg Office’ had recently stated in Berlin that ‘the position of the Reich Chamber of Literature is essentially that all Fallada’s writings, past and future, are entirely unsuitable’ (letter to Elisabeth Ditzen, 17 October 1938, Hans Fallada Archive, Neubrandenburg). When Iron Gustav appeared on 28 November 1938, the ‘Rosenberg Office’ conducted a smear campaign against Fallada.

  131. During the filming of Die Patrioten (directed by Karl Ritter, with Lída Baarová and Mathias Wieman in the starring r
oles) a showdown apparently took place between Goebbels, his mistress Lída Baarová and her partner Gustav Fröhlich, which ended with a slap in the face for the Propaganda Minister. Fröhlich had indeed found Goebbels and Lída Baarová in a compromising situation, probably in January 1937, and had slammed his car door in the Minister’s face. The affair between Goebbels and Baarová became public knowledge, and Goebbels was even prepared to get a divorce because of Baarová. But Hitler intervened at the instigation of Magda Goebbels and ordered Goebbels to end the relationship.

  132. Mathias Wieman (1902–1969) gave a reading from Wolf among Wolves on the radio on 5 November 1937. He and his wife visited Fallada in Carwitz at the beginning of December. Fallada and Wieman kept in contact over the next few years. Wieman visited Fallada for the last time in Berlin in November 1945. Fallada’s account of the relationship between Wieman and Goebbels takes a few liberties with the facts. Wieman, who staged Das Frankenburger Würfelspiel [a historical open-air pageant cum morality play] during the Olympic Games, had been in close contact with Goebbels since 1936. In January 1937 he was awarded the honorific title ‘Staatsschauspieler’ [National Actor] and invited to join the supervisory board of Ufa in April of that year. The falling-out with Goebbels occurred when in August 1937 the Minister strongly criticized Wieman’s portrayal of a general staff officer in the film Unternehmen Michael [Operation Michael]: Wieman, he claimed, was not right for the part of an army officer. With reference to discussions about a film project telling the story of ‘Dr Peters and the colonies’, Goebbels notes: ‘But not Wieman for the lead role’ (diary entry for 20 October 1937). Wieman’s appearance in the film Die Kadetten [The Cadets] was also judged by Goebbels to be ‘a failure’ (diary entry for 30 July 1939). Wieman moved to Hamburg, where in 1940 he performed in Faust under the direction of Gustav Gründgens. In 1941 he was back in Berlin, where he had a part in the film Ich klage an [I accuse] (1941). During the war Wieman continued to work in films and on the radio, where he recited German poetry in the regular Sunday series ‘Das Schatzkästlein’.