This is up there as one of my favourite books (alongside a few others on a list that sees many changes !).
This feels like quite a bold statement and every time I say it about a book I say it with caution, in case I am challenged. I always have my reasons; this book tells almost poetically the impact an individual can have in the backdrop of momentous, terrifying historic events. I read it shortly before my little trip to Berlin in July 2019. It was published in Germany in 1947, but remarkably only translated and published in English for the first time in 2009, met again with instant success.
About the Book
Originally titled in German as ‘Jeder stirbt für sich allein’ or in English, ‘Everyone/man dies alone’, it is based upon the true criminal case of a working-class couple, Elise and Otto Hampel (in the novel they are Anna and Otto Quangels), living in Berlin during the rise of Nazism and the second World War. Hans Fallada acquired the police case file from a poet friend, after returning to Germany in 1947, after the Nazi Regime fell. He had many personal problems including addiction and was institutionalized many times throughout his life. Fallada wrote the story in just 24 days, and died a month later, before it was published. Fallada is a really interesting author, and I will probably do a post about his personal life in the future, along with his other Berlin based novel, Iron Gustav.
In the book, after their son is killed they begin writing postcards, urging the German public to resist the rise of Nazism and Adolf Hitler. They leave them on trams, bus stations and stairwells discreetly, in a political climate that urged neighbours to turn on neighbours in allegiance to the government. With the majority of the postcards reported to authorities, a pattern emerges and the Gestapo are soon on their tails. A game of cat and mouse, and close encounters ensues between the couple and the Nazi state.
The postcards they discreetly distributed around Berlin had personal messages such as “Mother! The Führer has murdered my son. Mother! The Führer will murder your sons too, he will not stop till he has brought sorrow to every home in the world.” For me the telling of a story of a small act of resistance shows the personal humanity that must always be present in these great catastrophic events in history, under such regimes. The novel shows the fear of the average working class German living under the Nazis, the slightest look, whisper or action could mean disappearing in the night, with no trace.
What I think
The actions of the real- life couple could be judged as pointless and ineffectual, when placed against the might of the Nazi regime at the time. The file could have been destroyed and Fallada may have never fictionalised their story for a book, thereby their existence in history would have been erased.
But I disagree, actions such as this might mean nothing in a hundred years’ time, but that does not reduce the thought or feeling that incited them. Fallada writes beautifully and with the postcards and police files there is a definite theme of ‘paper’ or ‘documents as evidence of history occurring. The opening of the novel even begins with this theme, as it describes a postwoman tramping up to the couples flat with the letter, telling them their son is dead. The most important document in the novel perhaps, as this incites the future events.
Lovely Berlin
I am glad I read this book before visiting Berlin, both the city and country wear their history and the consequences of it, out in the open. Every corner of Berlin, and literally every street bears the marks of the countries rich, troublesome history. The literal marks of former Berliners are still on the streets; across the city on the pavements there are metal plaques of names and dates of those former residents who were deported by the Nazis. It is both a harrowing and touching tribute to all those lives that once called that wonderful, but once frightening city home.
Even outside the apartment we stayed in was a plaque for a young couple and their child. I enjoyed the confidence of the city to move forward without disregarding the responsibility they had to keep the memory of the past alive. The memory of those Berliners who were cruelly snatched from their city, is at the centre of the cities memory and memorial parks today, and it is nice, despite their tragic endings, they can still be a part of the place they once called home.
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