This is Hans Fallada’s novel, Little Man, What Now?
If you’ve flicked through my blog pages, you will know I’ve talked about Hans Fallada’s more well-known novel, Alone In Berlin. Although not on my blog I’ve also read his novel Iron Gustav, so you could call me a big fan. I love German Literature, especially Fallada’s novels set in Berlin.
This latest one I’ve read, Little Man, What Now?’, is probably most akin to Iron Gustav. Both track families living through the recession in 1930s Berlin. Iron Gustav, is a large Family Chronicle, tracking the fortunes and (mostly misfortunes) of a Berlin Family across a broader Time period.
Little Man, What Now? Is different and it follows a young couple called Pinneberg and ‘Lӓmmchen’ as they navigate their young married life together. I love Hans Fallada’s writing, and I didn’t want this to finish, as I think he’s only written one more novel after this.
The Story
The novel begins with a prologue, a young unmarried couple, Pinneberg and Lӓmmchen visit a gynaecologist in a town just north of Berlin in 1931. Far from getting the contraception they want, they are told that Lӓmmbchen is pregnant. They visit Lӓmmbchen’s family, who don’t take to Pinneberg as he is a ‘white collar worker’, which means he’s in business, not trade like her father and brother.
The prologue is entitled ‘The Holy Innocents’. You are drawn into their love affair and quick youthful marriage. It becomes deeply personal as they start up life together in their first run down, top floor flat let to them by an eccentric widow.
Despite the personal touches in the description of the early days of their marriage, there is something transient and recurrent about the formulation of their relationship. It is personal, but Fallada, shows as the novel proceeds the timelessness of their situation, that they are one of many couples, to fall in love, marry, and try to make ends meet in an economic world that is unforgiving to the sacristy of young love.
Time Periods
All of their little foibles and upset are set in the backdrop of the massive recession in Germany, causing a changeable political climate, and as we know in History, the start of the Second World War. This novel was published in Germany in 1932, so it is likely that Fallada and his readers would not have predicted the catastrophe that was to come.
There is a particularly poignant bit for me that I doubt Fallada or his readers knew the significance of at the time. This lady starts talking to Pinneberg and mentions she is Jewish by heritage, but not religious, but she says something to Pinneberg like; ‘With everything going on at the moment (I think the propaganda against Jewish people was beginning) , I don’t feel I should leave the faith completely, it wouldn’t be right’.
I mean that’s all the woman says but, we as readers have the weight and knowledge of history, and it adds resonance to our reading of the politics in the book.
Pinneberg also works with a guy, (whom he doesn’t like very much), who is described as a Nazi. I think around then, obviously it was a fringe political party which was growing in popularity largely because of the huge recession in Germany. This colleague of Pinneberg’s is seen as a bit of a radical supporting them.
Things Don’t Change
I won’t be shy in saying, I resonated a lot with the early days of their first flat together. The conversations they have over meals, food budgets, flat bills, rent and how all these things work in the very very adult world, were all conversations I and my boyfriend had when we first moved into our little top floor flat.
Although the novel gets bleaker, their settling in to proper adult life together was highly amusing and familiar. It was little things like Lӓmmbchen confessing to having eaten all the smoked salmon on her way home from the deli or her confessing, yes she did burn the soup again. Equally Pinneberg was never without is foibles, as they tackle work, long shifts, rubbish pay and questionable landlords and family members. There is a really bizarre bit where Pinneberg, not allowed onto the labour ward, goes off and ends up accidently invited to a nudist swimming evening at the local pool!
Cute Names
This novel is translated from its Original German. The translators makes a note at the beginning about the names the couple use for one another.
It is good practice if you want to read books in translation like this to read the translators note at the beginning to understand the choices they have made in their translation. Languages are pretty fluid, and even translating from German to English is not always direct or straight forward.
it is therefore up to the translator to pick what they deem most appropriate for the novel or the author’s original intentions.
So the translator of this one describes his choice on translating the nicknames the couple have for one another.
I really found Pinneberg’s name for his wife, Lӓmmbchen very endearing. Her actual name, which she is barley called in the book is Emma. But ‘Lӓmmbchen’, is ‘Lambkin’ in English, which is incredibly cute, no? AW
Lӓmmchen’s name for her husband, Pinneberg (his surname), is translated to ‘Boy’ or ‘Boyo’. ‘Boyo’ to me is a bit of an odd choice. But not knowing enough about translation, I didn’t really have a better alternative haha. Mostly he becomes ‘my boy’ to Lӓmmbchen which is almost as equally endearing.
Man vs. State
This novel, as I said has lots of amusing and playful bits, particularly towards the beginning. However, as there married life proceeds, their economic position becomes precarious, and the novelty of being young and in love wears off, the novel turns into a bleak critique of Capitalism.
The title of the novel ‘Little Man, What now?’, I think is almost being said by the Capitalist state. Fallada across the novel, carefully tracks Pinneberg’s silent economic then personal degradation alongside the state’s growth in power and wealth. It is a sequence of poor housing, poor working conditions, unforeseen expenses and the state’s impersonal bureaucracy to people just trying to survive.
The grind and realness of adult life diminishes the youthful expressions of love the novel begins with. Towards the end of the novel, Lӓmmchen becomes ‘the woman’, showing their lack of defence towards a brutal economic climate and world.
Although bleak, it is definitely worth a read. Fallada writes with such humanity and sympathy that this young couple, Lӓmmchen and Pinneberg, could be any young family, in any time period, showing the often faceless modern struggle to just get by.
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