The Drinker (novel)

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The Drinker is a novel by Hans Fallada . The author wrote the work in 1944 while he was imprisoned in the Neustrelitz-Strelitz state institution . He relied on his own experiences with alcohol addiction . The novel was not published posthumously until 1950.

Biographical background

The drinker is considered Fallada's most personal work , along with The Nightmare written below . The author was imprisoned for three and a half months after a suspected manslaughter attempt on his former wife. While in custody, he secretly wrote the so-called "drinker's manuscript" (for protection he disguised it as secret writing - it was illegible, tightly written, turned upside down and written back in the spaces), an intensive discussion of the humiliations and personal crises during the past years. The novel, which was only published after Fallada's death (1947), is part of this manuscript.

Table of contents

Erwin Sommer's business has been going bad for some time. When he lost a large order to his young competitor Heinze due to his negligence, he washed away his grief with half a bottle of white wine. Against his wife's wishes, Sommer goes on a business trip to Hamburg, where he gets used to drinking regularly within a week. Eventually his wife finds out his alcohol addiction and the bad situation of the business and wants him to go into therapy by having two doctors take him to the sanatorium, but he escapes from the car on the way. Due to crime and other alcohol crashes, he was first sent to prison as a remand prisoner, and later to a closed sanatorium and nursing home. During her only visit there, his wife informs him that she has teamed up with his young competitor on both business and private occasions. As a result, Sommer loses control of himself in a fit of anger. His desperation grows and eventually leads him to drink from the ethanol supplies on his ward after a long and forced abstinence. This is discovered and taken together with the anger towards his wife as a sign that he cannot be released. His permanent placement as a “mentally ill” is ordered by the head of the institution. With his ex-wife's regular alimony, he could lead a materially carefree life. But he decides to put an end to his existence himself; not through violent acts - he is, as he himself admits, too cowardly for that - but through intentionally induced contagion by tubercular inmates of the institution. When he felt the first signs of the fatal illness, he imagined how he, inspired by an overdose of alcohol, would float away in the arms of his former lover, in intoxication and oblivion: "And if this happens to me in the hour of my death, I will bless my life and I will not have suffered in vain! "

Film adaptations

The Drinker was filmed twice for television. In 1967 the leading actor Siegfried Lowitz received the Golden Camera for his performance in The Drinker . In 1995 the highly acclaimed remake came with Harald Juhnke in the lead role as a television film on WDR , later also on ARD . Directed by Tom Toelle , the script was written by Ulrich Plenzdorf based on the novel by Fallada.

Audio book

Der Trinker was published as an audio book by Edition Apollon in 2010; Read in full by the actor Christian Melchert , read by André Grotta on HieraxMedien in 2019 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://muromez.com/2015/08/02/hans-fallada-der-trinker/ , last accessed: July 6, 2019
  2. ↑ Hans Fallada - The Drinker (audio book). In: buchrevier.com. February 12, 2020, accessed April 9, 2020 .