In the last car
In the last car is a story by Leonhard Frank . It was published in 1925 by Rowohlt Verlag and in 1929 under the title Fall bei Reclam .
content
1st chapter
A banker and a traveling salesman get to know each other in a health resort in the mountains. On the way to a café you will pass a sawmill. They learn that the workers are on strike because around 100 of them, around a third of the workforce, are about to be laid off. A socialist agitator speaks to the workers. Someone is standing a little apart with a notebook - a spy, as it turns out later.
2nd chapter
Travelers board a train that is supposed to go down from the health resort into the valley. A drunken railroad worker is docking the last car in which the following people ride:
In the rear compartment:
- the banker with his heavily pregnant wife
- the traveling salesman
- a clergyman
- an officer
- an editor in chief
- a university professor
In the front compartment:
- the agitator
- The prosecutor
On the floor:
- the informant (appointed by the public prosecutor)
- a laid-off worker from the sawmill
- a corps student
- a farmer
The prosecutor tells the agitator that he is prosecuting at political trials and warns him that for people like him who incite workers, he can seek long prison terms or even the death penalty.
3rd chapter
In the back compartment you can talk about the political and economic situation. The banker's wife wants to convince her husband to finance a school for talented working-class children, but he refuses. Then the conversation comes to a very high viaduct , over which the train is to travel shortly afterwards and which is considered to be a masterpiece of architecture.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor tells the agitator that even in his youth he wanted to become an "avenger of the poor, a revolutionary", which he is fighting today in court. The agitator accuses him of "cynicism" and "lasciviousness".
4th chapter
Another passenger, who was standing at the back of the car and counting money, suddenly throws the door open and jumps out of the car. The car has separated from the train and is slowly rolling on, which the passengers do not notice yet. When the train passes a switch , the station attendant adjusts the switch so that the detached wagon is diverted to a branch line on which freight trains drive wood to a sawmill. The route goes downhill and the car is getting faster. The worker wants to pull the emergency brake because of the man who jumped off and notices that the car has been disconnected and that there is no more rescue from a fatal accident. The others become aware of the danger with a delay, but then suddenly.
The faster the car races, the more panic increases; they run aimlessly through the car and are tossed to and fro. The woman goes into labor, but her screams cannot tear her man out of his own fear and paralysis. The worker helps her give birth on the floor of the compartment. The banker believes that the car will jump out of the curve of the viaduct and crash - a mistake, since the train left this route at the switch. A so far not mentioned passenger, a "carousel owner", falls madly from the front compartment and jumps out of the car, where his arm is torn off. In the distance, the agitator sees a freight train that is threatening to collide with. Shortly afterwards, the driver of this train noticed the car and accelerated to avoid a collision. When the speeds have equalized, he brakes carefully so that the car slowly opens up and the train comes to a stop.
5th chapter
In their panic, the passengers do not notice their rescue at first. Then they leave the car exhausted. The train driver notices that the railroad worker forgot to hook in the fuses when he hitched up the car. He couples the car and takes the passengers to the sawmill. The conversations between the travelers are slowly starting again. The banker takes care of his wife's medical care on arrival, but the incident disrupts the relationship between the two of them - the woman believes that the failure to help in the emergency can tell that her husband never really loved her. He indirectly confirms this by leaving her hospital bed shortly afterwards for a business meeting.
Subject
The passengers represent different groups of the society of the Weimar Republic ; everyone behaves according to the role expectations placed on this group: the traveling salesman is jovial and superficial, the professor serious and silent, the clergyman only speaks in religious phrases etc. These roles fall away from people in fear of death. Their behavior after the banker warned of the approaching viaduct is described as follows:
"Those were the last sounds of human language, already roared by the screams of fear of death, for which there are no words in any language. The very last remains of the life masks, masks that had become faces in the course of life, fell off - the primal face appeared . They all pressed themselves, retreating in front of the viaduct, staggering over one another, fighting wildly and roaring in fear of death, against the back wall of the car, eight meters further away from the fall. "
Frank represents here social orders and conventions, even civilization as a whole, as a thin surface that disappears immediately in the event of an existential threat, as a result of which humans degrade themselves and almost sink themselves down to animals. The conclusion of the narrative shows that the event had no lasting effect on the passengers, since every figure who speaks again falls back into their previous behavior and language patterns.
Individual evidence
- ^ Leonhard Frank: In the last car. Stories. Reclam, Stuttgart 1959 [1982] (= Reclams Universal Library 7004). P. 37.