Everyone dies for himself (Roman)

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Lettering Everyone dies for himself on the cover of one of the first issues

Everyone dies for himself is a novel by the German writer Hans Fallada (Rudolf Wilhelm Friedrich Ditzen) from 1947. The novel is based on the authentic case of Otto and Elise Hampel , who laid out postcard leaflets against Hitler in Berlin from 1940 to 1942 and had been denounced. Fallada wrote the novel in just under four weeks in late 1946; he died on February 5, 1947. The novel is considered to be the first book by a German non-emigrant writer about the resistance against National Socialism .

Since 2002 the novel has been published, partly newly translated and partly translated for the first time, in the USA, Great Britain, Israel and France and has become a bestseller. The unabridged original version of the novel was republished in Germany in 2011 and also proved to be a sales success.

content

In the first part ("The Quangels") the main characters of the novel are introduced: master carpenter Otto Quangel and his wife Anna; they live in Jablonskistr. 55 in Berlin. Barkhausen, an informer and casual thief, lives in the same house with his family; Persicke family, Nazis loyal to the line; the Jewess Rosenthal and the retired judge Fromm. The postwoman Eva Kluge comes into the house with a field post letter informing the Quangels that their only son Otto died in the Western campaign . Eva's husband Enno Kluge, a work-shy no-good with a preference for women and horse racing, knows Barkhausen. Trudel also comes into the house, the dead soldier's almost fiancée, who works in a communist cell.

With the death of Otto junior, the Quangel couple had the idea of writing cards with anti-fascist messages and displaying them in stairwells. Barkhausen and Enno Kluge want to steal from Frau Rosenthal's apartment. They are prevented from doing so by the Persickes, who in turn want to steal, but Fromm prevents them from doing so. Fromm hides Mrs. Rosenthal, but she jumps out of the window and dies. Trudel is expelled from the communist cell.

The second part (“The Gestapo”) reports how the first cards appear in Berlin and what they do: horror for the respective finder. When he visits a doctor, Enno Kluge is drawn into such a card find and interrogated; he was able to escape, was spied on by Barkhausen and finally “sold” to the police. Barkhausen also wanted to gutt Enno's new girlfriend, Frau Häberle, but didn't get the money and was beaten up by young people. His son Kuno, who he used as an informant, is one of the boys who beat him up and then leaves home. The Gestapo officer Escherich is tasked with clearing up the writing of cards. He approaches the matter systematically, but is pressured to deliver the perpetrator as quickly as possible. Although he is convinced of Enno's innocence, he drives this suspect to suicide in order to be able to show at least something.

“The game is against Quangels” is the title of the third part: Trudel has married and is pregnant; she happened to witness Otto Quangel laying out a map in a stairwell. Her husband Karl Hergesell is entrusted with a suitcase for storage by a former Communist Party comrade - so both of them are later drawn into the Quangel case. Quangels made contact with Heffkes, Anna's brother and sister-in-law. On occasional visits, they also display cards in this area. Quangel is observed and displayed once; However, Escherich's successor lets him go because he is looking for a tram driver as a clerk due to the distribution of the tickets in Berlin. When Quangel loses two cards in his sawmill and reports to the German Labor Front (DAF) that he has found them, the company is closed. Quangel is recognized as a perpetrator and arrested by Escherich due to his residence in Jablonskistraße. Quangel is brought before Escherich, who triumphantly mocks his most dogged opponent. By showing him almost all the cards Quangel has ever written, he shows that people by no means read and keep the cards, but on the contrary want to distance themselves from them as quickly as possible and therefore hand them in to the police. Quangel, too, was initially shocked by this, but after a while he took courage because seven cards were not found. Escherich reminds him of the poor effectiveness of the years of work that Quangel will pay with his life. Quangel only replies that decent people have to fight because otherwise they will no longer be decent at some point. Subsequently, he blames Escherich, who considers himself very successful, that he too is dependent on the whims of those in power. After the conversation with Quangel, Escherich shoots himself because he has realized how mendacious his whole life has been, since he has always distanced himself from his actions and the persecuted victims. He is the only one for whom the cards had the desired effect.

Eva Kluge now works in the country for her sister. Her new friend Kienschäper encourages her to take in the homeless Kuno. Barkhausen is involved in a theft with the informer Klebs, is arrested and beaten up.

The fourth part follows “The End”: The interrogations of the Quangel couple are described; Anna accidentally mentioned Trudel’s name, which is why she and Hergesell are arrested. Trudel had a miscarriage. This is followed by stays in various prisons, the encounter with a human prison pastor and an inhuman prison doctor, as well as the trial before the People's Court - an unworthy trial in which Otto and Anna admit their guilt, but both excluded from the trial because of negative statements about Hitler and the SS and thus escape the judge's sadistic verdict. Fromm succeeds in getting each of the two Quangels a poison ampoule. Otto met his fellow inmate, the cultivated conductor Dr. Reichhardt, from whose life in the cell he learns essentials. For example, he discovered new aspects of himself when he discovered conversation and the game of chess for himself. Although he rejects the pacifism and unwillingness of his cellmate, the two become good friends. Otto finds his peace, but decides not to swallow the capsule because he wants to enjoy the last few days. Ms. Quangel throws the vial away because she does not want to be tempted to commit suicide as long as there is a chance to see her beloved husband again before they are executed together. This makes her calm and friendly, but is increasingly considered crazy by the guards and the other inmates. Both get to know difficult fellow prisoners. Karl Hergesell is slain, Trudel commits suicide. Otto Quangel has refused to submit a petition for clemency and absolutely wants to savor life for a few last moments. In the end, he is executed with the guillotine because he cannot choose to commit suicide. Anna is killed in a bomb attack months later.

In the meantime, old Persicke ended up drinking in a rehab facility. His son Baldur, a student at a Napola ( National Political Education Institute ), was able to ensure that Persicke was not convicted of embezzlement. He visits him in the institution and forces the attending physician not to discharge his father, but to have him regularly given a nauseating "green syringe" in high doses.

The last chapter offers a more hopeful outlook: Eva Kluge and Kienschäper got married and adopted Kuno; he has become a different person. When he meets his father, he finally renounces him so that he can live and work freely in the country.

Structure and style

Following the principle of his earlier time novels Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben (1931) and Wolf Among Wolves (1937), Fallada jumps chapter by chapter between the individual storylines. The arc of suspense is always continued in the next but one or later chapter. The sometimes striking headings of the individual chapters ( the first warning , the second warning, etc.) are used to generate tension. The novel by the successful writer Fallada is aimed at a wide reading public. It is written in an emphatically simple, visual and legible manner and creates the impression of immediacy and authenticity. The leading tense of the past tense is repeatedly interrupted by the present tense , often with a focalization , i.e. the replacement of the authorial narrator by the subjective narrative perspective of a character.

The narrator reports factually, soberly and differentiated. It arranges the plot for the reader and often gives him non-banal insights. He also has an insight into all the figures. These are types rather than individual characters and are close to the cliché . A strict distinction is made between good and bad characters, with the former remaining good throughout the novel. The dialogues are partly wooden, they authentically reflect the language of the Berlin lower class as well as the humiliating and cruel language of National Socialism .

interpretation

For Heribert Hoven, Everyone dies for himself stands out from the early literary confrontations with the time of National Socialism . The defining moment is the fear that all characters in the novel are exposed to. The novel shows a “gender full of fear” in a “permanent struggle for existence” in which everyone has to assert themselves against all others. The decline of social ties and moral values ​​in a totalitarian system is demonstrated. The house at Jablonskistraße 55 in Berlin becomes a “miniature edition” of the Third Reich , a community of people who denounce one another and seek life and property for one another. In a dictatorship, people are not only standing alone when they die, but also when they live.

According to Hoven, Fallada's theme is "the relationship between power and morality in a dictatorship". A system in which there is no law is determined by omnipresent distrust; instead of civil order, it is based on arbitrariness. Quangel's motivation is based on the search for justice, and it is precisely the ineffectiveness of his resistance that ultimately only confirms the need for conscience as the highest authority. Although the end of the novel bears witness to a naive, almost fairy-tale look with a positive outlook into the future in the form of a new generation, for Hoven the novel is not only a settlement with the Third Reich, but it was also created on the threshold of a new dictatorship in of the GDR, some of which he anticipated clairvoyantly, for example in the descriptions of the work of the Gestapo , which are reminiscent of the practice of the later Stasi . For Hoven, it is precisely the experience of two dictatorships that made the novel's late success.

The writer Primo Levi , a survivor of Auschwitz, called Fallada's novel "the best book ever written about the German resistance."

Work history

The impetus for a "resistance novel" came from Johannes R. Becher , then President of the Kulturbund for the democratic renewal of Germany in the Soviet occupation zone , later the GDR. Fallada initially rejected the proposal because he, who had written popular novels in the Third Reich, was not entitled to such a work. Finally, he wrote the 700-page novel in a - according to Heribert Hoven - true creative frenzy within four weeks. In his foreword, he points out that the event was inspired by the acts of resistance of a Berlin working-class couple, Otto and Elise Hampel , who had put out postcard leaflets against Hitler in Berlin from 1940 to 1942 and had been denounced. However, Fallada also stressed that he had broken away from the template and was not reporting any reality. In this case, the accused had by no means matured in arrest like the Quangel couple in the novel and went to their deaths fearlessly in the end, but had accused each other in court to avoid execution.

The first edition appeared in 1947 by Aufbau-Verlag . For political reasons and presumably without the consent of the author, decisive details have been changed. It did not fit into the concept of the emerging GDR that a communist resistance cell sacrificed its members or that the Quangels had previously been supporters of the National Socialists. The work was first translated into English in 2009 and the author was rediscovered, encouraged by articles in the New York Times . In the spring of 2011, the novel was re-released in Germany for the first time in an unabridged version.

Adaptations

Film adaptations

Fallada's novel has been filmed five times.

The first film adaptation was directed by Falk Harnack and was broadcast for the first time on July 19, 1962 on ARD. Here played Edith Schultze-Westrum and Alfred Schieske the leading roles.

At the end of the 1960s, GDR television had DEFA film the novel as a three-part series , which was first broadcast in September 1970. The director was Hans-Joachim Kasprzik , the main roles were played by Elsa Grube-Deister and Erwin Geschonneck .

Six years later Hildegard Knef and Carl Raddatz played the leading roles in the film adaptation Everyone dies for himself (1976) by Alfred Vohrer .

I ve smrti sami (Everyone dies for himself), a three-part series directed by Dušan Klein , was created for Czech television in 2004 . Jana Hlaváčová and Alois Švehlík could be seen here as the Quangel couple .

Finally, the film adaptation Everyone dies for himself (OT: Alone in Berlin ) was made in 2015, directed by Vincent Perez . The film with Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson in the leading roles had its world premiere in February 2016 in the competition at the Berlinale .

theatre

Luk Perceval and Christina Bellingen turned the novel into a play that premiered in October 2012 at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg.

In a new version by Eberhard Petschinka , the piece, directed by Rafael Sanchez , premiered on December 3, 2016 at the Dresden State Theater .

In 2017, Mikko Roiha directed Yksin Berliinissä - Annan ja Oton tarina , based on Fallada's novel. The premiere took place on February 9, 2017 in the Berlin bread factory . Roiha, who regularly directs in Berlin, also designed the set.

Radio play and audio book

In 1986 a highly acclaimed GDR radio play was created under the title of a novel .

Ulrich Noethen lent his voice to a sharply abridged audio book reading from 2010 .

Translations

USSR / Russia
  • 1948, Иностранная литература, Каждый умирает в одиночку
  • 2017, Издательство Синдбад, Один в Берлине. Каждый умирает в одиночку , ISBN 978-5-906837-04-2
Sweden
  • 1948, Bonniers, En mot alla
  • 2012, Lind & Co, Ensam i Berlin
Finland
  • 1949, Mantere, Kukin kuolee itsekseen
  • 2013, ISBN 9789512089147 , Yksin Berliinissä , translator Ilona Nykyri
Romania
  • 1951, Editura pentru literatură și artă, Fiecare moare singur
Czechoslovakia
  • 1954, Československý spisovatel, I ve smrti sami
  • 2012, Ikar, Každý umírá sám
Norway
Estonia
  • 1959, Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus, Igaüks sureb omaette
France
Poland
  • 1989, Wydawnictwo Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, ISBN 83-11-07708-8 Każdy umiera w samotności
Italy
  • 1995, Einaudi Editore, Ognuno muore solo
  • 2010, Sellerio, Ognuno muore solo
USA and UK
Israel
  • 2010, Proza, לבד בברלין
Netherlands
  • 2010, Cossee, avenues in Berlijn. ISBN 978-90-5936-3335 . Translation A.Th. Mooij (1949), revised by A. Habers (2010)
Spain
Denmark
Iran
Japan
  • 2014, Misuzu Shobō, Ltd., Tōkyō, ベ ル リ ン に 一 人死 す (berurin ni hitori shisu) , ISBN 978-4-622-07703-9 , translation: Yōko Akane ( 赤 根 洋子 )

Web links

literature

  • Heribert Hoven: Everyone is an informer. Comments on the past and present topicality of Hans Fallada's novel “Everyone dies for himself”. In: Patricia Fritsch-Lange, Lutz Hagestedt (ed.): Hans Fallada. Author and work in the literary system of the modern age . De Gruyter, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-022713-0 , pp. 69-81.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ In other editions Borkhausen . According to the afterword by Almut Giesecke, the editor of the Aufbau-Verlag Paul Wiegler changed the name in the first edition from Barkhausen to Borkhausen , without the reason for this change being known.
  2. ↑ Adam Soboczynski, Fallada im Volksstaat, in: DIE ZEIT No. 18/2011, April 28, 2011, see: [1] .
  3. ↑ Heribert Hoven: Everyone is an informer. Comments on the past and present topicality of Hans Fallada's novel “Everyone dies for himself”. Pp. 69-72, 76-77.
  4. ↑ Heribert Hoven: Everyone is an informer. Comments on the past and present topicality of Hans Fallada's novel “Everyone dies for himself”. Pp. 70-71, 74, 77.
  5. ↑ berlinerliteraturkritik.de
  6. ↑ Heribert Hoven: Everyone is an informer. Comments on the past and present topicality of Hans Fallada's novel “Everyone dies for himself”. Pp. 70, 72-73, 75-76.
  7. ↑ Heribert Hoven: Everyone is an informer. Comments on the past and present topicality of Hans Fallada's novel “Everyone dies for himself”. Pp. 77-78.
  8. ↑ hansfallada.com
  9. ↑ Jürgen Kaube: Man is a suspicion to man. In: FAZ . March 18, 2011, accessed March 5, 2015.
  10. ^ I ve smrti sami in the Česko-Slovenská filmová databáze.
  11. ↑ Alone in Berlin on the page of X Films Creative Pool , Alone in Berlin in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  12. ↑ Werner Theurich: Premiere of "Everyone dies for himself". Laughing in the face of death on Spiegel Online on October 14, 2012.
  13. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 1, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.staatsschauspiel-dresden.de
  14. ↑ Nordic embassies: announcement of the event.
  15. ↑ Gummerus