Alone in Berlin

by Hans Fallada

Otto Quangel likes order in his life and routine at work; the more uneventful a day is, the better he likes it.

Even if they conquer the whole world, we must refuse to become Nazis.’

(Three years later, a high-explosive bomb would blow this home to smithereens, and the sedate old gentleman himself would die a slow and agonizing death in the cellar…)

Why does each individual survivor matter so much, myself most of all?

The floor of the Elysium, the great dance hall in the north of Berlin, that Friday night presented the kind of spectacle that must gladden the heart of any true German: it was jam-packed with uniforms.

Stupid people do stupid things, and smart people often do much more stupid things.

had been a long time since Anna had seen her husband in such a gentle mood; it was like seeing the sun shining one last time over a landscape before winter came and buried everything under sheets of ice and snow.

Work is always work, and that week people remained as they had always been.

He might be right: whether their act was big or small, no one could risk more than his life. Each according to his strength and abilities, but the main thing was, you fought back.

Pale-faced, they stared at each other. They were old friends, going back to school days, but now fear had come between them, and fear had brought mistrust with it. They eyed one another silently.

‘It’s because people have got in the habit of thinking. They have the idea that thinking will help them.’ ‘They need to do as they’re told. The Führer can do their thinking for them.’

a man so dry, you could easily take him for a creation of office dust;

probably the man was so unequal to the complexities of these times he was already doomed.

Conviviality, booze, cheerful relaxation after the heavy effort of torturing and putting to death their fellow men.

on the one hand you were afraid of the Gestapo and lived in constant fear of them, but it was something else to do their dirty work for them.

She had known for a long time that you had to pay for everything in life, and usually more than it was worth.

The unruffled water on the lake, which they sensed rather than saw, seemed to breathe out a dim grey light that looked as though it was returning part of the light of the day.

they ought to have known that in this State not even thoughts were free.

It’s like I can only stare at one point, which doesn’t have any enemies there. But all around me there are enemies, and I can’t see them.’

The ex-postie Eva Kluge is working in the potato fields, just as she had always dreamed of doing.

It was a life gently inclined toward its end, peaceful and bringing peace in a time full of hatred, blood, and tears.

For now Frau Kluge passed over the question whether drinking schnapps was advisable for fourteen-year-olds.

The men are still alive, but they are already making their own coffins.

This ridiculous figure in his too-short shift was actually stronger and more dignified than all his tormentors. And with each blow that Inspector Escherich had brought down in terror and despair, he had had the sense that he was hitting out at himself, striking with an axe at the roots of the tree of his own life.

I’d rather have a proper ham sandwich than all the emotion in the world!

Nothing in this world is done in vain, and since we are fighting for justice against brutality, we are bound to prevail in the end.’

You want to remain brave and strong; everything that keeps you brave and strong is good, just as everything that makes you weak and doubtful, such as brooding, is bad.

The preposterous comedy of this gang of criminals branding everyone else as criminals was suddenly too much for him to take.

Everything here takes its rigid course. They are cogs in a machine, iron cogs, steel cogs. If an iron cog happened to soften, it would have to be replaced, and the cogs don’t want to be replaced – they want to be just the way they are.

Even on death row, the deep-seated urge to communicate cannot be extinguished. But even though Otto Quangel – occasionally – put his life on the line to listen at the window, even though his senses never tired of picking up on each little change, still he was not like the others.

This means that Alone in Berlin examines for one final time the recurring tension in Fallada’s works between how people struggle with – or, as in The Drinker, are destroyed by – the world around them, and how they still assert themselves against it in some meaningful way.

I should perhaps note here that in the German text of the novel, Otto’s ‘properly’, Eva’s ‘self-respect’ and Reichhardt’s ‘decently’ are all expressed by the adjective-cum-adverb ‘anständig’, which refers primarily to what is ‘decent’ or done ‘decently’ in a moral sense, and moreover that ‘anständig’ and its related forms are key words in many of Fallada’s novels.