Every Man Dies Alone

by Hans Fallada

And when the novel was written, it did suggest that the dissidents had not lived or died in vain. The fact that they achieve very little material success against the Nazi regime is portrayed as secondary to the idea that they defeat the regime in ideal and even metaphysical terms, by preserving their moral integrity both as individuals, and as representatives of a better Germany who justify the nation’s survival. This means that Every Man Dies Alone 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.

Every Man Dies Alone characterizes the dissidents not only in ethical terms, as upholding profound ideals, but also in more metaphysical terms, as the conscience of the nation. This idea is introduced when Trudel tells Otto that the members of her factory cell see themselves as being “like good seeds in a field of weeds. If it wasn’t for the good seeds, the whole field would be nothing but weeds” (32).

Every Man Dies Alone is based upon the case of Elise and Otto Hampel, a poorly educated working-class couple living in Berlin with no history, prior to this case, of political activity. After Elise’s brother was killed early in the war, the couple commenced a nearly three-year propaganda campaign that baffled—and enraged—the Berlin police, who eventually handed the case over to the Gestapo. The Hampels’ campaign consisted, quite simply, of leaving hundreds of postcards calling for civil disobedience and workplace sabotage all over Berlin.