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A review by unfetteredfiction
Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada
5.0
“Would you rather live for an unjust cause than die for a just one? There is no choice - not for you, nor for me either. It’s because we are as we are that we have to go this way.”
- Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin
Hans Fallada’s first name was Rudolf Ditzen. Fallada was a pseudonym inspired by two of the Grimm fairy tales. At 18, Fallada failed to enact a suicide pact with his friend Hanns Dietrich, both were struggling with their sexuality. During WW2 Fallada was imprisoned in a Nazi insane asylum. Fallada battled with drug addiction and alcoholism. Fallada wrote this novel in twenty-four days, all 568 pages of it. He never saw it published.
Alone is Berlin is based on the true story of a poorly educated and working class couple, Elsie and Otto Hampel. The story is one of resistance, and I think, love. It’s impossible to place ourselves in WW2 Germany, but this novel does it for us, making apparent how difficult to do almost anything in resistance was. Yet, out of love, people still did what they could, even when it could cost them their lives. In Fallada’s own opinion the Hampel’s protest was perhaps a “purposeless battle”, yet he quickly goes on to reconsider “But perhaps not entirely purposeless, after all? Perhaps not entirely in vain, after all?”
In the novel, huge injustices are spreading throughout Germany and the world, one neighbour is snitching on another, people are being carried away never to be heard of again and families torn apart. The world cannot keep turning, not like this, not for the decent people who are victims. I don’t want to say too much about the plot, as I don’t want to give anything away, but I’d encourage anyone to read this novel, it’s one that will undoubtedly stay with you.
In the text’s afterward by Geoff Wilkes, we hear that Fallada’s characters “do not so much resolve their problems as defy them” with a “combination of struggle and self-assertion”, which sums up this novel perfectly - please read it!
- Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin
Hans Fallada’s first name was Rudolf Ditzen. Fallada was a pseudonym inspired by two of the Grimm fairy tales. At 18, Fallada failed to enact a suicide pact with his friend Hanns Dietrich, both were struggling with their sexuality. During WW2 Fallada was imprisoned in a Nazi insane asylum. Fallada battled with drug addiction and alcoholism. Fallada wrote this novel in twenty-four days, all 568 pages of it. He never saw it published.
Alone is Berlin is based on the true story of a poorly educated and working class couple, Elsie and Otto Hampel. The story is one of resistance, and I think, love. It’s impossible to place ourselves in WW2 Germany, but this novel does it for us, making apparent how difficult to do almost anything in resistance was. Yet, out of love, people still did what they could, even when it could cost them their lives. In Fallada’s own opinion the Hampel’s protest was perhaps a “purposeless battle”, yet he quickly goes on to reconsider “But perhaps not entirely purposeless, after all? Perhaps not entirely in vain, after all?”
In the novel, huge injustices are spreading throughout Germany and the world, one neighbour is snitching on another, people are being carried away never to be heard of again and families torn apart. The world cannot keep turning, not like this, not for the decent people who are victims. I don’t want to say too much about the plot, as I don’t want to give anything away, but I’d encourage anyone to read this novel, it’s one that will undoubtedly stay with you.
In the text’s afterward by Geoff Wilkes, we hear that Fallada’s characters “do not so much resolve their problems as defy them” with a “combination of struggle and self-assertion”, which sums up this novel perfectly - please read it!