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Alone in Berlin

Hans Fallada, 1947, in Michael Hofmann's translation. Seventy-two chapters in four parts, each with a summary and a short analysis — illustrated twice over, once as wartime colour photography and once in the poster graphics of the state the Quangels were writing against.

72 chapters · illustrations in progress (17 of 461 plates)

Illustration style

Part 1 The Quangels

  1. Eva Kluge climbs the stairwell

    Chapter 1 10 plates

    Some Bad News

    The postwoman Eva Kluge climbs the stairs of 55 Jablonski Strasse with a Party circular for the Persickes and a typed letter from the front she hates to deliver, addressed to the Quangels o…
  2. Baldur holds up the posed photograph

    Chapter 2 1 plates

    What Baldur Persicke Had to Say

    Otto Quangel hurries past the Persicke flat, where 'Sieg Heil!' is being shouted, anxious to avoid a family he has spent ten years avoiding. He reflects that people like the Persickes must…
  3. Borkhausen trails Quangel toward Prenzlauer Allee

    Chapter 3 6 plates

    A Man Called Borkhausen

    Otto Quangel walks to the furniture factory trailed by Emil Borkhausen, a lanky idler from the back basement whose calling is to stand wherever there is something to overhear. Quangel turns…

  4. Chapter 4

    Trudel Baumann Betrays a Secret

    Otto Quangel visits Trudel Baumann at her factory to break the news that his son, her fiancé Otto, has been killed. Getting her called away costs him a favour with her foreman. When she mee…

  5. Chapter 5

    Enno Kluge’s Homecoming

    Eva Kluge returns from her postal round in Friedrichshain to find her estranged husband, Enno Kluge, waiting on the doorstep, wheedling for a bed on the sofa. She refuses, citing years of h…

  6. Chapter 6

    Otto Quangel Gives up His Official Function

    At the furniture factory turned bomb-crate plant, Foreman Otto Quangel is summoned to an Arbeitsfront meeting in the office canteen, arriving in work blues among rows of Party uniforms. He…

  7. Chapter 7

    Break-in at Night

    Emil Borkhausen and Enno Kluge drink at the Also Ran, Borkhausen talking Enno into an 'SS-approved' burglary of the absent Frau Rosenthal's flat on Jablonski Strasse. Enno agrees once hunge…

  8. Chapter 8

    Small Surprises

    The Persicke brothers confront the drunken burglars; Baldur needles Borkhausen until Adolf and his SS brother knock both men unconscious, planning to hand them to the police as thieves caug…

  9. Chapter 9

    Nocturnal Conversation at the Quangels’

    Home late, Otto Quangel finds Trudel supposedly asleep in his bed and Anna banished to the sofa, but counting breaths through the dark he catches Anna out: Frau Rosenthal, fleeing the Persi…

  10. Chapter 10

    What Happened on Wednesday Morning

    Before dawn, Trudel walks Frau Rosenthal, marked with her yellow star, to Judge Fromm's door, narrowly missing the Persicke brothers as they leave to dump the battered burglars. Baldur has…

  11. Chapter 11

    It is Still Wednesday

    Frau Gesch lets Enno sleep off his beating, then tries to shame Eva Kluge into taking him back; Eva refuses, still reeling from her interrogation at the post office, where officials pressed…

  12. Chapter 12

    Enno and Emil after the Shock

    Borkhausen, patched up by his wife, Otti, broods that Baldur Persicke rigged the burglary to seize the Rosenthal haul for himself, and vows never to forgive him. Enno Kluge wanders Berlin s…

  13. Chapter 13

    Victory Dance at the Elysium

    At the Elysium dance hall, packed with Party uniforms, Trudel Baumann meets three men from her now-precarious resistance cell, the balding Grigoleit, a baby-faced enforcer, and Karl Hergese…

  14. Chapter 14

    Saturday: Discord at the Quangels’

    Three days of silence stretch between Otto and Anna Quangel; she longs to apologise for 'You and your Führer' but can't reach him, and he vanishes from meals mid-bite, absorbed in secret er…

  15. Chapter 15

    Enno Kluge Goes back to Work

    Enno Kluge drags himself back to the lathe despite his injuries, letting his boss and colleagues assume his bruises came from shirking rather than confess the truth. Summoned before a tribu…

  16. Chapter 16

    The Demise of Frau Rosenthal

    Frau Rosenthal wakes from a nightmare of fleeing with her son Siegfried, then spends a desperate Sunday alone in retired Judge Fromm's flat, hidden there since Wednesday. Turned away by his…

  17. Chapter 17

    The First Card is Written

    On the Sunday after their son's death, Otto Quangel finally keeps his promise to Anna, though he first spends a bewildering afternoon whittling a likeness of Ottochen before explaining hims…

  18. Chapter 18

    The First Card is Dropped

    Walking to drop the first postcard, Otto and Anna Quangel argue over where; at Anna's urging they abandon Greifswalder Strasse for the greater distance of the Alexanderplatz, but Otto, unse…

Part 2 The Gestapo

  1. Chapter 19

    The Postcards Make Their Way

    The blacklisted actor Max Harteisen, once Goebbels's favourite until he contradicted him, finds the Quangels' first card on the office stairwell and panics, convinced he is being watched. H…

  2. Chapter 20

    Six Months Later: The Quangels

    Six months into their campaign, writing postcards has become a settled Sunday ritual for Otto and Anna Quangel, deepening their marriage into an intimacy neither had known before. Otto now…

  3. Chapter 21

    Six Months Later: Inspector Escherich

    Six months on, Inspector Escherich has forty-four red flags on his map of Berlin, accounting for all but four of the Quangels' forty-eight postcards, most surrendered by frightened citizens…

  4. Chapter 22

    Six Months Later: Enno Kluge

    Waiting for a medical certificate to dodge work, the workshy machinist Enno Kluge skulks between the toilet and the crowded waiting room, drawing the fury of the doctor's receptionist, Fräu…

  5. Chapter 23

    The Interrogation

    Inspector Escherich interviews the terrified Enno Kluge and quickly concludes, from his weakness and ignorance of the card's contents, that he has nothing to do with the postcards. Needing…

  6. Chapter 24

    Inspector Escherich Gets to Work on the Hobgoblin Case

    Escherich reports his released suspect to Deputy Inspector Schröder, confident Kluge will eventually lead him to the postcard writer, then carries his statement to Obergruppenführer Prall,…

  7. Chapter 25

    Frau Hetty Makes up Her Mind

    Freed by Schröder, Enno Kluge loses his Gestapo tail in the underground crowds and, after collecting his belongings from his mistress Lotte, arrives with a suitcase at Hetty Haberle's pet s…

  8. Chapter 26

    Fear and Terror

    Over two weeks confined to Hetty's flat for fear of being seen, Enno Kluge proves idle and unreliable, drifting from sorting birdseed to dozing in the cellar, though he charms her customers…

  9. Chapter 27

    Emil Borkhausen Makes Himself Useful

    Humiliated by Prall over Kluge's escape, Escherich grows obsessively fixated on recovering the harmless little man, even suspecting he may be more deeply implicated than he seems. He travel…

  10. Chapter 28

    A Pretty Little Job of Blackmail

    Into the pet shop where Hetty Haberle is sheltering Enno Kluge walks Emil Borkhausen, greeting Enno with false old-friend warmth before revealing he works for the Gestapo's Inspector Escher…

  11. Chapter 29

    Enno’s Eviction

    With Borkhausen dispatched to Munich, Hetty Haberle and Enno Kluge sit in the Anhalter Bahnhof waiting room while she weighs whether they were followed. Enno, his courage returning now the…

  12. Chapter 30

    Emil Borkhausen and His Son

    Borkhausen never means to travel to Munich: he gets off at the first stop, Lichterfelde, and heads back to spy on Hetty Haberle's shop, using his son Kuno-Dieter as a lookout. A string of s…

  13. Chapter 31

    A Visit to Fräulein Anna Schönlein

    Learning Borkhausen has found Enno Kluge, Inspector Escherich hesitates: he knows Enno never wrote the Hobgoblin postcards, and interrogating him would expose the false statement Escherich…

  14. Chapter 32

    Escherich and Kluge Take a Walk

    Escherich leads Enno Kluge out past Borkhausen, who demands his five hundred marks; learning Borkhausen's son mugged him of the Haberle money, the inspector mockingly refuses payment, then…

Part 3 Things Begin to Go Against the Quangels

  1. Chapter 33

    Trudel Hergesell

    Part III opens with Trudel, now married to Karl Hergesell and five months pregnant, on the train from Erkner into Berlin. Parting from Karl at Alexanderplatz to deliver sewing, she climbs a…

  2. Chapter 34

    Karl Hergesell and Grigoleit

    Still angry after a woman demanded butter and bacon for a decrepit second-hand pram, Karl Hergesell runs into Grigoleit, his old comrade from Trudel's illegal cell, now working underground…

  3. Chapter 35

    The First Warning

    Hitler's invasion of Russia fuels Otto Quangel's rage and his output; he now writes letters as well as cards. At the coffin factory, eleven vanished workers and a man who fed his arm into a…

  4. Chapter 36

    The Fall of Inspector Escherich

    For a year after Enno Kluge's 'suicide', Escherich enjoys real success, closing the pornographic-letter 'Filth' case against Goebbels and catching a forger of papal encyclicals and a delusi…

  5. Chapter 37

    The Second Warning

    Anna presses Otto to visit her brother Ulrich Heffke for his birthday, against Otto's wish to stay home and write; he relents once he has finished two cards. Getting off the U-Bahn early ne…

  6. Chapter 38

    The Third Warning

    At the Heffkes', unaccustomed schnapps loosens everyone, and hunchbacked Ulrich sings hymns in a high falsetto that stirs old, half-buried belief in Otto. Walking home tipsy and irritated b…

  7. Chapter 39

    Inspector Zott

    Inspector Zott, a pedantic, corpse-averse little man who solves cases entirely through charts rather than interrogation, spends three days with the Hobgoblin files before briefing Obergrupp…

  8. Chapter 40

    Otto Quangel Grows Uncertain

    Otto and Anna Quangel ride home in silence after a near-arrest at the station, saved by a stationmaster's grudge against a querulant named Millek. Anna weeps quietly in the kitchen, then be…

  9. Chapter 41

    The Old Party Member Persicke

    Inspector Zott's informer Klebs arrives at the Persickes' wrecked flat, sent to find old men living alone on Jablonski Strasse, and discovers old Persicke drunk, filthy, and abandoned. Play…

  10. Chapter 42

    Borkhausen is Rooked a Third Time

    Borkhausen — the 'super' who confronted Klebs — sits in the ravaged Persicke flat and sees through him at once: the suitcases must hold stolen goods. He refuses drink, remembering how Enno…

  11. Chapter 43

    Interlude: An Idyll in the Country

    In the countryside, Eva Kluge hoes potatoes, having quit the Party, survived arrest, and lost both sons — Max killed in Russia, Karlemann given up as lost. Her happiness centres on Kienscha…

  12. Chapter 44

    The Fall of Inspector Zott

    Obergruppenführer Prall storms into Inspector Zott's office over a report that prisoners were released on his authority — the Quangels, picked up near Nollendorfplatz and let go. Zott admit…

  13. Chapter 45

    Inspector Escherich is Free Again

    Inspector Escherich returns to his desk after his ordeal in the Gestapo basement, battered and gap-toothed but alive, welcomed by colleagues who had believed in him all along. Zott apologis…

  14. Chapter 46

    The Fateful Monday

    On a single fateful Monday — Klebs sentenced to a year, Borkhausen to two, Baldur Persicke home from Napola school to see his father, and Trudel Hergesell miscarrying after a fall at Erkner…

  15. Chapter 47

    Monday, Inspector Escherich’s Great Day

    Inspector Escherich moves with sudden speed, sealing off the Krause & Co. furniture factory and driving there with Obergruppenführer Prall at the wheel. He demands a full staff list with ad…

  16. Chapter 48

    The Arrest of Anna Quangel

    Anna Quangel, feverish, searches for the two postcards she doesn't realise Otto took with him, before Gestapo men break into the unchained flat. In her delirium she takes the raid for a fev…

  17. Chapter 49

    The Conversation With Otto Quangel

    Inspector Escherich persuades Prall to let him question Otto Quangel alone. Told his wife has been taken to hospital, Otto softens and calls Escherich 'not a bad man', but stonewalls questi…

  18. Chapter 50

    The Death of Escherich

    After a drunken SS celebration where he must read Quangel's confession to applause, Escherich follows Prall and the rest to Quangel's cell, where they wake him, empty schnapps over his head…

Part 4 The End

  1. Chapter 51

    Anna Quangel is Interrogated

    Two weeks into her interrogation under Escherich's successor, Inspector Laub, who slaps her with the back of his hand between questions, Anna Quangel lets slip the name of Otto's late son's…

  2. Chapter 52

    The Downcast Hergesells

    Karl and Trudel Hergesell take their first walk since her miscarriage, past Grunheide along Frankenweg to the Flakensee and the lock at Woltersdorf. Trudel cannot stop grieving for their de…

  3. Chapter 53

    Otto Quangel’s Heaviest Burden

    Of the nineteen days Otto Quangel spends in the Gestapo basement before being passed to the examining magistrate, Laub's interrogations are not the worst of it, nor his dread for Anna, shar…

  4. Chapter 54

    Anna Quangel and Trudel Hergesell

    Berta dies in Anna Quangel's arms, the cellmate whose slip about a hidden sister-in-law first drew Inspector Laub's fury onto Anna, and Anna is left tormented by guilt, convinced she also d…

  5. Chapter 55

    Baldur Persicke Pays a Visit

    Baldur Persicke, the Napola cadet and most successful of the Persicke children, ties up his affairs in Berlin: he has retrieved his mother from hiding, visited his sister at Ravensbrück to…

  6. Chapter 56

    Otto Quangel’s Second Cellmate

    Otto Quangel is moved to remand prison and placed with Dr Reichhardt, a conductor imprisoned for openly refusing every accommodation with the Nazi regime. Reichhardt shares his privileged f…

  7. Chapter 57

    Life in the Cell

    Reichhardt's day is rigidly ordered: cold washes, exercise, reading, an hour's pacing during which he hums Beethoven, Mozart or Bach, and Quangel, against his own scepticism about music, fi…

  8. Chapter 58

    The Good Chaplain

    Chaplain Friedrich Lorenz, tubercular and overworked, confronts the prison director over a seventh death from neglect in two weeks, naming the doctor's drunkenness as the cause and remindin…

  9. Chapter 59

    Trudel Hergesell, Née Baumann

    Separated from Anna, Trudel Hergesell is locked with the spiteful, tale-bearing Frau Hänsel and lives for Chaplain Lorenz's visits and his news of Karli. Through him she meets the Gospel of…

  10. Chapter 60

    The Trial: A Reunion

    In the closed courtroom of the People's Court, with retired Judge Fromm unrecognised in the gallery, Otto and Anna Quangel are led in separately, but a guards' error lets Anna sit beside he…

  11. Chapter 61

    The Trial: Judge Feisler

    Judge Feisler, the Reich's senior judge, presides with the vulture-clawed cruelty Quangel had been warned to expect. Both Quangels plead 'guilty' outright, denying Feisler his theatre, so h…

  12. Chapter 62

    The Trial: Prosecutor Pinscher

    After a heavy lunch leaves Judge Feisler drowsy, he hands the questioning to Prosecutor Pinscher, a 'yapping terrier' to his 'bloodhound', who demands to know how many lovers Anna Quangel h…

  13. Chapter 63

    The Trial: The Witness Ulrich Heffke

    Ulrich Heffke, Anna Quangel's hunchbacked brother, takes the stand months after Inspector Laub tortured false confessions out of him over postcards near Nollendorfplatz and factory secrets,…

  14. Chapter 64

    The Trial: The Defence Team

    Anna Quangel's grizzled court-appointed attorney tries to argue diminished responsibility, citing her brother Ulrich Heffke's breakdown as family madness. Prosecutor Pinscher objects at eve…

  15. Chapter 65

    The Trial: The Verdict

    During a recess the guards leave Otto Quangel unwatched in the emptied courtroom, and he dozes before waking to find old Judge Fromm signalling from the gallery rail. Fromm walks off, leavi…

  16. Chapter 66

    The Death House

    Otto Quangel settles into solitary confinement in the death house at Plötzensee, where condemned men from across occupied Europe wait in near-total silence. Drawing on habits learned from D…

  17. Chapter 67

    The Pleas For Clemency

    Dr Stark, Otto Quangel's contemptuous attorney, brings the death verdict. Quangel refuses to petition Hitler for clemency, and the two spar over decency: Quangel tells him 'at least I staye…

  18. Chapter 68

    Anna Quangel’s Most Difficult Decision

    Alone in her cell, Anna Quangel unravels: she unpicks sacks of knotted string, cries constantly, and calls through the window every night for news of Otto until the other condemned women th…

  19. Chapter 69

    It’s Time, Quangel

    Roused before dawn, Otto Quangel learns from the young prison chaplain that his hour has come. The minister tries to talk him into pantheism when Quangel rejects a personal God, and grows i…

  20. Chapter 70

    The Last Walk

    Dr Brandt, the prison doctor, takes Otto Quangel's pulse and quietly offers an anaesthetic, declined. He furiously refuses the ritual last meal of acorn coffee and margarine bread, then sub…

  21. Chapter 71

    Anna Quangel’s Reunion

    Months pass, and Anna Quangel, unaware her husband is already dead, waits in her cell to be reunited with him. The warders, who have grown fond of her, keep up the lie that Otto 'sends his…

  22. Chapter 72

    The Boy

    It is early summer 1946. Kuno-Dieter Borkhausen, adopted by the Kienschapers after Karl and Max Kluge failed to return from the war, is now simply Kuno Kienschaper, a farm boy in Brandenbur…