Part 1 · Chapter 1
Some Bad News
Nothing has happened, there is no Ottochen any more, that’s all!
Summary
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 on the second floor. Old Persicke, drunk, celebrates the French capitulation and promises no mercy now for Frau Rosenthal, the Jewish widow upstairs. Otto Quangel takes his letter without a word and shuts the door in her face. Going down, Eva thinks people like the Persickes will be the masters, and that this is not justice. Upstairs, Otto props the letter against Anna's sewing machine and waits for her smile. She reads, gives a soft scream, and strikes her head on the spools. Their only son Ottochen is dead. Anna tears the letter up — 'Lies, all a pack of lies!' — and turns on her husband: 'you and that Führer of yours'.
Analysis
The whole novel in miniature, delivered by a stranger on a staircase. Fallada installs the building as his unit of society — Party, victim and bystander stacked on four floors — then detonates the Quangels' grief inside it. Anna's accusation, unjust and unanswerable, is what sets Otto thinking.
Translator's Note
The Arbeitsfront was a vast, Nazi-run umbrella organization of all German labour unions, instituted after Hitler outlawed the free and diverse labour unions of the Weimar Republic. Membership was voluntary but it was nearly impossible to get a job without joining, and the Reich made a considerable income from its compulsory fees.
Michael Hofmann's note to this chapter, from the Penguin Classics edition of Alone in Berlin (2009).
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