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. Playing the sympathetic 'old Party comrade', Klebs plies him with his own schnapps and cigarettes, pocketing stolen packets and cash as Persicke rambles. His collapse is traced: sons sent to Holland and Poland, Baldur gone to a Napola school, his wife fled to relatives, his daughter now a brutal warder at Ravensbrück, leaving him to drink, embezzle Party funds, and rampage through the flat in terror — a night when the Quangels and Judge Fromm stood outside his door, and Otto refused to get involved. Within the hour Klebs has learned everything, and packs suitcases with the late Frau Rosenthal's stolen linens before slipping toward the door, where he is stopped by 'a tall, bony man with a grim expression', demanding to know what he's carrying out.

Fallada turns his satire on the Nazi apparatus itself: a state informer reduced to a common thief, working over a ruined true believer. The flashback earns its place, showing how thoroughly the regime consumes its own devoted families. The cliffhanger hands the flat to an even hungrier predator.