THE BOOK FAIR

Review:

Every Man Dies Alone is based on the true story of Elise and Otto Hampel, a poor 

but educated working class couple in Berlin, Germany, during WW II.  Elise learns that her brother fell during fighting in France so joins with her husband in a campaign to distribute anti-Nazi literature against the Nazi regime as an act of civil disobedience which endures for three years. Otto and Elise were eventually captured, imprisoned, tortured, tried and executed for their “crimes”.

 

In the novel, it is Otto and Anna Quangle’s son who falls in France. The couple writes anti-Nazi slogans on postcards and distributes them throughout the city.  The postcards are distributed with meticulous planning to avoid discovery; the Quangles’s, always careful of when, how, and where the cards are placed.  Berliners, either brainwashed or terrified by the Nazi regime, turn in the postcards for fear of falling suspect.   After the distribution of hundreds of cards defying Hitler, the Nazis and the war, the Gestapo is convinced the postcard case is a large movement; one to be reckoned with.

The Quangle’s live in an apartment building with the Persickes, a family of die hard Nazis who despise the Rosenthal’s, a Jewish family who occupy an apartment in the building.  Mrs. Rosenthal waits for her husband to return from a Nazi interrogation.  The Persickes have their eye on her apartment.   Judge Fromm, another tenant in the building, tries to save Mrs. Rosenthal as he works quietly and tirelessly against the Nazis.

Eva Kluge, a post-woman, who never cared for the Nazis but worries for her sons conscripted into the German army, offers her fellow Germans what she feels is the proper respect to the regime, so not to be reported as anti-Nazi while she deals with her drunken sniveling husband, who refuses to earn a dime and hooks up with lowlifes and thugs such as Borkhausen, who loves nothing more than giving good beatings, will do anything for a dime and couldn’t wait to rob the Rosenthal’s apartment.

 

 

In the book, as in Nazi Germany, a small segment of moral characters rise up against the Nazis, through any means available to them.  The majority of people however do not fight back against the Nazi regime and most accept the difficulty of the wartime conditions, hoping their family members survive while waiting for better times to come.

 

Fallada delves into the depth of the character of moral men, as well as those who use a chaotic circumstance such as war, to exploit their fellow man at every turn.  The book also details the paranoia in the society among the people as well as the Nazi officials themselves, from the highest in command to the lowly street thug.

 

The book contains photocopies of the Gestapo file with police reports, eye witness reports, photocopies of the postcards, arrest reports of Otto Hampel and Elise Hampel, their photos, and the photocopies of their confessions.

 

A photocopy of the arrest report of Heinz Klaus is also provided, the model of the character of Enno Kluge; Klaus was later released.

Otto and Elsie Hampel were executed in prison in March of 1943.

Fallada’s theme throughout his writing is, that good must always combat and triumph over evil, or evil will prevail.