Hans Fallada - Writing Career and Encounters With Nazism

Writing Career and Encounters With Nazism

While in a sanatorium Fallada took to translation and poetry, albeit unsuccessfully, before finally breaking ground as a novelist in 1920 with the publication of his first book Der junge Goedeschal ("Young Goedeschal"). During this period he also struggled with morphine addiction, and the death of his younger brother in the First World War.

In the wake of the war, Fallada worked at several farmhand and other agricultural jobs in order to support himself and finance his growing drug addiction. While before the war Fallada relied on his father for financial support while writing, after the German defeat he was no longer able, or willing, to depend on his father's assistance. Shortly after the publication of Anton und Gerda Fallada reported to prison in Greifswald to serve a 6-month sentence for stealing grain from his employer and selling it to support his drug habit. Less than 3 years later, in 1926, Fallada again found himself imprisoned as a result of a drug and alcohol-fueled string of thefts from employers. In February 1928 he finally emerged free of addiction.

Fallada married Suse Issel in 1929 and maintained a string of respectable jobs in journalism, working for newspapers and eventually for the publisher of his novels, Rowohlt. It is around this time that his novels became noticeably political and started to comment on the social and economic woes of Germany. Williams notes that Fallada's 1930/31 novel Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben ("Peasants, Bosses and Bombs") "..established as a promising literary talent as well as an author not afraid to tackle controversial issues" Martin Seymour-Smith said it is one of his best novels, "it remains one of the most vivid and sympathetic accounts of a local revolt ever written."

The great success of Kleiner Mann - was nun? (Little Man, What Now?) in 1932, while immediately easing his financial straits, was overshadowed by his anxiety over the rise of Nazism and a subsequent nervous breakdown. Although none of his work was deemed subversive enough to warrant action by the Nazis, many of his peers were arrested and interned, and his future as an author under the Nazi regime looked bleak. These anxieties were compounded by the loss of a baby only a few hours after childbirth. However he was heartened by the great success of Little Man, What Now? in Great Britain and the United States, where the book was a bestseller. In the U.S., it was selected by the Book of the Month Club, and was even made into a Hollywood movie, Little Man, What Now? (1934).

Because the film was made by Jewish producers, however, it earned Fallada closer attention by the rising Nazi Party. Meanwhile, as the careers, and in some cases the lives, of many of Fallada's contemporaries were rapidly drawing to a halt, he began to draw some additional scrutiny from the government in the form of denunciations of his work by Nazi authors and publications, who also noted that he had not joined the Party. On Easter Sunday, 1933, he was jailed by the Gestapo for "anti-Nazi activities" after one such denunciation, but despite a ransacking of his home no evidence was found and he was released a week later.

Although his 1934 novel, Wir hatten mal ein Kind (Once We Had a Child) met with initially positive reviews, the official Nazi publication Völkischer Beobachter disapproved. In the same year, the Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda "recommended the removal of Little Man, What Now? from all public libraries". Meanwhile, the official campaign against Fallada was beginning to take a toll on the sales of his books, landing him into financial straits that precipitated another nervous breakdown in 1934.

In September 1935 Fallada was officially declared an "undesirable author", a designation that banned his work from being translated and published abroad. Although this order was repealed a few months later, it was at this point that his writing shifted from an artistic endeavor to merely a much needed source of income, writing "children's stories and harmless fairy tales" that would also conveniently avoid the unwanted attention of the Nazis. During this time the prospect of emigration held a constant place in Fallada's mind, although he was reluctant because of his love of Germany.

In 1937 the publication and success of Wolf unter Wölfen (Wolf Among Wolves) marked Fallada's temporary return to his serious, realistic style. The Nazis read the book as a sharp criticism of the Weimar Republic, and thus naturally approved. Notably, Joseph Goebbels called it "a super book". Goebbels's interest in Fallada's work would lead the writer to a world of worry: he would subsequently suggest the writer compose an anti-Semitic tract, and his praise indirectly resulted in Fallada's commission to write a novel that would be the basis for a state-sponsored film charting the life of a German family up to 1933.

The book, Der eiserne Gustav (Iron Gustav), was a look at the deprivations and hardships brought on by World War I, but upon reviewing the manuscript Goebbels would suggest that Fallada stretch the time-line of the story to include the rise of the Nazis and their depiction as solving the problems of the War and Weimar. Fallada wrote several different versions before eventually capitulating under the pressure of both Goebbels and his depleted finances. Other evidence of his surrender to Nazi intimidation came in the form of forewords he subsequently wrote for two of his more politically ambiguous works, brief passages in which he essentially declared that the events in his books took place before the rise of the Nazis and were clearly "designed to placate the Nazi authorities".

By the end of 1938, despite the deaths of several colleagues at the hands of the Nazis, Fallada reversed his decision to finally emigrate. His British publisher, George Putnam, had made arrangements and sent a private boat to whisk Fallada and his family out of Germany. According to Jenny Williams, Fallada had actually packed his bags and loaded them into the car when he told his wife he wanted to take one more walk around their smallholding. "When he returned some time later," Williams writes, "he declared that he could not leave Germany and that Suse should unpack."

This seemingly abrupt change of plans coincided with an inner conviction that Fallada had long harbored. Years earlier he had confided to an acquaintance that “I could never write in another language, nor live in any other place than Germany.”