by Hans Fallada
1936 Publication of Altes Herz geht auf die Reise [‘Old Heart Goes on a Journey’] and Hoppelpoppel, wo bist du? [‘Hoppelpoppel, Where Are You?’].
1937 Publication of Wolf unter Wölfen [‘Wolf Among Wolves’].
1938 Publication of Der eiserne Gustav [‘Iron Gustav’] and Geschichten aus der Murkelei [‘Stories from a Childhood’].
1940 Publication of Kleiner Mann, grosser Mann — alles vertauscht [‘Little Man, Big Man — Roles Reversed’] and Der ungeliebte Mann [‘The Unloved Man’]; birth of son Achim.
1941 Publication of Damals bei uns daheim [‘Our Home in Days Gone By’], Die Stunde eh’ du schlafen gehst [‘Before You Go to Sleep’], and Der mutige Buchhändler [‘The Brave Bookseller’] (also published under the title Die Abenteuer des Werner Quabs).
1942 Publication of Ein Mann will nach oben (alternative title: Ein Mann will hinauf) [‘A Man Wants to Get On’] and Zwei zarte Lämmchen weiss wie Schnee [‘Two Tender Lambs White as Snow’].
1943 Publication of Heute bei uns zu Haus [‘Our Home Today’] and Der Jungherr von Strammin (alternative title: Junger Herr ganz gross) [‘The Master of Strammin’]; at the invitation of the Wehrmacht, he undertakes fact-finding tours of the annexed territories of Czechoslovakia and occupied France as a major in the Reich Labour Service; after Rowohlt Verlag is closed down by the Nazis and his general publishing agreement is cancelled, Fallada is left without any financial security.
1944 5 July: divorced from Anna Ditzen; during an argument he fires a shot from his pistol, and is committed to the Neustrelitz-Strelitz psychiatric prison, where the so-called Drinker manuscript with the 1944 prison diary is written (first published in 2009 under the title In meinem fremden Land [‘A Stranger in My Own Country’]); following his release he writes Fridolin der freche Dachs [‘That Rascal, Fridolin’].
1945 Marriage in Berlin to the 22-year-old Ursula ‘Ulla’ Losch, who also has a history of morphine addiction; because of the ceaseless air raids they leave Ulla’s apartment in Meraner Strasse (Berlin–Schöneberg) and move out to her wooden chalet in Klinkecken, on the outskirts of Feldberg; when the war ends, Fallada is made mayor of Feldberg by the occupying Red Army; in August the couple suffer a breakdown and are hospitalised; they return to their apartment in Berlin–Schöneberg, which is partly destroyed, partly occupied by others; first meeting with Johannes R. Becher, through whom he gets commissions to write pieces for the Tägliche Rundschau, and who arranges for him to move into a spacious house with a garden and garage in Eisenmengerweg (in the Pankow-Niederschönhausen district of Berlin), Fallada’s last place of residence.
1946 Repeated admissions to hospital, including a spell in a private temporary infirmary specializing in female venereal diseases at 10 Marthastrasse, where Fallada is the only male patient; works on Der Trinker [‘The Drinker’] (published in a reconstructed version in 1950/1953), Nightmare in Berlin (published in 1947), and Alone in Berlin (first published in 1947, although the book did not appear in its original version until 2011).
1947 5 February: Fallada dies in Berlin; he is cremated in a cemetery in Pankow, and his ashes are later moved to the cemetery in Carwitz at the instigation of Anna Ditzen.
EDITORIAL NOTE
The text of this edition is based on Volume 7 of the Ausgewählte Werke in Einzelausgaben [‘Selected Works’], edited by Günter Caspar, Aufbau Verlag, Berlin and Weimar, 2nd edition, 1988. The 1988 text was in turn based on the first edition (Aufbau Verlag, Berlin, 1947), which contained two obvious slips that Caspar corrected: at the end of Chapter 8 the nurse talks of ‘16 February 1943’, although she clearly means ‘1944’, as mentioned at the beginning of Chapter 7. And towards the end of Chapter 12 there are two references to the ‘Big Four’, although this clearly refers back to Chapter 1 and the ‘Big Three’. While preparing the new edition, Caspar also consulted Fallada’s correspondence, the manuscripts, and other material relating to the novel, when the author’s papers were still in the possession of the then copyright owner, Emma D. Hey (Braunschweig). Some of the material is now kept in the Hans Fallada Archive (Neubrandenburg/Carwitz), but the location of the manuscripts and typescripts, as well as the proofs for Nightmare in Berlin, is today unknown.
Günter Caspar assumed that Hans Fallada had read the proofs in full. But letters kept in the Aufbau company archive cast doubt on this. Based on three such letters (dated 17, 24, and 27 November 1946), it is safe to assume that he read ‘the first 20 page proofs of Nightmare’ as well as ‘p. 21 to 127’ (‘page proofs 61 to 100 are missing’), and then returned them to his publisher (the first edition ran to 236 printed pages). The correspondence of the publishing director Kurt Wilhelm also contains a letter of 31 December 1946, in which he laments the fact that ‘at the time of writing’ he has still not received the corrected proofs back from Fallada. He reverts to the matter on 27 January: ‘Our production department is still waiting for your proof corrections for Nightmare, and needs them very urgently now. Is it not possible for you to send me your copy of the proofs through an intermediary, as soon as possible after you receive this letter?’ Wilhelm never received a reply to this request. Fallada died on 5 February 1947, in Berlin’s Charité hospital.
As far as the preparation of the manuscript is concerned, it is clear from the correspondence that Fallada revised the text several times. On 27 September 1946, he wrote: ‘Dear Mr. Wilhelm, with this letter my wife is bringing you the finished manuscript of my novel Nightmare in Berlin — unfortunately I am unable to come myself, owing to a bad attack of rheumatoid arthritis. / As you will see from a quick look through the copy, I have put a great deal of additional work into this novel, and I doubt if there is a single page that hasn’t been revised, but the main thing is that I have cut the text substantially, probably by as much as a quarter. I hope that the book in its present definitive form is to your liking. […] / Before the manuscript goes to print, I would like to look through it myself one more time, since all too often typing mistakes creep in that distort the meaning. I would also like to read the galley proofs myself.’
In October, further specific changes were agreed in an exchange of letters and sent on to Wilhelm by Fallada. The latter also expressed detailed views on the format and design of the book, took it upon himself to organise serialisation in the Frankfurter Rundschau, and announced his intention of placing the novel with three of his foreign publishers: Gyldendal in Copenhagen, Putnam in London, and Hökerberg in Stockholm: ‘It would be really nice if you were the first German publisher able to announce the publication of a German book in a foreign country.’
What emerges clearly from all this is that even if Fallada was unable to deliver a full set of corrected proofs to his publisher before his death, he had meticulously prepared the text of Nightmare in Berlin for publication.
