A Stranger in My Own Country by Hans Fallada Page B

Ministry in November 1933, would now decide who could work as an artist and who could not. Jews and political dissidents were no longer allowed to write for a living. The campaign of terror against writers unpopular with the regime had already taken on a new dimension with the burning of books on 10 May 1933. Among those whose books were burned were Anna Seghers, Lion Feuchtwanger, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Kurt Tucholsky, Sigmund Freud and many others. Hans Fallada was not on the list. Those who, like him, wished to remain in the country and continue to publish had to reach an accommodation with the powers that be – whether they liked it or not.
    The gaiety and bustle of ‘Schlichters Wine Bar’, the haunt of Berlin’s boheme , belonged to the past. As this opening scene already makes clear, Fallada treats his memories as material for literature, telling stories about ordinary people and the famous, creating characters, dialogue and scenes. The interspersed ‘separate entries’ are a repeated reminder of the conditions of his confinement and the emotional stress he is living under.
    In the autumn of 1944 Hans Fallada had reached the nadir of hisexistence. The most important wellsprings of his life were drying up: literary success, and his relationship with his wife Anna Ditzen. His drug addiction was getting the better of him again in a life that was gradually turning into a nightmare.
    In 1935, two years after they moved out into the country, the Nazis declared him an ‘undesirable writer’, following the publication of Once a Jailbird and Once We Had a Child . In 1938 Fallada was back on the blacklist again. The literary failures of the next few years did not leave him unscathed. ‘The dream of becoming a great artist is over’ was the bitter conclusion of a writer who had settled for churning out lightweight novels. In 1943 he lost his publisher, after nearly 25 years as one of his established authors. The many compromises, and the battles with the Nazi authorities, had left their mark.
    By the autumn of 1944 Carwitz, once an enchanted island in a ‘storm-tossed world’, had long since ceased to be an idyllic haven where he could work in peace. The war had come to this village too. The house afforded a refuge for Fallada’s mother, Elisabeth Ditzen, and a number of Anna’s relatives. The previous year Fallada had encouraged them to move in, but now he was developing an aversion to the many ‘strange faces’. He found an outlet for his anger by engaging in target practice in the garden. In the village, meanwhile, people were gossiping about an affair of the writer’s. In these notes Hans Fallada relates with brutal honesty and unconcealed hatred how the petty-mindedness and tale-telling of the villagers had poisoned his life over the years. He makes sure that the ‘informers and malicious gossips’ will not readily be forgotten. In contrast to the descriptions in Our Home Today , the book of ‘evasions’, the Prison Diary of 1944 has little to say about the joys of writing in leafy seclusion. The clashes with the Nazi bigwigs of the village and the constant run-ins with the hostile local farmers, all the disputes and legal proceedings going on year after year – these things made his everyday life a hell. And on top of all this Fallada now felt himself consigned to a ‘Strindbergian hell’ in his own home. His resentment against his wife of many years grew stronger. In the end he moved out of the house and into the gardener’s flat in the barn.And he agreed to a divorce. On 2 May 1944 the lawyer Dr Rehwoldt in Neustrelitz was instructed to act for him, and was simultaneously informed that the couple had reached a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’. They carried on living together on the farm in Carwitz, which remained home to their three children. On 5 July 1944 the marriage was dissolved in a hearing before the district