Hans Fallada "Little man – what now?"

• original title: “Der Pumm”
• 1932
• cover painting by George Grosz
• Rowohlt-Verlag

Hans Fallada’s novel “Little man – what now?” appeared on 10th June 1932. As in “Peasants, Bosses and Bombs” (1931) the work represented Fallada’s humanistic writing in the Weimar Republic, which depicted reality in a newly objective style. After the National Socialists came to power, Fallada felt obliged to change some passages. The Nazi Lauterbach, “who used his large hands (and whatever was in them) with an almost artistic sense of effect” and whose “yearning for life” was nurtured by them in such a way that he could “fight […] almost every Sunday – and sometimes even on weekdays” became a football goalkeeper.

Other things remained as they were, for example “Lämmchen‘s leaning towards the K.P.D. (German Communist Party)” or a complaint “against the anti-Semites.” Fallada explained to his publisher Rowohlt that these things are part of the “atmosphere of the book, the time when it was created and during which it is set, and do not hurt anyone.”