Hans Fallada, born Rudolf Wilhelm Adolf Ditzen in Greifswald, was one of the most famous German writers of the 20th century. His novel, Little Man, What Now? is generally considered his most famous work and is a classic of German literature. Fallada's pseudonym derives from a combination of characters found in the Grimm fairy tales: The protagonist of Lucky Hans and a horse named Falada in The Goose Girl.
He was the child of a magistrate on his way to becoming a supreme court judge and a mother from a middle-class background, both of whom shared an enthusiasm for music and to a lesser extent, literature. Jenny Williams notes in her biography, More Lives than One that Fallada's father would often read aloud to his children the works authors including Shakespeare and Schiller (Williams, 5).
In 1899 when Fallada was 6, his father relocated the family to Berlin following the first of several promotions he would receive. Fallada had a very difficult time upon first entering school in 1901. As a result, he immersed himself in books, eschewing literature more in line with his age for authors including Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, and Dickens. In 1909 the family relocated to Leipzig following his father's appointment to the Imperial Supreme Court.
A rather severe road accident in 1909 (he was run over by a horse-drawn cart, then kicked in the face by the horse) and the contraction of typhoid in 1910 seem to mark a turning point in Fallada's life and the end of his relatively care-free youth. His adolescent years were characterized by increasing isolation and self-doubt, compounded by the lingering effects of these ailments. In addition, his life-long drug problems were born of the pain-killing medications he was taking as the result of his injuries. These issues manifested themselves in multiple suicide attempts. In 1911 he made a pact with his close friend, Hanns Dietrich, to stage a duel to mask their suicides, feeling that the duel would be seen as more honorable. Because of both boys' inexperience with weapons, it was a bungled affair. Dietrich missed Fallada, but Fallada did not miss Dietrich, killing him. Fallada was so distraught that he picked up Dietrich's gun and shot himself in the chest, but miraculously survived. Nonetheless, the death of his friend ensured his status as an outcast from society. Although he was found innocent of murder by way of insanity, from this point on he would serve multiple stints in mental institutions. At one of these institutions, he was assigned to work in a farmyard, thus beginning his lifelong affinity for farm culture.
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 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 several farmhand and other agricultural jobs in order to support himself and finance his growing drug addictions. Before the war, Fallada relied on his father for financial support while writing; after the German defeat he was no longer able, nor willing, to depend on his father's assistance. Shortly after the publication of Anton and Gerda, Fallada reported to prison in Greiswald 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
Hans Fallada was a German writer from the first half of the 20th century who struggled alternately with addiction to alcohol, morphine, ether and cocaine for most of his adult life. This small book collects two autobiographical stories - Short Treatise on the Joys of Morphinism and Three Years of Life - the first of which is a harrowing account of his time as a morphine/cocaine junkie, and the second addressing his self-imposed jail-time for stealing to finance his alcoholism.
Of the two, Short Treatise is definitely the best. It鈥檚 a day in the life of Hans, who wakes up hungering for morphine, and we follow his journey to salve that hunger. Going from his cheap lodgings, he meets up with a fellow junkie desperate for a fix and the two try to fill fake scripts at various pharmacies, all while their pains are getting more unbearable. Hans decides to try his luck on his own, going to a doctor for a morphine injection, and from there it鈥檚 a nightmarish descent from needle to needle until his fickle lady - the drug - embraces him fully.
It鈥檚 a short 18 page story but it鈥檚 one of the most gripping accounts of drug addiction I鈥檝e ever read. Fallada鈥檚 writing is so intense that I was actually on edge and nervous the entire time I was reading it, feeling as jittery as Hans was as his anguish over withdrawal enveloped him. I breathed deeply once he got his fix but, once again, Fallada whips up more tension as Hans goes looking for more drugs to shoot into his veins, this time finding cocaine鈥� It鈥檚 a bitterly ironic title with little joy to be found in the drug habit.
Three Years of Life is tangentially about addiction. Fallada is so desperate, he decides to beat his alcoholism by spending time in jail. He鈥檇 been falsifying accounts and stealing money to finance his addiction and turns himself in to the police. This is surprisingly difficult to do at first as the police think he鈥檚 just another delusional wino, but eventually he gets thrown in the slammer and from there it鈥檚 an often dreary account of how he survived in prison.
It鈥檚 actually more about nicotine addiction than alcohol as Fallada spends quite a lot of the story talking about how cigarettes become currency in prison, the difficulty of finding a light inside, and the various disgusting ways an addict satisfies his needs. If Short Treatise is a pedal-to-the-metal frenzied ride through the blazing madness of drug addiction, Three Years is an uncomfortable but still amiable stroll through the inanity of prison life and the constant search for cigarettes. It鈥檚 a much less interesting story but illustrates the still further difficulties that Fallada鈥檚 addictions put him through (and would eventually kill him. Fallada died of a morphine overdose in 1947).
This is worth a look for the white-hot writing of Short Treatise but there are also some passages that stand out in Three Years. If the first story is five stars and the second three, let鈥檚 split the difference and call this a four star read.
Fallada was one of the eminent writers of the Weimar Republic who found their art just as change of politics made it increasingly difficult - even impossible - to practice it.
Nowadays, Fallada is not well known outside of Germany - possibly with the exception of the odd enthusiast, and I wager that even in Germany his books are true classics - meaning that people may remember some of his rather catchy titles but far and few between have read them.
Anyway, in this short collection of episodes, Fallada gives some insight into the life of a morphine addict in 1920鈥檚 Berlin. In the second part of the book, he turns to the life in prison at around the same time. His own experiences feature heavily in both parts of the book. Fallada was an addict. In his own words there was no time when he was not hooked something or another be it morphine, alcohol, nicotine or even caffeine. Addiction had always been a struggle for him and he constantly tried to wean himself of one substance by using another. Episodes of drug addiction intermingled with episodes of mental ill-health and imprisonment but somehow Fallada still managed to write some of the most readable, moving and also critical accounts of life as he saw it.
What stands out for me after reading The Short Treatise is the absolute urgency and focus that the morphine addiction demands from its victims.
"But I still don鈥檛 go, even though it鈥檚 nearly nine o鈥檆lock, I stare at the coffee I poured myself, and I think: caffeine is a poison that stimulates the heart. There are plenty of instances of people killing themselves with coffee, hundreds and thousands of them. Caffeine is a deadly poison, maybe almost as deadly as morphine. Why didn鈥檛 it ever occur to me before: coffee is my friend! And I gulp down one, two cups. I sit there for a minute, staring into space, and wait. I go on trying to kid myself, even though I know I鈥檝e been deliberately trying to pull the wool over my eyes. Inevitably, my stomach refuses to keep even that watery coffee down. I can feel my whole body shake and a cold sweat come over me, I need to get up, I am shaken with cramps, and then sour bursts of bile. 鈥業鈥檓 going to die,鈥� I whisper to myself, and stare into space."