By Ruth Pearson
"How little things have changed. Despite an ocean and a world war between us and Johannes Pinneberg, capitalism continues grinding ‘little’ people to the bone"
Divided Communities
For a book published 86 years ago, the themes of Hans Fallada’s 1932 novel Kleiner Mann, Was Nun? (Little Man, What Now?) are horribly familiar. Little Man, What Now? * follows a young couple who, upon realising their birth control is somewhat lacking, get married and attempt to establish a home on a single man’s salary.
The novel is set in the economic turmoil of Weimar Germany’s final years. Our eponymous little man, Johannes Pinneberg, spends so much time contending with low wages, inflation, exploitation, and the constant, looming threat of unemployment, he takes little notice of the increasingly polarised politics which surround him.
Fallada, writing in 1931, could not have known the seriousness of the threat posed by the Nazis, nor that their rise to power was imminent. The book is therefore a snapshot of the period’s contemporary thought, untarnished by hindsight.
Without wishing to doom-monger about the current political moment, there are a few striking similarities between Pinneberg’s world and ours. The most obvious are the vile, rising tides of fascism.
The Mundanity of Evil
The novel characterises this through a Nazi working with Pinneberg. He has joined the party out of boredom: enthused by the violence, military regalia, orders from on high, and the weekly opportunities to fight the “friends of the USSR”. Pinneberg has no interest in him, nor in the blossoming Communism movement of the period advocated by the family of his working-class wife, Lammchen (Lambkin). They condemn white collar workers such as Pinneberg for their lack of solidarity: their reticence to strike facilitates the bosses’ exploitation, something the unionised working-classes would never accept.
Their arguments are validated. Pinneberg is exploited, underpaid, and eventually unemployed; yet his apathy makes him unwilling to commit to the cause.
Rather than delve into the politics of either side, Fallada paints a candid portrait of disenfranchisement. Pinneberg is alienated by politicians telling him “to tighten his belt, to make sacrifices, to feel German, to put his money in the savings-bank” (sound familiar?). “[T]hey all want something from me, but not for me. It’s all the same to them whether I live or die.”
This feeling of powerlessness is observable today. A lack of faith in democracy is triggering greater levels of disengagement and ‘protest votes’ from those who believe it makes no difference.
Fallada’s refusal to directly investigate the politics of Weimar Germany was a clever move because it ensured the novel’s wider appeal. However, to claim that he cynically profited by not taking sides is inaccurate: Little Man, What Now? makes a profound statement about poverty and exploitation, exposing the day-to-day reality of a couple who, though they do everything right, struggle to survive.
The Potency of Reality
Rather than attempting to encapsulate the grand scale of contemporary political arguments, a more authentic depiction arises by centring on the domestic lives of this little family. Politics is, as the main characters see it, on the periphery of their world; this allows Fallada to make his point without ever being heavy-handed.
We see instead an old woman thinking her life savings have been stolen because she doesn’t understand inflation. We see the couple’s budget in full, with deductions for taxes, insurance, health costs and union dues, and how far a monthly salary must stretch. We see the bureaucracy Pinneberg encounters to claim back the hospital costs from his wife’s birth. We wince when Pinneberg leaves his one-year old son alone in the cold house to collect his unemployment benefit.
These scenes, equally maddening and moving, supply a genuine, human quality at the book’s core. The book is extensively researched, yet Fallada’s lived experiences are key to the novel’s potency.
Although he was born into a bourgeois family, Fallada suffered mental and physical illnesses from a young age, and developed a morphine addiction. His life was characterised by spells of institutionalisation - both in prisons and mental hospitals – as well as constant battles with addiction and poverty.
He wrote Little Man, What Now? in a relatively stable, sober period in 1931. Like Pinneberg he had married a working-class woman, Anna Issel; had a young child and was struggling against debt and low wage.
Writing your Life
While their financial issues serve as a background for those explored in the book, the couple’s relationship also provided material. Certain touches seem so real they must come from direct experience. When the pregnant Lammchen, for instance, indulges her insatiable craving for salmon by finishing the expensive treat straight out of the paper coming home; or when the toddler pulls his hat down over his eyes to force his father to carry him.
While he was writing the book, Fallada became the main carer for his son while his wife worked to support them. This mirrors Pinneberg after he loses his job: indeed, people who saw him on his errands thought he was one of the millions of unemployed.
Luckily for Fallada and his family, the wild success of Little Man, What Now? alleviated their financial issues. It became an international bestseller; was serialised in many newspapers; and adapted into a Hollywood film.
History Repeats Itself
I can’t help being reminded of Jack Monroe, the food writer whose blog about feeding themself and their son for £10 a week was published as a hugely successful cookbook in 2014. Jack has remained an activist against poverty despite no longer being at the sharp end.
Both books, in their own way, provide a window into the reality of attempting to exist, and eke out a decent life, in cruelly meagre circumstances. Eighty years apart, both parents, in spite of budgeting and hard work, struggle to provide their children with the necessities of life: adequate food and a warm home.
What this teaches us is how little things have changed. Despite an ocean and a world war between us and Johannes Pinneberg, capitalism continues grinding ‘little’ people to the bone. The results of political apathy and polarity remain to be seen, but , as Fallada’s novel shows, their forerunners are clear.
* Not to be confused with the shitty Morrissey song of the same name which deserves to bear no relation to the book – did the decaying old racist recognise the irony of borrowing that title from Fallada, a writer most famed for his anti-Nazi novel Alone In Berlin? (Also very much worth a read).
Pictures courtesy of: https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/little-man-what-now and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q-mxOTawB4 and https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/298082069063487052/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Monroe