A Small Circus

A SMALL CIRCUS

Hans Fallada was born Rudolf Wilhelm Adolf Ditzen in 1893 in Greifswald, north-east Germany, and took his pen-name from a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. He spent much of his life in prison or in psychiatric care, yet produced some of the most significant German novels of the twentieth century, including Little Man, What Now?, Iron Gustav, Once a Jailbird, The Drinker and Alone in Berlin, the last of which was only published in English for the first time in 2009, to near-universal acclaim. He died in Berlin in 1947.

Copyright © Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin 1994

First published by Rowohlt, Berlin 1931; first published by Aufbau Verlag, Berlin 1964 in: Hans Fallada. Selected works in single issues. Edited by Günter Caspar.

Translation and editorial material copyright © Michael Hofmann, 2012

Translation is published and licensed to Skyhorse Publishing courtesy of Penguin Books Ltd., London

First published as Bauern, Bonzen und Bombern in Germany by Rowohlt, 1931

First translation published by Penguin Classics, 2012

First Arcade Publishing edition 2015

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design Rain Saukas

Cover photo credit Thinkstock

Print ISBN: 978-1-62872-432-5

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62872-476-9

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Dramatis Personae

A SMALL CIRCUS

Prologue: A Small Circus Called Monte

Part I: The Farmers

Part II: The Townies

Part III: Judgement Day

Epilogue: Just Like at Circus Monte

Notes

Appendix: German Parties and Elections in the Late Weimar Period

Acknowledgments

Dramatis Personae

The Fourth Estate

Stuff, Hermann: editor, local-affairs reporter, film reviewer and sportswriter on the Altholm Chronicle.

Wenk: lanky managing editor of the Chronicle.

Tredup, Max: chronically hard-up ‘advertising manager’ of the Chronicle, freelance photographer and aspiring writer.

Heinze, Clara (a.k.a. ‘Clarabelle’ and ‘Heinzelmann’): receptionist and typist on the Chronicle, and (towards the end of the month) freelance beauty.

Schabbelt: proprietor of the Chronicle, negligent husband and hobby inventor.

Heinsius: editor-in-chief of the Right-ish News (a Gebhardt paper), oracle, stay-at-home, nationalist and (last and least) belletrist.

Blöcker: reporter on the News and a friend of Stuff’s.

Pinkus: reporter on the Volkszeitung, an SPD-supporting paper.

Gebhardt: ever-acquisitive but enduringly small, the ‘little newspaper magnate of Pomerania’.

Trautmann: Gebhardt’s business manager and prompter.

Padberg, Heino: writer and editor on the Bauernschaft, the farmers’ paper (based in Stolpe).

Law and Order

Gareis: Chief Commissioner of Police (also Head of Welfare, Housing and Town Development) for Altholm, and Social Democrat (q.v. Politicians).

Frerksen, Fritz: Police Commander and Social Democrat.

Kallene: Police Superintendent and returned Social Democrat.

Bering, Katzenstein and Hebel: Police Inspectors.

Perduzke, Emil: long-time Deputy Inspector and surprisingly good egg.

Maak and Hart: Police Sergeants.

also Maurer, Schmidt, Soldin, Meierfeld, Geier, Erdmann, lower ranks and constables.

Colonel Senkpiel (q.v. Politicians) and Lieutenant Wrede (both militia).

Kalübbe and Thiel (q.v. Troublemakers): both bailiffs.

Greve: Prison Director.

Rural Constable Zeddies-Haselhorst.

Detective Inspector Josef Tunk: political section and provocateur (Stolpe) (q.v. Troublemakers).

The Politicians

‘Fatty’ or ‘Red’ Gareis: the big man, Mayor of Altholm (q.v. Law and Order); prodigious walker and conciliator (q.v. Law and Order).

Stein: Gareis’s (Jewish) political adviser and close friend.

Piekbusch: Gareis’s secretary.

Niederdahl: man of the Right, Gareis’s titular superior, the Oberbürgermeister of Altholm; for the most part a valetudinarian and an absentee.

Town Councillor Geier, Party Secretary Nothmann, Reichstag Member Koffka: all SPD, troika of ‘men in dark suits’.

Temborius: District President, quiet-lifer and ineligible bachelor (‘the gelding in Stolpe’).

Meier: Temborius’s (Jewish) chief adviser and quondam emergency treasurer.

Colonel Senkpiel, Government Councillor Schimmel, Revenue Councillor Andersson: Temborius’s kitchen cabinet.

Gehl, Klara: Temborius’s housekeeper and cook.

(unnamed) the Minister, in Berlin.

The Pillars of the Community

Textil-Braun and Emil Rag-Meisel: local businessmen and council members.

Manzow, Franz: local businessman, council leader and ardent paedophile.

Revenue Councillor Berg and Bishop Schwarz: council members.

Medical Councillor Dr Lienau: council and Stahlhelm member.

Dr Hüppchen: accountant, teetotaller and vegetarian. An incomer.

Toleis: chauffeur and specimen.

also Rehfelder, Besen, Gropius, Severing, Plosch, Röstel, Hempel, etc.

The Farmers

Päplow: aggrieved owner of confiscated cattle in Gramzow (not to be confused with Agricultural Councillor Päplow, at Temborius’s staged meeting in Stolpe).

Reimers, Franz: Headman of Gramzow and leading figure in the Bauernschaft movement.

Bandekow, Ernst, Count: younger brother to Count Bodo Bandekow, and farmer (Bandekow-Ausbau).

Padberg, Heino: leading figure in the Bauernschaft movement and editor of the newspaper of the same name.

Benthin, ‘Cousin’, ‘Father’ or ‘Moth-Head’: Altholm’s only resident farmer: public-speaker and expectant father.

Banz, Albin: dirt-farmer (Stolpermünde-Abbau), paterfamilias and man with a grudge.

Kehding (Karolinenhorst): farmer and writer of letters to the press.

also Rehder, Rohwer, Feinbube, Henke, etc.

The Troublemakers

Henning, Georg: ‘presently travelling in mineral oils and lubricants’ (or is it ‘milking-machines and centrifuges’?); flag-designer, flag-waver and all-round dasher.

Thiel: ex-Revenue official, gone over to the farmers’ side.

‘Bonkers’ Gruen: Auxiliary Prison Warden; lost the balance of his mind in the course of a mock-execution by Spartacist troops in November 1918.

Matthies: sword-stealer and Moscow-line Communist.

Farmer Megger: from Meggerkoog (‘near Hanover’) (q.v. Detective Inspector Josef Tunk, Law and Order).

Padberg, Heino: (q.v. Fourth Estate, q.v. Farmers).

Stuff, Hermann: (q.v. Fourth Estate).

Tredup, Max: (q.v. Fourth Estate).

Gareis: (q.v. Law and Order, q.v. Politicians).

etc., etc.,

Michael Hofmann, 2012

A Small Circus

Prologue:

A Small Circus Called Monte

I

A young man is striding rapidly along the Burstah. As he walks, he darts furious sidelong looks at the shopfronts, which—here on the main street of Altholm—are rather plentiful.

The young man, who is in his mid-twenties, married and quite nice-looking, is wearing a threadbare black coat, a broad-brimmed black felt hat and black-rimmed spectacles. Factor in his pale face too, and ignore the unseemly haste, and he might be an undertaker, with a ‘rest in peace’ or ‘the dear departed’ never far from his lips.

The Burstah is Altholm’s Broadway, but there’s not much of it. At the end of three minutes, the young man has reached the last building on it, on the station square. He spits forcefully, and after this latest manifestation of his mood, disappears into the home of the Pomeranian Chronicle for Altholm and Environs, news-sheet for every class.

Behind the dispatch counter sits a bored typist, who hurriedly starts to put away her romance novel. Seeing that it’s only advertising manager Tredup in front of her, she doesn’t bother.

He tosses a scrap of paper on the counter.