For his English publisher he was nonetheless an important enough contemporary German author to be published in translation, despite the fact that he was living in a country with which Britain was at war.
It was not until 1962 that an attempt was made to reconstruct Fallada’s original German manuscript in the form it had taken before he made the changes in August 1938. This reconstruction, undertaken by Günter Caspar of the Aufbau publishing house in the German Democratic Republic, who was the editor of Fallada’s Selected Works, has since become the standard German edition. It ends rather abruptly on the day that Gustav returns from Paris. Caspar did not have access to the 1940 English translation; he was probably unaware that it represented, albeit in bowdlerized form, the structure of Fallada’s original manuscript. If he had seen it, he might have retained its last chapter, entitled ‘The Beer Glass’, in his German edition. This chapter continues Gustav’s story until the death of his wife and finishes, in typical Fallada fashion, with an anecdote that portrays Gustav as ‘iron’ until the end.
The new Penguin translation uses the Caspar reconstruction to reinstate Putnam’s original excisions and thus produces a much more complete English edition of the work than that published in 1940. This edition also represents the most faithful reconstruction of Fallada’s original manuscript to date. As such it provides an instructive case study of the significant role that translation can play in preserving a foreign text that has fallen victim to censorship in its country of origin.
Finally, the publication of Iron Gustav marks an important milestone in reconnecting Fallada with his English-speaking readers, who now have access to all his major critical realist novels from A Small Circus (1931) to Alone in Berlin (1947).
Jenny Williams, 2014
Note on the Translation
Iron Gustav was first published by Putnam (London) in 1940. Starting with Little Man, What Now? in 1933, Putnam had published a Fallada novel every year. Fallada’s popularity must be the only explanation for a British publisher bringing out a book by a writer – and one who was hardly known as any kind of dissenter – with whose country it was at war.
In view of the fact that Putnam had already substantially abbreviated Fallada’s even longer novel, Wolf Among Wolves, also translated by Philip Owens, it is not surprising that its British publisher abbreviated Iron Gustav even more drastically, by some two hundred pages. Many of these cuts concern issues – the so-called German Revolution of 1918–19, the Occupation of the Ruhr, and mass unemployment (about which Fallada wrote most powerfully) – which had been used successfully by the National Socialists in their propaganda, and so were considered unwelcome reading during a war against Germany which had just begun.
These cuts mean that the book was substantially misrepresented when first published, and that this edition is more than a reprint with some cuts restored, but rather a completely new edition of this novel.
Philip Owens, born in 1901, was a writer, translator and editor, who formed part of the British literary avant-garde alongside figures like Jack Lindsay, Samuel Beckett, William Empson and Edgell Rickword in the twenties and thirties. Among other works, he wrote an experimental novel, much of it set in Berlin (Hobohemians: A Study of Luxurious Poverty (Mandrake Press, 1929)). Little wonder that he was such a brilliant translator of Fallada’s low-life ambience.
Philip Owens was killed, serving in the Intelligence Corps, in the Greek Civil War in June 1945. I learned much from him.
More practically, I would like to thank Gardis Cramer von Laue for not only locating everything missing – as discussed elsewhere – from the 1940 translation, from single words and phrases to passages and whole chapters, but also for typing everything out, with its context, for the convenience of the translator. I also benefited from her native German and strong feel for the English language.
N.M.J.
All the characters in this book, including Iron Gustav himself, are creatures of the imagination, no living person being referred to in any way. Moreover, the author has used only such material as could be gathered from the daily newspapers of the time.
H. F.
ONE
The Good Days of Peace
§ I
Perhaps it was the grey mare, old Hackendahl’s favourite, demanding its feed by dragging the halter chain through the manger ring and pawing the floor of its stable; perhaps it was the dawn replacing the moon, the light of earliest morning breaking over Berlin, which had awakened the old man. Possibly, however, it was neither the dawn nor his favourite grey that had awakened him at twenty minutes past three on the morning of 29 June 1914, but something quite different.
Struggling with sleepiness, the old man had groaned: ‘Erich, Erich, you won’t do that, will you?’ Then he had started up and gazed round the room. Slowly, perception returned to his eyes; over the carved shell of the marriage bed, with knobs on either side, he saw the sabre and helmet, from the time when he had been a sergeant-major in the Pasewalk Cuirassiers, hanging on the wall beneath his photograph, taken on the day he had left the service twenty years ago. He saw the faint gleam of the blade and of the golden eagle on his helmet, bringing memories which made him even prouder and happier than did the big cab-hire business he had since built up; the esteem that had been his in the regiment pleased him more than the respect paid him, the successful businessman, by his neighbours in the Frankfurter Allee. And, harking back to his nightmare, he said, now fully awake: ‘No, Erich would never do a thing like that. Never!’
Abruptly he set his feet on the sheepskin rug by the bed.
§ II
‘Are you getting up already, Gustav?’ enquired a voice from the neighbouring bed, and a hand groped for him. ‘It’s only three o’clock.’
‘Yes, Mother. Twenty-five minutes past three.’
‘But why, Father? They’re not fed till four …’
He was almost embarrassed. ‘I’ve got a feeling that one of the horses might be ill.’ And, to avoid further explanations, he plunged his head into the wash basin. But his wife waited patiently until he had dried himself. ‘You’ve been talking all night in your sleep about Erich, Father.’
Her husband suddenly stopped combing his hair, was about to speak, but thought better of it. ‘Really,’ he remarked nonchalantly, ‘I wasn’t aware of it.’
‘What’s up between you and Erich?’ she persisted. ‘I know something’s the matter between you.’
‘Yesterday Eva was the whole afternoon at Köller’s. I won’t have it.
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