Iron Gustav (2 page)

On 12 November 1937 Hans Fallada signed a contract to write a novel ‘dealing with the fate of a German family from 1914 until around 1933'. Little did he suspect how much grief this project, which culminated in the publication of
Iron Gustav: A Berlin Family Chronicle
in 1938, would cause him – or how tortuous the path would be that would lead to the first complete English edition in 2014.

The manuscript that Fallada submitted on time in February 1938 was not initially intended for publication in book form. He had signed the contract with the Tobis Film Company, one of whose board members was the German film star Emil Jannings (1884–1950), most famous perhaps for his role in
The Blue Angel
of 1930, in which he had co-starred with Marlene Dietrich. Jannings had been looking for some time for a film script that would offer him an attractive leading role and was delighted with the larger-than-life figure of Gustav Hackendahl. Jannings took an active part in the negotiations between Fallada and Tobis, in the course of which it was agreed that Fallada would submit a novel and that the company's screenwriters would develop it into a film script.

Gustav Hackendahl is based on the historical figure of Gustav Hartmann (1859–1938) who, like his literary counterpart, inherited his father-in-law's coach business, built it into a successful enterprise and became famous for his return journey by coach and horse to Paris in 1928.

Fallada clearly wrote the novel with filming in mind. The physical appearance of Gustav Hackendahl himself, in his dark coachman's coat and white top hat, perched on the seat at the front of his coach with the reins of his horse firmly in his hands, is visually striking.
His symbolic status is powerful, too: a man of ‘iron' principle who sees the values of order, discipline and obedience, on which he has built his life, crumble in the face of modernity. The episodic nature of the work, the extensive use of dialogue (and dialect), the clearly delineated characters all lend themselves to a film adaptation, as does the wide range of social settings – from brothel to elegant villa, from stables to parliament buildings, from hospital to stationery shop, from a newspaper's headquarters to a tenement building. In this novel, as in
Wolf Among Wolves
of 1937, Fallada explores how the lives of quite ordinary people are affected by the tumultuous events of German history in the first three decades of the twentieth century. In
Iron Gustav
this social realism focuses on the Hackendahl family where the effects of the authoritarian nature of Wilhelminian Germany, in the form of Gustav's ‘iron' principles, result in only one of the five children growing into a ‘decent' human being. For Fallada, whose view of morality was a decidedly individual one, ‘decency' (‘
Anständigkeit
') is the key to ethical human behaviour.

When Fallada signed the contract for
Iron Gustav
in November 1937 he most probably knew that Tobis – like all media organizations – had been taken over by the Nazi Party. What he did not know was that Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945), the Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, was beginning to take a keen interest in his work. In January 1938 Goebbels read
Wolf Among Wolves
and, interpreting the critique of Weimar Germany in the novel as a confirmation of the Nazis' rejection of everything to do with the Weimar Republic, noted in his diary that this was ‘a super book' and its author had ‘real talent'. What Fallada ought to have known was that signing a contract in 1938 with a Nazi film company to write a book covering the period 1914 to 1933 in German history would mean including a glowing account of the rise of the Nazi Party.

Fallada seems to have had no inkling of the collision course on which he embarked in November 1937. In his defence it must be said that his main aim was to create a role for Emil Jannings and to write a social history around the Hackendahl family. This led to him concluding the novel shortly after Gustav's triumphant return from Paris in 1928.

Fallada expected the screenwriters to make changes to his
manuscript; what he did not expect was the personal intervention of Goebbels, who insisted that the story be continued until 1933 and that Gustav Hackendahl become an ardent Nazi. While Fallada was able to decline Goebbels's invitation for a face-to-face meeting, he could not ignore his instructions about the conclusion of the novel. He suggested to Jannings that a Nazi author would be much better placed to write the sort of conclusion that Goebbels required. When Jannings conveyed this view to Goebbels, the Minister replied that if Fallada was still unsure about his attitude towards the Party, the Party had no doubts about its attitude towards Fallada. Fallada now found himself faced with an unmistakable threat to his life. How would this non-Nazi, whose work since
A Small Circus
had constituted an extended plea for human decency, react?

He capitulated. Like most of Gustav Hackendahl's family he was unable to resist the iron fist of an authoritarian regime. By way of explanation he would later write: ‘I do not like grand gestures, being slaughtered before the tyrant's throne, senselessly, to the benefit of no one and to the detriment of my children, that is not my way.'

Fallada's great gift lay in his keen observation of the world around him and his talent as a storyteller. His ability to feel his way inside his characters and convey their hopes and fears, their successes and failures, produced realistic figures such as Otto Hackendahl in
Iron Gustav
, Willi Kufalt in
Once a Jailbird
and Johannes Pinneberg in
Little Man,What Now?
. This, his great strength, was also a weakness, for he was unable to rise above his emotional involvement – in his characters, in his attitude to politics as well as in many aspects of his day-to-day life – to develop an analytical or philosophical standpoint. His 1944 Prison Diary leaves no doubt about his hatred of the Nazi regime but it was an instinctive hatred, not one based on a political philosophy. And this left him defenceless against the bully-boy tactics of Joseph Goebbels. He spent August 1938 carrying out Goebbels's instructions: ‘this month […] is marked in black in my diary. The world filled me with loathing, but I loathed myself even more for what I was doing.'

Fallada did the minimum necessary to meet Goebbels's demands. There is no detailed account of the rise of the Nazi Party or the nature of Party meetings, nor is there a celebration of the Party's
much-vaunted achievements. In fact, Party activities are reduced to folding leaflets and getting involved in street brawls. There is no discussion of Party policy apart from Heinz Hackendahl's question about anti-Semitism, which is left unanswered.

In order to prepare the ground for first Heinz's and then Gustav's Party membership, Fallada added a small amount of material in Chapters Four, Five, Six and Seven in which he underscores the injustices suffered by Germany in the aftermath of the First World War and sharply criticizes the role of the Communists in the November Revolution. The first major addition is the insertion at the end of Chapter Seven of three new sections that explain Heinz's reasons for joining the Nazi Party: his unemployment (which leads to difficulties in his marriage), his meeting with a former comrade of Otto's (who is a Party member) and the feeling of comradeship and the sense of purpose that Party membership brings. As a member of the Party, Heinz ‘becomes a human being and a real man again'. The additions in Chapter Eight pave the way for Gustav to become a Nazi and the new Chapter Nine describes the death of Gustav's wife, Heinz and his family moving into the Hackendahl family home and Gustav's decision to join the Party. The final line of the new conclusion is Gustav's declaration to Heinz and his comrades: ‘Well, then: let me join you!'

Heinz and Gustav do not join the Nazi Party because they are convinced by Nazi Party policy. Heinz finds a reason for living and a sense of belonging in his political work (which remains unspecified); Gustav's reasons for joining are rather unclear.

Fallada, who later described these changes as ‘stupid tinkering around', expected that they would not satisfy Goebbels. But to his surprise the Minister approved the
Iron Gustav
project and work started on the film. However, it all came to a halt in October 1938 when the Party's chief ideologue, Alfred Rosenberg (1893–1946), declared that Fallada was not the kind of author that a German state could support.

Given Rosenberg's views and the fact that the novel did not constitute a paean to National Socialism, it is not surprising that when the novel appeared at the end of November 1938 it received very negative reviews and was withdrawn from display in bookshop windows.

Despite the outbreak of war, Fallada's English publishers, Putnam, bought the rights to
Iron Gustav
and the first English translation appeared in 1940.

The 1940 English edition was considerably shorter than the one that had appeared in Germany in 1938. In the first place, it was based on Fallada's original manuscript and did not include Chapter Nine, the new sections in Chapter Seven and the other material that he had included at Goebbels's behest. Moreover, Putnam removed an additional eight sections and undertook wide-ranging cuts across the board. They clearly wanted a much shorter book.

Content that was considered repetitive or not central to the main narrative was simply excised. This affected primarily the portrayal of the Hackendahl children: the account of Sophie's application to volunteer for nursing at the Front (Two, X), Erich's visit to Dr Meier (Two, XIV), Otto's experience of Lille (Three, VII) are all simply omitted. A further three sections relating to Heinz are also cut: his visit with Irma to Tutti and Eva (Four, IX), his row with Tutti (Six, XIII) and his visit to his former teacher and mentor, Professor Degener (Seven, XII). Even Chapter Two, section VIII, which describes Gustav's walk with Heinz and the incident with the spies on the day he handed over his horses for the war effort, does not appear in the 1940 English translation.

Besides deleting whole sections, the editor removed much inner monologue and descriptions of characters' thoughts and feelings, such as the account in Chapter Six, section IV of Gustav's reaction on hearing that his grandsons, whom he has never met, prefer to play with coaches and horses rather than with cars. Key scenes that give particular insights into character motivation and plot development are also omitted. A good example is the conversation between Otto and his mother in Chapter One, section XII, in which they consider whether to release Erich from the cellar. Here Otto's character is given depth and the reasons for the decision to break the locks on the cellar doors are provided – a decision that sets Erich on a path of criminality that ultimately leads to his being arrested for treason.

Putnam's editor in 1940 had little time for Fallada's detailed and often humorous accounts of everyday life, such as the conversations
in the queue for rations (Three, II) or in the waiting room of the doctor's surgery (Three, XV) during the First World War.

The cumulative effect of these changes was to produce characters that are much less complex and a novel that lacks the colour and vividness of Fallada's original work.

The final set of cuts in the 1940 edition relates to passages dealing with the political and historical background to the events portrayed in the novel. Perhaps the editor took the view that English readers would not be interested in detailed descriptions of recent German history. However, it is likely that the context in which the novel was published also had a considerable bearing on these cuts. The decision to omit Chapter Five, section XVI, which deals with the Treaty of Versailles, and drastically to reduce the account of the occupation of the Ruhr in Chapter Six can be ascribed to the sensitivity of these issues in Britain at the time.

Indeed, Putnam's decision to publish a contemporary German novel by an author still living in Germany in 1940 is unique in British publishing. It was, of course, Putnam that had arranged for Fallada and his family to leave Germany in the autumn of 1938 and it is possible that the original plan was to publish a new Fallada translation to coincide with the author's arrival in London and to provide some financial support for his new life in exile. However, Fallada could not bring himself to leave Germany. 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).