Bestseller set in Nazi Germany and published in communist era is to have controversial chapter reinstated
More than 60 years since Hans Fallada's international bestseller Alone in Berlin was published, readers will be able to digest the unabridged version for the first time.
Germany's Aufbau publishing house recently dug out Fallada's original manuscript from its archive, only to find there was an extra chapter, and a rather different story. They decided to reprint the novel as Fallada originally wrote it.
Based on fact, Alone in Berlin tells the bleak story of a working-class couple, Otto and Anna Quangel, in wartime Berlin. Crushed by the news that their son has been killed at the front they begin a resistance campaign, distributing anti-Nazi postcards. Hounded by the Gestapo, the couple are finally tried and executed.
The missing chapter 17 reveals a side of the Quangels only hinted at in the first version. "No one suspected that the original in our archive differed from the published version," says Ren� Strien, the director of Aufbau.
Yet the changes were considerable. Handwritten corrections on the original manuscript show that chapter 17 was completely cut, and the style and politics of the novel consistently toned down.
"The first edition was more tame, more black and white. There are more shades of grey in this original edition," said Strien. "But remember, Aufbau was an East German publisher and there was censorship back then. A communist should be a marvellous person, a Nazi should be bad."
Founded in 1945, Aufbau became the major publishing house in postwar East Germany and specialised at first in communist and anti-fascist literature.
The changes shift the reader's understanding of the story, according to the Penguin editor Adam Freudenheim. "I was surprised to read the new chapter," he said. "It was clear in the existing version that they are not heroic resisters, it's the death of their son that causes them to search their consciences. But this is more dramatic. There's not just good and evil."
Fallada's original portrayal of the Quangels is more ambivalent. At the start, they are an average German family, settled into the political status quo. Chapter 17 depicts them as actively taking part in national socialist society.
They are grateful to Hitler that Otto has work as the foreman in a furniture factory. His wife admires the F�hrer and volunteers for the National Socialist women's league ? details deleted from the published edition.
It is only after they lose their son that the couple turn against the regime.
"This is really exciting," said Manfred Kuhnke, a Fallada researcher and old family friend. "These are substantial changes. Fallada didn't want flawless anti-fascists. He would never have taken this chapter out."
Linguistically, the original also brings you closer to the writer, according to the critic Hajo Steinart. "It's grittier, more authentic, we're learning more about the author's state of mind," he said.
Fallada's life was troubled by mental illness and addiction. He died shortly before the novel was published and it is not clear whether he ever proofread the corrections. Aufbau says the first edition may even have been the version Fallada wanted.
"It's not as if the poor British readers have the wrong book," said Strien. "They are both legitimate versions."
The reprint will initially only be available in Germany but Penguin said it was considering a reprint with the rediscovered chapter 17 as an appendix.
The novel has been translated into 20 languages and sold more than 300,000 copies in the UK alone. In Germany, it is called Jeder stirbt f�r sich allein (Everyone Dies Alone).
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/09/chapter-hans-fallada-alone-berlin
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