"I lived the same life as everyone else, the life of ordinary people,
the masses." Sitting in a prison cell in the autumn of 1944, the German
author Hans Fallada sums up his life under the National Socialist
dictatorship, the time of "inward emigration". Under conditions of close
confinement, in constant fear of discovery, he writes himself free from
the nightmare of the Nazi years. He records his thoughts about spying
and denunciation, about the threat to his livelihood and his literary
work and about the fate of many friends and contemporaries. The
confessional mode did not come naturally to Fallada, but in the mental
and emotional distress of 1944, self-reflection became a survival
strategy.
Fallada's frank and sometimes provocative memoirs were thought for many
years to have been lost. They are published here for the first time.