A Stranger in My Own Country: The 1944 Prison Diary

A Stranger in My Own Country: The 1944 Prison Diary

Hans Fallada

“I have lived life like everyone else, the life of ordinary people, the masses.” In autumn 1944, says Hans Fallada in a jail cell, his life during the Nazi dictatorship, the period of internal exile. Under the conditions of detention, in constant fear of discovery, he writes from the nightmare without the Nazi era. His frank, sometimes provocative memories were long years missing. With this edition, they are first published. confessional Fallada was far from the narrator, but in the emotional distress of 1944, the self-reflection as a survival strategy. In the “death house”, he brings his political settlement on paper. “I know I’m mad. I jeopardize not only my life, I endanger […] recorded the lives of many people whom I report, “the driven. He writes of spying and denunciation of the risk of his life source, the literary work, and the fate of many friends and contemporaries such as Rowohlt and Emil Jannings. To the cover and to save paper, he used abbreviations. His notations, the eyes of the guards constantly exposed to “a kind of” secret writing. At the end he manages to smuggle the manuscript out of jail. “… today, after eleven years, I have not got used to those brown uniforms and the bulldog muzzles of their vehicles. You … destroy every human being – and with the dolls, which are left then, they have an easy time. “

A Stranger in My Own Country: The 1944 Prison Diary - Reviews

“In Meinen Fremden Land is an accurate novel, witty and ironic, about the author’s decision to stay in Nazi Germany.”

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Ariana Melamed

“Daily life in Nazi Germany: About Hans Fallada’s success.”

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Yiftah Ashkenazi, NRG

“In Meinen Fremden Land is an important read, even more that Alone in Berlin.”

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David Rosenthal