Little Man, What Now?

Little Man, What Now? is a 1932 novel by German author Hans Fallada. The novel portrays the difficult circumstances of Weimar-era Germany in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash. The novel was censored under the Nazi regime but republished after World War II with additional passages. The novel was adapted into two very different films in the early 1930s.

This guide uses the 2019 Penguin Modern Classics edition, translated by Michael Hoffmann.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss antisemitism and substance misuse. In addition, the source text uses offensive language regarding Jewish people, which is replicated in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material.

Plot Summary

In 1930s Germany, a young couple visits a doctor. The bookkeeper Johannes Pinneberg and his girlfriend, the salesperson Emma Morschel, are told that Emma is pregnant. Impulsively, they decide to marry. Johannes meets Emma’s parents for the first time and her blue-collar father mocks him for being a white-collar worker. Later, the couple begins to realize how much they will struggle amid the country’s financial crisis.

Now married, Johannes and Emma move into a small apartment on their own. they quickly discover that their neighbor is strange and that the house is filled with dust, and Emma wishes to move as soon as possible. At the same time, Johannes tries to keep their marriage a secret in the town because his boss still hopes that Johannes will marry his daughter, Maria. As Johannes and Emma struggle to stick to their budget, they treat themselves to food that is more expensive than they can afford. At work, Johannes’s position becomes increasingly untenable. Eventually, he is fired by his boss and he frets about what to do for work. He does what he swore he would never do and begs a former boss to give him back his job, to no avail. Fortune strikes when the couple receives a letter from Johannes’s estranged mother, inviting them to live with her in Berlin where she has arranged for Johannes to have a job.

Emma and Johannes move to Berlin. They quickly realize that Johannes’s mother, Mia, is not dependable. Her lover, Jachmann, helps Johannes secure a job in Mandel’s department store as a clothes salesperson in the menswear department. He befriends a colleague named Heilbutt but the other men in the department are not friendly. The young couple realizes they cannot continue to live with Mia, whose scandalous lifestyle threatens to get them in trouble. They find a small (and illegal) apartment and move out. As Johannes struggles at work, Emma goes into labor. He escorts her to the hospital and then returns, alone, to the apartment. Over the following day, Johannes struggles with loneliness. He calls the hospital for updates and wanders the streets of Berlin. He calls at the house of his colleague Heilbutt, who reveals that he is a nudist and invites Johannes to a nudist meeting. Johannes joins him but remains fully clothed. He quickly becomes bored and, a short time later, receives word that his baby has been born. Johannes rushes to the hospital, where Emma is waiting for him with their new baby boy, Markel.

As they learn how to be parents, Emma and Johannes struggle to make ends meet. Johannes does not enjoy the demanding sales quotas that are imposed on the staff by the bosses of the department store. Anyone who does not meet these quotas is fired. Johannes tries to collect money from the hospital, but he is trapped in the bureaucracy and quickly begins to loathe the office clerks who, he believes, are delaying his payment. Johannes and Emma are often kept awake by their baby. After one particularly stressful night, Johannes is late for work again and is reprimanded by his boss. During this time, Jachmann reappears in their lives. He insists on taking Emma and Johannes out for entertainment, paying for everything. He purchases lavish gifts and takes them to the cinema, only to vanish one evening when he is stopped in the street by a mysterious stranger. At work, Johannes continues to struggle to meet his quota. One day, he is surprised to see a famous actor in the store. Johannes recognizes the actor from the film he watched with Jachmann. Researching a role, the actor tries on many clothes but purchases nothing. Johannes begs him to buy something and, when the actor complains, Johannes is fired.

After 14 months, Johannes still cannot find another job. He lives in a summer house owned by Heilbutt, who now runs his own business selling nude photographs. Emma performs odd jobs for a small amount of money but the family is struggling to get by. Johannes must return to the center of Berlin to collect his unemployment payments. During one trip, he sees his disheveled appearance in a reflective store window and suffers an identity crisis. He returns home to Emma, who offers support to her husband. Rather than seeing himself as a white-collar worker, she suggests, he should remember that he is a father and husband. The love of his family helps Johannes to recover his spirit as Emma leads him back into their house.