Little man - what now? - by Hans Fallada
"Beginning of the second month." With this, the new phase of life of the young couple Johannes Pinneberg and Emma Mörschel, called Lämmchen, begins completely unexpectedly. The great love promises the big luck, the two marry shortly decided and look forward to the Murkel. For the time being, they ignore the fact that the salary will probably not be enough to live on. But how much pressure, fear and humiliation can a person endure?
Pinneberg shimmies from one precarious job to the next dismissal, towards the ever-present threat of social decline. The Murkel is delightful, Emma is the best woman in the world, and yet the little man finds no place in society. "You'll see what they've made of my husband in two years," Emma will say at the end, "there was no need for them to trample on him like that."
Hans Fallada writes his hit novel in 1932 during the Great Depression, when poverty and financial hardship are rampant, and it speaks to the people of his time. "What now?" Fallada leaves this question open in the novel. Historically, it was answered with the seizure of power and the triumph of National Socialism. Emma, on the other hand, has an unshakable belief in love and that things will eventually get better. The director is Tilmann Köhler, who most recently staged Shakespeare's "Coriolan" in Düsseldorf.<