Hans Fallada

Hans Fallada (hans ˈfa.la.da; born Rudolf Wilhelm Friedrich Ditzen; 21 July 1893 5 February 1947) was a German writer of the first half of the 20th century. Some of his better known novels include Little Man, What Now? (1932) and Every Man Dies Alone (1947). His works belong predominantly to the New Objectivity literary style, a style associated with an emotionless reportage approach, with precision of detail, and a veneration for 'the fact'. Fallada's pseudonym derives from a combination of characters found in the Grimm's Fairy Tales: The titular protagonist of Hans in Luck (KHM 83), and Falada the magical talking horse in The Goose Girl. Fallada was born in Greifswald, Germany, the child of a magistrate on his way to becoming a supreme court judge and a mother from a middle-class background, both of whom shared an enthusiasm for music, and to a lesser extent, literature. Jenny Williams notes in her biography More Lives than One (1998), that Fallada's father would often read aloud to his children works by authors such as Shakespeare and Schiller. In 1899, when Fallada was 6, his father relocated the family to Berlin following the first of several promotions he would receive. Fallada had a very difficult time upon first entering school in 1901. As a result, he immersed himself in books, eschewing literature more in line with his age for authors such as Flaubert, Dostoevsky, and Dickens. In 1909 the family again relocated, to Leipzig, following his father's appointment to the Imperial Supreme Court. In 1909 (age 16), he was run over by a horse-drawn cart, then kicked in the face by the horse, and the contraction of typhoid in 1910 (age 17) seem to mark a turning point in Fallada's life. His lifelong drug problems were born of the pain-killing medications he was taking as the result of his injuries. These issues manifested themselves in multiple suicide attempts. In 1911 he made a pact with a friend, Hanns Dietrich von Necker, to stage a duel to mask their suicides, feeling that the duel would be seen as more honorable.