The Drinker

The drinker is a novel by Hans Fallada. The author wrote the work in 1944 during a time in custody in the State Institute Neustrelitz -Strelitz. He relied on his own experience with alcohol dependence. The novel was published posthumously in 1950.

Biographical background

The drinker is considered, in addition to the subsequently written The nightmare, as Fallada personal work. The author was arrested after an alleged homicide attempt on his former wife as non compos mentis for three and a half months. In prison, he wrote secretly called the " drinkers manuscript ," an intensive examination of the humiliations and personal crises in recent years. The finally after Fallada's death (1947 ) published novel is part of this manuscript.

Summary

The business of Erwin summer is going badly for some time. When he by his negligence loses a big contract to his young competitors Heinze, he rinsed his sorrows away with half a bottle of white wine. Summer runs against the will of his wife on a business trip to Hamburg, where he used to live regular drinking within a week. Finally, his wife takes out his alcohol dependency and the poor location of the business and seeks to ensure that he goes to therapy, by letting him bring two doctors in the hospital drinker, but he runs the road from the car. Through crime and other alcohol crashes he comes first as remand prisoner to jail, and later in a closed therapy and nursing home. In her only visit there tells him his wife, that she has business and leisure teamed up with his young competitors. Then, in a fit of rage summer loses control of himself. His desperation grows and eventually leads him to drink after a long and enforced abstinence from ethanol inventories to his station. This is detected and compared with counted together with the fury of his wife as a sign that he can not be dismissed. His permanent housing as " mentally ill " is available from the warden. The regular alimony of his former wife, he could lead a substantive rather carefree life. But he decides to put an end to his existence itself; not by violent act - this he is, as he himself confesses, too cowardly - but by intentionally caused by tuberculous infection inmates of the institution. When he already felt the first signs of the deadly disease, he paints from how he is animated, in the arms of his former lover, can take off from an overdose of alcohol, in noise and forgetting: "And if I'm so done in my hour of death, I will bless my life, and I will not have suffered in vain! "

Films

Twice The drinker was filmed for television. 1967 was the protagonist Siegfried Lowitz for his performance in The Drinker the Golden Camera. In 1995, the highly acclaimed remake with Harald Juhnke was in the lead role as a television movie in WDR, and later in the ARD. Directed by Tom Toelle, the script was written by Ulrich Plenzdorf based on the novel by Fallada.

Audiobook

As an audio book was published The Drinker 2010 Edition Apollo; unabridged read by actor Christian Melchert.