A Stranger in My Own Country

lt;p>‘I lived the same life as everyone else, the life ofordinary people, the masses.’ Sitting in a prison cell in theautumn of 1944, Hans Fallada sums up his life under the NationalSocialist dictatorship, the time of ‘inwardemigration’. Under conditions of close confinement, inconstant fear of discovery, he writes himself free from thenightmare of the Nazi years. His frank and sometimes provocativememoirs were thought for many years to have been lost. They arepublished here in English for the first time.

The confessional mode did not come naturally to Fallada the writerof fiction, but in the mental and emotional distress of 1944,self-reflection became a survival strategy. In the ‘house ofthe dead’ he exacts his political revenge on paper. ‘Iknow that I am crazy. I’m risking not only my own life,I’m also risking … the lives of many of the people I amwriting about’, he notes, driven by the compulsion to write.And write he does – about spying and denunciation, about thethreat to his livelihood and his literary work, about the fate ofmany friends and contemporaries such as Ernst Rowohlt and EmilJannings. To conceal his intentions and to save paper, he usesabbreviations. His notes, constantly exposed to the gaze of theprison warders, become a kind of secret code. He finally succeedsin smuggling the manuscript out of the prison, although it remainedunpublished for half a century.

These revealing memoirs by one of the best-known German writers ofthe 20th century will be of great interest to all readers of modernliterature.

Hans Fallada was born in Greifswald, Germany, on 21 July 1893 asRudolf Wilhelm Adolf Ditzen; he took his pen name from a BrothersGrimm fairy tale. He died from an overdose of morphine on 5February 1947 in Berlin. Fallada was the author of many bestsellingnovels including Little Man - What Now? (1932), WolfAmong Wolves (1938) and Every Man Dies Alone (1947).

Auteur
Hans Fallada was born in Greifswald, Germany, on 21 July 1893 as Rudolf Wilhelm Adolf Ditzen; he took his pen name from a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. He died from an overdose of morphine on 5 February 1947 in Berlin. Fallada was the author of many bestselling novels including Little Man - What Now? (1932), Wolf Among Wolves (1938) and Every Man Dies Alone (1947).

Résumé
Translated by Ciaran Cronin. In the midst of the current crisis that is threatening to derail the historical project of European unification, J rgen Habermas has been one of the most perceptive critics of the ineffectual and evasive responses to the global financial crisis, especially by the German political class. This extended essay on the constitution for Europe represents Habermas s constructive engagement with the European project at a time when the crisis of the eurozone is threatening the very existence of the European Union. There is a growing realization that the European treaty needs to be revised in order to deal with the structural defects of monetary union, but a clear perspective for the future is missing. Drawing on his analysis of European unification as a process in which international treaties have progressively taken on features of a democratic constitution, Habermas explains why the current proposals to transform the system of European governance into one of executive federalism is a mistake. His central argument is that the European project must realize its democratic potential by evolving from an international into a cosmopolitan community. The opening essay on the role played by the concept of human dignity in the genealogy of human rights in the modern era throws further important light on the philosophical foundations of Habermas s theory of how democratic political institutions can be extended beyond the level of nation-states. Now that the question of Europe and its future is once again at the centre of public debate, this important intervention by one of the greatest thinkers of our time will be of interest to a wide readership.

Contenu

Introduction vi

The 1944 Prison Diary 1

A despatch from the house of the dead. Afterword 219

The genesis of the Prison Diary manuscript 233

Chronology 236

Notes 239

Index 268