About the work
Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde (Fabian, or Going to the Dogs) is a stage version of Erich Kästner's 1931 novel, whose unabridged original version was not published until 2013 under its original title. The work is a sharp-eyed portrait of the manners of the declining Weimar Republic — Berlin on the eve of catastrophe, depicted as a moloch of pleasure-seeking, unemployment and moral decay.
Plot
Jakob Fabian, a doctorate-holding scholar of German, scrapes by as an advertising copywriter in the Berlin of the early 1930s — a melancholy observer who regards the excesses and the despair of the metropolis with ironic distance. He loses his job and falls in love with the actress Cornelia, who, however, leaves him for the sake of her career. His best friend Labude, an idealistic academic, breaks down over an intrigue and takes his own life. Fabian, increasingly adrift in a world without a moral compass, returns resigned to his home city of Dresden. There he loses his life when he jumps into the water to save a child — he himself cannot swim, while the child saves itself.
Cultural significance
Fabian is among the most significant metropolitan novels of the Weimar era and Kästner's most ambitious work for adults. The National Socialists publicly burned the book in 1933. For a long time available only in toned-down versions, the unabridged original "Der Gang vor die Hunde" appeared in 2013. Dominik Graf's 2021 film brought the material to a new audience. Stage versions use the novel's fragmentary, cinematic structure for haunting productions about a society in free fall.