About the work
Kleiner Mann, was nun? (Little Man, What Now?) is a stage adaptation of Hans Fallada's 1932 novel, one of the most widely read works about the social hardship of the Weimar Republic. The novel was an immediate international success and has been filmed several times. With documentary precision it depicts the existential fear of low-level white-collar workers during the Great Depression.
Plot
The young clerk Johannes Pinneberg and his wife Emma, whom he calls "Lämmchen" (Lambkin), are expecting a child and struggle for their bare existence amid the Great Depression. Pinneberg loses his post as a bookkeeper and finally finds work as a salesman in a Berlin clothing store, where he labours under the pressure of impossible sales quotas. When he loses this position too, the little family slips ever deeper into poverty. Despite unemployment, social coldness and the humiliation of their social descent, the love between Pinneberg and Lämmchen holds firm — their tenderness and solidarity remain the only support in a world that lets the "little man" fall.
Cultural significance
Kleiner Mann, was nun? became the literary emblem of the late Weimar era and made Hans Fallada world-famous. The novel struck the nerve of millions who experienced the same social collapse and is regarded as a key work of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit). Stage versions are performed regularly at German-language theatres to this day, because in times of economic uncertainty the work finds renewed topical resonance. Film adaptations were made as early as 1933 in Hollywood and in 1967 as a German television production.