fallada

Fallada is a German surname. The most prominent bearer is Hans Fallada, the pen name of Rudolf Ditzen (1893–1947), a German novelist known for his precise, realist portrayals of everyday life in the Weimar Republic and Nazi era.

Born in 1893, Ditzen adopted the pen name Hans Fallada in the 1920s and published extensively. He achieved broad recognition with Kleiner Mann – was nun? (Little Man, What Now?) (1932), a tightly observed novel about a young couple's struggle during the Great Depression. His subsequent work, Wolf unter Wölfen (1937, translated as Wolf Among Wolves), extended his examination of ordinary people facing social upheaval and authoritarianism.

During the Nazi period, Fallada continued to write under censorship and faced pressure from the regime; his work emphasized moral choices and resilience in the face of totalitarianism. He published a number of later novels including Jeder stirbt für sich allein (Every Man Dies Alone), published posthumously in 1947, about a working-class couple who resist the Nazi regime by distributing anti-regime postcards.

His postwar reception grew, and his sharp, compact prose is often cited as a counterpoint to more overtly political exile literature. He died in Berlin in 1947; his life and work have since been studied for their humane portrayal of individuals under oppressive systems.