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Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart
Bombed-out Cologne after the war is a strange place to be. The black market in jam and corsets is booming, half-destroyed houses offer opportunities for stealing doors and eggcups, and de-Nazification parties are all the rage. Recently released from a prisoner-of-war camp, Ferdinand drifts around the city, strenuously avoiding his fiancée and drinking brandy with his fabulous cousin. But is this any way to go on?
Told with Keun's characteristic humour, irony and generosity of spirit, this is a wry portrait of a man, a city and a nation that asks how we go on living even in the face of total defeat.
Told with Keun's characteristic humour, irony and generosity of spirit, this is a wry portrait of a man, a city and a nation that asks how we go on living even in the face of total defeat.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1950
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About the author
Irmgard Keun
27 books152 followersIrmgard Keun (1905 – 1982) was a German novelist. She is noted for her portrayals of the life of women in the Weimar Republic as well as the early years of the Nazi Germany era. She was born into an affluent family and was given the autonomy to explore her passions. After her attempts at acting ended at the age of 16, Keun began working as a writer after years of working in Hamburg and Greifswald. Her books were eventually banned by Nazi authorities but gained recognition during the final years of her life.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
May 8, 2020
There is something deeply disturbing about the period directly after the Second World War in the destroyed German cities and minds!
And Irmgard Keun, via her narrator Ferdinand, has no mercy.
The former Nazis celebrate their denazification like they celebrated Hitler's birthday before. They change their views and ideas like chameleons - on the surface, staying exactly the same inside. Shallow, greedy, prejudiced and silly, they go about their businesses and bully those who struggle to adapt due to a lack of dishonesty and an abundance of empathy.
The characters in post-war Köln are very similar to those depicted in earlier novels, in Das kunstseidene Mädchen from the Weimar Republic or Nach Mitternacht during the early years of the Third Reich or Kind aller Länder from the years of exile. The flags and slogans and rituals change, but people stay the same. Messy and mean.
Unfortunately, rebuilding Germany was no joking matter, so Irmgard Keun lost her readers because she kept her sharp eye and her irony when others "denazified" in the most ridiculously shallow way.
She is one of the few German writers of the time that can relate to all the different phases of catastrophe. She was a free spirit in the early 1930s, a refugee writer later during that decade, a dissident hiding inside the collapsing country during the war, and she lived in the debris from a damaged house without a proper roof afterwards. Possibly, her clear vision of the entire disaster grated on the nerves of those with comfortable, selective memories...
To her sense of humour despite all, cheers!
And Irmgard Keun, via her narrator Ferdinand, has no mercy.
The former Nazis celebrate their denazification like they celebrated Hitler's birthday before. They change their views and ideas like chameleons - on the surface, staying exactly the same inside. Shallow, greedy, prejudiced and silly, they go about their businesses and bully those who struggle to adapt due to a lack of dishonesty and an abundance of empathy.
The characters in post-war Köln are very similar to those depicted in earlier novels, in Das kunstseidene Mädchen from the Weimar Republic or Nach Mitternacht during the early years of the Third Reich or Kind aller Länder from the years of exile. The flags and slogans and rituals change, but people stay the same. Messy and mean.
Unfortunately, rebuilding Germany was no joking matter, so Irmgard Keun lost her readers because she kept her sharp eye and her irony when others "denazified" in the most ridiculously shallow way.
She is one of the few German writers of the time that can relate to all the different phases of catastrophe. She was a free spirit in the early 1930s, a refugee writer later during that decade, a dissident hiding inside the collapsing country during the war, and she lived in the debris from a damaged house without a proper roof afterwards. Possibly, her clear vision of the entire disaster grated on the nerves of those with comfortable, selective memories...
To her sense of humour despite all, cheers!
March 27, 2025
Post-war Cologne, the great city on the Rhine, is a bombed out and devasted place like much of Germany. Here, the reader meets Ferdinand Timpe, a kindly daydreamer.
Through Ferdinand's eyes, we see a rich cast of characters who illustrate the lives, loves, and loss Germans have seen and the ways in which they're adapting and tackling their futures after Nazism and world war.
Written with Imrgard Kuen's wit and observation - she lived through these times in Germany - Ferdinand allows us to join him over a few weeks and months as he tells us of his plans, ideas, dislikes and likes, whilst also describing how his family, friends and acquaintances work, party and talk.
Ferdinand is a complex, kindly, and resourceful character, and it would have been fun to catch up with him a few years later. I hope he was fine and lived to a ripe old age.
3.5 stars.
Through Ferdinand's eyes, we see a rich cast of characters who illustrate the lives, loves, and loss Germans have seen and the ways in which they're adapting and tackling their futures after Nazism and world war.
Written with Imrgard Kuen's wit and observation - she lived through these times in Germany - Ferdinand allows us to join him over a few weeks and months as he tells us of his plans, ideas, dislikes and likes, whilst also describing how his family, friends and acquaintances work, party and talk.
Ferdinand is a complex, kindly, and resourceful character, and it would have been fun to catch up with him a few years later. I hope he was fine and lived to a ripe old age.
3.5 stars.
November 22, 2023
(3.5) I spotted this in a display of new acquisitions at my library earlier in the year and was attracted by the pointillist-modernist style of its cover (Man with a Tulip by Robert Delaunay, 1906) featuring the image of a dandyish yet slightly melancholy young man. I had never heard of the author and assumed it was a man. In fact, Irmgard Keun (1905–82) was a would-be actress who wrote five novels and fled Germany when blacklisted by the Nazis. She was then, variously, a fugitive (returning to Germany only after a false report of her suicide in The Telegraph), a lover of Joseph Roth, a single mother, and an alcoholic. (I love it when a potted author biography reads like a mini-novel!)
Ferdinand (1950) was her last novel and is a curious confection, silly and sombre to equal degrees. It draws on her experiences living by her journalism in bombed-out postwar Cologne. Ferdinand Timpe is a former soldier and POW from a large, eccentric family. His tiny rented room is actually a corridor infested by his landlady Frau Stabhorn’s noisy grandchildren. He’s numb, stumbling from one unsuitable opportunity to another, never choosing his future but letting it happen to him. He once inherited a secondhand bookshop and ran it for a while (I wish we’d heard more about this). Now he’s been talked into writing articles for a weekly paper – it turns out the editor confused him with another Ferdinand. Later he’s hired as a “cheerful adviser” who mostly listens to women complain about their husbands. He is not quite sure how he acquired his own fiancée, Luise, but hopes to weasel out of the engagement.
Each chapter feels like a self-contained story, many of them focusing on particular relatives or friends. There’s his beautiful but immoral cousin, Johanna; his ruthless businessman cousin Magnesius; his lovely but lazy mother, Laura. His descriptions are hilarious, and Keun’s vocabulary really sparkles:
Our antihero gets himself into ridiculous situations, like when he’s down on his luck and pays an impromptu visit to a former professor, Dr Muck, perhaps hoping for a handout; finding him away, he has to await his return for hours while the wife hosts a ladies’ poetry evening:
Hidden beneath Ferdinand’s hapless and frivolous exterior (he wears a jerkin made from a lady’s coat; Johanna says it makes him looks like “a hurdy-gurdy man’s monkey”), however, is psychological damage. “I feel so deep-frozen. I wonder if I’ll ever thaw out in this life. … Sometimes I feel like wandering on through the entire world. Maybe eventually I’ll run into a place or a person who will make me say yes, this is it, I’ll stay here, this is my home.” His feeling of purposelessness is understandable. Wartime hardship has dented his essential optimism, and external signs of progress – currency reform, denazification – can’t blot out the memory.
There’s a heartbreaking little sequence where he traces his rapid descent into poverty and desperation through cigarettes. He once shuddered at people saving their butts, but then started doing so himself. The same happened with salvaging strangers’ fag-ends from ashtrays. And then, worst of all, rescuing butts from the gutter. “So I never even noticed that one day there was no smoker in the world so degenerate that I could look down on him. I stood so low that no one could stand below me.”
I tend to lose patience with aimless picaresque plots, but this one was worth sticking with for the language and the narrator’s amusing view of the world. I’d happily read another book by Keun if I came across one. Her best known, from the 1930s, are Gilgi and The Artificial Silk Girl.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Ferdinand (1950) was her last novel and is a curious confection, silly and sombre to equal degrees. It draws on her experiences living by her journalism in bombed-out postwar Cologne. Ferdinand Timpe is a former soldier and POW from a large, eccentric family. His tiny rented room is actually a corridor infested by his landlady Frau Stabhorn’s noisy grandchildren. He’s numb, stumbling from one unsuitable opportunity to another, never choosing his future but letting it happen to him. He once inherited a secondhand bookshop and ran it for a while (I wish we’d heard more about this). Now he’s been talked into writing articles for a weekly paper – it turns out the editor confused him with another Ferdinand. Later he’s hired as a “cheerful adviser” who mostly listens to women complain about their husbands. He is not quite sure how he acquired his own fiancée, Luise, but hopes to weasel out of the engagement.
Each chapter feels like a self-contained story, many of them focusing on particular relatives or friends. There’s his beautiful but immoral cousin, Johanna; his ruthless businessman cousin Magnesius; his lovely but lazy mother, Laura. His descriptions are hilarious, and Keun’s vocabulary really sparkles:
“Like many businesspeople, Magnesius is a jovial and generous party animal, only to emerge as even icier and stonier later. He damascenes himself. To heighten the mood, he has jammed a green monocle in one eye, and pulled a yellow silk stocking over his head. Just now I saw him kissing the hand of a woman unknown to me and offering to buy her a brand-new Mercedes.”
“Luise is a nice girl, and I’ve got nothing against her, but her presence has something oppressive about it for me. I have examined myself and established that this feeling of oppression is not love, and is no prerequisite for marriage, not even an unhappy one. I suppose I should tell her. But I can’t.”
Our antihero gets himself into ridiculous situations, like when he’s down on his luck and pays an impromptu visit to a former professor, Dr Muck, perhaps hoping for a handout; finding him away, he has to await his return for hours while the wife hosts a ladies’ poetry evening:
“I was desperate not to fall asleep. Seven times I tiptoed out to the lavatory to take a sip from my flask. In the hall I walked into a sideboard and knocked over a large china ornament – I think it may have been a wood grouse. I broke off a piece of its beak. These things are always happening to me when I’m trying to be especially careful.”
Hidden beneath Ferdinand’s hapless and frivolous exterior (he wears a jerkin made from a lady’s coat; Johanna says it makes him looks like “a hurdy-gurdy man’s monkey”), however, is psychological damage. “I feel so deep-frozen. I wonder if I’ll ever thaw out in this life. … Sometimes I feel like wandering on through the entire world. Maybe eventually I’ll run into a place or a person who will make me say yes, this is it, I’ll stay here, this is my home.” His feeling of purposelessness is understandable. Wartime hardship has dented his essential optimism, and external signs of progress – currency reform, denazification – can’t blot out the memory.
There’s a heartbreaking little sequence where he traces his rapid descent into poverty and desperation through cigarettes. He once shuddered at people saving their butts, but then started doing so himself. The same happened with salvaging strangers’ fag-ends from ashtrays. And then, worst of all, rescuing butts from the gutter. “So I never even noticed that one day there was no smoker in the world so degenerate that I could look down on him. I stood so low that no one could stand below me.”
I tend to lose patience with aimless picaresque plots, but this one was worth sticking with for the language and the narrator’s amusing view of the world. I’d happily read another book by Keun if I came across one. Her best known, from the 1930s, are Gilgi and The Artificial Silk Girl.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
April 20, 2024
Another stunning novel by Irmgard Keun. This one is post-war, and shows that Keun had lost none of her gifts for satire, nor, and that's even more surprising, none of her optimism and generosity of spirit. "Ferdinand" has a rather episodic structure, but it's such a rewarding read that it doesn't matter if the ending feels a little arbitrary. Unlike in her pre-war fiction, the eponymous hero of this tale is a man. Ferdinand got engaged to Louise by mistake just before being sent to the front, because he believed he would be killed, therefore it didn't matter. Post-war, Louise clings on to him because her father, like so many others, needs to go through the "denazification" process, and the family has a hard time surviving in the ruins of Cologne. Although in fact they manage better than others, because Louise's mother has absolutely no scruples about pilfering stuff right, left and center. Keun skewers her, and all others like her, in fabulous scenes where the mother first passes off a looted painting as a beloved family heirloom in order to sell it, then rails against the legitimate owners when they dare to claim the mildly pornographic daub. Ferdinand lets himself be exploited by these people because he is desperate to break up his engagement, but hates the thought of letting Louise down. In fact, throughout the novel, he lets himself be pushed around by various unscrupulous or at least selfish characters, not because he is naive but because he is kind, and feels oddly protective even of his more shady acquaintances. Ferdinand comes from a very colorful family. His father was a painter and his mother is the laziest woman on earth. Ferdinand has lots of brothers and sisters, whose peculiarities give rise to all sorts of funny anecdotes. Before the war, Ferdinand did a variety of odd jobs, until he inherited a crumbling bookshop from an eccentric uncle. He remembers his time with the bookshop, which was eventually destroyed by bombs, as his happiest years. When the story starts, he is trying his hand at journalism, then is inveigled by a morally corrupt friend into becoming some sort of amateur psychotherapist. Ferdinand finds the gullibility of his clients depressing, but is nonetheless ashamed of benefiting from it. At the end of the day, Louise dumps him for a more energetic crook, and Ferdinand gets to meet the 2 little African boys his mother has just adopted. I love Keun's sense of humor and her empathy with her characters, no matter how vile. The book wasn't a success when it first came out in 1950, and it's easy to see why Germans didn't care to see themselves reflected in Keun's mirror. It seems to have been her last major work of fiction, and the more is the pity because her voice is absolutely unique and she ought to have been celebrated in her lifetime. Instead of which, after having been banned by the Nazis, she was silenced in more insidious ways in the post-war atmosphere. Among the dead writers I'd love to meet, she is right up there.
November 29, 2022
The German writer Irmgard Keun lived a fascinating life. Having enjoyed great success with her first two novels Gilgi, One of Us (1931) and The Artificial Silk Girl (both of which I adored), she found herself blacklisted when the Nazis swept to power in 1933. By 1936, Keun was travelling around Europe in the company of her lover, the Jewish writer Joseph Roth. After Midnight (1937) and Child of All Nations (1938) were written while Keun was in exile abroad, with the writer finally returning to Germany in 1940 under an assumed name – possibly helped by a false newspaper report of her suicide. A final novel, Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart, was published in Germany in 1950 but has only recently been translated into English by Michael Hofmann in 2021.
Ferdinand differs from Keun’s earlier novels by virtue of its focus on a male character. So while Gilgi, Silk Girl and Midnight, all feature strong women, full of determination and life, Ferdinand is narrated by a dandyish daydreamer with a tendency to drift. Consequently, Ferdinand seems to lack the narrative drive of Keun’s previous work, which makes for a somewhat frustrating read (for this reader at least). Nevertheless, there are still various elements to enjoy here, although it’s probably best suited to die-hard Keun fans rather than first-time readers of her work.
Set in post-war Cologne, where black-market trading and other dodgy activities are rife, the novel reads like a series of pen portraits and sketches as our eponymous hero, Ferdinand Timpe, tries to make his way in a rapidly changing world. Just like Ferdinand himself, the narrative meanders around, bumping into various acquaintances and members of the extended Timpe family, each one more eccentric and absurd than the last. Take Ferdinand’s brother Luitpold as an example, a furniture maker in southern Germany – a man who always manages to stay afloat, despite his dire money management.
Luitpold represents the type of good fellow who in nineteenth-century novels gets into trouble by issuing bonds for unreliable friends, allowing bills to fall due, paying allowances to children who were not his, and opening his heart and his wallet to impoverished widows. By the rules of our rough new world he is classified as a noble idiot. (p. 105)
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2022...
Ferdinand differs from Keun’s earlier novels by virtue of its focus on a male character. So while Gilgi, Silk Girl and Midnight, all feature strong women, full of determination and life, Ferdinand is narrated by a dandyish daydreamer with a tendency to drift. Consequently, Ferdinand seems to lack the narrative drive of Keun’s previous work, which makes for a somewhat frustrating read (for this reader at least). Nevertheless, there are still various elements to enjoy here, although it’s probably best suited to die-hard Keun fans rather than first-time readers of her work.
Set in post-war Cologne, where black-market trading and other dodgy activities are rife, the novel reads like a series of pen portraits and sketches as our eponymous hero, Ferdinand Timpe, tries to make his way in a rapidly changing world. Just like Ferdinand himself, the narrative meanders around, bumping into various acquaintances and members of the extended Timpe family, each one more eccentric and absurd than the last. Take Ferdinand’s brother Luitpold as an example, a furniture maker in southern Germany – a man who always manages to stay afloat, despite his dire money management.
Luitpold represents the type of good fellow who in nineteenth-century novels gets into trouble by issuing bonds for unreliable friends, allowing bills to fall due, paying allowances to children who were not his, and opening his heart and his wallet to impoverished widows. By the rules of our rough new world he is classified as a noble idiot. (p. 105)
To read the rest of my review, please visit:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2022...
September 20, 2024
4.5 realest real for real for real. Kann mich nicht entscheiden ob 4 oder 5
February 20, 2021
After World War II Germany adjusts to a new world order.
Book Review: Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart was the last novel published by Irmgard Keun (1905-82), but does not capture the immediacy and moral twilight of its time as did her previous novels. Three of her four earlier novels are favorites of mine: Gigli (1931), The Artificial Silk Girl (1932), and Child of All Nations (1938), with After Midnight (1937) not far behind. All great reads well worth finding. This story amiably wanders about, with no particular arc or story line, and no particular sense of tension, conflict, or urgency. The reader's next page will be much like the previous one. While the writing is uniformly charming and witty, with continual injections of sarcasm, irony, and cynicism punctuated by dark humor, it's not particularly compelling. For me that made for slow reading. There are some, but not many overt comments about the social and political situation in Germany after the war during the occupation, though in a sense the novel itself is that commentary, even if circumscribed. Keun seemed to be holding back. There's even less commentary about what happened during the war, which makes for an odd and uncomfortable silence. At least for non-German readers it doesn't much illuminate the situation. Our eponymous hero in Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart bumbles through the chaos of the post-war years, trying to survive, trying to help others, trying to be a good person. He meets many colorful characters trying to do the same thing. The link between Ferdinand's various encounters and events and the national situation, however, isn't sharp or obvious. Keun isn't writing allegory. One could call it a picaresque novel if much of anything happened, and if Ferdinand weren't so generally wholesome. Although told from Ferdinand's point of view, I don't have a good grasp on his personality, as he's somewhat vague, amorphous, hard to pin down. He certainly doesn't arouse the level of sympathy and involvement as did Keun's earlier desperate heroines. Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart is wonderfully, cleverly, and humorously written, but the lack of a plot and absence of dramatic tension limited the charm of the meandering storyline for me. Readers who can live without plot will find much to enjoy. [3½★]
Book Review: Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart was the last novel published by Irmgard Keun (1905-82), but does not capture the immediacy and moral twilight of its time as did her previous novels. Three of her four earlier novels are favorites of mine: Gigli (1931), The Artificial Silk Girl (1932), and Child of All Nations (1938), with After Midnight (1937) not far behind. All great reads well worth finding. This story amiably wanders about, with no particular arc or story line, and no particular sense of tension, conflict, or urgency. The reader's next page will be much like the previous one. While the writing is uniformly charming and witty, with continual injections of sarcasm, irony, and cynicism punctuated by dark humor, it's not particularly compelling. For me that made for slow reading. There are some, but not many overt comments about the social and political situation in Germany after the war during the occupation, though in a sense the novel itself is that commentary, even if circumscribed. Keun seemed to be holding back. There's even less commentary about what happened during the war, which makes for an odd and uncomfortable silence. At least for non-German readers it doesn't much illuminate the situation. Our eponymous hero in Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart bumbles through the chaos of the post-war years, trying to survive, trying to help others, trying to be a good person. He meets many colorful characters trying to do the same thing. The link between Ferdinand's various encounters and events and the national situation, however, isn't sharp or obvious. Keun isn't writing allegory. One could call it a picaresque novel if much of anything happened, and if Ferdinand weren't so generally wholesome. Although told from Ferdinand's point of view, I don't have a good grasp on his personality, as he's somewhat vague, amorphous, hard to pin down. He certainly doesn't arouse the level of sympathy and involvement as did Keun's earlier desperate heroines. Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart is wonderfully, cleverly, and humorously written, but the lack of a plot and absence of dramatic tension limited the charm of the meandering storyline for me. Readers who can live without plot will find much to enjoy. [3½★]
January 26, 2021
3.5
I think Tortoise Dream's review sums up most of my thought process in regard to Keun's novel, except I find the general silence to be an interesting tactic for Keun in embodying Ferdinand's psyche. He, a German POW, is struggling in postwar Cologne, and he reflects on the nostalgia of the past, including a single moment of his life being saved during the war, eliding (and most likely repressing) and grander discourse as to the WWII and the traumas that came with it on an individual and wider social level. I find this probable due to the intermittent descriptions of sections of the city having been bombed, or one of the many characters' mini-narratives revealing a horror of the rampant bombings in the area. There's no allegory to be found here, but there's so much acerbity in Keun's considerations of the superficiality of postwar industriousness and the hopes for capitalist gain to reap psychological benefit (national/personal healing). This is shown mainly through Liebezahl in his rapidly growing business of pseudoscience, astrology, color therapy, and more to appease the hopeful locals that just want some sort of aid in the meandering toiling that is the postwar German experience.
Note on the translation: Early on, there are translated excerpts of poems printed in English with their translations in footnotes. The translation in general seems adept at matching Keun's vibe and general diction that I remember from reading Das kunstseidene Mädchen in German. But, oh my god, the translations of the poems are TERRIBLE. So strangely done. Entirely different diction is used to the point that it seems that emulation of the original wasn't even attempted. Odd. Otherwise, it all seemed fine.
I think Tortoise Dream's review sums up most of my thought process in regard to Keun's novel, except I find the general silence to be an interesting tactic for Keun in embodying Ferdinand's psyche. He, a German POW, is struggling in postwar Cologne, and he reflects on the nostalgia of the past, including a single moment of his life being saved during the war, eliding (and most likely repressing) and grander discourse as to the WWII and the traumas that came with it on an individual and wider social level. I find this probable due to the intermittent descriptions of sections of the city having been bombed, or one of the many characters' mini-narratives revealing a horror of the rampant bombings in the area. There's no allegory to be found here, but there's so much acerbity in Keun's considerations of the superficiality of postwar industriousness and the hopes for capitalist gain to reap psychological benefit (national/personal healing). This is shown mainly through Liebezahl in his rapidly growing business of pseudoscience, astrology, color therapy, and more to appease the hopeful locals that just want some sort of aid in the meandering toiling that is the postwar German experience.
Note on the translation: Early on, there are translated excerpts of poems printed in English with their translations in footnotes. The translation in general seems adept at matching Keun's vibe and general diction that I remember from reading Das kunstseidene Mädchen in German. But, oh my god, the translations of the poems are TERRIBLE. So strangely done. Entirely different diction is used to the point that it seems that emulation of the original wasn't even attempted. Odd. Otherwise, it all seemed fine.
August 27, 2020
I very much enjoyed this darkly humorous, often discursive and always philosophical novella about a German POW's attempt to find meaning in his life once he attains his freedom. The story is filled with wry, sometimes sad and sometimes snarkily hilarious observations on his experiences as a youth, bookseller, conscript, POW and 'returnee ". It was a pleasure to read and I look forward to discovering more of Keun's work.
March 4, 2024
I enjoyed this even more than my first foray into Keun's The Artificial Silk Girl. Keun is a funny philosopher and proves that women writers can be as incisive and funny as some of the best male authors, bringing to mind given the period in which she wrote, some of my favourites like Hans Fallada and George Orwell. And boy, there is no greater honour. Read in a day as I had to return it to the new library from which I started borrowing.
March 8, 2021
I had trouble getting past the slow start, but I was so curious about what "normal" life was like for people trying to re-establish after WWII in Germany.
July 28, 2025
Keun perfectly peels back layers to reveal the true human character lurking deep within all of us with tremendous humour and wit... 5 stars
August 22, 2023
This book started out really strong, making me chuckle out loud at a Copenhagen cafe. I have never read anything quite like Keun's observational and sarcastic humor, and I enjoyed it deeply. However, as the plot progressed, or rather trudged on, I started losing interest and investment in the characters. Still, I enjoyed this glimpse into the struggling people of post-war Cologne, and bought a second book by Keun waiting to be read!
December 28, 2024
Oh my god
May 1, 2022
With a sharp eye for human foibles, Irmgard Keun paints a series of portraits of people trying to get by in lives that have been degraded in post-WWII Germany. I say a series of portraits because the story is not very structured, with new characters introduced right up to the very end, and the writing style is as impressionistic as it is witty. Amidst universal observations about men and women, we read of the black market, food shortages, and the title character reduced to digging in the gutter for cigarette butts and drinking cheap alcohol. He’s also trying to extricate himself out of a relationship with a woman who is attached to him, and in turn longs for isolation, solitude, and dissolution. That sounds rather heavy but the book isn’t at all – there is a lot of sardonic humor here.
A couple of notes on this particular edition: I don’t speak German so can’t speak to the quality of the translation from Michael Hofmann, but it did feel at times as though he was trying so show off his vocabulary (spiv, stonk, distrait, gnomic, hoyden, integument, damascenes, calefactory, etc). Also, the font of the footnotes is probably the smallest I’ve ever seen; it’s readable but curious as to why that decision was made.
Quotes:
On big crime and little crime:
“Dear Lord, why wouldn’t I let the man run off? Ever since I could think, there have been people all over the world busily trying to destroy me. They come up with wars for me, and financial and political disasters. Small bombs, big bombs, atom bombs, super-atom bombs, death rays, poison gas, and all sorts of other vilenesses. All for me. And I’m to find a self-respecting pickpocket dangerous and noxious? At most, I might feel guilty about disappointing him.”
On the less fortunate:
“One must not expect pears from an apple tree, nor nuts from a pear tree, nor milk from a mole, and no milk of kindness from a soul that’s down-and-out.”
On women and love:
“Johanna believed there was only one great love in the life of a woman. Each time she was unshakably convinced she was experiencing it. Such emotional conviction gives a woman an optimistic freshness and elevates the chosen one to the status of a sort of super-eraser that rubs out and removes all who have come before him. Until someone rubs him out.”
On men:
“Reports of her inner life interest a man only when she’s new and he fancies her. To waken the erotic potential of a woman one has to let her speak. Admittedly, what the woman takes to be close attention is often something else, and isn’t necessarily directed at what she’s saying. Later on, the poor women are surprised and disappointed when the man – so unlike before – has no interest in what his wife once did as an adorable five-year-old tomboy, or how as a teenager one summer her thoughts about bluebells and passing clouds delighted an elderly headmaster and his wife.”
On breaking up:
“She would like a last meeting. All women want this last meeting. I know that. I have always feared and loathed this last meeting, which is in fact a second-to-last meeting. What on earth is one to say? You say, ‘It’s better this way,’ and you feel like a heel, because she doesn’t at all think it’s better this way. You are left with the choice between new deceitful concessions and something that in its disagreeable sharpness outdoes the already accomplished parting. ‘But what did I ever do to you?’ asks the woman, and ‘You could at least tell me the real reason.’ She hasn’t done anything to you, and if she still doesn’t know the real reason, you will never be able to tell her.”
On war:
“And when people start to tell me that military discipline is necessary for the preservation of the state, then I tell them where they can put their state. And if they tell me wars are necessary, then I am disgusted by whatever it is makes them so. Cross my heart, any power that forces me to fight, I hope they lose their shitty war.”
A couple of notes on this particular edition: I don’t speak German so can’t speak to the quality of the translation from Michael Hofmann, but it did feel at times as though he was trying so show off his vocabulary (spiv, stonk, distrait, gnomic, hoyden, integument, damascenes, calefactory, etc). Also, the font of the footnotes is probably the smallest I’ve ever seen; it’s readable but curious as to why that decision was made.
Quotes:
On big crime and little crime:
“Dear Lord, why wouldn’t I let the man run off? Ever since I could think, there have been people all over the world busily trying to destroy me. They come up with wars for me, and financial and political disasters. Small bombs, big bombs, atom bombs, super-atom bombs, death rays, poison gas, and all sorts of other vilenesses. All for me. And I’m to find a self-respecting pickpocket dangerous and noxious? At most, I might feel guilty about disappointing him.”
On the less fortunate:
“One must not expect pears from an apple tree, nor nuts from a pear tree, nor milk from a mole, and no milk of kindness from a soul that’s down-and-out.”
On women and love:
“Johanna believed there was only one great love in the life of a woman. Each time she was unshakably convinced she was experiencing it. Such emotional conviction gives a woman an optimistic freshness and elevates the chosen one to the status of a sort of super-eraser that rubs out and removes all who have come before him. Until someone rubs him out.”
On men:
“Reports of her inner life interest a man only when she’s new and he fancies her. To waken the erotic potential of a woman one has to let her speak. Admittedly, what the woman takes to be close attention is often something else, and isn’t necessarily directed at what she’s saying. Later on, the poor women are surprised and disappointed when the man – so unlike before – has no interest in what his wife once did as an adorable five-year-old tomboy, or how as a teenager one summer her thoughts about bluebells and passing clouds delighted an elderly headmaster and his wife.”
On breaking up:
“She would like a last meeting. All women want this last meeting. I know that. I have always feared and loathed this last meeting, which is in fact a second-to-last meeting. What on earth is one to say? You say, ‘It’s better this way,’ and you feel like a heel, because she doesn’t at all think it’s better this way. You are left with the choice between new deceitful concessions and something that in its disagreeable sharpness outdoes the already accomplished parting. ‘But what did I ever do to you?’ asks the woman, and ‘You could at least tell me the real reason.’ She hasn’t done anything to you, and if she still doesn’t know the real reason, you will never be able to tell her.”
On war:
“And when people start to tell me that military discipline is necessary for the preservation of the state, then I tell them where they can put their state. And if they tell me wars are necessary, then I am disgusted by whatever it is makes them so. Cross my heart, any power that forces me to fight, I hope they lose their shitty war.”
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February 17, 2021From my review in the Times Literary Supplement:
Unspoken words make up the disconcerting non-centre of Irmgard Keun’s Ferdinand: The man with the kind heart, first published in Germany in 1950 and now brought to English readers for the first time in a crisp translation by Michael Hofmann. Keun, once a bestselling novelist, was sentenced to death by the Nazis. Having escaped, she snuck back into Germany at the height of the war under a false name. Although she lived on until 1982, Ferdinand was her final novel.
The novel is set in Cologne during the Besatzungszeit, the post-war Allied occupation (Belgian troops were stationed in the area until 2002). Ferdinand, the narrator, is poor, hungry and trying to find his fiancée another suitor. Before the war, he ran a little bookstore that has since been reduced to rubble; now an ex-POW, he dreams up tabloidesque copy for his friend Heinrich, and acts as an agony aunt for Liebezahl, whose proto-Goop-like retail empire will sell anything people can be convinced they need, from colour therapy to “astrological scents”.
What occurred between these two situations is never discussed. We likewise know nothing about the wartime activities of Ferdinand’s brother (once an author, now suspiciously a bellhop in Brazil); of his fiancée’s father, the recently “de-Nazified” Herr Klatte; or of Ferdinand’s former army sergeant.
[...]
Ferdinand’s silence about any character’s war experience allows us to assume either the best or the worst: readers can imagine them as unwilling cogs desperate to avoid being crushed by the Nazi war machine, or as the most willingly brutal camp guards, lucky to have escaped the trials at Nuremberg. If we choose the first, we risk being dupes; if we choose the second, we risk being like those we would condemn, tarring a whole nation with one brush. What might be called a redistribution of guilt seems to have left everyone in Ferdinand’s circle a little culpable, but never overly so. Ferdinand’s story consists of a dam of social niceties and hidden pasts, through cracks in which run only tiny rivulets of truth. Some readers might find in them the promise of a deluge, but Keun never commits herself either way.
Unspoken words make up the disconcerting non-centre of Irmgard Keun’s Ferdinand: The man with the kind heart, first published in Germany in 1950 and now brought to English readers for the first time in a crisp translation by Michael Hofmann. Keun, once a bestselling novelist, was sentenced to death by the Nazis. Having escaped, she snuck back into Germany at the height of the war under a false name. Although she lived on until 1982, Ferdinand was her final novel.
The novel is set in Cologne during the Besatzungszeit, the post-war Allied occupation (Belgian troops were stationed in the area until 2002). Ferdinand, the narrator, is poor, hungry and trying to find his fiancée another suitor. Before the war, he ran a little bookstore that has since been reduced to rubble; now an ex-POW, he dreams up tabloidesque copy for his friend Heinrich, and acts as an agony aunt for Liebezahl, whose proto-Goop-like retail empire will sell anything people can be convinced they need, from colour therapy to “astrological scents”.
What occurred between these two situations is never discussed. We likewise know nothing about the wartime activities of Ferdinand’s brother (once an author, now suspiciously a bellhop in Brazil); of his fiancée’s father, the recently “de-Nazified” Herr Klatte; or of Ferdinand’s former army sergeant.
[...]
Ferdinand’s silence about any character’s war experience allows us to assume either the best or the worst: readers can imagine them as unwilling cogs desperate to avoid being crushed by the Nazi war machine, or as the most willingly brutal camp guards, lucky to have escaped the trials at Nuremberg. If we choose the first, we risk being dupes; if we choose the second, we risk being like those we would condemn, tarring a whole nation with one brush. What might be called a redistribution of guilt seems to have left everyone in Ferdinand’s circle a little culpable, but never overly so. Ferdinand’s story consists of a dam of social niceties and hidden pasts, through cracks in which run only tiny rivulets of truth. Some readers might find in them the promise of a deluge, but Keun never commits herself either way.
May 7, 2024
This postwar novel has two very good things going for it: (a) Keun documenting what passes for the middle-class milieu in the immediate aftermath of Germany's defeat in the war and (b) Keun writing from the perspective of a man. And while Keun gets some delicious sendups of postwar German life -- complete with meditations on what now passes for a German film star, male cluelessness, and an entire nation trying to return (almost futilely) to some semblance of Weimar Republic high culture rituals -- I don't think this novel is quite on the level of Keun's masterpiece, AFTER MIDNIGHT. Given that Keun had been in hiding during the last years of the war, I obviously don't blame her for this. She still seems to be having a great deal of fun here, although one detects the regrettable strain of exhaustion that would sadly have her give up her vital and salacious pen.
July 12, 2025
‘Look at that, Ferdinand – see the sky on fire! It’s the sunrise. In an hour’s time the first bailiff will be here.’
The war is over. Abnormal times are becoming normal times, people are being De-Nazified, or just returning as best they can to the lives they had been leading before everything changed. As though time had stood still, paused for the Nazi’s to rise and pass through, the characters in this book sometimes dress and behave as if the Weimar was in full flow…because they didn’t yet know what the ‘new normal’ looked like. Money was scarce, but opportunity was there for those who chased it.
I loved this, the third Irmgard Keun book I have read and I want to shout from the rooftops about how good, and important, this author is. A truly special voice.
The war is over. Abnormal times are becoming normal times, people are being De-Nazified, or just returning as best they can to the lives they had been leading before everything changed. As though time had stood still, paused for the Nazi’s to rise and pass through, the characters in this book sometimes dress and behave as if the Weimar was in full flow…because they didn’t yet know what the ‘new normal’ looked like. Money was scarce, but opportunity was there for those who chased it.
I loved this, the third Irmgard Keun book I have read and I want to shout from the rooftops about how good, and important, this author is. A truly special voice.
March 27, 2024
It's a funny old book this, by an author who seems to have led an unusual life. Written in 1950 and set in Cologne, it follows Ferdinand, his friends, family and neighbours all living hand to mouth among the rubble of post-war Germany. There is a wry humour in the book, but tinged with a lot of pathos. It made me want to find out more about Irmgard Keun, but the only biographies I can find are in German.
February 28, 2026
In my pursuit of reading important German novelists and their works in translation I availed myself of Imgard Keun’s last book Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart, as reproduced in English by the doyen of German-to-English translators, Michael Hoffman. Whilst those novels translated by Hoffman and written by the likes of Fallada, Doblin, Jünger, Kafka and Erpenbeck have invariably pleased or even impressed me, unfortunately Keun’s book didn’t quite affect me as I had hoped. I would venture to suggest that this is not the fault of the translator, but rather that the narrative and characterisations in this text are too diffuse and disengaging. The protagonist is too ephemeral and insufficiently emotionally interesting for one to become excited or even intrigued by much of what he does and says, reducing the readers’ desire to immerse themself in Ferdinand’s life and world. Also, the fragmentary and chaotic world of post-WW2 Cologne, as depicted in the novel, lacks either the satirical bite one might expect or the bleakness that would seem appropriate considering the devastation visited on all because of the defeat of the Third Reich. In fact, everything seems rather mundane and bourgeois, with no grand passions or ideas to excite or invite the reader’s engagement.
Having found the overall impact of Keun’s novel less than satisfactory, it must still be noted that she had the ability to craft some worthy and ingenious passages, and assuming Hoffman’s translation is not too liberal in its deviation from the original German, she could craft some pithy comments distilled into highly engaging sarcastic observations. For example:
The Belgian cigarettes taste of rancid hay. I wasn’t in Belgium during the war and I never harmed a hair on the head of any Belgian. In the event that these Belgian cigarettes don’t constitute collective punishment but some individual act of revenge then it seems to me this is another case of the wrong person catching it.
There is a general air of decrepitude and shattered bourgeois order in Keun’s narrative, and Ferdinand is more of a reporter or distaff member of this society than a real participant. He glides and skates around, through and under what he sees and experiences, and for almost the entirety of the novel he offers little in the way of meaningful personal insights. It’s as if he is telling the reader what he sees and thinks without any significant emotional or intellectual connection. This is an understandable response; after all, considering the devastation brought upon Germany by the actions of the Nazis, and the moral vacuum that most Germans either accepted or implemented, to make sense of this world requires and maybe even compels detachment. The author ensures we understand this when she has Ferdinand state:
They were all so impersonal to me - the NCOs, the officers, the corporals, the pay sergeants. They all shared one face, the angry face of the machine..
Having found the overall impact of Keun’s novel less than satisfactory, it must still be noted that she had the ability to craft some worthy and ingenious passages, and assuming Hoffman’s translation is not too liberal in its deviation from the original German, she could craft some pithy comments distilled into highly engaging sarcastic observations. For example:
The Belgian cigarettes taste of rancid hay. I wasn’t in Belgium during the war and I never harmed a hair on the head of any Belgian. In the event that these Belgian cigarettes don’t constitute collective punishment but some individual act of revenge then it seems to me this is another case of the wrong person catching it.
There is a general air of decrepitude and shattered bourgeois order in Keun’s narrative, and Ferdinand is more of a reporter or distaff member of this society than a real participant. He glides and skates around, through and under what he sees and experiences, and for almost the entirety of the novel he offers little in the way of meaningful personal insights. It’s as if he is telling the reader what he sees and thinks without any significant emotional or intellectual connection. This is an understandable response; after all, considering the devastation brought upon Germany by the actions of the Nazis, and the moral vacuum that most Germans either accepted or implemented, to make sense of this world requires and maybe even compels detachment. The author ensures we understand this when she has Ferdinand state:
They were all so impersonal to me - the NCOs, the officers, the corporals, the pay sergeants. They all shared one face, the angry face of the machine..
March 8, 2021
A couples of days in the life of Ferdinand. The was my first read by this author. An okay book, it suffered for me in the cadence of the writing. It almost read like the way a standup comedian would write a set..observation...punchline...observation...outlandish statement. Characters were interesting. This was translated from German. Perhaps better in it's native tongue.
June 13, 2020
Roman im für Irmgard Keun recht typischen stream of consciousness Stil, passagenweise wirklich sehr witzig und treffsicher ironisch. In die Geschichte selbst bin ich aber leider nicht so ganz hineingekommen, da ich den Eindruck hatte, dass es nicht wirklich einen klaren Handlungsstrang gibt.
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August 19, 2022oh I don‘t know. I didn‘t enjoy reading the book but liked the ending (although it was a little predictable). I feel like that about a lot of German post WWII literature, not enjoying it because it‘s so bleak and apathetic.
November 6, 2021
Well written, sometimes laugh aloud funny, but also fairly formless: Ferdinand’s comments on post-war Germany and his formless life.
January 8, 2024
classic keun schreibweise, großartige charakterstudien
October 20, 2024
Stream of consciousness too exhausting for me
February 20, 2025
He’s so funny 😭😭 But his experiences are sad at the same time
March 22, 2025
Unglaublich kurzweilig und sehr, sehr lustig.
July 27, 2025
Parts of this was five stars, but as a whole it was good without being great. Give me five weeks and I won't be able to tell you a single thing about it.
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