Michael Bittner

Michael Bittner, known to his friends as Mickey, is a Cologne publisher and former paratrooper whose encounter with Hans Reiter—writing as Benno von Archimboldi—turns the submission of a first novel into a passage through postwar literary commerce, war stories, and contraband work. Bittner presents himself as a man of experience and opportunity, but his talk and conduct leave Reiter unsure whether his novel has found a publisher or merely another stage for someone else’s performance.

Identity and Introduction

Bittner runs a Cologne publishing house called the Adviser. Its catalog is weighted toward practical manuals, including books on gardening, first aid, and rebuilding the shells of destroyed houses, rather than literature. Unlike the other Cologne houses to which Reiter has submitted Lüdicke, Bittner comes out to receive the manuscript himself. He explains that he likes to see the faces of writers who hope to be published by his company, even though he has at least five employees.

The first impression is physical and theatrical: Bittner is young, only a little older than Reiter, with a face Reiter thinks resembles a gangster. His well-cut suit is too tight, as if he had gained twenty pounds overnight. He prefers his friends to call him Mickey, like the mouse, a nickname that sits oddly beside the imposing war record he proceeds to describe.

War Stories and Reiter’s View

Bittner says that he served in a paratrooper unit during the war, though he never made a jump, despite wanting to. He recounts battles in several theaters, especially Italy and Normandy, and says American planes carpet-bombed him. He claims to know how to survive such an attack. Since Reiter spent the war in the east, he does not know what carpet bombing means; Bittner explains it as a vast number of enemy planes dropping bombs over a designated area until not a blade of grass remains.

The conversation supplies a vivid contrast between Bittner’s declared expertise and Reiter’s distrust. Reiter answers that he understands, while inwardly judging Bittner irritating and ridiculous: to him, the publisher resembles a self-dramatizer convinced that he has witnessed a decisive moment in history. Reiter’s own view of history cuts against that grand performance. History, he thinks, has no decisive moments, only a proliferation of instants competing in monstrosity.

Bittner’s recipe for enduring bombardment is to drink strong liquor—schnapps, cognac, brandy, grappa, whiskey, or even wine—to escape the noise or confuse it with the throbbing and spinning of one’s head. Reiter imagines the aftermath of an attack in which paratroopers, Wehrmacht veterans, and SS infantrymen emerge from the devastated terrain to resist the enemy. In that imagined scene, Bittner is among the indomitable, drinking men. The juxtaposition makes his survival story feel less like a sober account than a performance built around alcohol, bravado, and the veteran’s claim to have been present at history’s worst moments.

The Novel and the Business Offer

When Bittner asks what Lüdicke is about and whether it is Reiter’s first novel, Reiter says it is his first and sketches its plot in broad strokes. Bittner says it sounds promising, but immediately qualifies the encouragement: the house cannot publish it that year, will offer no advance, and will pay five percent of the sales price, which he calls more than fair. He adds that people in Germany no longer read as they used to and have more practical matters to think about.

This talk leaves Reiter convinced that Bittner is speaking for the sake of hearing his own voice and reassuring himself that no one has hanged him. Reiter has little faith that Bittner knows anything about literature or will publish the novel. For several days the uncertainty unsettles him: he loses his appetite, reads very little, and finds that books make him shake and compel him to go outside and walk. Even when making love to Ingeborg, he sometimes mentally withdraws to a snowy planet where he memorizes Ansky’s notebook; when she asks where he is, her voice seems to reach him from far away.

Absence, Contraband, and Return

After two months without either an acceptance or a rejection, Reiter goes back to the publishing house and asks for Bittner. He learns that Bittner is now occupied with importing and exporting essential goods and rarely visits the publishing office, though it remains his. Reiter insists on getting Bittner’s new address and finds an office on the outskirts of Cologne, above a warehouse full of crates in a neighborhood of old nineteenth-century factories. Bittner is absent again. Three former paratroopers and a silver-haired secretary explain that he is in Antwerp closing a deal on a shipment of bananas. They laugh about the bananas, not at Reiter.

The paratroopers talk about films and ask Reiter where he fought and in which branch of the service. He says he was always in the east, in the light infantry; they describe their own service in the west, in Italy and France. Their company draws Reiter into another recollection of the eastern front: a soldier trapped for fifteen days beneath corpses and snow, who dug a small cave, rationed his food, and masturbated to stave off boredom. When German troops finally found him, he reportedly smelled unexpectedly good. The strange story broadens the scene beyond Bittner’s boastful account of survival: the veterans’ conversation moves between theatrical war recollection and the body’s desperate, degrading methods of enduring it.

The former paratroopers offer Reiter a job for that night. He asks what time it will end because he does not want to lose his position at the bar; they promise it will be over by eleven. At the Yellow Nightingale, he notices that the men wear black leather coats much like his own. Their work is to unload part of a freight car filled with U.S. Army stoves. An American collects a specified payment, then tells them to take boxes only from that freight car and only those marked PK. The group breaks the lock, loads the boxes into a truck with its lights off, and drives by unlit backstreets to Bittner’s office. There the secretary has hot coffee and whiskey waiting. The paratroopers drink and reminisce about General Udet and other purportedly historic events; Bittner himself is not shown at the operation, but his publishing office is its destination and his associates organize it.

Two days later Reiter visits the publishing house again. The secretary recognizes him and says they have found his manuscript; Bittner is in his office and may want to see him. Reiter asks whether Bittner wants to see him, and the secretary answers that she thinks so. The scene closes on this tentative possibility rather than a confirmed acceptance: after repeated delay and detour, the manuscript has resurfaced, but Bittner’s final decision remains unknown.

Narrative Role

Bittner’s episode places literary recognition beside the material transactions that surround it. A publisher whose list is dominated by practical manuals offers a writer no advance and a small percentage of sales, while his employees lead Reiter into a nighttime job moving American goods. The overlap does not establish that Bittner personally directs the theft, but it does make his publishing office a meeting point between literary business and informal postwar commerce.

He also serves as a foil for Reiter’s understanding of history. Bittner frames war as a personal credential and a story of survival; Reiter’s thought rejects the notion of a single decisive moment and imagines history instead as recurring, competing monstrosities. The novel’s publication remains suspended at the close, as does any settled judgment of Bittner: his offer may be genuine, but his talk, absences, and business dealings make certainty impossible.