Werner Pfennig—Frank Volkheimer

Werner Pfennig—Frank Volkheimer is a relationship formed first under the pressures of hierarchy and reputation, then tested by danger and isolation. At Schulpforta, Werner encounters Volkheimer as the enormous upperclassman known as the Giant, a figure cadets describe through stories of almost inhuman strength and cruelty. Later, in the field and beneath the rubble, Werner sees qualities those stories conceal: a capacity for tenderness, restraint, and practical care. Their bond is not declared in grand terms. It gathers meaning through music, a withheld shot, a hand on Werner’s cap, and Volkheimer’s effort to make him remember that he has someone waiting beyond the darkness.

First Impressions at Schulpforta

Werner first sees Frank Volkheimer in Dr. Hauptmann’s office, where the massive upperclassman sits in an armchair made for a much smaller man. At seventeen, he is already a legend among younger cadets. Rumor credits him with carrying three first-years across a river above his head and lifting the back of the commandant’s car so a jack could be slipped beneath it. More vicious stories claim that he crushed a communist’s windpipe and blinded a stray dog to harden himself against suffering. The stories make him appear less like a fellow student than an instrument of force.

That reputation determines the distance between the boys before they have developed any personal understanding of one another. Werner sees the veins climbing Volkheimer’s forearms in the office’s low light, a physical detail that seems to confirm the Giant’s legend. Yet the nickname and the rumors do not exhaust the person. The novel establishes their contrast early: the same boy whom others imagine as a brute will later reveal a private receptiveness that Werner can recognize only by seeing him outside the school’s public performance of strength.

Music and the Hidden Self

When Dr. Hauptmann is away in Berlin, Volkheimer sometimes slips into the doctor’s office, returns with a Grundig tube radio, connects the shortwave antenna, and fills the laboratory with classical music. He favors the sentimental, including Mozart, Bach, and Vivaldi. Then he leans back in a chair that protests beneath his bulk and lets his eyelids droop. The scene revises the image established by the cadets’ rumors without simply erasing it: Volkheimer remains physically imposing, but music draws out a quietness that the school’s stories cannot accommodate.

For Werner, this hidden tenderness becomes part of a more complex knowledge of his companion. Volkheimer is not presented as a gentle figure in every situation; the point is that strength and sensitivity coexist in him. The music offers a private counter-image to the Giant, one Werner later recalls when Volkheimer’s expression changes and his laugh makes him seem less menacing. Their closeness develops through these glimpses of a person who exceeds the role others have assigned him.

The Field Test and an Act of Restraint

The relationship reaches a decisive test during Werner’s field work with Dr. Hauptmann’s tracking transceivers. Werner triangulates a signal and approaches its source with Hauptmann and the hounds. In the snow they find Volkheimer lying faceup, a transmitter at his feet and its antenna rising into low branches. Hauptmann raises his pistol and warns Werner that, at such close range, hesitation is not possible. Werner believes for a startling moment that his teacher is about to shoot Volkheimer; the danger seems to extend beyond the two boys to every cadet.

Werner remembers Jutta Pfennig’s question about whether it is right to act merely because everyone else is doing so. Hauptmann fires into the sky instead. Volkheimer springs into a crouch as the hounds charge, but they recognize him and leap around him in play. The encounter confirms that the transceivers work, yet for Werner its personal consequence is more important: a situation that appeared to demand violence ends without Volkheimer being shot. The threatened loss makes his relief immediate, and the episode joins Werner’s technical success to a new awareness of how much Volkheimer’s safety matters to him.

Afterward, Volkheimer trudges toward Werner carrying the large KX transmitter and rests a mittened hand on Werner’s cap. He quietly echoes Hauptmann’s maxim that it is only numbers and that a cadet must learn to think in those terms. Werner replies by mimicking the professor’s clipped manner. The exchange turns an official lesson into a private joke between the boys: the language of mathematical detachment is repeated with enough irony to expose the distance between calculation and the human stakes they have just faced. Werner hears Volkheimer laugh for the first time. His countenance changes, appearing less threatening and more like the benevolent, enormous child he seems to become while listening to music.

Companionship Under the Rubble

The bond takes on a different urgency when Werner and Volkheimer are trapped in darkness beneath a collapsed building. Werner’s thoughts return to the coal dust of his childhood and to the mine that killed his father; the white dust around him makes the buried space seem both like that mine and its opposite. In this setting, Volkheimer does not answer despair with an abstract promise. He brings a field light, bent screwdrivers, and electrical fuses, and tells Werner that the radio is the point of their effort. The bulb’s filaments are already weakening, and the building continues to groan, so even the light that lets them communicate is running out.

Volkheimer asks whether Werner has slept. When Werner shakes his head, Volkheimer uses the light to make his mouth visible, communicating that they will run out of battery. Werner feels ready to give up, close his eyes, and wait for death. Volkheimer presses him instead to think of Jutta. That appeal reaches beyond the immediate problem of escape: it calls Werner back to a relationship and a life outside the rubble, at the moment when he is losing the will to imagine either. The plea makes their comradeship an act of survival, grounded not in a speech about heroism but in Volkheimer’s knowledge of what might still matter to Werner.

A Bond Made Visible

In the aftermath of the field test, Werner remembers the walk back to the castle beside Volkheimer as almost holy. Passing the sleeping cadets, he feels an unusually protective concern for the younger boys, while Volkheimer continues toward the upperclassmen’s dormitory, enormous against the sleeping ranks. Werner’s feeling reveals how the encounter has altered his perception: the Giant is no longer only a feared senior cadet, but a companion whose presence sharpens Werner’s sense of responsibility for others.

Across these scenes, their relationship develops through a repeated contrast between outward force and inward care. Volkheimer’s strength is evident in his size and in the legends surrounding him; his gentler character appears in his response to music, his laughter, his restraint, and his insistence that Werner remember his sister. Werner, in turn, moves from seeing a formidable school figure to experiencing Volkheimer as a trusted companion in danger. The connection remains largely unspoken, but its consequences are concrete: Werner feels relief when Volkheimer is spared, walks beside him with a new protectiveness, and receives from him a reason to endure the darkness.