Frieder Wittlinger

Frieder Wittlinger’s story is shaped by a contradiction that those closest to him can neither solve nor safely interpret: he does not always want to kill himself, but at times he does not want to go on living. His friends try to understand what he means and whether they should intervene; his later death leaves them with no definitive answer. The diary his father describes after the funeral offers one firm recollection amid that uncertainty: Frieder had written that his time at Auerhaus was his happiest, and that, while cutting down the Christmas tree, he had felt entirely present and well.

Identity and Background

Frieder’s own distinction between wanting to die and wanting not to continue living is central to how the novel presents him. He says that he had not wanted to kill himself, only to stop living, and believes the difference matters. The statement gives language to an ambivalence that is not the same as safety: it clarifies what he felt at one point without establishing that his risk has passed or making his motives transparent to others.

That uncertainty becomes especially difficult for the narrator, Frieder’s close friend. The narrator recognizes that the same outward mood can mean different things: when Frieder seems sad, he may simply be tired; when he seems cheerful, he may already have decided to die. Frieder has told him that a sudden, unexplained lift in mood after persistent suicidal thoughts can mean a decision has been made. His explanation becomes a warning that ordinary appearances cannot be trusted as evidence of recovery.

Life at Auerhaus and the Return to Routine

After a period in which suicide remains an immediate concern, Frieder is again among his friends at Auerhaus. The return of familiar domestic and school routines does not settle what is happening inside him. One morning, he says he will cycle anyway, while the narrator and Cäcilia hurry to catch the bus into town. Frieder gives a tired grin; in the third period, the seat beside the narrator is still empty. The gap between this everyday departure and the narrator’s fear for Frieder shows how little routine can reassure those watching him.

The narrator’s mind supplies an image of Frieder hanging from a rope in the hayloft. He has ruled out other imagined methods—the friends have no pistols, and Frieder is repelled by the idea of throwing himself in front of a train—yet this knowledge does not make the danger manageable. The grotesque word Frieder uses, “Himbeermatsch,” sits beside the narrator’s recurring image rather than dispelling it. Fear persists in the ordinary spaces of the shared life, even when Frieder is not present to explain himself.

Choice, Rescue, and the Limits of Knowing

The friends’ uncertainty reaches an explicit form when the narrator asks whether he should rescue Frieder if he suddenly fell through ice, or whether Frieder would be angry. After a long pause, Frieder says that the narrator may rescue him, because he wants to choose for himself. The reply does not amount to a promise to live; it distinguishes a rescue in an immediate emergency from the larger question of whether to continue living. Frieder claims the right to make that choice, while permitting his friend to act when danger arrives unexpectedly.

Frieder also argues that someone who wonders how life would continue without him is unlikely to carry out suicide, because that person believes their presence matters. His confidence gives the narrator a reason to see attachment and imagined futures as meaningful, but it does not resolve the risk that has made the question urgent. The novel keeps care and uncertainty together: friendship can offer a reason to intervene, yet it cannot guarantee that a friend will understand another person’s decision in time.

Death and the Unanswered Question

Later, after a police confrontation, the narrator asks Frieder what happened. Frieder says that he had deliberately tried to make the policeman shoot him. The narrator responds by striking him repeatedly, then accusing him of dragging the others into danger and telling him to kill himself if that was what he wanted. Frieder tries to turn aside and throw the narrator off, but does not fight back. The scene makes the consequences of Frieder’s risk immediate for his friends, while the narrator’s violence registers anger and fear rather than comprehension or relief.

Frieder eventually dies by suicide. His landlady finds him after he has been dead in his bed for several days. The death notice published by his parents says “After a long illness”; the narrator sees the words as both true and false. No date of death is given, because the doctor could no longer establish one. These details refuse the neatness of a final account: even the public notice cannot hold the whole truth, and the exact point at which Frieder died remains unknown.

The friends debate what the death means. Harry says that Frieder has done it after all; Vera suggests that he may have misjudged the dosage. The narrator sets one possibility against another—if an attempt fails, people may think it was done to be rescued; if it succeeds, they may call it an accident. He remembers that the question of why Frieder wanted to die the first time had gradually faded as they talked, until he could no longer find an answer. He likewise cannot know whether Frieder’s reasons at the end were the same as before. Rather than claim certainty, the narrator holds to the possibility that leaves more futures open: not dying today means that tomorrow remains possible, while death closes that choice.

Auerhaus in Frieder’s Memory

At the funeral gathering, Frieder’s father approaches the group and says that, while sorting his son’s belongings, he found a diary. The narrator realizes that he had never spoken with him before. The father’s voice is warm, but grief makes it falter; he speaks quietly, as though discipline or a sense of duty is forcing the sentences out. His disclosure shifts the friends’ knowledge of Frieder from the troubled life they witnessed to the words he left behind.

The father tells them that Frieder wrote that his time at Auerhaus had been the happiest of his life. The phrasing carries particular force because the house had been his family home, yet his father, too, calls it Auerhaus when speaking of the shared life Frieder made there with his friends. He also read what Frieder had written about cutting down the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve: “I was completely there. Everything was good.” The remembered moment does not explain away Frieder’s death, nor prove that happiness lasted. It stands beside it, a record of a time when, at least once, Frieder felt fully present and all was well.