Franz Biberkopf’s return to crime follows his third arrival in Berlin, now without his right arm. Determined to depend on himself rather than welfare or friends’ money, he first insists on using his own name despite fearing police scrutiny; but the prospect of ordinary work soon gives way to Willi’s offer of goods to sell discreetly. Franz becomes a fence, and his new livelihood takes shape alongside a carefully constructed public identity: a respectable-looking suit, an Iron Cross, and forged papers in the name of Franz Räcker. The change is not a simple return to an old life. It is a practical, increasingly deliberate answer to the narrow choices he sees around him, and a sharp reversal of his effort to live decently.