Franz takes part in Reinhold’s exchange of girlfriends through a sequence of comic handovers that exposes the unequal terms of their friendship. Reinhold cannot bring himself to end relationships, while Franz treats taking over his women as a favor and a source of amusement. The joke acquires practical consequences: the women move between households, and the exchange eventually leaves Franz with Cilly, whom he chooses not to pass on.

Reinhold’s predicament and the first exchange

One night, Reinhold, in his army overcoat, talks to Franz about women. He has fallen in love with the wife of a brewery driver, who has already left her husband for him; now Reinhold no longer wants her. His difficulty is not that she has refused to leave, but that she does not accept his repeated attempts to tell her their relationship is over. He imagines that the ending must be put in writing, and complains that she says she does not understand. Franz finds the problem ridiculous. A man who can enter a gasworks with dynamite, he thinks, should be able to dismiss a woman. Reinhold’s fear and stammering strike him as absurdly out of proportion to the simple solution Franz proposes.

Reinhold asks Franz to take the woman off his hands, on the assumption that Franz can later reject her in turn. Franz agrees enthusiastically, promising to do Reinhold a favor. The exchange is presented less as a serious negotiation than as a joke between men: Reinhold can no longer manage the relationship, and Franz relishes the chance to take his place. Their agreement makes a woman’s change of partner into an arrangement conducted between the two men, even as her own decisions disrupt their plan.

Fränze and the boots

The next day, Fränze arrives at Franz’s home carrying a pair of stout boots that Reinhold has sent. Franz is delighted when he learns her name: Franz and Fränze seem, to him, a fitting pair. He privately treats the boots as payment for accepting Reinhold’s problem, comparing them to thirty pieces of silver and noting their value. That night he accompanies her to look for Reinhold, who is absent as planned. Fränze becomes angry, and Franz calms her in his room. The following morning she returns to Reinhold and tells him that she no longer needs him because she has found someone else; she refuses to say who.

Franz then appears at Reinhold’s wearing the new boots. They are so large that he has to wear two pairs of woollen socks, a practical detail that makes the gift into a visible comic prop. The two men embrace and slap each other on the back. Franz insists that he has done Reinhold a favor, although he does not want recognition for it. The boots thus mark both sides of the exchange: they are the material gift Reinhold sends through Fränze, and the joke Franz carries back to Reinhold after becoming her new partner.

Fränze falls in love with Franz and settles into his home. He watches her take up familiar domestic tasks, including mending his clothes and cleaning his boots. The sight of her cleaning Reinhold’s boots makes him laugh, because their size suggests that the two men might fit into them together. They try the joke physically, but cannot both get into one boot. The scene makes the men’s shared claim on the objects—and their joking intimacy—more conspicuous than any romantic ideal attached to the exchange.

The failed transfer and Cilly’s arrival

Franz later tries to pass Fränze on to the hunchback, whom he visits to ask whether he wants to take her. The hunchback sees practical advantages: he could stop working, draw sick pay, and have her run errands, but he is not willing to settle down with her. At noon the next day, Franz picks a quarrel with Fränze over something trivial. She erupts, he shouts back gleefully, and within an hour the arrangement has been made: the hunchback helps her pack, Franz leaves in a rage, and she moves in with the hunchback because she has nowhere else to go. He goes straight to a doctor to be signed off sick; that night, he and Fränze grumble about Franz. What Franz has treated as a playful favor ends with a displaced woman and a household organized around the practical value of her labor.

Cilly arrives next, carrying a fur collar that Reinhold has asked her to bring Franz. Franz approves of the gift and jokes that Reinhold sends him food and clothes whenever he has too much, recalling the boots Fränze brought. He shows Cilly those oversized boots and invites her opinion. Dressed smartly in a black coat with fur trim, she puts her feet into them. Franz recalls the earlier joke and slips one of his feet into the boot behind hers; when she tries to run away, they hop about together, and he puts his other foot into the second boot. They topple over. The narrator’s mock announcement of private consultation turns their physical play into a comic spectacle, while keeping the exchange’s material signs—fur, coat, dancing shoes, boots—at its center.

Cilly stays and the friendship continues

Cilly asks Franz not to tell Reinhold about their encounter, and Franz agrees. That night she comes to stay for good, bringing her nearly new coat and dancing shoes. Franz notes that Reinhold gave her these things, joking that Reinhold buys them all on credit. As with Fränze, clothes accompany the woman’s movement from Reinhold’s life into Franz’s household. But this time the sequence does not end with Franz arranging another transfer. He is delighted whenever he meets Reinhold, and Cilly remains with him.

The episode therefore changes the terms of Franz and Reinhold’s friendship without breaking it. Franz worries about what will happen when the month ends and Reinhold, usually taciturn, speaks to him again; he is glad when they meet sooner at the Alexanderplatz underground station. Reinhold asks whether Franz has plans for the evening. Franz agrees to go with him, expecting perhaps a dance, but Reinhold leads him toward the Salvation Army meeting on Dresdner Straße because he wants to listen. The unexpected invitation carries their bond beyond the girlfriend exchange: after the comedy of passing women and gifts between households, Reinhold draws Franz into an unfamiliar setting, and Franz follows with curiosity.