Pums’s gang burglary and attack on Franz Biberkopf turns a paid Sunday-night errand into a forced test of loyalty, then into a concealed assault that permanently changes Franz’s body. Recruited on the promise of wages and expenses, he discovers that the work is a burglary and is ordered to keep watch. When he tries to get away, Reinhold and the gang take him with them, then cast him from their car during a pursuit. The gang’s theft continues; Franz is left unconscious on the road, and his right arm is amputated in Magdeburg.

Recruitment and the promised job

Franz is on his way home, thinking that Cilly should not have to wait for him, when he encounters Pums. Pums has noticed that something is happening between Franz and the gang’s tall member, Emil, and says that the man has failed to turn up. With the job due to begin that evening, Pums offers Franz five marks an hour and his expenses to take the absent man’s place. Franz hesitates at the pay, then accepts, pleased by the prospect of earning money on a Sunday.

The offer is framed as a practical favor to a gang under pressure, not as an invitation to take part in a crime. Franz tries to leave after the agreement, explaining that he wants to return to Cilly, who is at home alone. Pums refuses to let him go, insisting that the undertaking will fall apart without him. The conflict between Franz’s ordinary obligation to Cilly and his sudden, lucrative commitment establishes how readily the gang’s pressure redirects his plans.

The burglary and the lookout

The gang travels by car and continues on foot near Bülowplatz, passing beneath the S-Bahn railway arch. Franz expects to help collect goods. At an entrance on Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse, however, the men separate and enter a dark building. One of Franz’s companions takes away his cigar and disappears across the courtyard; Pums then confronts Franz with a torch and orders him back to the front of the building. He is not to carry goods but to act as lookout.

Left at the entrance, Franz hears activity in the yard and realizes that the men are breaking in and stealing. He understands that Pums runs an organized criminal outfit, and considers leaving rather than remaining responsible for the gang’s crime. Yet after Reinhold catches him and again orders him to stand guard, Franz finds himself unable to move at first. The narration renders his fear as a physical and mental paralysis: the world seems iron-hard, advancing with unstoppable force. The image gives the scene a pressure beyond the immediate threat, while keeping the cause concrete: Reinhold has struck him, and the gang has trapped him in the role of lookout.

Eventually Franz manages to leave his coat behind and move toward the yard. Gang members rush past with bundles of coats and other goods. He remains among them, without his coat, as the men load their haul and hurry between the building and the cars. The sequence makes his position increasingly precarious: he has recognized the crime and tried to withdraw, but the gang continues to treat him as part of its operation.

Reinhold’s attack and the getaway

When the gang departs, Franz is packed into one of the cars with Reinhold beside him. The vehicles travel without lights. The men say that they are being followed, but Reinhold has already signaled to the man opposite and surreptitiously put his hand on the door handle next to Franz. The apparent pursuit provides the cover for an attack that is deliberate rather than an accident of the getaway.

As the car speeds along a wide avenue, Reinhold seizes Franz and forces him toward the open door. Franz resists, but the men overpower him; one strikes him with a stick while another hits him in the hip. Franz clings to the car’s running board until Reinhold strikes him on the back of the head and throws him into the street. The door shuts, and the pursuing car runs over him as the chase continues through the snow. The gang’s escape carries on, while Franz is left behind, injured and unconscious.

Concealment and the lasting consequence

The gang takes Franz to Magdeburg in a private car, a journey of about two hours. He is brought to a hospital near a church and operated on that night. The medical account states that his right arm is amputated at the shoulder joint; the extent of his other injuries is still uncertain at that point. When hospital staff ask what happened, two men offer a false account involving a motorcycle accident and ask that the matter not be reported. Their invented explanation attempts to turn a calculated attack into an ordinary road mishap.

By Monday morning, the perpetrators, Reinhold among them, are drinking at their fence’s place in Weißensee, while Franz wakes in hospital and asks where he is. He is conscious of the loss of his right arm. The contrast is stark: the gang resumes its social life and seeks to suppress the incident, while Franz faces an irreversible physical consequence. His injury is not only the outcome of the burglary but a turning point in his relation to the gang that recruited him.

Narrative significance

The event is built around reversals in what Franz believes he has agreed to do. A paid errand becomes a lookout post; a chance to leave becomes enforced participation; and a supposed pursuit becomes the occasion for Reinhold’s attack. Each reversal narrows Franz’s choices until he is expelled from the moving car and left exposed to the consequences of the gang’s violence.

The narration also sets Franz’s bodily paralysis and the image of an iron world against his eventual effort to move. His fear initially makes escape seem impossible, but he does manage to leave the entrance hall; this partial act of resistance does not protect him once he is in the car. The episode thus distinguishes his attempt to withdraw from any claim that he has freely chosen the gang’s crime. Its final consequence—the amputation of his right arm—makes the gang’s betrayal permanent, while the men’s false story underscores their effort to erase responsibility for it.