Reinhold threw Franz from the moving car

Reinhold’s attack on Franz Biberkopf turns an escape into a deliberate betrayal: after recognizing the man beside him as the person he blames for disrupting his relationships, Reinhold signals his accomplices and has Franz forced out of the moving car. The attack leaves Franz gravely injured and marks a decisive rupture between the two men.

The attack and its immediate consequences

On Sunday night, Franz is packed into a large automobile with the others, with Reinhold sitting beside him. The vehicles are driving without lights, and the group realizes they are being followed. Franz looks back through the car’s small window and laughs silently as the pursuing vehicle draws near. He understands that the gang has been exposed and thinks that, even if he is caught too, he will not let its members treat him as if he were beneath them.

Franz’s laughter unsettles Reinhold. He suddenly recalls that this is the man who has, in Reinhold’s view, driven women away from him, and resents that he has confided so much to Franz. Reinhold also sees Franz as comfortably dismissive of his warnings about controlling himself in his relationships. The pursuit continues, but Reinhold’s attention has shifted from escape to the grievance beside him. He secretly signals a man opposite, puts his hand on the door handle next to Franz, and waits for the right moment.

As the car enters a broad avenue, Franz is pulled toward the open door. He resists, but the men overpower him; a companion strikes him, and Reinhold forces him out. Franz clings to the car’s running board before Reinhold throws him into the street. The pursuing automobile runs over him, while the chase continues through the driving snow.

The men take the unconscious Franz to Magdeburg in a private car, a journey of about two hours. They leave him near a church and bring him to a hospital, where he is operated on that night. The operation costs him his right arm at the shoulder. The men give the hospital a misleading account of how he was found and ask that the incident not be reported, presenting the matter as an accident and hoping to avoid court proceedings. By Monday morning, Reinhold and the others are celebrating and drinking at their fence’s home in Weißensee, while Franz has regained consciousness in the hospital.

Narrative interludes and the problem of trust

The action is interrupted by images of water lying still beneath a storm and by a biblical warning against trusting in other people. Set against the pursuit and Reinhold’s secret signal, these interludes widen the scene beyond a personal grievance: the danger comes not only from the chase outside the car but from the companion Franz has reason to trust. The calm water offers no shelter or intervention; its stillness makes the surrounding violence seem both close and indifferent.

After the attack, the narration turns from the night’s pursuit to the ordinary arrival of morning, then unsettles that apparent renewal by measuring human life against the sun’s vast scale. The change of day is real, but it promises no repair in itself. This abrupt movement between bodily peril, biblical distrust, and cosmic perspective keeps the episode from settling into a simple tale of escape or justice: the chase continues, while the larger question of what can be trusted remains unresolved.

Justice deferred

The episode’s narrator refuses to treat the end of the chase as a reckoning: Sunday night has ended, but the question of justice, the narration says, must wait until the following Friday. That precise postponement gives the attack an unresolved public and moral afterlife. Reinhold’s immediate escape is not presented as proof that he has escaped consequence; instead, the narrative holds judgment open, making the interval between violence and accountability part of the event’s meaning.

Awakening and the withheld decision

At eleven on Monday, as the dressings are changed, Franz Biberkopf is fully awake and asks the nurse where he is. She tells him what she learned from the night nurse and from the earlier conversation. He reaches toward his right shoulder, and she guides his hand back, telling him to keep still. His memory returns to the blood running from his sleeve in the street and to the moment when something changed within him. The narration identifies the result as a decision, then pauses before explaining its content; the attack has left Franz not only with a changed body but at the threshold of a choice whose meaning remains undisclosed here.