Reinhold—Konrad

Reinhold and Konrad’s relationship begins in the strained intimacy of prison and ends in betrayal at a distance. In Brandenburg penitentiary, Konrad becomes a rare companion for Reinhold, who is desperate not to be left alone again. When Konrad is released, Reinhold gives him personal information and asks him to make inquiries in Berlin. Konrad’s disclosure of Reinhold’s identity eventually enables the police to find him, turning a friendship formed under confinement into the decisive link in his capture.

First Contact in Prison

Reinhold’s bond with Konrad grows out of the conflict surrounding Dluga. After a fellow prisoner begins blackmailing him, Reinhold helps provoke a confrontation that brings him a week’s detention. The episode does not resolve the danger: he remains agitated by the prospect of spending years in prison alongside a man he wants to fight. His isolation and fury continue to deepen, and he becomes preoccupied with the belief that he is trapped there for good.

In that state, Reinhold attaches himself to a young burglar who is also serving his first prison sentence. The two first meet in the tobacco shop, where they share their hostility toward Dluga. Their common grievance gives way to a closeness Reinhold has not experienced before. Konrad is not one of the women through whom Reinhold has previously understood good fortune and misfortune, but the friendship nonetheless offers him welcome company. For a time, he can regard the trouble with Dluga as having brought something good into his life.

Konrad’s circumstances sharpen the difference between them. He is due to leave in March, while Reinhold expects to remain imprisoned for years. Konrad is from Mecklenburg and has a criminal past: of the two other men with whom he committed burglaries in Pomerania, one is serving a ten-year sentence. Yet in Reinhold’s immediate world, the important fact is that Konrad will soon be gone. The impending separation turns a new friendship into another reminder of his confinement.

A Friendship Under Pressure

On the evening before Konrad’s release, Reinhold cannot accept that he is about to lose his company. In the dormitory, he clings to the possibility of escaping with him and pleads for Konrad to take him along. Konrad tries to comfort him, but escape is not a practicable option. The recent attempts by other prisoners, and the prison’s precautions, make the danger plain. Their shared drinking of meths from the carpenter’s workshop does not change the situation: Reinhold must stay, and Konrad must leave.

The episode exposes how much Reinhold has invested in the bond. He weeps with rage and desolation, unable to take comfort from the suggestion that four years will pass. His distress is not just disappointment at losing a companion; it is bound up with his broader sense that his life has gone wrong and that he has no control over what follows. He blames the trouble in Motzstrasse, Mieze, and Franz Biberkopf, while Konrad is present as the person who listens and remains beside him on the last night.

Before they part, Reinhold turns the friendship into a request for continued contact. He gives Konrad the address of a woman he calls his girl, though he admits he does not know whose girl she is now, and asks him to visit her and report back. He also wants Konrad to find out what has happened with Dluga, whom he believes may know something against him. Reinhold speaks about Franz Biberkopf as an acquaintance in Berlin and begins to explain the affairs Konrad will need to understand. The information is both a practical errand and a sign of trust: Reinhold makes Konrad the messenger between his sealed-off prison life and the outside world.

Confidence Passed On

Konrad listens and learns the details. His release does not immediately sever the connection: on Friday he visits Reinhold’s girl in Berlin, receives a warm welcome, and spends days telling her what Reinhold has said. She gives him money. The contact appears, for a short time, to fulfill the role Reinhold assigned him, carrying his news from the prison to the people outside it.

But Konrad also repeats Reinhold’s secrets elsewhere. In Seestrasse he meets a friend from reform school, now unemployed, and boasts about how well he is doing. After they go to the cinema with some girls, the two men continue their evening at the friend’s room. There, in the early hours of Tuesday, Konrad identifies Reinhold by his other name, Moroskiewicz, and says that he is wanted for a serious crime. Once the information is out, Konrad recognizes that he has been foolish. His friend promises to keep quiet, and Konrad gives him ten marks.

The confidence does not remain private. On Tuesday, the friend goes to police headquarters and checks the wanted posters. One names Reinhold in connection with the murder of Parsunke in Freienwalde and offers a reward of 1,000 marks. The poster converts Konrad’s boast into actionable information. His friend hesitates, but his girlfriend urges him to consider the reward and the fact that Reinhold is wanted for murder. He returns to the police with her and tells the inspector what he knows about Moroskiewicz, Reinhold, and Brandenburg, without explaining how he learned it. Because he has no identity papers, he and his girlfriend must remain there for the time being.

Discovery and Consequences

Konrad does not initially know that the information he disclosed has led to Reinhold’s capture. On Saturday he travels to Brandenburg to visit him, bringing various things from Reinhold’s girl and from Pums. In the train compartment he finds an old Thursday-evening copy of the Lokalanzeiger. Its front page reports that the Freienwalde murderer has been caught in prison under a false name. The news makes Konrad understand the consequence of what he said: the man he had treated as a friend has been identified and taken back to Berlin.

For Reinhold, the arrest follows a brief period in which Konrad seemed to offer companionship and a connection beyond the prison walls. The revelation that the police have found him through the trail of information shared with his new friend makes that trust part of the cause of his downfall. After his transfer to Berlin, Reinhold behaves like a raving lunatic; he is eventually settled in Moabit prison while awaiting the progress of his trial. His hope of hearing from Konrad has been replaced by uncertainty about what will happen next, including what he may hear from Franz Biberkopf in Buch.

The Relationship’s Narrative Role

The bond is neither a settled alliance nor a simple exchange of favors. Reinhold depends on Konrad for company, comfort, and a means of reaching the outside world; Konrad accepts that closeness, listens to what Reinhold tells him, and carries some of his messages. But once outside, he also treats the information as material for a boast. The decisive breach occurs not when he directly approaches the police, but when he discloses Reinhold’s identity to a friend, who acts on the wanted poster and reward.

That indirect chain gives the friendship its particular weight. Reinhold’s loneliness makes him confide in Konrad, and the confidence supplies the knowledge that leads to his capture. Their connection first softens the isolation of prison, then exposes Reinhold to the consequences of trusting someone whose loyalty cannot withstand talk of crime and money. Konrad’s visit with the newspaper completes the reversal: he comes back to see his friend, but arrives carrying proof that his own disclosure has helped bring about the arrest.