Reinhold’s capture after Konrad’s tip is a chain of disclosures, recognition, and calculation rather than a planned police pursuit. Konrad lets Reinhold’s identity escape while boasting to a friend; the friend later confirms it against a police poster naming Reinhold in the Freienwalde murder of Emilie Parsunke and offering 1,000 marks. His report brings Reinhold back to Berlin, where he is held awaiting trial. The episode also turns Reinhold’s prison misery into a reversal: the visits and relationships that have repeatedly shaped his fortunes become part of the route to his downfall.

The disclosure

The sequence begins with Konrad visiting Reinhold in Brandenburg penitentiary. Reinhold clings to him and tells him everything. Konrad listens, repeatedly affirming that he understands, until he knows the full story. The visit exposes Reinhold’s inability to bear confinement: he weeps with rage, desolation, and anger at his fate, while Konrad’s reassurance that four years is not long enough to comfort him. Reinhold feels trapped and cannot imagine enduring the sentence. His distress establishes the stakes of the later news: this is not merely the discovery of a wanted man, but the arrival of a fresh disaster in a life already narrowed by prison.

After the visit, Konrad goes to Berlin and receives a warm welcome from Reinhold’s girl. He spends days telling her what has happened and receives money from her. The narration then shifts to Konrad’s encounter in Seestrasse with a former reform-school acquaintance, now unemployed. Konrad boasts about how well off he is, pays for his companion at a pub, and goes with him and some girls to the cinema. Later, after the women have left, the two men remain together in the friend’s room into the early hours. In this atmosphere of showing off, Konrad reveals that Reinhold is wanted for a serious crime. He gives the name Moroskiewicz as well as Reinhold’s own name, and describes him as an unusually capable man outside prison. As soon as he has spoken, Konrad realizes his mistake. The friend promises to keep quiet, and accepts ten marks from him.

The poster and the decision to inform

The promise does not hold. On Tuesday, the former schoolmate goes to Berlin Police Headquarters and looks at the wanted posters. At first, he is unsure whether the man Konrad described is actually the person being sought, or whether Konrad had been exaggerating. The poster settles the question: it identifies Reinhold in connection with the murder of Emilie Parsunke in Freienwalde and advertises a reward of 1,000 marks. The name, the crime, and the sum transform a boast into information with a price attached.

The friend is overwhelmed by the size of the reward and sets off at once. He returns that afternoon with his girlfriend. She says she has met Konrad and that he had asked after the friend, raising the possibility that Konrad might discover who informed. But the friend’s unemployment and the reward weigh more heavily in their decision. His girlfriend argues that Reinhold is a murderer, that Konrad is unlikely to know who made the report, and that 1,000 marks is too much to dismiss while they are out of work. The scene makes the tip an act of self-interest under economic pressure: the reward is not an incidental detail but the decisive inducement that overcomes the promise of silence.

The friend goes inside and tells the inspector on duty what he knows: the name Moroskiewicz, the name Reinhold, and the connection to Brandenburg. He does not explain how he obtained the information. Because he has no identity papers, he and his girlfriend have to remain at the police headquarters for the time being. The report is therefore direct, but the source of the information stays concealed from the authorities in the moment. Konrad’s confidence has set the chain in motion; the poster and the reward complete it.

Confirmation and return to Berlin

The consequences reach Konrad through a newspaper. On Saturday, he travels to Brandenburg to visit Reinhold, carrying various things from Reinhold’s girl and from Pums. In the train compartment he finds an old Thursday-evening edition of the Lokalanzeiger. Its front page reports that the Freienwalde murderer has been caught while living in prison under a false name. The newspaper’s date and headline make the capture public before Konrad can reach Reinhold. The rails continue to carry him toward the visit as he reads the news, while the report leaves him with the knowledge that his disclosure has helped bring this about.

The account compresses the transition into a blunt confirmation: Reinhold has been caught and taken back to Berlin, and Konrad recognizes his own part in it. The newspaper does more than confirm the result of the tip. It links the false name disclosed in conversation to the official identification and turns Konrad’s private indiscretion into an irreversible consequence. The narration supplies no account of the arrest itself; instead, the printed report, encountered on the journey to the prison, marks the distance between what Konrad intended to share and what has happened to Reinhold.

Downfall and unresolved future

The aftermath gathers together the episode’s recurring connection between Reinhold’s relationships and his changing fortunes. The narration observes that women and love have brought him both good and bad luck throughout his life, and that in the end they have contributed to his downfall. His girl’s welcome and money belong to the immediate aftermath of the prison visit; Konrad’s access to Reinhold’s confidences and his later journey with gifts connect private ties to the events surrounding the capture. The decisive tip, however, comes from the unemployed acquaintance, who acts for the reward after consulting his girlfriend. The result is not presented as a single person’s deliberate design but as a sequence in which money, confidence, and personal connections converge.

Taken back to Berlin, Reinhold behaves like a raving lunatic. The authorities come close to placing him in the same institution where his former friend Franz Biberkopf has been confined, but Reinhold eventually settles in Moabit penitentiary. He waits there to learn how his trial is progressing and what news may come from Buch from Franz Biberkopf, whom the narration describes as his accomplice or instigator. The capture thus closes the immediate question of where Reinhold is, but not what will become of him. His trial remains ahead, and the account leaves his future expressly unresolved.