Black Wednesday (Reinhold’s prison episode)

Black Wednesday (Reinhold’s prison episode) follows Reinhold’s collapse in prison and the careless disclosure that brings the police to him. Its decisive turn is not a planned investigation but a sequence of dependencies: Reinhold clings to Konrad, Konrad boasts to an unemployed friend, and the friend recognizes the value of what he has learned. The episode makes Reinhold’s capture emerge from the same unstable need for company that shapes his prison life.

The Prison Crisis

The episode is explicitly marked as Black Wednesday for Reinhold, with the narrator wryly telling readers they can skip the chapter. That interruption draws attention to the episode as a narrated construction even as the events tighten toward capture. Its central scene takes place in Brandenburg prison, where Reinhold has formed an unusually close friendship with Konrad, a young burglar serving his first term there.

Konrad is due to be released in March. On the evening before he leaves, Reinhold cannot bear the thought of being alone again. His distress has accumulated during imprisonment: his conflict with Dluga has left him agitated and furious, and he has been unable to settle into the prospect of a long term. As Konrad’s departure approaches, Reinhold wails, clings to him, and begs him to take him along. Konrad tries to comfort him, but escape is not a practical answer.

The men share methylated spirits obtained from a foreman in the carpentry workshop. Stories of recent escape attempts make the prison walls and their broken glass a concrete limit: one fugitive was caught bleeding badly after trying to get away, while another turned back rather than risk the glass. The bottle offers a brief shared act, not a way out. Reinhold’s dependence on Konrad becomes more acute against the visible impossibility of escape.

A Secret Passed On

In his agitation, Reinhold tells Konrad about himself. Konrad listens, keeps agreeing, and learns enough to identify the man whose past and wanted status matter outside the prison. The disclosure comes in a moment of grief and rage, as Reinhold cries over his confinement and insists that he cannot live like this. What he cannot keep within the prison is precisely what makes his confidence dangerous.

On Friday, Konrad is in Berlin with Reinhold’s girl. She welcomes him warmly, gives him money, and listens as he tells her about what happened. By Monday, Konrad has encountered an old friend from reform school in Seestrasse. The friend is unemployed; Konrad boasts of his good fortune, pays for him at a pub, and later goes with him to the cinema with some girls. After the group disperses, the two men spend much of the night together in the friend’s room.

In the early hours of Tuesday, Konrad identifies Reinhold to the friend, though he says Reinhold uses the name Moroskiewicz. He describes him as a wanted man connected to a serious offense and mentions that a reward may be offered. Konrad immediately recognizes that he has spoken carelessly. The friend swears to keep quiet and accepts ten marks from him, but the promise does not hold.

The Reward and Capture

On Tuesday, the friend goes to police headquarters and examines the wanted posters. There he finds the name connected to the murder of Emilie Parsunke, a prostitute killed in Freienwalde, and sees that the reward is 1,000 marks. The poster turns Konrad’s late-night story into something verifiable and gives the unemployed man a direct financial reason to act.

Overwhelmed by the amount, the friend leaves at once and returns that afternoon with his girlfriend. She confirms that she has met Konrad and that Konrad had asked after the friend, prompting them to consider whether their involvement might be discovered. They nevertheless decide to proceed, reasoning that Reinhold is a murderer and that the reward matters more than concern for Konrad. The episode ends as they set out to report what they know.

The wider account supplies the outcome: the police believe that, having caught one member of the criminal circle, they will soon catch the other, but Reinhold is already in their custody. He has passed through police headquarters and is in Moabit prison. Thus the betrayal does not merely expose his identity; it closes the gap between the wanted man on the poster and the prisoner already caught. The chapter’s chain of events makes that result depend on ordinary vulnerabilities—loneliness, boasting, unemployment, and the pull of 1,000 marks—rather than on a single, controlled act of pursuit.