Franz returns to selling newspapers after a sequence of small, hard-won acts of self-command. The return is not presented as a clean conversion: first he has to leave the scene of a burglary, resist the pull of alcohol, and find a way to move forward with little money and no settled plan. His eventual stand on Alexanderplatz gives that uncertain recovery a visible form—rucksack, newsvendor’s cap, and a new district—but does not erase the vulnerability that precedes it.

Leaving the burglary scene

Franz has kept apart from the conversations in the hall and yard, listening while the joiner and his wife are led through the building and out to the Black Maria. The public spectacle recalls his own earlier experience of being taken away, and he watches the couple’s shame with a mixture of recognition and resentment toward the people who gossip from the safety of their homes. When the crowd remains gathered, he stands at the front door in freezing weather, shifting from one leg to the other and asking himself what to do next. He does not go back upstairs. Instead, he turns from the gossiping group and walks aimlessly down Elsasser Strasse toward Rosenthaler Platz.

That departure is the first change in his immediate circumstances: he gets out of the building, but has not yet found a destination. The brief rhythmic cue of a horse beginning to trot again sits beside this uncertain movement, while Franz’s own pace is repeatedly interrupted by hesitation. A pub appears before he has even reached the corner of the square, and the absence of the bottle he left upstairs becomes a crisis. His hands go to his pockets automatically; then he argues himself toward and away from entering, knowing that drinking could leave him flat on his face and bring him back to the old woman’s place. The memory of the arrested couple and the Black Maria recurs as he urges himself to keep walking.

Food, thirst, and a decision

Franz reaches Alexanderplatz with only 1 mark 55 in his pocket. He makes himself enter a pub restaurant, where he eats a proper meal for the first time in weeks: veal stew with potatoes. The meal reduces his thirst, and he rubs the 75 pfennigs remaining between his fingers. This pause does not resolve his financial insecurity, but it gives him a concrete alternative to drinking and allows his attention to turn from immediate appetite toward a possible next step.

His body remains uncomfortable. His tongue is numb and bitter, his throat burns, and he decides that he needs more mineral water. As he drinks the cool, carbonated water, he settles on visiting Minna. The decision follows an earlier attempt at contact: he had sent her a fillet, while she had refused the aprons. He now thinks of her as someone he can approach and perhaps ask for a few coins until Thursday. The episode therefore moves from an aimless walk, through a meal and an effort to manage his thirst, to a specific person and a practical hope, without suggesting that Minna has agreed to help him.

The return to newspaper selling

A later scene marks the material change that gives this episode its subject. Franz has his rucksack again and is selling newspapers, but he has changed districts: he has left Rosenthaler Tor and set up on Alexanderplatz. He is described as fit again, five feet eleven inches tall, slimmer, and carrying his weight better; the newsvendor’s cap identifies his new working role. The contrast is visible in his appearance as well as in his activity. Earlier, he had studied his own pale, flabby face in a mirror and judged himself harshly; now the account presents him upright and working in the crowded square.

His station is at the Alexanderplatz exit of the underground, opposite the UFA picture house. Newspaper selling puts him among the square’s stream of commuters and passers-by, but it is also a means of earning money in a city where his earlier attempts to secure a footing have repeatedly faltered. As he looks down Münzstrasse, he remembers the two Jewish men he met when he was down on his luck and considers visiting them to sell a newspaper. The thought connects his present trade to an earlier encounter, while his readiness to offer the paper regardless of whether they approve of it shows the practical, unsentimental terms on which he approaches the sale.

A provisional recovery

The return to work is a change of condition, not proof that Franz has escaped the habits and pressures that threaten him. In the earlier sequence, a pub is enough to reactivate his urge to drink, and each step away from it requires a renewed decision. Food and mineral water help him get through that immediate crisis; the later rucksack and stand show him again in paid street work. The movement from cold indecision to a fixed place in the square gives the episode its modest reversal: Franz is no longer merely walking without direction, but selling papers in a district he has chosen. Yet the account keeps that advance concrete and limited—he has a job, a cap, and a place to stand, while the need for money and the possibility of drinking remain part of the world around him.