Oxy-acetylene torch

The Oxy-acetylene torch turns the gang’s plans into physical openings: it cuts through a ceiling so stolen cloth can be passed between floors, and later is brought against a safe during a break-in that ends in failure and fire. Its appearances show both the reach and the limits of specialized equipment. The tool can make a difficult entry possible, but only as part of a coordinated operation involving people who know how to use it, prepare a route, and work before time runs out.

A Tool and the Skills Around It

Pums recruits a tinsmith because he knows about Oxy-acetylene torches. The detail is part of a broader effort to build a crew whose members and equipment suit the work: Pums insists that a gang must have capable people who know their jobs and the right tools. The torch is not simply an accessory to a burglary. It requires someone with relevant skill, and its presence helps distinguish organized work by a team from theft undertaken alone.

That dependence on expertise shapes the gang’s preparation. Before the first burglary with Franz Biberkopf, three men enter the floor above the printers and carry the ladder and torch upstairs in boxes. They hide both behind bales of paper, while one of the men drives the car away. The equipment is placed in advance, out of sight, so the crew can begin the operation without drawing attention. The torch’s usefulness therefore starts before it is lit: its transport and concealment are already part of the job’s design.

Cutting Through the Ceiling

During the night operation, the tinsmith uses the torch to cut a roughly half-yard-square opening in the floor. He wears protective goggles as he works. Heat makes the ceiling crack, and fragments rattle and fall into the room below; the men push a silk umbrella into the opening to catch most of the debris. The sound and falling pieces create a risk of discovery, but the building below remains dark and quiet. The scene makes the tool’s force tangible through the damage it produces, while the umbrella and the men’s watchfulness show how carefully that force has to be managed.

The opening gives the gang a route between floors. At midnight, Waldemar Heller goes down first, using a rope ladder because he knows the premises. The lower level’s Steel ladder is too short to reach the ceiling, so the men drag tables beneath it and lower the ladder onto the highest one. While the others work below, Franz Biberkopf remains upstairs, lying over the hole and sweeping bolts of cloth toward another man with his one arm. The torch has made the passage possible, but the burglary still depends on improvised access, a lookout, and the coordinated handling of the stolen goods.

The Torch in the First Job

The first operation lasts about two hours. Reinhold is below with the tinsmith, while he also patrols the exit in the yard; above, Franz Biberkopf’s strength lets him move the cloth through the opening. The torch does not act alone or guarantee success. Its cut must be placed where the gang can use it, and the opening must serve a larger sequence of movement: men descend, goods are passed up, and the crew prepares to leave before the night watchman’s rounds become a danger.

This distinction between cutting and completing matters. The torch solves one specific obstacle—the solid barrier between floors—but the gang’s progress depends on other tools, people, timing, and concealment. The silk umbrella limits falling debris; ladders and tables bridge the difference in height; Franz Biberkopf’s arm moves the cloth. The operation presents the torch as powerful but bounded: it creates an opportunity, while the crew must turn that opportunity into a successful theft.

Failure at the Safe

The torch returns during the break-in at a factory on Stralauer Strasse, where the gang expects to find money in a safe in the private office. The choice of money rather than goods is meant to prevent Pums from controlling the proceeds through his dealings with fences. Pums goes along with the others, although he can no longer play an active role in the gang’s work.

Karl the tinsmith applies the torch to the safe, but burns his hand and cannot continue. Reinhold tries in his place, but is out of practice; Pums then takes the torch from him and also fails to make it work. The sequence does not show the tool itself breaking. Instead, the attempt stalls because the people handling it cannot complete the task: one is injured, another lacks practice, and the gang has little time before the guard may arrive. Equipment that enabled the earlier entry cannot compensate for the loss of the necessary skill and working time.

Forced to leave with only a few marks and postage stamps found in the office, the men seize two tanks of petrol from the corridor, drench the furniture and the safe, and throw in matches. The fire catches Pums too, singeing his back as the gang escapes. The torch’s second appearance thus ends not with a successful opening but with an abandoned safe and an incendiary retreat. Across the two burglaries, it marks the difference between a tool integrated into a carefully prepared operation and one that cannot overcome injury, inexperience, and a closing deadline.