Potsdam

Potsdam is a briefly named destination rather than a fully depicted setting. It enters the narrative through Franz Biberkopf and Mieze’s shared outing, and through a digressive story that first places a fugitive near Potsdam before correcting the geography to Anklam and Gorke.

Potsdam as a Destination

After reconciling with Franz, Mieze gives two days entirely to him. The pair stay together and travel to Erkner and Potsdam, while Mieze keeps her gentleman waiting. The account offers no description of Potsdam itself; the place matters as one of the destinations of their renewed closeness and as part of the time Mieze chooses to devote to Franz.

The Corrected Geography of an Anecdote

Potsdam also appears at the start of a story about Otto Bornemann, introduced as a man associated with the living dead. The narration immediately revises its own location: Bornemann’s escape and encounter with a corpse did not happen near Potsdam, but near Anklam, at Gorke. There, while walking near Neugard, he finds a dead man floating in the Spree and puts his own identification papers in the corpse’s pocket, passing himself off as dead.

The story then follows Bornemann beyond that initial deception. He goes to Anklam, becomes a fishmonger under the name Finke, and is eventually recognized by his grown stepdaughter, who has come to work in the village. His wife and five children confirm his identity, but the villagers know him as Finke and the man who died as Bornemann.

Narrative Function

The correction makes Potsdam a point of departure that the narrative itself withdraws: the anecdote’s action belongs elsewhere. Its brief mention contrasts with the outing with Mieze, where Potsdam is a real destination but remains undescribed. In both instances, the place is defined less by a physical portrait than by its role in movement through the story—first as part of a couple’s journey, then as a misleading geographical lead into a tale of escape and assumed identity.