Reinhold's arrest after being informed on

Reinhold's arrest after being informed on is the outcome of a disclosure passed from Brandenburg Prison into Berlin and then converted into a police report. The capture depends not on a direct confrontation but on a chain of confidences, recognition, and a promised reward: Reinhold tells Konrad enough to identify him, and an unemployed acquaintance of Konrad's gives the police the information that leads to Reinhold's arrest for the Freienwalde murder of Emilie Parsunke.

Prison and the secret under pressure

In Brandenburg Prison, Reinhold works weaving mats alongside Dluga, a Polish prisoner who recognizes the name Moroskiewicz and realizes that Reinhold has concealed his identity. Dluga initially acts as if he knows nothing. He approaches Reinhold in the lavatory, shares half a cigarette, and speaks with him in Polish, which Reinhold cannot speak properly. Later, when the foreman and Reinhold collect finished mats, Dluga quietly asks whether Moroskiewicz is a relation. Reinhold reacts with fear and gives him tobacco. Dluga takes the gesture as confirmation that the name matters and begins to blackmail him.

The pressure compounds Reinhold's isolation. He leaves the mat-weaving work and, because he sometimes presents himself as weak, is allowed to help the foreman carry mats to the cell block, where other prisoners cannot reach him as easily. But the protection does not silence Dluga. Reinhold's prison trouble is thus tied to the identity he has tried to keep hidden: a name spoken in the wrong place turns into leverage, and the blackmail leaves him agitated and furious.

Reinhold entrusts Konrad

Reinhold grows close to Konrad, a young burglar imprisoned for the first time and due to be released in March. The two initially bond over their anger at Dluga. Reinhold comes to regard the friendship as a rare comfort, but Konrad's imminent release makes it another impending separation. On the Wednesday before Konrad leaves, Reinhold becomes distraught at the thought of being left alone. He drinks carpenter's meths with Konrad and pleads to be taken along, although escape is not a practical option. After Konrad tells him there is no way out, Reinhold relents to remaining in prison.

That night, after the prison has been locked down, Reinhold gives Konrad instructions for his life outside. He tells him where to find a woman Reinhold calls his girl, asks him to report what has happened there, and mentions that Dluga has noticed something about his business. He also names Biberkopf, Franz Biberkopf, as a man he used to know in Berlin. Konrad listens and learns the information Reinhold has been withholding. Reinhold's confession is made in distress and as a request for help; it also gives Konrad the knowledge that will make the arrest possible.

From confidence to police report

On Friday, Konrad visits Reinhold's girl in Berlin. She receives him warmly, gives him money, and spends days hearing what Reinhold told him. By Monday, Konrad has met a friend from reform school in Seestrasse, now unemployed. Konrad boasts about his apparent prosperity, pays for his companion at a pub, and later tells stories about Brandenburg while they are out with women. After the women leave, the two men stay up late in the friend's room. In the early hours of Tuesday, Konrad identifies Reinhold to his friend as Moroskiewicz, says that he is wanted for something serious, and mentions the possibility of a large reward. He realizes too late that he has said too much. His friend promises to keep quiet and accepts ten marks from him.

On Tuesday, the friend goes to the ground floor of Berlin Police Headquarters and checks the wanted posters. One names the wanted man in connection with the murder of a prostitute, Emilie Parsunke, in Freienwalde, and offers a reward of 1,000 marks. The poster confirms that Konrad's account concerns the man named there. The informant returns with his girlfriend; she argues that there is little reason to hesitate over reporting a murderer when the reward could matter so much to an unemployed man. They go inside together.

At the police station, the friend tells the inspector on duty what he knows about Moroskiewicz, Reinhold, and Brandenburg. He does not explain how he learned it. Because he has no identity papers, he and his girlfriend have to remain there for the time being. The sequence makes the betrayal concrete: Konrad's confidence has passed to a friend who first accepts money to keep silent, then chooses the much larger public reward when the wanted poster confirms the story.

Capture and its aftermath

When Konrad travels to Brandenburg on Saturday to visit Reinhold, carrying things from Reinhold's girl and from Pums, he finds an old Thursday-evening Lokalanzeiger in the train compartment. Its front page reports that the Freienwalde murderer has been caught in prison under a false name. The newspaper allows Konrad to learn of the capture only after the report has already circulated. He understands that the information he passed on has led to Reinhold's arrest.

Reinhold is taken back to Berlin and held in Moabit Prison while awaiting news of his trial. He reacts like a raving lunatic; the account says that the authorities come close to sending him to the institution where Biberkopf was confined. His arrest therefore ends the immediate usefulness of his concealed identity but does not resolve the case's legal outcome. The narration leaves his trial pending rather than supplying a verdict.

The episode makes the arrest a reversal built out of ordinary transactions: a question about a name, tobacco given to quiet suspicion, a prisoner's desperate confidence, a ten-mark payment, and a poster offering 1,000 marks. It also links private attachment and betrayal to the machinery of custody. Reinhold's relationships have brought him both comfort and danger; this time, the chain from prison to police is carried by the young man he trusted and completed by an acquaintance willing to trade information for money.