September 1, 1928

September 1, 1928 is the date the novel’s later trial testimony assigns to Mieze’s murder in Freienwalde near Berlin. It gives a precise point in time to a crime that reshapes Franz Biberkopf’s life, while the date itself reaches the reader retrospectively, through the legal proceedings rather than through a scene of the murder.

The date and the crime

At the trial, Reinhold faces the murder charge, while Karl Matter, identified as the tinsmith, is tried for connivance and aiding and abetting. The victim is identified in the proceedings as Emilie Parsunke, from Bernau; Franz calls her Mieze. The testimony thus connects a formal name and place of origin to the intimate name by which she is remembered in her relationship with Franz.

Franz Biberkopf’s testimony

Franz is not indicted, but he gives evidence. He says that Mieze did not have an affair with Reinhold and describes himself and Reinhold as good friends. He characterizes Reinhold as having a destructive fixation on women, and suspects that Mieze resisted him in Freienwalde and that Reinhold killed her in a fit of rage. These are Franz’s suspicions, not a claim that he witnessed the murder or knows exactly what happened.

Franz also says he did not know Reinhold in his youth. Asked about Reinhold’s drinking, he recalls that Reinhold once could not tolerate even a drop of beer and later began drinking. But when questioning turns toward Reinhold and Franz’s own history—their quarrel, their fight, and Franz’s arm—Franz refuses to say more. His testimony supplies a possible account of Mieze’s death while leaving his own entanglement with Reinhold largely unspoken.

Retrospective significance

The date functions as a fixed legal and chronological marker, not as the date of a narrated courtroom verdict or as a fully witnessed account of the killing. At trial, Franz and Reinhold look directly at one another; Franz feels no pity for the accused, yet describes an affection that survives their conflict. That unresolved attachment complicates the public account of the murder: the proceedings establish when and where Mieze died, but Franz’s silences leave parts of the personal history behind that date unrevealed.

Elsewhere, the novel presents Berlin through fragments of transport, street construction, commerce, and crowds, but those urban scenes do not independently establish September 1 as their date. The explicit timestamp belongs to the retrospective account of Mieze’s murder, distinguishing that specific loss from the broader, ongoing life of the city.