The trial and conviction of Reinhold

The trial of Reinhold is both a criminal proceeding and the final public reckoning with the violent entanglements surrounding Mieze’s death. Franz Biberkopf, once suspected of complicity and mentally ill after her murder, is not indicted: he appears instead as a one-armed witness whom the experts deem recovered and fit to be questioned. His testimony identifies Reinhold as Mieze’s killer, but the encounter between the two men exposes a more complicated bond than the courtroom can settle. The trial ends with Reinhold accepting a ten-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter and with Biberkopf’s grief breaking through his composure.

The case and its public stakes

The proceedings concern the killing of Emilie Parsunke, whom Biberkopf calls Mieze, in Freienwalde near Berlin on September 1, 1928. Reinhold is tried for the killing; Karl the tinsmith, identified in the proceedings as Matter and as Oskar Fischer, is implicated in connection with it. The public attention extends beyond the charge itself. Biberkopf’s missing arm, his relationship with the murdered woman, his underworld connections, his mental illness after her death, and the suspicion that he had been an accomplice all make him a conspicuous figure at the trial. Yet the formal distinction is decisive: he is there to give evidence, not to stand accused.

The experts’ reports establish that Biberkopf has recovered sufficiently to be cross-examined. That finding places his former breakdown beside his present role as a witness without erasing either. The trial can ask him to account for what he knows, but his history and his visible disability also turn him into an object of public interest. The proceeding therefore brings the private catastrophe into a public, legal setting while leaving the inner history of the men only partly accessible.

Biberkopf’s testimony

Biberkopf tells the court that Mieze had no affair with Reinhold and describes himself and Reinhold as good friends. He characterizes Reinhold as compulsively drawn to women and says that this disposition led to the killing. Asked whether Reinhold had sadistic tendencies, he says he does not know. He did not know Reinhold in his youth, either, and cannot supply a fuller account of that earlier life. The testimony distinguishes what Biberkopf asserts from what he can only infer: he suspects Mieze resisted Reinhold in Freienwalde and that Reinhold killed her in a fit of rage, but presents this as his explanation, not as something he witnessed.

Cross-examination also turns to Reinhold’s drinking. Biberkopf recalls that Reinhold did not used to drink, and that he once could not tolerate even a drop of beer, taking soft drinks and coffee instead. He does not know how much Reinhold drank after he began. The detail offers the court a fragment of change in Reinhold’s habits, but not a complete history or a conclusive explanation of the crime.

Once these answers have been given, Biberkopf says no more about Reinhold. He does not explain his own arm, the quarrel between them, or the fight that preceded their separation. The silence is conspicuous because these omissions concern precisely the history that might clarify the friendship he has just described. The evidence does not make that silence a legal defense or a reconciliation. Instead, it leaves the courtroom with Biberkopf’s testimony about Mieze and Reinhold, and with a personal conflict he refuses or is unable to unfold there.

The men in the courtroom

Reinhold and Biberkopf meet each other’s gaze across the courtroom. Biberkopf shows no pity for Reinhold in the dock, whose life is now at stake, but the narrative registers a strange affection between them. The two responses coexist: Biberkopf can look steadily at the man connected to Mieze’s death and still retain an attachment to him. The scene does not turn their former friendship into forgiveness. Its force lies in the unresolved persistence of feeling alongside knowledge of the harm.

Reinhold, for his part, considers exposing the whole Pums gang if the trial goes badly, especially if Biberkopf speaks against him. Seeing members of the gang, Eva, and detectives in the public gallery makes him reconsider. He reasons that he will need friends after prison and sees Biberkopf’s decent conduct as a reason not to retaliate. His decision not to give evidence against the others is therefore bound up with self-interest and expectation of future loyalties, not simply with regard for Biberkopf. Biberkopf understands that Reinhold’s silence gives him no debt of gratitude. Their mutual restraint has unequal meanings: Reinhold weighs what may help him later, while Biberkopf neither presents the silence as a favor nor abandons his attachment.

Verdict, grief, and aftermath

Reinhold receives ten years’ imprisonment for voluntary manslaughter. The judgment also describes him as alcoholic, compulsively disposed, and marked by a depraved youth; he accepts the sentence. The outcome is specific, but it does not resolve every question raised in the testimony. Biberkopf’s account of the killing remains partly conjectural, and the trial does not produce a fuller explanation of the rupture between the two men.

When the verdict is announced, Eva cries out and sobs. Her grief is for Mieze, and it breaks into the formal order of the courtroom. Biberkopf turns from the witness box toward her, crumples, and covers his forehead with his hand. The narrative’s reaper imagery returns at this moment, joining Mieze’s death to his sorrow and to the sense that she had protected him. His composure as a witness gives way not when he describes Reinhold, but when another person’s grief makes Mieze’s absence newly present.

Immediately after the trial, Biberkopf accepts an offer of part-time work as a doorman at a medium-sized factory. The brief account of this next step places ordinary employment after the public drama of the verdict; no further details of his life are supplied. The story identifies the trial as its climax, the turning point from which the preceding events can be seen in a new light. Its close therefore sets legal judgment beside unresolved attachment, bereavement, and a modest return to work, without claiming that the sentence has repaired what happened.