Daß man lebt, ist Zufall; daß man stirbt, ist gewiß

“Daß man lebt, ist Zufall; daß man stirbt, ist gewiß” is a sentence Fabian whispers beside his dead friend Stephan Labude. It gives concise form to a recurring tension in the novel: lives are shaped by accidents and falsehoods, yet death makes their consequences final. Its force grows through repetition and contrast, from Fabian’s attempt to console Labude to the separate disasters caused by an invented news story, a lie, and a rescue attempt.

The Sentence at Labude’s Death

Alone with Labude’s body, Fabian unfolds his friend’s letter and reads its account of academic rejection, romantic disappointment, and a despair that Labude describes as psychological ruin. The letter explains that Weckherlin told him his dissertation had been rejected, and that Labude understood the report as confirmation that he had failed in every sphere that mattered to him. After reading, Fabian gently strokes the dead man’s forehead. As Labude’s jaw falls farther open, Fabian whispers the sentence and smiles toward his friend as though he might still offer comfort. The line is not an explanation of Labude’s death so much as a fragile response to its irreversibility.

The scene gives the sentence a double emphasis. Life appears contingent: Labude’s final despair depends on a report that turns out to be false. Death, by contrast, cannot be undone when the truth arrives. Fabian’s whisper tries to make that contrast bearable, but its tenderness also exposes its limit: he can address his friend, yet he cannot reach him.

Falsehood and Consequence

The later revelation overturns the account that Labude had accepted. The Geheimrat says he praised Labude’s work as a mature and important piece of literary history, recommended it to the faculty, and intended it for publication. Weckherlin had falsely claimed the opposite. When Fabian learns the truth, he drags Weckherlin from his chair and forces him toward the Geheimrat; afterward, the narration calls Weckherlin’s joke the cause of a death that only appeared to be suicide. The correction exposes the lie, but it cannot return Labude to life.

The book places this tragedy beside an earlier act of invention at a newspaper office. Münzer tells a young employee that when a needed news item is unavailable, one can make one up, then writes a fabricated report claiming that street fighting in Calcutta left fourteen dead and twenty-two injured before order was restored. The numerical precision makes the invention sound authoritative. These episodes turn chance into a question of responsibility: an invented account may be treated as fact, and a supposedly thoughtless joke may acquire consequences its teller did not intend. The sentence about life and death therefore does not absolve anyone by calling events accidental; it marks the gulf between what can happen by chance and what cannot be reversed.

A Recurrent Measure of Mortality

The sentence’s logic resonates with the novel’s ending. Fabian sees a small boy balancing on a stone bridge railing; when the boy falls into the river, Fabian strips off his jacket and jumps in after him. The boy swims, crying, to the bank. The rescue is a decisive act rather than Fabian’s familiar posture of watching from the sidelines, but its outcome elsewhere in the narrative is Fabian’s own drowning. The contrast sharpens the earlier line: a life may turn on an unforeseen moment, while death remains certain even when the act that precedes it is courageous.

Across these episodes, the sentence connects speech to outcome. A false report and a lie alter other people’s understanding of reality; a whispered maxim offers comfort without changing the fact of death; a rescue succeeds for the child but costs Fabian his life. The novel lets the phrase gather meaning from these reversals, making it less a detached proverb than a measure of how fragile intention is beside consequence.