Kriminalpolizei

The Kriminalpolizei is the Berlin criminal police, appearing at moments when political violence and private loss bring the novel’s characters into contact with law enforcement. Its pursuit of Jakob Fabian and investigation of Stephan Labude’s apparent suicide give it a practical role in the plot, but the evidence shows no resolution to either inquiry.

Appearance and Role

The Kriminalpolizei first reaches Fabian’s lodging after he has been away overnight and Cornelia Battenberg has left their room without a word. Frau Hohlfeld tells him that officers have come twice, three hours apart, and want him to report immediately. She has explained that Fabian was not home the previous night and that Cornelia had disappeared the day before. Her alarm turns the police visit into a source of anxious speculation: she asks what Fabian has done, though the scene does not establish that he is guilty of anything.

The officers’ interest in Fabian leads him to a damaged apartment where they are handling a separate crisis. Their arrival links his private turmoil to a scene of disorder, but the police do not initially explain why they need him. Their stated position is that they cannot proceed without him.

Investigation of Labude’s Death

At the apartment, Fabian finds Stephan Labude dead on a sofa, with a wound at his temple. A Kriminalpolizei commissioner and an assistant are present; five young women remain in the first room with a police officer. The adjoining room has been demolished, and the women say it was damaged during a private dispute. They claim Labude was not involved: he had gone to write a letter when the gunshot was heard.

The commissioner tells Fabian that Labude left a letter and asks him to read it, then share any contents relevant to the inquiry. The police consider suicide likely, as does Fabian, but the commissioner stresses that the incident is not fully clarified. He also reports the women’s account that they were in the next room when the shot was fired. Their unusual relationships and a suspected jealousy scene provide context for the wrecked room, but the officers do not treat that explanation as a complete account of Labude’s death.

A bundle of banknotes falls from the envelope as Fabian takes out the folded letter. The assistant picks it up and places it on the sofa. The detail accompanies the police request to examine the letter, but the available scene does not disclose what it says or how the investigation concludes.

Political Violence and Social Context

The Kriminalpolizei’s appearances occur against a background of escalating public conflict. Near the Märkisches Museum, Fabian and Labude encounter a wounded man who says that a fight began in a tavern after an argument over a swastika drawn on a tablecloth. The man says that, after the landlord threw them out, his opponent followed him and shot him. Labude takes the revolver and attempts to bandage the wound. The episode shows political emblems and partisan language turning an argument into armed violence; it does not show the Kriminalpolizei investigating that particular shooting.

Elsewhere, Fabian witnesses police lines confronting workers at Weddingplatz. Mounted police wait behind a barrier as workers approach, and the police advance before the crowd and officers collide. The mounted officers charge; shots are heard, windows break, stones fly, and a police sergeant is stabbed. Reinforcements arrive in three lorries, and the workers flee before stopping again at the edges of the square and nearby streets. This is a mass street confrontation rather than an investigation by the Kriminalpolizei, but it places police power within the same atmosphere of political violence that surrounds the novel’s criminal inquiries.

Narrative Significance

The Kriminalpolizei appears in sharply focused scenes rather than as a fully developed institution. At Labude’s apartment, its officers ask Fabian to interpret a letter and make sense of contradictory accounts, while the death itself remains unresolved in the supplied episode. At Frau Hohlfeld’s lodging, the police summons magnifies Fabian’s uncertainty at the moment Cornelia has vanished. In both cases, official attention does not restore order: it registers a crisis already underway. The contrast with the street clashes is also significant. Police can investigate a death and summon an individual, while public violence unfolds through crowds, weapons, and advancing lines, with no comparable resolution shown.