Hero, Post-War Model

THE HERO--Alfred Neumann--Knopf ($2.50). You frequently hear post-War literature criticized for being ugly, brutal, bereft of nobility. Many a novel of contemporary Germany can be tarred with this stick. But Herr Neumann's psychological epic, his portrait of a modern hero, while it is compact of journalistic realism, is neither ugly, brutal, nor ignoble. Neumann has translated old virtues into modern terms, but their values remain.

Neumann's hero is a political assassin. Hoff, former German officer, since the Revolution a professional dancer in a Berlin cabaret, is leader of an extreme group in an anti-Government party. This group decides to precipitate a counterrevolution by killing the Prime Minister; as leader. Hoff assumes sole responsibility for the job. He has everything figured out; all preparations made. Evening before the attempt, between dances at the cabaret. Hoff has a conversation with a man who looks so much like Hoff he might be his brother. They go home, spend the evening together. The man turns out to be David Hertz, once a front-page figure when he was acquitted for the murder of his wife. They understand each other; Hertz almost confesses what he has done, Hoff what he is about to do.

But Hoff is a soldier: he goes through with his plan. There are no hitches. He shoots the Prime Minister, makes a clean getaway, but decides not to escape to Switzerland, to stay in Berlin instead. Then his frozen will begins to thaw. To his horror he begins to realize he has murdered a man who was not his enemy, who should have been his friend. Hertz, made of weaker stuff than Hoff, tries to persuade him to do as he himself has done: to compromise, to live with unlaid ghosts. When Hertz sees that Hoff is determined to give himself up, he shoots himself. By the time Hoff gets to the police his brain has begun to give way; he will implicate nobody, and when the only witness fails to recognize him the police take him for a harmless madman. Hoff's frenzy increases; they take him to an asylum. There he goes through hell: Herr Neumann calls it "katatonic excitement." Just as he is dying Hoff manages to make what he thinks is a convincing confession. The doctor pretends to believe him, and he dies happy.

The Author. Alfred Neumann is one of that generation which the War matured fast. The trenches turned his literary aim from poetry to history; his famed novel on Louis XI and his barber, The Devil, won him Germany's Kleist prize, an international audience. Many a U. S. cinemagoer has seen The Patriot, made from Neumann's short story and three-act play. Other books (translated): The Rebels, Guerra, King Haber and Other Stories.

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