54 pages • 1 hour read
Hans Peter RichterFriedrich
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1961A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Herr Schneider”
It’s still 1933, and Friedrich is helping the narrator with his math homework. In the distance they notice a man approaching who appears drunk; it’s Herr Schneider, and he is crying. Friedrich goes with his father upstairs to their apartment. Later, in the narrator’s kitchen, Frau Schneider comes in to talk with the narrator’s mother. She is also crying. Herr Schneider has been sent into early retirement. He has lost his job. The narrator’s mother can’t believe it and wonders why. Frau Schneider cries out that it’s because they’re Jews.
Chapter 12 Summary: “The Hearing”
It’s 1933, and the narrator’s family is in a courtroom to support the Schneiders in their case against Herr Resch. Herr Resch and his attorney state the reasons for the eviction are because the Schneiders are Jewish and Herr Resch, as a member of the Nazi party, cannot have Jews in his building. The judge mocks Herr Resch’s reasons, especially when Herr Schneider tells the court that Herr Resch always knew he was a Jew and that the Schneiders have been living in the building for a decade. Herr Resch drops his case. Friedrich cries. The judge tells him not to cry, that people like him are there to protect them against people like Herr Resch. Friedrich shouts, “You, yes!” (54).
Chapter 13 Summary: “In the Department Store”
It’s still 1933. Friedrich takes the narrator with him into the city. They go to a large department store, to the toy section. Friedrich’s father is the new department manager. He seems happy with his new position. He shows the boys around and lets them play. He asks the narrator about his father. The narrator tells Herr Schneider that his father has joined the Nazi party. Herr Schneider tells one of the saleswomen to escort the boys around and let them buy something that doesn’t cost more than one Mark. He tells Friedrich and the narrator goodbye. The narrator notices that Herr Schneider is no longer smiling.
Chapter 14 Summary: “The Teacher”
It’s 1934. Friedrich and the narrator are in school. The bell rings. The teacher, Neudorf, requests that the students to stay back a little while but says they are free to leave if they wish. No one leaves. Neudorf gives them a brief history of the Jewish people and the persecutions they have endured throughout the centuries. He then announces that Friedrich is leaving the school, that he must attend an all-Jewish school. He tells the others that Friedrich will need friends to support him through trying times. He wishes Friedrich all the best and dismisses the class with the Nazi salute.
Chapter 15 Summary: “The Cleaning Lady”
It is now 1935. The Schneiders have a cleaning woman who comes by twice a week: Frau Penck. After joining the Nazi party, the narrator’s father finds a job, and Frau Penck also helps the narrator’s mother. One day, while Frau Penck is with his mother, Frau Schneider enters and asks Frau Penck to come later than normal the next day. Frau Penck informs Frau Schneider that she can no longer work for her. Frau Schneider is sad but seems to understand and leaves. The narrator’s mother is angry and doesn’t understand. Frau Penck tells her about the new law: it is illegal for her to work in a Jewish home because she is under the age of 35. Also, Jews and non-Jews are no longer allowed to be married. Last week she saw a young woman persecuted because her husband was Jewish. Frau Penck would have liked to continue with Frau Schneider, but she’s scared: her husband used to be a communist.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
Chapter 11: “Herr Schneider,” marks some of the first moves the Nazis took to lawfully persecute the Jewish community. The law described in the novel is known as Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentuns (the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service). The German word is good to know because a civil servant has a specific status in Germany that grants certain privileges (like the inability to be fired) but also carries certain requirements (like the inability to go on strike). Therefore, the fact that Herr Schneider was fired from his job marks a major step against the Jews. It was also the first law in Germany since 1871 to specifically target and limit them.
The law excluded certain groups (such as World War I veterans) because of the personal involvement of the then German President Paul von Hindenburg (the Chancellor and President of Germany are somewhat similar to the President and Vice-President in the US). Hindenburg was an important general during the First World War and a highly respected figure in Germany. Hitler respected and admired him, and Hindenburg often opposed Hitler in many instances. Hindenburg died in 1934 and after his death, there was little serious opposition to Hitler in the political realm. The fear that Frau Schneider expresses in the chapter is not only financial anxiety, but she fears what else might come if the Nazis are beginning to legally limit Jewish rights.
Chapter 12: “The Hearing” serves several purposes. The first is to continue the plot and resolve Herr Resch’s eviction order. The second is to show how German law in 1933 still protected Jews. It also shows that some in Germany (in this case a judge) viewed Nazi antisemitism as extremely ridiculous. When the judge explains to Herr Resch that his reasoning for evicting someone based on their religion/ethnicity is absurd, the judge echoes the novel’s epigraph, which proceeds the German text but is left out of the English version:
amals waren es die Juden…/Heute sind es dort die Schwarzen,/hier die Studenten…/Morgen werden es vielleicht die Weißen,/ die Christen oder die Beamten sein… (Back then it was the Jews…/Over there it’s the blacks today,/here it’s the students…/Tomorrow it might be the whites, the Christians, or the civil servants).
Furthermore, the last lines Friedrich speaks at the end of the chapter signify a prescient warning that the number of people willing to protect and defend the Jews is growing smaller.
In Chapter 13, Herr Schneider finds employment as a merchant. In the Middle Ages, Jews were banned from most professions and were relegated to usuary, tax collection, and other such jobs designated as necessary evils. Even in the Renaissance, this was so. Dante, in his Divine Comedy, places those dealing in moneylending in the seventh ring of hell. Because Jews came to dominate in this sector, the rising merchant class naturally attracted Jews as well, since they were not banned from it. Thus, when Herr Schneider is forced from his job as a civil servant, he follows the same pattern that his forebears were forced to follow, finding work as a merchant, which is typically seen as less prestigious.
Similar to Chapter 12, Chapter 13 also addresses the changing of the tide in Germany. Just as Friedrich sensed that fewer people are willing to stand up for Jewish rights, Herr Schneider comes to the same realization when he learns that the narrator’s father has joined the party. There is no evidence to suggest that Herr Schneider fears the narrator’s father has antisemitic beliefs. If this were true, then he wouldn’t have allowed his son to spend time with Friedrich. Rather than signifying a rise in antisemitism, this signifies how even regular, non-prejudiced Germans are falling to the appeal of the party and the social and political pressure to join.
The growing persecution continues in Chapter 14 when it is learned that Friedrich is being removed from his class and placed in an all-Jewish one. This not only marks the strengthening Nazi movement, but it also marks the point when the narrator’s and Friedrich’s stories begin to diverge, and their time together shortens greatly. For thematic importance, Teacher Neudorf gives his students a brief lesson in Jewish history and attempts to show how, despite the popular trend, the Jews are no different than anyone else. For the reader unfamiliar with Jewish history, religion, and culture, the teacher’s presentation provides them with a brief lesson as well. While the teacher’s intentions are honorable, his words also serve to quasi-support some of the stereotypes held against Jews. For example, on page 63 Neudorf says, “It is claimed that the Jews are avaricious and deceitful. Must they not be both?” The problem with a statement such as this is it maintains that the stereotype is true. The teacher implies that the Jews are indeed avaricious and deceitful, but it is only because society has made them so. It is a rhetorical question aimed at placing the blame for Jewish characteristics in the hands of those who persecute them, but it does nothing to obviate the negative stereotype.
Chapter 15: “The Cleaning Lady” connects with Chapter 12: “The Hearing” in that Friedrich’s foreshadowing cry is realized as new laws are passed in 1935 to rob the Jews of more and more rights. The laws mentioned in the chapter are known as the Nuremberg Laws. These laws were part of the Nazi’s notions of maintaining “racial purity” and separating the Aryan race (white Germans) from the non-Aryan. It is well known that the Nazis discriminated against and persecuted the Jews. What is less well-known is how effectively the punishments for breaking these racial laws kept the public (even those who had no desire to join the Nazi party) cowered and silent. As the book illustrates, the Nazi government allowed mobs to deal out their own forms of punishment, like public humiliation, in addition to legal retribution. Furthermore, as highlighted by the cleaning lady’s fears for her former communist husband, the Jews were not the only Nazi targets. During the Nazi party’s rise to power, they also combated in the streets against the communist party, which enjoyed a strong following in the years following the end of the First World War.
