based on the novel by Hans Fallada (1932)
Johannes Pinneberg, an accountant, falls in love with Emma, whom he affectionately calls Lämmchen. Lämmchen becomes pregnant unplanned and since it is 1930 and Johannes is a decent man, the two marry and move to the small village of Ducherow. Money is tight, but love is strong. When his employer finds out that Pinneberg has married, he dismisses him. He had been eyeing him as a potential husband for his hard-to-place daughter. And so the little man is faced with the huge task of having to find a new job to support himself and his family during the Great Depression. The two are shipped off to Berlin, where they hope to find new opportunities, but even there it does not get any easier for them to make a modest living.
Hans Fallada wrote Little Man - What Now?a novel that exemplarily depicts the fate of the simple, working population at the end of the Weimar Republic and that struck a nerve in its longing for happiness and modesty. Even today, in times of unstable financial markets, it has not lost any of its relevance.
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