1. Alexander Kluge · Arrival at the Endpoint ‘Galloping Daybreak’ Death in Confusion The Weapon of Disregard The Way to the West The Most Dangerous Weapon of the Second World War     En Route Further Westwards What is a Born Fighter? No Securing of Property at the Sudden Dawn of a New Age The Ways of Money A Future Fortune At Least for a Glance On Imagined Roads Undertaking in the Manner of a ‘Scouting Game’, Simply Because There Was Petrol Available A Practice Fight out of Recklessness Aftershocks of Wartime Film Scene in the Park End of an Epoch Processing the Spoils Overcome by the Front One Disaster among Millions No Enemy Was Needed to End the War A Fatal Encounter between Two Jurisdictions An Anti-Bolshevik Prague for One Day Much That Had Been Left Unfinished Was Still Meant to Be Taken Care of The Last Days of ‘Eternal France’ A Provisional Life The Trains East of the Brenner Pass Were Running at Full Tilt  Three Russian Offensives in the Eastern Alps and up the Danube ‘But this one is called Ister. It dwells in beauty’ The End of Hostility, Experience at the Vienna Burgtheater  A Hotel in No Man’s Land The ‘Black Hand’ of 1914 Would Not Have a Chance against the President of the USA Outrageous Decisions in So Short a Time More Waste than ever Before  Deadline Pressure for the Führer Venus Plus Mars in Square Relation to Saturn: The Constellation of Death The Threshold for Violent Killing in a Stone Age Tribe ‘Everyone Approved of the Killing’ How Small a Number of Military Predictions Survived a Quarter-Centry Arrival at the Endpoint On Side Paths He Wished He Could Come Home ‘Guilt, the Oldest Marble’ The Intertwinement of the Spiritual World with the Real A Ghostly Celestial Phenomenon over the Brocken Heiner Müller: The Iron Cross The Last Meteorologist of Pillau 2. Reinhard Jirgl War Births Afterpiece. Lucky Shadow3. Alexander Kluge · in a Different Country  The Large-Scale Celestial Events, Neutral towards the Turbulently Changing Fronts on the Ground Judgement at Dawn Metaphor of a Refugee Who Ended up in the Neutral Country Will You Be Emigrating in the Foreseeable Future? A Current Advertisement for Life Insurance Newspaper Report on a Tragic Detail  Transfer of Migrant Workers to Their Home Countries through Switzerland A Military Hospital Crosses the Border with Heavily Wounded Patients Free Time The Weekly Film Schedule at Zurich Cinemas The Explosive Device in the Gotthard Tunnel On the ‘Black List’ Background Conversation in 1983 Laconic Reply A Straggler The Grave of Stefan Man4. Reinhard Jirgl The Great March The Smile of a Family Man5. Alexander Kluge · In the Reich Capital Division of the City into Combat Sectors How I Lost My Friend As the Last Poet in the Reich Ministry of Propaganda Skirmishes on the Eve of 30 April at Heerstrasse City Train Station An Unreal Final Connection between 1936 and April 1945 Commemoration of Dead Words Reading Time As a Faithful Eyewitness The Last and Only Action by the New Reich Chancellor in Matters of Foreign Policy Last Connection Everything Went Too Quickly to Process the New Realities Inwardly In the Basements of the Charité Island of Civilization Normally One Pays for Erotic Services; Here One Pays for Lives to Be Saved Education Struggle to the Last He Had Only Got Three of His Students Through to Spandau-West Thirst in the Wasteland News across the International Date Line6. Reinhard Jirgl A Proletarian Clytemnestra7. Alexander Kluge ·In a Small Town In a Small Town Digging for the Dead Loot with No Practical Value Domeyer Garden Centre at Burchardi Green Assigned to Removal Work: From the Large Space to Simple Cultivation Re-enacting Conquest Life in the Rhythm of Haricuts Haircut for the New Times Bartering Early Commercial Flowering, Blown away a Moment Later Gitti and the Captain Wandered along the Shore, holding Hands (‘Several heavens walked beside them’) Transatlantic Door Tufts of Grass View of the Brocken  A Day with a Surprise 8. Reinhard Jirgl Uncanny Bridge-Building Early Shift. Scene for an Imaginary Front Theatre.9. Alexander Kluge · On the Globe Immense Redistribution of Military Forces Halfway around the Globe A Stock-Market Leap The System of Certificates Circumnavigation of the Early by Ship Disappointing Arrival in East Asia Robinsonad in the Ice Neutral Ship Fortunate Landing Coup in Argentina In the Seven-Hill City of San Francisco The Genesis of the Veto The Patriot of Lviv ‘What To Do?’ ‘All wheels stand still if your strong arm wills it’ On Folding Beds With Embers That Burn for Over 40 Years In the Eye of the Secret Service  A Labour Leader at the Hotel Palace A Senior Comrade Pilloried by the New Generation 10. Reinhard Jirgl After Midnight The Oldest Peace Shadow Figures 1. We all fall down.11. Alexander Kluge · Heidegger at Wildenstein Castle An Enclave of German Spirit From the Attendance List Wildenstein Castle Was No Ship Transients Unoccupiable Territory Crossing to Switzerland The Night March to Neu-Breisach Mineness of Concern The Three Leaves of the Lily Curiosity and the Lust of the Eyes Is It Possible, as Hölderlin Says, to ‘Fall” Upwards? ‘The Aroundness of the Environment’ ‘Man Was Originally Similar to Other Creatures, Namely, Fish’ Announcement on Swiss Radio News on Radio Beromünster at 9:40 a.m. Heidegger on Actuality ‘Primordial Will as Spirit’ The Entertainment Character of Thought The Brothers Grimm and the ‘Small Border Traffic of Fairy Tales’ ‘Fallen Into the Well’ The Temporality of Hope12. Reinhard Jirgl  Shadow Figure 2. Into the Light13. Alexander Kluge · I, the Last National Socialist in Kabul  I, the Last National Socialist in Kabul A Building Block for the Fourth Reich The Tunnel to Leuthen A Warlike Leftovers  Radio Work in the Final Hour Group Photo with Capitulators A Failed Surrender Episode near Eitting: Taken Prisoner along with Their Prisoners Surrender at Unusual Times Bite Inhibition in Wolves Failed Surrender by the Last Followers of Antony and Cleopatra Certain Captivity, an Uncertain Status ‘Whether the governor of a besieged fortress should go out and parley’ ‘I will lay my head on screws until all bridges are blown to pieces’ Handover of a City A Surrender That Was Unprofessional in Form but Successful in Content Life-Saving Message to the Enemy Emergency Supplying of Shaft Mines Knows No Fronts Exhausted as We were At Rest Devastated Youth: Hitler Youth Area Leader Friedrich Grupe Reports Fair Copy Based on the Latin Network of Loyalty The Loyalty Machine Nocturnal Confession  Performance of a Play Betrayal of Comrades on All Sides Hatred without Distinction of Person ‘Darkness in the minds if the perpetrators’ The Uncanniness of Props Disloyalty, Sacrificial Death ‘When I see you, I must weep’ ‘I readily trust others’ Awkward Leap ‘Mourir pour Danzing’: Nobody Wants to Die for Gdansk ‘When I look at a head officer, I imagine how he would look headless’ New Use for Old Property14. Alexander Kluge · In Place of a Postscript  Photograph Credits Acknowledgements 

“Readers familiar with how Hitler committed suicide on the last day of April 1945 will find that story enmeshed here in a dense tangle of plots playing out on the same fateful day. In this fractured polynarrative, gifted novelist Alexander Kluge depicts the travails of the famous (Martin Heiddegger, Ezra Pound, Thomas Mann) and the anonymous (refugees, scavengers, merchants). . . . A compelling translation of a vertiginous descent into a world-shaping cataclysm.”