Hans Fallada has suffered from a poor political reputation affecting his position in the literary canon. Instead of straightening out this political and canomical maladjustment, the essay argues for Fallada's significance as a bad example for those looking for moral and political lessons in mid-century German letters. Der Alpdruck, his 1947 novel about a Soviet-installed mayor, depicts his wrong-headedness, first, as the autobiographical protagonist fails to adopt a satisfactory affect toward postwar guilt and innocence, and second, as he eyes two would-be benefactors, fictional counterparts to Gottfried Benn and Johannes R. Becher, with a wily realism that serves as a foil to their cultural or political responsibility. Reprinted by permission of the German Studies Review