VON DREI MILLIONEN DREI

Three men left the city, a clerk,
a tailor and a factory worker: three out of three million unemployed.
They had no destination.

The three friends have known each other since their childhood, when they were united in a band of robbers and dreamed of breaking out of the narrow and repressive conditions of their homeland and living a free life in America. Their dreams were suppressed by reason and conformity: they married, started families and continued to live the entrenched lives of their fathers, against which they once rebelled.
Now poverty is driving them out of the city. We don't know what has become of their families. Together with the stray dog Hammelchen, they set off. They no longer believe in work, and fate is hard to trust. A future that makes life possible seems to have become utopia.
They finally manage to realize their childhood dream and make their way to South America. There they are caught up in a revolution and have to return to Europe. They try their luck in Marseille, flee to Italy and finally end up in an impoverished Berlin.
In their search, they only ever find what is already on their doorstep. The only thing they have left is their friendship.

Leonhard Frank, who was considered one of the most important voices against the war and unjust conditions in his time, published the first novel about the unemployed in 1932. He shows his characters as driven, powerless but full of life, and poses the question of the influence of the individual on circumstances.