Novel »Duty of Effort« | The Hole in the Sole

Carsten Linnemann, General Secretary of the CDU, wants to "cut to the core," and Chancellor Friedrich Merz dreams of depriving the poor of every penny they can muster; they simply can't afford "this welfare state" anymore. These latest attacks by the federal government against the poor and marginalized follow the old maxim: If you have problems, they'll make problems for you.

Rhetorically, the impoverishment experts try to avoid allowing too much humanity to emerge: They talk about systems, processes, and structures. This technocratic abstraction is intended to prevent any empathy. This is the behavior of an organization that claims to be committed to a Christian view of humanity.

One of these people being so humiliated is Manfred Gruber. Somewhere in Austria, he's standing at a supermarket checkout and wants to treat himself—for once—to a freshly squeezed orange juice. It's the second of the month, so the budget still allows for such extravagances. At least, he thought so, but at the checkout, it turns out there's no money in his account. The office hasn't transferred the money. Even wanting to drink an orange juice is asking too much.

Gruber is a conscientious and experienced welfare recipient. He knows he's submitted all the necessary documents and written enough pointless application letters. He hasn't done anything wrong. It must have been an oversight. But it isn't an oversight: The welfare office has decided he can work. And that's why they've cut his benefits without notice.

He's certainly no hero; he had a rather wild childhood. He trained as a butcher in a large factory, had a child, drank too much, and threatened the child's mother, even throwing a full beer bottle at the child. The relationship broke down. He eventually gave up his job—his back!—and took care of his frail mother at home.

Since her death, he's had the house, which is already work enough. The garden needs to be plowed, and a neighbor's child needs a rabbit hutch. Gruber has largely given up drinking, as well as almost all interpersonal contact. His relationship with his son is strained, small talk with the neighbors is irritating, and he's generally not very good at talking to others. He just wants peace and quiet.

But that's not what's planned, because there's this "duty of effort," as they say in Austria. If he doesn't look for work, the office will take away his house, the house he wants to leave to his son as a final gesture of affection. The house whose preservation has become his life's work. But of course, the office doesn't understand that. He's already seen as inconvenient and nonconformist because he constantly complains. For example, when he's placed in yet another completely pointless job that it's clear he won't be able to do anyway. But Gruber isn't unwilling: he submits, goes there, does several shifts of unpaid work, only to then be told what he already knew.

And then there's the issue with his foot. It started with him running through the rain-soaked streets to the office to settle the late payment. And because he had a hole in the sole, the entire skin was soggy. On top of that, he had an ingrown toenail. He ignored it, put a little ointment on it, but he didn't want to go to the doctor. And then it just kept getting worse, partly because of the work-related measure the office had put him in against his will.

This is one of the common reactions of people who are belittled by authorities. They don't believe they'll actually get any help anywhere. They're supposed to continue to be bullied; that's their everyday experience. This makes it difficult to go to the doctor, especially if you were raised with the ideal of being a "real man."

Author Sandra Weihs describes all of this in a dry, biting tone that never elevates the characters. It's a tone of humane objectivity. Most of the time, the narrator—a social worker who is somehow trying to save Gruber's house—speaks to her client in her thoughts. It's like a long letter, which at times has a somewhat apologetic quality: She already knows that she, too, is part of the system that so maims and mutilates Manfred Gruber; at least she tries not to become completely hardened by it.

Weihs, a social worker herself, succeeds very well in capturing not only the helplessness of those affected, but also the utter desensitization of those within the system. Even those who are politically stable are ultimately left with nothing more than pious wishes. The machine that crushes Manfred Gruber was built by others, for example, people like Merz and Linnemann. There's something hopeless about watching all the Grubers struggle against this machine and then gradually be crushed.

After all his struggles, Manfred Gruber will saw off his foot; it seems to him his last resort to escape all this madness. At the very end, an insurance expert will say on television that he suspects Manfred Gruber was trying to swindle his way to a pension—and that's probably a scam. That's how it is: you tear yourself apart, and it still isn't enough. That's what Linnemann and Merz have planned for the poor, for the Manfred Grubers of this world: a well-tempered cruelty.

Sandra Weihs: Duty of Effort. Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt, 256 pp., hardcover, €24.