Another ‘Schnipsel’ describes man as ‘a vertebrate with an immortal soul, and also a fatherland to make sure he doesn’t get above himself’. Tucholsky’s did, certainly. Just before Christmas in 1935, ill and unproductive and alone, ‘broken by his fatherland’, he took an overdose of morphia. He was buried in the churchyard at Mariefred, which he had described in Castle Gripsholm. ‘If I had to die now,’ he wrote, just before the event, ‘I would say, “Was that all?” And: “I didn’t really understand it.” And: “It was a bit noisy.” ’

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Castle Gripsholm was published in 1931. It is Tucholsky’s only novel, his longest single piece of work of any kind. As a critic, he had a very high regard for the form, and so, despite his modesty in not claiming the tag for himself, tribute should be paid to the skill of this one (which has sold three-quarters of a million copies). More than anything else, it is a beautifully plausible version of what it pretends to be: ‘a summer story’ – the plainest and clearest and liveliest of first-person writing – full of fresh air, sunshine, trees, companionableness and friendly bickering – sweet oblivion. But, in the light of its author’s other preoccupations, commitments and achievements, and of the date itself – two years later he would be stripped of his citizenship and his books would be burned – can this withdrawal, this holiday, this compliance with his ‘publisher’s’ wishes, can it be real?

It is real, though the reality is wishful. That the sales of his books really did matter more than what he was trying to achieve in writing them. That it would be possible to turn away from politics, and to forget what was happening, in some serene privacy. That the struggle in Germany and for Germany could take place on some manageably small and symbolic level, like the struggle for Ada. That his privacy would indeed be serene . . . Castle Gripsholm is a book by a man who was never a father himself, and in whose life there were many women, but no one durable and fulfilling relationship. Tucholsky was not a visitor to the area of Mariefred and Gripsholm, he was living there, and he would die there and be buried there. The train that leaves Berlin at the beginning was one he had been on seven years before; a return to Germany and a resumption of his work there must have seemed at best problematic, and, more likely, out of the question. There is real sadness, and a real sense of farewell and ending in the last pages. No wonder perhaps that he leaves us with a drinking toast that is more an agnostic prayer in deadly times, out of sight of Sweden, and with his beloved German coastline never to re-appear.