off) are collections of short stories about the experiences of the narrator and his father in the harsh world of 1920s and 1930s lower-class Berlin, which is nonetheless presented in a positive light. Because they take place against the backdrop of Adolf Hitler's rise to power and an increasingly precarious political environment in Germany, the stories are often political, and frequently explore moral questions. was published in 1958; the second volume followed in 1995, after Schnurre's death, and contains stories whose completion dates range from the 1950s to the year of Schnurre's death. They are among Schnurre's more popular works, with some of the stories from the first volume frequently being included in school books. ("The Shadow Photographer. Records"), published in 1978, is a collection of texts that take various literary forms. Biographer Katharina Blencke identifies a total of nine types of texts, including diary entries, poems, short stories and letters. The texts touch on various aspects of Schnurre's personal life, including the suicide of his second wife, his childhood, and his feeling of being an inadequate father to his adoptive son owing to the disabilities he had acquired following his polyneuritis. At the time of publication, Schnurre had already faded into relative obscurity. To his surprise, and despite the unusual composition of the book, it was well-received by both critics and readers and became a commercial success. In 1981, Schnurre published (A misfortune, An accident). The story takes place in 1959 and is written from the perspective of Berlin rabbi Lovinski who accompanies German glazier Goschnik on his deathbed after the glazier has an accident while working on a mizrah window as part of the reconstruction of a destroyed synagogue; the rabbi had helped him get the job. While inserting the window, his thoughts had wandered to Avrom and Sally Grünbaum, a Jewish couple who had served as his substitute parents during his childhood. During the Second World War, he had hidden them in his basement to protect them from persecution. After being drafted into the Army and deserting, he had returned and found the couple dead by suicide. Goschnik feels guilty for their deaths and realises that he had tried to redeem himself by working for the synagogue. The realisation that this is a futile effort made him disgusted with his own reflection in the window glass; he smashed it and fell to the ground. He recounts this