Reflections on Erich Kästner’s “No One Sees Behind Your Face”

Imagine a society in which everyone goes about their daily lives neatly dressed, nodding politely, doing their jobs, and assuring one another that everything is perfectly fine. Meanwhile, behind each of those faces, there might be someone on the verge of despair, bursting with joy, or simply no longer knowing how they actually feel.

Of course, there’s no need to imagine such a society. All you have to do is step outside in the morning.

Erich Kästner explored precisely this problem in his poem “Keiner blickt dir hinter das Gesicht” (“No One Sees Behind Your Face”). His Lyrical Medicine Chest, published in 1936, contains two versions: one for the courageous and another for the fainthearted. Both follow the same outward structure, but each examines a different aspect of our inner lives.

This is more than a literary exercise.

The version for the courageous deals with hidden suffering. People encounter one another, see faces, hear words, and yet know remarkably little about what lies beneath the surface. Someone who smiles may be desperate. Someone who greets us warmly may feel terribly lonely. And someone who claims to be doing well has, for the moment, merely provided an answer. Whether that answer is true is another matter.

In the version for the fainthearted, Kästner turns the idea around. Behind an unremarkable face, there may be a wealth of qualities that nobody notices. Patience, humour, and kindness, for instance. Qualities that do not necessarily announce themselves through an impressive appearance and are therefore easily overlooked.

It isn’t only suffering that remains hidden. Abilities, joy, and affection can be invisible too.

We see a face and believe we have seen a person. Yet all we have really seen is their face.

Kästner tells us this in language that seems almost casual. No obscure imagery, no elaborately encrypted messages. Instead, familiar situations, simple words, and a tone that occasionally sounds almost friendly. And that is precisely where the poem draws its strength. What initially seems perfectly ordinary turns out, on closer inspection, to reveal a rather uncomfortable truth.

Its structure contributes to this effect as well. Both versions consist of four five-line stanzas. The outward form remains unchanged, while entirely different human experiences are concealed within it. In one version, a hidden burden weighs a person down. In the other, their inner riches go unrecognised. The face offers no reliable indication of either.

Kästner doesn’t need a particularly cruel society to make his observation understandable. People don’t have to hate one another. They don’t even have to be especially inconsiderate. Being busy is quite enough.

After all, the neighbours have troubles of their own. Anyone carrying their own worries may not always have the strength to recognise someone else’s. Sometimes we do notice that something is wrong, briefly consider asking about it, and then carry on walking.

Not necessarily out of malice. Perhaps out of uncertainty, exhaustion, or fear of interfering in something that is none of our business. That doesn’t make matters any better, but it does make them more understandable.

Naturally, everyone has the right not to reveal their innermost thoughts and feelings at every opportunity. Not every friendly greeting is an invitation to deliver a detailed report on one’s emotional condition. And not everyone who remains silent is waiting for somebody to unravel their secrets.

There is, however, a boundary between consideration and indifference, and it is not always easy to recognise.

We don’t want to intrude upon others. At the same time, we sometimes wish somebody would notice when we are struggling. We expect understanding without necessarily wanting to explain what it is we want understood.

It’s not a particularly reliable method of communication. But it is a remarkably human one.

There is another complication: from an early age, we learn to be careful with our feelings. Fear is something we shouldn’t show. Anger is inappropriate. Sadness burdens other people. And anyone who displays too much happiness risks being considered excitable or conceited.

So we learn to pull ourselves together.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Not every feeling needs to be acted upon immediately. Self-control is one of the abilities that makes living together possible in the first place.

But there is an enormous difference between a feeling we choose not to show and a feeling we refuse to acknowledge even to ourselves.

Someone who has spent long enough suppressing their emotions may eventually find it difficult to recognise or even name them. Then we no longer tell only other people that everything is fine. We tell ourselves the same thing. Perhaps for so long that we eventually lose sight of what isn’t fine at all.

Yet not everyone who conceals their feelings has lost touch with them. Sometimes we know perfectly well what we feel. We have simply forgotten how to show it.

For me, that experience reaches back into early childhood.

From an early age, I experienced violence because the muscles in my face twitched involuntarily. Something I could not consciously control became a reason for punishment. So I trained myself to show as little expression as possible. An expressionless face promised safety. What began as protection gradually became a habit.

Unfortunately, habits don’t stop to ask whether they are still necessary.

This becomes particularly difficult when you don’t actually want to hide your feelings. You may experience joy, affection, or enthusiasm, want to share them with another person, and not even realise that your face is revealing hardly any of it.

It was only during a public-speaking course, which also covered nonverbal communication, that I began to understand just how much people communicate without saying a single word. Facial expressions, gestures, posture, and tone of voice complement what we say, and sometimes even contradict it. Suddenly, I became aware of how much I had missed because of my own mask.

I had learned to control my face. For a long time, I hadn’t realised that in doing so, I had also restricted part of my ability to communicate.

The very protection I had once taught myself was now standing in my way whenever I wanted to show other people how I felt.

After all, an expressionless face is not a face without feelings. Nor does a smile prove that someone is happy. We are simply accustomed to reading such signals, forgetting how unreliable our interpretations can sometimes be.

This gives Kästner’s observation another dimension. Behind a face, there may be more than hidden suffering or unrecognised riches. Sometimes a person genuinely wants to show what they are feeling but has learned to do precisely the opposite.

And so the question of why we cannot see beneath one another’s faces leads to another: How well do we actually understand what we ourselves are hiding behind our own?

This brings us to a term that has found a comfortable home on tea packaging, in self-help books, and somewhere between two relaxation exercises: mindfulness.

The fact that a word has become fashionable doesn’t mean the idea behind it is wrong. It simply means we should occasionally take it out of its packaging and have a closer look.

Mindfulness begins with the willingness to accept that our own perception is incomplete. This applies to other people just as much as it does to ourselves.

We don’t need to suspect a tragedy behind every friendly face. But neither should we assume that a smile constitutes a comprehensive report on its owner’s emotional state. Nor do we have to justify our own feelings immediately or turn them into actions simply to give them the attention they deserve.

Someone who has learned to regard their emotions as weaknesses may continue to resist them long after nobody is demanding that they conceal them.

Eventually, the mask becomes so natural that we forget we are wearing it.

But this doesn’t apply only to the suffering described in Kästner’s first version. We can overlook our own inner wealth as well.

Someone who has always been taught to be modest may struggle to feel proud of an achievement. Someone who is constantly there for others may regard their own helpfulness as nothing special. And someone who treats people with patience, humour, or kindness may fail to recognise anything remarkable in those qualities.

Kästner’s second version reminds us that people may possess far more than they, or anyone else, give them credit for.

This is not an invitation to stand in front of the mirror every morning and declare yourself the most wonderful person in the world. There are already plenty of people who generously share such assessments of themselves with everyone around them, without requiring any further encouragement.

The point is something simpler: not to judge ourselves exclusively by what others notice or acknowledge. And to allow other people the same freedom.

Just how ordinary this problem is becomes apparent in a question we constantly ask and just as frequently answer.

“How are you?”

“Getting by.”

Two words that can say an astonishing amount. Or almost nothing at all.

We know such answers. We give them ourselves. And we often accept them because we have learned that they prevent a conversation from becoming unnecessarily long.

Sometimes that is exactly right. Sometimes it would be better to stop for another moment.

Kästner’s characters encounter one another in a world where outward appearances reveal little about what lies within. Remarkably little has changed, even though we now have entirely different ways of presenting ourselves.

We share photographs, send messages, and publish carefully selected fragments of our lives. A profile picture can suggest happiness while the person behind it is in despair. Equally, it can make someone appear unremarkable while they are experiencing something wonderful.

The masks haven’t disappeared. They’re simply better lit.

It would be too easy, however, to turn this into an accusation against social media or the supposed superficiality of our times. People concealed their feelings long before telephones came equipped with cameras. And they misunderstood one another long before somebody had the idea of developing a dedicated platform for it.

Technology changes the possibilities of presentation. It does not eliminate the difficulties of human communication.

That is also why the idea of a “mask mandate” is more than a play on words. Some masks we put on out of politeness, others out of caution. Some we deliberately create, while others became part of us so early in life that we hardly notice them anymore. And occasionally, we even expect one another to make absolutely sure those masks stay firmly in place.

Anyone who steps out of line, shows too much happiness, cries, or reveals fear must expect to make other people uncomfortable. We want authentic human beings, provided they behave appropriately while being authentic.

So what remains of Kästner’s observation?

First of all, a little humility when it comes to our own judgements. We know less about other people than we often believe. And sometimes we know less about ourselves than we would like to think.

Both versions of the poem bring us face to face with this limitation. In one, what troubles a person remains hidden. In the other, what makes them inwardly rich goes unnoticed. And in both cases, it is possible that the person concerned does not fully recognise what is happening within them either.

None of this creates an obligation to start psychologically examining everyone we encounter. That would be neither particularly mindful nor especially pleasant for people who simply want to buy their morning bread rolls.

But we can learn to take our own feelings more seriously without automatically allowing them to take control of our actions. We can pay greater attention to others without interrogating them. And we can remind ourselves that a person is not identical to whatever their face happens to reveal at a particular moment.

For the real difficulty is not that we can never understand one another completely. Complete transparency would probably not even be particularly desirable.

The difficulty begins when we forget that there may be more behind every face than we can see. And when we ourselves no longer recognise what lies hidden behind our own.

Kästner doesn’t hold up a mirror in which we can finally see everything. Rather, he reminds us that even a mirror reveals only the surface.

What lies beneath is something we must first learn to discover. In others and in ourselves.

If you know that nobody sees behind the face, what are you going to do about it?

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