Mother Night Characters

Meet the Cast

Howard W. Campbell, Jr.

A Star Is BornHoward Campbell is kind of a big deal—and not in his own eyes. See, he's a spy. Not the Bond, James Bond kind of spy who rappels off the side of buildings and brings down campy badd...

Colonel Frank Wirtanen, a.k.a. Harold J. Sparrow, a.k.a. Blue Fairy Godmother

Like most fairy godmothers, this character is sort a huge question mark. All we really know about him is that nobody knows about him or his connection to Campbell:My lawyer here in Jerusalem, Mr. A...

Helga Noth

We're going to level with you, folks: we really have no idea who this gal is. The facts are as follows: she was the daughter of Berlin's chief of police, she grew up to be a famous theater actress,...

Resi Noth

Resi is kind of terrifying. Not quite kill-you-and-wear-your-skin terrifying, but close. After her big sister, Helga, goes missing, Resi assumes her big sis's identity and goes right into the armsâ...

George Kraft, a.k.a. Iona Potapov

Campbell and Resi aren't the only secret-agent types bumming around the New York City area circa 1960. Kraft's been in the U.S. for a couple of decades doing covert ops for the Russians. The only p...

Reverend Dr. Lionel Jones

We get an entire chapter dedicated to this guy's backstory, and believe us, that's plenty. He's basically the scariest dentist that you'd ever meet, because if he decides you're not Aryan enough—...

Bernard B. O'Hare

Bernard O'Hare is not a happy camper. He's not a happy anything. Sure, he's a war hero, and sure he's got a bunch of glory, but even so, he's down in the dumps, and it looks like nothing can fix th...

Dr. Epstein and His Mother

These two are a pair, both because they live together and also because they show us two different experiences of postwar life.Epstein's mother cannot forget the horrors of Auschwitz, and she tests...

August Krapptauer

Krapptauer, one of Jones's sidekicks, kicks the bucket shortly after we meet him. Why? Well, he's an elderly man at this point, and, according to Campbell, "Vice-Bundesfuehrer Krapptauer, on his ow...

Father Patrick Keeley

Father Keeley is an unfrocked priest who was kicked out of the Catholic Church for some great reasons. He was a drunk. He had, before the Second World War, been chaplain of a Detroit gun club which...

Robert Sterling Wilson

RememberUncle Tom's Cabin? It's Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel calling for an end to slavery. Why are we bringing this up here? Well, Campbell uses a racial slur to describe what Wilson is not. For...

Werner Noth

Resi and Helga's scary dad is a German police chief who ends up getting hanged by the Russian slaves he had moving the stuff out of his house to keep safe during the war.He also hates Campbell. May...

The Guards

We don't really get to know Campbell's guards too well, but here's a quick breakdown for good measure.Arnold MarxArnold doesn't really know too much about WWII, but he knows a ton about King Solomo...