This Tuesday

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This Tuesday is a short story by the German writer Wolfgang Borchert . Like other short stories by Borchert, it is considered a classic of post-war literature and is often dealt with in German lessons. Its title gave Borchert's second volume of short stories its name, which appeared in November 1947, shortly after the author's death.

content

The short story begins with the lines:

"The week has a Tuesday."
"Half a hundred a year."
"The war has many Tuesdays."

Nine passages of different lengths follow. They all act on the same day, a Tuesday during World War II , alternately at home and on the Eastern Front .

The even episodes tell of Captain Hesse, the leader of the Second Company . The battalion commander appoints Lieutenant Ehlers to succeed the sick Hesse. Satisfied, Ehlers lights a cigarette, whereupon a sniper shoots him. Meanwhile, Captain Hesse is taken to the Smolensk epidemic hospital with suspected typhus and already senseless . The chief physician and the chief physician talk about the high mortality rate in the hospital. Finally, the dead Hesse is carried outside on a stretcher and thrown to the other corpses.

Episodes 3, 5 and 7 show Hesse's environment at home. Mr Hansen instructs his secretary, Miss Severin, to send Hesse Wilhelm Busch to the front as humorous reading. The proud Mrs. Hesse receives a belated letter from her husband that he has been promoted to captain and company commander. Only the neighbor is worried about the cold in Russia. Frau Hesse goes out in the evening and looks at the Magic Flute .

The first and last episode are about the girl Ulla. Her teacher at the girls' school dictates the sentence “In war all fathers are soldiers.” When Ulla makes a spelling mistake, the teacher corrects that war is written with “G for pit”. In the evening, Ulla wrote ten times the sentence “In war all fathers are soldiers” as detention. And she ends the word “war” with “G for pit”.

Analysis and interpretation

construction

The introductory three lines of the short story act as an exposition explaining the title and the background to the war . This is followed by nine miniature scenes , which alternate between Germany and the Russian front. They are introduced anaphorically by the time “This Tuesday” and form the chronology of a day, with the last three scenes taking place simultaneously. The first and last scenes frame the story. Although it is not explicitly pronounced, the construction suggests that Ulla is the daughter of the Hesses.

The connection between the scenes results from their common reference to the figure of the dying Captain Hesse. In addition, the scenes are intertwined by corresponding motifs (for example the various books) and symbols (for example the color red). The continuous design element is the sharp contrast between the brutal reality of war and the banal everyday life. There is no authorial narrator . The scenes comment on each other through their contextual reference and the confrontation of what is depicted. The absurdity of what is happening is revealed in the final scene in particular . Ulla's housework "War with G. G as in Grube." Is not only the last sentence, but also the résumé and the quintessence of the story.

This Tuesday was of Höllerer due to the used assembly technique called "blending history," inspired by the technique of blending the film, the scenes actually rather hard against each cut are. Other voices spoke of a "simultaneity story", a " puzzle of snapshots" or a " mosaic ", the individual parts of which ultimately form an overall picture of the war.

Style and language

According to Werner Bellmann , This Tuesday stands in the tradition of American short stories that Borchert had known since the end of World War II. The story, like the other texts published in Borchert's second volume of short stories , represents a change in style compared to his earlier prose , which was more marked by lyricism , pathos and sentimentality . Lacony , everyday language , allusions, ellipses and understatement predominate in the late short stories , which refers in particular to the influence of Ernest Hemingway . Borchert himself described the style of his late prose as "the brief, the hinted, telegram-cinematic".

Example and criticism

In his short story, Borchert depicts the events of the Second World War as a whole using selected individual scenes that revolve around the life of a certain figure, Captain Hesse. Through the different perspectives on his environment, Hesse's individual fate is removed from the singularity and is an example of the war. The three introductory sentences underline the exemplary character of the episodes. Typical of Borchert's work, including the drama Outside Front Door , is, however, the narrowed perspective on the events in Borchert's German homeland, in which, for example, the effects of the German war of aggression on the Soviet population are ignored. The title of the short story This Tuesday can be interpreted symbolically. Werner Bellmann points out that the weekday Tuesday is derived from the Latin martis das , the day of the god of war Mars .

The two frame scenes around Ulla play a special role. Here Borchert, like Heinrich Böll later in Wanderer, criticizes you come to Spa ... , the school for indoctrinating its students with the ideology of National Socialism and militarism and denying reality. The teacher has Ulla write down humiliating sentences about the cruel war events and proves to be blind to reality (symbolized by her glasses), to be pedantic and tactless by giving Ulla the donkey bridge "G for Grube", which the reader immediately sees awakens the association with grave and death, which is also set in the following scenes.

expenditure

  • Wolfgang Borchert: This Tuesday . In: Wolfgang Borchert: This Tuesday. Nineteen stories . Rowohlt, Hamburg / Stuttgart 1947, pp. 38–41 (first edition DNB ).
  • Wolfgang Borchert: This Tuesday . In: Wolfgang Borchert: The Complete Works . 3rd edition, rororo 24980 - Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-498-00652-5 , pp. 224–228.
  • Wolfgang Borchert: This Tuesday . In: Wolfgang Borchert: Outside the door and other works . Edited by Axel Dunker. Reclam, Stuttgart 2018, ISBN 978-3-15-019466-9 , pp. 92–96.

literature

  • Werner Bellmann: Wolfgang Borchert: "This Tuesday" . In: Werner Bellmann (Hrsg.): Classic German short stories. Interpretations . Reclam, Stuttgart 2004 (Reclams Universal-Bibliothek 17525), ISBN 978-3-15-017525-5 , pp. 39-45.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Borchert: This Tuesday . In: Wolfgang Borchert: The Complete Works . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2007, ISBN 978-3-498-00652-5 , p. 224.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Borchert: This Tuesday . In: Wolfgang Borchert: The Complete Works . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2007, ISBN 978-3-498-00652-5 , p. 228.
  3. ↑ a b On the section: Werner Bellmann: Wolfgang Borchert: “On this Tuesday” , pp. 41–44.
  4. ^ Werner Bellmann: Wolfgang Borchert: "On this Tuesday" , pp. 40–41.
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Borchert: Alone with my shadow and the moon. Letters, poems and documents . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1996, ISBN 3-499-13983-9 , p. 231.
  6. ↑ Werner Bellmann: Wolfgang Borchert: "On this Tuesday" , pp. 44–45.