Then there is only one!

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Text passage from Then there is only one! on a board at Eppendorfer Marktplatz in Hamburg-Eppendorf

Then there is only one! is one of the most famous prose texts by the German writer Wolfgang Borchert . It was his last work a few weeks before his death on November 20, 1947 and was performed for the first time on the radio on the day of Borchert's death. The postponed text is considered to be Borchert's legacy, in which the writer once again thematized war as the dominant motif of his work and called on his fellow men in the form of a manifesto to refuse to participate in future wars. The recurring prompt Say No! became a much-quoted motto in the peace movement and is often used as the title of the prose text.

content

The text begins with the following lines:

"You. Man at the machine and man in the workshop. If tomorrow they order you to stop making water pipes and cooking pots - but steel helmets and machine guns, then there is only one thing to do: say NO! "

- Wolfgang Borchert : Then there is only one!

This is followed by 12 more calls to the “girl behind the counter and girl in the office”, the “owner of the factory”, the “researcher in the laboratory”, the “poet in your room”, the “doctor at the sickbed”, the “priest up the pulpit ”, the“ captain on the steamer ”, the“ pilot on the airfield ”, the“ tailor on your board ”, the“ judge in the gown ”, the“ man at the station ”and the“ man in the village and Man in the City ”, which also end with the prompt“ Say NO! ”Before the most extensive appeal to mothers around the world concludes with the transition:

"Says no! Mothers say NO!
Because if you don't say NO, if YOU don't say no, mothers, then: "

- Wolfgang Borchert : Then there is only one!

At this point the text changes to the description of an apocalyptic post-war state of a world without people, through which a last, fatally injured person wanders, whose question about why is no longer heard and answered by anyone. The text ends with the words:

"All of this will happen, tomorrow, tomorrow maybe, maybe tonight, maybe tonight, if - if - if you don't say NO."

- Wolfgang Borchert : Then there is only one!

shape

The Scottish German studies and former chairman of the International Wolfgang Borchert Society Gordon JA Burgess classified Then there is only one! as a prose text that can no longer be described as a short story or narrative , but as a manifesto. It falls into two different parts. In the first part, 14 groups of people are addressed in a repeated rhythm, with varying content, whereby the warning always has the same introduction "If they tell you tomorrow you should ..." and the same final call "Say NO!". The second part changes the tempo and closes with an increasing sentence running over one and a half printed pages. Burgess called the text a literally dramatic text, a “theater of words ” in which the “hammering staccato rhythm” of the first part contrasts with a “rising crescendo ” of the second part. Both linguistically and thematically, the text is an apotheosis of Borchert's stylistic devices, in which “ images and assonances , new formations and alliterations ” come together. Although the language is initially characterized by “deceptively simple polish”, on closer examination one becomes aware of its “precision and expressive power” that is inherent in it.

History of origin

Then there is only one! is the only work by Borchert that was written after September 22, 1947, the time he left for a spa stay at St. Clara Hospital in Basel , where he died two months later as a result of liver disease. The exact time of writing is unknown. According to Bernhard Meyer-Marwitz , a friend and publisher of Borchert, the prose work was created “a few days before his death”. Peter Rühmkorf dated the manuscript to October 1947.

From Kåre Eirek Gullvåg's point of view, Borchert suspected that he was responsible for writing Then there is only one! “There was little time that he had to strive to write briefly, clearly and simply.” Marianne Schmidt also spoke of a “clear text” which, in its direct address to the reader, in its impatience and urgency, is a rather untypical text for Borchert. Two post-war experiences would not have left him in peace until his last text: the atomic bombing on Hiroshima , which is reflected in the image of destruction and devastation in the second part of the text, and the indifference of his fellow human beings, about which he was concerned a few months before his death Letter complained: "This terrible indolence is probably our greatest enemy."

The manuscript kept in the Wolfgang Borchert Archive shows few revisions. So the original "If they tell you tomorrow" was replaced by an "order". The handwritten lines are preceded by the fact that Borchert originally planned the text as a prologue to a radio play by Axel Eggebrecht , which, however, did not come about. The manuscript also contains stage directions for the radio play production, which should have the text break off in a drum roll at the end, whereupon a sober voice announcer read the text: "Tomorrow the foreign ministers' conference begins in London." The first public reading of the prose piece came on the anniversary of Borchert's death November 20, 1947, when Hans Quest read the text on Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk . It appeared in writing for the first time on December 5, 1947 in the Hamburger Echo under the title Say No to War . In 1949 there is only one thing! included in the complete works of Wolfgang Borchert published by Rowohlt Verlag .

reception

Wolfgang Borchert monument on Eppendorfer Landstrasse in Hamburg-Eppendorf with a text from Then there is only one!

Bernhard Meyer-Marwitz was in Borchert's complete works before the shape of the recording, accompanied Borchert text later. He added an extra exclamation mark to the title of the original manuscript, Then There Is Only One , and moved the text to the end of the book, where it looked like Borchert's will . In the introduction to the posthumous stories, Meyer-Marwitz emphasized that the text that was written shortly before Borchert's death was his “legacy to Europe and mankind”. In the afterword he added: “Those were the last words Borchert wrote in his life. His last strength was exhausted in them. After this 'NO!' he could finally sink back into the last rest. "

Later reviewers endorsed the text as Borchert's will. So then there is only one thing! for Claus B. Schröder something “of a last will, of a consequence of everything thought and written.” Peter Rühmkorf saw in the text “the final legacy of a young poet who never made pacts with the big crowd, not with the opportunistic average and not with the power of duty ", the" last apology of the naysayer, the nerd, the refuser. "

Gordon JA Burgess pointed out that the language of the text does not come into its own until it is read. Borchert's manifesto is a “linguistic and acoustic tour-de-force” and leaves readers and listeners “deeply impressed” at the end, whereupon he judged: “If Borchert's work still has a place in today's world, then this is it : as a passionate and lasting reminder and warning of the inhumanity of humanity. ”For Brigitte Helbling, however, in the second part“ in its lyrical power of words […] the vision of the end of the times undermines the horror that it is supposed to awaken. ”The text is suitable because of the“ U-turn to Expressionism “not really as the anti-war manifesto to which it is often stylized. Alexandre Marius de Sterio saw Borchert's appeal “by an almost naively believing trust in the individual”. In misjudgment of social reality he becomes a “hopeful, optimistic illusion of bourgeois humanism ”, with which Borchert “in a society whose contradictions he suspects but does not understand, cannot be heard by most of them.”

Graffiti by Klaus Paier in Aachen

But just the roll call Then there is only one! became particularly popular among Borchert's works and widely quoted. Michael Töteberg spoke in the afterword of the new edition of the complete works of "Borchert's most famous text". Rainer Kunad finished his opera Bill Brook based on Borchert's story of the same name with passages from Then There Is Only One! Borchert's text (often shortened to its first part) was also used in political disputes. The prompt say no! became a motto of conscientious objection in Germany like the peace movement and was later found in the protests against the Gulf War . Hanns Dieter Hüsch presented the text in 1981 as a "vow text" by conscientious objectors in Darmstadt, in 1983 Ida Ehre declaimed it in front of 25,000 people in the St. Pauli Stadium in Hamburg. In the style of Borchert's text, Konstantin Wecker wrote a protest song in 1993 called Sage Nein! Even in the 21st century, Borcherts will then only be one! continue to be read out at peace rallies and Easter marches . How much Wolfgang Borchert was and is identified with his last text is also indicated by the memorial sites that are dedicated to Borchert in his hometown of Hamburg: two of three monuments explicitly refer to Then there is only one!

expenditure

  • Wolfgang Borchert: The Complete Works . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1986, ISBN 3-498-09027-5 , pp. 318-321.
  • Wolfgang Borchert: The Complete Works . Extended and revised new edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2007, ISBN 978-3-498-00652-5 , pp. 527-530.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ This is how Alexandre Marius de Sterio called it Say NO! as the "original title" of the text, which in the entire work "wrongly [...] under the banal title" Then there is only one! had appeared. Cf. Alexandre Marius de Sterio: Wolfgang Borchert: Eine literatursoziologische Interpretation . In: Rudolf Wolff (Ed.): Wolfgang Borchert. Work and effect . Bouvier, Bonn 1984, ISBN 3-416-01729-3 , p. 34.
  2. ↑ Borchert: Das Gesamtwerk (2007), p. 527.
  3. ↑ Borchert: Das Gesamtwerk (2007), pp. 528-529.
  4. ↑ Borchert: Das Gesamtwerk (2007), p. 530.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Gordon Burgess: Wolfgang Borchert. I believe in my luck . Structure, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-7466-2385-6 , pp. 234-235.
  6. ^ A b c d Gordon JA Burgess: Wolfgang Borchert, Person und Werk . In: Gordon JA Burgess (Ed.): Wolfgang Borchert . Christians, Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-7672-0868-7 , pp. 32-33.
  7. ^ Peter Rühmkorf: Wolfgang Borchert . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1961, ISBN 3-499-50058-2 , p. 167.
  8. ^ Bernhard Meyer-Marwitz : Afterword . In: Borchert: Das Gesamtwerk (1986), p. 347.
  9. ^ Rühmkorf: Wolfgang Borchert , p. 164.
  10. ^ Kåre Eirek Gullvåg: The man from the ruins: Wolfgang Borchert and his poetry . K. Fischer, Aachen 1997, ISBN 3-89514-103-8 , p. 116.
  11. ↑ Quote from Borchert: Alone with my shadow and the moon. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1996, ISBN 3-499-13983-9 , p. 215. To the section: Marianne Schmidt : In the end only the wind remains. About prose texts by Wolfgang Borchert. In: Heidi Beutin , Wolfgang Beutin u. a .: Then there is only one! The need to shape peace. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-631-56964-1 , pp. 64-65.
  12. ↑ Borchert: Das Gesamtwerk (2007), p. 543.
  13. ^ A b Claus B. Schröder: Wolfgang Borchert. The most important voice in post-war German literature . Heyne, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-453-02849-X , p. 363.
  14. ^ Burgess (Ed.): Wolfgang Borchert , p. 140.
  15. ↑ Borchert: Das Gesamtwerk (1986), p. 284.
  16. ^ Bernhard Meyer-Marwitz: Afterword . In: Borchert: Das Gesamtwerk (1986), p. 348.
  17. ^ Rühmkorf: Wolfgang Borchert , p. 168.
  18. ↑ Brigitte Helbling: Is Borchert a kitsch author? In: Die Welt from December 9, 2007.
  19. ↑ Alexandre Marius de Sterio: Wolfgang Borchert: Eine literatursoziologische Interpretation , p. 34.
  20. ↑ a b Michael Töteberg: Afterword . In: Wolfgang Borchert: Das Gesamtwerk (2007), p. 566.
  21. ↑ Heike Sauer: Dream, Reality, Utopia: The German Music Theater 1961-1971 as a mirror of political and social aspects of its time . Waxmann, Münster 1994, ISBN 3-89325-235-5 , p. 141.
  22. ↑ Bengt Algot Sørensen, Steffen Arndal: History of German Literature 2 . Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-47589-2 , p. 316.
  23. ^ Pacifism '81: Blessed are the peaceful . In: Der Spiegel . No. 25 , 1981, pp. 24-32 ( online ).
  24. ↑ Margarete Dörr: Those who did not experience the time ...: Women's experiences in the Second World War and in the years after . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 1998, p. 463.
  25. ↑ Say no! on the website of Konstantin Wecker .