The End (Anna Seghers)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The end is the title of a story by Anna Seghers from 1945 . The author draws on the character of the Scharführer Zillig from the novel The Seventh Cross and traces his fate after the Second World War . The last stages of his escape are described after he tried to return to his old life in a farming village.

overview

In reverse of the escape of the concentration camp prisoners in the novel “The Seventh Cross”, the concentration camp guard Zillich is the persecuted in the story “The End”. After the chance encounter with the former prisoner Volpert, who triggers the search in a parallel act and also does his own research, he flees his village. He tries to go underground in a sequence of stations, but is confronted with his past at every stage.

Prehistory in the Piaski camp

After Westhofen, Zillich worked as a security guard in various camps, most recently under Commander Sommerfeld in Piaski, known from the “Seventh Cross” . Together with his colleague Nagel and the staff, he guards the mostly Jewish inmates, whom he has greasy stairs licked off, and tortures the work columns with punitive exercises. "Indifferently attentive" he follows the execution of his orders: executions on the gallows, night shootings, beatings to death. Most of the prisoners were shot before the Soviets approached. The guards change their appearance and their names, move to the west and go into hiding. Zillich returns to his family on the remote farm. While he was often out and about in brawls before the war as an SA man, let his wife work for him, treated her badly and only visited his family occasionally on vacation during the war, his hard work now earns him the respect of the Villagers and he feels safe.

content

In the American occupation zone, the engineer Kurt Volpert directs a repair train to repair a railway line in a southern German low mountain range. By chance he meets the farmer Zillich, who lives with his wife and four children near the fictional village of Zeißen, just like the other places. His protruding earlobes remind him of a brutal bailiff called "The Pig's Ear" in the concentration camp, which Volpert survived in the chaos of the last days of the war. He thinks about the similarity and wants to question the farmer, but he suddenly disappeared and left his wife with the message that he had been called to work on a new building.

Then Volpert's storyline begins, and with it the aspect of avenging justice. The engineer reports his observation to the Allied authorities, and then again with additional information, and puts Zillich on the list of Nazi criminals. In Braunsfeld you can find Zillich's trail based on its description and follow it to the construction site. But in the meantime there has been an explosion in the factory, and the authorities assume that Zillich is dead and report this to his wife. At the same time, Volpert goes on a search himself. He drives to Zeißen and speaks to the mayor Abst and the teacher Degreif, who were both imprisoned in the concentration camp. They understand Volpert's demand for revenge, but the teacher directs his gaze on Zillich's son Hans: “So that they can live there [...] and especially that one. [...] I read in a fairy tale that the devil once violated a girl. Heaven allowed her to give birth to a son who inherits only the good qualities from the Father. [...] The son became exceptionally clever. ”While Hans and Volpert scowl at each other, Degreif wants to take care of the boy who hates his father after Zillich's suspected suicide becomes known. At the end of the story he gives an explanation: “The boy had received nothing but shame and disgust from his father. The father had brought him into the world and then abandoned him. Now someone else, a strange father, had to look after him himself. "

In the contrast story, Zillich begins to flee from one station to the next with his identification, because at every stage he encounters a figure from his past or a person who could betray him. He is not aware of any guilt: he only carried out orders from the leaders. Now he wants to live in peace and expects support from his “comrades” on the hike or at work.

  • On a country road near Weinheim, an old man he will meet several times speaks to him with an aster in his buttonhole, introduces himself as Peter Nobody, tests him with trick questions, whistles hits, marches and communist or National Socialist songs and watches his Reaction. Zillich calls him his new name "Schulze". The old man gives him hope of finding work in a nearby pit where sand is extracted for the Mammolsheim cement factory on the other bank.
  • The little man reappears in the sand pit near Erb in the Weinheim district. This time it's called Peter Freitag and has a buttercup in its buttonhole. Friday reports on a raid in a barracks, during which a death camp commandant and someone named "Schulze" were arrested, who would now be hanged, and philosophizes that everything is fate. Because of his hard work, Zillich is quickly promoted to foreman and drives his group to greater effort. This leads to friction, complaints and ridicule. He is afraid of attracting attention, thinks about the two arrests and quickly says goodbye.
  • Zillich wanders to Braunsfeld, sees the war damage there and looks into a shell hole. An ancient man with a corpse-like face and crutches asks him: "So jump, my son [...] They say that the abyss closes when you throw a victim into it." His next symbolic encounter is in the church. A young man complains that he is guilty of having to shoot women, children and old men as a soldier in the village of Sakoje. Zillich does not understand what he means by “higher order” and an “inner voice” and tries to reassure him that he only carried out orders, that his lieutenant received the higher order. He should rest, then he would be better. In the city he finds work in a plumber. The mother of the two craftsmen is waiting for her youngest son, who has been imprisoned in a concentration camp, to return. When it is discovered that Zillich's earlobes are glued on, he gives an implausible explanation and runs away.
  • His next stop is a factory construction site in Erbenfeld. One day weapons are to be produced here for the Americans. Two colleagues, Hans and Franz, who helped him get the job, want to get him to prepare for an attack. He does not agree: “Yes, in the past he too was ready for any recklessness. He had gone through thick and thin with the Führer. But the Führer was dead. […] He wouldn't fall for Führer antics again. They had promised him fame and glory, a share of their own power. They had lured him away from home, from his plow and from his field. They had promised him a miracle - what was the result? Persecution, fear and abandonment. ”He leaves the building site that night.
  • After hiking over a plateau, he comes to a dam and helps to put the dam back into operation. Among the workers he meets his supervisor colleague Nagel from Piaski, who has changed his hairstyle and beard and is now called Stegerwald. Because he rivaled him for the position of superintendent, he distrusted him and secretly disappears from the barracks into the night.
  • He is discouraged and decides to return to his village, he hopes that perhaps Volpert did not recognize him at all. He sees his eldest son Hans in the field and has his wife fetch him to sound out the situation. She tells him that investigators assumed that he was killed in the explosion of the factory in Erbenfeld. He should go away and that would be better for the family, who had been burdened by his crimes. With the curse "You damn carrion!" He leaves the place.
  • He takes a ferry across the river and sleeps in a shed. There another hiker told him that after a year in prison in Piaski he was happy to wake up every morning, no matter where he was. Zillich's attitude towards life is contrary to this: “There was no refuge. His wife did not accept him, and certainly not a stranger. [...] Here on the bank there were innumerable new dangers. It drew him back to the river, which flowed darkly in the rigid, dull darkness. [...] The best thing for him would be to disappear now. "
  • He found a place to sleep in the town of Erbach. Here the little man reappears, this time with a loquat in his buttonhole, addresses him with “Heil Zillich” and, on his warning, tells him that it is “not a bad idea at all”. Zillich does not want to allow him this "fun" and hangs himself on the window hook.

Prehistory in the Westhofen concentration camp

In the novel “The Seventh Cross” Zillich only appears in a few chapters (e.g. Kp. I, 4; Kp. III, 1; Kp. V, 3; Kp. VI, 1 and 7). In the autumn of 1937 he was part of the “Equipe” of Commander Fahrenberg. As a receiver of orders, a reporter and a lightning rod for the irascible attacks of the superior after seven prisoners fled the camp, he is trained to subordinate himself. As the head of the SA group, he oversees the torture interrogations of the escaped prisoners who have been caught again and has them tied to crosses to warn the prisoners who have lined up in the yard.

In the 6th chapter (VI, 7) Zillich's life story is sketched, somewhat more detailed than in the story “Das Ende”: He grew up as a farmer's son near Wertheim and fought as a soldier in the First World War. “His innate mind, his enormous powers, were constrained from an early age, unadvised, unredeemed, unusable. During the war he had found one thing that made him easier. [...] He did not go wild at the sight of blood, as is said of murderers. That would have been a kind of intoxication, still curable, perhaps through other noises. The sight of the blood calmed him. He became so calm, as if his own blood was streaming from the deadly wound, like a bloodletting of his own. He looked, became calm and went away, and then he slept calmly. ”At the end of his interrogation, the blood-soaked Wallau will see such a look of“ calm ”and“ equality ”directed at himself and think:“ This is death ".

In 1918 Zillich returned to his neglected farm and left the work to his overwhelmed wife. Instead he sits in the tavern and argues with the other guests about the lost war and the economic hardship. It's always the other's fault. If someone contradicts him, there will be fights. His farm is foreclosed and he has to take over the tiny farm of the in-laws. A comrade in the war freed him from the hard work in the fields by hiring him for the SA. Now he fights with communists and gets a prison sentence for a knife fight. After his release, he met his lieutenant from the war at an SA meeting in Fahrenberg. This helps him to get a job in the Westhofen camp. Here he is dependent on the goodwill of the capricious superior. After the escape of the seven prisoners, the commandant is relieved and replaced by Sommerfeld. Zillich has to relinquish responsibility for the “special column” and wonders whether his boss will take him to his new job, whether he will be alone in Westhofen after the clique has broken up remains behind or whether he loses his job and has to return to the farm. In contrast to him, his wife hopes to return so that he can use his labor to cultivate the leased field again and thus save money. She also reckons that his relationships will give them preferential treatment as old warriors and their large number of children.

reception

The story “The End” is mostly received in connection with the novel “The Seventh Cross”. B. by Sonja Hilzinger In addition to the topic, the linguistic means are also focused: contrasting action, station sequence, mixture of realistically drawn people and symbolic figures with surreal behavior, like the old man.

literature

Sonja Hilzinger: “Now we are here. What happens now happens to us. ”Anna Segher's novel“ The Seventh Cross ”. In: Sonja Hilzinger (Ed.): “The seventh cross by Anna Seghers. Texts, data, images. ”Luchterhand Collection Frankfurt a. M. 1990, p. 7 ff.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anna Segher's mother Hedwig Reiling was deported to the Piaski ghetto near Lublin in 1942 at the age of 62 and killed there. Reinhard Frenzel: "Hedwig Reiling". In: Frauenbüro Landeshauptstadt Mainz (Hrsg.): Frauenleben in Magenza. The portraits of Jewish women from the Mainz women's calendar and texts on women's history in Jewish Mainz. 4th and completely revised edition. Mainz 2015, OCLC 908617988, p. 26, column 2 (mainz.de [PDF; 8.8 MB] - editor Eva Weickart). The author found out about her mother's deportation and murder in 1943.
  2. ↑ Anna Seghers: "The End". In: “The excursion of the dead girls. Stories". Luchterhand Collection Frankfurt am Main, 1979, p. 125 ff.
  3. ↑ Anna Seghers: "The End". In: “The excursion of the dead girls. Stories". Luchterhand Collection Frankfurt am Main, 1979, p. 144.
  4. ↑ Anna Seghers: "The End". In: “The excursion of the dead girls. Stories". Luchterhand Collection Frankfurt am Main, 1979, p. 106 ff.
  5. ↑ Anna Seghers: "The End". In: “The excursion of the dead girls. Stories". Luchterhand Collection Frankfurt am Main, 1979, p. 122 ff.
  6. ↑ Anna Seghers: "The End". In: “The excursion of the dead girls. Stories". Luchterhand Collection Frankfurt am Main, 1979, p. 140.
  7. ↑ Sonja Hilzinger: “Now we are here. What happens now happens to us. ”Anna Segher's novel“ The Seventh Cross ”. In: Sonja Hilzinger (Ed.): “The seventh cross by Anna Seghers. Texts, data, images ”. Luchterhand Collection Frankfurt a. M. 1990, p. 7 ff.