The forest of the dead

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The Totenwald is a documentary prose piece by Ernst Wiechert , which - written towards the end of 1939 - first appeared in Zurich in 1946. The “Report” has been translated into English, American, French, Finnish, Dutch, Italian, Polish, Spanish and Swedish.

With the forest of the dead, the author means the Buchenwald concentration camp in Thuringia , where he survived two months as prisoner no.7188 in the summer of 1938 . The narrow volume can compel even the most distant reader to "respect the suffering of those who suffer".

Ernst Wiechert does not offer a piece of autobiography, but tells chronologically coherent episodes from the life of an intellectual named Johannes, a war participant. Before describing the two-month detention in the concentration camp, a few things from the previous history are discussed - the house search by three Gestapo men and the detention in the Munich Gestapo prison.

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Germany at the time of the “ return of Austria to the Reich ”: In March 1938, Johannes came into the focus of the party and the state and was imprisoned for four months after speaking out against the deportation of a pastor “to a camp ”.

During the above-mentioned search of his study, which took several hours, Johannes was not allowed to leave the room. Before that he had thoughtlessly destroyed neither letters nor diaries. In the prison mentioned above, Johannes is interrogated for about seven hours by investigators who want to investigate the attitudes and do not want to tolerate different thinking. The arrest warrant "for emphatically anti-subversive attitudes and excitement of public unrest against the state and party" is not missing. After seven weeks in prison, Johannes is interrogated by a “cultural politician” who, in vain, wants to recommend Baldur von Schirach as a poetic role model. Unfortunately - so the officer decides on the interrogation - the transfer to a concentration camp could not be avoided. The journey there leads on July 1, 1938, first to the Munich police headquarters and then by train through Eastern Bavaria and via Hof , Leipzig , Halle to Weimar . On the way, Johannes meets other “critics of government”.

At first the name "Buchenwald" sounded beautiful and the Ettersberg reminded of Goethe . Disenchantment follows immediately. The “Unterlagerführer in SS uniform” - that is the pastor's son Hartmann - threatens the “pigs”, ie the “ prisoners ”, with shooting if there is any resistance and recommends that they “keep their mouths straight ahead”. The newcomers have to watch as an example of "new people education" as a prisoner on the Bock goes. The new ones have to undress. All their hair is shaved outdoors.

Johannes has to do hard work outdoors and gets to know the "traitor" Josef, who was last tram driver in Saarbrücken . The locksmith Josef has walked through several camps in recent years. When Johannes, due to the heavy physical work, can no longer overlook serious health problems, the turning point is suddenly reached: Johannes experiences the solidarity of the prisoners. Josef arranges light work for the sick person in a barrack.

On the way to freedom, Johannes has to pass the "Propaganda Minister". Goebbels threatens that he will not leave a camp alive a second time.

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The subtitle says A Report . Certainly the text is not lacking in facts. Johannes reports of 103 deaths in the Buchenwald concentration camp in July 1938 and estimates there “about eight thousand prisoners”. Johannes, the bourgeoisie, gets to know and respect communists - such as Walter Husemann .

Johannes reports as an eyewitness

  • SS men kicked prisoners or hit them in the face.
  • "The squad leader "
    • [throws the inmate] "a head-sized stone with full force in the back"
    • [hits the prisoner] "with a stick as thick as a finger ... on the cheeks, ears, temples."
  • As a punishment, prisoners have to stand all day and are not allowed to leave. Uniformed passers-by occasionally hit the unfortunate.
  • one prisoner hangs "by the arms tied behind his back ... in a tree".

Even so, the text is more an indictment than a report.

Many a leap in thought by Ernst Wiechert has become almost incomprehensible decades after the text was written. The reader from the 21st century asks, for example, what does the narrator's hymn of praise for the National Socialist Wilhelm Hug mean?

reception

  • 1951: Reinhold Schneider : “Ernst Wiechert went to Buchenwald; we will always have to be grateful to him for it ... "" As little a poet can detach himself from the world of images ... just as little can we detach himself from his pain ... "
  • 1977: According to Eike Middell , the text ranks well behind “ Naked Among Wolves ” and “ The Investigation ” , but “As a testimony to not only preserved but also proven humanity, The Totenwald remains a moving document, a simple, touching commemoration the victims of fascism. "
  • 1994: Based on the epilogue in which Ernst Wiechert warns and states that the text contains “the pure truth and nothing but the truth” and the intention to write is a transformation of reality “into a higher truth, precisely into that of art”, Manfred registers Karnick "a deliberate manner of simplicity and the content is based on the Bible." In addition, the material is "already literary".
  • 2008: Buchenwald prisoner No. 7188: Ernst Wiechert. Re-encounter with Ernst Wiechert's concentration camp report “Der Totenwald” , berlinerliteraturkritik.de , review of the Suhrkamp edition in 2008

literature

Text output

  • Ernst Wiechert: The Dead Forest. A report. With an afterword by the author. Verlag Kurt Desch, Munich 1946. 196 pages (first edition).
  • Ernst Wiechert: The Dead Forest. A report. Diary notes and letters. With an afterword by Eike Middell. Union Verlag Berlin, 1977 (Licensor: Verlag Kurt Desch, Munich 1957). 204 pages.
  • Ernst Wiechert: The Dead Forest. A report. Diary notes and letters. Reclam Leipzig, 1989, ISBN 3-379-00429-4 .
  • Ernst Wiechert: The Dead Forest. A report. With an essay by Klaus Briegleb . Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2008 (Suhrkamp Library 1425), ISBN 978-3-518-22425-0 . 184 pages.

Secondary literature

  • Manfred Karnick: War and post-war, narrative prose in the west , Chapter II in: Wilfried Barner (Hrsg.), History of German literature. Volume 12: History of German Literature from 1945 to the Present . CH Beck, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-406-38660-1 Table of contents

Remarks

  1. ↑ However, some passages were edited after 1939 - for example the comment on Husemann's death in May 1943 (edition used, p. 123, 10th issue).
  2. ↑ For example, Thomas Mann dismissed the report as “very mild and fuzzy ” (Thomas Mann, quoted by Eike Middell in the afterword of the edition used, p. 201, 14th Zvu).
  3. ↑ Ernst Wiechert thinks Martin Niemöller (see, for example, Hupka : " The coming of the reminder ( memento of the original dated November 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ernst-wiechert.de archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link accordingly Instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 31 kB) ” (p. 127 above)).
  4. ↑ In 1938, from their relatively safe location in Switzerland or the USA, many emigrants made bitter comments about such events in the Reich. Erika Mann is said to have said, for example, that Ernst Wiechert became a “good boy” after his release from the camp (quoted by Eike Middell in the afterword of the edition used, p. 199, 4th Zvo).
  5. ↑ Edition used.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ in the afterword of the edition used on p. 193, 17. Zvo quoted by Eike Middell from Ernst Wiechert's memoirs “ Years and Times ( Memento of the original from November 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked . Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. " @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ernst-wiechert.de
  2. ↑ The Forest of the Dead ( Memento of the original from November 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at ernst-wiechert.de  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ernst-wiechert.de
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 83, 11. Zvu
  4. ↑ Blurb in the edition used, 18th line
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 4, 10. Zvu
  6. ↑ Eike Middell in the afterword of the edition used, p. 203, 4th Zvu
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 19, 9. Zvu and p. 59, 1. Zvo
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 12, 14. Zvu
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 11, 8. Zvo
  10. ↑ Edition used, pp. 25, 14. Zvo
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 64, 7th Zvu
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 62, 8. Zvo
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 69, 9. Zvu
  14. ↑ Edition used, p. 69, 2. Zvo
  15. ↑ Edition used, p. 70, 13. Zvu
  16. ↑ Edition used, p. 131, 3rd Zvu
  17. ↑ Edition used, p. 90, 1. Zvo
  18. ↑ Edition used, p. 71, 6. Zvo
  19. ↑ Edition used, p. 122 above
  20. ↑ Edition used, p. 66, 4th Zvu and p. 64, 8th Zvo
  21. ↑ Edition used, pp. 79, 19. Zvo
  22. ↑ Edition used, p. 80, 15. Zvo
  23. ↑ Edition used, p. 108, 5th Zvu
  24. ↑ Edition used, p. 109, 8. Zvo
  25. ↑ Edition used, p. 114, 14. Zvu
  26. ↑ Edition used, p. 123, 3rd Zvu
  27. ^ Reinhold Schneider: Ernst Wiechert in Buchenwald . Edition used, p. 189, 3. Zvo
  28. ^ Reinhold Schneider: Ernst Wiechert in Buchenwald . Edition used, p. 190, 2nd Zvu
  29. ↑ Eike Middell in the afterword of the edition used, p. 192, 12. Zvu
  30. ↑ Eike Middell in the afterword of the edition used, p. 199, 16. Zvu
  31. ↑ Edition used, p. 134
  32. ↑ Karnick in Barner (Ed.), P. 41, 1. Zvo
  33. ↑ Karnick in Barner (ed.), P. 50, 10th Zvu