The adventures of Werner Holt
The adventures of Werner Holt is a two-volume development novel by the GDR writer Dieter Noll , published in 1960 and 1963 . The popularity of the first volume, "A Youth's Novel" led to a sequel called "A Homecoming Novel". Based on the first part, the 165-minute black and white film The Adventures of Werner Holt with Klaus-Peter Thiele in the leading role was made in 1965 . The first volume of this book was part of the curriculum in the polytechnic high school in the GDR.
The adventures of Werner Holt - novel of a youth
The first volume, with the subtitle Roman einer Jugend, tells the story of high school student Werner Holt and his classmates Gilbert Wolzow, Sepp Gomulka, Christian Vetter, Fritz Zemtzki and Peter Wiese. The boys are about to graduate from high school and, with the exception of Wiese, have volunteered and enthusiastically as flak helpers in order to be able to embark on their supposedly greatest adventure, the Second World War . Wiese, more fond of classical music and actually unfit for military service, is the only one among them who shows no interest in war. Their experiences, especially the horror they experience and the inner brutality, are described realistically. Werner Holt experienced various situations that could arouse doubts in him. His father, doctor and scientist, loses his job because he is not prepared to put his research into the service of the National Socialists and refuses to develop poisonous gases for the killing of "large mammals". The father of his acquaintances and a young woman who was shyly adored by him, Uta Barnim, a colonel in the army who surrendered his troops in a hopeless situation but was unable to flee in time himself, was executed as a traitor , and the family became clan.
The Hitler Youth leader of the town of Meissner, who is about to be accepted into the SS , is responsible for the suicide of a girl he impregnated and denounces her father in order to silence him. Out of his partly romantic worldview, Holt decides to avenge the girl. He succeeds in persuading Wolzow to participate. Wolzow doesn't care about the girl, but he's mad at the arrogant Meissner because he ruined his career in the Hitler Youth. Wolzow is the son of a colonel, willing to use violence and poor schooling. He has a lot of military knowledge, but is only interested in making a military career as quickly as possible. He has no conscience, moral concerns are alien to him and he subordinates everything to his planned military career. Together they lure Hitler Youth leader Meissner into an ambush, threaten him with pistols and force him to sign an admission of guilt for the girl's suicide. Wolzow then beats Meissner. In his enthusiasm for the adventures that this time offers him, Holt ignores the many references to the inhuman character of the National Socialism he lived by. Holt firmly believes in fate, to which he has to bow, just as propaganda tells him to.
Wolzow's father was killed on the Eastern Front in the spring of 1943, but that hardly affected Wolzow. However, his mother despairs when she has to read about his war crimes in her husband's diaries and has a nervous breakdown. Wolzow also reads the books, but only sees to it that his mother is admitted to the psychiatric ward so that she cannot go on telling the crimes documented in the diaries.
While Wolzow never questions the meaning of a war and sees it only as a career opportunity, Holt and Gomulka increasingly experience the criminal character of the war and the Nazi system. Holt's first doubts come when he meets real “subhumans” for the first time during his service as an anti-aircraft helper and realizes that their animal appearance is only due to their emaciated condition. The Soviet soldiers are badly mistreated by the SS and are almost starving. Contrary to orders, he gets them food, which is due to his still existing romantic view of the war. When Holt's father, whom he visited over Christmas 1943, finally threw the truth in his face, made it clear to him that the SS murdered millions of Jews and other people with gas , and he refused to cooperate in the development of such chemical weapons and was therefore reprimanded and Werner Holt does not want to accept this truth. He still can't imagine serving criminals himself and puts his military duty above any other law.
He has a relationship with the stepmother of a comrade and gets into a bombing raid with her in Wattenscheid. He experiences the horrors of war and the misery of the bombed-out civilian population up close. The depiction of this air raid is a highlight of the novel and probably the best description of this horror in German literature. A little girl tries to save Holt, but she dies in his arms. Back in the flak position, his sergeant-major Gottesknecht asks him about the events. Gottesknecht, a high school teacher in civilian life, made it clear to Holt for the first time that at least some of them had to remain in order to rebuild the destroyed Germany. He calls the cowardly the ones who report to the tank hunting commandos or the one-man torpedoes , because they would avoid the heavier fight that comes afterwards. For the first time, Holt does not see Germany shining brightly, not as a giant swarmed by calls of salvation and flags, but as something that is bleeding and writhing miserably. Holt has to realize that this war is not the big adventure he has always seen it to be. For the first time, he is forced to recognize the consequences that do not fit the propaganda in the newsreels or in the classroom.
In a bomb attack on their flak position, for which their own superiors are negligently responsible (an earth sign made of cloth to identify the position for their own fighter pilots was not obtained and thus the position was shown to the enemy), the first of his schoolmates die. As a result of this, the anti-aircraft position known to the enemy is attacked, a direct hit is achieved in one of their gun positions and the comrades there are completely torn to pieces, which affects Holt very deeply.
He received another impetus to rethink while on vacation when he met the girl Gundula (Gundel) Thiess, who, as the daughter of communists, was isolated from the other youths as a “traitor” and had to work as a housemaid in the house of an SS member. Your parents were murdered. Werner Holt is deeply moved by her fate, but still does not understand how strongly he was indoctrinated and manipulated.
During the labor service in Slovakia , the turning point comes for Holt and Gomulka: The pretty Slovak daughter of the caretaker of their accommodation, a school - Milena, kills a German soldier when he tries to rape her. The caretaker, who shot a German soldier (Kranz) with a hunting rifle when they tried to arrest them, and his daughter are arrested, Holt and Gomulka have to guard them with their guns at the ready. It is clear to both of them that they would have to shoot the two people and would do so if they were ordered to. But they are also aware that the two people are not to blame and that the daughter only saved herself from a rapist. Ultimately, the father and daughter are locked in the school cellar, but only to be executed the next day after a brief SS show trial. On the night before this show trial, however, an attack by Slovak partisans takes place and Holt is ordered to kill the prisoners in the cellar immediately. However, Holt takes advantage of the mess and helps them to escape. He puts his still existing humanity above the soldier.
In the course of their use against the insurgent Slovaks they discover in a sawmill , the remains of a cruel mutilated and murdered by SS men suspected guerrillas and other people was executed. Holt and Gomulka now finally doubt the justice of their cause. However, the four friends react quite differently to the victims of the crime. Wolzow: “I don't understand the SS. If you do something like that, then you don't leave it lying around! "When looking at the cruelly mutilated corpses, Vetter only says:" God help us if we do not win. "Gomulka, who was informed about various crimes by his intellectual father , but she did not want to believe, replies: “It must not be that something like that wins!” and later to Werner Holt “Now I believe everything he (his father)” Several of her classmates and friends fall, but Holt is increasingly unaffected leaves. He observes brutalization on the part of his comrades, whose language is becoming more and more vulgar and who are increasingly behaving like mercenaries.
The training to become a tank soldier is tough, but Wolzow can impress a trainer, a young lieutenant, with his pedigree full of great military men and play with him on the large sandpit great battles of world history or other military tasks that Wolzow almost with his extensive military knowledge always wins, while the rest of the training group practices tactical tank maneuvers at the edge of the sandpit. In these sandpit games Wolzow repeatedly cites military classics such as Moltke or brings up historical parallels up to Hannibal and Caesar . He repeatedly unites his troops in an exemplary manner for decisive operations, leads successful defensive battles and counterattacks and thus proves to the lieutenant his extensive theoretical knowledge of previous as well as current opponents and their combat strategies and how to use them for yourself. Ultimately, it's all about getting a good evaluation from the lieutenant in order to make a career himself. Wolzow realizes only too well that the lieutenant is actually a coward who is actually stupid and at best only moderately intelligent.
Holt, on the other hand, realizes that the hard drill dulls them all. But he also understands that the constant training in racial theory and the slogans hammered into them only serve to uncritically commit crimes such as the murder of the Slovak woman and her father, which Holt prevented. Peter Wiese has now bowed to the compulsion of his parents and also volunteered to join the tank soldiers. The weak boy, who is more inclined to art, loses all lust for life. Vetter, on the other hand, becomes a mercenary and blindly believes the propaganda. He now follows Wolzow like a dog. Holt finally realizes that the cause they are fighting for is wrong, but he is still indebted to his soldier.
When Wolzow volunteered for a tank hunting squad, Vetter got in touch immediately. Amazingly, Gomulka also volunteered for this suicide mission. Holt only follows his friends because of peer pressure . On the way to the front, Holt and Vetter realized that, contrary to what they were told, the Red Army had a large number of and, above all, very effective attack aircraft . Everyone is shocked to see the chaos of retreat and the inability of the leadership to stop this onslaught. Gomulka makes it clear to Holt that he has decided to desert and he surrenders to the advancing Red Army under a white flag before their first deployment on the Eastern Front .
On the other hand, Holt initially follows his friend Wolzow, who wants to make his first real combat mission at an anti-tank barrier a lesson in his “superior” strategy and tactics. However, it fails miserably because "the Russians" see through his trap very quickly. With the last of their strength, Holt, Wolzow and Vetter can just escape.
They are brought together with other dispersed soldiers to form an "assault company" and sent back to the front to stop an imminent attack by the Red Army. In the Soviet assault in the snowstorm, however, they are completely overrun and can only make it back behind their own lines with a lot of luck. Holt has to increasingly recognize not only the superiority of the Red Army, but also how the Wehrmacht tries in vain to counter the onslaught with increasingly senseless acts of desperation. In the propaganda, the Red Army was described to them as a badly armed and badly managed troop from “last reserves”, which only fought their way forward with fanaticism . But they are opposed to an excellently armed and highly motivated Red Army with countless powerful tanks and an extremely powerful air force, which the German side has nothing to counter even remotely equivalent. He also wonders more and more where the Soviet soldiers, who had almost been defeated two years earlier, get their fighting power. He now believes the words of Gomulka, who told him before he deserted that Germany attacked the Soviet Union in deep peace and without a declaration of war and that the Germans raged everywhere as they did in the sawmill.
Holt and his comrades now also see the misery of the refugee treks , but also the long columns of concentration camp inmates on their death marches . When a concentration camp prisoner collapses in front of their control post and is shot dead by an SS man, Peter Wiese, who is now also part of the troops, attacks the SS man with his fists, who simply shoots him at the same time. Holt is now finally beginning to understand that the cause he is fighting for is wrong, but on the one hand he still feels obliged to his soldier's oath, on the other hand he does not want to be seen as a traitor who abandons Germany in its most difficult hour.
He is now getting to know more and more people who have failed, such as the former farmer Oberfeldwebel Burgkert, who went to war in order to conquer land in the east because, as the second son of his family, he cannot inherit any land, but is now addicted to alcohol and will never walk behind a plow again. Burgkert is a veteran of the 44th Panzer Division, to which Holt and his comrades are assigned, has happily survived their loss-making missions in the east, but knows that the shrunken remains of the division consist only of a handful of scrap tanks and are hardly fit for action. Under Burgkert's direction, the freshly trained recruits undertake a tank attack against the Soviet lines, in which all ten tanks used are ultimately destroyed. Holt realizes that the attack was completely pointless and never had any chance of success. He realizes that a final victory is no longer possible. After the experiences in the sawmill and similar events, however, he increasingly wonders where all this will lead and whether a German final victory is really worth striving for.
Oberfeldwebel Burgkert falls completely pointless because he tries to save liquor bottles when opposing attack pilots attack them.
On the western front there is a break between Holt and Wolzow. After the commander's escape, Wolzow takes command of a unit of the Wehrmacht. In a pointless skirmish, he stops the US attack on a small town and commits war crimes such as the shooting of surrendering US soldiers. He also shot a 16-year-old German soldier who had lost his nerve in a chaotic situation and had fled. Wolzow stubbornly takes his soldier's oath and is ready to fight to the death. He plans to wipe up the remains of the unit in a final battle with the US Army . Holt wonders what Wolzow thinks the soldiers are and realizes that they are just figures that he pushes back and forth in the sandpit like the strategy games in training. When Holt asks himself what Wolzow is for the soldiers, he finally realizes the truth. Wolzow is the fate of the soldiers! Wolzow sends her to her death, no providence, no fate. Wolzow is responsible. "My fate is called Wolzow."
With this knowledge he begins to reevaluate all memories and actions of his life in a flash. His mind is finally starting to step in and take control. He turns his life upside down and his mind races from the events and experiences of the past into the now. Now Holt realizes that not only is the cause he is fighting for wrong, worse, he has become a criminal himself by not fighting these crimes! He's been on the wrong side all his life! He belongs to the side of the half-starved Soviet soldiers, to the revolting Slovaks, to the concentration camp inmates, to his father and to Gundel. With the realization that it is people like Wolzow who made him a criminal and now want to send him to his death, he actively opposes them. He disarms Wolzow and he gives the rest of the soldiers in the unit free to withdraw or, even better, surrender to the Americans and flee. When he learned a short time later that Wolzow was about to be hanged by an SS troop whose leader was former Hitler Youth Leader Meissner from her hometown, he returned, armed himself with a machine gun and killed the SS men who Wolzow have hanged in the meantime. He is now actively fighting on the right side, but is immediately captured by American soldiers.
Holt experiences the hardships of being a prisoner of war in various camps and now has to realize that he himself doesn't look any better than the Soviet prisoners of war. Significantly weakened and ill, he is discharged and starts looking for Gundel, who in the meantime, according to the promise that Gundel Holt made during his last vacation, should live with his father. Holt travels across Germany to the Soviet occupation zone with dwindling strength, where he finds Gundel and his father, who has since been made a senior chemist in a chemical company by the Soviets, and then collapses due to complete exhaustion. The first volume ends with Holt recovering at Gundel's side.
The adventures of Werner Holt - novel of a homecoming
The second volume, with the subtitle “The novel of a homecoming”, contains the odyssey of the completely disaffected, sometimes cynical Werner Holt through post-war Germany. Neither with his father, who once refused to develop chemical weapons for the Nazis and was therefore reprimanded and demoted by them, and who was therefore made a senior chemist at a chemical plant in the Soviet zone of occupation by the Soviets , nor with his father was already allowed A mother who was divorced during the Nazi era and wants to introduce him to industrial circles in the western zones, he finds a home or a perspective for his future life. Werner Holt's skepticism about any future vision of a private or political nature is the result of his disappointed belief in National Socialist ideology; he now rejects any worldview and distrusts all the people of his parents' generation, whom he blames for the mistakes of the past.
But he also despises his own generation. He can only see the young communist Schneidereit from his father's business as a politically naive activist and rival in the fight for his childhood friend Gundel Thieß. He despises the young people from the Hamburg bourgeois families who are friends with his mother because of their willingness to glorify their fathers' Nazi past. Their willingness to follow in their footsteps and their support for a new war on the US side against the Soviet Union stunned him.
The attempt to find refuge in his first relationship with Uta Barnim from his time before the flak is also rather disappointing. As a hermit she has withdrawn to her family's old possessions in the Black Forest and stubbornly tries to avenge the death of her father, who was executed for high treason. To do this, she uses the connection to Sepp Gomulka's father, who now lives as a lawyer in Nuremberg, and another lawyer. Holt realizes that Uta is also practicing a slightly different variety of his Hamburg relatives and dissolves this relationship after a few months. This has at least 'grounded' him again and confronted him with the purely practical things of the struggle for survival. Uta wanted to deny all possessions - quite easy when you've had enough of it ...
Holt respects the former resistance fighter and concentration camp prisoner Müller in his father's chemical factory, but he also feels shame towards him, which creates distance. Müller is the only one who realizes that Holt needs a lot of patience in order to develop.
He throws his knowledge in the face of the communist Schneidereit, to whom Holt ultimately succumbs in courting for Gundel's favor. He, Schneidereit, had experienced hell on earth, sat in prison and in a concentration camp, but at least he knew why and that he was on the right side. He, Holt, also experienced hell on earth, saw friends falling, knew in the end that everything was wrong and he served criminals, but no one told him what the right way was. Around him his world and his faith collapsed, people died and crimes were committed, but there was no one to help him on the way to the truth. He had to see it all alone.
At the end of this journey through East and West, through life's lies and world views, Werner Holt decided to take his Abitur where his father lived: in the Soviet zone of occupation. One of the few positive figures from his time as an air force helper is Gottesknecht, who supports him as a teacher at the school, but also challenges and criticizes him. The success in learning, but also the recurring compulsion to take a stand in decisive situations, form the basis for the protagonist's gradually changing attitude towards life. So he stands up against his comrade and school friend Cousin, who first becomes a black market trader , then a criminal and finally a murderer wanted in all occupation zones. The responsibility he has taken on with a love affair with a younger girl ultimately leads him to give up his cynicism and rediscover his emotional world. At the end of the novel, Holt , who had matured much too early due to the war and his mercenary mentality , which he now admits to himself, becomes a young man who takes on responsibility of his own accord, who begins to help shape his environment without being critical and to give up an uncompromising attitude towards oneself. The “home” he wanted to stay in was destroyed in the war. A new one can only be created with his cooperation: “I come from a world that has led me into a single error, and I want to go free out of this error,” he says at the end of the novel.
Kippenberg
An originally planned third volume of The Adventures of Werner Holt , which was to have the further development of the protagonist from the first two volumes in the GDR as a theme, was never written. In a certain way, the novel Kippenberg can be understood as a continuation of the character of Werner Holt: In February 1967, an extremely successful chemist went through a life crisis, which he made with his own wrong decisions and life lies, but also triggered by contact with a young woman who abandons the trajectory of her life, confronted with forgotten goals from the period of construction of the GDR. The focus of the novel, however, is a critical examination of the reality of decision-making functions and structures in the GDR, especially in the science / party / industry triangle of forces, with saturated decision-makers who, as the title character must also recognize for himself, have distanced themselves from the original goals of a socialist society. As in Werner Holt , the author avoids drawing a hero figure in Kippenberg . The chemist Kippenberg raises more questions than he can answer, finds ways that, from contradictions, produce new contradictions. Different and often incompatible professional and social points of view of the protagonists become comprehensible in their biographical condition. In 1979 Dieter Noll received the National Prize of the GDR 2nd class for art and literature for Kippenberg .
In 1981 the film adaptation of Kippenberg was published.
literature
- Dieter Noll: The adventures of Werner Holt. Novel of a youth. 8th edition. Structure of Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-7466-1043-5
- Dieter Noll: The adventures of Werner Holt. A homecoming novel. 3. Edition. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1964
- Dieter Noll: Kippenberg . Novel. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1979