Esther (novella)

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Esther is a novella by Bruno Apitz . It first appeared in the PEN Almanac in 1959 and is considered Apitz's oldest surviving prose work. Although the novel Nackt unter Wölfen was published first , Esther was created in 1944 in Buchenwald concentration camp .

content

The text tells the love story of the young couple Esther and Oswald in an unnamed concentration camp . There, influenced by Oswald, she recognized the need for resistance. Although it can only be a symbolic gesture in view of the circumstances, Esther accepts the resistance struggle as a goal in life. In a key scene, Esther refuses, together with Oswald by morphine to suicide to vote, although it is already clear that they are in the gas chamber shall die. Instead, she tries to resist until the end.

The novella ends with Esther disappearing the following day. Oswald finds the traces of a fight and her torn dress in front of the gas chamber.

Emergence

The concept of the novella came about during Apitz's eight-year imprisonment in Buchenwald concentration camp. The story is based on a true story that Apitz heard from former inmates of the Natzweiler concentration camp . After the liberation in 1945, he finished the story in Leipzig. Esther was presented to the public for the first time in 1946 at an SED event . It wasn't published until 13 years later.

meaning

Today , compared to Apitz's novel Naked Amongst Wolves , Esther doesn't play a big role. The novella, however, had a major impact on the development of GDR literature . Esther is considered to be one of the most important literary works that were created in a concentration camp.

The importance of Esther is also shown in the fact that the material was implemented as an opera by Robert Hanell and Günther Deicke in 1969 . Apitz also wrote a script for a film adaptation.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bengt Algot Sørensen, Steffen Arndal: History of German literature . In: Beck's series . 2nd Edition. tape 2 . CH Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-47589-2 (467 pages, limited preview in Google book search).
  2. ↑ James MacPherson Ritchie: German Literature under National Socialism . Taylor & Francis, London 1983, ISBN 0-389-20418-8 (English, limited preview in Google Book Search).

literature

  • Eva Reissland: Bruno Apitz . In: Hans Jürgen Geerdts (Ed.): Literature of the GDR. Individual representations . tape 1 . People and Knowledge, Berlin 1976.
  • German literature since 1945: German-Jewish literature? In: Pól O'Dochartaigh (Ed.): German monitor . 53rd edition. Rodopi, 2000, ISBN 90-420-1453-9 , ISSN  0927-1910 (English, 673 pages, limited preview in the Google book search).