Nothing new in the east
Nothing new in the east with the subtitle Das Buch d. War as it was is a field report from the First World War , written by Carl August Gottlob Otto . The book was first published in 1929 by the Sanitas publishing house in Zirndorf - Nuremberg and in Leipzig by R. Gieglers Buchhandlung with a volume of 302 pages. This year also came Erich Maria Remarque novel nothing new in the west out.
title
The author tells in the present tense in the style of a first-person narrator and addresses the reader through numerous direct addresses, which makes the fiction clear. The title of the book alludes to a recurring formula in the official war reports from the front. In his book, the author tries to fill this blank space in the official announcement with material from the lives of soldiers at the front. Unlike Remarque, he does not choose the form of the novel with all the possibilities of fictional representation and emotional charge, but that of a documentary factual report in which the battle images and war events, the sufferings and hardships of the soldiers, as they have happened every day in many places , be described factually.
A detailed description of all aspects of the war machine with its cruelty and degeneracy, the psychological and physical stresses of the individual soldiers, their privations, suffering and brutality from the war, creates a vivid picture of the endless, repetitive horrors of war.
content
The author places a soldier and his experiences at the center of the book, although it remains open whether the book contains autobiographical elements. The soldier volunteers, is trained, comes to the western front , is transported to the eastern front , is wounded, comes back to the eastern front, experiences the revolution and the time after the revolution.
The storyline does not make the work appear like a novel, it is rather a series of topics that are addressed one after the other. Be addressed:
- Convocation, training, trenches, field post , iron cross , patrols,
- Melee, battlefield, food, lice, frostbite, wounded, dead, sick play,
- Stage, blackmail, GV ( garrison usable ), self-mutilation, women, nurses,
- Failure to provide assistance, euthanasia, front leave, necromancy, salt, illegitimate children,
- Fraternization , suicide commands , telephone troops , aerial bombs , amputations,
- Homosexuality, shrapnel , poison gas, atheism, dum-dum bullets , sleep,
- Hunger, love, austrians, impotence, vaccination, premonition of death, storm attack, tanks,
- Executions, carbide , coincidence, ruse, patriot groups, thieves, corpses,
- Fraud, hunger, harbingers of the revolution, spy, war frenzy, poor food, revolution, end of war.
Towards the end of the book, the soldier comes to the conclusion that those who died in the war would have been better off. The survivors did not receive thanks from the fatherland, but were disadvantaged in several ways after the war. For years they had achieved nothing, wasted their lives, the competitors for jobs were now younger and cheaper, and they were no longer suitable for a normal life. Otto closes the experience report with the words:
“That is an undeniable consequence of the lost war. Our cohorts are the victims whose corpses, especially the generations after us, will pass for decades. "
Inferences
Otto introduces his work with the words:
“In the work no special dates are mentioned, in order not only to arouse a one-sided interest of dated events. It doesn't even matter. The content of the book refers to all theaters of the world war. Combat images and incidents of war, as described here, took place at the same time every day in hundreds of places in all theaters of war. This is intended to convey the image of the war as it really was without any tendency. "
According to the experience report, Otto speculates about the next, future war. Here he predicts that poison gas will play a more important role than in the First World War.
criticism
In a dissertation on texts critical of the war, it is said that the book definitely wanted to build on the success of Remarque's novel. It also says: The simplest things in military life are explained and figures and problems are created schematically or typifying. The central conflict between the factual affirmation of war and inner distance to the war has largely been defused, the protagonist is shown almost exclusively as a victim of the overpowering military system. The depiction is only surprising because of its appendix ..... in which a gas war or chemical war is discussed .... Otto uses the myth of the "lost generation" much more clearly than Remarque ....
output
- Carl AG Otto: Nothing new in the East. The book of war as it was . 1929.