Rubble literature

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The rubble literature (also literature of the hour zero , war or homecoming literature ) is a German literary epoch . It flourished in Germany immediately after the Second World War and, in the early 1950s , receded from modern, more complex and experimental forms, such as those from Arno Schmidt , Günter Grass , Peter Rühmkorf and Uwe Johnson .

Classification in literary history

The authors of the rubble literature were mostly young men who were held in prison camps after the war or who had returned home. That is why the era began in the magazines of the prisoner-of-war camps (e.g. Der Ruf ). Most of the authors of this young generation were at the beginning of their literary work and did not continue the tradition of National Socialist literature , the literature of inner emigration or exile literature .

Foreign reference points and role models were the American short stories and their terse, simple and unreflective style. The works of Ernest Hemingway , John Steinbeck and William Faulkner are particularly worthy of mention here. Other ideologically influential authors, some from the spectrum of existentialism and the Resistance , were the French Jean Anouilh , Jean-Paul Sartre , Albert Camus and the Italians Elio Vittorini and Ignazio Silone . Other role models were unorthodox left-wing German emigrants such as Arthur Koestler and Gustav Regulator . After the end of the Third Reich, all of these authors were (again) accessible and some of them were deliberately disseminated by the victorious powers, for example in prisoner-of-war camps .

The rubble literature ended when Germany became increasingly wealthy, the cities were built and the horrors of war faded into the background. Further reasons for the ultimate failure of the rubble literature were the pressure of restorative literary norms, the too hesitant and laborious development of the genre, the formal uncertainty and overestimation of many authors and the later distancing of some writers from their rubble works as literary sins of youth. However, some of the authors also shaped other German post-war literature , for example in Group 47 or GDR literature .

Style and subject

The authors embarked on a radically new path in literature. They expressly tried to set themselves apart from the previous currents in terms of content and form. The language as the ideological carrier of National Socialism (see also Language of National Socialism ) should be completely rebuilt through a purification process. Calligraphy was also rejected as literary calligraphy , and the expression of ideology and feeling was taboo. The new literature was supposed to be realistic, unpsychological, and truthful, so it made a truth postulate. It should grasp exactly what happened and what existed. A magical realism was called for, which sees behind the reality but also the unreality. This also made a demand on the authors: An author who wants to write in this new sense must get involved in literature and reality and leave the ivory tower .

Forms of older epochs such as Romanticism , Expressionism and the New Objectivity were only partially used . Traditional lyrical forms such as the sonnet were also still used. The stylistic means used were laconic language, which described, but did not evaluate, the shattered and bleak world, as well as an episodic limitation of space, narrative time and characters. Another important stylistic device was repetition .

In terms of content, the rubble literature dealt with intentionally meager and direct observations of the hard life in the ruined cities, in refugee camps. Another topic was the fate of isolated and wandering people who stood in front of the ruins of their home and their property, and also in front of the ruins of their values ​​and had to deal with it. Many people felt addressed by the topic of returnees, stories of those returning from the war or the prison camps, who suddenly found themselves in a world that had no more room for them. The question of guilt and collective guilt for war and the Holocaust was also in the foreground. This was not an easy question as many of the writers themselves were involved in the war as soldiers and now had to review their own roles. The rubble literature criticized the political and social restoration of Germany.

Agitation literature and propaganda , literary classics, the stylistic device of recourse to antiquity , literary calligraphy, pathetic , exuberant literature, stylistic escapism as well as the older rationalism of the 19th century and its purely rational description were frowned upon and viewed as literary enemy images .

Clear-cutting literature

The clear-cut literature existed as a thematically similar tributary. She described the immediate experience of the war and the post-war from the point of view of the "common people". The trend sketched above all by Wolfgang Weyrauch in the epilogue of his short story anthology “Thousand Gramm” emphasizes once again the magical realism. Literature should help you cope with the past and rebuild the future. Stylistically, the language was characterized by its scarcity with few paraphrases and attributes. The aim was to purify the language abused by National Socialist ideology through scarcity (= clear-cutting). The content-related topics were, on the one hand, the exact analysis of the truth, i.e. the need in ruined cities, the fate of people who stood in front of the rubble of their existence (= loss of home, property, values), and on the other hand, the question of guilt for the war and the Holocaust and the criticism of the political and social restoration of Germany.

Authors and works

The definition of an author as a rubble writer does not always apply exactly, because often only a small part of the work falls into the relatively short epoch.

Debris film

Main article: Debris film

Parallel to the rubble literature, rubble films were also made in the late 1940s. These were partly based on works from rubble literature, for example Love 47 as a film adaptation of Wolfgang Borchert's radio play Outside in front of the door.

Quotes

“So we wrote about the war, about the homecoming and what we had seen in the war and found when we returned: about rubble; that resulted in three keywords that were added to the young literature: war, returnees and rubble literature. "

- Heinrich Böll : Confession to rubble literature

"The name Homer is not suspicious of the entire occidental world of education: [...] Homer tells of the Trojan War, the destruction of Troy and the homecoming of Ulysses - war, rubble and homecoming literature - we have no reason to be ashamed of this name . "

- Heinrich Böll : Confession to rubble literature

Sources and literature

  • Rüdiger Bernhardt: Is there no one, no answer ??? To understand the texts of Wolfgang Borchert. In: German lessons. 48 (1995) 5, pp. 236-245.
  • Heinrich Böll: Commitment to rubble literature. In: Bernd Balzer (Ed.): Heinrich Böll. Works. Essayist Writings and Speeches 1: 1952–1963. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1979, ISBN 3-462-01258-4 , pp. 31-34.
  • Karl Esselborn: A new beginning as a program. In: Ludwig Fischer, Rolf Grimmiger (ed.): Literature in the Federal Republic of Germany until 1967. Carl Hanser, Munich, Vienna 1986, pp. 230–243. (= Hanser's social history of German literature from the 16th century to the present, Vol. 10)
  • Wilhelm Große: Wolfgang Borchert. Short stories. Oldenbourg, Munich 1995, pp. 11-19. (= Oldenbourg Interpretations Vol. 30)
  • Hans Kügler: Eighth May 1945 - approaching a date. In: Praxis Deutsch. 22 (1995) issue 131, pp. 13-21.
  • Ralf Schnell: German literature after 1945. In: German history of literature. 6th edition. Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2001, pp. 479-510.
  • Gabriele Schultheiß: The muse as rubble woman: Investigation of rubble literature using the example of Walter Kolbenhoff . Hochschulschr .: Frankfurt am Main, Univ. 1984, dissertation 1982.
  • Volker Wedeking : Literary Programs of the Early Post-War Period. In: Language and Literature in Science and Education. 21 (1990) 2, pp. 2-15.
  • Wolfgang Weyrauch : Afterword to a thousand grams. In: Wolfgang Weyrauch (Ed.): Thousand grams. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1989, pp. 175-183.
  • Gustav Zürcher: rubble poetry. Political poetry 1945–1950. Scriptor, Kronberg 1977 (= monographs literary studies, vol. 35).

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