Last letters from Stalingrad

Last Letters from Stalingrad was the title of an anthology first published in West Germany in 1950 , which has been translated into many languages. It supposedly contained authentic war letters from German soldiers from the Battle of Stalingrad .

content

Through the individual fates that these last letters from Stalingrad express , the reader gets a more tangible impression of the horrors of the war, especially the battle of Stalingrad. The book, which is also of literary quality in certain respects, tells of the "individual (...) in the face of death" (Ferber) and thus contradicts the usual reports and historiography of the sacrifice of anonymous armies. These letters, which have to be dated shortly before the end of the battle, are no longer in the foreground of an idea, but rather surrender, anger or sadness:

I've cried so much in the last few nights that it seems unbearable to myself .

So now you know that I'm not coming back. Teach our parents gently. I am badly shaken and I very much doubt everything. Once I was a believer and strong - now I am small and unbelieving. Much of what is going on here I will not find out, but the little that I take part is already so much that I cannot swallow it. I cannot be persuaded that my comrades die with the words “Germany” or “ Heil Hitler ” on their lips. To die - that cannot be denied; but the last word is for the mother, or the person you love most, or just the call for help.

Twenty-six times I have written to you from this accursed city and you have replied to me with 17 letters. Now I will write again and then no more. So there it is! I thought for a long time about how to formulate this heavy sentence in order to say everything in it and yet not to hurt so much.

There is no victory Mr. General! There are only flags and men that fall and in the end there will be neither flags nor men. Stalingrad is not a military necessity, but a political risk - and your son is not doing this experiment, General! They blocked his way into life - he will choose the second way, in the opposite direction, which also leads into life; but on the other side of the front.

expenditure

The 68-page cardboard ribbon in the first edition was published by Die Quadriga in 1950 . It was so successful that Sigbert Mohn-Verlag added it to its program in 1954 and published it as number 60 within the series Das kleine Buch . Numerous translations and new editions followed.

Foreign language editions

The following list gives an overview of foreign-language editions of the Last Letters from Stalingrad , as they are drawn up in the online catalog of the German National Library :

Sidste Breve fra Stalingrad, Copenhagen 1954
Sista Breven från Stalingrad, Stockholm 1955
Last Letters from Stalingrad London 1956
Lettres de Stalingrad, Paris 1957
Ultime Lettere da Stalingrado, Turin 1959
Viimeiset Kirjeet Stalingradista, Jyväskylä 1960
Last Letters from Stalingrad, New York 1962
Las últimas Cartas de Stalingrado, Barcelona 1963
Last letters from Stalingrad, Tokyo 1993

Emergence

Allegedly, letters like the ones summarized in the anthology were supposed to be used for a propaganda documentary work after the statistical evaluation (one wanted to get to know the mood of the troops in the fortress Stalingrad ¹⁾ ) in the Third Reich . Joseph Goebbels , however, considered them "intolerable for the German people" after viewing them. The ones published in Last Letters from Stalingrad are said to be the only of those letters flown out of Stalingrad in January 1943 that reappeared after 1945 as copies made for the subsequently banned documentary company, after they had been secured in the Reichsarchiv Potsdam a few days before the capture of Berlin .

The journalist Christian Ferber describes the genesis of a record edition in 1961:

They (the soldiers) wrote letters - letters that never reached their recipients, but were used by the functionaries of the calamity as a barometer of mood at the front. One bundle, however, was preserved and published after the war.

¹⁾ After the confiscation of the letters, which had been flown out of Novocherkassk in seven mail sacks by order of the Führer Headquarters in January 1943 with the last machine , the addresses and senders were first removed; The letters were then sorted according to content and tendencies and forwarded to the Army Information Department for statistical recording of the mood at the front, where the letters were divided into five groups; A: positive to warfare: 2.1%; B: doubtful: 4.4%; C: disbelievingly disapproving: 57.1%; D: oppositional: 3.4%; E: without comment, indifferent: 33.0%.

Doubts about authenticity

In the 1960s, historians and media experts began to doubt the authenticity of the Last Letters from Stalingrad that they had either been manipulated by an editor or even forged. Evidence for this was initially a certain uniformity of style, later more and more the comparisons that could be made with other war letters from Stalingrad that were found in Volgograd , collected in the field post archive at the Museum for Communication in Berlin or from open Russian archives.

The legal philosopher, lawyer and Hegel researcher Wilhelm Raimund Beyer , who himself took part in the Battle of Stalingrad, vehemently doubts the authenticity of the Last Letters from Stalingrad in one of his last publications . He speaks of "concerns (...) very large against the (...) band". Much about and in this book is correct and therefore everything is probably not correct. In addition to a “uniformed style”, Beyer's opinion is that the subject areas dealt with in the letters are more than questionable. He deems

the whole project as a certain imitation of the former successful book “ War Letters of German Students ” (1915) (...). The (...) laid down data and facts and especially the ideological outpourings of these letters did not match

with my own experience.

Despite all doubts about authenticity, it ultimately remains controversial whether and, above all, to what extent the letters printed for the first time in 1950 are processing, manipulation or forgery.

reception

Germany

In Germany, the letters helped to come to terms with the devastating battle of Stalingrad, which the Wehrmacht had tried to justify. The publication was seen as an indictment of the soldiers who had died in Stalingrad against the then high command. The little book was also used in a certain way to “think of the dead” and “remind the living” (Ferber).

In his speech “To the Germans” on June 17, 1962 , held in the Bundeshaus in Bonn, Helmut Thielicke referred to the publication in order to ask the fallen of the last world war about “Germany”.

Excerpts from Last Letters from Stalingrad were used in West German school lessons in the 1960s and 1970s , e. For example, individual letters were included in Gelebte Zeiten - admonishing figures (1968), a reader with texts for political education .

foreign countries

Abroad, the letters were read mainly as "a human document that bares the man's soul in his worst hour". In the post-war period, the anthology also contributed to the reconciliation of foreign countries with the Germans and to the dismantling of Germany's enemy image as the “land of the Nazis ”.

The French President François Mitterrand is said to have carried the French edition of the letters from Stalingrad with him all the time during the last months of his life . B. used in his famous speech on the 50th anniversary of the end of the war on May 8, 1995.

Others

filming

Tears from the cover of the German DVD release of the feature film Lettres de Stalingrad in 2003

In France, based on Last Letters from Stalingrad in 1969, based on a screenplay by Gilles Katz , who also directed, the film Lettres de Stalingrad with Alberto Cavalcanti , James Cellier , Paul Crauchet and Frederic Muninger , a chamber play-like film experiment, which reads out the letters of war integrated into a framework and z. Partly illustrated with documentary recordings from the Second World War. In Germany, the film was released in 1972 not under the original German title, but with the literal translation of the French title Letters from Stalingrad . The Lexicon of International Films stated in a review that the film adaptation, like the book, was able to demonstrate the senselessness of war. The German DVD release in 2003, on the other hand, was given the unsuitable subtitle In der Weißen Hölle, the dead had no name and a lurid cover, on which the book was also incorrectly referred to as the best-selling novel .

Settings

The anthology Last Letters from Stalingrad has also recently inspired two great works in contemporary music theater: a chamber music work by Elias Tanenbaum and Aubert Lemeland's 10th Symphony , a collage of music and recitation . As early as 1961, the German actor Hansjörg Felmy designed 12 letters and the introductory part of the book for a record in the literary archive of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft - “with the necessary objectivity”, as the cover text noted.

United States

The New York composer and composition teacher Elias Tanenbaum wrote his work for baritone , guitar , viola and drums Last Letters from Stalingrad (1981) based on the US edition of The Last Letters from Stalingrad (1962 ). The composer grouped 12 letters in three equal parts around the Gregorian mountain burial chant Libera Me . The work begins with a triumphant drum solo. The same solo forms the end of the composition, but embeds the German folk song Schön ist die Jugend (she does not come back) .

In Germany, the work was performed in Munich by the Bayreuth- born director and action artist Peter Kees .

France

The French edition Lettres de Stalingrad (1957) inspired the composer and writer Aubert Lemeland to write his 10th symphony Last Letters from Stalingrad (1998), a six-movement requiem for speaker, soprano and orchestra. "Reading (the letters ) made a lasting impression on me over the years," explains the composer over the forty years between the publication of Lettres de Stalingrad in France and the premiere of the symphony in Koblenz :

It is a difficult undertaking to express the last, very personal moments of the German soldiers who were trapped in Stalingrad, especially in music. It took me more than ten years to get to the moment of this battle.

Scandal over letters in the Reichstag

When the symphony was to be performed in the Berlin Reichstag building in 2002 at a commemoration of the German War Graves Commission for the Fallen in Stalingrad with Senta Berger as the spokesperson for the Last Letters , the news magazine Der Spiegel forced a scandal: a statement by Bundestag President Wolfgang Thierse , who was before wanted to proofread the work or the letters during the performance in order not to participate in an event in which "Nazi letters" were read out, was picked up by the mirror and made a political issue. The composer, on the other hand, soon saw himself denigrated by the German press, specifically not by Thierse, as a “Nazi propagandist” and canceled his participation in the memorial hour. After this scandal for her reputation, Senta Berger was concerned about releasing a CD that had already been recorded.

Image and sound carriers

Speech plate

Hansjörg Felmy reads: Last letters from Stalingrad; Deutsche Grammophon, 1961

Music CD

Elias Tanenbaum: Last Letters from Stalingrad; Albany Records 1997
Aubert Lemeland: Last Letters from Stalingrad, 10th Symphony. Speaker: Senta Berger; Top Music, 2002
Aubert Lemeland: Symphony No. 10; Skarbo, 2002

Feature film DVD

Letters from Stalingrad: French feature film from 1969; MiB media sales in Buchholz 2003