Lieutenant Bertram
Leutnant Bertram is a 1944 novel by the German writer Bodo Uhse . The first part takes place in Germany from 1935 to 1936 and describes the society and mentality, especially in the Luftwaffe officer corps . The second part takes place mostly in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1937.
content
Part 1: Attack on Wyst
Lieutenant Bertram is an officer in the German Air Force stationed on the Pomeranian Baltic coast. He has an affair with Marianne, the wife of his superior, Major Jost. An aircraft crashes during a maneuver. 4 men are killed, including Kress, with whom Captain Harteneck has an affair, and Sander, Hilde's fiancé. The fishing families living there are driven from the island of Wyst off the coast in order to set up an aircraft base there and practice bombing. The fisherman Christensen refuses to leave the island. He offers armed resistance and is killed by Bertram. The communist Hein Sommerwand used to be Marianne's partner before he had to go into hiding. Since his release from the concentration camp , the other illegally active Communist Party members have distrusted him. Georg should check its reliability. Hans lets himself be used as a worker for the construction of the airfield on Wyst, in order to collect information and to do decomposition work among the soldiers. He befriends Corporal Kowalski. Kowalski is arrested by the Gestapo . Marianne is pregnant from Bertram. She reveals herself to Hans. Marianne tells her friend, the count's daughter Erika, that she is pregnant. Erika then reports that she herself had an illegal abortion. Harteneck overhears this conversation. Marianne wants the child and tells her husband that she is expecting a child. Tensions arise between Jost and Marianne because Jost does not want any children and (rightly) doubts Marianne's marital fidelity. At first he thinks that Marianne had him with Bertram, later that she cheated on him with Hein. In addition, he suspects the origin of the decomposition work on Wyst in Hein. He denounced him to the Gestapo. Marianne tries to warn Hein, but has a miscarriage due to the excitement and physical overload. When Jost arrives at the hospital, he meets old Kunze, who established the contact between Georg and Hein and was beaten up by the Gestapo because of Jost's denunciation and was fatally injured in the process and is waiting to be killed without betraying anyone. Shortly afterwards Marianne also dies. Hein and Georg escape to Paris .
Part 2: On a strange earth
Lieutenant Bertram goes to Spain as an officer of the Condor Legion and takes part in the bombing of Madrid . Soviet aviators inflict heavy losses on German units. Bertram saves the life of the Spanish aviator Cisnero during a mission. Cisnero sympathizes with the republic and serves in Franco's air force to save his life. His wife and two daughters live in Madrid, the city he is bombing. Cisnero's wife and older daughter are killed in the bombing raids. Meanwhile, Jost wants to destroy Harteneck because of his homosexuality. In order to avoid this misfortune, Harteneck blackmailed the count's daughter Erika, knowing about her abortion, to become engaged to him in order to escape the suspicion of homosexuality and to ascend into better society. Harteneck can be transferred to Spain. Hein Sommerwand and Georg are also fighting in Spain. As officers of the International Brigades, you defend Madrid. They later fight for Guadalajara . In a hospital, Hein meets Hilde Kowalski, the private's sister from the island of Wyst. Her husband Albert dies in the hospital. Hein later visits Hilde in Madrid. Together they adopt an orphan girl who, as it later turns out, is Cisnero's daughter. Dr. Kersten, the former doctor from the Pomeranian coastal town, also serves in the International Brigades. He tells Hein about the deaths of Kunze and Marianne and suspects Hilde of espionage. She is arrested and confesses to spying for the German Reich . To spy she is being blackmailed by allowing her threatening to kill the child she has in common with the unfortunate Sander. Bertram is shocked by the inhuman warfare of the allied fascist armies. Cisnero is shot by his comrades in the presence of Bertram, Harteneck and other German officers because he had sought contact with his family by letter. Harteneck orders Guernica to be destroyed. When Bertram's plane is badly damaged and he has to make an emergency landing, Harteneck shoots him because it is forbidden to land in enemy territory. Bertram survives and the fall becomes for him a "fall from the lie into the truth". He distances himself from fascism .
expenditure
The first edition of the work was published - in German - in Mexico in 1943 by Editorial El Libro Libre . The next edition appeared in English in 1944 under the title Lieutenant Bertram at Simon & Schuster in New York . In 1946 a French translation followed by Éditions du Bateau Ivre , Paris, a Polish translation in 1951 , a first in Czech in 1954 and a first in Russian in 1987 . The last German-language edition was published in 1974 by Aufbau-Verlag , Berlin.
Individual evidence
- ^ Reference in the catalog of the German National Library .
- ^ Reference in the catalog of the German National Library.
- ^ Reference in the catalog of the German National Library.
- ^ Reference in the catalog of the German National Library.
- ^ Reference in the catalog of the German National Library.
- ^ Reference in the catalog of the German National Library.