Missa sine nomine

Missa sine nomine (in German: Mass without a name ) is the last novel by Ernst Wiechert . He acts in an undisclosed location in Germany immediately after the end of the Second World War .

characters

The main characters are the three brothers and barons Amadeus, Erasmus and Egidius Liljecrona, who meet again after years. Amadeus was in a concentration camp , Erasmus is a retired general, Aegidius managed the family estate until he fled East Prussia .

Secondary characters are the forester Buschan, his wife, their daughter Barbara, the former coachman Christoph, the Protestant pastor Wittkopp, the American first lieutenant John Hilary Kelley and the Jewish trader Jakob.

The scene of the event is an old castle with a forester's house and sheepfold, which initially houses a staff of the United States Army and is later confiscated by the German authorities to accommodate displaced persons.

action

At the beginning, the returned Amadeus tries to find his way back into civilian life and to establish a relationship with his sorely missing brothers who now live in the castle's sheepfold. He admits that the lonely hikes around the moor and other nature experiences are more important to him than the contact with people. The fluent German-speaking soldier Kelley advises him to deal with the horror by writing it down, and Amadeus obeys him.

The barons are contrasted with the figure of the approximately 18-year-old forester's daughter Barbara, who through her father had become a supporter of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism and who now dares not admit to having been deceived; she treats the American victors with hatred and the barons with contempt. She meets a stranger who remains nameless and is only called The Dark One and becomes pregnant by him. The dark man forcibly gains access to houses and apartments and kills men, women and children if he is not given what he wants. He is caught with an animal trapping iron by a man from Lithuania, brought to justice, sentenced to death and hanged. As a result, Barbara plans her revenge on Amadeus, whom she blames for the capture of her boyfriend: She hires some young people to injure Amadeus with gunshots. When she sees the victim lying on the ground at the edge of the forest, she sits down next to him to watch him die. Amadeus manages to persuade Barbara to get help and he can be saved. During pregnancy, Barbara undergoes a radical personality change; she now believes that Amadeus is the father of her unborn child and fears having to marry the much older man.

In the meantime, Aegidius has taken the position of manager of a neighboring property. He marries the landlady and becomes a father. Erasmus meets a woman who says of herself that she owns cigar factories in Hamburg and marries her; when the woman's story turns out to be wrong, she disappears without saying goodbye.

interpretation

Ernst Wiechert composes the novel as if the nobles were noble keepers of a bygone era; at her side stands the coachman Christoph, who appears as a wise old man. In the memory of the barons, their father lives on, who collected and researched instead of acquiring “the fat of the earth”. The nobility is associated with the concept of duty "to till the field and protect the defenseless" (p. 147).

The nobles are juxtaposed with the common people who were deprived of their certainty by the dissolution of the Nazi state and their flight and expulsion. They, and especially the women among them, live in a constant battle over trifles during their cramped residence in the castle.

The author takes a special look at the role of the church, which is reflected from the perspective of the refugee pastor Wittkopp, who initially refuses to take up a position again because the church abused its power during the Nazi era and its pastors were not entitled to it to stand "on top of the pulpit" again.

In many places the novel represents a commitment to the traditional estate order, in which the nobility sets the tone because they were raised in loyalty to duty; only in the historical review of the old coachman Christoph is the time of serfdom criticized.

The historical location of the novel is unique because it illuminates the time after the war and before the creation of the two German states, i.e. the years from May 1945 to April 1949.

Wiechert focuses on the experience of forest and moor; The times of day and the seasons form the rhythm of the life of the depicted persons and their chance for self-assurance, a kind of consolation after the loss of their homeland and the collapse of almost all state order.

Text output

Ernst Wiechert: Missa sine nomine. Desch, Munich 1950.

literature

Wilhelm Olbrich : Article Missa sine nomine. In: Johannes Beer (Ed.): Der Romanführer. Volume 5, Part III, pp. 947-949, Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1954.
Eduard Spranger : The last work. In: Ernst Wiechert. Man and his work. Desch, Munich 1951, pp. 62-69.