Spanish War Diary
Spanish War Diary is an experience report in book form by Alfred Kantorowicz about his experiences in the Spanish Civil War . The records refer to the period from December 1936 to April 1938, during which Kantorowicz worked as a press officer in the International Brigades .
content
In the diary-like, detailed descriptions of the struggles around Madrid and on the front sections of Pozoblanco and Brunete , the claim of the testimony of an experience report is invoked again and again, which should relentlessly expose one's own psyche and that of the struggling like-minded people in their needs and fears. Kantorowicz succeeds convincingly in articulating the communist brigadists' attitude to life. In the partly humorous, partly grotesque entries, considerations are made about the aim and meaning of the anti-fascist struggle . For him it is primarily a matter of restoring humanity and less of an ideological enterprise in the sense of the communist world revolution . The descriptions are loosened up by encounters with important writers at the front such as Ernest Hemingway , Gustav Regulator , Egon Erwin Kisch and others. His strong attachment to communist ideology is in conflict with the sharp criticism of the behavior of party officials , who were Stalinist in Spain during the war Carried out purges and thus contributed to the failure of the Spanish Revolution .
background
The book was first published in East Berlin in 1948 under the title Spanisches Tagebuch , which in turn was based on a manuscript version created in 1939/40. The final edition, published in 1966 under the title Spanish War Diary , is a revision of the text published in 1948.
See also
Bibliographical information
- Spanish War Diary . With a new foreword by the author and an appendix to previously unpublished documents and letters. Fischer , Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-596-25175-3 (library of burned books as Fischer paperback number 5175, licensed edition of Konkret-Literatur-Verlag Hamburg ).