Tears of the fatherland

Tears of the Fatherland is a sonnet by Andreas Gryphius . It is “one of the best-known baroque poems”, “probably the most famous German poem of the 17th century”, “an integral part of the school and university canon”, “repeatedly reprinted in anthologies and reading books”, and “has an intense one like no other Research History ".

• Print in the edition of 1657
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The poem was first published in 1637 as the twenty-sixth of the 31 so-called " Lissa sonnets " in Lissa, Poland . There it bore the title Trawrklage des Devastated Germany . The next print, a heavily revised version under the title Threnen des Vatterlandes / Anno 1636 , was published in Leiden in 1643 , the twenty-seventh of the collection of 50 sonnets “ANDREAE GRYPHII SONNETE. The first book. ”Further prints during Gryphius' lifetime were made in 1650, 1657 and finally in the last edition in 1663. The subtitle“ Anno 1636 ”presumably names the year of its creation - in the middle of the Thirty Years War .

The 1637 version was reprinted in 1963 in Volume 1 of a complete edition of the German-language works for which Marian Szyrocki and Hugh Powell were responsible, the 1663 version in 2012 by Thomas Borgstedt.

text

The texts are taken from Szyrocki's and Borgstedt's reprints.

Trawr action of the devastated Germany. (1637)

We are now completely / yes more than completely dead.
The cheeky crowd / the raging trumpet /
That heavy heavy heavy with blood / the thundering Carthaun /
Has all this away / what many sawr acquired /
The old honesty and virtue has died;
The churches are devastated / die Starcken vmbgehawn /
The virgins are defiled; and wherever we go /
Is Fewr / Pest / Mord vnd Todt / here between Schantz vñ Korbẽ
There between Mawr vñ Stad / rint fresh blood at all times
Three times already six years are our rivers flood
Heavily / slowly pushed away from so many corpses.
I'm still silent about you / what is stronger than the dead /
(You Strasbourg know it well) the grim famine /
And that souls = treasure forced from many.

Tears of the Fatherland / Anno 1636. (1663)

We are now completely / yes more than completely devastated!
The cheeky Völcker crowd / the raging trumpet
The heavy heavy with blood / the thundering Carthaun /
Has consumed all sweat / and diligence / and supplies.
The towers are in embers / the church is reversed.
The town hall is in gray / the Starcken are disheveled /
The maidens are violated / and wherever we look
Is fire / plague / and death / the heart and spirit goes through.
Through the Schantz and the city fresh blood is always running.
Three times are already six years / when our rivers flood /
Almost clogged by corpses / slowly pushed away.
But I still keep silent about what is worse than death
What is worse than the plague / and embers and famine?
That also of the soul's treasure / forced from so many.

interpretation

The interpretation is based on the version of 1663, which differs little from the 1643 and those in between. The German scholar Nicola Kaminski spoke of it ironically as the "one that enjoys greater popularity in research almost without exception". Even Erich Trunz it has based its all later generations as groundbreaking designated analysis from the year 1949th

shape

The poem is like all Lissa sonnets in 1624 by Martin Opitz in his book by the German Poeterey recommended for sonnets meter of Alexandrian written with the recommended also by Opitz rhyme scheme "abba abba" for the quartets and "ccd eed" for the trios . The verses with the “a” and “d” rhymes are thirteen syllable, the rhymes feminine , the verses with the “b”, “c” and “e” rhymes are twelve syllable, therefore corresponding to the editions of Szyrocki and Borgstedt indented, the rhymes masculine . The caesura usually follows the sixth syllable. In the first verse, Gryphius fitted the sentence “We are now wholly <…> devastated” by inserting “yes more than wholly” into the meter of the Alexandrian. But the verses are not monotonous. A differentiated sequence of tempo changes, for example from verse 2 and 3 to verse 4 and from verse 5 to 7 to verse 8, creates an artistic dynamic. Internal rhyme - welding / diligence Rathauß / Grauß -, alliterations - the f rake V oil cker, Sch aar / Sch Werdt / Sch knows F leiß / V orrath, Sch antz and S tadt - and enjambement - by verse 3 to 4, by Verse 7 to 8 - add to the musicality. According to Trunz, the Alexandrian corresponds in its spaciousness to the mass of what should be said. His proud step gives everything a firm shape. His legality tamed the gloomy abundance at which the gaze stares to pure form and that is precisely why it is in place here.

heading

"Tears of the fatherland" - the genitive subiectivus suggests that it is the " fatherland " that speaks in the poem, that the sonnet is a role poem . In the 1663 "Trawrklage des ravaged Germany" unequivocally the "ravaged Germany" raises its voice. However, the idea of ​​a rhetorical role Germany suppresses the effect with which the beginning "WIr" grabs and involves the reader immediately. According to Borgstedt, the text of the poem does not speak of the “personification” of “devastated Germany” or of the “fatherland”, but rather a real collective “we”. Ultimately, Gryphius' “poetic speaking <...> cannot be clearly traced back to a lyrical speaker”.

For Gryphius and his contemporary readers sounded in "tears" the Greek Threnody , θρῆνος, original name for a lamentation. (Pseudo) etymologiserend wrote Sigmund von Birken 1679, the "KLagLieder or Threnien" so be "benamet / because they are as it were written with Threnen. It describes the downfall / not only of great people / but also of cities and countries / ”. “Tears of the Fatherland / Anno 1636 ” is - among other things - determined by the late humanist Threnos poetics.

First quartet

We are now completely / yes more than completely devastated!

“'We': the poet himself stands in the middle of the great common fate.” The “fatherland” may be Gryphius' homeland Silesia , but Germany is probably meant. "Devastated" names the extent of the destruction and at the same time the cause, the armies of war . In the middle of the simple, almost everyday sentence “We are now completely <...> devastated”, the speaker interrupts himself, forming the sentence into an Alexandrian, with a surpass that is logically impossible, “yes more than completely” - a riddle that To attract attention and to get excited about the solution.

This is followed in two verses by the perpetrators of the "gantz <en>" devastation, the anonymous "cheeky peoples", and their weapons of war. The analogously constructed, paratactically arranged noun phrases that fill in the half-verses accelerate the speaking rhythm:

The cheeky Völcker crowd / the raging trumpet
The heavy heavy with blood / the thundering Carthaun /
Has consumed all sweat / and diligence / and supplies.

The epithets cheeky, furious, fat, thundering create a high rhetorical volume. “Words of a hundredweight 'are piled up without any adornments.” But then follows a longer sentence, engaging the whole Alexandrian, a change of pace, a reassurance. The singular "hat", which was possible for "have" against today's grammar rule, connects every single noun of verses 2 and 3, the "Völcker Schar", the "Posaun", the "Schwerdt", the "Carthaun", Insisting on every single horror, with the predicate "Has <...> consumed". The raging of the war equipment has destroyed all material livelihoods.

Second quartet

The second stanza reinforces the sound of the first. After naming the perpetrators and their tools, the destructions are enumerated, again in quickly rhythmic, half-verse filling, rushing nominal sentences:

The towers are in embers / the church is reversed.
The town hall is in gray / the Starcken are disheveled /
The maidens are violated / and wherever we look
Is fire / plague / and death / the heart and spirit goes through.

Misery everywhere. The “towers” ​​stand for defensive security, the “church” for spiritual life, the “town hall” for secular administration, the “Starcken” for military strength, the desecration of the “maidens” for “the destruction of moral and personal things Integrity". In a gesture involving the reader “where we only look”, the gaze is then drawn in a slowed rhythm to the omnipresence of “fire / plague / and death”, not only passing through it, but now also “heart and spirit” , ver disturbing effect. So twice, in the first and second quartet, "the clustering of images that corresponds to a passionate excitement of the soul, and twice then the calm, sad distance and generalization, knowing about one's own impotence".

The quartets are interspersed with signs from the Secret Revelation of John : “Trumpet” ( Rev 8,2  LUT ) - in the Luther Bible from 1545 “And I saw seven angels / who trod for God / and they were given seven trumpets”; “Schwerdt” ( Rev 6,4  LUT ) - in the Luther Bible of 1545 “And he went off another horse / that was red / and the one who sat on it / was given peace from the earth / and that they mingle slain / And a great sword was given to him ”; “Fire / plague / and death” ( Rev 6,8  LUT ) - in the Luther Bible from 1545 “Vnd sihe / and I saw a false horse / and who sat on it / the name was death / and the light followed him. And power was given to them to kill / the fourth part of the earth / with the sword and hunger / and with death / and by the beasts on earth ”. The words evoke the image of the four horsemen of the apocalyptic .

First trio

“Where can the poem lead to?” Asks Trunz.

Through the Schantz and the city fresh blood is always running.
Three times are already six years / when our rivers flood /
Almost clogged by corpses / slowly pushed away.

Gryphius creates a picture that one would have to call "grandiose, if it weren't so terrible, of Dante's imagination: that even the rivers are clogged with corpses and therefore only flow slowly". Devastation does violence to even nature, the flow of rivers. The picture seems exaggerated and improbable, “no observed reality”. In fact, it is a topos that goes back to the Iliad , in the 21st song of which the river god Scamandros laments against the angry Achilles :

The beautiful waters are already full of dead;
I can hardly pour myself into the holy sea,
constricted by the dead.

However, the contemporary pretext in Martin Opitz's “Consoling Poems in Disgracefulness of War” (see “ Intertextuality ” below ) warns against denying reality to the image as if it were a pure metaphor for martial murder.

The closeness to reality of the poem becomes inevitable in the time indication "three times are already six years". It is overwritten " Anno 1636 ". In 1618 the war had started. By dividing the 18 into 6 + 6 + 6, the effect is increased. The “endless length of this war cannot simply be dismissed with a number; You wore it for six years, and then again for six years, and then again for as long - the formula has real life here ”. In his analysis of the symbolism of numbers in Gryphius' work, Marian Szyrocki pointed to a - possible - hidden meaning of the three times "6". According to the Luther Bible of 1545, the Secret Revelation says about this: “VND I saw another animal rise from the earth / and had two horns / just as the Lamb / and speaks like the dragon. <…> Here is wisdom. Who has understood / consider the zal of the animal / for it is a man's zal / And his zal is six hundred and six and sixty. "The" 666 "is a devil number. It “roughly gives the meaning: this war is the work of hell that will lead to its downfall. The accentuation of the long duration of the war is further strengthened by the connection of the determination of time with a terrifyingly realistic image of war killing: in disaster, time expands immeasurably. "

The war that lasted 18 years points back to the title. This is how the painting of horror gets its frame.

Second trio

Irritating, but precisely because of this, it attracts attention, the second trio begins with an announcement of silence.

But I still keep silent about what is worse than death
What is worse than the plague / and embers and famine?
That also of the soul's treasure / forced from so many.

What is the sonnet silent about? "Like Baroque poems so often, it has saved the summit for the end." It comes back to the riddle of the first verse, what could be "more than completely devastated", "worse than the plague / and embers and famine" . The comparatives increase the tension to the utmost. The answer is given in the last verse. “The twelve lines of the war effects presented in the most intensely increased picture sequences <…> are a single line, just a metaphor”, a sursum corda , slowly, calmly: “That too of the soul treasure / forced from so many . ”But which“ soul treasure ”is it? The Christian Faith? A denomination ? The soul anyway? The good in people? The poem is in fact silent about this. “The sentence 'But I am silent…' is right.” There has been talk of an “intentional indeterminacy”, an interpretation- seeking punch line, an appeal to the reader for additional assistance.

One of the possible interpretations is to question the eschatological aspect of the last line. Surely she says that the damage people have done to their soul outweighs any kind of physical suffering; but does not the physical suffering have to be taken seriously unmetaphysically? Nicola Kaminski referred to the Lissa version of the second trio. A window on the unmetaphysical contemporary reality of "devastated Germany" opens the "Trawrklage" there:

I'm still silent about you / what is stronger than the dead /
(You Strasbourg know it well) the grim famine /
And that souls = treasure forced from many.

“You know Strasbourg know” - what does Strasbourg know, and what happened in Strasbourg could Gryphius assume to be known throughout Germany? Kaminski suspected that the Lissa print could be a typographical error for “Augsburg”: “Du Augsburg know it”. In 1635 there was a famine of "mythical specimen" in besieged Augsburg . "Dog and cats <were> instead of a wild pret / the poor also ate mice and other unnatural things / yes the human corpse was used in many ways". The imperial governor Otto Heinrich Fugger , it is said, “brought the tenderest city in Germany to the human flesh”, so that “now one luscious one feels the other”. Desecration of corpses, cannibalism, so Kaminski, could be meant by "stronger than the dead".

Mario Zanucchi, on the other hand, managed to prove that the Strasbourg famine, to which the sonnet alludes, is historically documented. In the years 1636 and 1637 a famine raged in the city, of which the now destroyed Strasbourg city chronicle by Johann Wencker reported. Gryphius was very well informed about the contemporary Strasbourg famine, presumably from reading a Danzig newspaper, namely the "Report by Pomerania what recently happened". Under the heading “Outside Strasbourg / 17 May” one reads 1636, exactly in the year Gryphius' sonnet was composed, in the “Report through Pomerania”: “The sad times we have lived here anjetzo / is to be pityed / the people must Hungers die in the country / because they have nothing more to eat / the cattle / steed / donkeys / cats and dogs / everything has already been eaten / yes the hunger is so great / that people eat each other / as well as the dead bodies / Dead children have lost themselves in the country / and | are said to have lost four children in addition to a man's house / and the parents must fear that they will be killed and eaten. The ton of grain is worth 20 Reichstaler / the poor cannot pay for that / God will turn it around. "

For the print of 1643, Gryphius strongly reshaped the second trio. The antithetical “yes” now marks a new beginning in verse 12; removing the set of brackets smooths the rhythm; the comparative sequence “ärger” - “grimmer” ties verses 12 and 13 together; the last verse, with the “Vnd” from 1637, is a member of a list, only through the new version becomes “the coronation of what has been predicted”, a pointed emphasis and a meaningful turn into the spiritual. In terms of content, the “window” on contemporary bestiality is closed by removing the brackets. "The text of the poem now represents a more general statement that can name the events of the war as a whole."

intertextuality

“You see that everywhere the corners are devastated / the villages torn and plundered / the cities set on fire and turned around / the people imprisoned and beaten to death: the honest women are given away / the young women are made less: and what else tends to follow in the war. "

The German translation of a passage from “De Constantia Libri Duo” by the Flemish philosopher Justus Lipsius , published in 1584 , appeared in 1599. Lipsius describes the conditions in his homeland during the Spanish-Dutch war and, in the spirit of the younger Stoa , urges courage and steadfastness in the face of unreasonable demands of life. The lines could be understood as a template for Gryphius' poem.

According to Günther Weydt, Opitz's verse epic “Consolation poems in the disgracefulness of the war” worked into “Tears of the Fatherland” in a far more direct and detailed manner. Opitz wrote the work in 1621. He mentions it in his “Deutsche Poeterey” from 1624, but did not publish it until 1633. In the first of the four books with a total of 2,312 pair-rhymed Alexandrians, Opitz describes the “Bohemian War” as God's sending. In the second to fourth books he propagates stoic virtues like Lipsius, calls for the heroic variant of persistence in the form of the struggle for freedom and relativizes the present distress against the background of transience and the Last Judgment. At the beginning of the first book he defines the topic and time:

First book verses 1-4 and 49-56
The heavy burden of war / which Germany is now feeling /
And that GOD is not ignited so violently for nothing
The eye of his power / even where in such pain
Consolation is to be fetched here / should be my dish.
<...>
The great sun with its beautiful horses
has now measured the wide circle of the earth three times /
Ever since the strict Mars came to our Germany /
And this hard war began for the first time.
I want the hard fall / we have felt since then /
and felt masculine (how to get fresh wounds
Do not touch much by not a blue haze
Cover with fog.

Opitz wrote in 1621, the year in which the sun measured “the wide circle of the earth” “three times” since the beginning of the war. Gryphius' time fixation “three times are already six years” can be found in Opitz. From his gigantic epic with philosophical and theological sections, Gryphius chose what went with his Threnos, lamentation, and installed it in the 14 lines of his sonnet. Similar single images, similar formulations, the same rhyming word pairs are striking traces of Opitz in the sonnet:

First book verses 77-80 and 85-88
The field now asks for no large hawen / sown
with corpses; he doesn't ask for a tawen /
After none do not fertilize: what else the rain does /
Sufficiently is now done by thick human blood .
<...>
Oh! Oh! because you can hear now the grawsamen trombones /
The Donner vnd the Plitz the fewrigen Carthaunen /
The wild cries of the field: where leaves and grass used to be
The country vmbkrönet has a rotten carrion there.

First book verses 123-126 and 153-156
Never heard of such things: how many beautiful cities /
Which has otherwise adorned the whole country with splendor /
Is there now and ash and dust? The Mawren are devastated /
the churches laid down / the houses turned upside down .
<...>
The man has had to see his marriage bed weaken /
The daughters' honor blooms break in his eyes,
And she / when the desire is no longer kindled /
Vnmenschlich vntergehn by jhres abuser hand.

Verse 80 "through fat human blood" provided the material for a completely new pictorial monument that fits into the emblems of war: the "vom Blood feiste Schwerd" 1637, the "vom Blood fat Schwerdt" 1643. From the "cruel trumpets" became the "raging trumpet". Opitz's verse 86, “The thunder and the Plitz of the few little Carthaun” was condensed into the half-verse “the thundering Carthaun”. The singular proposition heralds the one great murder. Gryphius only introduced Opitz's rhyming words “devastated” - “reversed” in 1643 and expanded them to “devastated” - “consumed” - “reversed” - “carried out”, so he did not shy away from reinforcing the imitation compared to 1637. "Gryphius is not only gifted with an eye for appropriate pictorial elements, he also concentrates them into a new, effect-rich whole that shows more intense luminosity and effect compared to Opitz."

Third book verses 132-134
Rhodan himself, who usually walks so strictly:
The large number of corpses was often shot /
and stuffed it up / so that it did not flow.

Going back to these verses, Gryphius won the more vivid “Of corpses almost clogged” 1663 from “Of so many corpses difficult” 1637. Opitz's resolution was to report on “the hard case” without “blue haze and fog”, without glossing over and covering up (First Book, verses 53–56). The verses from the Third Book, even taken from tradition, confirm the gruesome reality of Gryphius' first trio.

The whole

In research on “Tears of the Fatherland”, according to Borgstedt, the patriotic-combative, the eschatological-apocalyptic and at the same time internally-autonomous, the realistic-reality-related, also pacifistically understood moment, the general human moment in the sense of Christian tradition, the denominationally accusatory Moment or the timeless aesthetic moment.

The apocalyptic and at the same time inwardly autonomous moment developed (according to Borgfeldt) Trunz. For Trunz “the poem combines a huge accumulation of images of the misery of war, which stands between realism and apocalyptic, with a melancholy shadowed reference to the moral freedom of the human being, which is the only one left to him in the highest misery, and a tight language which describes the misery in ever new waves, but in between and afterwards finds distance and oversight in long, quiet sentences and in its discipline itself puts an order of the spirit against the chaos of senseless violence. "

Near and yet this interpretation far is that of Herbert Cysarz from the year 1942. Near, insofar writes Cysarz: Remote at Cysarz ' "How apocalyptic horsemen mastered fire, plague, famine and death the field." Weltkriegerischem staying pathos: "Deep and heavy going the breath of bleeding Germany. ”“ The basic color of the poem is metallic, as it were: as if everything was reflected in the black armor of a soul that cannot be broken by anything. An iron truthfulness of feeling also speaks from the swollen parables; speaks the callous feeling of a defiant stand, iron broom of an iron time, connected by dream and deed, rapture and horror of the environment without the slightest fluctuation of the pure male character. "

Trunz emphasizes the realism and relation to reality (“'We': the poet himself stands in the middle of the great common fate.”) Marian Szyrocki. From the opening sentence on, the poem breathes a faithfulness to reality that is seldom encountered in 17th century poetry. For Nicola Kaminski the pretext of the “trawr complaint” is not the apocalypse of John, but the horror of war, as Opitz described it without the “blue haze and fog”. Opitz's epic catapults “like an intertextual beacon” a “reception instruction” in Gryphius' poem.

For Wolfram Mauser, on the other hand, one misses the poet's intention when "from the opening word 'we' one deduces that 'the poet himself <...> stands in the midst of the great common fate'." The poem is far from the historical event in to hold onto its peculiarity. What is of interest is war as an example of an earthly scourge. It is not a look into the real world that controls the sequence of the images, but the idea of ​​a spiritual order in danger. For their own sake, the pictures are not worth communicating. The claim of the sonnet and its justification lie in the realm of the meditative. The horror of war is an example of vanitas in all areas of life. “But since suffering and death are inseparably connected with the temporal existence of man, they are not the monstrous. The 'tears' as signs of overwhelming suffering refer beyond the real need to the elementary affliction of the soul, which is 'grimmer because the plague is glowing and hunger noth'. <...> But even that which is 'worse than the dead' can be overcome by a person even in the greatest misery by reflecting on the cross of Christ. This last conclusion is no longer elaborated by the poem, but for the contemporary it is obvious and in the context of the sonnet collection it is given by the compositional special position of the Christ sonnets. "

With the forcing of the soul treasure in the last verse, according to Kaminski and Borgstedt, most likely the coercive measures for the re-Catholicization of Silesia in 1628 are meant. At that time, when he was twelve years old, Gryphius and his family, who wanted to remain Lutheran , had to leave their place of birth Glogau and go into exile.

With all differences in interpretation, Jürgen Landwehr believes that the filling of the sonnet form in "Tears of the Fatherland" is rhetorical through and through . Theodor Verweyen compares the structure with the "Thorough Guide to Teutschen accuraten Reim- und Dicht-Kunst" published in 1704 by Magnus Daniel Omeis . Christian Zimmermann found in the sonnet the practiced in the schools of the 17th century rhetorical argument form of Chrie again with a protasis in which put the issue of Paraphrasis immersive explicatio , are explained in detail in the amplificatio in which it is extended , and the epilogus , which pointedly presents the actual goal of the argument. The first verse is the protasis with the theme “devastation”. In the following three verses, what “devastation” means, the descriptive-defining paraphrasis sive explicatio, will be determined in more detail . The fact that in verse 4 “all sweat / and diligence / and supplies are consumed” means not only a plunder of the pantries; rather, as the second quartet enumerate, everything that diligence has built up is destroyed, an amplificatio . With verse 8 “fire / plague / and death / the heart and spirit drives through” the threat to life and limb is included. The amplificatio reached its climax in the first trio with the reference to blood, corpses and the long duration of the war. The amplification serves to emphasize the lament about the more serious loss of the soul's treasure in the epilogus . Gryphius superimposes “this basic structure with the increasing threnetic lament. <…> There is a simple explanation for the conclusion that there is a terrifyingly gloomy statement that gives the war events apocalyptic features. Gryphius here follows the givens of the threnetic species, which consists precisely in the inconsolable lament. This distinguishes it from the comforting epicedium . "

According to Marian Szyrocki, Gryphius, who was affected by the desperate situation of the Protestants in his home country, gave general validity to his personal experiences in the sonnet. Although he was rhetorically trained, he used traditional images and motifs, "but he used them in a density that was unprecedented at the time and thus achieved an intensity of statement that gave the sonnet an individual character".

Poetic reception in the 20th century

For Gryphius' three hundredth birthday in 1916, two selected volumes were published. The writer Klabund (Alfred Henschke) declared him a pacifist who had been persecuted "because his poems were capable of inciting the people against war".

After the Second World War, notes Kurt Ihlenfeld , the “tears of the fatherland” “went through all of Germany”. The actor Will Quadflieg recited the poem as part of an "hour of edification" in a prisoner of war camp. The expressionist poet and at times communist politician Johannes R. Becher published an anthology "Tears of the Fatherland" in 1954, which shaped the image of early modern poetry in the GDR . In 1937 in exile in Moscow he had a pair of sonnets “Tears of the Fatherland. Anno 1937 "written, the most famous echo of a single Gryphius poem:

Tears of the fatherland. Anno 1937

I.
O Germany! Say, what have you made of Germany ?!
A Germany strong and free ?! A Germany in high esteem ?!
A Germany, in which the people can increase their belongings
, Everyone is concerned about all prosperity ?!

Do you still remember the call: “Germany is awakening!”?
As if they would soon bring you rich with gifts,
So they took you, who are devastating you today.
You are defeated more than ever in a battle.

Your heart has shrunk. Your thinking has failed.
Your word became lies and deception. What is still true and real ?!
What lies still hidden is exposed in the deeds:

the whip is raised to strike a mad torturer,
the executioner wipes the blood from the edge of his ax -
O how much new suffering to all the old suffering!

II
You mighty German sound: Bach's fugues and cantatas!
You tender blue sky, painted by Grünewald!
You hymn of Holderlin, which shines solemnly for us!
O color, sound and word: desecrated and betrayed!

Have you not yet succeeded in murdering nature too ?!
Are Neckar and the Rhine still drawing their course?
You playground of my childhood: who will play on it today?
Black Forest and Lake Constance, what has become of you?

The fourth year begins. In order to weep Germany,
we do not have enough tears at our command,
Since the tears are lost in so much blood.

So, tears, hold still! Let us unite the hatred
until we are strong to proclaim: “An end to the hardship!”
Then: color, sound and word! Shines, roars and celebrates!

In the first sonnet, the promises of the Hitler regime are contrasted with its crimes. The second calls for instead of shedding tears to fight the regime full of hatred, so that the legacy of Matthias Grünewald , Johann Sebastian Bach and Friedrich Hölderlin will once again "lap, roar and cheer". Gryphius' sonnet is claimed "for establishing the identity of the 'better', post-fascist Germany."

literature

• Achim Aurnhammer: Martin Opitz 'Trost-Getichte: a founding text of German national literature from the spirit of Stoicism. In: Barbara Neymeyr (ed.): Stoicism in European philosophy, literature, art and politics: a cultural history from antiquity to modernity. Volume 2. Verlag Walter de Gruyter , Berlin 2008, pp. 711–729. On the Internet.
• Horst Bienek : Andreas Gryphius (1616–1664) Tears of the Fatherland, Anno 1636. In: Rudolf Riedler (Hrsg.): Whom time is like eternity: poets, interpreters, interpretations. Piper Verlag , Munich / Zurich 1987, ISBN 3-492-10701-X , pp. 14-17.
• Thomas Borgstedt (Ed.): Andreas Gryphius. Poems. Reclam-Verlag , Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-15-018561-2 .
• Thomas Borgstedt: Andreas Gryphius' Tears of the Fatherland / Anno 1636. Epos imitation and war lament in the sonnet. In: Marie-Thérèse Mourey (ed.): La Poésie d'Andreas Gryphius. Center d'études germaniques interculturelles de Lorraine , Nancy 2012, pp. 19–34. On the Internet.
• Thomas Borgstedt: Sonnets. In: Nicola Kaminski, Robert Schütze (Ed.): Gryphius-Handbuch ,. Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-022943-1 , pp. 90-112.
• Eoin Bourke: Andreas Gryphius (1616–1664) Tears of the Fatherland / Anno 1636 (1663). In: Florian Krobb (Ed.): Poetry Project. Irish Germanists interpreter German Verse. Peter Lang , Oxford a. a. 2003, ISBN 3-906766-45-4 , pp. 17-22.
• Herbert Cysarz : Three baroque masters. In: Heinz Otto Burger (Ed.): Poem and Thought. Interpretations of German poems. Max Niemeyer Verlag , Halle (Saale) 1942, pp. 72–78.
• Nicola Kaminski: EX BELLO ARS or origin of the "German Poetry". Universitätsverlag Winter , Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-8253-1564-9 .
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• Dieter Martin: Reception in the 20th century under the sign of two world wars. In: Nicola Kaminski, Robert Schütze (Ed.): Gryphius-Handbuch ,. Verlag Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-11-022943-1 , pp. 802–814.
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• Erich Trunz : Five Sonnets by Andreas Gryphius. In: Fritz Martini (ed.): From the spirit of poetry. Memorandum for Robert Petsch . Hoffmann and Campe , Hamburg 1949, pp. 180–205.
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• Günther Weydt: Baroque sonnet art. On the problem of reworking at Andreas Gryphius. In: Yearbook of the German Schiller Society. 9, 1965, pp. 1-32.
• Christian von Zimmermann : Andreas Gryphius' "Threnen des Vatterlandes / Anno 1636" - reflections on the rhetorical foundations of early modern poetry. In: Daphnis. Volume 28, No. 2, 1999, pp. 227-244. doi: 10.1163 / 18796583-90000663
• Mario Zanucchi: Andreas Gryphius' sonnets Trawrklage des Veruesteten Deutschland , Threnen des Vatterlandes / Anno 1636 and Johannes R. Becher's double sonnet Tears of the Fatherland Anno 1937 . In: The Second Thirty Years War. Struggles for interpretation in modern literature. Edited by Fabian Lampart, Dieter Martin and Christoph Schmitt-Maaß. Würzburg: Ergon 2019 (Classic Modernism 39), pp. 185–200.

References and comments

1. ↑ Szyrocki 1991.
2. ↑ Borgstedt 2016.
3. ↑ Bienek 1987.
4. ↑ Borgstedt 2016, p. 108.
5. ↑ The picture comes from a 1658 title edition of the 1657 edition.
6. ↑ Bienek 1987.
7. ↑ Szyrocki 1963.
8. ↑ Borgstedt 2012a. Thomas Borgstedt is a Germanist and has been President of the International Andreas Gryphius Society since 2002 .
9. ↑ Szyrocki 1963, p. 19.
10. ↑ Borgstedt 2012a, p. 23.
11. ↑ Nicola Kaminski, * 1967, main field of work German literature of the early modern period.
12. ↑ The preference for this or that version reflects "openly the liking (taste) of the respective interpreter". Kaminski 2004, p. 275.
13. ↑ Trunz 1949; Trunz chose a reprint for Andreas Gryphius' son Christian in 1698, 34 years after the poet's death.
14. ↑ Borgstedt 2012b, p. 24.
15. ↑ Trunz 1949, p. 191.
16. ↑ Verweyen 1997, p. 40; Landwehr 2009, p. 21.
17. ↑ Kaminski 2004, p. 275.
18. ↑ Quoted from Kaminski 2004, S: 279.
19. ↑ Trunz 1949, p. 187.
20. ↑ Borgstedt 2012b, p. 23.
21. ↑ Cysarz 1942, p 76. The term "Zentner words" comes from the eulogy that Daniel Caspar von Lohenstein by Gryphius' death wrote to the poet he admired; Gryphius "hundredweight words" are filled with "wise teachings". Wesche 2016, p. 771.
22. ↑ Trunz 1949, p. 187.
23. ↑ Landwehr 2009, p. 22.
24. ↑ Landwehr 2009, p. 22.
25. ↑ Trunz 1949, p. 188.
26. ↑ Trunz 1949, p. 188.
27. ↑ Bienek 1987, p. 17.
28. ↑ Trunz 1949, p. 188.
29. ↑ Homer : Iliad. Translated by Johann Heinrich Voss . Philipp Reclam jun. , Stuttgart 1962, p. 422.
30. ↑ Trunz 1949, p. 188.
31. ↑ Szyrocki 1959, pp. 89 and 103-104.
32. ↑ Rev 13 : 1-18  LUT is the revision from 2017.
33. ↑ Trunz 1949, p. 189. Opitz spoke of the “subtlety” of a poem as his soul, “which appears particularly at the end that should always have fallen differently than we had hoped”. Weydt 1965, p. 24.
34. ↑ Landwehr 2009, p. 23.
35. ↑ Cysarz 1942, p. 73.
36. ↑ Trunz 1949, p. 190.
37. ↑ Verweyen 1997, p. 45.
38. ↑ Landwehr 2009, p. 23.
39. ↑ Mauser 1976, p. 149.
40. ↑ Kaminski 2004, p. 289.
41. ↑ Kaminski 2004, p. 288.
42. ↑ Mario Zanucchi: Andreas Gryphius' sonnets Trawrklage des des Weruesteten Deutschland, Threnen des Vatterlandes / Anno 1636 and Johannes R. Becher's double sonnet Tears of the Fatherland Anno 1937 . In: Fabian Lampart, Dieter Martin and Christoph Schmitt-Maaß (eds.): The Second Thirty Years War. Struggles for interpretation in modern literature . Ergon, Würzburg 2019, p. 185-200 .
43. ↑ Anno 1636. | Report by Pomerania | What recently happened. Georg Rethe, Danzig / Stettin.
44. ↑ Szyrocki 1959, p. 104.
45. ↑ Weydt 1965, p. 18.
46. ↑ Borgstedt 2012b, p. 32.
47. ↑ Justus Lipsius: From the steadiness [De Constantia]. Facsimile print of the German translation by Andreas Viritius. Edited by Leonard Forster. JB Metzler'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung , Stuttgart 1965, p. 19 verso.
48. ↑ by Zimmermann 1999, p. 239.
49. ↑ † 2000; Münster Germanist and Baroque researcher.
50. ↑ Aurnhammer 2008, p. 712.
51. ↑ Schulz-Behrend 1968, pp. 192–193.
52. ↑ Schulz-Behrend 1968, pp. 194–196.
53. ↑ Weydt 1965, p. 17.
54. ↑ The Rhone .
55. ↑ Borgstedt 2016, p. 108.
56. ↑  Trunz 1946, p. 191.
57. ↑ Cysarz 1942.
58. ↑ Trunz 1949, p. 187.
59. ↑ Szyrocki 1959, p. 104.
60. ↑ Kaminski 2004, p. 284.
61. ^ Mauser quotes the version from 1643.
62. ↑ Mauser 1976, pp. 148-149. The Christ sonnets include the poems “ About the Birth of Jesus ” and “ To the Crucified Jesus ” discussed in Mauser's book .
63. ↑ Kaminski 2004, p. 316.
64. ↑ Borgstedt 2012b, p. 30.
65. ↑ * 1941 in Mannheim.
66. ↑ Landwehr 2009, p. 21.
67. ↑ Verweyen 1997.
68. ↑ by Zimmermann 1999, p. 241.
69. ↑ Szyrocki 1991.
70. ↑ Martin 2016, p. 805.
71. ↑ Johannes R. Becher : Tränen des Vaterlandes, Anno 1937. In: Johannes R. Becher: Selected poetry from the time of exile 1933–1945. Aufbau-Verlag , Berlin around 1945, pp. 49–50. Plus Zanucchi 2019.
72. ↑ Martin 2016, p. 810.