Winter thunderstorm (novel)
Wintergewitter is a novel by the evangelical pastor and writer Kurt Ihlenfeld and at the same time his main work. The first edition was published in 1951 by Eckart-Verlag , Witten and Berlin. Ihlenfeld received the West Berlin Fontane Prize for the 1952 plant .
Historical background
The book deals with the fate of the civilian population in the eastern German regions at the beginning of 1945. It has an autobiographical background, because Ihlenfeld himself was a pastor in Pilgramsdorf near Liegnitz in 1944/45 . He appears in the person of a pastor , who plays the main role in the first three parts of the novel, until he leaves the place of the action, a village in Lower Silesia , together with its other residents towards the west.
Is dedicated to the novel three people who had died at the time of the publication of the novel: in addition to the Protestant poet and novelist Jochen Klepper and the humanist and classical philology experienced translator Ludwig Wolde the theologians and writers Siegbert Stehmann . The latter, who died in Poland in January 1945 as an officer of the Wehrmacht and a member of the Confessing Church , is likely to have been a model for the figure of the lieutenant.
structure
The formal structure of the novel consists of four parts:
- The Chronicle
- The diary
- The conversation
- The legend
content
The focus is on the catastrophic events for the German population of Lower Silesia at the beginning of 1945 , i.e. in the final phase of World War II . The Red Army was approaching inexorably, the Wehrmacht was defeated and fell back. The inhabitants of the villages near the front began to slowly become aware of the loss of their homeland , the break-in of chaos into a previously ordered world, and possibly the end of their own lives, but at the time of the novel they are not yet a reality.
The approaching front and the thunder of the guns are perceived by those affected surreally as a “winter thunderstorm”, which explains the title. Thunderstorm is here a metaphor in the field of association between disaster, judgment, purification and atonement .
The secret hero of the story is a fictional lieutenant who, like his historical role model Siegbert Stehmann, serves as a staunch Christian in internal opposition to the military of the Nazi state , held only by his responsibility towards the soldiers entrusted to him . He dies near the end of the book, but does not fall in battle, but at the hands of a criminal.
But this does not change the lieutenant's conviction that he must die for a specific goal . In the diary he leaves, this is outlined as follows:
- “WE ARE SACRIFIED. I resisted it for a long time. I would have liked to have taken a different route. But no one who refuses to be sacrificed should think that he was innocent. ... The sacrifice will for once be no less respected than the resistance. And we are sacrificed. There is still time for it. "
The terminology is reminiscent of the posthumously published anthology of essays and poems by Siegbert Stehmann “Sacrifice and Change”, Witten and Berlin, Eckart-Verlag 1951, with a foreword by Rudolf Alexander Schröder .
Quote
The diary of Lieutenant contains a plea for a comprehensive, linking the peoples and forward -looking humanity , but remains an anthropological skepticism obliged:
“IT SEEMS VERY UNCERTAIN whether those who have resisted so valiantly in these years - here and in other countries - will also be called to bring about a new state of the international community. In any case, they would only be ready for such a task if they were able to erase even the slightest thought of their merit and every sense of vindictiveness from their memories. But since they will probably not be able to do this, the hoped-for work of reconciliation can only be expected from the coming generation. Also from the church. "