GERMAN LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION by Michaela Anchan
I ’ m reading my way through the Deutsche
Welle list of the “ Top 100 German Books in Translation ” as a way to learn more about Germany ( and all the European history I did not learn at school in Wellington , New Zealand ).
I ’ m not normally a big reader of war books , though that ’ s changing as I try to learn more about German history . I chose to read these two World War I books from the list — Storm of Steel ( 1920 ) and All Quiet on the Western Front ( 1928 )— within a short time of each other , and I ’ m not sure if it was the right idea . Being a memoir and a novel , they differ in many ways , but both also are intensely focused on the trauma and senselessness of war , and I found both pretty overwhelming and intense to read .
Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger is a memoir covering his years as a soldier from December 1914 to September 1918 . There are not so many other “ characters ” in this memoir — comrades are mentioned here and there — and instead , the focus is on battle action . There are incredibly detailed descriptions of the fights and battles he was part of — all taken from a journal he wrote at the time . The detail is exhaustive — the types of guns fired , the names of missiles and grenades launched at him , the troop and battalion movements , the structure of the trenches , the march from one small French town to the next . It took me the first third of the book to get into the momentum of this , and it ’ s only when he eventually moves close to Somme , and the great battle is in the distance , that I felt the words really gained depth and fluidity . His descriptions of the battles are incredibly auditory : we can hear the thunder of battle all around and feel the overwhelming relentlessness of it and the absolutely traumatic horror and brutality . I found it hard to continue after the Battle of the Somme , where I know my own relatives died . Descriptions of digging trenches in fields where the bodies are layered deep between layers of dirt . The close escapes . The shock . Battle after battle . A village decimation . A withdrawal . A battle . It ’ s hard to read — but of course it ’ s supposed to be hard . That ’ s the point .
The advantage of a novel is that the author can play with the arc of the story and can give you some “ relief ” from that brutality , and I found All Quiet on the Western Front an easier read because of this . The novel features a group of classmates who enlisted together , and their friendships and stories become the core of the story . Between the horrors of the trenches and the battles , there are episodes of goose theft , drinks with pretty French girls across a river , and a wife smuggled into the hospital for a “ conjugal visit ”— there is story and drama and emotional connection that bring a relief from the war . It also , perhaps , gives the death and brutality even more resonance . The novel was the one that left me in tears , and one that still haunts me with images — I ’ ll never forget Paul Bäumer hiding in that shell crater with the French soldier . But Storm of Steel is a historic record — and I will recommend it to my father , who is studying our family tree , including his grandfather ’ s military records and his time at the Somme .
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