WOLFGANG BORCHERT
“NO” TO VIOLENCE WITH ALL OUR MIGHT,
By Nevin Ulusoy
War. The nonsensical concept that makes young people aged twenty have an old face. The horrible thing we cannot escape that gives us a world of “laughter, sorrow, tears and screams”, laughter all alone, by yourself, the result of the insanity of bloodshed. Killing, why and for who? Digging graves, measuring them with a small man, making graves by exploding the ground because there is no other way, snow, white death lurking wherever you go. Nightmares, becoming a walking nightmare. “Scream in the silence of the night, in the silence of love, in the silent loneliness.”
Wolfgang Borchert, the founder of German Trümmerliterature-literature of the ruins, lives with his unforgettable, unbelievably touching stories, poems and a play. He was born in 1921 in Hamburg and died at a very young age in 1947 in Basel. He fought in the Second World War in Russia. As he criticised national socialism in his letters he was arrested, although he was seriously ill. Because of his youth he was forgiven, but he was arrested again in 1944, stayed in a cell for nine months despite his illness. After the war, he wrote in two years all his brilliant work until his death when he was only 26.
Borchert’s words dive deep inside, never letting go of their hard grip, as the winds of war are felt today, as they have always been felt through the history of human beings.
His voice is the cry of a generation that was doomed to fight at an age meant for joy and laughter, fight for their very lives. Even survival was not a happy end, because they needed one slice of bread, in their dreams of home they left behind and the idea of an evening with their families, just coming together, dining and drinking something hot was equal to being in heaven. What awaited them back home was ruins, ruins everywhere, but mostly in the hearts. The pain of this heart could not be soothed by any form of art, the pre-war poetry, the indescribable grief those poets wrote about seemed absolutely out of place. The idea of a little, simple flower, the dream of seeing it again, touching it, feeling it in your hands, smelling it and having it in your dark and cold cell, yes, trying to hold on life this way, because there is no other way, taking the risks just to be able to have it in your cell, there is immense happiness in that. “We are laughing. But our death has been planned beforehand… This evening. Not tomorrow the day after tomorrow. Nine thousand years later. Always. ”Feeling the breath of perishing every minute. Killing, killing, killing, heaps of young men, no more young, no more good-looking, heaps of young men, dead or alive, broken, all broken, if alive. “And everything was just babbling in the face of war.”
His last work is a call for humanity, begging everyone to say “no!” to everything that might lead to war and a warning:
“The last human creature, withered, mad, cursing, accusing-and the terrible accusation: WHY? will die unheard on the plains, drift through the ruins, seep into the rubble of churches, fall into pools of blood, unheard, unanswered, the last animal scream of the last human animal-All this will happen tomorrow, tomorrow, perhaps, perhaps even tonight, perhaps tonight, if-if-You do not say NO.”
Borchert is here to remind us, giving us the reason why we need art, the only way to survive maybe.
Borchert’s words dive deep inside, never letting go of their hard grip, as the winds of war are felt today, as they have always been felt through the history of human beings. We must never stop asking “WHY” and saying “NO”, this is the only way of our survival in this wonderful planet we call earth, an awesome present for all of us. Borchert is here to remind us, giving us the reason why we need art, the only way to survive maybe.