Post-war poetry

Dear grandchildren,

What 17-year-old guy (or girl) do you know who loves poetry this much?! As I mentioned previously, my father Thomas had the sole of a poet. He was about as far from “macho” as one could get and never understood the testosterone-driven hyper-masculinity that American society clearly found so appealing in the 70s and 80s (look up the TV shows Magnum PI, Miami Vice, and MacGyver), and even through the early 2000s.

In this post, like the last few, Thomas continues to turn inward and we get to know more about his spirit and thoughtful personality as a young man. War and daily survival are no longer his sole focus and he is able to settle back into school and begin to ponder what he wants the rest of his life to look like.

Here are his words – and some poems!

I wrote to Nora: “You have no idea how anxious I am to start a normal, regular life and to get back into learning again! Being so unproductive in Adelsberg was the hardest part of those months.” I’m not sure how sincerely I meant that. Much of what we wrote in letters that went back and forth every few days consisted of things we had heard, but not quite digested. How could we have? Nora was a few months older than I, and probably many months ahead of me in maturity, although I wouldn’t have admitted it then. Her letters spoke of real yearning and commitment; they sounded very honest and they probably were. I was longing for the dark winter evenings when we took endless walks in the forests around her parents’ house in Adelsberg. Those walks, for me, were the essence of being together:

Es hat nun all die Stunden

still vor sich hingeschneit.

Die Erde ist verschwunden

in Schnee und Ewigkeit.

Und langsam schon und leise

verwandelt sich der Tag.

Der Abend auf seine Weise

erhebt sich hinter dem Hag.

Wir wollen nichts mehr sagen,

die Worte sind so laut.

Was wir im Herzen tragen,

ist uns ja alles vertraut.

Und wenn dann so beim Wandern

sich Schulter an Schulter lehnt,

fühlt einer in dem andern,

wie er sich nach ihm sehnt.

Die Flocken fallen und wehen,

die Dämmerung hüllt uns ein.

Wir wollen nur ... so ... hingehen ...

und ganz beieinander sein.

-- Manfred Hausmann

It has for all these hours

been snowing silently.

The earth has almost vanished

in white eternity.

Now very still and slowly

the day transforms itself.

The evening in its manner

rises behind the grove.

Let us not even whisper.

Our words, they are so loud.

We know so well what thinking

Lies deep in our hearts.

 

And then, when, in so walking,

shoulder and shoulder meet,

one senses in the other

the longing thoughts we share.

The flakes are falling and drifting,

The dusk envelops us.

Let’s just ... keep ... walking,

and feel together and close.

Ah yes, Nora… But there’s no time for dreaming! Reality demands that I try to buy some pencils for Nora! She’s taking drawing lessons and can’t find pencils, especially soft ones, in the Russian Zone.

For the first time in three years, I would soon return to a classroom. My old school in Chemnitz was a Humanistisches Gymnasium – that is, a college prep school emphasizing Latin, Greek, and the Humanist liberal education and the values that go along with them. The Theresiengymnasium in München was beginning to operate again on a limited basis. The school rooms near the Goetheplatz had been largely spared from bomb damage, the old Nazi teachers had been thrown out, and just enough coal was available to at least keep the rooms from freezing. Most of the windows were still boarded up.

(Theresiengymnasium today)

Like my Gymnasium in Chemnitz, it had the pedigree of a proper old school from the years after the First World War. It looked oddly familiar: dark hallways, massive wooden handrails on the stairs, with knobs on top to keep kids from having fun by sliding down on them. It even smelled like my school in Chemnitz, a mixture of locker room, pissoir, and chalk. Just about now my old classmates were probably returning to their own lives. I felt awkward: re-entering a childhood world as a walking anachronism.

The principal looked at my papers from Chemnitz. The report card from 1942 told him that Geography and Physics were my only “good” subjects; the rest were average or below, with Math and History just barely passing. The report card of March 1943, when the Nazis had thrown me out of school, wasn’t much better: Math was still terrible. So was Greek. But then I also had a piece of paper saying that I was certifiably “meticulous, courteous, focused, and tenacious,” plus affidavits about the private lessons in four languages and all that, and about the Nazi labor camp. The principal studied me, then studied the papers, weighing his guidelines carefully. He finally accepted me as the equivalent of a Junior — provisionally.

The two months I spent at the Theresiengymnasium apparently made little academic impression on me, because I hardly remember any of it. In fact, I remember nothing at all about Latin and Greek, other than how difficult it was to get back into studying. It had only been a year and a half since I last sat down to study a subject or write a paper, but what a tumultuous time it was! I’m positive my achievements in class were less than impressive.

I was especially impressed by two things: the classes were coed (a first-time and rather uncomfortable experience for me!) and the German lessons were interesting. I found study buddies in a clearly very sophisticated young man and a very pretty (but, OK, less sophisticated) young woman. The German teacher, to my great surprise, was a woman! Never in my life, in any school, had I seen a woman teacher before. She had a particular fondness for poetry (and thus, I, a fondness for her) and showed us how differently Conrad Ferdinand Meyer and Nicolaus Lenau used similar images to deal with loss:

Meine eingelegten Ruder triefen,

Tropfen fallen langsam in die Tiefen.

Nichts, das mich verdroß! Nichts, das mich erfreute!

Nieder rinnt ein schmerzensloses Heute!

Unter mir — ach, aus dem Licht verschwunden —

Träumen noch die schönern meiner Stunden.

Aus der blauen Tiefe ruft das Gestern:

Sind im Licht noch manche meiner Schwestern?

-

Lying on my vessel’s edge, my oars are dripping.

Drops are falling slowly, slowly in the deep.

Nothing that upsets me, nothing cheers me up.

A present without pain is trickling down.

Below me — ah, from daylight vanished —

Lie my bygone fairer hours, dreaming.

From the azure depths, the past is calling:

Are there sisters up there in the light?

The other poem, by Lenau, still comes to mind today when I’m near a stream:

Sahst du ein Glück vorübergehn,

Das nie sich wiederfindet,

Ist’s gut in einen Strom zu sehn

Wo alles wogt und schwindet.....

...Hinträumend wird Vergessenheit

Des Herzens Wunde schließen.

Die Seele sieht in ihrem Leid

Sich selbst vorüberfließen.

-

When you have met a passing bliss

that never will return,

It’s good to stare into a stream

Where all is surge and fading...

...And as you dream, forgetting will

Heal all your pain and heartbreak.

Your soul will see itself

Flow past, with all its anguish.

We analyzed these poems to death in class, but neither of them touched me especially deeply. I’m sure they were chosen by the teacher because there was still so much misery all around and so much healing to be done. Not a single one of the kids in class had come through the war without major losses: a father, an older brother, a friend, a home, an entire homeland. So much of the immediate past was still so painful – like festering wounds of the soul.

Our teacher read one poem to us and didn’t even ask us to analyze it. It is by Lulu von Strauß und Torney, who was still alive then:

Und wenn ich selber längst gestorben bin,

Wird meine Erde blühend stehn,

Und Saat und Sichel, Schnee und Sommerpracht,

Und weißer Tag und blaue Mitternacht

Wird über die geliebte Scholle gehn.

Und werden Tage ganz wie heute sein:

Die Gärten voll vom Dufte der Syringen,

Und weiße Wolken, die im Blauen ziehn,

Und junger Felder seidnes Ährengrün,

Und drüberhin ein endlos Lerchensingen.

Und werden Kinder lachen vor dem Tor

Und an den Hecken grüne Zweige brechen,

Und werden Mädchen wandern Arm in Arm

Und durch den Sommerabend, still und warm,

Mit leisen Lippen von der Liebe sprechen.

Und wird wie heut der junge Erdentag

Von keinem Gestern wissen mehr, noch sagen;

Und wird wie heut doch jeder Sommerwind

Aus tausend Tagen, die vergessen sind,

Geheime Süße auf den Flügeln tragen.

-

And even then, when I am long dead

My earth will stand in bloom again,

And seed and sickle, snow and summer’s joy

And white-hot day and cobalt-colored night

Will sweep across the cherished ground.

And then there will be days just like today:

The gardens heavy with the lilacs’ scent,

White clouds are drifting in a sea of blue,

The silken green expanse of growing corn,

And high above the endless song of larks.

And children will be laughing out of doors

And will break twigs from hedges by the road,

And girls will wander, arm in arm, and will,

Throughout the warm and quiet summer’s eve

Speak secretly of love with muted lips.

And then as now, the day in all its youth

Will neither know nor speak of any yesterdays.

And yet, just like today, each summer’s breeze

Will carry in its wings the secret sweetness

Of thousand past and long forgotten days.

Now, isn’t that enough reward for a couple of months at school?

That poem struck an immediate chord in me in 1946, and even six decades later, after we have spoiled so much of our environment, it is still one of the most comforting, almost cheerful poems I know, and few poems have had as much presence or given me as much peace as this one. With all its vivid images, it’s hard to get through a beautiful summer without being reminded of it over and over. With tears in my eyes.