Background
Ernst Wiechert was born on 18 May, 1887 in East Prussia, he was inspired by scenery and countryfolk of the country that provided the background to several of his novels.
Ernst Wiechert was born on 18 May, 1887 in East Prussia, he was inspired by scenery and countryfolk of the country that provided the background to several of his novels.
Following army service in World War I, Wiechert became a secondary-school teacher in Königsberg, then in a Berlin Gymnasium where he observed with growing concern the Nazism already rampant at schools and universities in the last years of the Weimar Republic.
When Hitler came to power in 1933, Wiechert was retired from his school duties and left Berlin to live in Bavaria. At first, the Nazis tolerated and tried to exploit his work, claiming him as a poet of ‘blood and soil’. The heroes of his quasi-mystical novels, who found solace in humble, non-urban pursuits, were far removed from what was condemned as ‘asphalt literature’ in the Third Reich.
Nevertheless, some of his novels were criticized for failing to reflect the ‘positive experience of war' and the resurrection of the nation. Weichert’s humane, religious outlook was attacked as an escape into inwardness and sterile traditionalism.
Following ‘subversive’ remarks at a public lecture before students at Munich University in 1935, Wiechert was closely shadowed. A second address at Munich University in 1937, where he declared himself part of the conscience of Germany and warned that the nation ‘stands already on the edge of an abyss and is doomed by the eternal law' if it fails to distinguish between right and wrong, made him a marked man. In 1938 he was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp as a ‘seducer and corrupter of youth' and an enemy of the Reich. Four months later he was released, more or less a broken man, forbidden to publish anything in the future. Nevertheless, because of his influence, the Nazi managers of literature ordered him to take part in a literary meeting in Weimar where he was used as an advertisement for the ‘generosity’ of the régime.
He moved to Switzerland, following threats to his life from former Nazis in Bavaria. Wiechert, looking back on the Third Reich, claimed that until 1938 most Germans had only a vague inkling of the terror that was perpetrated in the concentration camps.
(A stirring book about the author's experiences in Buchenw...)
1946Der Kinderkreuzzug
1935He defended the record of the working class, in contrast to the aristocracy, the army, the churches and the intellectuals under the Nazi régime.
Quotations: ‘Never did the German worker bear a heavier load than during these twelve years, but never more honourable.’