Thoughts on war: Werner Bergengruen – The Final Epiphany (Published on 15/12/2023, amended on 07/06/2024)
The Final Epiphany
I had taken this land into my heart.
I have sent it messenger after messenger.
I have come in many guises.
But you have not recognized me in any of them.
I knocked at night, a pale Hebrew,
a fugitive, hunted, with torn shoes.
You called to the henchman, you beckoned to the
scout and still thought you were doing God a service.
I came as a trembling, mentally weakened
old woman with silent cries of fear.
But you spoke of the future generation,
and you only released my ashes.
Orphaned boy on eastern land,
I fell at your feet and begged for bread.
But you shied away from a future revenge,
you shrugged your shoulders and gave me death.
I came as a prisoner, as a day laborer,
abducted and sold, torn to shreds by the whip.
You turned your eyes away from the shaggy friar.
Now I come as a judge. Do you recognize me now?
(Werner Bergengruen, Dies Irae – Eine Dichtung (1946), p. 9,
translated from German language without implementing the rhyme scheme)
Werner Bergengruen (born on 16/09/1892 in Riga/Latvia, died on 04/09/1964 in Baden-Baden) was a German-Baltic writer and one of the best-known and most popular authors both during the Nazi era and in the early Federal Republic of Germany.
Although he was a national conservative, he was distanced from National Socialism due to his Christian-humanist worldview, without openly rejecting it. Expelled from the “Reichsschriftumskammer” in 1937 – membership was a prerequisite for any professional activity in the field of writing – for allegedly lacking the aptitude to contribute to the “development of German culture” through literary publications, he was nevertheless allowed to publish based on a “permanent special permit”. Although his poetry collection “Der ewige Kaiser” [“The Eternal Emperor”] (1937) and the novel “Am Himmel wie auf Erden” [“In Heaven as on Earth”] were banned in 1940 and a broadcasting and lecturing ban was imposed on him, several of his other works were allowed to appear, not least due to his popularity as an author.
After his house in Munich-Solln was destroyed in 1942, he moved to Achenkirch in Austria and, after living in Switzerland and Italy, returned to Germany in 1958, where he lived until his death.
The poem quoted here is taken from his work “Dies Irae – Eine Dichtung”, which – written in the summer of 1944 – only appeared after the end of the war and deals poetically with the social conditions in Germany during the Nazi era. “Dies Irae” means “Day of Wrath”, presumably chosen in reference to a medieval hymn about the Day of Judgement, which was sung in the church liturgy at the time as part of the requiem mass and is apparently symbolic of a reckoning with National Socialism.
(Head picture: Cross inscribed „Unbekannter russischer Soldat“ [„Unknown Russian soldier“],
Ehrenfriedhof Heidelberg, April 2022)
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