Thoughts on war: Poem “Jahrgang 1926” (“Born in 1926”) by German soldier Andreas Bergmann, who died at the age of 19 (Published on 24/10/2024)
„Born in 1926
Even before we fully understood our youth,
Time had already crushed it to dust.
In the same mill race under dull agony
Our hearts were ground to blind steel.
We learned to cry long before we laughed,
We were numbers before we had names.
With equanimity we saw the shadows
Make themselves masters over our eyes.
We had already entered the threshold
As fools still and unconsciously;
But the mockery only gave us desire,
We grew tired of loving and praying.
The ear was weaned from every soft sound.
We had no mothers to teach us,
Our own friends were companions of sorrow,
And only death was dear and familiar to us.
Even if it is no longer the death that once was,
Who yet gently enveloped his own;
Whom of us he spit upon and roared at,
Closed his lips narrow, because he was exquisite.
Only sometimes a knowledge resonates within us
About flowers, girls’ hair, lullabies.
We think of the morning, laugh again —
And are out of the dust for days.”
(Source: Bähr/Meyer/Orthbandt, Kriegsbriefe gefallener Studenten 1939 – 1945, p. 452;
translation from German language without implementing the rhyme scheme)
Andreas Bergmann, born on 11/04/1926 in Braunschweig, fell there on 11/04/1945, the day of his 19th birthday.
(Head picture: German military cemetery Sandweiler/Luxembourg,
September 2024)
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