Thoughts on war: From the memorial speech of German soldier Bernhard Beckering for a fallen friend, March 1944 (Published on 04/11/2024)
Held at Elmau Castle on 18/03/1944 for Harald Eckert, killed in action on 22/01/1942 (source: Bähr/Meyer/Orthbandt, Kriegsbriefe gefallener Studenten 1939 – 1945, p. 433 f.(translation from German language)):
“When we think of our situation today, do we believe that peace will be permanent after the war, that people will be better, insight greater and truth closer? None of this: the victor will show signs of arrogance, arbitrariness and negligence. The next generation, unconcerned about the blood of their fathers and the suffering of their mothers, will laughingly and harmlessly want to conquer the world anew, unaware of the painful foundation on which the security of their existence rests. Indeed, it would not be youth if it did not have the desire to clean up everything we have created to its heart’s content in order to finally build the only humane, perfect world.
Earthly and eternal thinking often interpenetrate and confuse each other in our reflections. It is as if two pictures have been painted on top of each other on a canvas. Our gaze sees the context of one picture and then the context of the other, without it being possible to merge them without contradiction.
The image of the earthly shows youth, success, progress, money, brute force, a pale, intoxicating happiness for which we have to pay heavily, transience and decay and the desolation of old age.
The image of the eternal shows the true values that are independent of age and success: love, loyalty, truth, authenticity, the possibility of the deepest trust.
The earthly image shows the bright colors of propaganda, the obtrusiveness of the provable, the arrogance of skepticism and the flags of victory of success.
For the clairvoyant, however, the image of the eternal has its own, unprovable but all the more convincing luminosity and relates to the other image like the sun to a miner’s lamp.
In the attempt to become aware of this mystery – even if it remains and must remain a mystery forever – we gain the possibility of a trust in life which, by its very nature, has a peculiar affinity with Christian faith. This trust means that a life lived by divine forces in another realm is not lost and forgotten, even if it remains completely inaccessible to us, as happens. It also means that we come closest to our own ground when we seek to find the divine in another person in humility, reverence and love.”
Bernhard Beckering, born on 09/07/1907 in Deutsch-Wilmersdorf, fell on 25/01/1945 in the Eifel near Oos/Gerolstein.
(Head picture: Autumn morning mood in Hürtgen Forest, October 2023)
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