Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa... by Heinrich Böll

Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa... Reviews

• 
  Jan-Maat

  The theme that comes closest to linking the twenty-five stories in this collection together is the transformative nature of the experience of war, the effect on the civilian made into a soldier and the difficulty of reintegrating into civilian life after conflict.
  
  Written in the immediate postwar period some of the stories repeat wartime experiences (often involving drinking and drunkenness) although one of the most arresting stories "Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa..." doesn't.
  
  In the story an injured soldier is taken to a field hospital established in his former school that it turns out he left a bare three months earlier. The education implied in the decoration of the school (pictures of colonial Togo, the
  Old Fritz and the
  Great Elector) and the quotation, cut short, from "Wanderer, kommst du nach Sparta, verkündige dorten, du habest uns hier liegen gesehn, wie das Gesetz es befahl" - of Schiller citing the Simonides epigram on the Spartan dead at Thermopylae - manages in a few words and images to describe a wealth of social and political values built in to the education of a society which over-valued martial virtues and a military death, which in themselves explain Germany's involvement in the First and Second World Wars in a convincing and moving way I think Anselm Kiefer does something similar with his Varus painting as a complete culture, a set of values that ends in a schoolboy facing field surgery in his former classroom - who will learn the lesson?
  
  The post war stories are full of the shabby difficulties of the postwar years. Black market trading, struggling to get work and stealing coal or firewood. In "Kerzen fuer Maria" the narrator and his wife have managed to set up a small candle business but the quality of their candles is so poor that as time goes on even the steepest discounts can't sell their goods. The narrators sense of sin is such that the helplessness of their situation seems like a consequence of their moral state rather than a question of manufacturing. The war and the Nazi regime are here unspoken in the background as a society searches for normality.
  
  A good collection of stories.
• 
  Lisa

  "Trümmerliteratur" - the literature describing the wreckage and ruins in Germany after the catastrophe of World War II and Third Reich ...
  
  Quite literally, the German world was cut to pieces, broken down, destroyed together with the evil forces that had dominated the country since the 1930s. This affected all aspects of life, not least education and adolescent lives.
  
  The short story "Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa..." was required reading in my German high school in the early 1990s, a school which proudly carried the name of a famous scientist. And it was probably read in many other Gymnasiums as well, called "Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Gymnasium", or "Anne-Frank-Gymnasium", or "Geschwister-Scholl-Schule". The school names that still refer to older historical context usually include Goethe or Schiller or Humboldt, but NEVER Adolf Hitler or other symbolical figures of fascism. With the end of Hitler's Germany, education had to be re-evaluated.
  
  History has had to be redefined many times.
  
  In Böll's short story, a Gymnasium is the setting for a young soldier's last journey - a school transformed into an improvised hospital in a town burning bright at the end of the war. It used to carry a Christian patron saint's name, and the shadows of the crosses can still be seen on the walls where they left a light spot even after they were removed to reinvent the message of the pedagogy in the spirit of Nazism.
  
  The soldier is carried on a stretcher past signs of pedagogical focus: heroes, classical art, portraits of politicians and orators in a long row of perfectly implemented "translatio imperii et studii" to the last in line: Adolf Hitler!
  
  For his delusion of "Weltherrschaft", young men left school to fight a war of destruction, to die for their fatherland. That this was explicitly taught in class is made perfectly clear in the story. The soldier, looking for proof that he is actually in his own old school, identifies a quote on the blackboard - in his own handwriting: "Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa...".
  
  The sentence, a sadly accurate symbol for the cut off, broken culture, the "Trümmerliteratur", is an unfinished line from a Schiller poem, telling the story of ancient Spartan youths willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of their nation - a worthy equivalent to the German men signing up for the war directly from school, believing in the old lie "Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori" long after Wilfred Owen and his fellow poets denounced it in World War I.
  
  The poem is cut off in the middle of the word "Sparta", splitting the warrior society in the middle, and illustrating the rupture between literary tradition and "Stunde Null" in 1945. The soldier, in heartbreaking analogy - about to die - sees his own injuries: he has lost his arms and one leg, his body is a "Trümmer" like the school, the town, the country, the education system.
  
  Politics and education are closely linked, and whenever a political system is breaking down, it implies changes for the next generation of learners. The Third Reich taught its children the ideology it needed them to believe in order to reign the world, and when the regime was overthrown, the symbols of its power were removed, just like the cross was removed before. But the brutal history left a shadow on the wall. The Gymnasiums nowadays carry the names of the victims of the Third Reich, like Anne Frank, or of representatives of resistance, like the Scholl siblings or Bonhoeffer, - and we read Böll, lest we forget.
  
  What will the future have in store for our classrooms? What will we teach our children of the world? That will determine their lives not only on an individual level, it will define their role in a society shaped by a mass of people being taught with specific biases.
  
  At a time when German right-wing politicians shout out that people should stop atoning for Nazi Germany, when isolationist and nationalist slogans become more and more "politically correct" in many traditionally liberal and open-minded countries, and propaganda and lying are a regular instrument of brainwashing in the world's leading "democracy", we need to consider where to put our educational emphasis. What message should schools send to the impressionable youth that will shape the future? We don't ever want to see German Gymnasiums called Adolf Hitler School again, do we?
  
  The Schiller poem as seen through the historical lens of Böll is a method to create historical, literary and political awareness - and it works beyond national borders, as the ancient Spartan ideal has been usurped and abused not only in fascist Germany, but in many education systems across the world.
  
  Trümmerliteratur speaks to us today, and reminds us of the dangers of indoctrination, war mongering and ostracism, and it is not an exclusive failure of Germany to repeat history again and again. All communities have to double-check their values when the wind is blowing in full storm from fascist elements of society.
  
  Dulce et decorum non est!
• 
  Paolo del ventoso Est

  Böll, il Maestro delle short-stories. Si rassegnino gli americanisti.
  Questa raccolta è un autentico risveglio dei sensi; il nitore della prosa, la sensibilità di chi racconta un vissuto, il dosato susseguirsi di descrizioni mai ingombranti, poche frasi semplici e perfette per stampare un viso, una situazione, un cielo stellato o una trincea.
  Un risveglio dei sensi letterari, perché desta ammirazione vedere come poche righe possono espandersi, fino a contenere un mondo; é strabiliante, ad esempio, come La nostra buona, vecchia Rénee, poche pagine di racconto, abbia il profumo della Francia intera. O la rapida sequenza di immagini in Una bevuta a Potöcki renda perfettamente l'idea di una Ungheria intima, diffidente, baffuta, rintanata in un'osteria durante l'occupazione nazista.
  Un denso fluire di sogni, speranze ed amare disillusioni tra i feriti della guerra, uomini orribilmente mutilati, moribondi, ed il loro disperato bisogno di una compagna, una sigaretta, un dolcetto, la fioca luce di una candela nell'oscurità della trincea.
  Il ritorno, dolorosamente felice, degli anni della gioventù nel riconoscere la tua calligrafia tracciata col gesso su una lavagna che ormai funge da separé per i militari in attesa di amputazione, nello struggente racconto eponimo.
  La religiosità genuina, saldamente ancorata ai sentimenti umani, o anche il senso del tempo che passa, gli oggetti e gli affetti che ci sfuggono di mano; di tutto questo parla Heinrich Böll, raccogliendo i frammenti di umanità provate, sofferenti, con sussulti di straordinaria dignità. Regalandoci il volto tenero e segreto di una Germania che abbiamo conosciuto forse solo come il Mostro abbaiante e crudele al guinzaglio di Hitler.
• 
  Dhanaraj Rajan

  Three and half stars as a whole collection. But there are stories in this collection that deserve full five stars.
  
  The stories deal with life in the war front (World War II) and post war Germany. These stories certainly must have had a great impact in the immediate aftermath of the World War II. The war ravaged haunting landscape of the defeated Germany along with its defeated people are narrated in a harrowing manner. Everywhere there is only rubble and people are not sure that the next person is alive or the ghost from the past. Many imagine seeing people killed in the war. The utmost poverty, the result of the war is as-a-matter-of-fact described. The reader feels the anxiety of the people and suffers with the people in their hunger.
  
  Some of the Five star stories are:
  1. Across the Bridge.
  2. 'Stranger, Bear Word to the Spartans We...'
  3. What a Racket
  4. Breaking the News
  5. Lohengrin's Death.
• 
  Martin

  Tragic, sad, poignant. All 26 stories collected in this book* are worth reading. Just don't pick up this book expecting a frivolous read. These stories hit hard. You may have to take a break between some of them.
  
  War isn't funny, and these stories help readers like me understand just exactly what war is, how the people cope (or not) with it, and how they rebuild their lives once it's over. Really, no joke, read this book.
  
  I liked all 26 stories, but these more than the rest (with my favourites in bold)
  
  Across The Bridge
  My Pal With The Long Hair
  The Man With The Knives
  'Stranger, Bear Word To The Spartans We...'
  Dear Old Renée
  What A Racket
  At The Bridge
  Breaking The News
  Reunion In The Avenue
  In The Darkness
  My Expensive Leg
  Business Is Business
  My Sad Face
  Black Sheep
  
  I discovered
  Heinrich Böll only a few months ago when I read
  Billiards at Half-Past Nine and
  The Train Was On Time, and I must say, I'm just sorry I didn't get to read him sooner.
  
  *Note: This book is included in
  The Collected Stories of
  Heinrich Böll
  
  
• 
  Makati

  Mit Abstand die beste Geschichte: Mein trauriges Gesicht.
• 
  Nicholas Whyte

  
  https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2875639.html
  
  I acquired this collection of short stories years ago and got around to reading it last month.
  
  I must say they blew me away. They are mostly very short indeed - 26 stories in 185 pages, so roughly 7 pages each on average. They were published between 1947 and 1951, mostly in 1950. They cover the horror of being a German soldier in the war, and of being a German after the war; of the disintegration of civilisation and humanity, and the dreadfulness of being oneself an integral part of that. It's unflinching and unsentimental, and full of memorable images (not all of which seem to have got translated) - the shreds of wallpaper, for instance, in the paragraph above. Most of the stories are vignettes, but some have a distinct twist in the tail. I'll look out for more by Böll.
• 
  Farhan Khalid

  Somewhere the war was going on, invisible, inaudible in these silent streets
  
  Something between obsession and detachment, something magical
  
  I could see it all right: the town was burning
  
  The weight I was dragging, the weight of the world, was heavy
  
  Invisible ropes bound me to it, it to me
  
  I was filled with a sense of almost utter isolation
  
  This life, I thought, is not my life
  
  I have to behave as if this were my life, but I'm not good at it
  
  I realized I now had a proper profession
  
  A profession where all I needed to do was stand still and dream a little
  
  Picture a little café under some tree, maybe, in the fall
  
  The smell of moisture and decaying leaves in the air, and you're translating a poem by Verlaine
  
  There I saw someone, who must be me
  
  That little smile you exchanged will never die, never, I tell you
  
  Rise, my love, I whispered, rise, and my tears mingled with the rain
  
  A single minute of hope and twenty-three hours and fifty -nine minutes of despair
  
  That's what keeps me alive
• 
  Johannes

  Great book with lots of mystical stories about the II. World War. I was deeply moved by the feelings of the people, being in despair or hope. Highly recommendable!
• 
  binaliest

  Manche der Geschichten verfolgen einen noch Tage später. Ein interessanter Einblick in die Dynamik zwischen Menschen in der (Nach-)Kriegszeit.
• 
  Magdalena

  Interessant, man kann aber nicht viel am Stück lesen.
• 
  William Kirkland

  
  Children Are Civilians Too is a 1995 re-issue of earlier translations by Leila Vennowitz, one of Böll’s favored translators. Of the twenty-six stories only one does not have reference to the war. Not surprisingly, it is the most amusing of all.
  
  Böll himself, though coming from a Catholic, pacifist family and having refused to join the Hitler Youth in 1930, was conscripted and fought in the Wehrmacht, on the Eastern Front, which is to say Romania, Hungary and the Soviet Union. He was wounded four times (as well as contracting typhoid fever) before being captured by Americans in April 1945 and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.
  
  We suspect so from his writing ...
  
  “The Ration Runners” (1950 ) is about war, combat and the wounded, one of several about moving into the after-life. An arc of lights slowly falls. When the last one hits, nearby, an explosion.
  
  After recovering and having a short a smoke with the man next to him, he is told:
  
  “You’d better get going, and don’t forget to take him with you, he’s lying up there by the old Flak emplacement.” Then he added: “There’s only half of him, you know, in a groundsheet.”
  
  In “My Expensive Leg,” Böll whets his knife of irony. A wounded man is offered a job shining shoes. He refuses, saying that he should get a full pension because of his disability. The interviewer calculates how much that would cost over his likely 40 years of life and tries to get him to realize that is very expensive for merely a leg. The man replies that, to the contrary, many, of high rank, were saved because, while lying there wounded, he passed the word and the others “all scrammed. The funny part is … they were in such a hurry they forgot to take me along.”
  
  For an accessible short read about what "the enemy" lived through during such a war, Böll is a great place to start, and his short stories let you get a taste.
  
  For a full review see here:
  http://www.allinoneboat.org/heinrich-...
• 
  Justin Goodman

  (More of a 3.5)
  
  The opening sentence of this collection tries to set the tone for the rest: "The story I want to tell you has no particular point to it, maybe it isn't really a story at all, but I must tell you about it." What's necessary to make this weightier is that the collection was originally titled 1947-1951, a title that somehow required changing despite its meaningful blandness. For it imply a lot to a German.
  
  The stories at their best are vignettes of an ordinary despoiled by recent memory and cultural legacy, and subtly bring out the tragicomic invidiousness in the phrase used for one of the stories titles: "business is business." Some of the stories veer into this oddly romantic, oddly dramatic structure that doesn't fit either Boll's writing, the collection as a whole, or the stories as stories in themselves.
  
  Which is why this isn't a four. It feels like a writer at the beginning of their development.
  
  If you enjoy Hemingway's writing style you'll probably enjoy Boll's, with the benefit that Boll doesn't come with the cultural baggage (misogyny, homophobia, etc). At least, I thought of stories like "Indian Camp" and "Hills Like White Elephants" when reading these stories.
• 
  Kris McCracken

  An interesting collection of Heinrich Böll’s early short stories.
  
  Written in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, Böll’s remit is to capture the perspective of the peoples of a defeated country who have to reconcile that defeat, the misery of post-war deprivation with the notion of national culpability. Excellent writer that he is, Böll effectively manages it.
  
  As such, it is a very good read. As you would expect, it’s incredibly sombre in tone, and evokes a period that we don’t often hear about. Well worth a look.
  
• 
  Max

  A scary story of what war is, who needs it and who pays for it. Surprisingly, the answers to these questions the author can enter into the framework of a tiny five-page story.
  Exceptionally capacious.
• 
  Enrico Ammirati

  Racconti molto belli. Da leggere. E' la Germania della Guerra con le macerie. Alcune immagini sono stupende. Leggerete di una donna vista attraverso i vetri di una casa vista tutti i giorni da un uomo su un treno...
  Viandante se giungi a Sparta e' una scritta su una lavagna
• 
  Jerry Pogan

  An outstanding collection of short stories. Boll depicts everyday German life following WWII in the small villages and through ordinary people faced with the devastation of the war as well stories of ordinary soldiers during the war.
• 
  Comrade

  A great piece of WWII literature, simple and without unnecessary pathos. A clear and powerful reminder, that war has a child's face.
  It was really, really good.
• 
  DukeHenry

  Heinrich Böll erzählt in dieser Sammlung von Kurzgeschichten über die Entrückten und Vernichteten der Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit. Dabei ist alles einerseits so plastisch, so nah, was er berschreibt, und doch ist es eine schwankende, taumelnde Sprache, die auch mich beim Lesen taumeln lässt, oder noch mehr, wenn der Krieg sein unendlich grausames Gesicht offenbart, wenn die zerstörten Existenzen durch diesen Dichter sprechen und uns in den Abgrund blicken lassen, dann ist es nicht nur ein schwanken, dann ist es ein inneres Erzittern.
  Das kannte ich bereits aus den "Ansichten eines Clowns", wo wir sehen wie eine Existenz scheitert, weil sie dieses Grauen nicht verdrängen mag und es ist hier genauso wirkungsvoll. Wie nah am Wahnsinn, an der Leere und am Tod die Figuren in diesen Erzählungen leben, und welche Sehnsucht zur Liebe, zur Nähe, aus ihnen spricht. Und noch vieles mehr ist in diesem Buch.
  Ich habe nun seit Ewigkeiten keine Kurzgeschichten-Sammlung mehr angefasst und frage mich wieso, diese Gattung der Literatur spricht sehr zu mir, es reizt mich gleich wieder selbst zu schreiben.
  
  Wenn ich im übrigen eine Kritik äußern kann, dann die, dass man noch ein wenig den beginnenden Schriftsteller erkennt, wenn eine Pointe, eine gewisse Idee um die sich eine Geschichte kreist, etwas zu grell beleuchtet wird.
• 
  Christopher Walker

  'Children are Civilians Too' is both the name of the book by Heinrich Boll and the name of one of the short stories contained within - of which there 26 in total. These are often very short stories bordering on flash fiction - some are as short as three pages - but each one hits home, focusing on the wretchedness of life in a war-torn state, and the sadness that seems to follow every man, woman, and child when war descends upon the country.
• 
  Hannah

  Dieses Buch ist wichtig für die Geschichte dieses Landes und trotzdem muss ich sagen, dass ich es nicht mag. Es könnte daran liegen, dass ich Kurzgeschichten nicht mag, weil sie zu schnell zu Ende sind oder weil die Themen, die Böll in den Erzählungen behandelt nicht schön sind.
  Ich weiß nicht genau, warum dieses Buch und ich keine Freunde werden, aber ich habe es nicht abgebrochen, weil ich mir der Bedeutung durchaus bewusst bin.
• 
  A.J. Adams

  Fantastic but OMG is it depressing! I loved it because of the insight it gave me into Germany in 1944/45. This was called, "Nullpunktliteratur" or Point Zero Literature, and it really does describe a society that is totally lost. I have no idea if this ever was translated, but if you can find it in English, read it!
• 
  Justin Echols

  "At first there were two of us, but they shot the other fellow, he's not costing you a cent now. It's true he was married, but his wife is in good health and able to work, you don't need to worry. He was a real bargain. He'd only been a soldier for a month, all he cost was a postcard and a few bread rations. There's a good soldier for you, at least he let himself be killed off."
• 
  Nataliia Rybko (Kucher)

  Книга про медитації на тему війни смертельнопораненого солдата,юнака який пішов на війну зі школи і в школу повертається на ношах помирати. Глибокий відчуттєвий драматизм, хапання за деталі, щоб ідентифікувати місцезнаходження і сенс всього, що відбувається навколо.
• 
  Larry

  26 short stories by Heinrich Boll as only he can depict ordinary people in post World War II Germany. Noir reading at its best. Stories of soldiers and people struggling after the war as only he can write and tell based on his personal and observed reflections.
• 
  Bookwormthings

  I wasn't sure what to make of these stories, but I am glad I persisted. Stories of the people of Germany just post WWII as they struggle to survive and develop a future after the horrific recent past.
• 
  AlterEgo

  2.5/5 stars