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war in
Borchert’s writings are the pictures he had in mind of the front from the war, the life of a prisoner during the war, the return of a soldier to a destroyed Germany and the hope for the future after devastating war. From there his writings entail abrupt and fragmented pictures. Most of what he creates is not memorable-character based, meaning, he describes people and things without the labels placed by the society or the nation. For example, he mentions men, soldiers, or widows instead of giving up characters like himself, his parents or anyone else. People felt the pain in his writing even with this anonymity and that points out a humanitarian success he achieved; reaching the people’s hearts with simplicity. The basic language he used contributed to delivering the desired message of suffering the people, and he, experienced during the war time.
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into his poems and short stories. Rilke tends to use metaphors, metonymy and contradictions which affected
Borchert in that he utilized many metaphors in his writings such as Borchert's short story “The Kitchen Clock”. In the story, he used the clock as a metaphor that reminds him of his mother and his lost family. It has a great resemblance to trauma-literature. Then, comes Hölderlin's role in inspiring Borchert where Hölderlin was known for using symbols in his writings instead of labeling people and places with their known tags. And, again in “The Kitchen Clock”, Borchert uses symbols in describing characters, for example, describing the returning soldier in “The Kitchen Clock” he says:
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fate. This describes what
Borchert felt inside and how he wanted to touch the audience's feelings. He aimed to bring up disjointed events and present them as a shattered mirror and let the audience enjoy feeling it instead of watching it. The normal style of narrating a story does not exist in Borchert's writings due to the intensity of experience he had to go through. Instead, the reader finds Borchert's stories divided into sections of despair, guilt, solitariness and a lack of faith and willingness. That was caused by the distracted mind, the shaken soul, and the disordered emotions initiated by the war experience.
398:, where he saw the full horror of the eastern conflict, witnessing the numerous casualties in battle and those sustained due to cold, starvation and inadequate equipment. On 23 February 1942, he returned from sentry duty on the Russian front missing the middle finger of his left hand. He claimed that he had surprised a Russian soldier, had engaged in hand-to-hand conflict, his rifle had gone off in the struggle and wounded him. His superior officer, accusing him of attempting to evade military service by
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produced it to be played in London in 1998 at the Gate
Theater. The translation of Borchert's work opened up the opportunity for foreigners to further study the trauma literature which is greatly presented in his poems and short stories. In 1988, a group of people who were keen on Wolfgang Borchert work initiated the International Wolfgang-Borchert Society. The mission of the society is to promote studying Borchert's writings to the international level.
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Borchert's writings indicate that he was less concerned with the quality of his work than he was fulfilled creating poems. This later came in when he joined the theater where he became an actor to better express himself. For instance, in one of his letters to Aline
Bussmann he was not interested in hearing her opinion in what he wrote but rather he asked her whether the piece pleased her or not!
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645:“ written by Borchert is very similar to Whitman's “youth, old age, and night”. They share the same images of insomnia with darkness that are mixed with cold, hunger and the long time outside standings Later in Borchert's life, his work extended beyond the national borders as it was translated to other languages, especially English. The most famous work of Wolfgang Borchert was
516:“Aber ich bin seit einiger Zeit darüber, meine Gedichte für etwas Wichtiges anzusehen, das nicht verloren gehen dürfte. Wenn von den paar Tausend – so viele werden es ja allmählich sein- nur zwei – drei übrig bleiben die es wert sind, dann will ich zufrieden sein. Wenn ich aber dennoch immer welche schreibe, die oft garnichts taugen, dann nur, um sie loszuwerden – sonst nichts.”
504:. Rilke was his role model, to the extent that he signed a work "Wolff Maria Borchert" to express his respect for him. He was a follower of some poets and had seen them as his source of art fulfillment, for example, when he was to join the army, he wrote that he was hungry for art, listing Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Musset, Schiller and Hölderlin.
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has the same tone as the
Kitchen Clock so that it describes the return of a prisoner of war to his home. This play was first translated to English in 1952 by David Porter whose translation reduced the quality of this artistic piece. Then, Thomas Fisher, an English producer, retranslated the play and
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The character is missing here but the message he wanted to send is clear and deliverable because there are many people who had their different “Clock” after World War II and can relate to his situation. Borchert was a heavy reader and he read the product of other poets from other countries. Borchert
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Wolfgang
Borchert’s style was not limited to his poems, but rather it was his short stories that made his style more vivid. The experience he had been through during war was a key factor in the way he expressed himself; his work reflects the trauma he went through. The preoccupations of war and post
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Later when
Wolfgang grew up, he purified his creation by destroying many poems that were irrelevant to that time period. In Wolfgang's eyes, what was left of his poems were not of high quality. Therefore, what survived from his poems were mostly included in his letters to Aline Bussmann, Ruth Hager,
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Writing poetry was easier for
Borchert than creating prose. His poem production rate was around five to 10 per day. His work was reviewed by his father, which Wolfgang considered as an endorsement. He was later well known for expressing himself in poems when he needed to, no matter what the outcome.
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Following the war, Borchert's condition continued to worsen. In 1946 one doctor told his mother he expected
Borchert would not live longer than another year, but Borchert himself was never told of this prognosis. He resumed his work with the theatre, and continued writing. He wrote short prose and
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Borchert's work was not famous during his early days, although there were many people who liked his poems and prose works. The war gave Wolfgang's writings an everlasting impression; it was characterized as one of the best war-literature. He employed the styles of Rainer Maria Rilke and Holderlin
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which was “a tragedy of a returning soldier”, had a hopelessly nihilistic theme. There was emphasis on how nothing was worth living for and everything was destroyed; the smell of guilt is spread everywhere, and the largest share of guilt is the God's guilt. There was no tolerance or acceptance to
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When it comes to putting Wolfgang's poems under the critic's spotlight, only his later work that he endorsed publishing should be studied. This is due to the fact that his poems were mostly written for certain events or to a particular person, or occasional literature; his earlier poems were done
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Borchert's work was distributed to whoever showed interest in them; later, this helped the Gestapo arrest him along with other reasons. Even though Wolfgang's work was widely spread, he was not satisfied with his work and thought it was more of a self-expression need that he needed to let out:
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Carl Albert Lange and Hugo Seiker. Those poems were not to be published, or at least that was the intention of Borchert. However, in 1960, his mother Hertha Borchert and the American Stanley Tschopp gathered around two hundred poems to be published but that did not happen until 1996, when
427:. Borchert was denounced by one of the other soldiers in the dormitory, arrested, and on 21 August 1944 sentenced to nine months in prison. The sentence was deferred until the end of the War, so he was again returned to the army, this time mostly spending his time in his barracks in
375:. He would pass around anti-Nazi poems to his colleagues. While at the bookshop, Borchert took acting lessons, without, at first, telling his parents. He left the apprenticeship early in 1941. Upon passing his acting examination on 21 March 1941, he began working for the travelling
408:– making statements against the regime. He was convicted of making "statements endangering the country" and sentenced to serve a further six weeks of strict-regime detention, and was then sent back to the Eastern Front "to prove himself at the front". There he suffered
416:, after which he was granted medical leave. On leave he again acted in a night club in the now bomb-ravaged city of Hamburg. He then returned to his barracks, and successfully applied to be transferred to an army theatre group. He was transferred to a transit camp in
636:“… He looked at his clock and shook his head pensively. No, dear sir, no, you are wrong about that. It has nothing to do with the bombs. You should not keep talking about the bombs. No. At 2:30. At night I mean. Nearly always at 2:30. That is just it…”
402:, had him arrested and placed in isolation. At his trial, the military prosecutor called for the death penalty, but the court believed Borchert's version, and he was pronounced not guilty. However, he was immediately re-arrested on charges under the
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camp, Borchert and others jumped off the lorry and escaped, and then he walked home to Hamburg (a distance of around 370 miles). He arrived there, totally exhausted, on 10 May, a week after Hamburg had surrendered to the British.
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and then released. The same year he reluctantly took up an apprenticeship at the Hamburg bookshop C. Boysen in the
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Padgett, Jacqieline (1980). "The Poet in War: Walt Whitman and Wolfgang Borchert".
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Das pubertäre Genie: Wolfgang Borcherts emotionale Veränderung in seinem Jugendwerk
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Klarmann, Adolf (1952). "Wolfgang Borchert: The Lost Voice of a New Germany".
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was influenced by an American civil-war poet Walt Whitman. For example, the “
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Allein mit meinem Schatten und dem Mond (Alone with my shadow and the moon)
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in December 1946. In December 1946 and/or January 1947 he wrote the play
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284:. His work is among the best-known examples of the
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49:. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
1025:English translations of some of Borchert's stories
961:Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English
317:. He is one of the most popular authors of the
258:; 20 May 1921 – 20 November 1947) was a German
1080:20th-century German dramatists and playwrights
139:Last photo as a civilian in the summer of 1941
488:shortly before his death from liver failure.
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359:, and they moved in Hamburg's intellectual
869:Wolfgang Borchert Ich glaube an mein Glück
851:. Hamburg: Dolling and Galitz. p. 98.
379:company Landesbühne Ost-Hannover based in
266:whose work was strongly influenced by his
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109:Learn how and when to remove this message
341:Fritz Borchert, who also worked for the
1020:International Wolfgang Borchert Society
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1090:German male dramatists and playwrights
321:; his work continues to be studied in
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871:. Berlin: aufbau. pp. 136–138.
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47:adding citations to reliable sources
993:Wolfgang Borchert. Werk und Wirkung
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1105:Burials at the Ohlsdorf Cemetery
1100:20th-century German male writers
1009:. Rowohlt. Reinbeck bei Hamburg.
975:Wolfgang Borchert Das Gesamtwerk
893:Wolfgang Borchert Das Gesantwerk
831:Granvella! Der schwarze Kardinal
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444:published a collection of poems
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720:Nachts schlafen die Ratten doch
585:I would like to be a lighthouse
486:(Then there is only one thing!)
34:needs additional citations for
920:10.1080/19306962.1952.11786604
767:(Then there's only one thing!)
532:From one of his longer poems:
295:. His most famous work is the
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412:and several further bouts of
1002:. Colloquium Verlag. Berlin.
774:Die lange lange Strasse lang
731:(The rats do sleep at night)
16:German playwright and writer
847:Rodenberg, Kajetan (1999).
778:(Along the Long, Long Road)
394:Borchert was posted to the
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544:Ich möchte Leuchtturm sein
451:(Lantern, Night and Stars)
1075:20th-century German poets
1060:German resistance members
807:Wolfgang Borchert Theater
643:Laterne, Nacht und Sterne
537:Laterne, Nacht und Sterne
447:Laterne, Nacht und Sterne
255:[ˈvɔlfɡaŋˈbɔʁçɐt]
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867:Burgess, Gordon (2007).
578:Lantern, Night and Stars
1005:Rühmkopf, Peter. 1961.
995:. Bouvier Verlag. Bonn.
825:These are for example:
665:Die drei dunklen Könige
595:for codfish and smelt –
274:and his service in the
998:Gumtau, Helmut. 1969.
756:Dann gibt es nur eins!
669:(The three dark kings)
475:Dann gibt es nur eins!
1095:German-language poets
1070:Deaths from hepatitis
658:Selected bibliography
573:Which translates to:
554:für Dorsch und Stint-
333:Borchert was born in
319:German postwar period
226:("Rubble literature")
1110:Hitler Youth members
1050:Writers from Hamburg
991:Wolf, Rudolf. 1984.
625:Draußen vor der Tür,
337:, the only child of
43:improve this article
709:Draußen vor der Tür
615:Style and influence
590:at night and wind –
564:und bin doch selbst
529:when he was young.
455:Draußen vor der Tür
422:propaganda minister
300:Draußen vor der Tür
58:"Wolfgang Borchert"
676:An diesem Dienstag
569:ein Schiff in Not!
549:In Nacht und Wind-
502:Rainer Maria Rilke
311:issues of humanity
191:, Hamburg, Germany
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1007:Wolfgang Borchert
1000:Wolfgang Borchert
895:. Rowohlt. 2007 .
878:978-3-7466-2385-6
827:Yorrick, der Narr
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680:(On this Tuesday)
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71:
64:
56:
943:JSTOR
763:]
745:]
727:]
693:1946
492:Poems
482:]
470:Basel
466:Swiss
297:drama
178:Basel
90:JSTOR
76:books
873:ISBN
780:1947
769:1947
751:1947
733:1947
715:1946
704:1946
682:1946
671:1946
500:and
429:Jena
355:and
343:Dada
329:Life
313:and
262:and
168:Died
145:Born
62:news
916:doi
270:of
45:by
1036::
939:72
937:.
912:27
910:.
857:^
833:;
829:;
761:de
743:de
725:de
480:de
325:.
160:,
949:.
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580::
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39:.
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