Humanist Anecdotes in Hard Times: F. C. Weiskopf and Lenka Reinerová

Abstract

This article examines humanist anecdotes about the turbulent times of the mid-twentieth century by F. C. Weiskopf and Lenka Reinerová. It provides a comparative reading of Weiskopf’s Elend und Größe unserer Tage. Anekdoten 1933–1947 (1950) and Reinerová’s “Tragischer Irrtum und richtige Diagnose” (published in Mandelduft, 1998). The anecdotal form of these texts harks back to the popular Enlightenment (Volksaufklärung) anecdotes of Heinrich von Kleist and Johann Peter Hebel, published in 1810–1811 during the Napoleonic Wars. The anecdote as a literary form is particularly well suited to the representation of wartime and political repression. While Weiskopf’s anecdotes explore cruelty and heroism under the Nazi dictatorship, Reinerová’s autobiographical text juxtaposes crisis points in her own life—her time as a political prisoner in France in 1939 and in Czechoslovakia in 1952–1953; her return to Prague as her family’s sole survivor; and her periodic cancer treatment from 1948 onwards. Reinerová describes how the kindness of ordinary people, and her own optimism and resilience, helped her through the worst times. Her lived experience gives her authority as a storyteller in Walter Benjamin’s sense. Both authors contrast human extremes—the good and the bad—yet both remain optimistic about the human capacity for good.

1. Introduction

Prague was a centre for anti-Nazi resistance between 30 January 1933 (when the Nazis seized power in Germany) and 30 September 1938 (when the Munich Agreement was signed, sacrificing Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany; the Nazis then seized power in Czechoslovakia on 16 March 1939). From 1933 to 1938, Prague was the base for the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ) edited by Franz Carl Weiskopf.1 Weiskopf was born in Prague in 1900 and lived there until 1938, except for some years in Berlin (1928–1933). In addition to his work as a publicist, he was a novelist and translator from Czech into German. He was also the mentor of Lenka Reinerová (1916–2008), who joined the staff of the AIZ in 1935. Reinerová describes Weiskopf’s lifelong struggle for a better world as follows: “Seit seiner Jugend setzte er sich […] für die Verwirklichung des […] konkreten Ziels ein: für eine bessere Ordnung der menschlichen Gesellschaft. Dazu gehörte auch die Überbrückung künstlich geschürter nationalistischer Zwistigkeiten” (From his youth he dedicated himself to the realization of a concrete goal: for a better organization of human society. This included the bridging of artificially fuelled nationalist disputes, (Reinerová [1985] 2006, p. 29)).2 In 1939, Weiskopf escaped to New York, where he worked with the League of American Writers, whose members included Arthur Miller and Langston Hughes, helping his friends and colleagues to obtain visas to escape from occupied France to the USA and Mexico. He saved the lives of many, including Reinerová herself (Reinerová [1985] 2006, p. 45). Reinerová also recalls how Weiskopf taught her how to be more concise in her writing.3 In this way, she highlights Weiskopf’s humanist, internationalist outlook and his concision, both of which are evident in his collection of anecdotes, Elend und Größe unserer Tage (1950, Misery and Grandeur of Our Time). Like Weiskopf, Reinerová affirms a humanist perspective throughout her work. As Traci O’Brien puts it, in Reinerová’s late prose “the locus of meaning is […] in the qualities that make us human, despite [our] individual differences” (O’Brien 2018, p. 356). This article will examine humanist anecdotes about the turbulent times of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s by Weiskopf and Reinerová.

The word “anecdote” (from Greek, meaning “unpublished” or “not given out”) was first used around 550 AD by Procopius of Caesarea in his collection of incidents from the Byzantine court, which were “previously unknown” (Grothe 1971, p. 4). Although the anecdote is an ancient form, in the modern period, it achieved canonical status with Heinrich von Kleist’s Berliner Abendblätter (1810–1811) and Johann Peter Hebel’s Schatzkästlein des rheinischen Hausfreundes (1811) (Treasure Chest of the Rhineland Family Friend). As a short form, the anecdote lends itself to the depiction of war and violence, and it is no coincidence that Kleist and Hebel wrote their anecdotes during the Napoleonic Wars. As in a newspaper report or a fait-divers, the anecdote must maintain a matter-of-fact tone, even when reporting the most horrific events. Furthermore, the best anecdotes are instructive—they almost always imply a (humanist) moral framework.

J. P. Hebel (1760–1826) was an exponent of Volksaufklärung (popular Enlightenment). This was the attempt to popularise the ideas of the Enlightenment in German-speaking lands, including humanist values such as mutual respect and dialogue, and the progressive spirit of modern science and critical inquiry.4 This type of Volksaufklärung was exemplified by C. F. Nicolai (1733–1811) and his anecdotes about Frederick II the Great of Prussia (1788–1792). The popular Enlightenment tradition continued to resonate until the mid-nineteenth century and beyond, as Böning has shown (Böning 1990, 2001, 2016, 2018). J. P. Hebel also belongs to the storytelling tradition, as described by Walter Benjamin in Der Erzähler (The Storyteller) (1936). Benjamin regards the figure of the storyteller (as represented by J. P. Hebel, Nikolai Leskov and Jeremias Gotthelf) as a man of the world, one whose lived experiences qualify him to give good counsel. As Benjamin puts it in section IV of his essay:

Die Ausrichtung auf das praktische Interesse ist ein charakteristischer Zug bei vielen geborenen Erzählern. […] jede wahre Erzählung […] führt, offen oder versteckt, ihren Nutzen mit sich. Dieser Nutzen mag einmal in einer Moral bestehen, ein andermal in einer praktischen Anweisung, ein drittes in einem Sprichwort oder in einer Lebensregel—in jedem Falle ist der Erzähler ein Mann, der dem Hörer Rat weiß.

(Benjamin [1936] 1991, pp. 441–42)

An orientation toward practical interests is characteristic of many born storytellers. […] every real story […] contains, openly or covertly, something useful. The usefulness may, in one case, consist in a moral; in another, in some practical advice; in a third, in a proverb or a maxim. In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.

(Benjamin 1973, p. 86)

I suggest that F. C. Weiskopf and Lenka Reinerová are working in the humanist storytelling tradition, as described by Benjamin. Both of them offer insights they have gained from their encounters and experiences for the benefit of their readers. Like Benjamin’s storytellers, Weiskopf and Reinerová offer their readers anecdotes, which show the difference between right and wrong; sometimes, they even offer practical suggestions.

The anecdotes of Hebel and Kleist have their modern counterparts in the anecdotes of the 1930s and 1940s by F. C. Weiskopf, Bertolt Brecht (Geschichten vom Herrn Keuner/Stories of Mr. Keuner), and Anna Seghers.5 Of these three, it was Weiskopf who studied the history of the anecdote most intensively, as shown in a note of 1950, in which he traces the form back to Renaissance humanist authors, including Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, Heinrich Steinhöwel and Heinrich Bebel.6 Just as Kleist published his anecdotes in his own newspaper, Berliner Abendblätter, Weiskopf published his anecdotes in his monthly periodical, Neue Deutsche Blätter (Růžičková 2016, p. 75); they were collected in Die Stärkeren (1934) (The Stronger Ones). After World War Two, an expanded collection of anecdotes appeared with Dietz Verlag in East Berlin: Elend und Größe unserer Tage. Anekdoten 1933–1947 (1950) (Misery and Grandeur of Our Time: Anecdotes 1933–1947). While Kleist and Hebel wrote in response to the violence of the Napoleonic Wars, Weiskopf responded to the violence of World War Two. Weiskopf’s anecdotes are informed by socialist ideals, and so Růžičková categorises them as “socialist anecdotes” (Růžičková 2016, p. 73). They might just as well be called “humanist anecdotes”, for these anecdotes put human stories before political ideology.7 One of his anecdotes, “Blueberry Pie” (discussed below), presents a US soldier in an extremely positive light (Weiskopf 1950, p. 81) (significantly, Weiskopf spent World War Two in exile in New York, not in the Soviet Union). Moreover, humanism and progressive political commitment are fully compatible. As J.-P. Sartre puts it: “every one of us must choose himself; but […] in choosing for himself he chooses for all men” (Sartre [1946] 1989, p. 29). He adds: “[we are] obliged at every instant to perform actions which are examples […] as though the whole human race had its eyes fixed upon what [we are] doing and regulated its conduct accordingly” (Sartre [1946] 1989, p. 32). Similarly, Weiskopf and Reinerová write with an awareness that their anecdotes could potentially inspire people to behave better to each other in the future.

The cosmopolitanism and Jewish background of Weiskopf and Reinerová made them vulnerable to the political repression in Czechoslovakia, which culminated in the trial of Rudolf Slánský, the then General Secretary of the Communist Party, and thirteen other leading party and government officials in November–December 1952. Political repression had intensified in Soviet satellite states after Joseph Stalin broke with Josip Broz Tito in the spring of 1948. The Soviet leaders viewed Tito’s statements about the possibility of a Balkan Federation as “a direct threat to their own efforts to organize their great power bloc” (Kaplan 1990, p. 2). The Soviet leaders organized a series of show trials intended to cow into submission the leaders of other Soviet-bloc countries; any divergence from Moscow was condemned as “bourgeois nationalism” (Kaplan 1990, p. 3). In 1949, this led to the show trial of László Rajk in Hungary, who was executed as a “Titoist spy” (Kaplan 1990, pp. 25–30). The Slánský trial of 1952 was orchestrated by Soviet advisors sent to Czechoslovakia by Stalin. As well as a crackdown on “Titoism”, the Slánský trials also had an antisemitic component, as eleven of the fourteen accused were of Jewish origin. The suspects were unjustly accused of anti-state conspiracy, including charges of Titoism, Zionism and “Jewish bourgeois nationalism” (Pelikán 1971, p. 102). Pelikán summarizes: “As the trials were prepared and conducted, the emphasis on Zionism, and on the Jews as a whole, became more pronounced, although the whole thing was a fabrication, with Communists and other progressives as the main victims (Pelikán 1971, p. 49).8 While antisemitism played a part in the Slánský trial and subsequent show trials, their main thrust was arguably to subjugate the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) and its chairman Klement Gottwald and to make them totally subordinate to Moscow and, thus, to prevent any further schisms, as had happened with Tito in 1948 (Kaplan 1990, p. 3).

In March 1952, Weiskopf was recalled from Beijing where he had been serving as ambassador and stripped of his duties. Anna Seghers interceded with Walter Ulbricht on his behalf, and he was permitted to move to East Berlin in 1953 with his wife Grete, also an author (Romero 2003, p. 116).9 Reinerová was imprisoned for fifteen months from 1952 to 1953 and released after Stalin’s death; she describes this ordeal in Alle Farben der Sonne und der Nacht (All Colours of the Sun and the Night), originally written in Czech (Peroutková 2018, pp. 170–72). By 1952, as the Cold War battle lines solidified across the entire world, the humanist, cosmopolitan approach of Weiskopf and Reinerová was no longer welcome. The communist regime in Czechoslovakia regarded them as politically suspect, not only because of their Jewish background but also because they wrote in German, a language that most citizens now associated with the horrors of the recent German occupation. Between 1945 and 1950, most of the German-speaking population of Czechoslovakia had been expelled in accordance with the Beneš decrees, and Weiskopf no longer had a German-speaking audience in Czechoslovakia (Hiebel 1973, p. 251). However, from today’s perspective (2024), the anecdotes of Weiskopf and Reinerová seem as relevant as ever. They have a humanist potential to speak beyond the political and national divides imposed during those years. They bear witness to the viciousness of the times and also to the amazing positive actions which sometimes provided a ray of hope.

This article compares Weiskopf’s Elend und Größe unserer Tage (1950) (henceforth: EG) and Reinerová’s (1998) “Tragischer Irrtum und richtige Diagnose” (Tragic Error and Correct Diagnosis) (henceforth: TI). As the titles suggest, each text juxtaposes extreme horror with some positive elements. Each bears witness to the extreme horrors of the mid-twentieth century in a remarkably matter-of-fact way. There are important differences, too, relating to the different periods when they were written: Weiskopf’s anecdotes have an international range; Reinerová’s anecdotes are woven together into a much longer narrative centred mainly on Prague and on her own personal experiences. Weiskopf’s text was produced in the early years of the Cold War; Reinerová wrote her text in the 1990s. Writing in 1950, Weiskopf saw no contradiction between socialism and humanism, or rather, he regarded his socialism as a natural extension of his humanism. Writing almost five decades later, Reinerová is politically disillusioned and reluctant to adopt a clear political position. This is hardly surprising, given her first-hand experience of communist political repressions in 1952 and 1968. Yet, in spite of these vast differences in time periods and experiences, both of these texts reflect an essentially humanist outlook, bearing witness to the violence of history and its vicissitudes. This article will argue that the anecdote form enables Weiskopf and Reinerová to adopt a tone which avoids sentimentality and helps them to focus on what is most important to them, i.e., respect for other human beings. This article will seek to show how Weiskopf and Reinerová are in dialogue with a humanist anecdote tradition, one which includes Kleist and Hebel.

2. F. C. Weiskopf, Elend und Größe Unserer Tage (1950)

F. C. Weiskopf emphasizes the continuity between his anecdotes and those of Kleist and Hebel. In a note in Elend und Größe unserer Tage, he observes the aesthetic qualities of the anecdote which render it suitable for the present time:

Die Ankedotenform wurde nicht zuletzt deshalb gewählt, um das von Kleist und Hebel hinterlassene, seither jedoch etwas in Vergessenheit geratene Erbe neu zu erwerben und zum Besitz der Literatur von heute zu machen. Gerade die Anekdote, die vermöge ihrer geschliffenen Fassung und ihres novellistischen Charakters dem verwöhntesten wie dem einfachsten Geschmack Befriedigung bieten kann, scheint so recht für unsere Zeit geschaffen, in deren Züge es liegt, Präzisionsinstrumente für den Massengebrauch herzustellen.

(EG, p. 92)

(The anecdotal form was chosen not least in order to reconnect with the legacy left by Kleist and Hebel, which has since been somewhat forgotten, and to make it the property of today’s literature. Thanks to its pared-down quality and its resemblance to the novella, the anecdote can give satisfaction to both the most refined and the simplest of tastes. In this way, the anecdote seems to have been created especially for our time, which is characterized by the production of precision instruments for mass consumption).

Weiskopf is telling his readers that he has chosen the anecdote form because of its immediacy and because it can appeal to all readers, whether educated or not. In other words, the anecdote has a universal appeal. Furthermore, the extreme brevity of the anecdote form leaves hardly any room for the narrator to suggest reasons for the events being narrated. Psychological explanations are bracketed out. As in the works of Kleist and Hebel, the author has a certain ideological position, but he refrains from spelling it out. As much as possible, he describes the events and leaves it up to the readers to draw their own conclusions. This is perfectly in line with the popular Enlightenment tradition, as represented by Hebel, which encouraged the public to develop their own faculties of reasoning and debate. Weiskopf observes that some of the tales in his collection have also appeared in works by other authors, e.g., in a poem by Bertolt Brecht, a novel by Lion Feuchtwanger, and a play by Clifford Odets. For Weiskopf, this suggests that the anecdote relates to other popular forms, such as the folk tale, the folk song, and the legend (EG, p. 92). Once again, Weiskopf is arguing that these anecdotes have a universal popular appeal precisely because they speak to a shared common humanity, beyond any distinctions of class, race, gender, or nationality.

Some of the anecdotes in Elend und Größe are so horrible that they could potentially erode Weiskopf’s humanist message. If human beings are capable of such atrocities, what does that say about human beings in general? Weiskopf carefully avoids such disturbing generalizations by reminding his readers that it was the Nazis who committed these crimes—not human beings in general, but specific military and paramilitary units. The perpetrators in these anecdotes are Gestapo men or SS officers who have been systematically trained to commit violent actions. They may be “human beings”; however, they are some specific people who have been groomed to kill.

This grooming process can be seen in “Das Geburtstagsgeschenk” (The Birthday Present), which recounts the moment when American officers searched the apartment of the commander of the Mauthausen concentration camp. They found the diary of his teenage son:

In dem Buch fand sich eine Eintragung des Inhalts, daß der Junge an seinem dreizehnten Geburtstag vom Vater ein Infanteriegewehr, zweihundert Schuß scharfe Munition und, als besondere Überraschung, vierzig Juden zum Einschießen10 erhalten habe.

Und nun sage mir einer, daß Herz, Gemüt und Vaterliebe im Dritten Reich nicht hochgehalten wurden. (EG, p. 12)

(In the diary they found an entry to the effect that on his thirteenth birthday the boy received an infantry rifle from his father, two hundred rounds of live ammunition and, as a special surprise, forty Jews for target practice.

And now tell me that heart, mind and a father’s love were not held in high esteem in the Third Reich).

The narrator’s ironic comment hints at the shocking fact that mass murder seems potentially compatible with family life.11 Yet, the anecdote reminds us that crimes do not come out of nowhere. It seems that the worst crimes occur within perpetrator communities where people are trained to act violently and when such crimes are normalized.

Weiskopf is interested in what happens to family relationships under the pressure of extreme, fanatical ideology. “Das Mark der Ehre” (The Core of Honour) provides another tale of family relations in the Nazi period, this time, among a family of Sudeten Germans. Franz Josef Günther is a socialist who served in Spain, initially under General Franco, then he switched sides and fought for the Republican cause. Returning to his hometown in Northern Bohemia in 1938, he is persecuted by the Sudeten German Party. After the failed uprising of 12–13 September 1938 led by Konrad Henlein, many of the Sudeten paramilitaries fled to Germany; Günther protected the women and children left behind and vouched for his brother’s fiancée. Soon afterwards, the Sudetenland is occupied by the German army, and Günther escapes to Prague. He is consumed by homesickness, when he receives a letter from his brother telling him he will be pardoned if he returns home. At the border, Günther is greeted by his brother in an SS uniform. A signpost on the customs house displays a Nazi slogan: “die Treue ist das Mark der Ehre!” (loyalty is the core of honour, EG, p. 31).12 This is bitterly ironic, because Günther’s brother then takes him into the customs house and “führte beim Verhör den ersten Schlag gegen ihn” (struck the first blow against him during interrogation, EG, p. 31). Beaten beyond recognition, Günther is sent to a hospital in Chomutov, where he slits his wrists to avoid further torture. In his own blood, he writes “die Treue ist das Mark der Ehre!” (EG, p. 31). The story is a version of Cain and Abel, in which the Nazi slogans are—quite literally—written in human blood.

In the manner of Kleist, Weiskopf interweaves multiple relative clauses into his narrative. He skilfully exploits the property of relative clauses in German to send the verb to the end of the sentence. A good example of this is “Keiner Mutter Sohn” (No Mother’s Son), a short text of only three sentences, which could be described as a prose poem. Each sentence is a paragraph long and is carefully composed so that the final words of each sentence deliver a devastating punchline. The first paragraph is as follows:

Zu den merkwürdigsten Aussprüchen, die je vor einem Nazigericht getan wurden, gehört ohne Zweifel die Rede der fast siebzigjährigen Altenteilbäuerin Ursula Weinzierl aus Ferlach, die zusammen mit sechsunddreißig anderen Einwohnern dieses Fleckens […] zum Tode durch den Strang verurteilt und auf öffentlichem Markt hingerichtet ward.

(EG, p. 57)

(One of the most remarkable speeches ever made before a Nazi court was undoubtedly that of Ursula Weinzierl, an almost seventy-year-old farmer’s wife from Ferlach, who, together with thirty-six other inhabitants of the region, was sentenced to death by hanging […] and executed in a public market).

The relative clause structure means we have to wait until the end of the paragraph in order to discover that Ursula Weinzierl and thirty-six others were executed in public. Their crime was to have harboured some Yugoslav partisans.

In the second paragraph, the SS “Schnellgericht” (summary court) asks Weinzierl why she sheltered a partisan and even slaughtered her last piglet to feed him; she replies that she thought: “daß er einer Mutter Sohn sei” (that he was a mother’s son, EG, p. 57). Even a Yugoslav partisan has a mother who loves him. This sets the scene for the final paragraph, which reads:

Auf die weitere Frage, ob denn der Ortsbauernführer, den die Partisanen mit Wissen und unter Zustimmung der angeklagten Dörfler als Gestapoagenten erschossen hatten, nicht auch einer Mutter Sohn gewesen, besann sich die Weinzierl abermals eine ganze Weile und meinte dann, unter heftigem Kopfschütteln, sie habe den Ortsbauernführer immer sagen hören, daß ein Nazi von echtem Schrot weder Vater noch Mutter kenne, weshalb es ihr denn auch niemals eingefallen sei, in ihm einer Mutter Sohn zu sehen.

(EG, p. 57)

To the further question whether the Ortsbauernführer (local farmers’ leader), whom the partisans had shot as a Gestapo agent with the knowledge and consent of the accused villagers, was not also a mother’s son, Weinzierl again pondered for quite a while and then said, shaking her head vigorously, that she had always heard the Ortsbauernführer say that a true-calibre Nazi knows neither father nor mother, which is why it never occurred to her to see him as a mother’s son.

Once again, the syntax is carefully composed so that the pay-off is delivered in the last two clauses, echoing the ending of the previous paragraph. The syntactical structure contrasts the Yugoslav partisan—who almost certainly loved his mother and was loved by her—with the boastful Ortsbauernführer (local farmers’ leader) who claims he “knows neither father nor mother”. The text elicits outrage from readers, by rhetorically dividing humanity into two groups. On the one hand, there are those people (such as Weinzierl) who respect the fundamental bond between a mother and her child. On the other hand, there are Nazis who lack respect for even the most fundamental human bonds. As in the anecdote discussed previously, the Nazis are effectively condemned by their very own words. No moralising is needed here. The point is clear enough, namely the contrast between the Nazi’s lack of filial piety and a mother’s love for someone in whom she recognises the child of another mother.

A similar point is made in another anecdote, “Seltenes Beispiel von Mutterliebe” (Rare example of motherly love), set in April 1945 (at the end of the war) in Nesterov (German: Stallupönen/Ebenrode). Katharina Kleinmetz, a farmer, discovers that her son Hans Georg, an officer of the Waffen-SS, has just returned home. She is surprised to learn that her youngest son is still alive, unlike “seine drei älteren Brüder, die sämtlich den nichtsnutzigen Tod für Führer und Reich gestorben waren” (his three older brothers, all of whom had died a useless death for the Führer and the Reich, EG, p. 24). Katharina realizes that Hans Georg is so blinded by Nazi ideology that he intends to fight on even though the war is already lost: “[Ihr wurde klar], daß sich der Junge in seiner Verblendung allem Zureden, allen Gründen der Vernunft und des Gefühls verschließen würde” (She realized that the youth, in his blindness, would close his mind to all persuasion, all arguments based on reason and feeling […], EG, p. 24). She clubs him unconscious with the handle of an axe, ties him up, and delivers him to the Russian authorities, telling them he is better off in their custody than dead. The anecdote juxtaposes the human feeling of the mother and the blindness of the son. In a classical humanist move, Weiskopf wants to appeal to both “Vernunft” (reason, common sense) and “Gefühl” (feeling), both the head and the heart. Significantly, Reinerová uses similar rhetoric in the preface to her memoir Alle Farben der Sonne und der Nacht (All Colours of the Sun and the Night), when she says: “Wenn ich diesen Stoff jetzt […] von neuem durch Kopf und Herz ziehen lasse […]” (I let this material pass through my heart and head once again, Reinerová 2003, p. 11).13

Two of the longest anecdotes in the collection connect more explicitly with Kleist and Hebel. “Unwahrscheinliche Wahrhaftigkeiten. (In der Kleistschen Manier)” (Unlikely Truths—in the manner of Kleist, EG, pp. 72–76) has the same title as a text by Kleist, in which an old officer tells three amazing stories (Kleist 1977, pp. 277–81). In each case, we get three anecdotes in one longer frame narrative. In Weiskopf’s variation on Kleist, the old Prussian officer has become a German emigrant in New York, formerly an officer in the International Brigades. The emigré quotes Kleist’s officer directly: “Denn die Leute fordern, als erste Bedingung, von der Wahrheit, daß sie wahrscheinlich sei; und doch ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit, wie die Erfahrung lehrt, nicht immer auf seiten der Wahrheit.” (Kleist 1977, pp. 277–78; For people demand, as a first condition of truth, that it be plausible; although, as experience teaches, plausibility is by no means always on the side of truth, EG, p. 72). In the first of Weiskopf’s modern anecdotes, we hear the story of a Czech veteran of the International Brigades. Captured by the Vichy regime, he is made to work as a forced labourer in the Sahara desert, building roads. During this time, he studies many languages (French, Spanish, English, Arabic) as part of his plan—to escape to Egypt. In 1942, he escapes and crosses the Sahara. When he gets to the British lines in Egypt, he hopes to use his new language skills. Astonishingly, the first voice he hears is Czech. The guard on duty is a Czech volunteer (EG, p. 74). The next two anecdotes describe more unlikely coincidences: a Ukrainian is captured and moved to Germany as a slave labourer. He is assigned work as a gravedigger after a mass shooting of “saboteurs” by the SS. Among the corpses, he recognises the body of his sister, who he had thought was safely hidden back in Ukraine (EG, p. 75). In the third anecdote, set in Bosnia in 1945, an officer of the Geheime Feldpolizei (secret military police) disguises himself as an ordinary trooper and surrenders to the Yugoslav partisans. One of the partisans sees through the deception because he recognises the ring on the man’s finger, that belonged to his fiancée back home in Novi Sad—she was murdered shortly after the Nazi occupation had begun. He asks the man: “Und was hast du in Novi Sad gemacht?” (And what did you do in Novi Sad?, EG, p. 76), and the truth is revealed. This kind of discovery exemplifies how real-life events can sometimes seem improbable. After the organized mass murder of World War Two, Weiskopf’s characters (and readers who had survived those times) were likely to have experienced and done extraordinary things merely in order to stay alive. The narrator observes: “heutzutage [sind wir] beinahe versucht, einen Vorfall für ausgezeichnet und ungewöhnlich zu halten, wenn er der Abenteuerlichkeit und Unwahrscheinlichkeit ermangelt.” (Nowadays, we are almost tempted to consider an incident exceptional and unusual if it lacks any adventurous and improbable qualities, EG, p. 76). The excesses of the Napoleonic period have been outdone by the atrocities of the mid-twentieth century.

The next anecdote in the collection, “Die Geschwister von Ravensbrück” (The Siblings of Ravensbrück), also hinges on a shocking twist. Once again, there is a frame narrative: this time, the narrator is Anna Seghers, who assures Weiskopf that it is a true story; she describes the story as a “Wunder der Wirklichkeit” (miracle of reality, EG, p. 77).14 This time, though, the intertextual reference is not to Kleist but to Hebel’s famous story “Unverhofftes Wiedersehen” (1811, Unexpected Reunion), in which a young miner disappears shortly before his wedding day. Fifty years later, his body is found, perfectly preserved in vitriolic water. The young man’s fiancée, now an old woman, recognises the corpse of her lover (Hebel [1811] 1984, pp. 248–50). Seghers’s miraculous tale is about the many displaced persons, including children, after the end of the war. A community of Jewish refugees now living in Mexico decides to adopt thirty of these displaced children. A couple known as the B.s decide to adopt a boy and his younger sister who were found near Ravensbrück. In the lining of the girl’s skirt, Frau B. finds a hidden note written by her own murdered sister, a voice from beyond the grave. The tale is as moving as Hebel’s original. Although it seems “unlikely”, we should recall that almost everything that happened in the 1940s seemed “unlikely” to many people, until the events actually happened. As Anna Seghers wrote to Weiskopf from Stockholm in 1947, “Es kommen Tag und Nacht Geschichten an mich heran, wo Dir die Spucke weg bleibt, soviel Du auch glaubst gehört zu haben.” (Day and night you hear stories that make you speechless, no matter how much you think you’ve already heard).15 Here, Seghers, highlights the shocking, unbelievable quality of that time. “Die Geschwister von Ravensbrück” exemplifies this jaw-dropping quality. It is precisely because of this quality that Weiskopf avoids any didacticism or moralising, focusing instead on the human drama of the story. The events of the story do not need any commentary, as they speak for themselves, yet they are instructive.

Let us consider one more anecdote from Elend und Größe to show how Weiskopf focuses on the human dimension of his material. Weiskopf includes a profoundly pro-American story in his collection, which bears no relation at all to socialist ideology. “Blueberry Pie” is about an American private in Belgium in December 1944 who gets trapped behind enemy lines, who single-handedly fights off a large German patrol unit for a long time, until, finally, he is wounded by grenade shrapnel and captured. The German lieutenant who interrogates him is astonished by the man’s bravery:

Der ihn verhörende Leutnant […] bemerkte schließlich, daß man bei einem Kerl, der sich so todesmütig [sic] schlage, schlechterdings annehmen müsse, er trage eine ähnliche Idee wie die vom tausendjährigen Reich des Führers in seinem Bewußtsein. Worauf der Amerikaner […] beiläufig bemerkte, das sei keineswegs der Fall, vielmehr kämpfe er dafür, möglichst schnell nach Hause zurückzukehren, seine Benzinstation in Tucson aufs neue zu übernehmen, nach Feierabend mit den Kindern Baseball zu spielen und vor allem wieder blueberry pie zu essen—einen Heidelbeerkuchen, wie man ihn nur drüben, in Gottes eigenem Lande, zu backen verstehe.

(EG, p. 81)

(The lieutenant interrogating him […] finally remarked that one had to assume that a man who fought so boldly must have a noble ideal in his mind comparable to the Führer’s thousand-year Reich. Whereupon the American […] remarked casually that this was by no means the case, rather he was fighting in order to get back home as quickly as possible, to manage his gas station in Tucson once again, to play baseball with the kids after work and, above all, to eat blueberry pie again—a pie they only know how to bake over there, in God’s own country).

The German soldiers are so astonished by this response that, after a short discussion, they decide to surrender to the American. They accompany him back to his base and give themselves up. The anecdote suggests that civilian life—and blueberry pie—are more attractive than Hitler’s absurd fascist ideology. It presents the USA in such a positive light that it is surprising that it was even published at all in East Berlin in 1950. Furthermore, this anecdote underlines my point that Weiskopf’s anecdotes generally avoid any references to socialist ideology; instead, they make a rhetorical appeal to a common, shared humanity. What matters most in “Blueberry Pie” is not ideology at all but blueberry pie. From the above examples, we can see that Weiskopf’s anecdotes are concerned primarily with human feeling, not with political ideology. For this reason, Růžičková’s claim that these are “socialist anecdotes” is misleading (Růžičková 2016, p. 73). In my view, Weiskopf’s anecdotes are essentially humanist anecdotes, because their primary focus on human feelings and human values (e.g., truth, reason, love) gives them a certain timeless, universal quality.

3. Lenka Reinerová, “Tragischer Irrtum und Richtige Diagnose” (1998)

Lenka Reinerová presents herself as continuing the tradition of Prague German literature represented by Weiskopf and Kisch (Balcarová 2018, p. 9). Weiskopf’s influence can be observed in Reinerová’s “Tragischer Irrtum und richtige Diagnose” (1998) (Tragic Error and Correct Diagnosis), a 74-page text comprising a series of vignettes, or rather, humanist anecdotes. The juxtaposition in the title, which contrasts the best and the worst of Reinerová’s own life experiences, recalls Weiskopf’s contrast of Elend (misery) and Größe (greatness). “Tragischer Irrtum” was the official euphemism used to describe Reinerová’s imprisonment for fifteen months (much of it in solitary confinement) during the Stalinist purges in Czechoslovakia in 1952–1953; “richtige Diagnose” refers to her correct cancer diagnosis in 1948 by Czech doctors and subsequent life-saving radiotherapy treatment—astonishingly, she survived her cancer diagnosis by sixty years, living to be 92 years old. Reinerová’s title suggests a list of pros and cons. It is almost as if she is drawing up a balance sheet of her own life. On the one hand, she records her persecution by Nazis (who tried to kill her) and Stalinists (who put her in prison). On the other hand, she recalls communist Czechoslovakia’s excellent healthcare system, which saved her life. As noted previously, unlike Weiskopf, Reinerová has chosen to weave her many vignettes into a longer narrative form. Yet, her fundamental outlook—like Weiskopf’s—is an optimistic, humanist one, as Gitta Honegger argues:

Here was a woman who stood by her belief in a humanist communism, and who had managed to preserve her personal integrity despite being cruelly betrayed by political realities. The wounds of Stalinist brutalities were outweighed by the tender vignettes of the friends she introduces through a Chekhovian lens—ordinary human beings responding to extraordinary challenges.

(Honegger 2005, p. 674)

This is precisely what Reinerová offers her readers in “Tragischer Irrtum”—a series of tender vignettes showing how human kindness helped Reinerová to survive her persecution by the Nazis and, later, in the early 1950s, by the Stalinist authorities. As Reinerová herself puts it: “ich [weiß] neben sehr Bösem auch Gutes über Menschen und ihr Handeln zu erzählen” (I can talk not only about the worst, but also about the good in people and their actions, Reinerová 2003, p. 11). This optimistic, humanist belief in the fundamental goodness of most people is a key aspect of her work.

“Tragischer Irrtum” (henceforth TI) hinges on Reinerová’s two periods in prison and her cancer treatment. It begins by evoking a dark time that can happen to anyone: “Eine bleischwere Stunde, in der man das Gefühl hat, an einem Abgrund zu stehen, vielleicht sogar vor einem Nichts” (A leaden hour in which you have the feeling of standing before an abyss, perhaps even oblivion, TI, p. 41). A prison door slams shut and “ich war ausgestoßen aus der alltäglichen, wunderbaren Welt” (I was cast out of the everyday, wonderful world, TI, p. 41). In the vignettes that follow, she recounts her persecution by the Nazis, by the Vichy regime, and by the Stalinist regime in Czechoslovakia. In France, in 1939, she was interned twice, first in the La Petite Roquette prison in Paris and then in the Camp de Rieucros in the Vichy zone in Southern France.16 As noted previously, in 1952–53, she spent fifteen months in Ruzyně prison in Prague. Upon her release, she was rehoused with her family in Pardubice for almost two years, where she was assigned a job selling pottery. In late 1957, she began working as an editor for the magazine Im Herzen Europas (In the Heart of Europe), the first issue of which appeared in 1958 (Leclerc 2022, p. 88). However, she was officially rehabilitated only in 1964 (Honegger 2005, p. 662). After the Prague Spring, in 1969, she was expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) and forbidden to write until 1989, although her stories were published in East Germany by Aufbau from 1983 onwards (Honegger 2005, p. 662).17 Given her experiences, one might expect Reinerová to show some bitterness. She acknowledges the “bittere Wahrheit” (bitter truth, Reinerová 2003, p. 66) but chooses to accentuate the positive aspects of her experiences.18 Sometimes, people ask her why she still has such a positive outlook:

Wie kann man so etwas erklären? Wahrscheinlich habe ich viel meinem Naturell zu verdanken, manches vielleicht auch meinem unentwegt trainierten Willen. […] Auf die […] Frage, ob ich in all den Jahren mit mehr guten oder mit mehr bösen Menschen zu tun hatte, ist meine Antwort schon einfacher. Auf jeden Fall mit mehr guten. Zu ihnen zählt z. B. die Gefängnisaufseherin im kriegsgeplagten Paris, die mir eines Tages ein Veilchensträußchen in die Zelle brachte. Ebenso der Aufseher, der mir im Prager Gefängnis der fünfziger Jahre eines Morgens mit dem Getränkenapf zwei mit Marmelade bestrichene Brotscheiben in die Einzelzelle schob. […] Beide Male war das mit einem Risiko für die Menschen verbunden […].

(TI, p. 81)

How can you explain something like that? I probably owe a lot to my nature, and perhaps some things to my willpower, which I constantly trained. […] As for the question of whether I’ve had to deal with more good or more bad people over the years, my answer is simpler. Definitely more good ones. They include, for example, the prison warden in war-torn Paris who brought a bunch of violets into my cell one day. Also the warden who, one morning in Prague prison in the 1950s, slipped two slices of bread spread with jam into my single cell with the drinking bowl. […] Both times, these actions were risky for those people.

These small acts of kindness make an enormous difference. Every time Reinerová evokes her worst memories, she relativizes these events by recalling such acts of kindness and her ability to find comfort in everyday things. For example, when she recounts her first cancer operation in the late 1940s, she describes the woman in the bed next to her, a cleaning woman whose teenage son is a baker’s apprentice. The son comes for a visit with a bag of cream rolls, which he has learned how to bake. The woman has just had a large tumour removed, but she swells with pride when her son arrives carrying “die heiß ersehnten Kremrollen” (the passionately longed-for cream rolls, TI, p. 44). A cream roll is given to Reinerová, and this matters: “Was in solchen Minuten hilft, sind die natürlichsten Dinge im Leben […] Vielleicht auch Kremrollen” (What helps in such minutes are the most natural things in life […] Perhaps also cream rolls, TI, p. 45). Then, Reinerová’s husband and daughter arrive for a visit, and suddenly she no longer feels on the edge of an abyss; she is back on solid ground: “Die Erde hat mich wieder” (I’m back on earth again, TI, p. 46). These apparently simple anecdotes help to explain Reinerová’s astonishing resilience.

“Tragischer Irrtum” is a text about human resilience in the face of adversity. Early on, Reinerová recounts an incident from her childhood sometime in the late 1920s. In the early hours of the morning, two bailiffs came to the family’s apartment while her father was away. They were tax enforcers with the authority to confiscate the mother’s jewellery. Reinerová’s mother was crying with despair and begging them not to take the jewellery, so that she would have something left to pay the medical bills in case her daughters got sick. Reinerová walked into the room and said bravely: “Laß nur, Mutti, gib den Herren ruhig alles. Uns fehlt nichts, wir sind ganz gesund” (Go ahead, mum, give the gentlemen all of it. Nothing is wrong with us, we are completely healthy, TI, p. 50). Recalling this incident many decades later, she observes: “daß es mir zum ersten Mal gelungen ist, mit großer Angst vor einer unbekannten und darum um so unheimlicheren Gefahr fertig zu werden und etwas Schlimmes heil zu überstehen” (that for the first time I managed to cope with great fear of an unknown danger, which was all the more scary because it was unknown, and to survive something bad in one piece, TI, p. 50). In this way, her encounter with the tax enforcers sets a precedent for her adult life, by confirming her ability to confront danger and to somehow get through it unscathed.

Reinerová’s resilience was tested to its utmost in 1952–1953 when she spent fifteen months in Ruzyně prison, including one year in solitary confinement. She recalls the mental discipline that she developed, so as not to go insane:

Ich konnte es fertigbringen, mir zum Beispiel in meiner Einzelzelle ganz deutlich eine blühende Wiese vorzustellen oder Vogelstimmen im Wald. Oder den Geschmack von einem Butterbrot und einem Glas Milch. Ich versuchte mir ein Musikstück in Erinnerung zu rufen und tat dies so hartnäckig, bis ich meinte, es in der Tat zu hören. Stimmlos sagte ich Gedichte aus meiner Schulzeit auf.

(TI, pp. 59–60)

I was able to clearly imagine a flowering meadow or birdsong in the forest in my single cell, for example. Or the taste of bread and butter and a glass of milk. I tried to recall a piece of music and did so persistently until I thought I could actually hear it. Voicelessly, I recited poems from my school days.

Even when she was totally alone, Reinerová could remember the good times and use the memories and the music to sustain her. Reinerová also had a dream in prison, which was a great consolation to her. She dreamt that flowers were slowly blooming between her fingers, in unknown colours that she had never seen before: “in Farben, die es auf dieser Welt nicht gibt” (in colours that do not exist in this world, TI, p. 95). The vision of these amazing flowers growing from her hands helped her to feel calm and secure. For O’Brien, this dream represents “the potentially transcendent reality of human experience” (O’Brien 2018, p. 370). Although it was “only” a dream, it was a very special one that gave Reinerová the strength to endure her solitary confinement.

Reinerová explains that these daily meditations were an important survival technique during her worst times: “jene Stunden, in denen man alles in sich zu Hilfe rufen muß—Erinnerungen an Vorhaben, Pflichten und die besten Gaben des Daseins, um standzuhalten und sich nicht selbst aus Angst und Kleinmut vorzeitig aus dem Leben zu streichen” (Those hours when you have to draw strength from everything inside you—remember your intentions, moral duties and the best gifts of existence in order to stand firm and not exclude yourself from life prematurely out of fear and faintheartedness, TI, p. 55). Reinerová’s point is that, sometimes, the smallest things can help. During her time in prison, her only cellmate was a small spider, and it was a great consolation to her to watch the purposeful activity of another living creature; she felt a sense of “Lebensgemeinschaft” (living community, TI, p. 102) with the spider. Another time in prison, however, she identified more with the fly that was caught in the spider’s web (TI, p. 58). This motif recurs later on when she receives cancer treatment again in the 1980s, and she gets to know the woman who brings the hospital food. The woman asks her to translate an article on spiders in the National Geographic magazine from English into Czech, and the two of them bond over their shared interest in spiders.

Reinerová explains how important these little moments of human contact sustain her and help her to look on the bright side. Sometimes, she reflects on her years of political activism and the disappointments she experienced in the 1950s and 1960s. She wants to let the past be:

[…] laß die Vergangenheit vergangen sein. Wenn aber aus ihr plötzlich ein Licht aufblitzt, wenn mir jäh ganz warm ums Herz wird und die Erinnerung an bleibend Schönes, etwa an menschliche Solidarität, wach wird?

(TI, p. 105)

let the past be past. But what if a light suddenly flashes out of it? What if my heart suddenly goes warm and a memory returns of lasting beauty, for example, human solidarity?

Human solidarity is a thing of lasting beauty for Reinerová. This memory reminds her in turn of the many times she has heard and sung the Internationale. She states that for Czech people of the older generation, the song is almost sacred (TI, p. 107). But how does she square those old socialist ideals with the bitter disappointments she has experienced? She says she gradually learned to distinguish “zwischen Traum und Wirklichkeit, Lüge und Wahrheit” (between dreams and reality, lies and truth, TI, p. 107). Yet, she ends this reflective passage by stressing the need for hopes and dreams. She hopes for a new generation of political activists, “Menschen, die nüchterne Denker und dabei auch großzügige Träumer sein können” (People who can be sober thinkers and generous dreamers at the same time, TI, p. 108). And she insists that, in order to live in this world, people need hope (TI, p. 109). More than that, she chooses to honour the memory of her family and friends by carrying a piece of their dreams with her, and by remaining hopeful: “Nun, vielleicht lasse ich auch im Gedenken an jene Menschen, komme was da wolle, nicht alle Hoffnung fahren. Damit sie, so tröste ich mich, nicht ganz umsonst gestorben sind” (Maybe in memory of them, I won’t stop hoping, come what may. So that, I console myself, they have not died in vain, TI, p. 76). In this way, “Tragischer Irrtum” offers a series of surprisingly beautiful anecdotes that have sustained Reinerová through the bad times. Ultimately, she draws strength from the people she loves. Furthermore, as O’Brien has argued, Reinerová’s anecdotes refuse to dwell on the “inexpressibility” of historical trauma (O’Brien 2018, p. 351). They deliberately avoid pathos of this kind. Instead, they express the agency and determination of a survivor who maintains her humanist values as a mark of respect for those who have died. She owes it to them not to give up hope.

Reinerová’s authority as a narrator is enhanced by her decision to avoid self-pity. While she acknowledges her many losses and sufferings, she ultimately chooses to accentuate the positive. She focuses patiently on her moments of comfort and solace—and how these have helped her to survive. This focus on lived experience shows Reinerová to be a humanist storyteller in Walter Benjamin’s sense (i.e., in the tradition of J. P. Hebel, Nikolai Leskov and Jeremias Gotthelf). As Benjamin puts it: “Erfahrung, die von Mund zu Mund geht, ist die Quelle, aus der alle Erzähler geschöpft haben.” (Benjamin [1936] 1991, p. 440; Experience which is passed on from mouth to mouth is the source from which all storytellers have drawn, Benjamin 1973, p. 84). Reinerová’s authority as a narrator derives from the fact that she is a woman of the world. She is worth listening to, because she speaks with the voice of experience. She was there; we were not. Her tale of survival is, simultaneously, a gathering of the moments that matter most in her life: moments of human solidarity when people showed their best sides (not their worst); moments of creaturely solidarity, for example, her encounters with a humble spider and a bumblebee, which reveal the “Lebensgemeinschaft” (living community, TI, p. 102) of all living things.

4. Conclusions

As we have seen, both Weiskopf’s Elend und Größe and Reinerová’s “Tragischer Irrtum” are testimonies of great value about the crimes of the mid-twentieth century, about how some people survived them, and how many people did not survive them. The texts provide insightful accounts of human bravery and resilience in the worst possible situations. Both texts affirm the importance of humanist values, including telling the truth, human kindness, and human solidarity. Both texts have a moral (and political) framework, but they focus primarily on individual human stories, not on political ideology. Weiskopf’s text is largely about popular resistance to Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s; Reinerová’s is about her own personal resistance to Stalinism in the early 1950s. It is important to note the completely different scale of destruction caused by these two deadly “isms”. We should recall that it was Nazi Germany, not the Soviet Union, that was primarily responsible for World War Two, the deadliest conflict in human history, in which an estimated total of 75 million people died.19 Reinerová’s text expresses her sorrow at her betrayal by her Czech socialist comrades during the show trials of 1952–1953. In spite of this, she refuses to denounce the political ideals of her youth. She still regards the Internationale as an almost sacred song; she still regards “menschliche Solidarität” (human solidarity) as a thing of lasting beauty (TI, p. 105). She still hopes that future generations will continue to think soberly, while dreaming generous dreams (TI, p. 108). And Reinerová still affirms her friendship with Weiskopf, her generous colleague who campaigned for a better world, including “die Überbrückung künstlich geschürter nationalistischer Zwistigkeiten” (the bridging of artificially fuelled nationalist disputes, Reinerová [1985] 2006, p. 29). Arguably, these are classic texts that, like the anecdotes of Kleist and Hebel, will always be worth reading for their insights.