The Thousandth Regiment - 25. "Born amid the era of the aeroplane"

Hans again plays with the hideous contrasts of this war; the clean blue skies against the muck and death below, the proclamation of faith against the implacable religion of war, and the false ecstasy of church versus the frenzy of battle. His final three lines perfectly illustrate this. Thank you again for your efforts. 

The emotions of the original are brought perfectly in English. This is great work my friend. There would be to say more to this sonnet, because I have read some very interesting things about Hans today in connection to it. But it needs to wait until tomorrow, because I am exhausted tonight.  Muha

Paul Zech says in his addition to the Tausendste Regiment, that those poems are the strongest/the sharpest refusal of a soldier to mass murder. Digging deeper into this selection of poems, it becomes clear, that Hans wrote some of them in training. From letters, which were found at the archive of the Wilhelm-Pieck University of Rostock, is known, that Hans was very critic of the military training system, and he was disgusted by the general militarization of his nation. Sadly those letters are discussed in a paper which is not published and can only read as reference in a paper about the Tristan poems of Else Lasker-Schüler, without getting an archive number to look up. (So it seems very appropriate to be very source critical with this information.) I know why you put the poem into this particular place, and I agree completely that it is very fitting here. But also I see it as a sonnet written at an earlier point of time, when Hans was still Neuruppin, those memories of the life in Berlin seem still very close, while the fundamental refusal of war and militarization is already phrased and yet the horror is not described in that detail, as he later used to.

Especially the second stanza holds for me the tune of a ritual forced by social norms on him. The sleepiness he refers to in this stanza, does not seem to fit to a time phase during war. Still, the question rises in me, why did he go voluntarily to Neuruppin to go into this training year (Einjähriges), why did he complete his training with no special resistance noticed as the books confirm? Did he seek for something, he obviously didn't found there? The magazine "Der neue Pathos"he published before leaving Berlin discussed the ideas of how to create a reformed, better world. His poems speak of his hope to found a democratic new country with his sacrifice. Maybe this is the answer, maybe we will never understand completely, because humans hold so many layers and contradictions in themselves to be able to analyze them completely from the outside.

On 9/25/2019 at 1:53 PM, Parker Owens said:

Hans again plays with the hideous contrasts of this war; the clean blue skies against the muck and death below, the proclamation of faith against the implacable religion of war, and the false ecstasy of church versus the frenzy of battle. His final three lines perfectly illustrate this. Thank you again for your efforts. 

Thank you, Parker. I think you are right to point out the edges. At least where the battle line was drawn through open countryside, the unspoiled woods or tilled farm fields were right there, next to the men. I have read one account from a British poet, Isaac Rosenberg, describing how off-duty soldiers would go spend the afternoon in the wheat fields, writing letters or journal entries (or poems). Or they would lie perhaps with their closest buddy and stare up at the clouds. 

Hans paints such a picture in No. 12 (The world's adrift some placid evening waves) where a soldier couples wake up in such cover-providing fields to celebrate the fact that they are alive.

It must have been excruciating to be this close to "normal" settings, and yet a world away at the same time. 

Thanks again for your generous support  

On 9/25/2019 at 2:05 PM, Lyssa said:

The emotions of the original are brought perfectly in English. This is great work my friend. There would be to say more to this sonnet, because I have read some very interesting things about Hans today in connection to it. But it needs to wait until tomorrow, because I am exhausted tonight.  Muha

Thank you for reading and leaving me encouragement right away, Lyssa, even though you had a long and tiring day. I appreciate it

On 9/26/2019 at 3:29 AM, Lyssa said:

Paul Zech says in his addition to the Tausendste Regiment, that those poems are the strongest/the sharpest refusal of a soldier to mass murder. Digging deeper into this selection of poems, it becomes clear, that Hans wrote some of them in training. From letters, which were found at the archive of the Wilhelm-Pieck University of Rostock, is known, that Hans was very critic of the military training system, and he was disgusted by the general militarization of his nation. Sadly those letters are discussed in a paper which is not published and can only read as reference in a paper about the Tristan poems of Else Lasker-Schüler, without getting an archive number to look up. (So it seems very appropriate to be very source critical with this information.) I know why you put the poem into this particular place, and I agree completely that it is very fitting here. But also I see it as a sonnet written at an earlier point of time, when Hans was still Neuruppin, those memories of the life in Berlin seem still very close, while the fundamental refusal of war and militarization is already phrased and yet the horror is not described in that detail, as he later used to.

Especially the second stanza holds for me the tune of a ritual forced by social norms on him. The sleepiness he refers to in this stanza, does not seem to fit to a time phase during war. Still, the question rises in me, why did he go voluntarily to Neuruppin to go into this training year (Einjähriges), why did he complete his training with no special resistance noticed as the books confirm? Did he seek for something, he obviously didn't found there? The magazine "Der neue Pathos" he published before leaving Berlin discussed the ideas of how to create a reformed, better world. His poems speak of his hope to found a democratic new country with his sacrifice. Maybe this is the answer, maybe we will never understand completely, because humans hold so many layers and contradictions in themselves to be able to analyze them completely from the outside.

Thank you, Lyssa. Actually saying that some of Hans' letters are available for research (someplace...) is encouraging news. You and I both know the chain of custody of Hans' estate and literary output( and personal love letters) passed from him to his partner Wilhelm Murnau, the great film director. After Murnau's tragic death in a car accident, these papers passed to Murnau's brother in the 1930s, and were sold at auction to the Murnau Museum in about 1966. I have made inquiries of this institution, and was told they have nothing by Hans. This tragically reinforces written accounts that Murnau's brother destroyed everything concerning the director's queerness. (Just another example of how vulnerable Gay History is...)   

So, again, hearing that some Hans material is out there is encouraging!

As for why Hans chose to receive officer training in 1913 is not very clear with the extremely limited surviving first-hand material we have. This only heightens the mountains of future scholarship than can and should be done on this artist's life and work. A vision emerges from the Regiment poems themselves to suggest a reason; to work towards a democratic German nation, as you mention. And during the war he also seemed to sense how the senseless slaughter was moving the idea of self-government closer and closer by the day. 

As I say, there is enough material alone in these remarkable poems to keep several scholarly careers going for decades!  I hope my little contribution with these translations can start the ball rolling. 

On 9/26/2019 at 3:29 AM, Lyssa said:

 I know why you put the poem into this particular place, and I agree completely that it is very fitting here. But also I see it as a sonnet written at an earlier point of time, when Hans was still Neuruppin, those memories of the life in Berlin seem still very close, while the fundamental refusal of war and militarization is already phrased and yet the horror is not described in that detail, as he later used to.

Especially the second stanza holds for me the tune of a ritual forced by social norms on him. The sleepiness he refers to in this stanza, does not seem to fit to a time phase during war.

Some of the mysteries that cannot be addressed, with the limited scholarship available, touch on this particular poem. It does not appear in the sequence of 37 included in the posthumous edition of Poems from 1917. It does appears however in the Geleitwort (Introduction), but even this brief essay contains large questions. The text references Hans' death as "two years ago," meaning it was also written in 1917. But this Introduction was not bound with the book!!! It was slipped in separately as a loose-leaf addenda dated after the war: November 1918. How did this come about? Speculation could run rampant. Perhaps the censors allowed the book to be printed in 1917, but did not approve the Geleitwort. If so, then how did the editions get this pamphlet in with the books...? Are we to think censorship also prevented the sale of the book until November 1918...? Sadly, there is no information available right now to explain it.  

So we get to this poem. One can say it's unflattering to religion. Is this a reason why Murnau and Paul Zech did not include it among the numbered set? Was it forbidden? If so, how many more Regiment poems are out there, suppressed? It all makes me anxious to find out more, and feeling frustrated that the scholarship simply does not exist at this point.  

As for reading the internal references of the Regiment poems and trying to work out an order of composition, I do not feel able to make any judgements. We all write poems about memories too, so if one of Hans' poems talks about spring, that is not a guarantee he wrote it in spring. I am personally very content with the order of the 37 presented; they slowly build a personal connection between reader and poet, which is part of the artistry as well. But I had to think where to place this poem from the Introduction.

In my opinion it is too jaded to be the first one a reader encounters, and with it in the introduction, if is fairly well forgotten by the time a reader gets to the Regiment section, as many poems are printed in the book before the war sonnets. I personally am inclined to see this poem as a late one, a moment of reflection perhaps written when he was wounded in battle and home in Berlin with his family recovering. However, to put it in the 37 near the end weakens the sequence, so I chose to put it here. It is far enough into the collection so the reader is adjusted to Hans' thoughts, but well enough from the conclusion to not overly influence the reader's experience at the end.