I have a story for you today, about a man who suffered through the ravages of fascism and war and a disease that ultimately killed him. But before he died, he left writings that had a great deal of resonance in a country torn apart by war, and one piece in particular that speaks to us today.
Read on for the story of this man and his message for us . . . 
Wolfgang Borchert (pictured here in 1946, a year before he died) was born in Hamburg in 1921. He spent time in the Hitlerjugend, as did all German teenagers in those days, but resigned as soon as he could. He then worked as a bookseller’s apprentice and an actor before being drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1941. While at the Eastern Front he developed hepatitis, which went untreated because his superiors thought he was mutilating himself to get out of the Army. Eventually he got medical leave, returned to Hamburg and took up acting again. A skit in which he parodied Joseph Göbbels got him a prison sentence and a return to combat, this time on the Western Front. His unit was eventually captured by the French, after which he escaped and returned to Hamburg, where his hepatitis worsened.
In 1946 his doctors told him that his hepatitis was going to kill him, most likely within a year. He began to write, primarily anti-war pieces. His play Draußen vor der Tür (The Man Outside) was performed on German radio to wide acclaim in 1947. Later that year he entered a sanitarium in Switzerland, where he wrote until he died on November 20, 1947.
I studied Borchert in my high school German class. I took to the language fairly quickly and to keep me interested, my teacher found me some works in German to read and translate — Hermann Hesse and Borchert, mostly, with a little Goethe and Schiller and Heine thrown in. Borchert’s work made quite an impression on me at an impressionable age. (This was soon after the end of the Tet offensive, and not long before my fateful encounter with Alice’s Restaurant.) I read Draußen vor der Tür and stories like Die traurige Geranien (The Sad Geraniums), about a scientist who notices that the geraniums on his windowsill are drooping and goes to take care of them, then returns to his task of drawing up plans for a weapon that will kill thousands of people. Heavy handed, perhaps, but Borchert didn’t really have time to be subtle.
The work that stayed with me the most, however, is a poem called Dann gibt es nur eins, which I translate as “There’s only one thing to do.” It was one of Borchert’s last works, completed shortly before he died. I hope won’t run afoul of anyone’s copyright in posting the first section of the poem, because I think it’s more relevant today than it has been at any time since it was written. With madmen running the country and talk of another war that we are not prepared for and could not withstand the aftermath of, it sure seems like there’s only one thing to do.
You! Man at the machine and man in the workshop. If they order you tomorrow to stop making water pipes and pots and to make steel helmets and machine guns instead, there’s only one thing to do:
SAY NO!
You! Girl at the sales counter and girl in the office. If they order you tomorrow to start filling grenades and installing sights for sniper rifles, there’s only one thing to do:
SAY NO!
You! Factory owner. If they order you tomorrow to start selling gunpowder instead of powder and cocoa, there’s only one thing to do:
SAY NO!
You! Researcher in the laboratory. If they order you tomorrow to invent a new death to destroy old life, there’s only one thing to do:
SAY NO!
You! Poet in your garret. If they order you tomorrow to sing songs of hate instead of songs of love, there’s only one thing to do:
SAY NO!
You! Doctor by the patient’s side. If tomorrow they order you to declare men fit to go to war, there’s only one thing to do:
SAY NO!
You! Priest at the pulpit. If tomorrow they order you to bless murder and declare war to be holy, there’s only one thing to do:
SAY NO:
You! Captain of the cargo ship. If tomorrow they order you to transport tanks and cannons instead of wheat, there’s only one thing to do:
SAY NO!
You! Pilot on the runway. If tomorrrow they order you to carry bombs and phosphorus over the cities, there’s only one thing to do:
SAY NO!
You! Tailor at his bench. If tomorrow they order you to cut uniforms, there’s only one thing to do:
SAY NO!
You! Judge in his robe. If tomorrow they order you to preside over a court-martial, there’s only one thing to do:
SAY NO!
You! Man at the train station. If tomorrow they order you give the departure signal for troop transports and munitions trains, there’s only one thing to do:
SAY NO!
You! Man in the village and man in the city. If tomorrow they order you to report for duty, there’s only one thing to do:
SAY NO!
You! Mother in Normandy and mother in Ukrania; you, mother in San Francisco and London, by the Hwang Ho and the Mississippi, in Naples and Hamburg, and Cairo and Oslo — mothers on all continents, mothers of the world. If tomorrow they order you to bear children to become nurses in military hospitals and new soldiers for new battles, mothers of the world, there’s only one thing to do:
SAY NO! MOTHERS, SAY NO!
The poem then goes on to describe in depressing detail what will happen if the mothers of the world don’t say no. It’s a very unpleasant picture, with the last man on earth wandering its ruined streets, asking “WHY?” and getting no answer. I struggled between posting the whole thing in all its blunt gory detail and posting just the selection you see above; I chose the latter for reasons of time and length. If you want to see the rest of the piece you can Google the phrase ‘there is only one thing’ borchert” (with the phrase in quotes) to see other translations. Otherwise, just picture the worst post-apocalyptic nightmare you can think of, with empty ships rotting in the harbor, crops withering in the fields, and all of the fruits of mankind’s progress, in Borchert’s words, “crumbled, crumbled, crumbled.” You’ll get a pretty good idea of what he had in mind.
And then he finishes it off with this admonition: “And all this will happen tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, maybe tonight already, maybe tonight, if — if — if you do not SAY NO!”
My translation is not word-for-word literal; no good translation is. It does, however, convey all of the stanzas of the translated portion, and Borchert’s intent, in my humble opinion. And again, in a day where we don’t trust the man with his finger on the metaphorical button, perhaps, in the end, there is only one thing to do.
Credit where credit is due department: I got the information for Borchert’s biography from Wikipedia, the picture is from the web site of the Hamburg State and University Library, and as a check on my translation I used a page from Wordit.com. Thanks to Frau Mayberry and Frau Friedman for sparking and stoking my interest in German, and as always, cheers to all of you.
Nice diary, Omir! Thanks for your research, otherwise I would not have known about this amazing person!
He hasn’t gotten much play in the English-speaking world, and I’m not sure why. I found a couple of collections online including The Man Outside and story collections, but nothing that would lead me to believe that he ever made much of an inroad into the American consciousness, at least, not in the way that some of his contemporaries like Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse did.
I think his life story would make an interesting movie. I’ve read biographical snippets elsewhere on the Net that lead me to believe Borchert was more of a troublemaker (in the good sense) than Wikipedia lets on. For instance, he was arrested by the Gestapo at least once before he even made it into the bookselling business, when he was probably only 18 or 19, and his theater group in Hamburg was constantly scrutinized by the authorities.
Whoot!!!
And when you “say no!” say it with a strong voice. 🙂
And KEEP saying it. SCREAM IT! SING IT!
Show your kids how to “say no”
and with Janet leading the charge, we’ll be in good hands. <grin>
I’ve never heard of this poet. I’m glad you wrote about him. Thanks for introducing him.
You’re very welcome. He’s an interesting figure, and more people need to know about him and other heroes from that time period. Even relatively well-known freedom-fighters like the members of the White Rose Society don’t get much attention.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll make the plunge over at Big Orange.
I didn’t get to read it last night Omir, but did this morning. Thanks for introducing me to Wolfgang Borchert. A very good diary.
Thanks for sharing this, Omir–I’ve always thought that Borchert’s work, while not at all subtle, was really powerful and deserving of wider attention.
I read most of his short stories in college, and they left a lasting impression on me, too. “Nachts schlafen die Ratten doch” (about a young boy protecting his dead brother’s body from rats in a bombed-out building) is the one that’s stuck with me.
I got all of my Borchert from a Rowohlt edition that must have been published in the mid to late sixties. The school’s office (at enormous expense, I’m sure) imported paperback copies of Hesse’s Märchen (Fairy Tales) and Borchert’s Draußen vor der Tür. I don’t remember if Nachts schlaffen die Ratten doch was in the edition I had or not. I’m sure the collection is still in print, and one of these days I should get a copy just so I can brush up on my German again. It’s been woefully neglected these many years since I left school because it was interfering with my education.
Thank you Omir for this. A man I never knew has now made my acquaintance through his writings.
There’s a wonderful line from the movie Excalibur in which Merlin tells the assembled knights and King Arthur to remember their history “Because it is the Doom of Men that they forget.”
How soon we forget the ravages of war, especially if we ourselves suffer no ill effects.
One of our main problems over here in America is that we are pretty much isolated from almost everyone else in the world. Americans have long had the luxury of not being in constant contact with a multitude of other countries, so we haven’t really had to learn how to work and play well with others. We have also not had to worry about major battles being fought on our soil since 1865, so we haven’t had the experience of cowering in burnt-out cities, scraping for what food we could find, burning down the trees in Central Park to keep ourselves warm in the winter and the like. Not that I’m complaining, of course.
I just think we would be a much more tolerant people, on the whole, if (to stretch the point a little) we had grown up in a large family instead of being a spoiled rich only child.
Great diary Omir! Being the Frenchie that I am, I was unaware of Borchert’s work, since my German lit cred is a bit thin in places, especially 20th century writers (well if you except Brecht, Weil, et. al.) so this was a welcome addition to my knowledge.
Funny, but reading through that poem you excerpted, for some reason I was reminded of another writer (French) woefully unknown in these parts who expressed some similar sentiments, however in the post-war context. That man was Boris Vian, and in his novel L’ecume des jours (which can be very loosely translated as “Seafoam of the Days,”) he lays out a very pacifist agenda regarding war and the growing military industrial complex. His central character is drafted into making military rifles in a factory, and his protest against the whole situation is to garnish each of the rifles he completes with a white rose in the barrel. Symbolic, yes, but still an act of defiance, and I think that’s the main point Borchert is tring to communicate in this poem … be defiant, resist and don’t acquiesce!
Sure does sound like a job for DJ, huh? Cheers, Omir, wonderful work you’ve shared with us here!