Word: bertin
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Grischa was eventually shot, in one of the most powerful scenes in War fiction. In his next two novels Zweig turned back to trace the earlier careers of some of the people who had defended Grischa. Young Woman of 1914 told of the marriage of Werner Bertin, who had been one of Grischa's first defenders. Education Before Verdun told how Bertin had learned the facts of war life, and the savagery of conflicts between officers. Now, in The Crowning of a King, the consequences of their stand in the Grischa case are traced in the subsequent careers...
...defiant in the face of gross injustice, fought desperately against outrages that would indeed have cried aloud to heaven in peace, but might now rank as trifling irregularities." As in so many contemporary German novels, Injustice is the theme. The story opens with a minor but significant example. Bertin, who in peacetime had been a well-known German novelist, is now simply a near-sighted private in the Army Service Corps, gets into serious hot water for giving some thirsty French prisoners a drink. Thenceforward he is a marked man, is relentlessly persecuted by his superiors, given dirty and dangerous...
...comparative comfort and quiet of the Russian front. The nurse and Lieutenant Kroysing fall in love, and when she promises to marry him he forswears his vengeance on his brother's murderers. They have one night together before a French airman's bomb blots out Kroysing. Bertin, nearly all his friends dead, sets out for the Eastern Front. An epilog shows Bertin in 1919 going to call on the Kroysing parents, to tell them "how their sons had died, and in how pitiful and futile a fashion; they must be made to understand that it was no deed...
...Author, like his patient protagonist Bertin, is a near-sighted Jewish writer,* served on three fronts (southeastern Europe, before Verdun, in Russia) in the German Army. A pre-War writer of national reputation, with many a story and play to his credit, the War that changed him from an intelligent, independent man to a numbered pawn was a crippling straitjacket. Like Bertin, he decided: "More lies will be told about this war than any other international shooting-match. The survivors must tell the truth, and some of those who have a story to tell will survive." In 1933 he left...
...publishers to conjure with. Professorial-looking, no friend of war, he was not raised to be a soldier but a professor. Some five universities, years of study in philosophy, languages. French and English literature, graduated him to pick & shovel work in a Labor Corps. Like his hero Bertin he sweated his spectacles steamy in Macedonia, Serbia, northern France, spent 13 months at Verdun before he settled down on the Eastern Front. Now, with the help of his education, he is getting the War out of his system, hopes to have...