Word: grischa
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Literary circles in many countries have hummed for months with praise of Arnold Zweig's The Case of Sergeant Grischa, sharp, beautifully written novel of War life on Germany's Eastern Front. But the praise of literary circles meant little to portly highbuttoned Lieut. Col. Walther von Bogen, editor of the sedate Journal of German Nobility, who, reading novelist Zweig's book, found to his horror and amazement that it was vulgar, pacifistic, shockingly outspoken, likely to cause discontent among German troops. Editor von Bogen wrote a review in which he said that Novelist Zweig...
...seven languages-German, Russian, Lithuanian, Polish, Yiddish, Lettish, Esthonian-the Germans posted their proclamations, but Grischa could read not one of any seven, and in a few hours he was imprisoned again. For, the newest ordinance read that in the name of discipline all Russian deserters would be executed-dour example to weary-hearted German soldiers. Grischa, alias Deserter Bjuscheff, was promptly sentenced, whereupon he took refuge in confessing his camouflage. His peasant simplicity won belief in the hearts of guards, officers, and even old Commander von Lychow...
...stripped of its humanity, happened to come before Schieffenzahn (said to be Ludendorff), engrossed as he was with annexation, colonization, Germanization, of the whole new border territory. In wholesale efficiency as to forestry, mineral resources, new currency, savings-banks, travelling incinerators, German bookshops, and paper factories for newspapers, insignificant Grischa fell under the category of discipline necessary to state maintenance. In vain did old von Lychow, beloved of his men, argue that it is justice preserves the state: "I know that justice and faith in God have been the pillars of Prussia, and I will not look on while...
...Grischa was shot, having meticulously joined his own coffin, lustily dug his own grave, manfully marched to his death...
...Significance. War novels by the gross have detailed the lice, the mud, the oaths, on "Flanders Field." The present volume is distinctive in vivifying that other, more mysterious, no-man's-land east of Germany, west of Russia. But far more than this, The Case of Sergeant Grischa is a powerful indictment of autocratic statecraft, a pageant of heterogeneous border peoples, and a human document of uncanny understanding. The jocund vitality which lured Grischa to mad escape is no less vivid than his fatalistic reluctance to escape again. Insignificant "case," Grischa is the symbol that rouses the interest...