Word: prussians
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DIED. Arnold Brecht, 93, Prussian official who defied Hitler in the last free speech given in Germany's parliament; while vacationing in Eutin, West Germany. In 1933, when Hitler made his first address to the legislature, Brecht, who represented the largest state, made the reply. Brecht reminded the newly appointed Chancellor of Hitler's oath to abide by the constitution and the law of the land. Hitler stalked out of the meeting and four days later dismissed Brecht. Emigrating to America, Brecht joined the "university in exile," a haven for refugee professors at New York...
...PRUSSIAN NIGHTS by ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN Translated by ROBERT CONQUEST 113 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $8.95. $2.95 paperback...
...before he was deported from Russia. Solzhenitsyn secretly made a recording of Prussian Nights, now available in the West. The author reads the 1,200-line war poem in the declamatory mode favored by many Russian poets, obviously savoring every line. Trochaic tetrameters and thumping end rhymes roll off his tongue. In an unexpectedly boyish baritone he interjects snatches of song, whispers, conversational asides and other special effects that hark back to his teen-age ambition to become an actor. The voice suits the poem. Prussian Nights represents the young Solzhenitsyn, still a decade away from the fine-tuned virtuosity...
Written in 1950, Prussian Nights is the earliest work the author has released for publication. Like much of his writing, it is essentially autobiographical. Solzhenitsyn had served in his mid-20s as an artillery officer in World War II, commanding a reconnaissance battery in one of the most dangerous of frontline positions. During the long pauses between the fighting, he kept a war diary and even managed to complete several short stories based on his experience. Prussian Nights is the fruit of Captain Solzhenitsyn's participation in the rampageous march of the Red Army across East Prussia to Berlin...
...German playwright and satirist who wrote the screenplay for The Blue Angel, the 1929 film that made Marlene Dietrich a star; in Visp, Switzerland. Son of a Rhenish cork manufacturer, Zuckmayer won a pocketful of medals in World War I, then turned to writing. His immensely popular comedy about Prussian militarism, The Captain of Koepenick (1931), in which a shoemaker is able to take command of a town simply because he dons an army captain's uniform, earned Nazi wrath. After fleeing Hitler in 1933, Zuckmayer eventually settled on a farm in Vermont and wrote The Devil...