Review: Heinrich Böll's Und sagte kein einziges Wort

One period of German literature I keep coming back to is the immediate postwar decade (1945-55) I consider this the "heroic decade" as writers crafted their fiction amid cities in ruin and a population traumatized by war. This was "die Stunde Null" - "the Zero Hour" - a chance to rebuild the world anew, to "purify" the German language of Nazi ideology.  The best novel of the period was Tauben im Gras - Wolfgang Koeppen's imaginative rewrite of James Joyce's Ulysses in American-occupied Munich (#9 on my list of the Ten Greatest German Novels). The decade is also known for the realistic depiction of ordinary Germans dealing with the ravages of war and rebuilding their lives in the ruins.  The greatest proponent of Trümmerliteratur  ("Rubble Literature") was Heinrich Böll.  In his Bekenntnis zur Trümmerliteratur  ("Manifesto of Rubble Literature") Böll responds to the objections that this type of realism was too depressing for literature: 

Wir schrieben also vom Krieg, von der Heimkehr und dem, was wir im Krieg gesehen hatten und bei der Heimkehr vorfanden: von Trümmern;[...] es war Krieg gewesen, sechs Jahre lang, wir kehrten heim aus diesem Krieg, wir fanden Trümmer und schrieben darüber. Merkwürdig, fast verdächtig war nur der vorwurfsvolle, fast gekränkte Ton, mit dem man sich dieser Bezeichnung bediente: man schien uns zwar nicht verantwortlich zu machen dafür, daß Krieg gewesen, daß alles in Trümmern lag, nur nahm man uns offenbar übel, daß wir es gesehen hatten und sahen, aber wir hatten keine Binde vor den Augen und sahen es: ein gutes Auge gehört zum Handwerkszeug des Schriftstellers.

("So we wrote about war, about coming home, and about what we saw in the war and what we found when we came home: about rubble, and we wrote about that. Six years of war.  We came home from this war and found rubble, and we wrote about it. What is strange - even suspicious - is the reproachful tone people attach to this designation; not that they actually blamed us for the war or that everything was now reduced to rubble, but they resented that we had seen it and that we see it now.  But we weren't wearing blindfolds and we saw it: a good eye is a valuable tool for a writer.")

Böll may have been frustrated that he was unable to find a publisher for his novel Der Engel schwieg (1950) (see my review).  By 1952 the market was more receptive and Böll published  Und sagte kein einziges Wort ("And Never Said A Word"), which covers the same themes as the earlier novel but has a much tighter narrative structure. Und sagte kein einziges Wort deals with the scenes of a marriage over a day and a half.  The marriage, like the city of Cologne where it takes place, is in ruins.  The husband, Fred Bogner, has left his wife and three children who live in a one-room sublet. Fred is traumatized by his war experience - today he would be diagnosed with PTSD - and spends what little money he earns on drink and the Totto Lotto machines. When not working as a switchboard operator or getting drunk Fred haunts the local cemeteries.  Fred's wife Käte, left alone in abject poverty with three small children in the shabby room, does her best to get by and finds some solace in tearful prayer. She is occasionally able to spend the night with Fred when he has enough money for a third class hotel room and a babysitter.  Altogether a pretty bleak existence in a bleak landscape.  The original English translation of the novel was Acquainted with the Night - after a Robert Frost poem. The chapters alternate back and forth with the interior monologues of husband and wife.

Böll saw himself as a moralist and Christian writer, and Sagte kein einziges Wort is about the search for God in a fractured world.  Fred and Käte are often either in church or by a church, but they sit in the back and are not inspired by the words of the priest; they do not take communion.  Böll was highly skeptical of the Roman Catholic Church even though he considered himself a devout Catholic.  In a pivotal scene in the novel Käte confesses her sins but is refused absolution due to some doctrinal technicalities.  The priests leave her cold, but she is moved by the refrain of an old African-American spiritual she happens to hear on the radio: "they nailed him to the cross...and he never said a mumbling word..."(ironic since Christ did indeed speak on the cross.) Fred, also, is unmoved by the priest's words; in fact he pretty much rejects language altogether because of his duty as communications specialist in the war: 

...die meisten schickten den Tod durchs Telefon - er zappelte durch den Draht, sie schnauzten ihn mit ihren dünnen Stimmen in die Muschel hinein, in das Ohr irgendeines anderen der dafür zu sorgen hatte, dass genügend Leute starben.

Still, Fred finds some measure of peace in the presence of "das blonde Mädchen" - the blond girl - whom he follows out of the church an into her the small snack bar that she runs while at the same time caring for her mentally disabled brother.  The girl cheerfully dispenses "communion" - rich black coffee and fresh baked rolls - to Fred, to the priest, and, later, to Käte without asking for money. Her grace amid the desolation somehow gives them the courage to go on. 

In his "Rubble Manifesto" Böll wrote: "Es ist unsere Aufgabe, daran zu erinnern, [...] daß die Zerstörungen in unserer Welt nicht nur äußerer Art sind." ("It's our task to recollect that it's not only the outer world that is destroyed.") In Und sagte kein einziges Wort Böll  succeeds in taking the reader into the interior world of men and women who have been spiritually damaged by war.

Comments

[M. Doren]

The novel touched me deeply. What touched me most was the discovery of humble people finding their dignity in silence. Words cannot fight off offenses and humiliations. These are meant to provoke a visible response, but, on the contrary, they are accumulated inside the soul engendering hate and then guilt and alienation. Or else they are reconciled with a higher transformative power and dignity in silence. And He never said a mumbling word. He only spoke to His Father. Did not deign to respond to his torturer. I suppose that Boll meant it like this. No need to reply with the same weapon. No need to go to middlemen, like priests. Anyway, this is what I feel as a reader.