Review: Heinrich Böll's Das Brot der frühen Jahre

I've read many of Böll's novels and stories, but I keep coming back to his early work - written in the immediate postwar decade.  He was an early proponent of Trümmerliteratur: his city of Cologne was completely bombed out and was the setting of his first novel Der Engel schwieg (1950) (see my review), in which the characters move zombie-like through the rubble,  The book was far too realistic for a reading public looking to escape the deprivations of the war's aftermath: it was finally published in 1992.  In his next novel - Und sagte kein einziges Wort (1952) (see my review) the principal characters are still traumatized by the war, and the ruins of the city are mirrored in the ruins of a marriage.  By the time Böll wrote Das Brot der frühen Jahre (1955) the "economic miracle" - Wirtschaftswunder - was well underway but the rubble and hardship of the war and its aftermath were still imprinted on memory. The title refers to the hunger experienced in the "early years". The first-person narrator - 24-year-old Walter Fendrich - was a young teenager when the war ended and his existence at the time was a constant search for bread. There was never enough bread. His relationship with other people was binary: those who gave him bread - his dying mother or the nuns at the hospital - were good; those who refused or were stingy were evil.  In particular he hated his boss Wickweber, who exploited his young apprentices by having them loot bombed out apartments.  Instead of bread, the boys were given soup for lunch.

„Die Rechnungseinheit ist das Brot, das Brot dieser frühen Jahre, die in meiner Erinnerung wie unter einem tiefen Nebel liegen: die Suppe, die uns verabreicht wurde, kullerte flau in unserem Magen, heiß und sauer stieß sie uns auf, wenn wir abends in der Straßenbahn nach Hause schaukelten: es war das Rülpsen der Machtlosigkeit, und der einzige Spaß, den wir hatten, war der Hass.“

The events in Das Brot der frühen Jahre take place over one day.  Walter is by now a successful washing machine repairman.  He has plenty of money for all the bread he could possibly eat, but still there is a hollowness left over from the lean years.  He hates his work, but craves the money that it brings - even though happiness is elusive.  His father asks him to pick up a young woman from his hometown who is arriving by train in the city.  The sight of the woman - Hedwig - strikes Walter like a lightening bolt: he realizes he must change his life:

In dieser halben Minute, in der ich hinter ihr herging, dachte ich daran, daβ ich sie besitzen würde und daβ ich, um sie zu besitzen, alles zerstörem würde. was ,mich daram hindern könnte.  Ich sah mich Waschmaschinen zertrümmern, sie mit einem zehnpfündigen Hammer zusammenschlagen.

And over the next few hours Walter Fendrich does change his life: he gives up his employment, breaks off his engagement with Ulla, withdraws all the money is his bank account to spend on gifts for Hedwig. At the end of this very short novel (my edition calls it a "story" - Erzählung) the narrator has experienced a breakthrough - an awareness of his own mortality - and immortality: ("Nie voher hatte ich gewuβt, daβ ich unsterblich und wie sterblich ich war.")  But what does he mean by wanting to "come back" instead of "going forward" in the last sentence?

[...}und ich wuβte, daβ ich nicht vorwärtskommen wollte, zurückkommen wollte ich, whohin wuβte ich nicht, aber zurück.

Böll was a devout Roman Catholic (although highly critical of the Church), and there is much religious symbolism in Das Brot der frühen Jahre that I still need to think about .  Brot for Böll has a double significance: bread as the sacrament of Holy Communion, and bread as a necessity for sustenance and material survival.  As a soldier and prisoner of war Böll  was acquainted with both meanings.  Later he would outline an Ästhetik des Brotes:

„Wer das Wort Brot hinschreibt oder ausspricht, weiß nicht, was er damit angerichtet, Kriege sind um dieses Wortes willen geführt worden, Morde geschehen, es trägt eine gewaltige Erbschaft auf sich, und wer es hinschreibt, sollte wissen, welche Erbschaft es trägt und welcher Verwandlung es fähig ist.“

Comments

[Todd Woollen]

Nice to see you posting again.

"He has plenty of money for all the bread he could possibly eat, but still there is a hollowness left over from the lean years." Reminded me of my experience with many immigrants to the United States.