Our Courtyard E-Book

Hugo Wormsbecher

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 93

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

From the point of view of a child, the classic of Russia-German literature Hugo Wormsbecher depicts the hopeless struggle for survival of a Volga-German family during the deprived years of the Second World War. The loss of the homeland on the Volga and the deportation of the family form the background of the novella "Our Courtyard", which becomes a parable for the fate of the Russia-Germans.

Leseprobe

Content

About the author

Father’s Footprint

Mother

Maria

Аrnо

Only a Black Flag above the Waters

Hugo Wormsbecher

“Due to the beginning of the war, the dissolution of the Volga-German Autonomous Republic, the expulsion of the Germans from Ukraine, Crimea, the Volga region, the Caucasus, Moscow and Leningrad to Siberia and Kazakhstan, the development of the Soviet-German Literature was disrupted for many years. The wartime, the years of labour service, when the entire adult German population — both men and women — was in camps behind barbed wire, where thousands and thousands died, were not just the years when nothing could be published. Those were the years of deep silence...“

Hugo Wormsbecher. Having gone through all the hardships with the people/ Mit dem Volk durch alle Härten gegangen (Notes on Soviet German Literature/Notizen über die sowjetdeutsche Literatur); journal ‚Heimatliche Weiten‘, № 1/1989.

“The short novel ‘Our Courtyard’ was written long before the Perestroika period, but its publication had been banned for 15 years. But even after its release in the journal ‘Heimatliche Weiten’, it remained under supervision for a long time.”

Nina Paulsen, Dr. Walther Friesen. Hugo Wormsbecher's ‘Our Courtyard’ on stage for the first time / Unser Hof‘ erstmals auf der Theaterbühne; journal ‚Volk auf dem Weg‘ Nr. 1/2018.

„According to reliable information that has been gathered by military authorities, there are thousands and tens of thousands of saboteurs and spies among the German population living in different districts of the Volga Region who at a given signal from Germany must carry out explosions in the areas that are inhabited by the Volga Germans. ...The State Defense Committee ... must urgently carry out the resettlement of all the Volga Germans…”

(From the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of 28 August 1941)

1. Father’s Footprint

It stopped raining long ago and I’d like to go out. Maybe little Hans is already out there. Maybe little Karl is also there. And Elsa, too. I‘m feeling bored at home, but to go out wouldn’t be good, ‘cause others also want to do it, but they don’t go out. We are staying in, ‘cause of our father. He’s sitting at the table, with his hands on it, and he’s looking at them. He’s been sitting so for quite a long time. Mother is sitting opposite to him and she’s also looking at father’s hands. Arno’s seated himself by the stove. He’s tilted his body sideways to the table, and hanged his head, as if staring at the floor. But I see that he’s casting side glances at our father. Now and then, he takes a look at him and then drops his eyes again. Only his hair on the crown is sticking up. And Maria is lulling her stuffed puppet with purple eyes that she painted with a chemical pencil as we still lived at home.

I can see everything very well, ‘cause I’ve rolled my tiny log to the window, climbed on it, and now I’m looking by turns at the street through the window or at the room.

Every one of us has got his own loglet. Grandpa Semenych who lives next door has sawn out them for us. I like my loglet. It’s got very polished. ‘Cause I’m always twirling on it and so I’m rubbing off the only pants I’ve got…

I’m looking out of the window. The sun has risen already at one spot.

“It’s sunny now,“ I say.

“Be quiet, Fritzik,” Mother says.

I sigh. Mother never says anything to no purpose. It means I have to keep silent. And stay at home.

My father goes far away today. There’s a village there. And Volodya’s father is also going there, and little Karl’s father, and Elsa’s. And fathers of all the boys I know are going to that far away village. Only Otto’s father doesn’t go there, ‘cause his father is at the front. And fathers of all Russian children are also at the front.

Our fathers are leaving for work. There should be plenty of work to be done there, that’s why so many of them are going there. Though, there is also a lot of work to be done in our village, ‘cause when we get up in the morning our father is never at home. He comes only when Mother closes the window with the shutters, so that nobody could see from the street how we’re sitting down to supper.

Maybe, there’re indeed very many children in the village my father is going to, ‘cause my father is a teacher and he said, “All of us would be needed there…” That means that a teacher would also be needed there, and my father would teach children there.

Elsa’s father is also a teacher. But he isn’t the kind of teach er like my father. My father is a teacher of Russian, and he can speak with everyone, even with the lame chairman of the collective farm who drives a two-wheeled horse cart.

We can also speak Russian, ‘cause as we still lived at home, we spoke one day German and the other day – Russian. We don’t do like that here. We speak German with our mother and Russian – with father. And with neighbours we also speak only Russian, ‘cause they don’t understand German. But only Grandpa Semenych always laughs at me, when I speak Russian with him. He even mimics me, as if he were a child. But I don’t hold anything against him. Then I start speaking German, and he doesn’t understand anything. Then I also laugh at him. But he doesn’t hold anything against me, neither. He says then,

“Agreed, Fedjka! I shan’t be mocking at you anymore. Come on! So be it, tousle my beard!”

I like to tousle the beard of Grandpa Semenych; it is big, and I always find something in it, now and then: a grass-blade or a piece of thread. And once, I even got pricked, ‘cause there was a tiny timber splinter there. Only I don’t like when he calls me Fedjka. Then I tell him that my name is Fritzik, for a grown-up man it would be Fritz or Friedrich, as the name of my father is.

“When I’ll grow up,” I tell him, “I’ll be called Friedrich Karlowich, like my father.” But Grandpa Semenych is laughing then again.

Somebody is shouting out there in the street. I’m peeking out of the window.

“The carts are coming!” I jump off the tiny log.

Father is getting up. And Mother is also getting up. She tells me,

“Be in a hurry, Fritzik, put on your shoes.”

Mother makes me hurry up. She even helps me.

Somebody’s knocking at the door. Little Karl’s father is coming in.

„Hello, everybody,” he says, „Teacher, they are waiting for you.”

All grown-ups call my father Teacher and address him with respect. And children from the school, where Arno learned, call my father Friedrich Karlowich. And the Russians call him Friedrich Karlowich. As I asked my mother, why the grownups call my father Teacher, she said that earlier at home all teachers were used to be addressed that way. That’s why they say so, even now.

“And when it was earlier?” I asked.

“By the time I wasn’t in the land of the living,” Mother says.

“And when I wasn’t in the land of the living?”

Mother can’t explain it to me. Maybe, she doesn’t know it, neither.

My father puts on his long coat. Mother uses to cover me and Arno with it for the night. Father takes his hat and pack, and comes up to the door. He looks round the whole room once more, as if he doesn’t want to forget anything, looks at us and says,

“Well, let’s go.”

The street is filthy. There’re several horse carts on the road. There are some men on them. They’re looking at us. They’re waiting for my father.

Women and children are standing around the carts. They’re also looking at us.

My father is going along the pathway close to our house. There’s clean sand on the pathway. My father has strewed it on it, so that we didn’t walk in mud. The sand on the pathway is wet.

On the corner of the pathway father gets out of the pathway and steps straight into the soggy soil, ‘cause the little Karl’s father is heading to the horse carts, and my father clears the way for him.

Father doesn’t want us to go further. He turns round to look at Arno and stretches out his hand to him. Arno also stretches out his hand, ‘cause Arno’s already grown-up and he’s got a red tie.

“Well, son, goodbye,” Father says, “Remember, we were talking about. Now, you are the only man in our house.”

“I’ll do everything,” Arno says, without raising his head.

My father hugs Arno. He rather only presses Arno’s head to his coat, just over the pocket. ‘Cause even though Arno’s grown-up, he’s small, but father is so-o tall. Father stands quite upright; he’s only tilted his head. He’s grooming Arno’s hair on the crown, and then puts his hand on brother’s shoulder.

“Goodbye,” he says, “I rely on you.”

Arno looks down and nods his head. He goes away from father. There’re tears in his eyes. He turns aside from me, but all the same, I’ve seen it. And I’ll be teasing him in the evening, shame on him, such a grown-up already and cries.

And Maria, as well. Even before she came to Father, she started to howl and wasn’t in any way ashamed of it; and soon she’ll go to school, you know. Whoopee! They’ll catch it from me to-day!

Father kisses her right in the wet cheek.

Now he turns to me. Mother shoves me to him. I’m walking straight into his stretched arms. My father lifts me up high into the sky, so that his face is in front of me.

“Embrace me, Sonny,” Father says softly.

I like to hug Father. I put my arms around his neck and pull it to myself, with all might I have. Father’s chin is a bit prickly, and I like it. I don’t let it off and wait till Father says, “Ooh- ooh, let me off, or else you’d throttle me fully!”

But now, Father says nothing. Maybe, I’ve throttled him to death already? I let him off and look at him, whether he’s alive or not. Two tears are rolling down on his cheeks. Maybe, these’re the tears of Marijke. At first, they’re big, and then they’re rolling down and are getting smaller. It’s so, ‘cause they’ve left glittering tracks on the cheeks. As these tracks nearly reach the mouth, the tears are quickly moving to different sides: Father’s got two deep wrinkles round his mouth, and the tears can’t get out of them, in no way.

I smooth out with my finger one of the wrinkles. One of the tears comes up to my finger. I’m making a track with my finger right downwards, and the tear is also following this track right downwards like a raindrop on the window pane, when it’s cold out there, but warm indoors.