Memory and the Nibelungenlied in Peter Hirche’s “Nähe des Todes”

Virginia L. Lewis

Northern State University

September 2005

 

            I don’t recall ever having heard of Peter Hirche during my graduate studies in German literature, nor did I encounter his name on the library shelf, or during my preparations for teaching introductory and survey courses in the area of 20th century German literature. I first encountered Hirche’s name when I was preparing to teach an upper-level undergraduate course focusing on the German Radio Play a year ago. After reading that Hirche was honored with numerous prizes for his radio plays, including in 1965 the prestigious “Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden,” a group with a unique vested interest in access to quality literature delivered in audio format, I decided I must include a work by Hirche in this specialized course.

            I selected “Nähe des Todes,” because its theme fit in well with the much better known “Draußen vor der Tür” by Wolfgang Borchert, which I was also using in the course. The mythic confrontation of death with life in the wake of the Second World War offered an important opportunity for the students to gain insight into how Germany struggled to integrate the experience of the conflict into its own cultural memory.

            Teaching the text was a challenge, because the dearth of scholarship on Hirche and his works is almost shocking. While reading the text as I immersed myself into a very stressful semester, I realized when I encountered lines such as “Auf tritt Blödel, sagenumwoben, aus der Fremde kommend. Blödel, gebräunten Gesichts, der das Ungeheuer bezwang” [Peter Hirche, Nähe des Todes, Anna Otten, ed. (New York: The Odyssey Press, 1966), 35], that I was dealing with some sort of rewriting of the Nibelungenlied. In fact Anna Otten, who edited a version of the play for classroom use in the 1960’s, describes “Nähe des Todes” as “a modern treatment of Das Nibelungenlied,” though she reduces Hirche’s engagement of the older text in essence to the following: “Hirche’s question is: How can one be a hero in a hero-less age?” (viii).

            My and my students’ encounter with the text unearthed a rather different complex of themes and meanings from this hero-centered one. Consequently, the present paper has several purposes, one being to adjust Otten’s argument to one I argue does better justice to Hirche’s play. In my reading of “Nähe des Todes” a simple equation emerges: MEMORY = LIFE. I will suggest here that Hirche’s message revolves around leveraging memory as a means of restoring a culture of life where the culture of death had taken over. In the process of making this argument, I am simultaneously lobbying for the importance of “Nähe des Todes” as a literary text that has been wrongfully ignored not only in scholarship, but also in the classroom. What Otten refers to as Hirche’s “most complex play” is a remarkable work of literature connecting an old, established cultural tradition embodied by the Nibelungenlied to contemporary historical experience in a manner fraught with skill, meaning, and innovation. Consideration of Hirche’s prize-winning accomplishments in the radio play genre, with his emphasis on tolerance and compassion, is, I will argue, even needed in the cultural and educational climate of today. “Nähe des Todes” offers a critical treatment of the tensions between life and death, war and memory, grace and acceptance that can lead to fruitful consideration of these politically charged issues both here in the U.S. and across the international horizon. My hope is ultimately to inspire scholars and teachers alike to take a look at Hirche’s oeuvre and discover for themselves the value of these gems as cultural artifacts from the landscape of 20th-century Germany, and of Western civilization as a whole.

            The author’s choice of the Nibelungenlied as the foil for his poetic treatment of the “nearness of death” underscores his deep moral concern for the culture of death that informed Nazi Germany. As the purported “German national epic,” the Nibelungenlied constituted a key element of German cultural memory and identity as national feeling developed and strengthened there in the 19th and 20 centuries. Though Christian elements pervade the epic, the ethos that dominates it is decidedly pre-Christian, and antithetical to the moral traditions of Martin Luther, Meister Eckhart, or Johannes Tauler, for example. The Nibelungenlied is dominated by vengeance, violence, and death. Hirche locates in this epic a kind of mirror onto the culture of Nazism. By seeking to rewrite the Nibelungenlied to reflect a life- and grace- (Gnade-)centered worldview, Hirche hopes to reorient German historical experience, and to retrieve sparks of life from a deeply destructive past.

            It is the loss of his immediate friends over the course of the war that prompts the narrator to resurrect them through the writing of his play: “Sie sind nicht tot, ich habe nicht gesehen, wie sie starben, darum leben sie in ewiger Jugend” (3). The narrator raises the prototypically Nibelungian issue of vengeance in the opening lines of the prologue, asserting from the start that envying the dead for their “eternal youth” is preferable to seeking retribution, in spite of the suffering inflicted on them: “Sie haben die ganze Nacht hindurch geschrien, und versucht, mit ihren Händen die Eingeweide in den zerrissenen Bauch zurückzudrängen, und sie sind an den Kanonen festgefroren.” Though tempted, “jedem ins Gesicht zu schlagen, der behauptet, es sei süß und ehrenvoll zu sterben,” the narrator lacks what he terms “den Mut” to do this. Instead, he simply lobbies for the priority of life over death: “Süß ist nichts auf dieser Welt, und ehrenvoll allein ist es trotzdem zu leben.” Even in the face of suffering, in the absence of “sweetness,” living is still the only honorable option, life itself the highest value.

            So the narrator recalls his fellow orphans in life, as young people approaching the threshold of maturity, before they were swallowed up by the bloody cataclysm of World War II. These children occupy roles readily associated with counterparts in the anonymous medieval epic: Günter replaces the Burgundian king, Haake his advisor Hagen. Hilde fulfills a dual identity role as Kriemhild/Brünhild. Gernot (or is it Jeannot?) stands in for Günter’s brother(s). And then there is “der Fremde,” Blödel, who occupies the place of Siegfried from the older tale (in fact it can be argued that he is also identified with Attila due to Hirche’s naming him after Attila’s brother in the Nibelungenlied). These 20th-century, war-time “heroes” stand out in their status as counterparts to the medieval characters, because they are children. As such, they are closer to the source of life than Günter, Siegfried, and Kriemhild. Their very youthfulness makes life appear to be less of an “option” in their ultimate fate. And even though death does overcome them, they live on, not just in memory: “sie leben in der Erinnerung, und das ist zu wenig” (70), but as that is not enough, they survive also in the living work that Hirche created around them. Death is near, but does not overwhelm.

            Thus the narrator’s memory of these victims of war, inadequate as it is in and of itself, generates a collective process of remembering through the literary text. This collective memory comes somewhat closer to constituting an adequate attempt to rescue life from the jaws of death. The children’s lives are guided by two complementary forces. Dr. Theißmann, the first force, is a teacher whose failure to accept Nazi doctrine has placed him on the margins of his profession. Theißmann struggles with his powerlessness to influence the destructive historical path on which Germany has embarked. Tellingly, he resides in what the author labels “Das Sterbehaus.” Within this house of death, Theißmann works on a book in which he argues essentially that ignorance is the path to life: “Den Menschen wäre viel wohler, wenn sie noch heute in warmen Höhlen lebten, ohne frei oder sonstwie denken zu müssen, ohne Licht, in warmen Höhlen, drunter und drüber, Fleisch an Fleisch” (17). The Enlightenment project, Theißmann suggests, is a failure: “für die Menge ist bei all dem nichts rausgekommen, nur Schweiß und Blut und Dreck und Mantsch, sonst nichts, kein Ruhm, keine Unsterblichkeit, keine Märtyrerkrone, sie ist im Anonymen varramscht worden, immer” (19). Thus when Sister Gertrud, the second force impacting the childrens’ moral development, suggests that Theißmann ought to teach the orphans under her care an unbiased view of recent history, now in 1938, it takes the teacher’s breath away: “Sie, sind Sie von allen guten Geistern verlassen?” he quizzes her (17).

The book in which Theißmann indicates he is recording his arguments concerning the advantages of maintaining the masses in a state of ignorance becomes the subject of a desperate rescue on the part of the children, specifically of Hilde, later in the play. The book thus becomes associated with the “Hort” of the Nibelungs, and with Kriemhild’s desperate quest to access the status and power she lost through her husband’s murder. The association Hirche thus alludes to of Theißmann’s somewhat cynical convictions concerning the failure of education and enlightenment on the one hand, and the self-serving greed inspired by the riches of the Nibelungenhort on the other, merits deeper attention than I can accord it here in this brief analysis. Nevertheless, sensitive listeners/readers are led to contemplate the destructive consequences of ignorance in relation to the destruction wrought by the pursuit of greed over the course of Western history and particularly in the 20th century. Forgetting – ignorance – sows death.

            Hirche further thematizes the notion of Mündigkeit in “Nähe des Todes.” Mündigkeit is what the alternative force to Theißmann, Sister Gertrud, wishes for the children. In an interview published in Wühlmaus in 1995, Hirche states: “Das ist unsere große Hoffnung, daß alle Menschen mündig werden und das (sic) jeder selber für sich auch die Verantwortung übernimmt” (Wühlmaus 17/June 1995, 23). In this regard, the Theißmann character is antithetical to the author’s goal in writing this play. That he resides in “Das Sterbehaus” underscores the teacher’s association with death. Hilde’s failure ultimately to save Theißmann’s book also serves to confirm its lack of relevance to the message Hirche wishes to convey with “Nähe des Todes.” Ignorance and forgetting are not the answer to the grave difficulties facing the Germans in particular, and mankind in general. Gertrud is right to wish for the children to have insight into the horrors of Nazism, even in the dangerous years leading up to the outbreak of World War II. In order for individuals to become “mündig,” they must have access to the truth, even when it is horrible. In this sense, too, memory equates with life. Harsh truths can be overcome only when they are confronted and processed, life restored only through the confrontation with death.

            When the medieval Kriemhild loses her husband to Hagen and Günter’s murderous machinations in the Nibelungenlied, she then devotes her existence to the cause of vengeance. Hirche’s modern character Hilde reaches a point which, though reduced in scale, parallels Kriemhild’s pursuit of death over life. Haake takes Blödel off on a bicycle trip and returns without him – Blödel having ended up getting killed by a train. Haake also thwarts Hilde’s rescue attempt of Theißmann’s manuscript, hurling it into the river. “Blödel ist tot, und das Buch ist im Fluß versenkt,” Hilde exclaims. “Haake hat beides getan. . . . Und ich weiß, was ich tun werde. . . . Ich kann das Haus anzünden, und wenn die anderen auch verbrennen, will ich denken, daß sie geduldet haben, was Haake getan hat” (65). A small-scale murder scene akin to the conflagration that ends the Nibelungenlied presents itself in the listener/reader’s imagination.

            But Hilde changes her mind. The sight of death in the machinery of war deters her from her object:

Eine Frau, die es eilig hat und sich nicht um die Absperrung kümmert, will die Straße überqueren, . . . und Hilde sieht es aus der Nähe. Die Frau wird von einem der großen LKW’s angefahren, sie stürzt, und die schweren Räder rollen über sie hinweg. Die Frau liegt da, der Unterleib ist fast abgequetscht, sie versucht sich auf die Hände zu stützen. Aber die Arme sind nicht mehr stark genug dazu. Mit einer Hand klopft sie auf den Boden, sie stöhnt zweimal und fällt zusammen. Die bestrumpften Beine zittern noch. (66)

In a sudden change of heart, Hilde runs back to the orphanage to warn the others of impending harm – to save their lives. “Nähe des Todes” climaxes with Hilde’s repudiation of death and her renewed commitment to the cause of life.

            In reconsidering Otten’s claim that Hirche thematizes the Nibelungenlied in order to address the question: “How can one be a hero in a hero-less age? . . . . How can the individual – and the group – help but be swallowed up by the infernal machine?” – “The machinery of war . . . “? (viii), I wish to suggest that Otten places excessive emphasis on the concept of heroism. In fact given an opportunity I might argue that the Nibelungenlied itself is not about heroism. Rather, it is about the catastrophe of human failure. In her afterword to the 1958 Hamburg edition of “Nähe des Todes,” Maria Sommer emphasizes a different conceptual underpinning of the text, one that comes far closer in my view to doing justice to the work’s intent: “Alles, was [Hirche] bisher geschrieben hat, ist, mitunter offensichtlich, oft verschlüsselt, doch spürbar für jeden, der in ein Werk hineinzuhorchen vermag, auf einen Begriff bezogen: die Gnade” [Peter Hirche, Nähe des Todes (Hamburg: Hans Bredow-Institut, 1985), 62]. Sommer’s assertion is supported by Hirche’s repeated reference to “Die Notwendigkeit Gottes” in “Nähe des Todes,” which he seeks at several points to “prove” – beweisen (20, 43, 69). In this sense, Hirche calls for a return to a constellation of values espoused, for example, by Martin Luther in combating the Nazi prioritization of death over life in German society. The memory of the Nibelungenlied must be opposed by the memory of Luther’s life-affirming concept of grace. While certain scholars such as Erich Kahler have argued that Luther’s worldview actually contributed to the development of a German mentality that allowed Hitler’s hate-driven politics to thrive, Hirche espouses a simple argument to the contrary, and invokes the Lutheran notion of grace as a way out of his nation’s cultural pathology.

            Regardless of the stand readers may take on this issue, Hirche’s choice of the Nibelungenlied and its memory in German culture is the result of his attempt to help restore life itself as a value in German society. “Nähe des Todes” is an instructive text from numerous meaningful standpoints. This radio play deserves to have a place in the classroom as a telling document of German culture, one that presents particularly to non-German students of this nation’s history an opportunity to incorporate the values of the ancient Germanic tribes, of the Reformation, of the Enlightenment, of Nazism, and of Germany in the post-World War II era into their study of German cultural experience. And it does so in a manner that is approachable and accessible to non-native speakers of German, because as Otten observes, the exigencies of a reception method that takes place in solely aural fashion demand simple syntax and straightforward writing (perhaps in fact it is time to reprint Otten’s student-friendly edition of “Nähe des Todes”).

At the risk of straying into the area of the more strictly religious, I wish also to suggest that “Nähe des Todes” is an invaluable document of the pursuit of life over death. In 1995, Hirche argues that a humanity that continues to admit war as a viable solution to collective conflict has a dark future indeed:

Ich habe immer die Furcht, daß für eine Lebensform, deren Teile gegeneinander Krieg führen, die Evolution keine Zukunft hat. Das gibt es in der Natur ja sonst nicht. Die Tiere der selben Art kämpfen zwar untereinander, aber um Gottes willen, sie rotten sich nicht aus. Das machen nur die Menschen. Das duldet die Evolution auf längere Sicht nicht. Ich bin ziemlich skeptisch und pessimistisch, was die Zukunft der Menschheit betrifft. (Wühlmaus Interview 23)

One might expect that Hirche’s fears in this regard must persist today. The international community, sixty years after the conclusion of the worst war in human history, still looks to war and the death it brings in its wake as an acceptable means of solving conflict. Hirche’s message continues to bear invaluable relevance for listeners and readers today, particularly young ones, and not just in Germany, but from the U.S. to Pakistan to Korea. If there are to be “heroes” in this post-modern age, then let them be heroes of compassion, heroes of grace, heroes who are truly “mündig” in the sense that they recognize the priority of life as a central human value and the capacity of this value ultimately to overcome the Nibelungian devotion to vengeance and death.