Johannes Bobrowski

Bobrowski, Johannes (Tilsit, 1917-65, Berlin), spent his early years in the German/Lithuanian borderland with its multinational population. In 1928 his parents moved to Königsberg, where he was educated, and he studied history of art in Berlin, where he became a member of the Bekennende Kirche, and completed his military service. During the war he served after short spells in Poland and France at the Russian front and from 1945 spent four years in a Russian prisoner of war camp, intermittently attending a ‘re-education’ (Antifa) school. After his release he became engaged in editorial work for Berlin publishers and wrote his first poetry. He repeatedly cited Klopstock as his main influence, though he acquired from P. Huchel the idea of not viewing the landscape he loved without the people whose lives formed part of it. Out of this grew his projected ‘Sarmatischer Divan’ which resulted in the collections Sarmatische Zeit (1961) and Schattenlandströme (1962). He died, aged 48, before the appearance of Wetterzeichen (1967), which was followed by a further collection, Im Windgesträuch (1970, ed. E. Haufe). Published in both Germanies, the early volumes instantly won him recognition as a leading representative of modern lyric poetry. His elliptical, melancholy verse relies for its communication on allusive images and myth deriving from the long stretch of borderland up to the Baltic Sea (Mare Sarmaticum) and its people, Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, and Jews. In making this region his basic theme he explored a form of atonement for guilt incurred in the course of Germany's East European history since the days of the Teutonic Order (see Deutscher Orden). Writers and artists remembered in this context include Joseph Conrad, who after the loss of his parents had been cared for by Bobrowski's great-great-uncle; Conrad's narrative technique was among influences which counted when he turned to prose in order to impart his message to a wider public, his ultimate aim being the promotion of ethnic reconciliation and social justice.

Bobrowski's shorter prose from the years 1959 to 1964 appeared in two collections of which the title-stories, Boehlendorff and Mäusefest (both 1965), rank among his best; a posthumous collection appeared as Der Mahner (1967), in which the title refers to a victim of National Socialist persecution who, on point of arrest, vainly entreats his tormentors to observe the Ten Commandments. Still more characteristic is Bobrowski's technique of conveying his moral theme in the form of a question, as in Boehlendorff, a complex story adapting the life and death by suicide of Kasimir Ulrich Boehlendorff (1775-1825), a friend of Hölderlin. A minor writer and private tutor, Boehlendorff poses the question around which the last years of his life and contact with people representing all sections of society are poised: ‘Wie muß eine Welt für ein moralisches Wesen beschaffen sein?’ Mäusefest is one of Bobrowski's exquisite short prose pieces; set in 1939, it marks the beginning of the persecution of Jews in occupied Poland. During his lifetime, Bobrowski achieved his greatest success with his novel Levins Mühle (1964), which almost instantly was translated into several languages. As in all his fiction, Bobrowski dealt freely with his source, in this instance a court case of the 1870s, the outcome of which he appears to have adjusted to suit his purpose of exposing the plight of the poor. Somewhat reminiscent of Sudermann's Litauische Geschichten, with the fiction of R. Walser a known influence, the novel stands out for its affectionate portrayal of ordinary folk, their countryside, and their musicality. This love of music and its social and cultural function is central to Bobrowski's only other novel, Litauische Claviere (posth. 1966). Set in the 1930s, it is concerned with the composition of an opera on the Lithuanian pastor and poet Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714-80), notable in his day for having written realistically about the hardships suffered by the peasants. Their way of life has no more changed than the landscape which determines the novel's melancholy stance as much as discussions on art and the now sombre political background. As a novel, its appeal was limited, and the view that Bobrowski's gifts as a narrator of fiction, measured by the standards of H. Bienek, were more suited to shorter prose, is understandable.

It is remarkable that Bobrowski, though living in the DDR, succeeded in making no concessions to socialist realism (see Sozialistischer Realismus) in his oeuvre, which he approached throughout as a Christian socialist. Gesammelte Werke (7 vols.), ed. E. Haufe, appeared 1987 ff.

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