The most important and most tragic figure in the German
Trümmerliteratur.
He was born on May 20th, 1921 in
Hamburg. Already in school he starts writing. In 1939 he begins an
apprenticeship as a book seller, but takes
acting classes in parallel. In 1940 he gets arrested by the
Gestapo, but the charges have to be dropped. In March 1941 he joins the "Reisetheater
Hannover". The happiness does not last long - in June 1941 he is sent to the
Russian front. He contracts
icterus and
diphtheria, and he does not take the cruel battles well. Allegedly he injures himself to be sent home, but after some weeks in a
Nuremberg prison he is sent back to the eastern front. There he has to spend the next two years under harsh conditions, while his health deteriorates.
Shortly before he was to be sent assigned to a front theater, he gets denunciated again for a
parody on
Goebbels and sentenced to several months in jail. In September 1944 he is released and sent to
Jena. His company is taken captive by the
French in March 1945, but he manages to flee and walks the 600 km back to
Hamburg. There he tries to resume his earlier life, but his sickness gets worse and he is finally admitted to
hospital in spring 1946.
In a frantic race against
death, he writes as much as he can. All in all 24 prose texts, eg "Die Hundeblume", about his
experiences in jail. He also releases "Laterne, Nacht und Sterne", a collection of his
poems from the years 1940 to 1945. In January 1947 he writes the
play "Draußen vor der Tür" about a soldier who finds no place in the civilian society. It becomes a great
success. In the following months he writes another 22 short stories. Well known are "An diesem Dienstag", "Die traurigen Geranien", "Dann gibt es nur eins", "Das Brot" and "Nachts schlafen die Ratten doch".
Friends finally manage to send him to special hospital in
Basel, but that does not help either. Wolfgang Borchert dies on November 20th, 1947.