SERGEANT-MAJOR PONT, a master builder from Kalkar on the Rhine.
PECHLER, Dannevoux hospital bath orderly.
DR BAER, Jewish chaplain at Dannevoux hospital.
KELLER, a blind cuirassier, now telephone operator for Dannevoux hospital.
PHILIPPE, pilot of a French bombing plane.
LENORE BERTIN, Werner Bertin’s wife.
Translator’s note
In completely this translation of Arnold Zweig’s Erziehung vor Verdun, I was frequently assisted by Eric Sutton’s existing translation. Published in the United States in 1936 – just one year after the German publication – Sutton’s translation, now out of print, bore the title Education before Verdun and has been a rich source for military terminology in particular.
I am also grateful to David Midgley for invaluable assistance with First World War military vocabulary and with some of the trickier nuances in the text, and to Alaric Searle. Thanks are also due to Ingrid Kollak and Titus Kroder for providing a German native speaker’s view on certain points.
Some of the terms used in Erziehung vor Verdun almost defy translation. I have translated Feldwebelleutnant as acting lieutenant. The literal meaning is sergeant major lieutenant, and the term denotes sergeant majors given the command responsibilities of lieutenants due to the heavy losses incurred by the German army.
Also tricky to translate into English are the three categories of reserve forces in the Prussian army: the regular military Reserve, the Landwehr, roughly equivalent to the Territorial Army, and the Landsturm, made up of older men capable of wielding weapons and men not fit for active service. In many cases, I have therefore kept the original German terms of Landwehr and Landsturm in the English text, as well as the term Landstürmer, which denotes a member of the Landsturm.
Another problem arises in translating Erziehung vor Verdun into English from the fact that the German terms Kamerad, a comrade at arms, and Genosse, a Communist Party comrade, both translate into English as comrade. I have attempted to clarify the distinction in each instance.
My principal aim with this translation has been to bring Arnold Zweig’s magnificent novel of the First World War alive for contemporary English-speaking readers. In particular, I have tried to capture the flavour of the humour, dialect and colloquialisms in the original. For that reason, I have occasionally used non-standard English, particularly Scots, as that is the form of non-standard English with which I am most familiar.
It goes without saying that any errors or omissions in this translation are my responsibility alone.
About the Author
Arnold Zweig (10 November 1887 – 26 November 1968) was a German writer and anti-war activist. He is best known for his World War I tetralogy of which Outside Verdun is part. Zweig volunteered for the German army in World War I and saw action as a private in France, Hungary and Serbia. He was stationed in the Western Front at the time when Judenzählung (the Jewish census) was undertaken. After World War I he was an active socialistic Zionist in Germany. Following Hitler’s attempted coup in 1923 Zweig went to Berlin and worked as an editor of a newspaper, the Jüdische Rundschau. Zweig would later witness the burning of his books by the Nazis. When the Nazis took power in 1933, Zweig was one of many Jews to go into voluntary exile, first to Czechoslovakia, then Switzerland and France and finally Palestine. In 1948, after a formal invitation from the East German authorities, Zweig decided to return to the Soviet occupation zone in Germany where he became a member of parliament. He was President of the German Academy of the Arts from 1950-53. He died in Berlin in 1968.
Copyright
First published in the UK May 2014
© Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin 1957
First published in Amsterdam in 1935 by Querido, Amsterdam
Freight Books
49-53 Virginia Street
Glasgow, G1 1TS
Copyright © Arnold Zweig, 1935
Translation © 2014 Fiona Rintoul
The moral right of Arnold Zweig to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by his in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without either prior permission in writing from the publisher or by licence, permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP.
All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
A CIP catalogue reference for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-908754-52-3
eISBN 978-1-908754-53-0
Typeset by Freight in Plantin Std
The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Geothe-Institut which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs