The Evolution of Wolfgang Borchert's "Billbrook": Rainer Kunad's Opera and Michael Blume's Film
Robert Lawson
When I read Wolfgang Borchert's "Billbrook" with my students at Memorial University in Newfoundland they are invariably amused when they read the description of the protagonist Bill Brook's hometown of Hopedale, Labrador. Borchert describes what is in reality a subarctic fishing village as a pastoral landscape with cows and green grass. A glance at any picture of Hopedale reveals this is far from the truth. In this paper I will explore some possible reasons why Borchert chose such an obscure location for Bill Brook's place of origin. As well, I will focus on two major adaptations of "Billbrook", Rainer Kunad's 1965 opera and Michael Blume's 2003 film. I will show how both of these artists have adapted Borchert's short story to reflect the political circumstances of their time.
It is possible that Borchert encountered a Canadian soldier or airman from Labrador in postwar Hamburg since this city was under British jurisdiction. In fact, many of the author's stories were directly influenced by memories, reminiscences, characters and events from his past.[1] In this regard one should, however, bear in mind two historical facts: first that Labrador would not join the Canadian confederation until 1949 and that Canadian soldiers were largely withdrawn as an occupying force in 1946, the year the story takes place.
An explanation for Bill Brook's hometown may lie in what many critics have already noted: the dominant influence of the American poet Walt Whitman on Borchert's writing, a fact which even the Hamburg writer testifies to in his postwar letters: "Ich habe mir die 'Grasshalme' geliehen und finde, dass es eigentlich eine Bibel ist."[2] Whitman's influence is particularly apparent in the grass motif of "Billbrook", a theme emphasized in the American poet's famous "Song of Myself."[3] Bedstricken with the liver disease that would eventually kill him, Borchert may have been inspired by Whitman's description of exotic North American locations. In the "Song of Myself" one encounters a reference to Labrador: "In vain the razor-bill'd auk sails far north to Labrador."[4] As well, prior to his brief but successful literary career Borchert had expressed a pantheistic conception of the world: "Denn schliesslich ist doch alles Natur, wenn wir es auch All, Leben oder Gott nennen,"[5] he wrote to his friend Claus Dammann. In a later letter he repeats his love of nature and his desire to escape his restrictive lifestyle: "Im Wald Holz hacken oder Fische fangen wäre mir weitaus lieber, als 18 Monate in horizontaler lage Geschichten schreiben."[6] For a sickly war veteran an idealized vision of Hopedale, Labrador and Canada itself for that matter would have represented the opposite of bombed out urban centres like Hamburg.
The name Hopedale is of great symbolic significance, since "Hope" or "Hoffnung" in German contrasts sharply with the postwar sense of despair that prevails in Borchert's Hamburg.[7] As well, Hopedale is also the name of a village in Massachussetts, one that Walt Whitman was quite familiar with during the nineteenth century. Hopedale, Massachussetts was a Christian socialist community established in 1841 by Adin Ballou, one of whose guiding principles was pacifism and he discouraged his church members' participation in any type of armed conflict: "[They were] Never to serve, aid in, or encourage war, or preparations for war."[8] Affiliated with this utopian village was Abby Price, whose work on behalf of the abolition of slavery and women's rights deeply impressed Walt Whitman and may have partly inspired his portrayal of women in "Leaves of Grass."[9] The critic Sherry Cezina contends that the abolitionist, emancipatory and pacifist spirit of Hopdale had an enormous impact on Whitman and that the poet referred to such utopian communities as "admirable communes" in an earlier version of "Song of Myself."[10] It is unlikely but nevertheless possible that Borchert may have encountered a reference to this utopian community in a biography of the American writer. Certainly it is interesting to note the ironic contrast between Hopedale in the American context and Hamburg, a city obliterated by war.
"Billbrook", one of Borchert's longest stories, was first published in the Hundeblume collection and the monthly Karussel in the summer of 1947 before appearing in the Gesamtwerk (1949).[11] The narrative consists of six main sections: the first part details the arrival of the Canadian Flight Sergeant Bill Brook in the city of Hamburg. It is at the train station that he first catches a glimpse of the enamel sign that bears both his name and that of the Hamburg suburb Billbrook. The second part of the story take place at the hotel where Bill Brook is quartered with two other occupation soldiers who have been in the city for over a year. After expressing to his comrades his joyful discovery of a city district bearing his name, Bill Brook eventually sets off on a journey to discover "his" neighborhood. The meeting between Bill Brook and the old man, accompanied by his younger companion with the amputated leg constitutes the fourth and middle part of the narrative.This eerie encounter is followed by Bill Brook's journey back from the dead core of the city and concludes with his attempt to write about his experiences once he reaches his hotel.
Pantheism is a central motif in "Billbrook." Bill Brook and his hometown Hopedale represent naivité, and life. In the green pastures of Hopedale the greatest tragedy is that two cows have died, while in Hamburg ten thousand dead lie beneath the ruins of the city. As the Canadian airman journeys into the heart of Hamburg life diminishes, dogs and humans disappear until all that is left are skeletal ruins: "Totes nur Totes."[12] The chief symbol of spiritual death in this desolate landscape is the church, whose towers represent the meaninglessness of orthodox Christianity: "Er sah ganz dünn die Türme der Kirchen. Sie sind nicht wahr, sie sind gelogen, dachte er" (BB 90). This critique of traditional religion is in keeping with the character of many Borchert stories, which reflect the helplessness of God and the inability of Christian beliefs to prevent atrocities.[13]
Bill Brook arrives in Hamburg at night. However, even during daylight there is a pall hanging over the city. The sun shines but it is a sun that reflects death: "nach der grauen Hamburger Sonne" (BB 88) or "der in Blut ersoffenen Sonne" (BB 97). Green grass, a symbol of life in Hopedale, is transformed into "Friedhofsgras" (BB 91), grey grass symbolic of decay. Such paradoxical descriptive combinations remind one of the Holocaust poet Paul Celan's "Death Fugue" and that author's attempt to develop new metaphors for horror and atrocity such as "black milk."
Initially the Canadian is overjoyed at his discovery of a neighborhood bearing his name and imagines his family's joyful laughter when he tells them of this coincidence. However, joyful laughter soon mutates into the laughter of insanity and incomprehension once the Canadian airman is informed by an old fisherman that the destruction of the city took only two nights: "aber er lachte nicht aus Freude und nicht aus Lust. Er lachte aus Unglauben, aus Überraschung, aus Erstaunen, aus Zweifel (BB 97)." The demeanour of the young man with one leg who is also sitting on the pier and is presumably a wounded German soldier contrasts sharply with that of his Canadian counterpart: "Der andere war ganz jung, gerade angefangen, verdorben, zerpflückt, zerstört und ganz jung [...]" (BB 94). The emotionally and physically destroyed young man is representative of the dead, lifeless city that surrounds him and when he casts a glance at the Canadian he pushes him away, back into Bill Brook's distant homeland (BB 97-98).
Borchert's stories, such as "Billbrook", that portray the enormous destruction of war and the broken German soldiers who came home would receive enormous acclaim not only in West Germany but in the East as well. In the GDR Borchert was viewed as an anti-fascist[14] and, despite some copyright issues with the Hamburg publisher Rowohlt, many of his works were available in East Germany.[15] Borchert's famous play Draussen vor der Tür was performed regularly in the GDR and in the early 1980s its anti-war stance was adapted as a vehicle to protest NATO plans to station more nuclear missiles in Europe.[16] In particular, Borchert's haunting images of a destroyed city and his powerful, expressive language had a significant impact on the young East German composer Rainer Kunad, inspiring him to compose his opera "Bill Brook" [sic] from 1959 to 1960. The first performance was on March 14, 1965 in the Dresden Radebeul Landesbühne.[17]
Kunad, born in Chemnitz in 1936, was one of East Germany's most famous composers and his distinguished GDR music career culminated with his appointment as professor of composition to the "Dresden Musikhochschule" in 1978. However, in 1984 Kunad left the East German Republic and was subsequently banned from reentry. Because of the circumstances surrounding his departure and because his avante garde style proved unpopular amongst opera goers in the West, Kunad's musical works were soon consigned to obscurity.[18] Following the premiere of "Bill Brook" in 1965, however, Kunad and his musical adaptation of Borchert's story were roundly fêted in the East German press. Gottfried Schmiedel, for example, called Kunad "der geborene Musikdramtiker"[19] in his positive review.
Rainer Kunad's opera differs significantly from Borchert's short story. The musical drama, approximately an hour in duration, consists of seven acts roughly corresponding with the major episodes in the story. Unlike the narrative, however, the opera concludes where the text begins, at the train station. Instead of encountering an old fisherman and an amputee, Kunad's Bill Brook, originally played by Ekkelhard Wlaschika, instead meets only with the latter character who is accompanied by his wife. In this scene the man throws the cigarettes offered by Bill Brook away and also insults him, calling him an "elender Hund."[20] This insult corresponds with the harsher tone which Borchert created in the original manuscript in which the one-legged soldier calls the Canadian a "Schwein"[21] Rainer Kunad also added certain characters and scenes from other Borchert stories. When he arrives at the beginning of the musical drama Bill Brook is confronted by the "Bahnhofsgirl" from "Bleib doch, Giraffe," a prostitute who encourages him to go with her. Their conversation devolves into a series of insults taken from the original story: "nackt und angemalt" vs. "stur und doof" (BBO 25-28). As well, expressing his haunted conscience and his subsequent movement towards insanity upon seeing the destruction of the city, Bill Brook incessantly repeats a line from "Das Känguruh": "Es war einmal ein Känguruh, das nähte sich den Beutel zu, mit einer Nagel, Nagelfeile. Aus Langeweile, aus Langeweile"(BBO 101).
The biggest difference between the musical drama and the short story is the emphasis in the East German production on the guilt of the Canadian airman. The winter of 1965 marked the twentieth anniversary of the horrific allied firebombing of Dresden, the site of the opera's premiere. Nowhere in the short story does Borchert explicitly state the Canadian airman's complicity in the bombing of Hamburg or any other German city for that matter. As Kunad's Bill Brook enters the bombed out ruins of Hamburg, however, the chorus, accompanied by a series of objects that suddenly come to life, including a telephone booth, a street lamp and a poster pillar, play upon the Flight Sergeant's guilt. In the third act the poster pillar accuses Bill Brook: "Und du, Bill Brook, sassest du nicht auch in einem Flugzeug, du? Mit Bomben über Bill-Brook, he, -- Bill Brook?" (BBO 79). The woman Bill Brook meets in the centre of the city emphasizes the extent of the destruction by repeating the names of various Hamburg neighborhoods: "Barmbek, Eilbek und Wandsbek. Und Ham und Horn [...]" (89) Eventually the dead of Billbrook appear in gray linen sheets and together with the choir haunt Bill Brook, forcing him to eventually admit his guilt: "Und ich habe die Bomben mit geworfen! Bin hinter dem Steuer gesessen, hab mit Bomben ausgeklinkt!" (BBO 113) and finally: "Ich Mörder!" (BBO 114). After his confession the Canadian is chased back to his hotel where he meets again with his American colleagues. In the short story Borchert doesn't mention the nationality of Bill Brook's roommates. Kunad's choice of Americans, even though Hamburg was in a British zone of occupation, was undoubtedly an attempt to suggest American war guilt, an accusation that would have found particular resonance in the midst of the cold war. In fact, material from an additional Borchert story "Dann Gibt Es Nur Eins!" was added to the live opera performance in 1965 to underpin the dangers of East/West tension. At the end of the first production the chorus appeared on stage wearing death masks and singing the final paragraph of Borchert's cautionary tale about the consequences for humanity if they continue to fight wars: "dann wird der letzte Mensch, mit zerfetzten Gedärmen und verpesteter Lunge, antwortlos und einsam unter der giftig glühenden Sonne [...]."[22] In a nuclear age where mass destruction can be accomplished with the touch of a button Borchert's image of the last human being on earth crying out "Warum" with noone to hear was an all too real scenario in 1965.
Borchert's stories were popular with a subsequent generation of East German artists as well. The Magdeburger filmmaker Michael Blume directed a number of Borchert shorts throughout the 1980s and 90s. Unlike Kunad's opera, however, much of his work did not meet government approval and many of his films were confiscated.[23] In 2003 Blume produced "Billbrook" setting his film in the old industrial section of Magdeburg, whose broken factory windows and piles of rubble resemble a bombed out city. In terms of structure and content the film is relatively faithful to the short story, although unlike the narrative, Blume's production both opens and concludes with Bill Brook writing home to his parents in Hopedale. As well, Bill Brook is no longer a Canadian airman but rather an American. Blume, who wrote the screenplay, decided to change the nationality of Borchert's protagonist in order to demonstrate his opposition to the war in Iraq.[24] In this sense one can see Bill Brook as representing a typically naïve American soldier whose confidence dissipates when he confronts the victims of his bombs, in this case Germans who could also represent Iraqis. Blume's Bill Brook reflects the American who has allowed himself to become involved in a destructive venture without critically examining what he has been asked to do. Certainly such an approach is problematic in the context of the Second World War since one does not want to be seen relativizing American bombing against Nazi atrocities. However, although his protagonist is a US airman, Blume sees "Billbrook" as a narrative with universal appeal that could describe the crisis of conscience faced by any soldier in any conflict, regardless of nationality or generational affiliation.[25]
As I have shown there could be a variety of reasons why Wolfgang Borchert chose Hopedale in Labrador as the birth place for his protagonist Bill Brook. Hopedale, representative of nature, contrasts sharply with the ruins of Hamburg, which are representative of the horrors associated with modern warfare. The contrast becomes sharper when one associates Hopedale with the 19th century pacifist community in Massachussetts. As a natural village of green pastures and cows Hopedale reflects the pantheistic beliefs of the author. The bombed out church at the heart of Hamburg, on the other hand, shows the powerlessness of God and the meaninglessness of orthodox Christian belief. As the story of a "perpetrator" coming face to face with the destruction he may have caused "Billbrook", has become an suitable vehicle for expressing a variety of political sentiments about war. Rainer Kunad's opera "Bill Brook" explores allied war guilt and demonstrates cold war nuclear tensions. With the Iraq war in mind, the director Michael Blume sees Borchert's story as one that could reflect the ethical dilemmas faced by any soldier at any time in any part of the world.
Endnotes
1 Gordon Burgess, The Life and Works of Wolfgang Borchert (Rochester: Camden House, 2003) 111.
2 Wolfgang Borchert, "To Werner Lüning," 21 June 1946 Allein mit meinem Schatten und dem Mond, ed. Gordon J.A. Burgess and Michael Töteberg, (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1996) 183.
3 Jacqueline O. Padgett, "The Poet in War: Walt Whitman and Wolfgang Borchert," Monatshefte für Deutschen Unterricht, Deutsche Sprache und Literatur 70: (1980): 149-50
4 Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself," Walt Whitman: The Complete Poems, ed. Francis Murphy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975) 94: 682.
5 Wolfgang Borchert "To Claus Damman," 21 April 1941 Allein mit meinem Schatten 74.
6 Wolfgang Borchert "To Elisabeth Kaiser," 21 May 1947 Allein mit meinem Schatten 202-03.
7 Burgess, Life and Works 217: note 33.
8 Lewis G. Wilson, "Hopedale and its Founder," The New England Magazine. 10.2 (April 1891): 202 <http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgibin/moa/pageviewer?root=%2Fmoa%2Fnewe%2Fnewe0010%2F&tif=00210.TIF&cite=&coll=&frames=1&view=50>
9 Sherry Ceniza, Walt Whitman and 19th Century Female Reformers (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998) 45-95.
10 Cezina 59.
11 Burgess, Life and Works 11.
12 Wolfgang Borchert, "Billbrook" Das Gesamtwerk (1949; Rowoholt Verlag, 1996) 8. Hereafter parenthetical references with BB.
13 Burgess, Life and Works 62.
14 "Uraufführungen an den Landesbühnen Sachsen" Sächsiche Neueste Nachrichten 15 March 1965: n.p.
15 Michael Blume, e-mail to the author, 4 May 2005.
16 Burgess, Life and Works 222.
17 Burgess, Life and Works 227.
18 Jochen Schönleber, "Kunad, Rainer," The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, 1992 ed.
19 Gottfried Schmiedel, "Musiktheater - Erregend, Aktuell: Zwei Uraufführungen: Erfolg für Rainer Kunad," Sächsiches Tageblatt 17 March 1965: n.p.
20 Rainer Kunad. Bill Brook, Conatum 23: Klavierauszug (Rimsting: Keturi, n.d.) 97. Hereafter referred to parenthetically as BBO.
21 Gordon Burgess, "Änderungen im Sinne Borcherts - Ja oder Nein? Zu Billbrook in der Originalfassung und im Gesamtwerk," Jahresheft der Internationalen Wolfgang-Borchert-Gesellschaft 16 (2004): 10-11.
21 "Uraufführungen" n.p.
22 Wolfgang Borchert, "Dann Gibt Es Nur Eins!," Das Gesamtwerk (1949; Hamburg: Rowholt, 1958) 346-47.
23Michael Blume, e-mail to the author, 4 May 2005.
24 Michael Blume, e-mail to the author, 28 June 2005.
25 Michael Blume, e-mail to the author, 29 June 2005.