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Der große Krieg der weißen Männer #1
The Case of Sergeant Grischa
"The Case of Sergeant Grischa" by Arnold Zweig unfolds against the backdrop of World War I and presents a gripping narrative that delves into the complexities of justice, morality, and the impact of war on the human psyche. Sergeant Grischa, accused of desertion and espionage, finds himself at the center of a military trial that becomes a microcosm of the moral dilemmas faced by individuals during times of conflict.
As the courtroom drama unfolds, Zweig weaves a powerful exploration of the blurred lines between right and wrong, duty and conscience. Readers are drawn into a thought-provoking examination of the human condition amidst the chaos of war. "The Case of Sergeant Grischa" is a compelling journey that challenges preconceived notions, providing a poignant reflection on the nature of justice and the choices individuals make in the crucible of war.
As the courtroom drama unfolds, Zweig weaves a powerful exploration of the blurred lines between right and wrong, duty and conscience. Readers are drawn into a thought-provoking examination of the human condition amidst the chaos of war. "The Case of Sergeant Grischa" is a compelling journey that challenges preconceived notions, providing a poignant reflection on the nature of justice and the choices individuals make in the crucible of war.
449 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1927
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1246 people want to read
About the author
Arnold Zweig
123 books12 followersGerman writer and anti-war, anti-fascist activist.
He is best known for his six-part cycle on World War I Der große Krieg der weißen Männer
In 1934 he settled in Mandatory Palestine where he wrote a novel based on the assassination of Jacob Israël de Haan.
In 1948 he settled in the Soviet occupation zone in East-Germany. From 1949 - 1967 he was a member of the parliament of the German Democratic Republic.
He is best known for his six-part cycle on World War I Der große Krieg der weißen Männer
In 1934 he settled in Mandatory Palestine where he wrote a novel based on the assassination of Jacob Israël de Haan.
In 1948 he settled in the Soviet occupation zone in East-Germany. From 1949 - 1967 he was a member of the parliament of the German Democratic Republic.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
June 24, 2025
Zweig’s The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1927) orchestrates a symphony of absurdities and bureaucratic decay, where one illiterate Russian prisoner of war becomes the unwitting lodestone for every vice, vanity, and vibration of the late-stage Imperial German military.
Grischa Paprotkin escapes a POW camp with a stolen pair of pliers and the primal yearning for wife, child, and fresh air. Hiding in a coffin of timber in a freight car, he rides through war-torn landscapes like a stowaway Charon, sliding east toward Russia, and freedom.
Along the way, he shoots rabbits with a homemade umbrella-bow, befriends ghosts, and is tracked (perhaps symbolically, perhaps literally) by a lynx.
Unfortunately for Grischa, paperwork has sharper teeth than any predator. Arrested by Germans who interpret his false identity as espionage, he’s handed over to the deathless clerical machine: forms, misreadings, laws, revisions of laws, jurisdictional tantrums, and the meticulous art of losing a human being inside a filing cabinet.
The comedy of errors quickly sours into something grotesquely sublime. Grischa’s fate, one would think, should be unambiguous: he is a Russian deserter, a POW, a lost man trying to return home. But the German army, allergic to the obvious, debates his status with all the frantic solemnity of a senate during collapse.
General von Lychow wants to free him. Major-General Schieffenzahn, a man whose name sounds like a dental procedure gone wrong, insists on execution as a liturgical devotion to protocol.
Meanwhile, Grischa, proud, illiterate, stubborn as an axe handle, refuses to play along. He declines rescue. He repudiates false names. He demands his real identity be acknowledged, and thus signs his own death sentence. “I am Grischa Paprotkin,” he says, and that truth, uttered in a world drunk on documentation, becomes fatal.
This is a novel where hunger and snow have more conscience than commandants, and where rabbits, gendarmes, lynxes, revolutionaries, and field kitchens all jostle elbow-to-elbow in a universe that obeys bureaucracy like a religion and justice like a rumor.
The absurd climaxes include: a clergyman arriving too late to save a life but early enough to moralize; the sudden arrival of Grischa’s lover Babka, who sets off on foot through a war zone only to discover that love has a slower bureaucracy than murder; and the most Germanic act of mercy ever conceived - a change in the law.
As Grischa contemplates his fate with the strange calm of a man who has watched too many buffoons debate his soul, the reader is left with a single overwhelming insight: the war may have been stupid, but the paperwork was sublime.
This is a bleak, razor-edged condemnation of bureaucracy, militarism, and the murderous consequences of systems that prize obedience over thought, hierarchy over humanity, and formality over life.
Zweig’s Jews slip into the novel sideways, through trapdoors of irony and footnotes of farce. Jews appear in rich, diverse, and sharply observed vignettes that feel drawn from life rather than doctrine.
Reb Tawje Frum, a grey-bearded carpenter with tassels dangling from his garments and a flask in his boot, is one of the most vividly portrayed. He haggles, philosophizes, and builds coffins for both Germans and Jews. He drinks schnapps, quotes Gemara, and explains dysentery epidemics with equal gravity.
Mervinsk, the town where much of the action unfolds, is depicted as a Jewish shtetl to the marrow: tailors, glaziers, bookbinders, and cab-drivers packed into timbered houses, starving even before the war, and now burying their dead from dysentery in alarming numbers.
The wooden synagogue is famous for its peculiar beauty, and inside, mysticism meets military jurisprudence: the Chief Rabbi discusses cabbalistic reincarnation while rumors swirl that the British are about to liberate Jerusalem.
Tawje himself believes that even an innocent Russian soldier may have once, in a prior life, forced Jewish boys to convert under Nicholas I, thus explaining divine justice.
In a more intimate subplot, Deborah "Dwore" Stisskind, a plaited and radical Jewish schoolteacher, debates Marxism under the birch trees with a suitor too timid for love but impassioned about Lenin.
The Talmud is described with a grin as looking like “a row of Jews sitting at table”. Even the town gossip is Talmudic: a beggar may be Elijah in disguise; bread given to a stranger might heal a sick husband.
Grischa, tramping eastward like a spectral lumberjack with a tin of bully beef in one hand and an umbrella-bow in the other, crosses a landscape where Jews flicker in and out of view like uneasy metaphors. One Polish-German soldier, Kazmierzak, complains bitterly about having lived “right among the Jews” in New York’s East Side, grudging them their dollar-savvy, their skyscrapers, their stubborn refusal to vanish.
Jews in occupied towns are a constant background presence, feared and resented by the soldiers as informers or collaborators, yet always indispensable — selling tobacco, passing news, doing business even as pogrom shadows loom off-stage.
The power dynamic is absurd: a Russian prisoner fears that “every peasant, every Jew, even every woman” can dispense life or death like a provincial god.
But it’s not all menace. The novel offers a glint of surreal comedy when a group of Bavarian soldiers drunkenly parade around with a broken umbrella during carnival and then discard it, leaving it for Grischa to transform into a makeshift weapon. A detail so bizarre it feels like something out of Sholem Aleichem rewritten by Kafka.
Jews in Grischa are never central, but they haunt the margins: watchful, hunted, tolerated, and, in a bitter twist of the grotesque, still the ones everyone is expected to buy their schnapps from.
Nowhere does Zweig caricature; instead, he crafts an affectionate, ironic, occasionally mournful portrait of Eastern European Jewish life caught between religious ritual, revolutionary fervor, and German military boots.
The German-Jewish Zweig - who fought in the German army during World War I - offers a satire so cold and exacting it becomes indistinguishable from tragedy. The novel’s true villain is the machine of officialdom itself. Every character - well-meaning or tyrannical - is hemmed in by orders, counter-orders, legal memos, and circulars. The moment someone tries to act humanely, they are crushed by someone acting “correctly.”
It’s a parable for anyone who has ever had a form returned due to a missing signature and wondered: what if that signature were life or death?
If Kafka wrote a war novel with more rabbits, pine planks, and Prussian uniforms, this would be it.
Part of the “Lost Generation” of German-speaking authors who saw Europe devour itself twice in one lifetime. Though less famous today than some of his contemporaries (Remarque, Mann, Brecht), Zweig’s work, especially the “Grischa” cycle, burns with an integrity that makes forgetting him seem less like neglect and more like collective denial. He wrote so history wouldn’t repeat itself. History, of course, rarely reads.
Grischa Paprotkin escapes a POW camp with a stolen pair of pliers and the primal yearning for wife, child, and fresh air. Hiding in a coffin of timber in a freight car, he rides through war-torn landscapes like a stowaway Charon, sliding east toward Russia, and freedom.
Along the way, he shoots rabbits with a homemade umbrella-bow, befriends ghosts, and is tracked (perhaps symbolically, perhaps literally) by a lynx.
Unfortunately for Grischa, paperwork has sharper teeth than any predator. Arrested by Germans who interpret his false identity as espionage, he’s handed over to the deathless clerical machine: forms, misreadings, laws, revisions of laws, jurisdictional tantrums, and the meticulous art of losing a human being inside a filing cabinet.
The comedy of errors quickly sours into something grotesquely sublime. Grischa’s fate, one would think, should be unambiguous: he is a Russian deserter, a POW, a lost man trying to return home. But the German army, allergic to the obvious, debates his status with all the frantic solemnity of a senate during collapse.
General von Lychow wants to free him. Major-General Schieffenzahn, a man whose name sounds like a dental procedure gone wrong, insists on execution as a liturgical devotion to protocol.
Meanwhile, Grischa, proud, illiterate, stubborn as an axe handle, refuses to play along. He declines rescue. He repudiates false names. He demands his real identity be acknowledged, and thus signs his own death sentence. “I am Grischa Paprotkin,” he says, and that truth, uttered in a world drunk on documentation, becomes fatal.
This is a novel where hunger and snow have more conscience than commandants, and where rabbits, gendarmes, lynxes, revolutionaries, and field kitchens all jostle elbow-to-elbow in a universe that obeys bureaucracy like a religion and justice like a rumor.
The absurd climaxes include: a clergyman arriving too late to save a life but early enough to moralize; the sudden arrival of Grischa’s lover Babka, who sets off on foot through a war zone only to discover that love has a slower bureaucracy than murder; and the most Germanic act of mercy ever conceived - a change in the law.
As Grischa contemplates his fate with the strange calm of a man who has watched too many buffoons debate his soul, the reader is left with a single overwhelming insight: the war may have been stupid, but the paperwork was sublime.
This is a bleak, razor-edged condemnation of bureaucracy, militarism, and the murderous consequences of systems that prize obedience over thought, hierarchy over humanity, and formality over life.
Zweig’s Jews slip into the novel sideways, through trapdoors of irony and footnotes of farce. Jews appear in rich, diverse, and sharply observed vignettes that feel drawn from life rather than doctrine.
Reb Tawje Frum, a grey-bearded carpenter with tassels dangling from his garments and a flask in his boot, is one of the most vividly portrayed. He haggles, philosophizes, and builds coffins for both Germans and Jews. He drinks schnapps, quotes Gemara, and explains dysentery epidemics with equal gravity.
Mervinsk, the town where much of the action unfolds, is depicted as a Jewish shtetl to the marrow: tailors, glaziers, bookbinders, and cab-drivers packed into timbered houses, starving even before the war, and now burying their dead from dysentery in alarming numbers.
The wooden synagogue is famous for its peculiar beauty, and inside, mysticism meets military jurisprudence: the Chief Rabbi discusses cabbalistic reincarnation while rumors swirl that the British are about to liberate Jerusalem.
Tawje himself believes that even an innocent Russian soldier may have once, in a prior life, forced Jewish boys to convert under Nicholas I, thus explaining divine justice.
In a more intimate subplot, Deborah "Dwore" Stisskind, a plaited and radical Jewish schoolteacher, debates Marxism under the birch trees with a suitor too timid for love but impassioned about Lenin.
The Talmud is described with a grin as looking like “a row of Jews sitting at table”. Even the town gossip is Talmudic: a beggar may be Elijah in disguise; bread given to a stranger might heal a sick husband.
Grischa, tramping eastward like a spectral lumberjack with a tin of bully beef in one hand and an umbrella-bow in the other, crosses a landscape where Jews flicker in and out of view like uneasy metaphors. One Polish-German soldier, Kazmierzak, complains bitterly about having lived “right among the Jews” in New York’s East Side, grudging them their dollar-savvy, their skyscrapers, their stubborn refusal to vanish.
Jews in occupied towns are a constant background presence, feared and resented by the soldiers as informers or collaborators, yet always indispensable — selling tobacco, passing news, doing business even as pogrom shadows loom off-stage.
The power dynamic is absurd: a Russian prisoner fears that “every peasant, every Jew, even every woman” can dispense life or death like a provincial god.
But it’s not all menace. The novel offers a glint of surreal comedy when a group of Bavarian soldiers drunkenly parade around with a broken umbrella during carnival and then discard it, leaving it for Grischa to transform into a makeshift weapon. A detail so bizarre it feels like something out of Sholem Aleichem rewritten by Kafka.
Jews in Grischa are never central, but they haunt the margins: watchful, hunted, tolerated, and, in a bitter twist of the grotesque, still the ones everyone is expected to buy their schnapps from.
Nowhere does Zweig caricature; instead, he crafts an affectionate, ironic, occasionally mournful portrait of Eastern European Jewish life caught between religious ritual, revolutionary fervor, and German military boots.
The German-Jewish Zweig - who fought in the German army during World War I - offers a satire so cold and exacting it becomes indistinguishable from tragedy. The novel’s true villain is the machine of officialdom itself. Every character - well-meaning or tyrannical - is hemmed in by orders, counter-orders, legal memos, and circulars. The moment someone tries to act humanely, they are crushed by someone acting “correctly.”
It’s a parable for anyone who has ever had a form returned due to a missing signature and wondered: what if that signature were life or death?
If Kafka wrote a war novel with more rabbits, pine planks, and Prussian uniforms, this would be it.
Part of the “Lost Generation” of German-speaking authors who saw Europe devour itself twice in one lifetime. Though less famous today than some of his contemporaries (Remarque, Mann, Brecht), Zweig’s work, especially the “Grischa” cycle, burns with an integrity that makes forgetting him seem less like neglect and more like collective denial. He wrote so history wouldn’t repeat itself. History, of course, rarely reads.
August 3, 2014
During the late 20's many of those who experienced World War I wrote semi-autobiographical novels. One of them was Arnold Zweig (1887-1968), a German writer, anti-war and anti-fascist activist. He is known for his six-part cycle on World War I called The Great War of the White Men and the first part of it is this 1001 book, The Case of Sargeant Grischa.
The story is about mistaken identity. Sergeant Grischa is a Russian POW in Germany during WWI and he escapes with the help of his lover, Babka and young woman who dresses as a man. Before he leaves the German camp, Babka gives Sergeant the name tag of Bjuscheff a dead soldier who is a German deserter. Babka thinks that if Grischa gets caught being a German deserter he will be sent home and not back to the German prison camp.
Babka is wrong. When Grischa is caught he is sentence to death by firing squad. As the trial unfolds the drama begins. The German authorities, coming fresh from the war, try everything to reverse the order of the camp administrator, Schieffenzahn. Grischa is illiterate and so he does not understand everything that happens on the trial. The pivotal scene is when he reveals his true identity as a Russian soldier Grischa and not the German deserter Bjuscheff, he thinks that he will be saved only to realize that Schieffenzahn will restore his death penalty just for the sake of discipline. They say that the novel is a satire for the German rich and influential people, including Jews, who spend a lot of time on the case to save the life of one man only to face the errors of Holocaust only a bit more than a decade later. This book was published in 1927.
The book gives more information about World War I that I know a little about. It is a lot better than All Quiet on the Western Front (4 stars) but not us dramatic as Birdsong (4 stars) by Sebastian Faulks or The Wars (4 stars) by Timothy Findley. The reading feels like reading Mother (3 stars) by Maxim Gorky because of the names of the characters and the way they speak. Both novels are written by Russian authors during the early 20th century.
Suffice it to say that this is one of the best war novels that I've read. A lone man's struggle for justice amidst German's search for its own identity in between the two world wars.
A must read for all WWI-interested readers.
The story is about mistaken identity. Sergeant Grischa is a Russian POW in Germany during WWI and he escapes with the help of his lover, Babka and young woman who dresses as a man. Before he leaves the German camp, Babka gives Sergeant the name tag of Bjuscheff a dead soldier who is a German deserter. Babka thinks that if Grischa gets caught being a German deserter he will be sent home and not back to the German prison camp.
Babka is wrong. When Grischa is caught he is sentence to death by firing squad. As the trial unfolds the drama begins. The German authorities, coming fresh from the war, try everything to reverse the order of the camp administrator, Schieffenzahn. Grischa is illiterate and so he does not understand everything that happens on the trial. The pivotal scene is when he reveals his true identity as a Russian soldier Grischa and not the German deserter Bjuscheff, he thinks that he will be saved only to realize that Schieffenzahn will restore his death penalty just for the sake of discipline. They say that the novel is a satire for the German rich and influential people, including Jews, who spend a lot of time on the case to save the life of one man only to face the errors of Holocaust only a bit more than a decade later. This book was published in 1927.
The book gives more information about World War I that I know a little about. It is a lot better than All Quiet on the Western Front (4 stars) but not us dramatic as Birdsong (4 stars) by Sebastian Faulks or The Wars (4 stars) by Timothy Findley. The reading feels like reading Mother (3 stars) by Maxim Gorky because of the names of the characters and the way they speak. Both novels are written by Russian authors during the early 20th century.
Suffice it to say that this is one of the best war novels that I've read. A lone man's struggle for justice amidst German's search for its own identity in between the two world wars.
A must read for all WWI-interested readers.
February 26, 2024
An interesting, intriguing novel set in 1917 Germany. The protagonist, Grischa Paprotkin, an ordinary Russian soldier, escapes from a German prison camp, and finds Babka and other outlaws in a forest. He remains with this group for some time before deciding to go back to Russia to be with his wife and child, whom he has not seen. He takes the identity of a dead German soldier, hoping this will make it easier to travel through Germany. However he is recaptured and sentenced to death by a German commander, as the German soldier whose identity he has assumed is known as a deserter. When Grischa proves that he is Russian and what his true identity is, things become complicated!
A novel with interesting characters and good plot momentum. A very worthwhile read about justice, authority, morality and an individual’s conscience.
This book was first published in 1927.
A novel with interesting characters and good plot momentum. A very worthwhile read about justice, authority, morality and an individual’s conscience.
This book was first published in 1927.
November 27, 2019
This is the best first world war novel I’ve read since Solzhenitsyn’s August 1914. It is very long, but not I think too long, and it is very moving.
There are a great many extraordinarily memorable characters and a very vivid sense of time and place. The clunking injustice of the German military machine is tempered by the humanity and decency of some the characters. We are almost inured to tales of barbarism and horror involving those in German uniforms and the Eastern Front, but here there are Jews wearing the uniform of German officers, and plenty of humanity and decency, often in unlooked for places. The horror is all the more effective for being wrapped up in the pseudo-commonsensical calmness of bureaucracy.
There are a number of Germans who collaborate to try and prevent the judicial murder of the poor innocent Russian prisoner. Their motives are mixed, as all our motives always are: jealousy, envy, revenge, and dislike can all impel us to actions with a morally good outcome as much as the love of virtue. But some of them come to realise that the case of Sergeant Grischa is really much bigger than Sergeant Grischa or any of the protagonists: it is about the code by which a society lives, and if that code is rotten and corrupt, what good is that society?
The stolid stubborn stupidity of officialdom when it comes to enforcing that which it knows to be unjust is still with us, alas, and it isn’t just a German disease.
There are a great many extraordinarily memorable characters and a very vivid sense of time and place. The clunking injustice of the German military machine is tempered by the humanity and decency of some the characters. We are almost inured to tales of barbarism and horror involving those in German uniforms and the Eastern Front, but here there are Jews wearing the uniform of German officers, and plenty of humanity and decency, often in unlooked for places. The horror is all the more effective for being wrapped up in the pseudo-commonsensical calmness of bureaucracy.
There are a number of Germans who collaborate to try and prevent the judicial murder of the poor innocent Russian prisoner. Their motives are mixed, as all our motives always are: jealousy, envy, revenge, and dislike can all impel us to actions with a morally good outcome as much as the love of virtue. But some of them come to realise that the case of Sergeant Grischa is really much bigger than Sergeant Grischa or any of the protagonists: it is about the code by which a society lives, and if that code is rotten and corrupt, what good is that society?
The stolid stubborn stupidity of officialdom when it comes to enforcing that which it knows to be unjust is still with us, alas, and it isn’t just a German disease.
February 20, 2014
A stirring novel full of beautiful descriptions of the settings in which the title character, a Russian POW during WWI, escapes from the timber camp, heads for home, gets recaptured and sentenced to death. I was extremely impressed with the language used to describe nature and the feelings of the characters.
May 2, 2011
Reading Arnold Zweig's "Case of Sergeant Grischa" brings to mind what a wretched century the 1900s were. After all, Zweig's novel takes place at the bitter end of World War I, as a Russian soldier (voting with his feet, as Lenin is said to have put it) tries to find his way home from behind the German lines. As an evasive manouver, he takes on the identity of a deceased soldier, and through an obscure tweak of regulations, becomes subject to the death penalty. The German military, composed largely in this novel of honorable aristocrats and idealistic officers, including a Jew, tries and fails to save him from the firing squad. Much of the novel and a fair amount of comedy is devoted by the efforts of those military bureaucrats to save Grischa from its own absurdly lethal regulations, resorting even to subterfuge at the end. It's a bitter comedy, but not overly so, and almost light-hearted, when one views it from the perspective of the changes awaiting Germany, Russia, and the rest of Europe. On the day of Holocaust Remembrance, at fifty years from the trial of Adolf Eichmann and Hannah Arendt's coverage of it, one can almost feel nostalgia for a German military trying (if failing) to do right, and for a time when only one life was at stake.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 7, 2024
This is a compelling and unusual book about WWI, as it focuses on the bureaucracy of the war and the petty squabbles between the bureaucrats and the army itself, epitomised in the case of Grischa and his assumed identity as a deserter. It isn’t a quick or easy read but I never felt like abandoning it as it was always worth the effort.
Grischa Paprotkin is a Russian prisoner of war in a German camp who manages to escape. He intends to walk home to his wife and child, and on his journey is helped by Babka, who suggests he adopts the identity of a dead soldier called Bjuscheff. However, when Grischa is recaptured he finds out that Bjuscheff was a deserter and so he is sentenced to death. In his struggle to prove his innocence, he discovers that this is less important to the powers that be than the need to preserve army discipline and follow orders to the letter.
There were a lot of characters involved and it took a while to get to grips with their titles and roles, but they all were distinguishable with their human emotions and failings. Grischa himself developed really well as the wrangling over his fate got more complex and absurd. The depiction of the inhumanity of war is brilliantly done, as the battlefield itself is barely mentioned, yet we are made aware of how the military and administrative regulations have taken over everything to the detriment of values such as compassion and justice. The final chapters were surprisingly intense and moving, and I also loved the descriptions of the pure snow covered landscape where these horrors take place.
Grischa Paprotkin is a Russian prisoner of war in a German camp who manages to escape. He intends to walk home to his wife and child, and on his journey is helped by Babka, who suggests he adopts the identity of a dead soldier called Bjuscheff. However, when Grischa is recaptured he finds out that Bjuscheff was a deserter and so he is sentenced to death. In his struggle to prove his innocence, he discovers that this is less important to the powers that be than the need to preserve army discipline and follow orders to the letter.
There were a lot of characters involved and it took a while to get to grips with their titles and roles, but they all were distinguishable with their human emotions and failings. Grischa himself developed really well as the wrangling over his fate got more complex and absurd. The depiction of the inhumanity of war is brilliantly done, as the battlefield itself is barely mentioned, yet we are made aware of how the military and administrative regulations have taken over everything to the detriment of values such as compassion and justice. The final chapters were surprisingly intense and moving, and I also loved the descriptions of the pure snow covered landscape where these horrors take place.
February 25, 2026
Soooo gut geschrieben! Immer, wenn ich’s am wenigsten erwartet habe fand ich 2-3 super schöne poetische Sätze, die ich mir mehrmals durchgelesen und richtig auf der Zunge zergehen lassen habe. Die Handlung ist spannend, ich war nie gelangweilt :)
April 28, 2018
History books tell us what happened. Fiction explores how the things that happened affected those who lived through them. This book looks deeply into a wholly plausible, but presumably fictional, incident of injustice in time of war, and how it affected those who were involved. The setting is the Eastern Front in 1917, as the Germans paused to allow the Russian army to collapse, anticipating that they would soon sue for peace on any terms.
An escaped Russian prisoner of war has been recaptured and mistakenly identified as a spy, and sentenced to be shot. His true identity is soon revealed, and all involved accept that he is not the spy, but someone else entirely. The infantry division which has custody prepares to prosecute him for his escape, but the paperwork winds up before the army commander, who decides that even though the prisoner is innocent, allowing any enemy soldier convicted of spying to live might be bad for German morale, and orders the death sentence to be carried out.
The division commander, his chief legal advisor, his aide-de-camp, and others involved in the custody of this man are outraged, partly over the injustice of it, but also over the interference of Army in a matter that should have been handled at their level. The rest of the book examines the people on both sides of the issue, the decisions and maneuvers they make, and their thoughts, conversations, and actions.
The book was published in 1927, and the modern reader might pause to consider the characters’ discussions of the ethical burdens of justice and the consequences of injustice. The defenders of the accused man are wholeheartedly committed to the idea that Germany is a civilized society built on fairness and the rule of law, and that allowing even one man – even an enemy soldier – to be wrongly executed could shatter forever what it means to be an honorable German. It is not with irony, because it is too tragic to be ironic, but with dismay that the modern reader considers that not many years after these discussions of inviolable ethical principles, the Germans were murdering millions of innocents under the banner of a depraved ideology.
Although I liked the book, with its complex and believable characters, getting through it requires either commitment on the part of the reader, or a fondness for the verbose Dickensian novels of the 19th century. There were times when I wanted to toss it aside in frustration. Minor characters, no matter how peripheral to the plot, are introduced with pages of backstory, including their hometowns, education, pre-war occupations, thoughts about the war, conversations with friends, and even what they’ve been eating. After all that, they have a couple paragraphs where their small part plays out, and then they disappear forever.
Ultimately, despite its frustrations, this book is worth reading. Any book that you keep thinking about after you have finished it is worth your time.
An escaped Russian prisoner of war has been recaptured and mistakenly identified as a spy, and sentenced to be shot. His true identity is soon revealed, and all involved accept that he is not the spy, but someone else entirely. The infantry division which has custody prepares to prosecute him for his escape, but the paperwork winds up before the army commander, who decides that even though the prisoner is innocent, allowing any enemy soldier convicted of spying to live might be bad for German morale, and orders the death sentence to be carried out.
The division commander, his chief legal advisor, his aide-de-camp, and others involved in the custody of this man are outraged, partly over the injustice of it, but also over the interference of Army in a matter that should have been handled at their level. The rest of the book examines the people on both sides of the issue, the decisions and maneuvers they make, and their thoughts, conversations, and actions.
The book was published in 1927, and the modern reader might pause to consider the characters’ discussions of the ethical burdens of justice and the consequences of injustice. The defenders of the accused man are wholeheartedly committed to the idea that Germany is a civilized society built on fairness and the rule of law, and that allowing even one man – even an enemy soldier – to be wrongly executed could shatter forever what it means to be an honorable German. It is not with irony, because it is too tragic to be ironic, but with dismay that the modern reader considers that not many years after these discussions of inviolable ethical principles, the Germans were murdering millions of innocents under the banner of a depraved ideology.
Although I liked the book, with its complex and believable characters, getting through it requires either commitment on the part of the reader, or a fondness for the verbose Dickensian novels of the 19th century. There were times when I wanted to toss it aside in frustration. Minor characters, no matter how peripheral to the plot, are introduced with pages of backstory, including their hometowns, education, pre-war occupations, thoughts about the war, conversations with friends, and even what they’ve been eating. After all that, they have a couple paragraphs where their small part plays out, and then they disappear forever.
Ultimately, despite its frustrations, this book is worth reading. Any book that you keep thinking about after you have finished it is worth your time.
May 30, 2011
An astonishing, devastating novel. It's been a very long time since I read anything that got under my skin so much. The night when I tried to go to bed with about sixty pages left to read I found I couldn't sleep.
This book is an outstanding example of how good writing elevates whatever the subject is -- the story could easily have been sentimental and the moralizing heavy-handed (there are one or two moments that the author doesn't quite pull off) but it turned out beautifully. The last chapter is just the perfect finish for it.
People can be terrible to one another and the state of the world is bad, but a thin thread of hope remains.
This book is an outstanding example of how good writing elevates whatever the subject is -- the story could easily have been sentimental and the moralizing heavy-handed (there are one or two moments that the author doesn't quite pull off) but it turned out beautifully. The last chapter is just the perfect finish for it.
People can be terrible to one another and the state of the world is bad, but a thin thread of hope remains.
February 27, 2022
This book is far better than others on WWI that have received much more recognition. A prescient look at the dehumanizing effects of mechanized war and the loss of moral compass among high ranking Prussian officers
July 5, 2020
Purchased, used (from Ebay seller.) A solid 4 stars, maybe 4.2. This is part of Arnold Zweig’s historical fiction series about World War One, published in Germany in 1927 and later translated into English and made into a Hollywood movie in 1930. This picture of the war, taken from the German perspective, is quite intriguing.
Grischa is an illiterate Russian prisoner of war who escapes a western Germany prison camp with the ambitious plan to walk back to his hometown in eastern Russia. He befriends a band of refugees living in the forest of occupied Poland who help him. A woman in the group gives Grischa the uniform and dogtags of a dead German soldier, thinking that this will enable him to travel more easily and the new identity will protect him from harm in the event of capture.
The Germans do capture Grischa, but they assume he is German deserter and accuse him of being a counteragent spying for the Russians, thus they sentence him to death. The story careens from farce to tragedy as the German military bureaucracy bungles the trial of an obvious Russian national who the prosecutor claims is a German traitor.
Zweig is excellent at developing complex characters who delve into legal, moral and philosophical questions-- which is reminiscent of Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. Major themes include the insanity of war, the cavalier disregard bureaucracies have for individual human life, and the notion that a nation’s well-being is dependent on it’s respect for a legal and moral foundation. Indeed, impeccable regard for justice is an existential necessity for a state, without which no government can maintain authority.
These themes are ironic in light of the ensuing German atrocities over the decade after the book’s publication which eventually led to Germany’s destruction. Of note, Zweig had become a foremost Jewish intellectual and pacifict after the Great War; he grew increasingly dismayed with his country and left Germany when Hitler assumed power in 1933.
Excellent book. This book was recommended in my reading of Louis L'Amour's memoir The Education of a Wandering Man. While I've never read any of L'Amour's novels, his memoir is topnotch and has given me some worthwhile book recommendations-- including Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company, which was was reviewed earlier on this site.
Grischa is an illiterate Russian prisoner of war who escapes a western Germany prison camp with the ambitious plan to walk back to his hometown in eastern Russia. He befriends a band of refugees living in the forest of occupied Poland who help him. A woman in the group gives Grischa the uniform and dogtags of a dead German soldier, thinking that this will enable him to travel more easily and the new identity will protect him from harm in the event of capture.
The Germans do capture Grischa, but they assume he is German deserter and accuse him of being a counteragent spying for the Russians, thus they sentence him to death. The story careens from farce to tragedy as the German military bureaucracy bungles the trial of an obvious Russian national who the prosecutor claims is a German traitor.
Zweig is excellent at developing complex characters who delve into legal, moral and philosophical questions-- which is reminiscent of Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. Major themes include the insanity of war, the cavalier disregard bureaucracies have for individual human life, and the notion that a nation’s well-being is dependent on it’s respect for a legal and moral foundation. Indeed, impeccable regard for justice is an existential necessity for a state, without which no government can maintain authority.
These themes are ironic in light of the ensuing German atrocities over the decade after the book’s publication which eventually led to Germany’s destruction. Of note, Zweig had become a foremost Jewish intellectual and pacifict after the Great War; he grew increasingly dismayed with his country and left Germany when Hitler assumed power in 1933.
Excellent book. This book was recommended in my reading of Louis L'Amour's memoir The Education of a Wandering Man. While I've never read any of L'Amour's novels, his memoir is topnotch and has given me some worthwhile book recommendations-- including Arthur Conan Doyle's The White Company, which was was reviewed earlier on this site.
January 21, 2011
Brilliant and moving account of an incident which occured in the first world war. Russian Grischa escapes from a prisoner of war camp and decides to walk home, he gets lost and is eventually recaptured but he has taken the identity of a deserter and is sentenced to be shot. Can he prove his innocence or will the words of one of the characters prove true, " the Divisional Court Martial works like a machine, whaen once a man is caught init , he only comes out as a corpse"
September 14, 2011
This is about justice, which among many other things, determines the fate of nations. And this seems to have done just that - after the book was written. We have a little voice within us which tells us the right thing to do, but if it's hard to hear the little voice, we have the Torah to guide us.
The setting: the German eastern front, 1917.
The setting: the German eastern front, 1917.
December 7, 2013
Set largely on the Eastern front during WWI Zweig's novel focusses on a very specific and singular injustice. Like all similar tales that describe the difficulty of obtaining justice in wartime it often borders on the absurd, being saved only by the meticulous description and exploration of the inner states of the various characters. An excellent tale.
July 17, 2010
This novel of the First World War is both epic and masterful. It is the story of an ordinary Russian soldier who escapes from prison camp and decides to walk home to his family. In the process of returning he assumes the identity of a dead soldier, but then his real adventures begin.
September 7, 2013
German book written in 1928, one of the earlier novels of WW I. A Russian POW escapes from captivity, and when recaptured is sentenced to death in a case of mistaken identity. Very interesting viewpoint on German attitude toward Jews (Zweig was Jewish). Very unusual and worthwhile book!
April 25, 2023
In maart 1917 besluit een Russische krijgsgevange, sergeant Grigorij Iljitsch Paprotkin (‘Grisja’), aan zijn Duitse bewakers te ontsnappen. De vrede lijkt op dat ogenblik, na drie verschrikkelijke oorlogsjaren, niet ver weg meer. Grisja wil op die vrede echter niet wachten. Hij wil zo snel mogelijk terug naar zijn vrouw en pas geboren kind op het Russische platteland. Na zijn ontsnapping, waarbij hij zich op een trein verbergt tussen stapels hout, raakt hij verzeild in de onmetelijke bossen van oostelijk Polen en Wit-Rusland, nog altijd in de greep van de onbarmhartige winter. Daar ontmoet hij Babka, een karaktervolle jonge vrouw die er met haar grijze vlechten en verweerde gezicht oud uitziet en bij wie hij, zo blijkt later, een dochter verwekt.
Grisja was ontsnapt, maar hij was nog niet van de Duitsers af. “Het leger van verbonden Duitse stammen had zich als het ware met duizenden zuignappen vastgezogen aan dit ontzaglijke gebied”, schrijft Zweig. “Tegelijkertijd onttrokken zij de sappen en de grondstoffen aan het zwakke land en pompten die in het leger of door naar Duitsland, dat, volkomen afgesneden van de zee en van iedere toevoer, als een gigantische octopus de landstreken waar nog wat te halen viel leegzoog.” (65) De plaatselijke bevolking zocht ondertussen haar toevlucht onder de dieren in de bossen, van waaruit zij de Duitse vijand in de nachtelijke uren angst inboezemde. “Het komt, ondanks uitdrukkelijke verbodsbepalingen, huiszoekingen en terechtstellingen, maar al te vaak voor dat de bevolking toch over wapens blijkt te beschikken: het wemelt ervan. Massa’s mensen, massa’s verborgenen, hele volksstammen als je ze uit de uitgestrekte bezette gebieden zou samenbrengen, zwerven ‘s nachts door hun vaderland…” (67) Zweig beschrijft beeldend hoe Grisja onder deze omstandigheden, Babka weer achterlatend, als een schim in het nachtelijke donker door de dorpen trekt, een spoor van geruchten achter zich latend. (72)
Uiteindelijk valt Grisja opnieuw in Duitse handen. Niet als Grisja Paprotkin, maar als Bjoezjov, van wie hij zich de identiteit op aandringen van Babka had aangemeten. Het blijkt een noodlottige identiteitsverwisseling: Bjoezjov was een Russische spion en Grisja wordt daarom door het opperbevel ter dood veroordeeld—uiteraard ten onrechte en Bjoezjov was bovendien al dood. De veroordeling is het begin van een langdurige strijd om zijn leven te redden. Grisja wekt de sympathie van zijn Duitse bewakers, die hem een geschikte vent vinden en zich zijn lot aantrekken. Tegelijkertijd blijft hij overgeleverd aan de grillen, de onbenullige toevalligheden en de harde onverschilligheid van de bureaucratie in het Duitse leger. Daar doorheen spelen de sterk gegroeide sociale tegenstellingen in de Duitse samenleving, die binnen het leger hun doorwerking niet missen. De strijd om sergeant Grisja is ook de strijd tussen de oude, op ridderlijke waarden georiënteerde Pruisische landadel, die in de roman wordt vertegenwoordigd door de oude divisiegeneraal Otto von Lychov, en de opkomende industriële, burgerlijke klasse die van ambitie overloopt en wordt vertegenwoordigd door opperbevelhebber generaal-majoor Albert Schieffenzahn en ritmeester Von Brettschneider. Schieffenzahn houdt vast aan zijn besluit als opperbevelhebber, ook nadat is komen vast te staan dat deze veroordeling de verkeerde man treft; Von Lychov en zijn getrouwen proberen Grisja met man en macht te redden. Aldus wordt Grisja een pion in een moreel gevecht dat tegelijkertijd een competentiestrijd is tussen de ‘menselijke’ Von Lychov en de op macht en roem beluste Schieffenzahn. Deze strijd om sergeant Grisja is zeer herkenbaar — en leerzaam — voor iedereen die werkzaam is in complexe bureaucratieën die het leven van mensen vergaand beïnvloeden maar waarin de menselijke maat al snel uit het zicht kan verdwijnen en ethische vraagstukken kunnen worden weggeduwd.
Het is voor de lezer uiteraard gemakkelijk te sympathiseren met Grisja en met Von Lychov en de zijnen. Nadat Von Lychov de strijd met Schieffenzahn al heeft verloren, legt deze in een brief aan het keizerlijke hof uit waarom hij zich zo had ingespannen voor één enkele Russische krijgsgevangene: “[ik] beschouw […] elk afzonderlijk geval als belangrijk, de moeite van het bekijken waard, als een soort barometer.” Ook tegenwoordig nog een belangrijke vingerwijzing voor bestuurders: casuïstiek is belangrijk en misschien zelfs wel waar het om gaat. Op een ander moment in het verhaal laat Zweig Von Lychovs adjudant, luitenant Winfried, uitleggen waarom hij zich voor Grisja zijn nek uitsteekt: “Het gaat ons om Duitsland, […] dat in het land waarvan wij het uniform dragen, en waarvoor wij bereid zijn te creperen, waarachtig en rechtvaardig recht wordt gesproken. Dat dit geliefde land niet ten onder gaat, terwijl het meent op te stijgen, dat onze moeder Duitsland niet aan de verkeerde kant terechtkomt. Want wie het recht laat varen, is verloren.” Het zijn — met de benefit of hindsight — belangrijke waarschuwende woorden in een roman die in 1927 verscheen. Verpleegster Sophie koppelde haar betrokkenheid bij het lot van Grisja daarentegen juist los van dat van Duitsland: “Haar hart hunkerde naar rechtvaardigheid, maar niet omdat het ging om landen en mensen, maar omdat de ziel die binnen in haar leefde en klopte, en het goddelijke waaruit die voortsproot, niet kon leven en ademen waar onrecht de boventoon voerde.” Zo laat Zweig uiteenlopende morele perspectieven zien. Hij pretendeert als auteur niet de wijsheid in pacht te hebben, maar nodigt uit tot overdenking. De kwaliteit van deze roman schuilt onder meer in haar subtiliteit.
Grisja’s pleitbezorgers ten spijt, de ene na de andere reddingspoging lijdt schipbreuk. Schieffenzahn is onwrikbaar: Befehl ist Befehl. Het verhaal leest dan ook als een aanklacht tegen de Befehl ist Befehl-mentaliteit die menselijke waarden uit het oog verliest (en uiteraard niet alleen is voorbehouden aan de Duitse cultuur); Zweig is hoe dan ook kritisch over de regelzucht van de Duitser, die de oorlog denkt te winnen met zijn verordeningen, bevelen en plakkaten. Het afsluitende hoofdstuk is veelzeggend. Daarin is de naar zijn verlof snakkende korporaal Schacht, de bewaker van Grisja, afhankelijk van de bereidheid van de treinmachinist om van de dienstregeling af te wijken en de al vertrekkende locomotief te stoppen om Schacht aan boord te laten klimmen. De locomotief stopt in weerwil van de dienstregeling, waar Schacht zelf had geweigerd van regels af te wijken teneinde een door luitenant Winfried bedachte vluchtpoging voor Grisja mogelijk te maken. Befehl ist Befehl.
De waanzin van de oorlog is een ander belangrijk thema in deze prachtige roman. Niet alleen de tijdelijk aan zijn krijgsgevangenschap ontsnapte Grisja, maar ook zijn Duitse bewakers zijn oorlogsmoe. “Europa kreunde, bloedend uit talloze wonden, hoopte schroomvallig op een spoedig einde van dit lijden, bad met honderdduizend onhoorbare stemmen om verlossing uit zijn ellende. De simpele instinctieve wijsheid van het volk wist, alle zeer verstandige overwegingen en politieke sluwheden ten spijt, dat die vrede die het snelst gesloten werd de beste was voor alle partijen.” (152) De boodschap van deze roman is wat dat betreft vergelijkbaar met het werk van de Engelse oorlogsdichter Wilfred Owen.
In De strijd om sergeant Grisja gaat de sympathie uit naar de onderste sociale ‘laag’ in de oorlog: de gewone manschappen, de krijgsgevangenen en de plaatselijke bevolking. Zij hebben het meeste te lijden onder de oorlog en de uitbuiting. De kameraadschappelijke omgang tussen Grisja en zijn Duitse bewakers komt voort uit wederzijds begrip en solidariteit: “Het waren [in de ogen van Grisja] geen slechte mensen. Hij kende ze allemaal; ze waren niet goed en niet slecht, maar ieder van hen had het in zich om op een gegeven moment juist te handelen. De handen van hun superieuren lagen om hun nek en daar waren ze doodsbang voor, veel banger dan voor zo’n daad, het vermoorden van een medemens. En dat deden momenteel twintig miljoen mannen, en vierhonderd miljoen mannen en vrouwen vonden dat prima, helemaal in orde, vanzelfsprekend.” (312) In het verlengde hiervan is tevens duidelijk dat Zweig sympathie koestert voor het opkomende socialisme, in de roman vooral vertolkt door de schrijver Bertin (130). “De landenverslinder heeft gewapende proletariërs nodig, maar die noemt hij legers, hoewel ze weinig tot niets te maken hebben met de legers in eerdere stadia van de Europese geschiedenis. De gewapende proletariër moet bang gehouden worden voor zijn superieuren, dat noemen ze discipline, en omwille van de discipline worden onschuldige mensen doodgeschoten.”
In literair opzicht is De strijd om sergeant Grisja van een grote schoonheid. Zo is Grisja’s droom over de soldatenhemel — “of misschien de soldatenhel; waaraan zag je het verschil…” — werkelijk prachtig geschreven (322-323). Mooi is ook hoe Zweig met zijn literaire lens in- en uitzoomt. Op de eerste bladzijde wordt het startpunt gevormd door de wijdsheid van het universum om vervolgens snel af te dalen tot niveau van een man bij een boom in een winters bos— Grisja. Later zoomt Zweig juist weer uit: “Ze zwegen, wikkelden zich in hun dekens en lagen dicht naast elkaar om warm te blijven, als de poppen van een griezelig grote vlinder; ze voelden dat ze nog leefden en niet alleen waren onder de maan, die haar smalle rode hoorn in het oosten tussen de nevels liet hangen. In de verte klonk gehuil, misschien van een wolf, misschien van een hond op een onzichtbare hofstede, en met geluidloze vleugelslagen cirkelde boven het kamp van de slapers met het gloeiende vuur de jagende grote uil. Hoog in de hemel beschreven de sterren flonkerend en imposant hun baan.” (71)
Is het verhaal van Grisja waargebeurd? Arnold Zweig werd in 1887 geboren in Glogau (tegenwoordig in Polen) in een gematigd religieus Joods gezin. Opgeroepen voor dienstplicht in de Eerste Wereldoorlog vocht hij bij Verdun in 1915 (in de roman diverse keren gekenschetst als een zinloze slachtpartij). In 1917 werd hij overgeplaatst naar de staf van Ober-Ost in Kovno (Litouwen). In Kovno hoorde Zweig over de lotgevallen van een Russische krijgsgevangene, waarmee de kiem werd gelegd voor De strijd om sergeant Grisja.
De roman verscheen voor het eerst in feuilletonvorm in 1927 en markeerde de doorbraak van Zweig als grote Duitse auteur (ongeveer tegelijkertijd met Erich Maria Remarque die in die tijd Im Westen Nichts Neues publiceerde). In 1933 moest Zweig onder druk van de Nazi’s Duitsland echter verlaten; hij emigreerde naar Palestina. Na de Tweede Wereldoorlog verkoos Zweig een terugkeer naar de DDR boven een verblijf in het westen. In de DDR, waar hij leefde tot aan zijn dood in 1968, werd hij als schrijver gevierd, maar in West-Duitsland werd zijn werk genegeerd. De Koude Oorlog zat nog in de weg. Pas vanaf de jaren tachtig kreeg Zweig als schrijver in heel Duitsland opnieuw de waardering die hem op grond van zijn werk toekwam. Er is wat mij betreft geen twijfel mogelijk: de strijd om sergeant Grisja is een nog altijd actueel meesterwerk.
Grisja was ontsnapt, maar hij was nog niet van de Duitsers af. “Het leger van verbonden Duitse stammen had zich als het ware met duizenden zuignappen vastgezogen aan dit ontzaglijke gebied”, schrijft Zweig. “Tegelijkertijd onttrokken zij de sappen en de grondstoffen aan het zwakke land en pompten die in het leger of door naar Duitsland, dat, volkomen afgesneden van de zee en van iedere toevoer, als een gigantische octopus de landstreken waar nog wat te halen viel leegzoog.” (65) De plaatselijke bevolking zocht ondertussen haar toevlucht onder de dieren in de bossen, van waaruit zij de Duitse vijand in de nachtelijke uren angst inboezemde. “Het komt, ondanks uitdrukkelijke verbodsbepalingen, huiszoekingen en terechtstellingen, maar al te vaak voor dat de bevolking toch over wapens blijkt te beschikken: het wemelt ervan. Massa’s mensen, massa’s verborgenen, hele volksstammen als je ze uit de uitgestrekte bezette gebieden zou samenbrengen, zwerven ‘s nachts door hun vaderland…” (67) Zweig beschrijft beeldend hoe Grisja onder deze omstandigheden, Babka weer achterlatend, als een schim in het nachtelijke donker door de dorpen trekt, een spoor van geruchten achter zich latend. (72)
Uiteindelijk valt Grisja opnieuw in Duitse handen. Niet als Grisja Paprotkin, maar als Bjoezjov, van wie hij zich de identiteit op aandringen van Babka had aangemeten. Het blijkt een noodlottige identiteitsverwisseling: Bjoezjov was een Russische spion en Grisja wordt daarom door het opperbevel ter dood veroordeeld—uiteraard ten onrechte en Bjoezjov was bovendien al dood. De veroordeling is het begin van een langdurige strijd om zijn leven te redden. Grisja wekt de sympathie van zijn Duitse bewakers, die hem een geschikte vent vinden en zich zijn lot aantrekken. Tegelijkertijd blijft hij overgeleverd aan de grillen, de onbenullige toevalligheden en de harde onverschilligheid van de bureaucratie in het Duitse leger. Daar doorheen spelen de sterk gegroeide sociale tegenstellingen in de Duitse samenleving, die binnen het leger hun doorwerking niet missen. De strijd om sergeant Grisja is ook de strijd tussen de oude, op ridderlijke waarden georiënteerde Pruisische landadel, die in de roman wordt vertegenwoordigd door de oude divisiegeneraal Otto von Lychov, en de opkomende industriële, burgerlijke klasse die van ambitie overloopt en wordt vertegenwoordigd door opperbevelhebber generaal-majoor Albert Schieffenzahn en ritmeester Von Brettschneider. Schieffenzahn houdt vast aan zijn besluit als opperbevelhebber, ook nadat is komen vast te staan dat deze veroordeling de verkeerde man treft; Von Lychov en zijn getrouwen proberen Grisja met man en macht te redden. Aldus wordt Grisja een pion in een moreel gevecht dat tegelijkertijd een competentiestrijd is tussen de ‘menselijke’ Von Lychov en de op macht en roem beluste Schieffenzahn. Deze strijd om sergeant Grisja is zeer herkenbaar — en leerzaam — voor iedereen die werkzaam is in complexe bureaucratieën die het leven van mensen vergaand beïnvloeden maar waarin de menselijke maat al snel uit het zicht kan verdwijnen en ethische vraagstukken kunnen worden weggeduwd.
Het is voor de lezer uiteraard gemakkelijk te sympathiseren met Grisja en met Von Lychov en de zijnen. Nadat Von Lychov de strijd met Schieffenzahn al heeft verloren, legt deze in een brief aan het keizerlijke hof uit waarom hij zich zo had ingespannen voor één enkele Russische krijgsgevangene: “[ik] beschouw […] elk afzonderlijk geval als belangrijk, de moeite van het bekijken waard, als een soort barometer.” Ook tegenwoordig nog een belangrijke vingerwijzing voor bestuurders: casuïstiek is belangrijk en misschien zelfs wel waar het om gaat. Op een ander moment in het verhaal laat Zweig Von Lychovs adjudant, luitenant Winfried, uitleggen waarom hij zich voor Grisja zijn nek uitsteekt: “Het gaat ons om Duitsland, […] dat in het land waarvan wij het uniform dragen, en waarvoor wij bereid zijn te creperen, waarachtig en rechtvaardig recht wordt gesproken. Dat dit geliefde land niet ten onder gaat, terwijl het meent op te stijgen, dat onze moeder Duitsland niet aan de verkeerde kant terechtkomt. Want wie het recht laat varen, is verloren.” Het zijn — met de benefit of hindsight — belangrijke waarschuwende woorden in een roman die in 1927 verscheen. Verpleegster Sophie koppelde haar betrokkenheid bij het lot van Grisja daarentegen juist los van dat van Duitsland: “Haar hart hunkerde naar rechtvaardigheid, maar niet omdat het ging om landen en mensen, maar omdat de ziel die binnen in haar leefde en klopte, en het goddelijke waaruit die voortsproot, niet kon leven en ademen waar onrecht de boventoon voerde.” Zo laat Zweig uiteenlopende morele perspectieven zien. Hij pretendeert als auteur niet de wijsheid in pacht te hebben, maar nodigt uit tot overdenking. De kwaliteit van deze roman schuilt onder meer in haar subtiliteit.
Grisja’s pleitbezorgers ten spijt, de ene na de andere reddingspoging lijdt schipbreuk. Schieffenzahn is onwrikbaar: Befehl ist Befehl. Het verhaal leest dan ook als een aanklacht tegen de Befehl ist Befehl-mentaliteit die menselijke waarden uit het oog verliest (en uiteraard niet alleen is voorbehouden aan de Duitse cultuur); Zweig is hoe dan ook kritisch over de regelzucht van de Duitser, die de oorlog denkt te winnen met zijn verordeningen, bevelen en plakkaten. Het afsluitende hoofdstuk is veelzeggend. Daarin is de naar zijn verlof snakkende korporaal Schacht, de bewaker van Grisja, afhankelijk van de bereidheid van de treinmachinist om van de dienstregeling af te wijken en de al vertrekkende locomotief te stoppen om Schacht aan boord te laten klimmen. De locomotief stopt in weerwil van de dienstregeling, waar Schacht zelf had geweigerd van regels af te wijken teneinde een door luitenant Winfried bedachte vluchtpoging voor Grisja mogelijk te maken. Befehl ist Befehl.
De waanzin van de oorlog is een ander belangrijk thema in deze prachtige roman. Niet alleen de tijdelijk aan zijn krijgsgevangenschap ontsnapte Grisja, maar ook zijn Duitse bewakers zijn oorlogsmoe. “Europa kreunde, bloedend uit talloze wonden, hoopte schroomvallig op een spoedig einde van dit lijden, bad met honderdduizend onhoorbare stemmen om verlossing uit zijn ellende. De simpele instinctieve wijsheid van het volk wist, alle zeer verstandige overwegingen en politieke sluwheden ten spijt, dat die vrede die het snelst gesloten werd de beste was voor alle partijen.” (152) De boodschap van deze roman is wat dat betreft vergelijkbaar met het werk van de Engelse oorlogsdichter Wilfred Owen.
In De strijd om sergeant Grisja gaat de sympathie uit naar de onderste sociale ‘laag’ in de oorlog: de gewone manschappen, de krijgsgevangenen en de plaatselijke bevolking. Zij hebben het meeste te lijden onder de oorlog en de uitbuiting. De kameraadschappelijke omgang tussen Grisja en zijn Duitse bewakers komt voort uit wederzijds begrip en solidariteit: “Het waren [in de ogen van Grisja] geen slechte mensen. Hij kende ze allemaal; ze waren niet goed en niet slecht, maar ieder van hen had het in zich om op een gegeven moment juist te handelen. De handen van hun superieuren lagen om hun nek en daar waren ze doodsbang voor, veel banger dan voor zo’n daad, het vermoorden van een medemens. En dat deden momenteel twintig miljoen mannen, en vierhonderd miljoen mannen en vrouwen vonden dat prima, helemaal in orde, vanzelfsprekend.” (312) In het verlengde hiervan is tevens duidelijk dat Zweig sympathie koestert voor het opkomende socialisme, in de roman vooral vertolkt door de schrijver Bertin (130). “De landenverslinder heeft gewapende proletariërs nodig, maar die noemt hij legers, hoewel ze weinig tot niets te maken hebben met de legers in eerdere stadia van de Europese geschiedenis. De gewapende proletariër moet bang gehouden worden voor zijn superieuren, dat noemen ze discipline, en omwille van de discipline worden onschuldige mensen doodgeschoten.”
In literair opzicht is De strijd om sergeant Grisja van een grote schoonheid. Zo is Grisja’s droom over de soldatenhemel — “of misschien de soldatenhel; waaraan zag je het verschil…” — werkelijk prachtig geschreven (322-323). Mooi is ook hoe Zweig met zijn literaire lens in- en uitzoomt. Op de eerste bladzijde wordt het startpunt gevormd door de wijdsheid van het universum om vervolgens snel af te dalen tot niveau van een man bij een boom in een winters bos— Grisja. Later zoomt Zweig juist weer uit: “Ze zwegen, wikkelden zich in hun dekens en lagen dicht naast elkaar om warm te blijven, als de poppen van een griezelig grote vlinder; ze voelden dat ze nog leefden en niet alleen waren onder de maan, die haar smalle rode hoorn in het oosten tussen de nevels liet hangen. In de verte klonk gehuil, misschien van een wolf, misschien van een hond op een onzichtbare hofstede, en met geluidloze vleugelslagen cirkelde boven het kamp van de slapers met het gloeiende vuur de jagende grote uil. Hoog in de hemel beschreven de sterren flonkerend en imposant hun baan.” (71)
Is het verhaal van Grisja waargebeurd? Arnold Zweig werd in 1887 geboren in Glogau (tegenwoordig in Polen) in een gematigd religieus Joods gezin. Opgeroepen voor dienstplicht in de Eerste Wereldoorlog vocht hij bij Verdun in 1915 (in de roman diverse keren gekenschetst als een zinloze slachtpartij). In 1917 werd hij overgeplaatst naar de staf van Ober-Ost in Kovno (Litouwen). In Kovno hoorde Zweig over de lotgevallen van een Russische krijgsgevangene, waarmee de kiem werd gelegd voor De strijd om sergeant Grisja.
De roman verscheen voor het eerst in feuilletonvorm in 1927 en markeerde de doorbraak van Zweig als grote Duitse auteur (ongeveer tegelijkertijd met Erich Maria Remarque die in die tijd Im Westen Nichts Neues publiceerde). In 1933 moest Zweig onder druk van de Nazi’s Duitsland echter verlaten; hij emigreerde naar Palestina. Na de Tweede Wereldoorlog verkoos Zweig een terugkeer naar de DDR boven een verblijf in het westen. In de DDR, waar hij leefde tot aan zijn dood in 1968, werd hij als schrijver gevierd, maar in West-Duitsland werd zijn werk genegeerd. De Koude Oorlog zat nog in de weg. Pas vanaf de jaren tachtig kreeg Zweig als schrijver in heel Duitsland opnieuw de waardering die hem op grond van zijn werk toekwam. Er is wat mij betreft geen twijfel mogelijk: de strijd om sergeant Grisja is een nog altijd actueel meesterwerk.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 30, 2018
Jó aránya a megrázó történetnek és a humornak, szimpatikus a humanista és pacifista üzenet, de az az érzésem, hogy annak az olvasónak, akit nem különösebben érdekel az I. világháború, tehát a konkrét körülmények, amelyek közé van helyezve az általános üzenet, annak nem elég jól van megírva a történet. Engem rettentően érdekel egy csomó történelmi jelenség, amire reflektál, úgyhogy élveztem, de ahhoz én sem eléggé, hogy végigolvassam Arnold Zweig egész hatkötetes I. világháborúval kapcsolatos regényciklusát (pedig a címe nagyon tetszik: Der große Krieg der weißen Männer). Mindenesetre pár nagyon érdekes dolog a Grisa őrmesterben:
- kiemeli az osztrákok és németek közötti konfliktust az elvileg közösen megszállt keleti területeken.
-nagyon hangsúlyosan a NOSZF (nagy október szocialista forradalom) előtti pár napban kulminál a cselekmény azzal, hogy a németek kivégeznek egy ártatlan orosz hadifoglyot (olyan dologért, amit egy másik hadifogoly követett el, aki már meghalt eddigre). De nov. 2-án véget ér a történet, sosem jut el nov. 7-ig.
- Nem zsidó történet, Zweig cionizmusa miatt jókat lehetne vitatkozni rajta, ahogy ez zsidó irodalom-e, mindenesetre látszik, hogy a szerző tipikusan ez az I. VH-ban a keleti fronton hús-vér "Ostjudékkal" találkozástól megrendült és megihletett disszimiláns német zsidó, aki "az autentikus zsidót" látja meg a kelet-európai zsidókban, a regényben Tevje személyében láttatja ezt meg a német célközönséggel. Ezekről a német cionistákról, amilyennek Arnold Zweig tűnik, írt Gershom Scholem olyan önreflexíven a "Berlintől Jeruzsálemig" című memoárjában.
-Szerintem Bertin, a német zsidó, aki a hadbíró írnoka, túl nyilvánvalóan Arbold Zweig alteregója. -lsd. 655. o. 1. bekezdése az 1975-ös magyar fordításban. (Európa Könyvkiadó, Mászáros Klára fordítása).
-pp. 270-271. szájába rágja a német olvasóközönségnek, hogy az "orosz zsidók" nem önszántukból, hanem a cári politika következményeként élnek bezárkózott életet a stetlben. (Mervinszk, a helyszín egy fiktív stetlben tűnik, sehogy sem találom nyomát egy létező Mervinszknek.)
- p. 420. szánkba rágja, hogy a jiddis egy külön nyelv, amely már ismert korban vált ki a németből, a hollandhoz hasonlóan (a holland példával gondolom a jiddis nyelv létjogosultságátakarta erősíteni)
-p. 467. célzás arra, hogy a katonanövedékek szexuális abúzusnak voltak kitéve a katonaiskolában
Na, erről Stefan nevű (Zweig) druszája nem ír az "Ungeduld des Herzens" c. regnyében, ahol szintén nagyon ostorozza a katonai nevelést.
- p. 556. nekem új infó judaisztikai szempontból: azok sincsenek teljesen elveszve, akiknek a csontjaik szanaszét szóródtak és elporladtak, mert van egy "Luz" nevű csontocska, amiből az ember szükség elején újra kinőhet, amikor az angyalok megfújják az utolsó ítélet harsonáit.
-p. 612. ha a németek elveszítik a háborút, nem a világ vége, "Németország nem nélkülözhetetlen, és ha egy időre most lelépne, már egymagában ezzel a Johann Sebastiannal [Bach] biztosította, hogy tisztelettel őrizzék az emlékét."
-p. 614. Saul Val, Lengyelország egynapos zsidó királya
-p. 642. a szÍvemből szól a tárgyakkal kapcsolatban: "Mert amink van, megannyikötelék, amely bennünket idehúz."
-p. 643. Grisa legszívesebben Tevjére, a zsidóra bízná a gyerekt "mert tudott dolog, hogy a zsidók nyájasak a gyermekeikhez, és semmiképpen sem olyan durvák, mint a parasztok" -jó, hát politikailag nem korrekt, de tetszik és úgy is folytatódhatna, mint Aszkoldov "A komisszár" című filmje.
- kiemeli az osztrákok és németek közötti konfliktust az elvileg közösen megszállt keleti területeken.
-nagyon hangsúlyosan a NOSZF (nagy október szocialista forradalom) előtti pár napban kulminál a cselekmény azzal, hogy a németek kivégeznek egy ártatlan orosz hadifoglyot (olyan dologért, amit egy másik hadifogoly követett el, aki már meghalt eddigre). De nov. 2-án véget ér a történet, sosem jut el nov. 7-ig.
- Nem zsidó történet, Zweig cionizmusa miatt jókat lehetne vitatkozni rajta, ahogy ez zsidó irodalom-e, mindenesetre látszik, hogy a szerző tipikusan ez az I. VH-ban a keleti fronton hús-vér "Ostjudékkal" találkozástól megrendült és megihletett disszimiláns német zsidó, aki "az autentikus zsidót" látja meg a kelet-európai zsidókban, a regényben Tevje személyében láttatja ezt meg a német célközönséggel. Ezekről a német cionistákról, amilyennek Arnold Zweig tűnik, írt Gershom Scholem olyan önreflexíven a "Berlintől Jeruzsálemig" című memoárjában.
-Szerintem Bertin, a német zsidó, aki a hadbíró írnoka, túl nyilvánvalóan Arbold Zweig alteregója. -lsd. 655. o. 1. bekezdése az 1975-ös magyar fordításban. (Európa Könyvkiadó, Mászáros Klára fordítása).
-pp. 270-271. szájába rágja a német olvasóközönségnek, hogy az "orosz zsidók" nem önszántukból, hanem a cári politika következményeként élnek bezárkózott életet a stetlben. (Mervinszk, a helyszín egy fiktív stetlben tűnik, sehogy sem találom nyomát egy létező Mervinszknek.)
- p. 420. szánkba rágja, hogy a jiddis egy külön nyelv, amely már ismert korban vált ki a németből, a hollandhoz hasonlóan (a holland példával gondolom a jiddis nyelv létjogosultságátakarta erősíteni)
-p. 467. célzás arra, hogy a katonanövedékek szexuális abúzusnak voltak kitéve a katonaiskolában
Na, erről Stefan nevű (Zweig) druszája nem ír az "Ungeduld des Herzens" c. regnyében, ahol szintén nagyon ostorozza a katonai nevelést.
- p. 556. nekem új infó judaisztikai szempontból: azok sincsenek teljesen elveszve, akiknek a csontjaik szanaszét szóródtak és elporladtak, mert van egy "Luz" nevű csontocska, amiből az ember szükség elején újra kinőhet, amikor az angyalok megfújják az utolsó ítélet harsonáit.
-p. 612. ha a németek elveszítik a háborút, nem a világ vége, "Németország nem nélkülözhetetlen, és ha egy időre most lelépne, már egymagában ezzel a Johann Sebastiannal [Bach] biztosította, hogy tisztelettel őrizzék az emlékét."
-p. 614. Saul Val, Lengyelország egynapos zsidó királya
-p. 642. a szÍvemből szól a tárgyakkal kapcsolatban: "Mert amink van, megannyikötelék, amely bennünket idehúz."
-p. 643. Grisa legszívesebben Tevjére, a zsidóra bízná a gyerekt "mert tudott dolog, hogy a zsidók nyájasak a gyermekeikhez, és semmiképpen sem olyan durvák, mint a parasztok" -jó, hát politikailag nem korrekt, de tetszik és úgy is folytatódhatna, mint Aszkoldov "A komisszár" című filmje.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 21, 2026
I started reading this in a battered, faded old East German paperback version I found on a hotel book exchange shelf in London some 15 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Initially interested mostly by its curiosity value, I soon realised it was a satirical anti-war novel that I’d enjoy.
The German language paperwork fell to bits during one of my house moves, so after a long delay I recently decided to download a kindle version (in English) so I could finish the novel.
(Practical note: the kindle version I read felt like it had been converted from print to e-book by machine with no human editing. Names with umlauts and other accents were often mis-spelled. I lost count of the different incorrect versions of the Jewish coffin maker Tawje’s name and the number of times an ü became ii or ij or even i!.)
Like many of his contemporaries returning from the senseless slaughter of WW1, Zweig was highly critical not just of the incompetent and cruel way the war was waged, he also questioned the very legitimacy of the old militarist aristocratic order that had dragged Europe into it into the first place, However rather than a brutal description of the horrors of the war, as written for example by Remarque, Zweig used satire expertly, focussing on the fuss over the nonsensical treatment and execution of a single Russian POW at a time when thousands were dying on all sides every day, to demonstrate the evil stupidity of the war.
By making his characters real individuals, to whom we can easily relate, Zweig makes us understand all the better just how inhuman those events are. Many of his characters are good or at least not evil men and women, Grischa is not in any way a criminal, but the pressures of war override all that and they fail to keep him from an unjust death. At the same time we are often reminded gently of the discordance between all the energy expended on trying to save Grischa and the general acceptance that many thousands more innocent men are dying hideous deaths in the trenches.
Interestingly, given what came later in Germany, Zweig’s treatment of his fellow Jews in the novel is not just positive (Posnanski, Bertyn and Tawje are honest, caring souls) but also very realistic about their “separateness” in the German army, regardless of their playing key roles and/or having fought in the trenches. The Germans around them are not unfriendly or hostile but nonetheless are aware of them being Jews and treat them as somehow not truly German.
This is a clever satire. Not funny of course, but the ridicule is done intelligently and with a sensitive touch. Well worth reading.
The German language paperwork fell to bits during one of my house moves, so after a long delay I recently decided to download a kindle version (in English) so I could finish the novel.
(Practical note: the kindle version I read felt like it had been converted from print to e-book by machine with no human editing. Names with umlauts and other accents were often mis-spelled. I lost count of the different incorrect versions of the Jewish coffin maker Tawje’s name and the number of times an ü became ii or ij or even i!.)
Like many of his contemporaries returning from the senseless slaughter of WW1, Zweig was highly critical not just of the incompetent and cruel way the war was waged, he also questioned the very legitimacy of the old militarist aristocratic order that had dragged Europe into it into the first place, However rather than a brutal description of the horrors of the war, as written for example by Remarque, Zweig used satire expertly, focussing on the fuss over the nonsensical treatment and execution of a single Russian POW at a time when thousands were dying on all sides every day, to demonstrate the evil stupidity of the war.
By making his characters real individuals, to whom we can easily relate, Zweig makes us understand all the better just how inhuman those events are. Many of his characters are good or at least not evil men and women, Grischa is not in any way a criminal, but the pressures of war override all that and they fail to keep him from an unjust death. At the same time we are often reminded gently of the discordance between all the energy expended on trying to save Grischa and the general acceptance that many thousands more innocent men are dying hideous deaths in the trenches.
Interestingly, given what came later in Germany, Zweig’s treatment of his fellow Jews in the novel is not just positive (Posnanski, Bertyn and Tawje are honest, caring souls) but also very realistic about their “separateness” in the German army, regardless of their playing key roles and/or having fought in the trenches. The Germans around them are not unfriendly or hostile but nonetheless are aware of them being Jews and treat them as somehow not truly German.
This is a clever satire. Not funny of course, but the ridicule is done intelligently and with a sensitive touch. Well worth reading.
June 23, 2018
I thought Arnold Zweig's novel "The Case of Sergrant Grischa" was a good story, though it kind of dragged on a bit too long in the middle (especially when the conclusion seemed to be so obvious.)
Grischa is a Russian prisoner of war, who walks away from his camp and gets caught up in a troop of German soldiers in a case of mistaken identity. Unfortunately, his new identity is that of a deserter, so things aren't so rosy there either.
This book get reminding me of "Forest of the Hanged" even though plotwise, they aren't super similiar -- and I just kept thinking I'd rather be reading "Forest of the Hanged." Overall, this was an okay book but not one I feel particularly strongly about.
Grischa is a Russian prisoner of war, who walks away from his camp and gets caught up in a troop of German soldiers in a case of mistaken identity. Unfortunately, his new identity is that of a deserter, so things aren't so rosy there either.
This book get reminding me of "Forest of the Hanged" even though plotwise, they aren't super similiar -- and I just kept thinking I'd rather be reading "Forest of the Hanged." Overall, this was an okay book but not one I feel particularly strongly about.
October 9, 2024
I'll tell you what, Arnold Zweig was a very good writer. This story has wonderful portrayals of characters, human strengths and flaws, it has tension and lovely evocative descriptions. The translation by Eric Sutton is really good. While set in WW1, there are no battle scenes, just passing references to the trenches. It's an excellent book and a pity that it is hardly known, at least in the US and probably in Europe as well, nearly 100 years after publication.
Zwieg's novels are rather difficult to find but can be read on the computer from Open Library (photos of each page).
Zwieg's novels are rather difficult to find but can be read on the computer from Open Library (photos of each page).
August 20, 2019
The story line reminded me a little of Sommersby. Never take on another's identity without knowing all the details.....He's Russian and escaped a German prison, only to be captured by the Russians as a deserter and imprisoned yet again.
The story could have been a little shorter as the length didn't add anything to the storyline.
The story could have been a little shorter as the length didn't add anything to the storyline.
November 5, 2018
World War I: a Russian prisoner of war is the object of power games between German generals. A perfect example for the complete non-sense of life, in particular during war times.
January 13, 2019
Way too long, the same point could have been made in half the number of pages.
March 25, 2024
Absolutely tremendous. Part comedy, part tragedy.
November 7, 2024
This book was read by 2 people during October 2024 and one other reader in 2021. It averages a rating of 3.75 stars.
June 6, 2025
Ik kwam er bij het nawoord achter dat dit een klassieker is in de literatuur. Dat verklaart voor mij waarom ik er zo uiterst moeizaam door kwam. Echt niet slecht, maar zeker niet mijn boek.
April 29, 2025
This novel is based on an actual case from World War I. Zweig used this real event to write a satirical work on the insanity of war and the senselessness of bureaucratic institutions. Grischa, a Russian soldier imprisoned in a German camp, escapes. He meets a woman, Babka, who suggests he assume the identity of a dead Russian deserter if he is captured. He does, not realizing the Germans are treating all deserters as spies to be executed. When captured, he desperately works to reveal his true identity, which he does. However, the German high command orders him to be shot anyway as that decision had been made. The book includes multiple characters and lengthy passages of discussions among the characters regarding justice, faith, war, and other issues. A number of the Germans work to save Grischa from the injustice of execution. While this book requires a bit more work than most modern readers exert, it is well worth the effort.
July 15, 2025
terrific book! I didnt know anything at all about the Eastern front in WWI or the occupation of the land between Germany and Russia during the war, including the erstwhile country of Prussia, and many Jewish areas. Reading this book provided a view into a compelling lost world and an unnervingly prescient glimpse into Germany’ future. The book is a very clever satire with vivid descriptive passages, wonderful characters, a compassionate heart, and enough plot twists and turns to create quite a lot of suspense despite the absurdity of the situation depicted. I can see why this book was wildly popular upon publication (in the 1920s) as it is a highly-entertaining mix that is both humorous and heartbreaking.
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