Die Katrin wird Soldat

by Adrienne Thomas

"Die Katrin wird Soldat" war einer der meistverbreiteten Antikriegsromane der Weimarer Republik. Die frisch gebliebenee Geschichte von der jungen Katrin, deren Flirts - französische wie deutsche - plötzlich gegeneinander kämpfen müssen, war seit der Bücherverbrennung in Deutschland nicht lieferbar.

Genres: World War I, War

229 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Adrienne Thomas was the pseudonym of Hertha A. Deutsch, nee Strauch (1897–1980), a German autobiographical novelist.

Life
Hertha Strauch was born in St Avold in Alsace-Lorraine, then part of Germany, on June 24, 1897. She grew up bilingual in German and French, going to school in Metz, where her family owned a small department store. During World War I she became a nurse for the Red Cross, at first in Metz and later in Berlin, where her family moved. During the 1920s she trained as a singer and actor at the Clara Lion Conservatory in Frankfurt.

Writing as Adrienne Thomas, she drew on her Red Cross experiences for her semi-autobiographical anti-war novel Die Katrin wird Soldat (Katrin Becomes a Soldier), the diary of a young Jewish girl serving behind the German lines as a relief worker. Published in 1930, the book was translated into sixteen languages. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 Thomas was forced to go into exile and her writings banned. After living in Austria, France and the United States, she eventually settled in Vienna in 1947.

Reviews

[Steffi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Am Anfang handelt es sich um die Geschichte eines ständig verliebten Backfisches, der kokettiert und dabie nicht unsympathisch ist, aber wiet von erwachsenem Verhalten entfernt. Dann die erstaunliche Wende. Kathrin entwickelt sich zunehmend zur Pazifistin als der Erste Weltkrieg ausbricht. Sie wird Rot-Kreuz-Schwester, kümmert sich um verwundete Soldaten, muntert sie auf und ihr Scherzen und Flirten ist nicht mehr das eines kokettierenden Teenagers, sondern das einer erwachsen denkenden, verantwortungsvollen Frau. Auch wenn sie auf den Sieg der Deutschen hofft, sieht sie den Krieg immer von seiner unmenschlichen Seite, nimmt Anteil auch am Leid der Franzosen und Russen. Ihren persönlichen Kummer um ihren Geliebten verbirgt sie vor allen und von ihrer Familie entfremdet sie sich zusehends.

[Em · Rating 3 out of 5]

Katrin Becomes a Soldier by Adrienne Thomas (the pen name of Hertha Strauch) works better as a historical artifact than a novel. That’s not surprising, given that this fictional diary is nearly an autobiography of Thomas’s own experiences during World War I.

Like Thomas, Katrin Lentz (the titular diarist) is a young Jewish girl born in 1897. Like Thomas, she grows up in Metz, a city that was annexed by the German Empire in 1871 but would become part of France by the end of WWI. And, like Thomas, Katrin serves as a relief worker with the Red Cross when the war breaks out, even though she longs to be a singer.

The diary eventually diverges from Thomas’s life with an ending that seems borrowed from Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front . Instead of moving to Berlin with her family, like Thomas did, Katrin buries herself in the war effort, eventually contracting pneumonia and dying in December 1916—nearly two years before the truce.

Katrin Becomes a Soldier is an antiwar novel in the style of several books published in the post-WWI era—namely Remarque’s 1929 classic and its lesser-known feminist equivalent, Not So Quiet… written by Helen Zenna Smith in 1930. Each of these novels offers a different perspective on the war: that of a male German soldier (Remarque), a female British volunteer ambulance driver (Smith), and a female German Red Cross worker who also happens to be Jewish (Thomas). Yet despite these differences, each comes to the same conclusion, one that history has supported: that the war was meaningless and destructive.

Part of what makes Thomas’s novel unique is her heritage as a Jewish woman. It’s utterly heartbreaking to know that this woman who had already been subjected to so much trauma would find herself facing not only another war but also genocide within years of this novel’s publication. Disappointingly, Judaism does not play a large role in Katrin Becomes a Soldier, although there’s a nice scene where Katrin and a Russian Jewish POW realize they share one word in common: Sholom. Thomas also captures the anti-Semitism brewing in Europe in two pointed instances toward the end of the novel. They’re worth recounting here, both for their content and Thomas's prose:

“They say that the Empress Auguste Victoria paid a visit to every hospital in Metz except the Jewish one, which has been established in the Old People’s Home. It is a model hospital and patients of all creeds are taken in there. The people of Lorraine are very bitter because she omitted this hospital.

Strange as it may seem, the municipal authorities of Metz don’t consider it necessary to send a seventeen-year-old Red Cross assistant authentic reports concerning army movements or the activities of royalty, so I don’t know whether these rumours about the Empress are true or not. But the fact that they are so readily accepted and believed shows that people would not be surprised to hear that she had done so.” (p. 237)

And the second instance:

“A few weeks ago a Sister came to our hospital from the Front… But here she is doing no work at all. It seems to me that Sister Frida-Louise R… has come here only to introduce a smart military atmosphere—‘it’s a matter of honor to be anti-Semitic.’” (p. 312)

It makes me wonder if Thomas was holding back at times, much like Katrin censored herself by being overly patriotic in her letters if she wanted them to arrive on time. Not that it mattered—Thomas’s work was banned when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933.

Although it offers valuable historical insight, Katrin Becomes a Soldier doesn’t quite reach the heights of Remarque and Smith’s works. Thomas covers many of the same beats as Smith —the protagonist “doing her bit,” hating the garish society life she returns to, losing her love interest, and ultimately “dying” devoid of hope— but is dragged down by the first third of her novel. Whereas the other novels open in the middle of the war with their protagonists already somewhat jaded by their experiences, Katrin begins in 1911, with over a third of the novel devoted to (and named after) two men Katrin becomes enamored with. Although this structure gives Thomas the opportunity to show how optimism degrades into apathy, it doesn’t quite work in practice, as Katrin’s pacifist outlook sets her against war from the outset.

On one hand, this book is an authentic product of its time. As in, a firsthand (albeit fictionalized) account that helps us find the Lost Generation. On the other hand, it’s an authentic product of its time. As in, racist descriptions (ex: “He looked angry and very ugly, almost like a Chinaman or a Japanese.”) and sexist characters (all of Katrin’s love prospects, who think it’s a “wonderful idea” to turn out the lights and have one of them kiss her without her knowing who). It is uncomfortable, to say the least, to hear Katrin dote on a man (Lucien) who forces himself on her on multiple occasions, such as this one:

“My first conscious effort was to get to the door. But he pulled me towards him. His mouth moved over my face, he was breathing hard, and then he kissed my mouth for a long, long time… then he bit my lips until they hurt me. … I thought he might be going to kill me and I wished that he would.” (p. 102)

Relationships like that make you remember that this was written in an era where, if you were a woman, “silence [was] the best way to show one’s disapproval” (Katrin’s words).

That being said, I think that Thomas does not always echo the beliefs of her naïve protagonist. After all, she wasn’t silent when she wrote this book, even as others tried to silence her. As a general rule, any book that Hitler wanted burned is one that’s worth checking out. This one is no exception. Though a little too heavy on the doomed romance, it captures the ugliness of war from a perspective that war literature often neglects. These nurses and kitchen workers weren’t just responsible for caring for soldiers’ physical health; they became the emotional lifeline for thousands of soldiers, even though they themselves had no support. As Katrin describes it:

“Our charges so often say:

‘Please, Miss, dear Miss, give us your address, so that we can thank you properly for all your kindness.’

And if we hesitate, because we don’t like to tell our names, they say:

‘Perhaps you’re the last German girl we shall ever see.’

Then we always give them our address.

Then we get loads of field cards.” (p. 218)

And loads of death notices. “For me the war is over,” one French prisoner has the nerve the say in front of Katrin. But although she finds herself echoing his words after Lucien’s death, in truth, the war is never over for her. It becomes all that is left of her. It’s a problem that we understand better but still have today.

Note: I read the English translation done by Margaret Goldsmith in 1931. Also, it should be noted that Smith (Evadne Price's pseudonym) based her novel on the diaries of Winifred Young, not her own experiences, although she was a contemporary of Thomas.

[Evelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ich habe selten einen Roman gelesen, der es schafft, den Horror des Krieges so schmerzhaft genial spürbar zu machen. Dass er der nationalsozialistischen Bücherverbrennung zum Opfer gefallen ist, ist ein Grund mehr, ihn zu lesen.

[Lisa Camille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Traurig.
Muss das erst einmal Verarbeiten…