The Silesian Tetralogy by Horst Bienek

First published: 1975-1982: Die erste Polka, 1975 (The First Polka, 1978); Septemberlicht, 1977 (September Light, 1987); Zeit ohne Glocken, 1979; Erde und Feuer, 1982

Type of work: Poetic realism

Time of work: 1939-1945

Locale: Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia (then a border area between Germany and Poland)

Principal Characters:

• Valeska Piontek, a piano teacher, the mother of Irma and Josel
• Leo Maria Piontek, her ailing husband, a former photographer
• Josel, her son, who is fifteen years old in the first novel and later becomes a soldier
• Irma, her daughter, who marries a German soldier in the first novel and later becomes widowed
• Ulla Ossadnik, Valeska’s most promising piano student, later a famous pianist, the childhood sweetheart of Josel
• Willi Wondrak, Valeska’s brother, a lawyer and her closest business associate
• Georg Montag, a magistrate with Jewish ancestry who is working on a biography of the Polish politician Wojciech Korfanty

The Novels

The first three books of the Silesian tetralogy narrate the fate of the border city of Gleiwitz (Gliwice) and its inhabitants on three single days before and during World War II: August 31, 1939, the night before the outbreak of the war in The First Polka; September 4, 1939, in September Light; and Good Friday, 1943, in Zeit ohne Glocken. The last novel, Erde und Feuer, concludes the tetralogy with events surrounding the end of the war and the westward flight of many of the city’s inhabitants. The omniscient narrator chronologically recounts the events of the family of the matriarch Valeska Piontek and her family—and to a lesser extent their acquaintances.

The First Polka revolves around the wedding of Irma Piontek and a soldier in the Third Reich, whom she met just days before. While the couple is married by the judge and not by the archpriest Pattas (a fact that troubles the devout Catholic Valeska immensely), the guests gather for the wedding celebration in the most exclusive hotel in town. On their way to the hotel, the two teenagers Ulla Ossadnik and Andreas, Valeska’s nephew, witness a strange civilian attack on the radio station in Gleiwitz. Several men get out of limousines and carry what looks like a body into the station. As it turns out, this incident, staged by the Nazis themselves, was then interpreted as an attack on the radio transmitter by Polish Nationalists and was used as grounds for the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany.

Uneasy about the events they have just witnessed but unaware of the immense political ramifications, the youngsters resume their trip to the hotel, where the wedding celebration has reached its climax. The dancing of the polka is taken as an expression of the ethnic qualities of the people in this border region. For the teenagers, this dance signifies a rite of passage in more than one sense. It is a culmination of their budding erotic feelings, and it opens the door to adulthood for them. (It is the first time they have danced the polka.) On a more somber note, it is also the last day of peace, the last day of innocence for them. In a few hours, the war will prematurely turn them into adults.

After much drinking and dancing, the fateful night ends with the bride’s brother, Josel Piontek, having to leave town. He is under the impression that he killed a German soldier who tried to rape Ulla, his childhood sweetheart, on their way home. The novel closes with Valeska’s return from the hotel to her bedridden husband, Leo Maria Piontek. Outwardly, he is suffering from asthma, but inwardly he is ailing from a general lack of will to live with a domineering wife who smothers her family with her love. As Valeska is describing the private events of the wedding, Leo Maria tells her about the public aspects of the night, the strange interruption of the radio program, followed by agitated Polish voices and then by silence.

The second novel, September Light, begins with the funeral of Leo Maria attended by the whole town. After the conclusion of this festive and spectacular event (the music of Frederic Chopin is played on a gramophone, a fact so unusual that Valeska had to obtain permission for it from Pattas) and the departure of the more or less sincere mourners from the cemetery, another very quiet funeral takes place. It is that of Georg Montag, a “retired” magistrate who, as the Nazi ideology became stronger, rediscovered his Jewish ancestry. His father had attempted to erase their religious and cultural heritage by rearing Georg as a Catholic and by hiding Georg’s grandfather in the house because he looked too Jewish. Georg Montag committed suicide after completing his life’s work, a biography of Wojciech Korfanty, a Polish politician who fought for the independence of Silesia and against corruption in his own government.

As the war claims its first victim in Georg Montag, Ulla’s parents, Franz and Anna Ossadnik, hope to profit from the war, which will attach more importance to Franz’s job as a railroad engineer. Anna, despite her six children, manages to read romantic adventure novels and looks forward to her husband’s promotion in hopes of improving their limited income.

In the next novel, Zeit ohne Glocken, the Ossadniks indeed profit from the new regime. The improvement in their living standard, however, is accompanied by pangs of conscience on Franz’s part, because he knows that he is transporting Jews to the concentration camp. When he is on the brink of volunteering for the army to escape his complicity, however, his wife convinces him to continue, because their standard of living had never been as high as it is during the latter stages of the war. The winners—Valeska had also profited from the war with real estate speculation—are outnumbered by the victims and the sacrifices: Arthur Silbergleit, a Jewish writer who returned to his hometown, is transported to a concentration camp and put to death in a gas chamber.

The war has entered a new stage in which all personal and material resources are mobilized. With Good Friday, 1943, the bells, customarily silent on this church holiday, will be silent forever. They are confiscated and turned into war material. Old men and boys are recruited for the national defense. The widowed Irma has since remarried and is about to give birth to her second child. Folk myth and religious symbolism surrounding Good Friday cast their dark shadows on the impending birth.

The ominous events on Good Friday anticipate the content of the last book, Erde und Feuer: the approach of Russian soldiers in January/February, 1945. The Reich is losing the war, and all signs point to capitulation: A feverish rush to the railroad stations begins as people hurry to obtain a place on westbound trains. Work camp inmates regain their freedom because their watchmen disappeared during the night. All but the lowest party officials have deserted the town for the West. The remaining population prepares for the Russians’ advance by burning the portraits of Adolf Hitler with which they decorated their homes, schools, businesses, and offices to endear themselves to prying Nazi Party officials. Incriminating documents are destroyed, and the white flags of surrender are prepared. Abandoned houses and stores are looted by ordinary citizens. The inhabitants of Gleiwitz perform these tasks with the quiet and efficient routine of a border people which is accustomed to changing political regimes.

Valeska and her daughters and granddaughters, along with her brother and his wife, flee to Ulla in Dresden, the only common address in the West that they and her son, Josel, have. As they arrive, Josel, who is a soldier by now, has been wounded and is hospitalized in Dresden. As he contacts Ulla, Valeska attempts to look for Ulla but is surprised by a fierce bombing raid which sets Dresden aflame for five days and nights. With its members scattered over the burning city, the story of the Piontek family ends.

In Gleiwitz, Ulla’s father, Franz Ossadnik, is arrested by the Russians, and the remaining family members are forced to dismantle the factories. The Silesian tetralogy thus concludes with the displacement of its central character, Valeska, and her family. The remaining inhabitants of Gleiwitz will presumably adjust to the new political system as they had to the previous ones.

The Characters

The events and characters in these novels are to some extent autobiographical. The main character, Valeska Piontek, is named and modeled after Horst Bienek’s own mother. Both are piano teachers, and both are married to sickly men who are in early retirement. In the novel, Valeska is portrayed as a strong, domineering mother figure who, on the one hand, teaches Chopin even though it is officially forbidden, and on the other hand is a shrewd businesswoman profiting from real estate speculation. With her own brand of Catholicism, rich with colorful elements of a border region, and her possessive love for her children, Valeska symbolizes Silesia with its unique qualities of a land between two cultures.

Her husband, Leo Maria, appears to be her complete opposite. He is not commercially successful in his photography studio; instead, he takes excursions into the Silesian countryside to photograph old towers and other landmarks. As his wife meddles in the studio, his last refuge of privacy, he takes to his bed and dies a few years later. Leo Maria’s love for Silesia, as exemplified in his secret production of political leaflets against the war propaganda, is devoid of the economic opportunism characteristic of his efficient wife.

His son, Josel, combines character traits of both parents: He is a member of the Hitler Youth and simultaneously a participant in the Bosco Bund, a religious organization. He stands up for his beliefs (his love of Dostoevski) but at the same time takes advantage of the soldiers whom the war has brought into town. He rents them an empty shed where they can be alone with their women.

Critical Context

The Silesian tetralogy is Bienek’s most substantial work. Previously, he had produced only smaller volumes of prose and poetry. His earlier works include Traumbuch eines Gefangenen (1957; a prisoner’s dream book), Die Zelle (1968; The Cell, 1972), Bakunin, eine Invention (1970; Bakunin, an Invention, 1977), and several small volumes of poetry. The time span being re-created by these volumes is the more recent past of Bienek himself, the time and experience of his physical and psychological suffering during early adulthood. Bienek was arrested in the German Democratic Republic by the Russians when he was only twenty-one years old and was sentenced to twenty-five years of forced labor in the notorious camp of Varkuta in the Gulag Archipelago. He was released in 1955, after four years of incarceration. His writing in these earlier volumes centered on the traumatic experience of imprisonment and suffering. It is during this time that he aesthetically relates to Jean Cayrol’s “lazarene literature,” of which traces can still be found in the Silesian tetralogy, especially in the fate of the Jews Montag and Silbergleit.

After aesthetically coming to terms with his more recent past, Bienek found it necessary to take another step back in time, back into his childhood. His autobiographical past coincides with the historical period of Germany’s darkest hours. As such, it forms a complex poetic analysis of Fascism as it manifests itself in the lives of average people in everyday situations. Bienek shows how normal human beings are forced to produce the ideology of a system in themselves, how a general sense of dissatisfaction can be turned against an artificially created image of an enemy, and how people learn to take advantage of the opportunities a system provides—even though they realize that it is not morally proper to do so. The author also shows how these changes create a general sense of uncertainty and thus moral ambiguity.

Motifs in Bienek’s poetry thematically centering on his childhood in Gleiwitz recur in the Silesian tetralogy. These four volumes represent his coming-of-age as a full-fledged novelist in the tradition of Gunter Grass, a contemporary who recovers the ethnic qualities of Danzig during a similar time span.

Bibliography

Fruhwald, Wolfgang. “Sprache als Heimat: Zu Horst Bieneks Gleiwitzer Tetralogie,” in Arbitrium: Zeitschrift fur Rezensionen zur germanistischen Literaturwissenschaft, 1984.

Hamburger, Michael. “Dance to the Sound of Gunfire,” in The Times Literary Supplement. March 25, 1977, p. 378.

Kott, Jan. “The First Polka: Coming of War, Coming of Age,” in The New York Times Book Review. LXXXIX (April 8, 1984), p. 26.

Kruger, Michael, ed. Bienek lesen, 1980.

Piontek, Heinz. “Oberschlesische Polka,” in Das Handwerk des Lesens, 1979.

Snead, James A. “Sun Rise, Sunset, Septemberlight,” in The New York Times Book Review. XCII (February 22, 1987), p. 35.