Dictatorship time and human time

Ivan Davydov - about the diaries of Viktor Clementere

In Russia, forty years after the first publication in the GDR, the diaries of Viktor Clemerer, a German Jew who lived under the Third Reich and managed to carefully document everything that was happening around him - from the language of newspaper editorials to the death of friends in concentration camps and disasters on the Eastern Front. The fact that our contemporaries can still inform this is a difficult book in every sense, read in the material of Ivan Davydov.

Starting from February 24, 2022, we were all in the face of the advancing barbarism, violence and lies. In this situation, it is extremely important to preserve at least the remnants of culture and support the values ​​of humanism - including for the sake of the future of Russia. Therefore, the editorial office of Gorky will continue to talk about books, reminding our readers that the world remains in the world and fiction.

Victor Clemperer. I testify to the end: Diaries of 1933-1945. In two volumes. M.: Kuchkovo Field; The Jewish Museum and the Center for Tolerance, 2025. Translation from German T.F. Datchenko. Fragment

In the late nineties in Russia, they published the book of Victor Clemere “LTI. Language of the Third Reich. " This is probably the most famous work of a German philologist - hardly even experts are now reading his works dedicated to the French literature of the Enlightenment. “Language” is a different matter. An unusually exciting, subtle and accurate story about how the speech in a totalitarian dictatorship becomes an instrument of extermination of objectionable ones. With vivid examples, sometimes even funny, although, it would seem, the material does not have fun at all.

The first original edition appeared in 1947, and here we must understand the context. Clemperer is a Jew. The son of a rabbi. A veteran of the First World War with military awards that, in adulthood, turned into Protestantism, and even, perhaps, a little German nationalist. The famous scientist with a bunch of publications, worldwide, during his lifetime the article in Brockhaus was devoted to him. But since 1933, only the first characteristic was important in Germany. Jew - that is, excluded from the world of the living. Jew - that is, sentenced. That is doomed.

He did not leave Germany. At first he did not dare, and then there were no possibilities. Until the end of the war - in Dresden, the road from life to survival, and out of survival - to death stretched in time. But he survived and all this time collected material about the mutations of the German language under Hitler. Speeches of radio leaders, newspaper leaders, front -line reports, chatter of the townsfolk. The maximum poverty of vocabulary. Carrying for excellent degrees. Readiness with unimaginable ease to forget what was very important yesterday. The words that come into fashion, and then disappear without a trace. Well, for example, Blitzkrieg. And the unstoppable craving for abbreviations. Actually, in the very name of the book there is something like a parody, games with a Nazi abbreviation passion: “LTI” is also a reduction, Lingua Tertii Imperii, the language of the third empire.

He made notes for a future book, realizing that he would never write a book, and it would not be possible to publish it. But these are trifles - the main thing is that if the notes are found during the search, they will be killed. Literally. And everyone who is mentioned in the records will also most likely kill. Beloved wife, friends, acquaintances. Even the random counter -counters, whose conversations were recorded, can find and punish: there are good specialists in the Gestapo, they know their job.

He understood this and still wrote. By asking himself a question from time to time: does he have the right to risk other people's lives? It really worried him. The answer he found: this is the debt of the scientist. Perhaps not impeccable from a moral point of view. But the clipper chose him. Eve, his beloved wife (Aryka is important, “mixed marriage” to the last served as a defense from a concentration camp), took the scribbled pages to a good friend, also Aryan. Everything survived. This is almost impossible, but everything survived.

He also tried to write books - the history of French literature of the 18th century and his own autobiography. Both, by the way, were added after the war, both were published.

In addition, Professor Viktor Clemperer all this time kept a diary.

***

The diary has its own fate. The clipper remained in the GDR. He was not touched, he was given to work, he was printed, he was awarded, but the diary did not come to the court. Separate fragments were released in the sixties, but the first large publication appeared only in 1985 (the author was not among the living for 25 years). And then - glory, non -replacement attention, full publications, transfers, documentary films. So Russia waited in the wings. True, after forty years: Victor Clemperer. “I testify to the end. Diaries. 1933–1945 ". Moscow, Kuchkovo Field, the Jewish Museum and the Center for Tolerance, 2025. Two volumes, about one and a half thousand pages, the translation of T.F. Datchenko.

Tom is a huge, real monument, and this is actually a monument. The author who survived, who had the courage to see and remember, who told us about one of the main nightmares of mankind. And to everyone who did not survive, of course, too. It is first of all.

With nothing, perhaps, a thing in my reader’s experience is perhaps. You involuntarily recall Anna Frank's diary. This, I think, is generally one of the worst books that humanity has: a talented little girl is chatting with you, chatting about boys, about American movie stars, about books, about cats, about plans for the future, but you know how everything will actually end. In fact, not in the book. There is no future there, there is death. And you know that, but she is not. And from this, the reading process turns into inescapable icy horror. Nevertheless, the person who took place (in 1933 by Clement of fifty-two), a university professor, an experienced writer, who also does not hide in a shelter, but lives in a large German city-with a yellow star on his chest and with a kenkart, a special Jewish passport in his pocket, he sees more differently and sees more.

Reading as a slow immersion in darkness, into a space where there is neither light nor air where a person simply cannot dwell. Slowly - a large story is characterized by a certain sadism. Page, step - and even darker around. And yet. And yet. And now there is nothing but darkness, and the text is not going to end.

The diary is a special book. The author does not build a plot, does not invent characters, does not try to prove something to the reader. It simply captures the event occurring around (a strange mixture of marginal subjectivity, auto -description with the ultimate objectivity). And yet, wiping through the horror of someone else's everyday life, you begin to understand that the book has a plot.

***

This book is about the collision of times. The dictatorship and the person whom the dictatorship declared the enemy is also different. Rather, like this: the dictatorship, which overcame the period of formation, took shape, came - if you get distracted from the language of the Third Empire and switch to the language of St. Petersburg gates - there is no time at all. Successful dictatorship is the kingdom of statics.

At first - a swift stream: Hitler comes to power, Hitler is overgrown with allies, Hitler destroys enemies ... between the night of long knives and a crystal night - four years and eternity. The crystal night is an important point: there is nothing to be ashamed, the positions are indicated with final clarity, in the pogrom there is nothing that could confuse its well -established power and confuse its fans. And then the time in the dictatorship seems to disappear, becomes an excess category. The sequence of events is not important (and in a sense, even a world war, while it consists of victories, does not become a real event: it does not move time, it strengthens the timelessness). Does this feel something like that? I don’t know, the author - in a situation of a personal disaster, we’ll talk about the author now, but the reader feels for sure: it doesn’t matter when the dictator will say about the next speech, what will be in the new front -line summary, if in this summary, we are talking about the next successes of German weapons, it doesn’t matter what the newspaper editorials are clogged and what novels are published, officially registered in the Imperial House of Literature ... The world The dictatorship is a gray frozen jelly in which nothing happens and does not happen at all. These changes are prohibited and, most likely, punishable. The dictatorship is peace.

But the person whom the dictatorship declared the enemy is in a completely different situation, of course. Disaster is a dynamics. Inside the personal disaster, everything moves in growing. At first, our hero is only unpleasantly surprised at what vile types can come to his enlightened Germany in his enlightened Germany and what nonsense can print in newspapers. However, he lives, completes the house in the outskirts, buys a used car, ride with his wife in the neighborhood, plans new books and even works on them. And after evening coffee with friends it sighs: this cannot last long, they are about to disappear, because how else?

But the time is all faster, and the troubles are getting worse: here he is fired from the university, because there is no place for a Jew in the public service. True, he was dismissed with a pension and almost with honors, and the trouble is only that the pension is not large enough. He, a well -known scientist and veteran of war, could give more. The wife is breeding a garden near the house, they ride a car, and friends do not lose confidence for coffee: this cannot last long.
It is already impossible to publish reviews in magazines, and it is clear that the books he writes will also hardly ever be published. And this cannot last long, but it lasts, does not want to end, it seems to never end at all. The car has to be sold at a cheap, because Jews cannot drive a car anymore. Instead of his own house - “Jewish house” (there was no ghetto in Dresden, Jews were thrust into separate houses). The star of David blooms on the chest, a special passport with a capital J, a beautiful Gothic font appears in the pocket. He is now not Victor Clemperer, but Victor Israel Clemperer, racial laws require this. If the name is not “Jewish”, then Israel is an obligatory supplement.

Cards, searches, humiliations in the Gestapo, even a prison, although only for a week: a retired professor violated the rules of lightning, forgot to lower the dark curtain in time. The German would be fined for this, but the Jews could be killed. Clement is lucky. A joke - a questionnaire in the fourth Reich, questions: how long have you been in prison with Hitler? If you were not sitting, then why?

The death of the cat Mushel. Jews are forbidden to have domestic animals, they must be handed over for disposal, but the clamps manage to take their favorite to the veterinarian to euthanize a couple of days before the new order entered into force. Give the beast an easy death. Talk that all this is not for long is subsided. In the notes - the dates of the death of those with whom the clipper conducted these conversations. And the names of the death camps where they were killed. Dahau, Terezienstadt, Buchenwald, Aushwitz. Warsaw ghetto, Riga ghetto.

And (this is perhaps an optional remark, who allows you to understand something about a big story) information about the life of the leaders, ideologists and commanders of the Reich, mentioned in the text, is also available in subscription notes. Someone died in the war, someone committed suicide in the forty-fifth, some were executed. But basically, everything is not bad: "sentenced to life imprisonment, three years later released for health reasons." Or even: "Has up in Argentina." Sometimes the story of people is condescending.

A strange detail (this is already on the issue of a German order): in 41, and in 42, and even in 43 relatives from concentration camps, urns with the dust of the tortured are sent. They are buried in a Jewish cemetery with prayers and all the laid ceremonies.

***

And now comes the moment when personal time stops. There are no more searches, because there is nothing to take away from the doomed. There are no new prohibitive laws, because everything is prohibited. Several dozens of Jews remain in Dresden, and they themselves do not understand why they still continue to exist. Personal disaster rests on statics. Empathy even leaves: the author records that messages about the next victims do not cause him any emotions. “I am still alive” - that's all he might think.

But also in the dictatorship of the change. The dictatorship of the time returns just a disaster. 1943, Stalingrad, at first strange reports from the front: “After long and long battles, our valiant troops managed to seize a three-room apartment with the bathroom” (and this is not an angry joke, this is a quote). Then in these reports there are fewer specifics, and in newspaper editorials - more and more calls to fanatical resistance. LTI generally loves the word "fanatical." And it is already clear that this really cannot last long, but there is only no one else to fue it for coffee with the professor by the Clement: Almost all interlocutors are exterminated, but not to get coffee.

Two temporary streams interprets the disaster, visible to their own eyes - the bombing that destroyed Dresden. The world of dictatorship collapsed along with beautiful baroque buildings, just argue the star from the jacket to get lost among the crowds of the survivors. And then the war is the end, and the people around suddenly begin to tell in chorus that they always hated the Fuhrer and the party, and the Jewish passport turns into a document capable of opening any doors in the offices of the new owners of Germany.

During refugees, the Clement Pereper is stuck with incomprehensible, but perhaps a Soviet officer threatening speeches. “My brother treated Lenin,” the professor tells him. And this is true, Georg Clemperer at one time went to Moscow to consultations to save the leader of the world proletariat. However, did not save.

***

The clipper surpassed. And his house survived, and manuscripts. Personal happy end, which is a little poisoning the questions that remained unanswered. Where are the real Germans, who are they? Those who, risking freedom or even life, in the most terrible years approached the street to steal a hand to a man with a yellow star? Share excess potatoes? Or those who shouted after the insults? Or a Gestapo, who, during searches, loved women in the face? Can he, Victor (no longer Israel) by the clipper, become a German again? How? And how are the children who seemed to be soaked in Nazi propaganda than adults?

The Germans (who, of course, have always hated Hitler, etc.) their questions: could the German soldiers create in Russia and in Poland the horrors that the winners are now talking about? How could they? The winners are lying, they will probably slander.

There are no answers, the Russian edition of the diary breaks out suddenly, Victor and Eve in Dresden, their house will be returned, there will be new flower beds and a new cat. And books, and coffee, and human life. But people who remained in Terezienstadt, Aushwitz and Dachau will not come for coffee. Never again.

***

Books about the Third Reich and the first post -war years of Germany are now in fashion, there are many of them, there are even entire book series. It is clear, probably, why so, and this is not important. Historical analogies - a bad, worthless way to reason, is not what and what it looks like.

It is important to remember that people-educated, shallow, civilized, normal, cultural, and so on, the Germans were just like that-they can rapidly turn into something like that. In something that the clipper talks about in detail. Can. He is a witness. Not at all impartial, but in a different way it would not have happened.

And yes, a belated disclaimer: this is a heavy book. The German professor showed too detail how terrible transformation occurs. A step behind a step, a little darker, a little deeper ... Starting to read, keep in mind: it will hurt. It will definitely hurt you. So it should be.