Not I Read Online Free PDF

musical work; then, reading a great book; then, first love; and then, the first irreplaceable loss.

    Wolfgang Fest just before his call-up to the army in 1943
    Among the viler Nazis in our unit was a Medical Corporal Schneider, a man of about forty, a male nurse by profession, who (as he often boasted) had joined the party in 1933. Some of us suspected that he had been assigned to our company of mainly middle-class school-leavers as an informer. At any rate, we called him “the Ear,” because he was constantly eavesdropping and treated everyone he met with the mistrust of the born spy. Someone had evidently told him that I had spoken with disgust of the death of my brother, and in particular of the battalion commander who had forced him back to the front line. Without hesitation, Schneider formally reported the “incident,” and, together with the overzealous Sergeant Major Mahlmann, tried to submit it directly to the court-martial to whose sphere of responsibility the regiment belonged. Lieutenant Kühne, however, asserted his superior rank as company commander and—feigning outrage, he stated in the presence of the sergeant major—he had come to a provisional decision. I was given a “final warning,” but given the difficult military situation I was declared indispensable for the time being. After the foreseeable final victory, however, which I also impatiently anticipated thanks to my trust in the Führer, continued Kühne, I would certainly be placed before a court-martial and, should the accusations made against me prove well founded, be punished by the full force of the law.
    The next day I had to come to the orderly room and Mahlmann immediately brought up what had taken place. He bellowed angrily, “I can see through it all!Always Kühne, Kühne, Kühne! That’s going to stop! Otherwise, I’ll be the one who is up at regimental headquarters in full dress uniform!” When I described the incident to him, Lieutenant Kühne remarked, “Once Mahlmann would have been someone to fear. In the present situation I don’t worry too much about him. I feel more unease at your behavior. Of course, I understand you. But don’t do anything else stupid! Even someone who has the better arguments doesn’t let the Mahlmanns and Schneiders of this world notice it.” And, patting my shoulder, “Not least because we despise them.”
    In November 1944 our unit was moved to the army training camp at Cologne-Wahn. We had hardly arrived before preparations for Christmas began. Fir twigs were nailed up everywhere, hung with tinsel or apples, and sometimes even a candle found somewhere was attached. As always the celebrations began with an hour of contemplation, which opened with an address boldly cobbled together by the commanding officer about salvation, sacrifice, and final victory; then there followed a drawn-out “O Tannenbaum.” Franz Franken—the opera enthusiast I had got to know during our time on the antiaircraft battery, and who was in one of the battalions at this camp—had managed, within a short space of time, to form a chamber orchestra, which performed Mozart’s “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” and Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks . The three hundred or so participants returned once again to Christmas with a tearful “Stille Nacht”; then it was time for the jolly part of the festivities. Without a pause, the tables became boisterousand whoever had been sitting at them seemed, as if at a signal, to romp back into the forests from which his ancestors had emerged in primeval times.

    Lieutenant Walter Kühne, who saved the author from a court-martial, in front of his house in Stelle, near Lüneburg, in the early 1950s
    As soon as circumstances allowed, I fled to my books. On the second day of Christmas my father was unexpectedly on the phone. He hinted he was awaiting the Russian attack somewhere on the edge of West Prussia. We talked about family things and about Wolfgang’s death, and I had the