An autobiographical novel of World War I experiences in the German ranks, "Zero Hour" equates duty with camaraderie and finds a balance between bitterness and hawkishness. The war is experienced here through the keen eyes of Hans Volkenborn, a well-bred officer-candidate whose youthful enthusiasm turns to angst and disillusion. The sole comfort of his experience is fellowship with his comrades, but even that abates over time. Grabenhorst recalls specifics of battlefield actions on the Western Front with a visceral language that resonates still today. Of particular historical importance are accounts of combat in the Ypres campaign in 1917, and the futile clashes in the woods of Aveluy in northern France the following summer as German hopes for victory faded. But the novel's greatest success is a vivid description of shell shock, the result of being briefly buried alive by a mortar round. The condition ultimately engulfs Volkenborn's ailing psyche and leaves him tormented, isolated, and blinded at the war's end. "Zero Hour" was first published as Fahnenjunker Volkenborn in Germany in 1928 and was translated into English under the current title in the following year. This reissued edition features a new introduction by Robert Cowley and a new afterword by Casey Clabough to place the novel in its proper literary and historical contexts.
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Focusing on individual authors from Heinrich Boll to Gunther Grass, Hermann Lenz to Peter Schneider, The Language of Silence offers an analysis of West German literature as it tries to come to terms with the Holocaust and its impact on postwar West German society. Exploring postwar literature as the barometer of Germany's unconsciously held values as well as of its professed conscience, Ernestine Schlant demonstrates that the confrontation with the Holocaust has shifted over the decades from repression, circumvention, and omission to an open acknowledgement of the crimes. Yet even today a 'language of silence' remains since the victims and their suffering are still overlooked and ignored. Learned and exacting, Schlant's study makes an important contribution to our understanding of postwar German culture.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
Focussing on individual authors from Heinrich Boll to Gunther Grass, Hermann Lenz to Peter Schneider, "The Language of Silence" offers an analysis of West German literature as it tries to come to terms with the Holocaust and its impact on postwar West German society. Exploring postwar literature as the barometer of Germany's unconsciously held values as well as of its professed conscience, Ernestine Schlant demonstrates that the confrontation with the Holocaust has shifted over the decades from repression, circumvention, and omission to an open acknowledgement of the crimes.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Growing up in Imperial Germany, 1893-1914-- from patriotism to pacifism, 1914-1917-- call to socialism, 1917-1918 - the anti-war movement, the influence of Gustav Landauer, the January strike-- The Transformation - the drama as political action-- revolution in Bavaria - the Writers' Republic, November 1918 - May 1919-- high treason-- five years "honourable imprisonment", 1919-1924-- plays from a prison cell - "Masses and Man", "The Machine Wreckers", "Hinkemann", "Wotan Unchained", "The Swallow Book", "Mass Spectacles"-- public figure and political playwright - Toller in the Weimar republic, 1924-1930-- political theatre - theory and practice - "Hopple, Such is Life", "Draw the Fires"-- Russia and America - which world, which way? - America, Russia-- dress rehearsal for dictatorship, 1930-1935-- the first year of exile, 1933-- exile in London - PEN, pacifism and popular front, 1934-1936 - "No More Peace!"-- "Hitler - the Promise and the Reality" - Toller's North American lecture tour, 1936-1937-- Hollywood and after, 1937-1938 - "Pastor Hall"-- food for Spain, 1938-1939-- requiem.
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Playwright, socialist revolutionary, and political activist and organizer, Ernst Toller was one of the most celebrated German authors known to the English-speaking world from the 1920s to the Second World War. This biography presents Toller and his work in historical and literary context, from his birth into a German-Jewish family in the Polish part of the German Empire, through his political awakening in World War I to his political coming of age in the Bavarian Soviet Republic of 1918/19, as a result of which he served four years in prison. Dove goes on to show how Toller became on of the Weimar Republic's leading playwrights and an energetic early Cassandra, warning of the ride of fascism from the 1920s. Forced to leave Germany in 1933, he spent his exile years mainly in England, travelling to Soviet Russia and to the United States. He remained in the thick of exile activity, and continued writing plays until his death in may 1939.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)