| Emil, the son of a modest tailor, has a diploma from the Realschule, an expensive school for his means. However, when the Great War breaks out, he is only an apprentice in a weaving shop. Everyone calls him Schlump, a nickname meaning "mischievous scoundrel," which he earned after a prank at the market as a child. Schlump should be focused on model making, but his mind is preoccupied with girls and the war, imagining himself in a gray uniform, admired by women as he heads to the front or triumphantly returns, surrounded by celebrations and flowers thrown from windows.
On August 1, 1915, with his orders in hand, he says goodbye to his tearful mother and proudly reports to the barracks. He is sent to Libercourt, France, and from there marches to villages without well-kept gardens or picturesque houses. Thanks to his knowledge of French, he is given the task of managing three villages. In Loffrande, the largest, he learns what it means to command both older and younger men like Estelle, a blonde with blue eyes; Suzanne, a brunette with brown curls; and Jeanne, with black hair and delicate skin. Schlump would enjoy life there if it weren't for the thunder of artillery fire from the nearby front.
But the war calls, and Schlump must leave Loffrande to go to the trenches, where he faces the whistling of grenades, muddy corridors, and bullets buzzing like swallows after a storm. "The Soldier Schlump," published in 1928, burned by the Nazis in 1933 and rediscovered in 2008, is one of the most powerful works about the Great War. |
