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HRS Bad Salzdetfurth
Comenius Programme
Bad Salzdetfurth in World War II
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Results of the2nd years work
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How the people in Bad Salzdetfurth and Germany
experienced the 2nd World War and the new start

• Our Comenius- Team watched Ufa reports and
  movies, studied chronicles of the villages that
  belong to Bad Salzdetfurth and read famous
  literature, like short- stories from Wolfgang
  Borchert and Elisabeth Langgässer and many
  others.
• Doing all this we found out that the 2nd World
  War passed Bad Salzdetfurth nearly without
  damage, but that Hildesheim, 15 kilometres from
  here, was totally destroyed.
• From our history books we know the unbelievable
  numbers of dead soldiers and civilians. Many
  people who survived were destroyed inside for a
  long time many of them till the end of their
  life.

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How the people in Bad Salzdetfurth and Germany
experienced the 2nd World War and the new start

• Today, 62 years after the end of the 2nd World
  War, we students just have a superficial view of
  the war. Some of us watch or listen carefully
  when new horror- stories from the theatres of war
  in the world arrive. But thats far away and only
  shocks a little when German soldiers, who are
  working for peace, are killed.
• Short- stories, like the ones of Wolfgang
  Borchert, which show the cruelty of the war never
  appeared in our school history books and vanished
  from our latest reading books! Why? Dont they
  want to burden us in the year 2007, although it
  would be really necessary because of the actual
  theatres of war and the rightists who grow strong
  again?
• Our Comenius- Team wants to focus some short-
  stories of Wolfgang Borchert and try to answer
  the question above.

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Wolfgang Borchert

• The author Wolfgang Borchert died two years after
  the end of the 2nd World War at the age of 28
  years because of a serious lung disease.
• He had to experience all sides of the war under
  these conditions and wrote short- stories with
  this impressions during, at the end and right
  after the war.
• Herein he shows the shock of the civilians and
  the oppressed soldiers.
• Very often the strickened persons understand
  their situation and can cope with it.
• The author knows how to give predictions and a
  view into the future that the short- story cant
  give because it doesnt have an end.
• We read the following short- stories
• The four soldiers
• The three dark kings
• The bread
• The kitchen clock
• The rats are sleeping at night

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The four soldiers

• The four soldiers squat in a shelter that doesnt
  seem to be very save.
• They are laughing when the bombs dont hit them
  and think about the question if they are sitting
  in a field of rapes or of radish.
• They look like dead and strike their hated guns.
  (The soldiers bride)
• In the end they are laughing about the dark, dark
  valley.
• Here Borchert wants to say that they wont
  survive and that their life- light will go out
  like the small light of their mine- lamp.

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The three dark kings

• In the ruins of a bombed house somewhere in
  Germany a woman gave birth
• to a son an hour ago.
• In spite of a shabby oven for which the father of
  the child can hardly find wood you can see their
  breath.
• Three oppressed homecomers come in to warm up
  themselves.
• They are weakened from the war and give their
  last belongings to the child.
• They are regardful, smoke outside and walk away
  again.
• The young mother is proud of her strong son who
  cries loudly in the light of the fire.

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The bread

• During the 2nd World War there were eating-
  rations from which nobody was satisfied.
• A couple that was married for 37 years meets in
  the kitchen at night where the husband had cut
  off a slide of bread secretly.
• The woman had worried about her husband as he
  didnt lie in bed next to her.
• She doesnt have the confidence to ask him about
  the bread because its embarrassing.
• They are talking about irrelevant things to save
  the situation and not to lie at each other.
• Later, when the woman pretends to sleep, she can
  hear her husband chewing the rest of the bread in
  his mouth.
• The next evening she gives her second slice of
  bread to him pretending to have problems with her
  stomach.

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The kitchen clock

• This story takes place in the time after the war
  and is about a
• twenty- year old man who sits between two
  strangers on a park bench.
• He shows them a kitchen clock and explains that
  the clock is
• the only thing that he had saved from his
  parents bombed house.
• The funny thing is that the clock stopped at half
  past three.
• That has always been the time when he came home
  at night and his mum prepared a warm meal for
  him.
• The man lost his whole family in the war.
• The kitchen clock is the only thing he has got.
• The everyday life before seems to him like
  paradise now.
• The man next to him is staring at his feet but he
  cant see them because he has to think about the
  word paradise all the time.

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The rats are sleeping at night

• In the desert of ruins of a bombed town in the
  2nd World War
• there is Jürgen, a nine- year old boy.
• He guards his brother whos buried alive day and
  night so the rats cant eat him.
• An old man talks to Jürgen and the young boy
  starts to trust him.
• When the old man mentions that Jürgen can have a
  look at his rabbits the boy says that he cant
  give up the watch.
• The old man turns round and goes away when Jürgen
  starts telling him about his little brother and
  that he has to guard him so the rats cant eat
  him.
• The old man lies to Jürgen that the rats are
  sleeping at night.
• So after sunrise the boy gives up the watch and
  chooses one rabbit.

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Priest Joseph Müller

• Joseph Müller was born on August 9th 1894 as the
  youngest of three brothers in
• Saalmünster in Hessen.
• In World War I he decided to interrupt his
  studies to become a war volunteer.
• After having been injured seriously he made the
  plan to work for the
• religious welfare.
• On March 11th 1922 he was ordained priest and
  worked as a clergy man in Duderstadt, Hannoversch
  Münden, Celle and Wolfenbüttel.
• His function as a priest led him to Lauterberg
  1931, to Süpplingen 1934,
• to Heiningen 1937 and at last to Groß
  Düngen.
• Because of his heartiness he was very popular
  with the youth.
• In 1944 he told the following joke to an old ill
  man who he visited at home
• A seriously injured soldier wishes to have Adolf
  Hitler and Hermann Göhring

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Priest Joseph Müller

• After the son of the old man betrayed Joseph
  Müller to the Gestapo, he was arrested in Mai
  1944.
• On August 28th 1944 Nazi- judge Roland Freisler
  condemned him to death per the guillotine.
• He was executed in Görden/Berlin on September
  11th 1944.
• Very impressing are his last letters. He wrote
  them to his family and to his parish in Groß
  Düngen during his captivity and even one hour
  before his execution
• My heart is full of joy because Im going home
  to my father. In one hour Ill be at home
• and leave earth for you. I know that Ill lose
  my life. I want to give my blood for my parish
• nothing can separate us from Jesus love.
• Until today the people in Groß Düngen remember
  priest Joseph Müller
• The school and a street are named after
  him. You can visit his grave and an exhibition in
  
• the parsonage and every year the bells of the
  church ring for his memory at 1pm on the
• 11th of September.
• At the moment the inhabitants of Groß Düngen try
  to obtain priest Joseph Müller to be canonized.

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