Luxemburg and Verdun

The last reading of my tour this year took place in Walferdange (Luxemburg) and was organised by Université Populaire Luxembourg.

It was a double reading together with the author and historian Dr. Kathrin Mess, who had written a book about Gerd Klestadt, a survivor of Bergen-Belsen. The event was simultaneously translated into French and was moderated by the actress Martina Roth.

“Ladies and gentlemen, dear guests, imagine being seventeen years old – and you are involuntarily sent into a war which is already lost. You have to fight, even though you don’t want to – and carry the consequences for the rest of your life”, Martina began the event and referred to my great-grandfather, whose experiences I shared afterwards.

The three of us sat on the stage together, and I found it very valuable that there were two perspectives presented in this event. 

Another day, I met the author Marielle R. who is from Luxemburg and wrote a biography about her life with the Asperger Syndrome which I had copyedited. In the conversation, I learned more about her experiences and perceptions as well as the culture and language situation of Luxemburg. 

Furthermore, I was in Schengen where the Schengen Agreement had been signed, which enables freedom of travel in most parts of Europe. There are many references to the Schengen Area in this little village located at the border triangle of Luxemburg, Germany and France. Two original segments of the Berlin Wall stand by the Moselle river, while cars freely cross the border on a bridge in the background. Seeing this contrast, it made me aware of what Schengen means and which value it has for both my location-independent work and my book reading tour.

Afterwards, I spent a week in Verdun (France) in order to get to know this place, since I currently research the remembrance cultures. Verdun is today regarded as a place of French-German reconciliation, which for example becomes evident through flags of both countries waving together on sites of the former battlefield.

Many historical places have been well preserved in this area and you can still see the scars in the landscape: the craters, the destroyed villages like Fleury and the original sites where the time seems to have stood still – with trenches, barbed wire and shrapnels sticking in the ground.

Especially sobering was the Douaumont Ossuary which contains the bones of more than 130,000 unknown fallen soldiers. There, I came across a sentence which was perhaps one of the most profound and thought-provoking sentences I have encountered during my research so far, containing the immense loss and senselessness:

“We were France. We were Germany. We were life.”

I had the impression that Verdun was an even more intense experience than Ypres or the Somme.