It was called the bloodbath of Liege – the first battle of World War I, in which
German troops invaded Belgium in early August of 1914 as the initial step in
their plan to bypass strong French defenses.
One of their first military objectives was the town of Visé, but to
delay the German advance, Belgians destroyed the town's bridge over the river Meuse
and stiffly resisted German attacks. When
German troops finally took Visé, they executed civilians in reprisal for snipers who had killed German
troops. They also burned two-thirds of the town’s homes and rounded up its citizens, sending men to prison camps and exiling women and
children.
Maria Dobler
Benemann was a German writer and associate of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Her husband, Ernst Gerhard Benneman, was
fighting with the German army, and he wrote a diary account of his time in Visé. When his friends returned home on leave, they
told Maria that while in the devastated town, her husband had found a piano in ruined
home and sat down briefly to play. She
used the story as material for the following poem. Ernst Gerhard Benemann was killed sometime in autumn of 1915 on the Western Front.
Visé
(After a Letter from the Field)
Smoke-black
the air, the city in rubble,
buildings reduced
to beams all charred
that strew
the streets like barricades.
No roof
shields the weary, just distant stars.
On paving
stones troops take hard rest,
barely
covered by a coat.
Around,
fatigue-dulled men breathe deep,
while you
alone lie awake so late.
Behind, a
heap of ashes haunts you,
an elegant
house that you transformed
when
hunting for a sniper's nest.
One room
still held an instrument,
above it a
fearful Virgin hung:
the quiet
greeting and silent respite
caught you
in their sudden embrace.
As light
waned you plucked some chords,
hollow
echoes of the home's dead souls.
The Queen
you salvaged in your coat
to bring
her to me, when you make peace.
Then set
fresh flames: you do your duty,
blow this
house up like all the rest.
…Was that
a cry? or just a broken string?
Music,
music behind you has collapsed.
-1915, trans. Margaret R. Higonnet[i]
What does victory cost the men who win the battle? Benemann’s poem chillingly relates details of destruction: black smoke rises from rubble, roofless buildings, and charred beams. The men responsible for the violence “take hard rest,” and while some fall into the deep sleep of utter exhaustion, one man lies awake. Intent on destroying a sniper’s nest, he was responsible for the hungry flames that “transformed” a home into a haunting “heap of ashes.” After the destruction of Visé, an occupant of the town reported, “I saw commissioned officers directing and supervising the burning….It was done systematically with the use of benzine, spread on the floors and then lighted.[ii]
What does victory cost the men who win the battle? Benemann’s poem chillingly relates details of destruction: black smoke rises from rubble, roofless buildings, and charred beams. The men responsible for the violence “take hard rest,” and while some fall into the deep sleep of utter exhaustion, one man lies awake. Intent on destroying a sniper’s nest, he was responsible for the hungry flames that “transformed” a home into a haunting “heap of ashes.” After the destruction of Visé, an occupant of the town reported, “I saw commissioned officers directing and supervising the burning….It was done systematically with the use of benzine, spread on the floors and then lighted.[ii]
Sleepless under the distant
stars – alone and isolated from everything and everyone -- the German soldier thinks back to the time before the
fire. “As light waned,” he wandered the deserted
rooms of “an elegant house” and “plucked some chords” on a piano that remained,
a lonely requiem for the “dead souls” who lived there. He failed to save the home’s occupants or
piano, but he “salvaged” – or looted – a painting of the Virgin Mary. He hid The Queen of Heaven in his coat, hoping to
bring her back to his wife as a stolen treasure of the war, looking forward to a time when the army would be able to “make peace.”
The poem’s mention of “peace” is
immediately followed by a jarring image of the man “setting fresh flames.” A good soldier, he does his duty – but he cannot
shake the memory of what follows, what he heard: a human cry?
Or “just a broken string”? In
either case, in burning a home, he has destroyed a part of himself; in
following orders, he has contributed to the collapse of culture and civilized
life. The poems "
