Deutsches Requiem (short story)
| Author | Jorge Luis Borges |
|---|---|
| Country | Argentina |
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre | Short story |
| Publisher | Sur |
|
Publication date
|
February 1946 |
"Deutsches Requiem" is a short story by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges.
Published on Sur in February 1946, it was reprinted in the collection El Aleph (1949). It is the fictional last testament of Otto Dietrich zur Linde, the one-legged commandant of a Nazi concentration camp. After being tried and convicted of crimes against humanity, Zur Linde reflects back on his own sins and those of Nazi Germany while he awaits the firing squad.
A member of the German nobility, zur Linde is born in Marienburg, West Prussia in 1908. Raised Lutheran, zur Linde loses his faith in Christianity after reading the writings of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Oswald Spengler. Soon after, he joins the Schutzstaffel. Despite his deep contempt for his fellow SS men, zur Linde persuades himself that the Nazi Party needs men like himself to assure the world a glorious future.
On March 1, 1939, he is wounded in the leg while attacking a synagogue in Tilsit. Days later, when the Wehrmacht invades Czechoslovakia, zur Linde is recuperating in a hospital following the amputation of his leg. Declaring how Raskolnikov's switch to robbery and murder was more difficult than the conquests of Napoleon Bonaparte, zur Linde relates how, on February 7, 1941, he was appointed subdirector of Tarnowitz concentration camp. There, many Jewish intellectuals are tortured and murdered under his orders.
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