Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 7652 Plough Quarterly • Winter 2015 R e v i e w Reclaiming a Literary Giant Ernst Wiechert, the master novelist who survived Buchenwald D A N I E L H A L L O C K “It may happen that a nation ceases to distin- guish between good and evil,” warned Ernst Wiechert, a German novelist and professor, in a 1935 speech to his students, many of whom were already enthusiastic National Socialists. “It may then be that it will win a gladiator’s glory . . . but the scales will already have been hung above this people.” The text of Wiechert’s talk, titled “Address to the German Youth,” was baked into a loaf of bread and smuggled out of the country for publication by anti-Nazi refu- gees in Moscow. At the time of Wiechert’s speech, his country was slipping blindly into Hitler-worship. At first, although Wiechert refused to lend his popular- ity as a novelist to the Nazi cause, he kept his criticism veiled. “He is a sorcerer,” complained an official in Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Pro- paganda, “but he refuses to use his magic on our side.” That changed two years later, however, when Wiechert heard news of the arrest of Martin Niemöller, the famous Lutheran pastor who resisted Nazi control of the German Prot- estant church. Incensed, he wrote an open letter criticizing the government and announcing his support of Niemöller and his family. Photograph courtesy of University of Lodz Repository Daniel Hallock is the author of Six Months to Live: Learning from a Young Man with Cancer, which will be reissued by Plough in spring 2015. He lives in Nonington, Kent, England.