The Reed

The Reed

The Reed

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Anna Seghers (1900-1983), a pseudonym for Netty Reiling, was born in Mainz and grew up in a middle-class Jewish family. Her earliest literary influences include the classical German literature of the 18th and 19th century, a tradition which defines her own narrative style. Between 1920 and 1924, Seghers studied art history and philology at the universities of Heidelberg and Cologne, and in 1925 she became one of the first women in Germany to receive her Ph.D. Although 1925 also saw the publication of her first story, Anna Seghers did not receive wide recognition until 1928 when her first novel, The Uprising of the Fishermen of St. Barbara, received the prestigious Kleist Prize, an annual award that is given anonymously for the best work of a new author. While the jury members were correct in predicting the future success of the new author, they were totally incorrect in their assumptions about the gender of this new literary figure. All references to the stark and powerful style of the young male author proved to be somewhat embarrassing for the members of the jury.

The year 1928 was an auspicious one for Anna Seghers in yet another sense, it was also the year in which she joined the German Communist Party. Her joining the Party may have been motivated by factors ranging from a basic humanistic hope for social change to the politically charged climate of Germany in the 20s, including the influence of her husband Laszlo Radvanyi, a Hungarian political emigre whom she met and married in 1926. She remained a loyal, if often critical member of the German Communist Party throughout her life.

After fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933 and after spending years of exile in France and Mexico, Anna Seghers returned to her native land in 1947 where she quickly became the matriarch of East German literature. Not only did she serve as an international representative of her Party and her country, she also became a supporter and role model for a whole new generation of East German authors in the sixties and seventies, especially Christa Wolf.

“The Reed” was taken from a collection of short stories that was published in 1965. In it the reader follows the evolution of the main character, Marta Emrich, through the dangers of the war years to the difficulties of the fledgling East Germany. How does the larger stage of historical events intersect with the lives of the characters? To what extent does the main character represent typically middle-class values and does she change in the course of the story? Why would Anna Seghers portray a woman like Marta rather than a political activist such as herself? As readers of the 1990s, what reaction do you have to Anna Seghers’ portrayal of the female character?

Anna Seghers, “The Reed,” trans. Benito’s Blue and Nine Other Stories, (East Berlin: Seven Seas Books,) ), 144-157.

Anna Seghers Jewish, Communist Party member

1900 Netty Reiling (Anna Seghers) born in Mainz

1925 Dissertation on The Jew and Judaism in the Work of Rembrandt; one of the first women to receive her Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg; publication of her

• first story

1926 married Laszlo Radvanyi, a Hungarian political emigre

1928 first novel, The Uprising of the Fishermen of St. Barbara (Aufstand der Fischer von St. Barbara ); Kleist Prize; joined the German Communist Party;)) -prize first novel

1933 arrested, by the Gestapo; flight to Paris

1940 flight from Paris to Marseille; then in 1941 to Mexico

1947 return to Berlin

1952-1977 President of the East German Writers’ Union

1983 -died in East Berlin — Matriarch of East German lit.

works include

1942 Das siebte Kreuz (The Seventh Cross) published in English; Film version in 1944; published in German in 1947

1943 Transit)

1943 “Ausflug der toten Madchen” (“Excursion of the Dead Girls”)

1965 Kraft der Schwachen (The Power of the Weak) a collection of stories, including “Agathe Schweigert” and “The Reed”

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THE REED

Anna Seghers

Long before the war the Emrich family had had a little house and garden on a lake near Berlin.

They grew mainly vegetables. There was a narrow strip of lawn between the lake shore and their solid, one-storey house–the only bit of land not cultivated. The shore was flat, sloping very gradually, and the reeds grew thick, as they did almost all round the lake. From the landing stage there was a gravel path up to the glass verandah which had been built on to the house in more prosperous days. The sitting room and the kitchen opened off the small paved front and the cellar was reached through a trap door in the kitchen floor. The cellar door facing the lake was not used any more, for it was blocked up by all kinds of stores, and things were piled so high that hardly any light came through the cellar window.

The Emrichs had also owned a small public house in a nearby village, and the smithy opposite. They had shod horses and mended ploughs and farm implements there.

Father Emrich had been kicked by a horse and died shortly before the war. They say misfortunes never come singly. Perhaps he had been a little less careful than usual, upset by the unexpected death of his wife shortly before.

The two sons were conscripted and the war prolonged their military service indefinitely. One of them experienced the invasion of Poland, the other the landing in Narvik.

Distant relatives had in the meantime bought the public house and the smithy. Marta Emrich, the only daughter, looked after the little property on the lake.SShe took pride in doing almost everything herself and only occasionally got some help from a day labourer, for instance with painting the house, so that it should look decent if one of her brothers came home on leave. She not only did most of the vegetable gardening herself; she also papered the rooms and tarred the boat, which was generally tied up to the landing stage, unused. Seen from the lake, the white house with its rambler roses looked friendly and inviting.

Marta toiled from dawn till dusk, not only because she wanted to save up and have no debts, for her brothers had already lost their income from the public house and the smithy, not only because she thought that was what she was there for, but also because she wanted to forget how lonely she was.

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Her second cousin, a farmer’s son from the neighbouring village whom people had thought of as her fiancé, was one of the few to be killed on the Maginot Line. Through him it might have been possible to get the public house and the smithy back into the possession of the Emrich family. They had not been properly engaged, but when she received the news that he had “Fallen in battle” Marta felt deserted and almost without hope. She had never been talkative, but now she retired into herself completely.

She was in good health and accustomed to relying on herself in any situation. She was twenty-six in the third year of the war, big- boned and with a broad, flat face. She had some contact with what was going on in the world through her brothers’ letters and through various meetings in the village. Like her neighbours, she put out a flag after every victory.

Her younger brother fell on the eastern front. Although he had been her favourite and was more good-natured than the older brother, she did not feel his death so much as that of her fiancé. She felt more as if his leave had been stopped indefinitely.

One rainy evening in the late summer of 1943 she was sorting potatoes and beets in the cellar and getting fodder ready for the next day.

She suddenly heard a slight, unaccustomed rustling in the reeds and then in the hedge. It seemed to her as if a shadow flitted by. The thought flashed into her mind that a person might think the house unoccupied, for there was no light burning, apart from the little oil lamp in the cellar. She called out, “Who’s there?”

There was no answer, so she climbed up through the trap door into the kitchen again, went through the little sitting room to the verandah and outside.

A strange young man stood on the little strip of ground between the lake and the house; as far as she could make out he was not badly dressed. She could not see his face clearly in the dusk. He asked quickly, “Does a Frau Schneider live here?” Marta answered, “Nobody of that name here, nor in the village either.” She looked more closely at the young man, then she asked, “How did you get here?” He answered, “By boat.” “How?” asked Marta peering through the gloom, for at the landing stage she saw that there was only one boat there. The stranger said, “Oh, I left the boat farther along the bank, I thought she might be living in the last village but one–Frau Schneider–and then I began asking my way.”

A motor cycle clattered along the road. He seized Marta’s hand, and said, “Don’t give me away if anyone comes asking for me.”

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Marta snatched her hand away, “So that’s it, you’ve been up to something.”

The motor cycle did not stop. The stranger took her hand again and said in a soft, urgent voice, “I’ve done nothing wrong. Just the opposite.”

They heard the rattle of a motor-boat on the lake. The man asked, “Do I look like someone bad?”

She tried again to see his face, as if a face had ever guaranteed a person’s honesty. She knew that, for she had lived alone long enough and had had to do with all sorts of people. But she thought she had never had anything to do with a face of this kind.

The motor-boat had passed by. “Why are they looking for you if you haven’t been up to anything?”

He went on quickly, in the same urgent tone, “They handed round something against the war where I work. And today they had it in for me.” “Well, but listen,” said Marta, “if there’s something in it you really ought to be locked up.”

The stranger went on talking, taking no notice of what she said. His voice was pleading and threatening at the same time. Maybe she hadn’t lost anyone in the war or waited for the news-­ “Fallen in battle.” They were now cowering side by side against the house wall. Marta said he ought certainly to be shut up for talking like that–if not in prison then in a madhouse. He asked whether they ought to wait till all the men had been killed. Well, he hadn’t waited–not him! And now they were after him. He asked, “Haven’t you any heart? Let me get behind the hedge. You don’t need to know anything about it.”

And when she hesitated a moment, he added, “Go on into the house! You haven’t seen me at all. You don’t know anything about me. Go on in, do!”

Marta turned away and went back into the house as if they had not spoken a word to each other and went on with her work.

That’s how it began. She got up a little earlier than usual to see whether he was still sitting behind the hedge. She rather hoped that he had made himself scarce. She would even have been prepared that first morning to persuade herself that nobody had ever been there. But there he was, crouched down in the same place. She went into the house without a word and came back with a hot drink. She watched him gulping it down and then choking on it and biting his hand to keep back the sound of coughing. He looked at her, and it was light enough to see his face clearly. He said nothing, but his lips moved a little and he looked her firmly in the eye. She said nothing,

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went back into the house as if there were no one crouching there, and got on with her work as usual.