''The Train Was on Time'' () is a novella by German author

Heinrich Böll Heinrich Theodor Böll (; ; 21 December 1917 – 16 July 1985) was a German writer. Considered one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers, Böll received the Georg Büchner Prize (1967) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1972). Bio ...

. It was published by Friedrich Middelhauve Verlag in Cologne in 1949. The book is about a German soldier, Andreas, taking a train to

Przemyśl Przemyśl () is a city in southeastern Poland with 56,466 inhabitants, as of December 2023. Data for territorial unit 1862000. In 1999, it became part of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship, Subcarpathian Voivodeship. It was previously the capital of Prz ...

in Poland. It was translated into English by

Leila Vennewitz Leila Vennewitz (19128 August 2007) was a Canadian-English translator of German literature. She was born Leila Croot in Hampshire, England and grew up in Portsmouth. Her brother was the surgeon Sir John Croot. She studied at the Sorbonne in Pari ...

. The story addresses the experience of German soldiers during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

on the Eastern Front, where fighting was particularly vicious and unforgiving. Böll had explored the same issue in '' A Soldier's Legacy'', which was written in 1948 but published later. ''The Train Was on Time'' was his first published novel.

Theodore Ziolkowski Theodore Ziolkowski (September 30, 1932 – December 5, 2020) was a scholar in the fields of German studies and comparative literature. He coined the term " fifth gospel genre". Early life Theodore J. Ziolkowski was born on September 30, 1932, i ...

called it "an artistic ''tour de force''. __TOC__

Synopsis

"Why don't you get on?" a chaplain asked him when the train arrived. "Get on?" asked the soldier, amazed. "Why, I might want to hurl myself under the wheels, I might want to desert ... eh? What's the hurry? I might go crazy, I've a perfect right to, I've a perfect right to go crazy. I don't want to die, that's what's so horrible—that I don't want to die." On his way to the war front, he meets two other Germans with whom he starts a dialogue and a short-term friendship. He also meets Olina, a Polish prostitute, who has been working for guerrillas but who has become disillusioned with such activity, seeing it as begetting yet further cycles of violence and aggression rather than leading to a proper way out of the bellicosity of the situation. During their trip we learn much about horrors soldiers endure in the war, and the effect it leaves on a person. Andreas has a particularly passive (some might say stoic) attitude to his involvement in the conflict, and the inevitability of death (and the question of fate) hangs over the narrative in a tragic fashion. It is arguable that the only real choices in the novel, presented in its opening gambits, involve the place and manner of Andreas's death in the war, rather than the possibility of its evasion. This tragic fate seems to be circumvented to some extent when Andreas meets Olina and she plans an escape to the

Carpathian Mountains The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians () are a range of mountains forming an arc across Central Europe and Southeast Europe. Roughly long, it is the third-longest European mountain range after the Ural Mountains, Urals at and the Scandinav ...

, but the eventual fate cannot (it appears) be overlooked. In this sense, connections can be made between the work and the structure of ancient Greek tragedies such as the story of

Oedipus Oedipus (, ; "swollen foot") was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. A tragic hero in Greek mythology, Oedipus fulfilled a prophecy that he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother, thereby bringing disaster to his city and family. ...

; as with Oedipus, actions taken in an effort to avert the foreordained fate only bring it about. In this short novel Böll attempted to follow the development of battle-induced

posttraumatic stress disorder Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder that develops from experiencing a Psychological trauma, traumatic event, such as sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, warfare and its associated traumas, natural disaster ...

. There is also a religious dimension to the novel, given Andreas's friendship with a priest called Paul. Just before the fateful ending, Andreas muses "O God, my time has passed and what have I done with it? I have never done anything worth doing. I must pray, pray for all." The book was translated into English by

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Train Was on Time, The 1949 German novels Novels by Heinrich Böll Novels set on trains Novels set during World War II

Synopsis

See also

References