{"id":18899,"date":"2026-10-22T15:12:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T15:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alst.org\/?p=18899"},"modified":"2026-10-22T15:39:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T15:39:55","slug":"narren-in-christo-jehovahs-witnesses-literary-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alst.org\/en\/news\/narren-in-christo-jehovahs-witnesses-literary-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cNarren in Christo\u201d \u2013 Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses from a literary perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Close-up
\u201cNarren in Christo\u201d examines Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in the literary discourse of remembrance of survivors of National Socialism.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When Bruno Apitz published his Buchenwald novel \u201cNackt unter W\u00f6lfen\u201d in 1958 \u2013 the first worldwide bestseller from the GDR \u2013 he also mentioned the Bible Students (Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses) on the first page in a list of prisoner groups. This was historically accurate, as there were around 800 Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in Buchenwald concentration camp. Yet in the next 400 pages of the novel, the prisoners with the purple triangle seem to play no further role. Or do they? Did Apitz include Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses among his Buchenwald characters without identifying them as such? If so, were there political reasons for this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nathan Schmidtchen explored these and other intriguing questions in his dissertation \u201cNarren in Christo\u201d, published in 2022. While historians have now adequately examined, and thus also recognised, the significance of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses during the National Socialist era, a literary or cultural studies perspective had been lacking. Schmidtchen\u2019s work has now changed this. The first literary study to address the role of Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in narrative texts about National Socialism is now available. It examines Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in the literary discourse of remembrance of authors who experienced and survived this era, focusing particularly on their narrative prose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to Bruno Apitz\u2019s Buchenwald novel, the author closely examines works by Wolfgang Langhoff (Die Moorsoldaten, 1935), Robert Antelme (L\u2019esp\u00e8ce humaine, 1947), Hans Werner Richter (Sie fielen aus Gottes Hand, 1951), Max von der Gr\u00fcn (Zwei Briefe an Pospischiel, 1968) and Jorge Sempr\u00f9n (Quel beau dimanche!, 1980). And he reaches surprising conclusions: \u201cJehovah\u2019s Witnesses fascinate, unsettle and disturb. As saints, prophets, martyrs and scapegoats, they follow in the footsteps of the Son of God. Connections also emerge with the figure of the Christian fool: not of this world, the world of National Socialist terror, yet at the same time bearing witness within it and against it,\u201d according to the book\u2019s back-cover text. An important contribution that has so far received too little attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

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\"Cover
Book cover: Nathan Schmidtchen, \u201cNarren in Christo\u201d, J. B. Metzler, 2022.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Book details<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Title:<\/strong> \u201cNarren in Christo\u201d. Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in the literary discourse of remembrance of survivors of National Socialism
Author:<\/strong> Nathan Schmidtchen
Publisher:<\/strong> J. B. Metzler
Publication date:<\/strong> 2022
Length:<\/strong> 474 pages
ISBN:<\/strong> 978-3-662-65921-2
Price:<\/strong> 119.99 euros (89.99 as an e-book)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy the book from Springer Nature (German edition)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

This article was translated from the German original using artificial intelligence (AI).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Bruno Apitz published his Buchenwald novel \u201cNackt unter W\u00f6lfen\u201d in 1958 \u2013 the first worldwide bestseller from the GDR \u2013 he also mentioned the Bible Students (Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses) on the first page in a list of prisoner groups. This was historically accurate, as there were around 800 Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses in Buchenwald concentration camp. Yet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18902,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,102,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-presentations","category-books","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alst.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alst.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alst.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alst.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alst.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18899"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/alst.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18929,"href":"https:\/\/alst.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18899\/revisions\/18929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alst.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alst.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alst.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alst.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}