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The Kitchen Clock

The Kitchen Clock was a short story produced by Wolfgang Borchert, A German Post-War writer who is responsible for many various works such as The Man Outside. Borchert was a major contributor to the genre of post-war literature known as Trümmerliteratur(Rubble Literature). The Kitchen Clock is a short story that encompasses many aspects of the lives of German civilians during and after World War 2. There are many themes within the short story that echo the horrors for German citizens during the end of World War 2.

The story is centered around a nameless group of people who are sitting at a bus stop after the bombing of their city. An unnamed man recounts his feelings of home and how he’d lost everything in the bombings from the previous night.

The short story was created in 1947; due to the death of Borchert on November 20th, 1947, all of his works were released after his death. In his rather brief life, Borchert spent a lot of his time in military prison; this is thought of as the reason for his strong anti-war beliefs. Borchert wrote a lot of his personal experiences within the war.

The Life of Wolfgang Borchert

Wolfgang Borchert was born on may 20th 1921, in Hamburg Germany. In his life Borchert hated the Nazi Party, his mandatory time in the Hitler Youth program only contributed towards his hate of the party. He was eventually dismissed from Hitler Youth, whereupon he continued to resist the ideas of the Nazi Party by producing many stories letters and poems that are aimed at the resistance of state power. Eventually, the German authorities grew tired of his writings and the Gestapo arrested him in April of 1940. A few months later he was released and received no further charges against him. However, only a few months after his release he was drafted into the German Military in 1941 and was deployed to the Eastern Front. Once stationed on the front, Borchert developed several illnesses such as frostbite, jaundice, liver problems, and malnutrition. Through all of this Borchert was imprisoned again, for recurring acts of self-mutilation; whereas it is thought that Borchert cut off his own finger to get away from the rigors of his deployment. The actual account of Borchert’s trial in February of 1942, stated that he lost his finger in a hand to hand fight with a Russian soldier. Regardless, he was dropped of charges only to be charged again immediately for a different crime. This crime was in violation of the Nazi protocol known as Heimtückgesetz, which was a law enacted to limit the freedoms of speech for Germans, especially if they were speaking badly of the government or the Führer. He was then sentenced to 6 weeks of military imprisonment, then sent back to the Eastern Front.  During Borchert’s, sentences in military prison, he spent a lot of time writing about the awful climate of his country and how the minister of propaganda at the time, Joseph Goebbels, was ruining Germany. After many months at the front lines, he was medically discharged for malnutrition and hepatitis in 1943, once he recovered he successfully transferred into a theater troupe. However, after many brash parodies against minister Goebbels, in 1944 he was imprisoned yet again for nine months.

After the war, Borchert was able to write what he pleased, he continued to write letters against the process of war, he started to write poetry again, and he began writing plays and eventually creating The Kitchen Clock and his best-known piece “Outside the Door” (Draussen vor der Tür). Borchert lived a short but painful life of imprisonment and mistreatment, he eventually succumbed to his hepatitis on November 20th, 1947, exactly one day before his play Draussen vor der Tür was performed.

Synopsis

The story of the Kitchen Clock or Die Küchenuhr begins with a man approaching a group of people gathered somewhere in their recently destroyed city. The city was bombed the night prior by allied forces, and many of the citizens were left homeless and without families. The story begins with a description of the approaching man, “He had an old face, but from the way he walked one realized that he was only twenty”. From then the man sits down without introduction and begins to talk to the other people gathered on benches. The ‘old faced man’, carried with him an old clock, the clock was of no monetary value, but as the man continues with his conversation it is learned that the clock is of very special importance to him. The people gathered on benches ask the man if he’d lost everything, they don’t look at him but they understand his pain. A conversation carries on, they continue to talk about the broken clock; in his speaking, the man carried a guise of false happiness, speaking with optimism he talks about how the clock wasn’t stopped by a bomb blast, it stopped because that was when it had to. The people gathered start to question the sanity of the man, but they continue on with their conversations. The old faced man begins to recount why the time of the clock is so significant to him. The clock was stopped at 2:30(pm), which is the time that the man would come home from working all day. He states that every day that he came home at that same exact time, his mother would be up waiting for him to come home, he continued on by saying how she’d prepare food for him and would spend a few moments with him before he would have to go back to work the next day. This is the only information that is detailed about the man’s life. The old face man then utters, “Now, now I know that it was Paradise. Real Paradise”. The story ends a few lines later after the man tells of his loss of everything, however, the story’s final line ends with one of the other men recounting the word “Paradise” in his mind.

Analysis of Themes

The Kitchen Clock is a very brief short story, however, it contains some very strong and meaningful themes within it. Primarily to a Western reader the depiction of a person's life after an allied bombing is a vastly different and or hard to grasp, due to Allied depictions of World War 2 and the vilification of all Germans. Secondarily, this story creates a lot of ambiguity, there is not a great deal of backstory to the characters, in fact, there aren’t any names or origins to the characters. This ambiguity of the characters allows for a central focus towards the meaning of the story.

There are a few themes in this story that reflect back to the life of Borchert. The idea of the helpless citizen plays a big role in this story; throughout Borchert’s life he had always been in the position of this helpless citizen, being thrown into danger by the policies of their government. Borchert always rebelled against the plans of his country, the themes of losing everything were very real to him. Borchert knew the costs of war, his home in Hamburg was destroyed in an allied bombing; helpless to do anything, and not even wanting to fight for his country, it’s easy to see how this is reflected in the story. There is also a central theme of irony within this story, how the only positive parts of his life relate to that clock. This echoes to the hardships that Borchert experienced within his life, he was imprisoned multiple times, forced to fight a war he did not support, and being neglected by his own country. The sorrow felt within Borchert’s life is very evident in this and many of his other texts.

In the final lines of the story, there is a talk of the word “Paradise”. The term is initially used by the old faced man when he is telling the group about his past. When the old faced man talks about knowing real paradise, he is referring to the only moments of his past that were happy or decent. The clock being stuck on 2:30 is a marker for the man to remember a point in his life that gave him some sort of happiness. Now that his home was lost and his family gone, he has a physical piece to remember from his past. The term paradise in this story signifies a time that is now gone, a time that was better than the current. That is the reason for the other man in the group's thoughts on the word paradise, he doesn't have an item to remember a happier time with like the old faced man.

Sources

-Borchert, Wolfgang. The Kitchen Clock. Hamburg: Borchert, 1947. Print.

-Wolf, Rudolf. 1984. Wolfgang Borchert. Werk und Wirkung.Bouvier Verlag. Bonn.

-Gumtau, Helmut. 1969. Wolfgang Borchert. Colloquium Verlag. Berlin.

-Burgess, Gordon J. A. The Life and Works of Wolfgang Borchert. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2003. Print.

-"Wolfgang Borchert." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, 24 Oct. 2016. Web. 11 Dec. 2016.

-Borchert, Wolfgang, and Heinrich Böll. Draußen Vor Der Tür: Und Ausgewählte Erzählungen. Reinbek Bei Hamburg: Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verl., 2007. Print.