Читать книгу If the War Goes On . . . - Герман Гессе - Страница 14

If the War Goes On Another Five Years

Early in 1918

In the autumn of 1925, the Official Journal, the one newspaper still published (weekly) in the Kingdom of Saxony, carried the following short article with the somewhat recondite headline:

A NEW KASPAR HAUSER

Near Ronneburg in Vogtland a puzzling and troubling discovery was recently made. Only the future can show whether it should be regarded as a mere curiosity or as a matter of more far-reaching interest.

In the course of the ‘elimination of citizens demonstrably unfit for public service’, a programme which in our district has been organised with exemplary efficiency and, allowing for inevitable hardships, humanely executed, the Ronneburg regional authorities have reported one of those all-too-frequent cases in which a private individual, despite his demonstrated inability to be of any further use whatsoever to the state and common weal, appreciably oversteps his allotted existence time, in the present instance by several months, it appears. A year before, the old-age control board had classified this private individual, one Philipp Gassner residing in a secluded country house outside one of the villages, as unemployable and, as usual in such cases, reminded him of his civic duty by progressive reduction of his rations. When his deadline expired, his demise had not been reported, nor had an appointment been made in his name with the regional chloroform centre. Thereupon the regional authorities sent Sergeant Kille to Gassner’s place of residence to convey a formal notification of his civic duty and inform him of the penalty for noncompliance.

Although this notification was communicated in the accepted forms and accompanied by the usual offer of free service, Gassner, a man of almost seventy, was thrown into a state of extraordinary agitation and obstinately refused to comply with the law. In vain the sergeant rebuked him for his unpatriotic attitude and tried to make him see how disheartening it was that an old man, grown grey in civic honours, should decline to make the sacrifice which all our hopeful young men were prepared to make at the front. When the sergeant pronounced him under arrest, Gassner went so far as to resist. The sergeant, who had already been struck by the physical strength of this man who had been put on diminishing rations, proceeded to search the house. And now comes the incredible part of the story: a young male was discovered in a second-floor room overlooking the garden. The old man had been hiding him for years!

This young man, aged twenty-six and brimming with health, turned out to be Alois Gassner, the house owner’s son. How the sly old man was able to elude the conscription authority and keep his son hidden for years remains to be clarified; the most likely hypothesis would seem to be a criminal falsification of the records. Much is explained, no doubt, by the secluded location of the house, by the father’s ample means, and by the existence of a carefully cultivated kitchen garden which provided them both with more than sufficient food.

What interests us here is not so much the unusual case of grave fraud and draft evasion, as a psychological anomaly which has come to light and is now being investigated by experts. The story is hardly believable, but the testimony at hand leaves no room for doubt!

The specialists all agree that Alois Gassner is mentally normal. In addition to his skill in reading, writing, and arithmetic, he is highly cultivated and, with the help of a well-stocked private library, has devoted himself to the study of philosophy. He has written a number of papers on epistemology and various aspects of the history of philosophy, not to mention poems and excursions in creative writing, all of which bear witness at the very least to clear thinking and a trained mind.

But there is a most unusual gap in this strange young man’s mental life – he knows nothing of the war! All these years he has lived outside of the world that surrounds us all! Just as officially he did not exist for the world, so our world and our times did not exist for him. He is probably the only adult in Europe who, though of perfectly sound mind, knows nothing whatever of his times, of the World War, of the events and upheavals of the last ten years!

We are tempted to compare this strange philosopher with Kaspar Hauser, that legendary figure whose early years were spent in a secluded twilight, removed from the world of men.

It will probably not take long to elucidate and pass judgement on the relatively simple case of Gassner Senior. He has committed a grave offense and will have to take the consequences. But, as to the guilt or complicity of the son, opinions vary widely. At present he is still under examination in a mental hospital. His only reaction to what little he has thus far learned about current events, the state, and his civic duties, has been childlike wonder tinged with fear. It is quite evident that he does not take the attempts to educate him in these matters very seriously; he seems to regard all references to the present-day world as fictions employed to test his mental condition. So far, questions and association tests based on common catchwords familiar to every child have elicited no response.

We learn, on the point of going to press, that the philosophical faculty of Leipzig University is now looking into the case. Gassner’s writings are to be examined. But, regardless of the positive or negative value of these writings, the faculty is most eager to make the acquaintance of the man himself and may decide to acquire him as the sole exemplar of an otherwise extinct species of man. This ‘pre-war man’ will be subjected to thorough investigation and perhaps preserved for science.