Bis auf Weiteres

The long-forgotten novel by a former prisoner about his time in the Esterwegen concentration camp 1934-1936. Reprinted with commentary and expanding texts. "Someone will write it one day, Jakob. One of the anonymous crowd of those who got away ... The book of our time ... The memorial of the unknown moorland soldier ..." The author has a character in the novel say these words about KL Esterwegen, perhaps meaning himself. But the book, published in 1961 under the pseudonym Valentin Schwan, soon fell into oblivion and the author's identity remained a mystery. It was only in 2015 that the pseudonym was deciphered by chance: Hans-Otto Körbs - a prisoner in Esterwegen in 1935/36 - had written the text. The story of the novel is thus also the story of a rediscovery. In a matter-of-fact style, Schwan / Körbs has processed his memories of imprisonment in the form of a novel. He writes thoughtfully and profoundly about life in one of the early concentration camps in Germany: about the prisoners, the camp SS and the violence. Sebastian Weitkamp, co-director of the Esterwegen Memorial, has now commented on the text and republished it together with a very personal account by a descendant of Hans-Otto Körbs - the Swede Birger Schmitz.