Bukolisches Tagebuch

Between 1927 and 1932, during the time of the Great Depression and the rise of National Socialism, Wilhelm Lehmann retreated to the barren Schwansen landscape in north-eastern Schleswig-Holstein to wander, smell, taste, see, feel. Full of awe and poetry, yet always precise in their observations, his records of this experience of the natural beauty, whose language is trained on British rather than German authors, more reminiscent of Wordsworth than Hölderlin. Their chronology follows the cycle of the seasons, their subject matter the miracle of becoming, maturing and passing away, revealed as much in the melody of the wren as in the barking of the dog. A caterpillar shortly before its pupation seems just as worthy of wonder and report to this observation as greying thistles, a newborn lamb, the calm of a summer's day. Thus the Bucolic Diary evokes a life close to nature that does not waste the gifts it uses, but spares them. Awarded the Kleist Prize by Döblin in 1923 together with Musil, Lehmann is today one of the unknown classics of German literature.