Not only does the Bible tell of the exodus and exile. Stories of flight and displacement exist in many languages, cultures and religions. People all over the world have had the experience of losing their home.
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The 20th century with the two world wars marks a sad climax in this narrative of violence and suffering. 60 million refugees were counted in Europe alone after the Second World War.
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Escape in diaries, poems, novels
Our present adds another chapter to the drama of forced exile. The historian Andreas Kossert tells the global story of a sad continuum from the perspective of those affected. He relies on diaries, letters and autobiographies. But he also includes quotes from novels and poems, especially from authors who themselves have relevant biographical experience. That is unusual for a historian. Kossert knows that. He sees himself as a border crosser between the disciplines.
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Literature is like a seismograph to describe the spaces in between, which empirically I can’t quite get into. For me, one of the best examples is when Christa Wolf describes homesickness as the cause of death. You won’t find that in any medical textbook. And yet one can die of homesickness.
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Kossert focuses on Europe and the Middle East. But he also looks to India and Pakistan, Vietnam and Guatemala. The Second World War and its consequences are central to him, which is not surprising, but the longest researched Kossert researched about the time that produced more uprooted people than any other.
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From an individual point of view
He consciously bundles the wealth of voices that he has collected, not into ethnic or social groups. His focus is radically on the individual. In the process, Kossert also moves historically and geographically widely spaced locations directly next to one another. He wants and is able to show that the sad experiences people have had and the tasks they were faced with are always similar.
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The contexts and causes change frequently, but there are always the same experiences of forced loss of home, the uncertainty of the path. What does arriving mean? When will i arrive? And how will my life go on after that? And how do I ultimately endure this tension between mourning the loss and arriving in a new life?
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Some never arrive
Flight often does not end with physical arrival in another country. Some of those who were able to save themselves are condemned to a lifelong camp life and remain shielded from the world in a kind of eternal waiting room. Others often encounter tough hostility. As a faceless crowd, people who have lost everything and are marked by what they have experienced radiate something threatening and are made responsible for all imaginable evils.
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But Kossert also shows how the newcomers challenge the locals: “It was never about reducing the displaced to a pure, passive victim role. That would not suit them at all. Despite everything, they are primarily supplicants in the beginning. They are those who knock on the knock in a majority society and ask for admission. But when they have arrived and ultimately stay there, they change societies. They break up encrusted structures, they question old braids and old hierarchies. ”
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Kossert complains that host societies repeatedly lack the imagination for the suffering of the uprooted, but he also shows that behind it there can be unacknowledged fear of loss. “You have to have a home in order not to need it,” he quotes the Austrian author Jean Amery, who knew very well what he was talking about. Kossert’s sensitive book is a great plea for empathy and humanity.
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The book
Andreas Kossert: “Escape. A human story”
432 pages, 25 euros
ISBN: 978-3-8275-0091-5
Siedler Verlag
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