Wolfgang Borchert (May 20, 1921 – 1947) was a German author and playwright whose work was affected by his experience of dictatorship and his service in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War.
After struggling to avoid enlisting in the Hitler Jugend, being arrested in 1940 by Gestapo, conscribed into the army and stationed at the Eastern front, Borchert caught hepatitis from an untreated wound. His superiors accused him of self-mutilation to avoid further combat, arrested him and placed him in isolation. Soon he was returned to the front ‘to prove himself’ - but while there he suffered frost bite and was, finally granted medical leave…
The young actor and playwright was relatively undeterred and while on medical leave gave a scathing parody of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in a Hamburg theater - which landed him a nine month stint in military jail and restationing at the front, this time in France. When his unit surrendered to the Allies in 1945, Borchert escaped en route to the POW camp and walked to his home in Hamburg.
He never regained his health after the war, and his doctors gave him only a year to live. He continued writing at a furious pace, producing his manifesto against war Dann gibt es nur eins! (Then there is only one thing to do!) shortly before his death in a hepatitic sanatorium in Schwitzerland…
