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Jaroslav Rudiš: Winterbergs letzte Reise (Winterberg’s Last Journey)

Winterberg is a ninety-nine year old man. He was a Sudeten German. This was the part of what was then Czechoslovakia occupied by German speakers and which Hitler occupied to “protect” these German speakers. After the war, the Germans, Winterberg included, were driven out. Winterberg ended up in Berlin where he worked as a tram driver. He now lives with his daughter, Silke, who has to travel for work(she is a lawyer) so she hires a carer to look after him, Herr Kraus. Winterberg had been married three times but all his wives are now dead. Kraus seems to be belong to an informal network of carers who take on the role of looking after the very elderly and infirm during what he calls their crossing, i.e. till they die. The idea of crossing evokes Charon ferrying the dead over the River Styx. We will later learn that Kraus is from Vimperk, whose old German name was Winterberg.

When Kraus first meets Winterberg, he is fairly certain that the crossing will be fairly short as Winterberg seems to be almost catatonic. However when he shows him pictures in his (i.e. Kraus’s) large Duden dictionary, Winterberg initially does not react but when he sees a picture of funeral, he cries out Feuerhalle ! Feuerhalle is the German for crematorium and it turns out that his father ran one. He soon recognises other things – a grave, a locomotive and a railway station (he is very keen on railways). Soon he is jabbering away.

Once Winterberg has recovered, Kraus finds a new man. He notices various maps on the walls and they all seem to be famous German battles. Winterberg suddenly decides that he has to go and visit these various battlefields to find his ancestors and to find Lenka Morgenstern, the first woman in the Moon as he calls her, a reference to the film Woman in the Moon they saw together. He claims tha Lenka is the only woman he ever really loved. Lenka is dead, apparently murdered so he wants to find the murderer as well as traces of Lenka. Obviously it turns out to be more complicated.

Their journey takes them to places that modern Germans would not recognise by name as their German names have now been replaced by Slavonic ones. His guide is a 1913 Baedeker Guide to Austro-Hungary, the last edition of Baedeker to cover that soon-to-disappear country. During the book he continues to read excerpts from the book to Kraus and, as they are in a train or, at times, in a restaurant, when he does his reading out aloud, to anyone who is nearby. Mad Germans, comments one person. In this way we learn a lot about the history, geography, culture, where to eat and drink and other aspects of Austro-Hungary of the era, though Winterberg thinks much of it still applies. When he is reading, on several occasions, he will suddenly stop and fall asleep.

Their first stop is Königgrätz which is no longer Königgrätz but Hradec Králové, site of a famous battle, where the Prussians beat the Austrians in 1866. It is a dismal place. The station has been more or less abandoned and no-one else gets off there. It is not helped by being November so it is cold and miserable. Winterberg enjoys it. Kraus does not, wanting only food and alcohol.

Winterberg claims to have lost two ancestors in the battle, one on either side. He also claims he lost his wives because of the battle, without giving any further explanation. A local, Josefa, takes them around the site on her tractor and tells them farmers still find human remains and, of course they see the odd ghost. Winterberg is in his element, enjoying the monuments and sights. Kraus is miserable. Winterberg keeps referring to the mysterious Lenka, the only woman he ever really loved and getting close to his ancestors will help him find her murderer.

We follow their journey round Central Europe, mainly to places most of us will not have heard of with Winterberg giving us a running commentary on the history fo the region, railway history, his life and a whole host of comments on a wide range of topics, while Kraus dreams of Carla, the only woman he ever loved, getting more alcohol and ending this job and perhaps going off to the United States.

Nobody knows about this journey – they just sneaked off. Kraus suggests that Silke, his daughter, may be concerned but he seems indifferent to this. She, however, knows her father and where he might go.

One character, who we never meet but do hear about is an unnamed Englishman. Winterberg had met him sometime before. It seems he was a aircraft navigator and flown many missions over Central Europe. He used the phrase the beautiful landscape of battlefields and cemeteries and ruins. and Winterberg will quote this phrase many times during the course of the book. He will add his own comment : This sentence which is not a sentence is our homeland.

Indeed the image of death and destruction is key to this book. The word corpse is frequently used but not just on its own but the type of corpse, according to how and/or when the person died . We have numerous examples: war corpses, train corpses, tram corpses, defenestration corpses,water corpses, arson corpses, noose corpses, winter corpses and many more. They also visit cemeteries and even the crypts of the Emperors in Vienna and see the bloodied uniform of Franz Ferdinand in a museum in Vienna. Moreover Kraus frequently talks about the people he has helped cross.

Winterberg and an initially reluctant but later more enthusiastic Kraus continue to travel around Central Europe looking for Lenka, looking for history and, of course, trying to determine who they are.

For people from the English-speaking world the concept of Central Europe is somewhat vague and, apart from major cities such as Prague, Budapest, Vienna and Sarajevo, irrelatively unknown. Shakespeare famously got the geography wrong. This recent article discusses what and where Central Europe is and its complexities. It is not straightforward.

I thought this a splendid book. I learned a whole lot more about Central Europe, its history, geography and culture while, at the same time, Rudiš tells an excellent story of two curmudgeonly old men looking for their past and trying o find out who they really are.

Publishing history

First published in 2019 by Luchterhand
First published in English in 2024 by Jancar
Translated by Kris Best