Lyrik als Lebensbegleitung (English shop)

Gesammelte Werke, Band 2

Preview

Table of Contents, PDF (93 KB)
Extract, PDF (120 KB)

Still I will not become!
I do not believe
in a Creator who promises rest
to questioning souls.
I believe in God,
in one, the Lord,
and this is my need:
That I weep and rage
and stand breathless
and between the paths
look up to the night sky,
that my blood throbs into my temples,
that a pain cutting from my heart compels me.
Still I will not become!
Let relief be far off!
I trust and labour for the one and only Lord,
and if my soul breaks apart in resonance,
let my life bleed out into wave and light.
In eternity let there never come to rest
what streamed and burned within me on earth.

“Dr. phil. Anneliese Dornseif was born on 21 October 1922 in Radevormwald, the daughter of the manufacturer Fritz Dornseif and his wife Ida, née Buschhaus.
On her mother’s side she was descended from the family of Pastor Theodor Crome of the Evangelical Lutheran (Old Lutheran) Martini congregation in Radevormwald (today SELK). Her great-grandfather’s resolute adherence to the Lutheran confession – against the state-imposed church union in Prussia – remained a formative influence on her parental home and on Anneliese herself throughout her life. Her attachment to the church and to the biblical truth on which it is founded was among the indispensable guiding principles of her life, as is evident, for instance, in the choice of the topic of her dissertation on Protestant hymns, which led her from her main subject of German studies across into the field of theology. Her father was a self-made man, the socially minded founder of a saw factory in Radevormwald, which formed the basis for the later secure economic existence of his only daughter. Her youth and student years were overshadowed by the bitter experiences of the Nazi dictatorship, the bombing war and her own serious illness, which she later had to work through in literary form.
Like many members of her generation, she was denied the personal happiness of marriage and family. All the more strongly did she develop her sense of family, her attachment to a widely dispersed kinship and to family history. Her large apartment in Wuppertal, filled with numerous family mementos and vast quantities of books, always stood open to guests and to intense conversation about God and the world – all the more so the more she was confined in old age, for reasons of health, to the sphere of her own home.
Her working life she had devoted with great dedication to her profession as Oberstudienrätin at the Else-Lasker-Schüler-Gymnasium in Wuppertal, which she pursued with far more commitment than would have been necessary for mere gainful employment, and for which she not infrequently – and at times, no doubt, not unwillingly – set other activities aside.
In accordance with her wishes, her literary work may not be published until after her death on 10 February 2014. Her family thanks the Evangelical Lutheran Martini congregation in Radevormwald and its pastor Johannes Dress, which has undertaken the publication of these posthumous writings, and especially Mrs Elisabeth Nickisch, who carried out the proofreading with great diligence.
The present second volume contains poems as well as interpretations by the author. The first volume, published simultaneously, bears the title ‘Still will ich nicht werden’ and contains the author’s memoirs and formative influences. May she gain among her readers a remembrance such as her family preserves for her in grateful memory.”

Göttingen, November 2015
Dr. jur. Dietmar Buschhaus