This composition requires stable nerves. “Best regards, Bruno – Letters from Stalingrad” is a work by the German-American composer Ralf Yusuf Gawlick, which will be performed in Germany for the first time this Tuesday. Gawlick wanted the location to be the former Nazi Party Rally Grounds in Nuremberg. The pandemic initially prevented the planned premiere in the documentation center, because it is currently being renovated, it will now take place two years later in the large music hall of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra in the congress hall.
Gawlick, a college professor in Boston, dedicated his work to the memory of his uncle Bruno. His family came from near Tilsit. In 1942, at the age of 18, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht. He wrote letters from the front near Stalingrad, and shortly thereafter all traces of him were lost. In December 1942 Bruno Gawlick was reported missing, he was probably only 19 years old. His name can be found in one of the many granite cubes at the memorial near Stalingrad.
Ralf Yusuf Gawlick didn’t know anything about his uncle’s fate for a long time.
(Photo: Lee Pellegrini)
Ralf Yusuf Gawlick didn’t know anything about his fate for a long time. Only a conversation with his aunt, who had memorized a missing letter from the 19-year-old, and a found handwritten letter drew his attention to it. The missing 19-year-old “is the great grief of the family,” says Astrid Betz from the documentation center, which oversees the project. In his sound collage, Gawlick now combines his uncle’s letters with contemporary audio documents – including Hitler’s speech in the Löwenbräukeller from November 1942, presented in a disturbing conversational tone and in front of a laughing audience (“I wanted to come to the Volga, at a certain place, in a certain city. Coincidentally, it bears the name of Stalin himself, but don’t think that’s why I marched there”).
Also incorporated is a switch to several war fronts in Europe, you can hear German soldiers in France, Africa and Stalingrad singing together on December 24, 1942 “Sleep in Heavenly Rest”. It is not clear whether Bruno Gawlick lived to see this day. The end of the composition is at least as oppressive. The spoken text of one of Bruno’s letters can be heard: “We have nothing to eat, just frozen horsemeat without salt. I found a bone on a dung heap that still had some meat on it. You wouldn’t believe how delicious it was .” The lines are contrasted with an alienated hate and victim speech by Göring and the Adagio from Anton Bruckner’s 7th symphony. Hitler had decreed that it be played on Reichsrundfunk after his death was announced.
Magnus Brechtken, deputy director of the Institute for Contemporary History, will classify the work historically. There are still tickets.