Mars in Aries (novel)
Encyclopedia
Mars in Aries is the most widely known novel by the Austrian writer Alexander Lernet-Holenia
. It was written during the winter of 1939/1940 under the impression of the author's combat experience during the invasion of Poland by the German Wehrmacht
at the start of World War II
. The novel draws its disturbing quality from an intimate interlacing of precisely described authentic combat episodes with a concept of a pervasive Otherworld
that merges with our reality in a way that makes it difficult to determine whether one has already transgressed its borders. It stands in the tradition of the early 20th-century Austrian psychological novel
genre of which Schnitzler's Dream Story
and Perutz' The Master of the Day of Judgement are other famous examples.
veteran and lieutenant of the reserve
, readies himself for a four-week military exercise
which is scheduled to start on August 15, 1939 he experiences the first of several derealization
episodes. Later, during an idle evening spent in talk with his fellow officers, as the discussion touches on the topic of spiritism
, his regimental commander half-jokingly promises Wallmoden that whenever they meet he would indicate whether he is still alive or already dead because that might not be immediately apparent to a living person. During a training attack near the village of Würmla
Wallmoden has an apparition
of naked ghosts swirling around him. He keeps this vision to himself until much later when he reports it to a military physician, who tells him that there is nothing necessarily wrong with him, as hallucinations in the sane
are not uncommon as most people believe.
While spending an off-duty evening in Vienna
Wallmoden socially meets people who, as it eventually turns out, are not quite what they seem and might in fact be members of the Austrian resistance
. Among them is a strange aristocratic lady, Baroness Pistohlkors who states that she is German by birth but lived in Sioux Falls
as a child before coming to Austria. The two start an affair. Wallmoden promises to meet her again on September 16, the day his tour of military duty is over.
Later, returning from another visit to Vienna, Wallmoden finds that his unit has been mobilized for war. Motorized night marches take them through Jedenspeigen
(where Walmoden has a lucid dream of two young women bathing in the room he is sleeping in) and across Slovakia
(at this time, a Nazi puppet state
) to Trstená
at the Slovak-Polish border. As the regiment prepares to attack Jabłonka at first morning light he witnesses an eastward migration of thousands of crabs, a phenomenon apparently not perceived or ignored by his comrades – and clearly a symbol for the German war machine.
As Wallmoden's regiment approaches Hrubieszów
by way of Tarnów
on September 16, the invaders face the first serious Polish resistance. A fellow officer who had supposedly visited Baroness Pistohlkors in Vienna admits that he had deceived Wallmoden when he had conveyed her greetings to him earlier; actually his beloved died resisting apprehension by the Gestapo
. On a country road he meets his regimental commander who—in keeping with his promise—had stated on all earlier occasions that he was "still in the flesh" but now almost proudly announces that "his status has changed." When the junior officer remarks that such a joke is in bad taste given the considerable number of recent casualties, the colonel angrily orders Wallmoden to stand aside near a group of trees. As Wallmoden complies he sees the corpse of his regimental commander being carried away.
Before he can come to terms with the fact that he has talked to a ghost a minute ago, Polish aircraft appear and drop bombs on the grove Wallmoden had been ordered to by his dead commander. As he is hurled through the air by one of the explosions he briefly enters a dreamlike state from which he (apparently at least) awakes to find himself being transported in an ambulance car, although he does not seem to have suffered injuries.
In Janówka their car brakes down and Wallmoden strays into a villa where he meets a woman whom he recognizes as his beloved although there is no outward resemblance. After they have made love she identifies herself as the true baroness Pistohlkors who had become a victim of identity theft
after her passport had been stolen. As the two make their way back towards Germany the story terminates, without explicit ending, as they pass Niwiska
. It is not clear whether the two continue on the factual plane of the story as living beings, or rather have rejoined in the Otherworld.
illustrated ladies' magazine Die Dame first published the novel as a serial
under the provisional title Die Blaue Stunde (The Blue Hour) in 1941 while the book version, with the definitive title Mars im Widder, was produced by the S. Fischer Verlag
. However the Nazi Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
frowned upon the story (which lacks all celebration of “Germanic heroism” in spite of its extensive illustrations of the total Polish defeat, and hints at anti-Nazi resistance) and refused the publishing permit. The 15,000 copies of the book were put in storage in Leipzig
, where they were destroyed during the Allied air raids of 1943 and 1944. The novel was later reprinted from proofs which the author had preserved throughout the war, with the first distributed German edition dating from 1947.
An English translation was published in July 2003.
Alexander Lernet-Holenia
Alexander Lernet-Holenia was an Austrian poet, novelist, dramaturgist and writer of screenplays and historical studies who produced a heterogeneous literary opus that included poesy, psychological novels describing the intrusion of otherworldly or unreal experiences into reality, and recreational...
. It was written during the winter of 1939/1940 under the impression of the author's combat experience during the invasion of Poland by the German Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
at the start of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The novel draws its disturbing quality from an intimate interlacing of precisely described authentic combat episodes with a concept of a pervasive Otherworld
Otherworld
Otherworld, or the Celtic Otherworld, is a concept in Celtic mythology that refers to the home of the deities or spirits, or a realm of the dead.Otherworld may also refer to:In film and television:...
that merges with our reality in a way that makes it difficult to determine whether one has already transgressed its borders. It stands in the tradition of the early 20th-century Austrian psychological novel
Psychological novel
A psychological novel, also called psychological realism, is a work of prose fiction which places more than the usual amount of emphasis on interior characterization, and on the motives, circumstances, and internal action which springs from, and develops, external action...
genre of which Schnitzler's Dream Story
Dream Story
Rhapsody: A Dream Novel, also known as Dream Story, is a 1926 novella by the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler. It details the thoughts and psychological transformations of Doctor Fridolin over a two-day period. In this short time, he meets many people who give a clue to the world Schnitzler is...
and Perutz' The Master of the Day of Judgement are other famous examples.
Plot summary
As Count Wallmoden, an Austrian World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
veteran and lieutenant of the reserve
Military reserve
A military reserve, tactical reserve, or strategic reserve is a group of military personnel or units which are initially not committed to a battle by their commander so that they are available to address unforeseen situations or exploit suddenly developing...
, readies himself for a four-week military exercise
Military exercise
A military exercise is the employment of military resources in training for military operations, either exploring the effects of warfare or testing strategies without actual combat...
which is scheduled to start on August 15, 1939 he experiences the first of several derealization
Derealization
Derealization is an alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems unreal. Other symptoms include feeling as though one's environment is lacking in spontaneity, emotional coloring and depth. It is a dissociative symptom of many conditions, such as psychiatric and...
episodes. Later, during an idle evening spent in talk with his fellow officers, as the discussion touches on the topic of spiritism
Spiritism
Spiritism is a loose corpus of religious faiths having in common the general belief in the survival of a spirit after death. In a stricter sense, it is the religion, beliefs and practices of the people affiliated to the International Spiritist Union, based on the works of Allan Kardec and others...
, his regimental commander half-jokingly promises Wallmoden that whenever they meet he would indicate whether he is still alive or already dead because that might not be immediately apparent to a living person. During a training attack near the village of Würmla
Würmla
Würmla is a municipality in the district of Tulln in Lower Austria, Austria....
Wallmoden has an apparition
Apparitional experience
In psychology and parapsychology, an apparitional experience is an anomalous, quasi-perceptual experience.It is characterized by the apparent perception of either a living being or an inanimate object without there being any material stimulus for such a perception...
of naked ghosts swirling around him. He keeps this vision to himself until much later when he reports it to a military physician, who tells him that there is nothing necessarily wrong with him, as hallucinations in the sane
Hallucinations in the sane
A hallucination may occur in a person in a state of good mental and physical health, even in the apparent absence of a transient trigger factor such as fatigue, intoxication or sensory deprivation....
are not uncommon as most people believe.
While spending an off-duty evening in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
Wallmoden socially meets people who, as it eventually turns out, are not quite what they seem and might in fact be members of the Austrian resistance
Austrian resistance
The Austrian resistance to the Nazi rule that started with the Anschluss in 1938 had a prehistory of socialist and communist activism against the era of Austrofascism from 1934. These activists, limited primarily to adherents of the political far left, operated in isolation from the Austrian...
. Among them is a strange aristocratic lady, Baroness Pistohlkors who states that she is German by birth but lived in Sioux Falls
Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Sioux Falls is the largest city in the U.S. state of South Dakota. Sioux Falls is the county seat of Minnehaha County, and also extends into Lincoln County to the south...
as a child before coming to Austria. The two start an affair. Wallmoden promises to meet her again on September 16, the day his tour of military duty is over.
Later, returning from another visit to Vienna, Wallmoden finds that his unit has been mobilized for war. Motorized night marches take them through Jedenspeigen
Jedenspeigen
Jedenspeigen is a town in the district of Gänserndorf in the Austrian state of Lower Austria....
(where Walmoden has a lucid dream of two young women bathing in the room he is sleeping in) and across Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
(at this time, a Nazi puppet state
Puppet state
A puppet state is a nominal sovereign of a state who is de facto controlled by a foreign power. The term refers to a government controlled by the government of another country like a puppeteer controls the strings of a marionette...
) to Trstená
Trstená
Trstená is a city in Tvrdošín District, Žilina Region, central Slovakia....
at the Slovak-Polish border. As the regiment prepares to attack Jabłonka at first morning light he witnesses an eastward migration of thousands of crabs, a phenomenon apparently not perceived or ignored by his comrades – and clearly a symbol for the German war machine.
As Wallmoden's regiment approaches Hrubieszów
Hrubieszów
Hrubieszów is a town in southeastern Poland, with a population of 18,661 . It is the capital of Hrubieszów County. Since 1999 Hrubieszów has been part of Lublin Voivodeship . Earlier, 1975–98, it had been part of Zamość Province...
by way of Tarnów
Tarnów
Tarnów is a city in southeastern Poland with 115,341 inhabitants as of June 2009. The city has been situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship since 1999, but from 1975 to 1998 it was the capital of the Tarnów Voivodeship. It is a major rail junction, located on the strategic east-west connection...
on September 16, the invaders face the first serious Polish resistance. A fellow officer who had supposedly visited Baroness Pistohlkors in Vienna admits that he had deceived Wallmoden when he had conveyed her greetings to him earlier; actually his beloved died resisting apprehension by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
. On a country road he meets his regimental commander who—in keeping with his promise—had stated on all earlier occasions that he was "still in the flesh" but now almost proudly announces that "his status has changed." When the junior officer remarks that such a joke is in bad taste given the considerable number of recent casualties, the colonel angrily orders Wallmoden to stand aside near a group of trees. As Wallmoden complies he sees the corpse of his regimental commander being carried away.
Before he can come to terms with the fact that he has talked to a ghost a minute ago, Polish aircraft appear and drop bombs on the grove Wallmoden had been ordered to by his dead commander. As he is hurled through the air by one of the explosions he briefly enters a dreamlike state from which he (apparently at least) awakes to find himself being transported in an ambulance car, although he does not seem to have suffered injuries.
In Janówka their car brakes down and Wallmoden strays into a villa where he meets a woman whom he recognizes as his beloved although there is no outward resemblance. After they have made love she identifies herself as the true baroness Pistohlkors who had become a victim of identity theft
Identity theft
Identity theft is a form of stealing another person's identity in which someone pretends to be someone else by assuming that person's identity, typically in order to access resources or obtain credit and other benefits in that person's name...
after her passport had been stolen. As the two make their way back towards Germany the story terminates, without explicit ending, as they pass Niwiska
Niwiska, Subcarpathian Voivodeship
Niwiska is a village and the seat of the rural gmina of Gmina Niwiska in Kolbuszowa County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland. It lies approximately west of Kolbuszowa and north-west of the regional capital Rzeszów.-Beginnings of the village:The village was founded in 1575 by...
. It is not clear whether the two continue on the factual plane of the story as living beings, or rather have rejoined in the Otherworld.
Publishing history
The BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
illustrated ladies' magazine Die Dame first published the novel as a serial
Serial (literature)
In literature, a serial is a publishing format by which a single large work, most often a work of narrative fiction, is presented in contiguous installments—also known as numbers, parts, or fascicles—either issued as separate publications or appearing in sequential issues of a single periodical...
under the provisional title Die Blaue Stunde (The Blue Hour) in 1941 while the book version, with the definitive title Mars im Widder, was produced by the S. Fischer Verlag
S. Fischer Verlag
The German publishing house S. Fischer Verlag was founded in 1886 by Samuel Fischer in Berlin and is a leading German address for literary publications and fiction.Originally, it was renowned for naturalism literature...
. However the Nazi Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was Nazi Germany's ministry that enforced Nazi Party ideology in Germany and regulated its culture and society. Founded on March 13, 1933, by Adolf Hitler's new National Socialist government, the Ministry was headed by Dr...
frowned upon the story (which lacks all celebration of “Germanic heroism” in spite of its extensive illustrations of the total Polish defeat, and hints at anti-Nazi resistance) and refused the publishing permit. The 15,000 copies of the book were put in storage in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, where they were destroyed during the Allied air raids of 1943 and 1944. The novel was later reprinted from proofs which the author had preserved throughout the war, with the first distributed German edition dating from 1947.
An English translation was published in July 2003.