Date: Mon, 8 May 1995 12:31:59 -0500 Reply-To: H-NET List on German History Sender: H-NET List on German History From: H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers Subject: Re: The Dead of Wars Submitted by: Louis Reith This may be an appropriate day to note a first impression that has never been forgotten. On my first day in Europe, August 15, 1969, I arrived in Prien-am-Chiemsee, between Munich and Salzburg, for a Goethe Institut tour before starting to work on my dissertation research in Tuebingen and Stuttgart. The entire back side of the Prien Roman Catholic Church was covered with the names of parish men fallen in all the two world wars. I remember being overwhelmed by the seemingly vast number of "Gefallenen" from such a small town, at least several thousand--and most impressive of all, those with the attached message "fallen on the Eastern Front." Not even subsequent viewings of Russian war memorials could impress upon me the significance of Stalingrad and the battles on the Eastern Front which followed. Later I ventured onto an island in the Chiemsee where a Bavarian Internat for girls (a Gymnasium, or high school) is located, the Fraueninsel. There, in a small garden, I found a few military graves from World War II, including, if my memory serves me correctly, General Keitel (I am not certain of this fact anymore). High above the graves one heard the laughing voices of the young students as they were washing dishes and finishing their chores. Meanwhile the sun set in a blaze of glory behind the Chiemgau. It was a useful lesson, that students of history and researchers occasionally need to get out from their archives and libraries and look around them at the books of life and death which still divulge their troubling messages. Louis J. Reith Rare Book Cataloger Georgetown University Library Washington, DC e-mail: lreith@guvax.georgetown.edu [editor's note: Keitel was hanged at Nuremberg and cremated, his ashes scattered to the wind so that there would be no memorial to him or any of the other executed war criminals] .