The Birth of the Millennium

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The Birth of the Millennium

by Kurt Eggers

Kurt Eggers was born November 10, 1905, in Berlin. After service in the Freikorps in Silesia, he studied philosophy and theology at Göttingen, Rostock, and Berlin. He obtained a degree in theology, with honors, and served for a while as a Protestant pastor in a Berlin church. His absolutely uncompromising National Socialist outlook, however, soon led him into irreconcilable conflict with church officials, and he left the ministry to join the SS.

He wrote more than thirty books of poetry, fiction, and philosophy, as well as a number of plays. He fell in combat, as an SS officer, in 1944 on the eastern front. The poem presented here is from his book of the same title, written in 1936. The English version of the poem, a free translation, is by Frank Collin, a student at Hiram Scott College, in Nebraska.

Die Geburt des Jahrtausends


Es gürtet die Idee sich mit dem Schwerte
Und ruft zum Kriegszug in das Reich der Tat.


Der Sturmwind braust,
Es ist die Zeit zu sterben.
Wohl dem, der jetzt
Bei Sieg und Leid
Ein Leben einzusetzen hat.


Weh dem, den graust.
Ihn stösst das Schicksal ins Verderben.


Ruinen ragen aus jahrtausendalten Mauern.
Es flammt der Weltbrand bis zum Sternenzelt.
Und aus dem todeswehen Stöhnen,
Aus ahnungsvollem, schreckerfüllten Trauern
Gebiert sich schon die neue Welt.


Wohl dem,
Der nicht im Tode zagte
Und trotzig seinen Schwertstreich tat.
Wohl dem,
Der nicht beim Untergange klagte
Und nicht das Schicksal um ein Wunder bat.
Wohl dem,
Der stark blieb.
Stärker wird er auferstehen.


Doch wer da bangte,
Fällt in tiefste Nacht.
Weh dem,
Des Herz im Kampfe schwankte,
Es wird zerbrechen in der letzten Schlacht.


Wenn erst der letzte Stein zerborsten ist,
Erhebt sich aus den rauchgeschwartzen Trümmern
Lebenden Geistes ungestümes Wehen.
Der letzte Todesschrei
Klingt aus
Im ersten Lebenswimmern
Der neugebornen Ewigkeit
Und jauchzend zieht das Lebenslied
Den Wolken und den Sternen zu,
Vermählt sich mit der Harmonie der Sphären
Und kehrt,
Geheiligt vom Gesetz,
Zurück,
Um, lebensschwanger, das Jahrtausend zu gebären.
The Birth of the Millennium


With the sword girded round is the Belief,
And calls a crusade into the Domain of Deeds.


The storm-wind howls;
It is the time for dying.
Blest be he now
Who by vict'ry and sorrow
Stakes his life on the wager.


Woe to him who flinches;
Fate throws him to oblivion.


The ruins loom from out the primordial walls.
The World-brand flames to the stellate skies,
And from the groaning lament of death,
From grief, full of dread, under terror's pall,
A new world now bears its own rise.


Blest's he
Who before death trembled not,
And swung with heart the havoc of his sword.
Blest's he
Who bewail'd his vanquishment not,
And begg'd of Fortune not a succor'd word.
Blest's he
Who remained strong;
Yet stronger will he rise up.


But he whose fear is rife:
Falls into deepest night.
Woe's him
Whose heart weakens in strife
It shall crack in two in the last fight.


When the last stone is burst asunder,
Then from the smoke-smeared rubble shall rise
The violent reproach of living phantoms.
Death's last and final mourn
Echoes off
In the first murmurs of life
Of an eternity newly born.
And the life-song soars as a pæan
Upward to the clouds and the stars,
Fuses its song with the harmony of the spheres,
And rebounds,
Sanctified by the Law;
Returns,
Impregnated with life, to bear forth The Thousand Years.




From: National Socialist World, Number 3 (Spring, 1967).

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