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Werner Sylten, Germany, biography

from Part II - Searching for the Purpose of Suffering: Despair—Accusation—Hope

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2018

Dorothea Heiser
Affiliation:
Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg
Stuart Taberner
Affiliation:
Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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Summary

Werner Sylten was born in 1893 in Hergiswil, Switzerland. He later moved to Germany, where he went to school in Berlin. He studied theology at the University of Marburg and became a vicar in Hildesheim. Later the protestant pastor, who was close to the religious socialists, became head of a girls’ reform school in Köstritz. As a “half-Jew” he was dismissed from his post and became a business manager for the Confessing Church in Thuringia. In February 1941 he was arrested and on May 30, 1941, he was taken to Dachau (prisoner number 26,077).

On August 12, 1942, he was moved together with eighty-two other prisoners as part of an “Invalidentransport” to the gas chambers of Hartheim, near Linz in Austria. Werner Sylten died there on August 26, 1942.

Gebet

“Wenn mir am allerbängsten wird um das Herze sein,

So reiß mich aus den Ängsten kraft deiner Angst und Pein.”

Christus allein kann Segen

auch schaffen aus dem Leid,

auf unbeschwerten Wegen

uns führ'n zur Ewigkeit,

die in dies dunkle Leben

voll Rätsel und voll Streit

kann Licht und Freude geben

und Fried’ und Ruh’ verleiht,

die uns die Welt bleibt schuldig,

die uns der Mensch nicht gibt.

Drum schaue nur geduldig

auf Christ, der uns geliebt,

daß er sein Leben tauchte

in Nacht und Gram und Tod,

und der am Kreuz noch hauchte:

“Mein Gott, dennoch, mein Gott.”

Mein Gott auch in des Lebens

dunkler Weglosigkeit

laß uns doch nicht vergebens

Not und Verlassenheit

im Schauen auf dich verwinden.

Reiß uns aus Angst und Pein

und laß am Kreuz dich finden,

dich unser Heiland sein.

Prayer

“When my heart is anguished, and at its most afraid,

Then wrench me from these fears through your own fear and pain.”

Christ alone can create

blessing from agony,

lead us on glad pathways

into an eternity

that can grant this life of darkness,

of conflict and uncertainty,

the radiance and happiness,

peace and serenity

that man to us denies,

and the world to us still owes.

So look with patient eyes

to Christ who loved us so,

that he doused his life in grief,

in night and death's dark flood,

and on the cross still breathed:

“My God, yet still my God.” […]

Type
Chapter
Information
My Shadow in Dachau
Poems by Victims and Survivors of the Concentration Camp
, pp. 167 - 169
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2014

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