The Quest

This novel, published in 1950, is set in the midsummer of 1945. It describes the journey of seven people leaving behind the devastated city of Berlin. They set off as individuals or in pairs but come together on the same eastward road outside the city and have a common destination (a village convent). The novel draws heavily from Greek mythology (its original title was Märkische Argonautenfahrt). Their journey is towards the village of Anastasiendorf, which is effectively a New Jerusalem. The object of their quest is wisdom; a way of understanding the meaning of life when coming from such devastation.

The author, Elisabeth Langgässer (born 23 February 1899) grew up in the Rheinhessen region of west-central Germany. She was educated in Darmstadt and qualified as a primary school teacher. Her first book, a poetry collection, was published in 1924. Having taught in the region for almost ten years, she moved to Berlin in 1929. She was active as a freelance writer of poetry and drama. She was awarded the main literature prize for German women in 1932. Her first novel was published in 1936. Being half-Jewish, she had to do forced labour for much of the Second World War. Her daughter, Cordelia, considered a full Jew, survived Auschwitz and was liberated to Sweden. In 1946, her major novel, The Indelible Seal, was published after nine years of writing. Several short story collections followed. Her final novel (this one) was published in 1950, soon after she had died of multiple sclerosis. She was posthumously awarded the Georg Büchner Prize, one of the two foremost literary prizes for German literature.

The depiction of the war-ravaged country is almost apocalyptic:
“The metropolis did not end, it shredded at the periphery. It became frayed like a flag, flapping and snapping in the wind, which ought long ago to have been taken down from its pole because the cause was lost which it had served... Remains of the tank blockades were still standing at the openings of the streets, mocking themselves. Army trucks — looking as though they had been mashed by the fist of some giant who had then shoved them up the embankment onto a heap of munitions — reared their horrible, charred posteriors. Still others, like cadavers disembowelled by jackals and vultures, had been so despoiled of their original substance by the fire of battle and the beaklike blows of the artillery that their skeletons, when one bumped against them, could bring forth only a rattle. Amid the fresh deposit of miserable old rubbish scarcely a speck of earth worthy of the name  was anywhere discernible.”