Thoughts on war: Horst Schirmer – Bist Du denn Feind mir? [Are you, then, an enemy to me?], autumn 1944 (Published on 12/11/2026)
I. Schirmer’s book “Hürtgenwald – Gedichte und Worte um ein Fronterleben” [“Hürtgenwald – Poems and Words Concerning an Experience at the Front”], published in 1951
Among the earliest published accounts by German soldiers regarding the fighting in the Hürtgen Forest is the 1951 book “Hürtgenwald – Gedichte und Worte um ein Fronterleben” by Horst Schirmer. In addition to several full-page photographs of the region taken by Hermann Claasen in the postwar period, the book primarily contains poems and short texts that Schirmer composed during the fighting in the Eifel – a conflict in which he himself participated – in the autumn and winter of 1944–45. Beyond the fact that these writings were produced in close temporal proximity to the events themselves, they are particularly notable for Schirmer’s perspective – unusual for the time – of the Hürtgen Forest as a living environment devastated by war, as well as for the melancholy with which he questions the very purpose of the war.
II, Bist Du denn Feind mir? [Are you, then, an enemy to me?]
One of the most striking poems in the collection is “Bist Du denn Feind mir?” – placed right at the beginning. In it, Schirmer raises the fundamental question: what have the soldiers on the other side – whose situation is, in fact, much like one’s own – actually done to warrant this, that two strangers should seek each other’s lives? Herein lies the paradox of any war.
Schirmer writes about this (cf. Hürtgenwald – Gedichte und Worte um ein Fronterleben, p. 16 [all citations translated from German language]):
“In the autumn of 1944, I was positioned in a gloomy forest in the Eifel region. About 150 to 200 meters away from me lay the American positions and foxholes. On bright, sunny days, we could see one another… In those days, I shared my foxhole with a young Austrian, and the thought was incomprehensible to both of us: the person over there, on the other side, is our enemy – and we are forced to fire at him, to kill him.”
He puts this situation in words as follows (ibid., p. 17):
“So are you
on the
other side
an enemy to me?
What harm did
I do to you
and what
you to me?
Do you not
love life
just as
I do?
Mothers pray
at home
for you
and for me…
Do you
as I
not have a home
and maybe
also woman
and a child?
Do you know
why we
are enemies?”
One way to resolve this paradox might be to fundamentally question the premise “the person over there, on the other side, is our enemy – and we are forced to fire at him, to kill him.”
Who can actually decide bindingly for another person that a third party completely unknown to him is his enemy and must be killed by him?
(Head picture:
Entrance to church St. Joseph in Vossenack,
October 2026;
translated inscription:
“In memory of the 68,000 German and American
victims of the battles around Vossenack”)
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