Heldensuche. Die Geschichte des Soldaten, der nicht töten wollte

Michael Martens

Publisher: Zsolnay

Germany
German
Fiction
2011

In the middle of the Second World War, in July 1941, a German soldier in a town near Belgrade refuses to shoot partisans captured by the Wehrmacht and is subsequently shot himself. There are eyewitnesses, and after the war the German refusenik, Josef Schulz, becomes a folk hero in Yugoslavia. But why is nothing about this unique event known in Germany? Martens reconstructs an incredible story that begins with Schulz’s death and leads him through half of Europe, to Vienna, Berlin, Brussels, and through time up to the present moment. In the end, it turns out that the incident is not unknown, but actually a myth.

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