Wörterbuch

John Z. Komurkiœs Wörterbuch comprises a series of sparse and enigmatic texts. Resembling poetry, they are in fact abstracted from a multilingual dictionary published in Germany in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Excavated in this way from their their original context, these texts become a meditation on the ravages of war, and in particular, its impact on civilian populations; as well as a reflection on the ways in which violence deforms language. I recently came across a book similar to the one described above. It was published in October 1945 by the Verlag Josef Wiroth Gera in Leipzig. The name Manfred Helmœ is carefully inscribed in blue ink on the olive-green cover. The book is sturdy and the pages are of surprisingly good paper, but the printing is cheaply done. It calls itself a Taschen-Wörterbuchʺ, a pocket dictionary, für den Alltag und für jedermannʺ, for every day and everyone. But more than a dictionary it is a glossary containing about 7000 German words, accompanied by their equivalents in English and French (but not Russian). There is no guide to grammar, sentence structure or pronunciation, and both German and French columns present the bare word, without any article. This may suggest how the book was meant to be used: simply to designate an object or conditionʺ --Page 19.