Humanist Anecdotes in Hard Times: F. C. Weiskopf and Lenka Reinerová

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This article examines humanist anecdotes about the turbulent times of the mid-twentieth century by F. C. Weiskopf and Lenka Reinerová. It provides a comparative reading of Weiskopf’s Elend und Größe unserer Tage. Anekdoten 1933–1947 (1950) and Reinerová’s “Tragischer Irrtum und richtige Diagnose” (published in Mandelduft, 1998). The anecdotal form of these texts harks back to the popular Enlightenment (Volksaufklärung) anecdotes of Heinrich von Kleist and Johann Peter Hebel, published in 1810–1811 during the Napoleonic Wars. The anecdote as a literary form is particularly well suited to the representation of wartime and political repression. While Weiskopf’s anecdotes explore cruelty and heroism under the Nazi dictatorship, Reinerová’s autobiographical text juxtaposes crisis points in her own life—her time as a political prisoner in France in 1939 and in Czechoslovakia in 1952–1953; her return to Prague as her family’s sole survivor; and her periodic cancer treatment from 1948 onwards. Reinerová describes how the kindness of ordinary people, and her own optimism and resilience, helped her through the worst times. Her lived experience gives her authority as a storyteller in Walter Benjamin’s sense. Both authors contrast human extremes—the good and the bad—yet both remain optimistic about the human capacity for good.