2024-04-06 05:48:00
The small town of Bornheim is located just over ten kilometers from Bonn in North Rhine-Westphalia. Here, from 1982 to 1985, the German writer, winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Literature, Heinrich Böll, spent the last three years of his life. In Bornheim, a school and a square are named after him, here is the house where the writer lived, near it there is a memorial plaque that was installed by the city authorities on the 30th anniversary of Böll’s death, and in the old Bornheim cemetery there is the grave of Böll and his wife. In the fields outside the city, on the country roads along which the writer once walked, there are now information signs telling about the main places associated with the life and work of Heinrich Böll.
How Böll ended up in Bornheim
The tourist route “Böll’s Road” was created by the city authorities for the 100th anniversary of the writer in 2017. It starts in the center of Bornheim. This is a small town in the Rhine Valley, located between Cologne and Bonn, with a population of just over 50 thousand people. One of the squares in Bornheim in the Merten district is named after Heinrich Böll, and this is the starting point on the route.
The street in Borheim where Heinrich Böll’s house is located Photo: Natalie Posdnjakov/DW
Heinrich Böll is an honorary citizen of Bornheim, although this title was awarded to him after his death, in 2010. During his lifetime, the relationship between local residents and the writer was not easy. Some of the residents of Merten were friends with Böll and supported him. And the other part did not understand and condemned him for his political views, which many considered leftist. There were also those who openly called Böll a “communist” and were hostile to him.
An information board in the square, which bears the name of the writer, states that “in connection with one of his works, the novel The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, published in 1974, “many accused Böll of supporting RAF terrorists (” The Red Army Faction is a left-wing terrorist group in Germany. – Ord. ). The opinions of conservative local residents were greatly affected by the “defamatory articles of the Bild newspaper about Böll.”
View of the town of Bornheim, where Heinrich Böll spent the last years of his life Photo: Natalie Posdnjakov/DW
Some facts from the writer’s biography are that he refused membership in the Catholic Church, although he grew up in a Catholic family; the fact that he participated in the Second World War (Böll spent six years at the front – in France and in Russia; he was wounded four times, tried several times to evade service by feigning illness), although he did not support Nazism and refused to join the ranks of the Hitler Youth “; the fact that he performed labor service after the National Socialists came to power, although it was almost impossible to refuse it; the fact that he was in American captivity in 1945 – all this was used to form a negative image of Heinrich Böll.
Böll’s house in Bornheim
A few steps from the square on Martinsstrasse is the house in which Heinrich Böll lived in Bornheim. Heinrich Böll moved here to join his son Rene in 1982. It would be impossible to find this building among other houses in the neighborhood if it were not for the memorial plaque, which is built right into the asphalt in front of the outwardly unremarkable building.
Heinrich Böll’s house in Bornheim Photo: Natalie Posdnjakov/DW
The sign, among other things, says that Böll’s participation in social and public life is a role model to this day. And that the writer, after his death, was awarded the title of honorary citizen of Bornheim. By the way, Heinrich Böll is an honorary citizen in his hometown of Cologne.
While here, far from the bustling Cologne, Böll did not lead the quiet life of a pensioner. Trying to improve his health – he had diseased blood vessels, he often took walks in the fresh air in the picturesque places around him. Böll wrote about these places: “Wherever I go, there are fields all around, vegetables are grown, and in the spring there are flowering trees around…”. Today, two tourist routes have been laid out in the places where the writer loved to take walks. One of them is related to the history of the ancient Roman aqueduct. Once upon a time, the Romans laid a water pipeline through these places, supplying drinking water to Cologne.
Memorial plaque at the house of Heinrich Böll in BornheimPhoto: Natalie Posdnjakov/DW
However, one of Heinrich Böll’s routes passed not only through fields creating a rural idyll, but also near Rösberg Castle – a place reminiscent of the Second World War. Now this restored building houses private apartments, and during the Second World War, the castle, being the possession of one of Hitler’s military leaders, Field Marshal Maximilian von Weichs an der Glonn, was destroyed. On February 27, 1941, the Allies dropped a phosphorus bomb on Rösberg Castle. A memorial plaque near the castle now reminds of this. And next to it is another message that says that Heinrich Böll’s route passes here.
Restored Rösberg CastlePhoto: Natalie Posdnjakov/DW
Böll’s life in Borheim was filled with events that went down in history. He actively participated in some of them. For example, he traveled from Bornheim to Bonn, where he spoke to 500,000 demonstrators protesting the deployment of NATO nuclear weapons in Germany. Here he wrote his last novel.
Where is Heinrich Böll buried?
After his death on July 16, 1985, Heinrich Böll was buried in the old cemetery in Bornheim-Merten. It is noteworthy that the cemetery chapel in the Romanesque style was restored in 1947 by Böll’s uncle, the architect Alois Böll.
Chapel at the cemetery in Bornheim-Merten, where Heinrich Böll and his wife are buried Photo: Natalie Posdnjakov/DW
His friends and associates came to see the writer off on his final journey: Lev Kopelev, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Günter Grass and Günter Wallraff, as well as the then President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Richard von Weizsäcker. “For the sincerity of his works and political activity, Heinrich Böll was called “the conscience of the nation.” “He was the advocate of the weak and the enemy of those who are always confident in their own infallibility. He stood for freedom of spirit wherever it was under threat,” this is how Richard von Weizsäcker described Böll in a letter of condolences to the writer’s widow. An unusual monument at the writer’s grave was erected by his son Rene, a famous artist. Another son, Raimund, was a famous sculptor. Heinrich Böll had four sons in total, the eldest died shortly after his birth.
In 2004, in the same cemetery in Bornheim, Böll’s wife, Annemarie, was buried next to her husband. She lived to be 94 years old and supported her husband in everything. A teacher, translator, actively involved in the anti-war movement, opposed anti-Semitism, after Böll’s death she became a co-founder of the political Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Foundation.
Böll House in Langenbroich
One more address associated with the name of Heinrich Böll needs to be mentioned separately. The writer and his wife had a country house in Langenbroich, near Düren in western Germany. Here the writer and his wife usually spent the summer months. During Böll’s lifetime, his friends often visited here. And in February 1974, exactly 50 years ago, Böll’s house in Langenbroich became a refuge for another Nobel laureate, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was deprived of his citizenship in the USSR and expelled from the country. On his way to Zurich and then to the United States, Solzhenitsyn spent a short time at Böll’s country house. Lev Kopelev first told Böll about Solzhenitsyn. And the two Nobel laureates met personally during Böll’s trip to the USSR in 1972. Heinrich Böll, together with his son Rene, secretly took Solzhenitsyn’s manuscript “The Gulag Archipelago” from the USSR.
Heinrich Böll’s house in Langenbroich Photo: Natalie Posdnjakov/DW
Heinrich Böll also spent the last days of his life in Langenbroich, although he was buried in the cemetery in Bornheim. After his death, Böll’s house in Langenbroich became a place where dozens of writers and poets found refuge. Böll’s fourth son, the architect Vincent, remodeled the house. One part of it belonged to Annemarie, and the other was made into rented apartments and common areas for the leisure of residents. In 1989, the Heinrich-Böll-Haus Langenbroich eV society was founded. Since then, more than 150 people from 43 countries have visited the Böll house. These are mainly artists, writers, composers, many of whom were subjected to political persecution in their homeland.
However, there was one not very pleasant chapter in the history of this house. In connection with the search for RAF terrorists in the 70s, the police came here to search. There were suspicions that Heinrich Böll was hiding terrorist suspects here. In fact, all this was fiction, as evidenced by historical sources. But among Böll’s neighbors in Langenbroich there were those who were hostile to the writer. It was probably for this reason that Böll spent a lot of time in Bornheim.
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