A Shadow of Myself, by Peter Flamm

A man troubled by war tries to lose himself by impersonating someone else.

While roaming the scarred battlefields of Verdun in north eastern France, a German man named Wilhelm Bettuch comes across the corpse of a dead surgeon, Hans Stern. A working class baker himself, Wilhelm decides to steal the papers of this professional man, return to Germany, and impersonate him. Things go surprisingly smoothly. Posing as Hans Stern, Wilhelm discovers he has a wife, named Grete. She recognises him as her husband, and any differences in personality she puts down to the traumatic effects of war. Hans/Wilhelm also discovers that neighbours and friends easily recognise him.

But a troubling inner voice says he will be caught. The family dog, Nero, treats him suspiciously. And family friend and prosecutor Sven Borges claims to be on his tail. When Hans/Wilhelm is summoned as a witness in a court case, he risks serious consequences. 

Peter Flamm (real name Erich Mosse, 1891-1963) was born into a Jewish family in Berlin. First published in 1926, A Shadow of Myself is on one level about survivors of trench warfare during the First World War, but on another level it delves into themes of self and presentation of self in society. Hans/Wilhelm (the two are somehow convincingly mixed into one entity) very much hides behind a mask, his inner self a roiling ocean of doubts, anxieties and fears. The text  denies the idea of concrete personality and identity, that hard surface and false veneer we try to wear. In an extraordinary passage, Flamm describes individuals as mere expressions of biology and mysterious nature:

“...our parents aren’t our father and mother, not their blood alone, we have every animal inside us, every plant, all of them speaking their muffled language, as embryos we still have all their shapes, breathing with gills, we’re fish and reptiles and animals, the whole of creation is inside us…we’re all brothers, we’re all one, there’s no guilt because we’re not ourselves…”

The novel’s narration is paced like a thriller, as Hans/Wilhelm constantly fears detection. Even though he is surrounded by friends and family, and  lives in a bustling city, he is nevertheless haunted by a terrifying isolation, a world that can never understand him. In tone and atmosphere, A Shadow of Myself is reminiscent of Kafka’s nightmare existential classic The Trial (the framing device Flamm uses is that of a courtroom confession, where Hans/Wilhelm tells his story.) 

A hundred years after it was first published, this exceptional work of war time fiction can now be enjoyed by English readers. (Translated by Simon Pare.)

A Shadow of Myself, by Peter Flamm. Published by Pushkin Press. $32.99.

MAR26