WHEN I was growing up, there was a trunk in a shed at the back of our house. It was something resembling a prop from Pirates of the Caribbean.
Large, musty, dome-lidded and strengthened with iron bands; it was the repository for family bric-a-brac, useless, dust collecting tat that could no longer be tolerated inside the house.
On wet afternoons with the light drawing in, I liked to rummage the contents, always hoping to unearth some curiosity that I had previously overlooked. Apart from its impressive bulk, the trunk had one other overwhelming feature – smell. The unmistakable, malodorous whiff of must and mothballs was enough to bring tears to your eyes. I often wondered how something as innocent looking as a pear drop sweet could smell so foul. My grandmother was a great believer in the power of mothballs. In the overheated church you could almost see the smell rising from her winter coat. But on reflection, this was, most likely, tame in comparison with the many other organic fragrances that must have emanated from the overfilled, agricultural-based congregation of our Big Chapel in the days before indoor plumbing became a standard component of domestic living.
But, back to the trunk itself, in the course of one of my expeditions I found a fresh novelty. In an overlooked corner, hidden by a verdigrised candlestick, was a small glass globe. It was as if I had unearthed Aladdin’s magical lamp. The object contained an image of the Virgin Mary with hands joined in prayer and her eyes up cast upwards to the heavens.
The magic was that you could make the Virgin’s world come alive with snowfall by inverting the globe. Wondrous snowflakes cascaded all about her blue-mantled shoulders whenever I tilted my hands.
So why, over half a century later, should I recall this religious novelty in the ruins of a bombed-out church in Berlin, on a winter’s day? The answer is, I was looking at the original image of the Madonna of Stalingrad.
It hangs in the ruined shell of Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. This building has been left in place, symbolically shattered. Its ruined spire and entrance hall remain as they were following the Allied bombing raid on the night of November 23rd, 1943. It has become a place of memorial reflection and the perfect space in which to house the Madonna of Stalingrad.
The image is that of a Madonna and child. The mother has wrapped her infant son inside her cloak. The baby sleeps; their foreheads touch. Her cloak is that of a traveller, serviceable, warm, woven from one piece of cloth. Her bare feet protrude from beneath it, strong and square. They are the feet of a woman who has walked the roads of the world. They are the feet of a mother who will carry her sacred child as long as she has breath in her body. The image is rendered in charcoal. It measures three feet by four feet. It is drawn on the back of a Russian map of the city of Stalingrad. You can see the folds and creases of the original document.
The picture was executed on Christmas Day in 1942, in a foxhole bunker during the Battle of Stalingrad. In its right hand margin are printed the words Licht, Leben, Liebe – Light, Life, Love.
The drawing was made by Lieutenant Kurt Reuber, a German army staff physician. He wanted to create something that might reawaken the spirit of long-lost Christmases for his surviving comrades, in that place of blasted and bombed misery.
There were seven of them at a mortar position. They had nothing to give each other – no gifts. Bread and ammunition were the finest presents they might hope for. The calendar told, those who bothered to consult it, that this was Christmas Day. The pewter sky augured snow and towards evening delivered on that promise. The cold was pitiless. Sometimes during a break in the storm, they recorded seeing a red glow ahead of them. It was the remains of burning buildings that mocked their frozen fingers.
Despite of the numbness in his hands, the low light and his presence in this place of Purgatory, Kurt Reuber managed to complete his drawing. He did it so that his comrade soldiers would have a spiritual icon to reclaim their minds on this sacred day.
In a letter home, he wrote of his companions response; “. . . they stood as if entranced, devout and too moved to speak in front of the picture on the clay wall . . . and read the words: light, life, love.” Dr Reuber’s famous drawing survived the war. Unfortunately, he did not.
It was flown out of Stalingrad on the last transport plane to leave the encircled German 6th army.
I looked at it and was held captive by its simplicity, purity and compassion. I think of how these men’s worlds were turned upside down and how the snow fell soft and clean all around the charcoal image of the Madonna in that bunker outside Stalingrad on that Christmas night.
How long ago and innocent now, seems the time I rummaged inside a musty trunk, found a glass globe, tilted the miniature world it contained, and made snow for the Virgin Mary.