Fiction Book Review: The WarWolf - Hermann Lons
Every now and then one reads a book that captures the essence of an idea so well you are shocked you could even generate the idea prior to having read the book. The WarWolf is one such book. The idea it captures is that of a strong, self sufficient community enduring a time of hardship with tradition at its core through a militant core of patriarchal power. That is quite the mouthful, though this being a German book I feel the long sentence is in keeping with the spirit of the translated language. The WarWolf is a deceptively simple tale on the one hand and an intricate historical study on the other. It is the story of a small hamlet in Germany during the upheaval of the ‘Thirty Years War’ and how a central family forged a path for them to survive.
Its length is also somewhat deceptive, the author Hermann Lons, takes you on a remarkable journey in what is a relatively slender volume. The story certainly makes some leaps in time but it is the detail to which Lons is so dedicated to that engrosses you in the world he has created. It is a fictional place but in a sense it is the story of every small place in Germany, perhaps even the wider Europe. The characters don’t exist yet we feel like we know facets of them in people around us. The imagined scenarios can’t be proven to have happened yet the historical record and pattern of human behavior makes them instantly relatable. Lons adds some lovely touches in making the world real - as a poet I found the small songs and poems included throughout particularly charming, all the more so because they are juxtaposed against men and women living through tough and dangerous times.
I’m not going to delve into the plot anymore, because I think you should read it, but allow me to say it captures the strife wonderfully. There is serious tragedy and casual brutality throughout and our journey with our protagonist shows how men become inured to suffering. This is fundamentally a tale about protecting your own and those you care about, though that is not to say there is not charity present. A hallmark of our people has been the ability to welcome the well intentioned good soul into a community once they have proved their worth and Lons writes of a couple instances of this. The antagonists of the story are historical, the marauding war bands that plagued the land, the gypsies that thrived in the chaos, there is not really an overarching villain present as this is the tale from a peasants viewpoint.
That is also refreshing, some woke academic types like to talk about history or fiction and say it is ‘problematic’ because it tells the story of only the elites. Elites truly do create history and the rest have to deal with it. This book is not some ideological attempt to ‘tell the other story’ but Lons’s honest attempt in 1910 to look at what life would have been for the ordinary man. Most of us after all are ordinary men, we wanted to grill and are now being thrust into a chaotic world where danger is present. We are not so far removed from the 1620s where our WarWolves are living. Chaos is increasing in the world, certain places have already descended to barbarism that were once great, South Africa, Rhodesia. The WarWolf functions almost as a manifesto for surviving the strife.
It would be remiss of me to ignore who turned me onto this book. A meme instagram account - Wehrwolf Dynamics - the tone of the account and his realism seemed great to me. Whilst this is a poetry project I have held an interest in self sufficiency and prepping for a great while, I have my copy of John Mosby’s ‘Reluctant Partisan’ and if you know what that is then this book slots right alongside it as a perfect narrative tale to what you are shooting for. Creating your own tribe is one thing and a noble goal, the WarWolf is the pinnacle to shoot for but the takeaways can be smaller. Do you know your neighbors? Do you have a plan with them for when X bad thing happens? Maybe it isn’t anti-fa chaos but a wildfire, building connections and becoming dangerous to outsiders is important to cultivate.
This is a book I can’t recommend enough, although this review is running long there is also a great sense of care that Lons seems to have infused. It has a historical element that showed he cared greatly about his ancestors and wanted to tell their story. He wanted to show the difficulty facing man when evil comes knocking and the difficulty we all must face in overcoming that evil.
I encourage you all to read this book.
