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He wrote short prose and poems, compiled in a collection called Laterne, Nacht and Sterne (Lantern, Night and Stars). In late 1946 or early 1947, he wrote "The Man Outside."
Performed on radio in February 1947, it won significant acclaim. It included a dozen short stories and one play. Combining polemic and sentimentality, it raged in elegiac pieces like "The Bread" and "The Rats Sleep at Night."
He recounted soldiers stumbling down post-war German streets. Their heads echoed gunfire and visions of numerous people killed. Boys sit in bombed-out buildings. They're vigilant so rats don't eat their brother beneath rubble.
Marriages threaten to unravel over trivial incidents. Prisoners risk life and limb to glimpse flowers. In addition, a narrator alternates between sympathy and rage about how things are. This is what we did, all of us, he said. Ideological framing's gone. Years of war destroyed it. There's just the here and now to start over, rebuilding from bubble and broken lives.
"Say NO! Say NO! Say NO! he said. He's not subtle. Time's too short. Imagine what his death cut short. On November 20, 1947, he died at age 26. The next day, "The Man Outside" was performed on stage for the first time.
It recounts a post-war soldier's hopelessness. He returns home to find his wife and home lost, his beliefs and illusions shattered. All doors are closed. Even the Elbe River rejects his suicide, washing him ashore. The play ends with the lead character's death. He may have recounted his own before he passed.
He subtitled his work "A play that no theater wants to perform and no audience wants to see." Its too grim to bear.
His poem titled, "Say NO" was written days before he died. Its searing rhetoric cuts deep. He said:
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