This Monday, June 17, at 7:00 p.m., the book The High Price of Honor is presented, written by the politician, lawyer and writer Carlos Mateo Balmelli, which talks about a part of the history of the Second World War. The launch will be in the auditorium of El Lector (San Martín almost Austria). The event will be officiated by Bernardo Neri Farina.
About the content of the book, Balmelli commented to ÚH that “the reader will first find a historical description, a description of what was the first naval battle of the Second World War. Although it was the first, it was the last that is understood as chemically pure because it was a battle between ships without the participation of aviation or submarines,” explained the former president of the Congress of Paraguay (2003-2004).
In parallel to the part of the battle itself and the diplomatic ups and downs that existed at that time, “here the personality of ship captain Hans Langsdorff stands out as a war hero, as a humanist and as a suicide.”
For Mateo Balmelli, the suicide, “he is his judge and his executioner, someone who installs a procedure against himself to condemn himself. The suicide knows when he is born and when he dies. There is a reflection not only on suicide, but on everything that can go through the head of a suicide.”
In the material, on the one hand, you will find not only the description of an armed confrontation, the first naval battle of the Second World War, but also the biography of a man who was impious to himself.
“For him the laws of heaven did not apply. Even though he was a Christian, Lutheran, Protestant, the son of a Protestant pastor and a great lawyer, he had no mercy towards him. Out of honor, he assumed that everything that happened was his responsibility and he decided to commit suicide,” explained the former member of the National Constituent Convention.
Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff (Rügen, March 20, 1894 – Buenos Aires, December 20, 1939) was not a member of the Nazi Party. He was a German decorated for his military actions in the First World War “with a high concept of honor and his action responds to the mandate of honor.”
For suicides, “and this is demonstrated by Langsdorff, life is more difficult than death. “Suicides are condemned by conventional morality and await a second death,” considered the author of The high price of honor.
Motivation. Regarding what motivated him to write this book, Carlos Mateo pointed out that it was to delve into the behavior of a man who “was perfect and made the perfect mistake. I reflect a lot on what José Ortega y Gasset wrote ‘I am myself and my circumstance, and if I don’t save her I won’t save myself’. So it was a bit of an analysis of the relationship that exists between man and his circumstances. “I didn’t want to make a war or merely historical novel,” he explained.
Balmelli explained that with the licenses of literature his desire was to “find out what the character thought, what his dreams were. He was a believer, he was in love with his wife, he considered himself a servant of the country. So, literature allows us to speculate all that.”
Although he clarified that Hans left clues about his way of thinking, such as the letter written to his wife or the one addressed to his superiors in which he points out that he assumes responsibility for everything that happened in the story.
“My idea was to reflect the behavior of a man inserted in certain circumstances and in this case, war, those of a National Socialist Germany, even though he was not a Nazi and the circumstances of a man who feels defeated, and who feels that his greatest treasure, which is his ship, is forced to sink it,” he added.
Look. People who love history will find in this historical genre novel, more than that, they will look towards a vindicated Hans Langsdorff.
“Hans for me was a hero, a man who must be vindicated. He was a man who followed the codes. “This book shows that at the beginning of the war it was not so bloody, there were knight codes, then it reached a level that no one thought of, with the Holocaust and the genocide, but at the beginning it was a fight between gentlemen,” he said.
Expectations. “I write so that the reader can use a writing that will make them think, reflect, move and entertain,” said the writer.
This novel is not read to know the ending, because “from the beginning it is known that Langsdorff dies. Then, the narrative demands to hold the reader’s attention, since the outcome of the story is known. The challenge is to maintain the reader’s interest and attention. Let him be the one to judge whether or not the objective was achieved,” he reflected.
Finally, the author highlighted that the circumstances were adverse for the protagonist, but the final decision was his. “The environment influences the making of a decision, but the final decision lies within oneself,” he said.
This Monday, June 17, the book The High Price of Honor, by Carlos Mateo Balmelli, will be launched in the El Lector auditorium. The work refers to the ship captain Hans Langsdorff.
I wanted to analyze the relationship that exists between man and his circumstances. I didn’t want to make a war or merely historical novel.
