How language comforts and arouses hope

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Anna Seghers (before 1929)

Photo: ullstein bild / picture alliance

While the strong can make a mistake without losing anything, because even the most powerful people are still human - yes, even their errors only make them more human - those who pretend to be omnipotent must never be wrong, because either omnipotence is or nothing.

- Anna Seghers,

The Seventh Cross

The number seven has always been the number of fairy tales and miracles.

Seven goats and seven gates of paradise, seven hills of Rome, the Lord of the seven seas and the seventh heaven in which we imagine ourselves;

on the seventh day God rested from creation, and Joseph predicted seven fat and seven lean years for Pharaoh - number mysticism, that is their flaw and at the same time their greatest promise, is a book with seven seals.

Anna Seghers' novel "The Seventh Cross" tells the miracle of salvation.

Seven prisoners flee from a German concentration camp, the camp commandant has seven crosses erected and orders the men to be brought back within seven days.

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