Herold Belger: A Man Who Cares about His Nation

“Representatives of many nationalities were destined to come to the Kazakh Land. We welcomed them with our traditional hospitality. They have come to be our brothers. Today, we make one multiethnic country. The globalization era is the era of multiethnic states. It is a process happening worldwide. Every community of our country contributes to its culture.” The words are part of the Head of State’s speech addressing the people of Kazakhstan. Indeed, representative of other ethnic groups who were once forced to settle in stranger parts have been able to preserve their culture through history. The ethnic groups and nationalities inhabiting Kazakhstan have been working in every sphere, and they have undoubtedly contributed to the development of Kazakh literature and arts.  One of them, representing the German community, is Herold Belger, a person who has worked hard for the sake of Kazakh literature. His research works include “The House at the Outskirts of a Village”, “Seagulls of the Steppe”, “Six Passages”, “The Stone Ford” , “The Living Image of Fraternity”, “Consonance”, “Face to Face with Time”, “Melodies of Three Strings”, “Goethe and Abay”, “Kinship”, and “Chosen on Earth”.

“Goethe and Abay” is a research on the great Kazakh philosopher presented as follows, “I felt like I had to begin exploring Abay by exploring Goethe.   Even though it was Kazakh, what language I learned at school and I grew up in Kazakh village, but I am still German. Abay showed me the way to Goethe. It is not just yeasty words. Before I came across Wanderer Nachtlied by Goethe, I had read Mountains Sleeping in the Dark of the Night by Abay and Mountain Peaks by Lermontov. As long as there is any spiritual connection between wise national poets, the connection is obvious when you compare works by Goethe and those by Abay.”

He is the author of over 20 books and over 25 article and short story compilations.  His bibliography includes “Faces of the Word”, “Remember Your Name”, “Talking Softly at Noisy Junctions”, “Sketches on Translation, I.Zhansugurova”, “ The Trace of the Word”, “The Home of a Vagabond”, “Spiritual Harmony”, “Authobiographical Sketches”, “Tuyuksu”, “Talking Rubbish”, “Munartau”, “The Edge”, “Discord”, and “Kazakh Words”.  

One of his books, namely the 2003 novel titled “The Home of a Vagabond”, was received especially enthusiastically. The plot describes the life of a Kazakhstani ethnic German. The book contains certain autobiographical episodes and describes the ordeals of both the Kazakhs and the Germans.

Today, Herold Belger is famous all across Kazakhstan as a language advocate. He devoted several pages to a description of the Kazakhs’ cry for their mother tongue. His book “Kazakh Words” tackles the issue. “To smite the ignorance of stigmatizing Kazakh as a primitive language, one should simply remember the following facts: 16983 words were used in the novel “The Way of Abay” by M.Auezov, while Shakespeare’s vocabulary consisted of 15 thousand words. It would be stupid to starve for foreign literature before you have had an opportunity to appreciate that of the Kazakh nation.”  This is his opinion of the Kazakh language. The writer has translated the cream of Kazakh literature into Russian. He had also promoted the best works among other communities. The list includes books by such Kazakh writers as B.Maylin, Kh.Yesenzhanov, A.Nurpeyisov, A.Kekilbayev, D.Doszhanov, and may more.  His works did not go unnoticed – he was awarded with the Maylin Prize of the Writers’s Union of Kazakhstan in  1988 following the title of a Merited Worker of Culture of the Kazakh SSR (1987). He is a Parasat Order awardee. In 1996, he was awarded the Kazakhstani PEN Club prize, and in 2007, the Altyn Samruk Prize.

To sum up, we do hope that we will have even more people who make a contribution to the development of our national literature, more truly caring Kazakh patriots representing other ethnic communities, for we are proud to have such figures in our culture. The speech of the Head of State Nursultan Nazarbayev made at a meeting of the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan supports it, “Once, many ethnic groups were brought to the sacred Kazakh Land. Today, they are equal and share one spirit regardless of their origin. Even though they have different blood running in their veins, they are a nation that shares a dream. People who have united under the colors of the country that they are willing to glorify share one destiny. Thus, the future of our country can be expressed with the following words: one nation, one country, one future, like a fire tripod.”

Gulmira Yerubayeva

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