Christian Rosendahl was a German Second World War soldier who is buried in the German Cemetery at Lommel, Belgium.
He expressed shifting views on duty, faith, and death through letters he sent home to his family. Initially critical of the regime, he later come to embrace his role as a pilot, seeing his fate as God’s will.
Christian Friedrich Rosendahl was born in Berlin on 28 May 1921 and is buried among 39,111 soldiers at German War Cemetery in Lommel, Belgium.
In the archive which is located next to the cemetery, you are able to view some of the letters that Rosendahl wrote to his parents and his aunt. They give an interesting insight into his perspective on the war and his changing philosophy on life and death.
He was a German soldier during the Second World War and, in the beginning of his military career, was quite opposed to the regime. He saw it as though he had forced him into a “disgusting and honour less existence.”
In his first letter, written in the summer of 1942, he thanked his parents for giving him two weeks of bliss and relief. He had just finished his training a few months ago and now was expressing feelings of futility and frustration with the perspective of a never-ending war.
His second letter came only 10 months later and was written in a notably different tone. He wanted his parents to accept the possibility of his death which he now painted in a different light than before.
He was ecstatic to have started his career in the Air Force and saw his death as something to be proud of, having served his country in the war. He now talked about God, whom he had not mentioned once in the first letter. His life, he believed, had been predestined by God to arrive at the point now, as a pilot.
His third letter, written about six months before his death, was to his aunt, who had expressed concerns over his seemingly premature acceptance of his own death. Here, he replied that although he did not want to die, he had accepted that he would and that to accept his death is to accept God’s plan. He “could not pray for the conservation of his life but just sing “what is being done by god, is being done well”.
Six months later, on 23 August 1944, he died on his first flight and mission against the enemy in a weather related accident.