Vēstures un literatūras naratīvs vācbaltiešu rakstnieces Elzas Bernevicas romānā “Negaiss pār Dievzemīti”

The article is dedicated to one of the most well-known novels of the German-Baltic writer Elsa Bernewitz, “Storm over God’s Land” (Wetter überm Gottesländchen, 1939), in which she, looking back on the fateful historical events of the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, artistically portrays the tragic fate of a German pastor’s family, organically connecting two types of narratives, historical and literary narrative, in one synergistic message. The research aims to discover how adequately they reveal, describe and evaluate both social and personal individual life collisions in the life of pastor Christian and his wife, Elizabeth. The historical discourse is theoretically based and supplemented with the opinions of the classics of literary narratology, Genette, Schmid, Stanzel and other authors, comparing them with the social conflicts that develop between the church and the humanitarian ideas of Christianity, which are indestructibly and consistently expressed by the pastor and the social sphere, which is represented by both the Baltic German local intelligentsia, but also Latvian agriculture. The period, which covers the still peaceful year 1885 and ends with the Bolshevist terror of atheism in 1919, clearly reveals the contradictions between Christian’s consistently cultivated canons of the evangelical church and the nihilistic denial of Christianity by both Germans and Latvians, which was hidden at first, but then overt. Christian Beckrath, remaining faithful to his ideals until death and serving alone in his church for the last time, does not run away with Elizabeth to escape the Red Terror but willingly gives himself into the hands of the Bolsheviks. Even while waiting for the death sentence imposed by the maddened atheists, they do not give up their beliefs and ideals. “God’s Land time” is a storm of hatred that destroys noble personalities. The analysis of historical and literary narrative examples confirms their artistic power and influence.