Werner passes the Schulpforta entrance exam

Werner Pfennig’s entrance examination is both a test of physical nerve and the gateway out of Children’s House. Across eight grueling days in Essen, he competes among boys selected for an institution that promises to take only the purest and strongest. At the final trial, he jumps from a platform twenty-five feet above the floor, lands in the center of a flag, and is admitted to Schulpforta. The victory converts a private hope into a concrete departure from the orphanage and the mining future that has shadowed him.

The examination and its terms

The National Political Institutes of Education hold their entrance exams in a sweltering dance hall in Essen, eighteen miles south of Zollverein. Three truck-sized radiators are plugged into the back wall; one clangs and steams through the day despite attempts to shut it down. War ministry flags hang from the rafters. A black-uniformed representative arranges one hundred boys in ranks and announces that the exams will last eight days and that the schools will take only the purest and strongest. The language makes the trial more than a simple contest: the boys are being assessed under an ideal of selection that links physical capacity to institutional worth.

Werner counts twenty-six other boys in his age group. All but two are taller than he is, all but three are blond, and none wear glasses. The observation establishes his difference within a group whose physical traits are conspicuous, but it does not keep him from wanting the place. The recruits speak of the schools with yearning and bravado, and Werner privately acknowledges that he wants selection as desperately as they do. At other moments, the ambition falters: he imagines Jutta Pfennig holding the smashed pieces of their radio, and uncertainty rises in him.

Attrition and the final trial

The examination proceeds through wall climbing and repeated wind sprints. On the fifth day, three boys quit; on the sixth, four more give up. By the eighth day, the heat has saturated the hall, and the final test requires each fourteen-year-old to climb a roughly nailed ladder to a platform twenty-five feet above the floor, close his eyes, and leap into a flag held by a dozen recruits. The test makes the candidates’ fear visible: the first boy, a stout farm child from Herne, reaches the platform but turns pale and trembles. When he begins to scream, Werner looks away, and four boys carry the injured candidate out.

The remaining boys climb and jump one by one. One sobs throughout; another sprains an ankle on landing; another waits at least two minutes before leaping. The fifteenth boy looks across the hall as though facing a bleak sea, then climbs back down instead. These different responses give the trial its force: passing depends not simply on reaching the height, but on stepping off it when retreat remains possible. Werner watches from his place on the flag, waiting for his turn and telling himself he must not waver.

Werner’s leap

As Werner climbs, the test gathers up images of the life he hopes to leave. Beneath his eyelids he sees the interlaced ironwork of Zollverein, its fire-breathing mills, men pouring from elevator shafts, and the mouth of Pit Nine, where his father was lost. The sequence shifts to Jutta at the parlor window, sealed behind rain as Werner follows a corporal to Herr Siedler’s house; it also includes the taste of whipped cream and powdered sugar and the smooth calves of Herr Siedler’s wife. His memories do not resolve into a single explanation for his choice. Instead, the industrial world, his sister’s watching, and these sharply sensory fragments accompany him to the edge.

The ladder’s roughly sawed rungs splinter Werner’s palms. From the top, the crimson flag, marked with a white circle and black cross, looks unexpectedly small, while the faces below form a pale ring. The heat and smell of perspiration make him light-headed. He does not hesitate: he steps to the edge, shuts his eyes, and jumps. He hits the exact center of the flag, and the boys holding its edges groan under the impact. Werner rolls to his feet uninjured. The examiner clicks a stopwatch, writes on his clipboard, and meets Werner’s eyes for less than a second before returning to his notes. Werner yells the Nazi salute; the scene records his public performance of allegiance alongside the private memories that have filled the leap.

Admission and its consequence

Five days after Werner returns from Essen, an admission letter is hand-delivered to Children’s House. The crisp envelope bears an eagle and cross and has no stamp. The little boys are gathered around a new radio for the half-hour Kids’ Club program; Frau Elena is doing laundry. Jutta Pfennig is away at a puppet show with Claudia Förster and younger girls, and since Werner’s return she has spoken no more than six words to him. The arrival of the letter therefore takes place amid ordinary routines and a strained silence between the siblings, rather than in a ceremony of celebration.

The letter summons Werner to the National Political Institute of Education at Schulpforta, near Naumburg in Saxony, two hundred miles east. He stands in the parlor of Children’s House, among cracked walls, a sagging ceiling, and benches worn by generations of children made orphans by the mine, trying to absorb the news. For him, the distance is both geographical and a measure of possibility: he had allowed himself to hope for such a journey only in his boldest dreams. He carries the letter to Frau Elena, who rereads it several times and points out that they cannot pay. The exam has secured his selection, but the letter’s arrival also makes the cost of leaving and the limits of the orphanage’s resources immediate. The decisive result is that Werner has found a way out of Children’s House; the next step is no longer imagined but demanded by the summons.