"CHRISTMAS NOT JUST ONCE A YEAR" - A Short Story by Heinrich Böll - 1952 (Nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit" )

 "

CHRISTMAS NOT JUST ONCE A YEAR" - A Short Story by Heinrich Böll - 1952 (Nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit") - 7 Pages - included in the anthology A Very German Christmas-

Heinrich Böll 

Born: December 21, 1917, Cologne, Germany

Died: July 16, 1985 (age 67 years), Kreuzau, Germany

1972 - Wins Nobel Prize for Literature 

Christmas Not Just Once a Year" takes place in the years immediately following World War II. Böll himself participated in the war as a Nazi soldier. In the course of the war, he wrote hundreds of letters home to his wife, many of which explicitly criticized Germany's role in the war.

Christmas Not Just Once a Year" ("Nicht nur zur Wiehnachtszeit") was written in 1951 and was first "published" in a German radio broadcast that year. Considered to be one of Heinrich Böll's finest satires, the story was included in German in his 1952 book, Nicht nur zur Weihnachtszeit, a collection that was expanded in 1966 and renamed Nicht nur zur Wiehnachtszeit: Satiren. In the United States, the story appeared most recently in Böll's collected stories, The Stories of Heinrich Böll, published by Knopf in 1986. In addition, "Christmas Not Just Once a Year" is one of Böll's most widely anthologized stories.

"Christmas Not Just Once a Year" tells the simple story of Aunt Milla's hysterical reaction to the taking down of the family Christmas tree in 1946 and her family's subsequent reaction to her hysteria. Told through the eyes of one of the family's first cousins, the story describes the complete moral and psychological disintegration of a family that refuses to acknowledge Milla's profound psychological problems. Instead of addressing the issue of Milla's breakdown clinically or directly, the family decides to continue with the ruse that every day is Christmas. For two years they go to great lengths and expense to host a nightly ritual of Christmas tree decorations and carol singing in order to keep Aunt Milla from screaming hysterically.

Böll's narrative becomes increasingly absurd as the story develops. Written while Germany was in the early stages of its postwar reconstruction, and during a time when it had yet to fully acknowledge its role in World War II or in the Holocaust. "Christmas Not Just Once a Year" addresses the theme of historical amnesia. Just as the family refuses to accept the fact that things are no longer "like the good old days" of prewar Germany and that Aunt Milla could not become healthy until the family acknowledges this basic fact, Böll believed that Germany would remain stunted if it did not directly address its Nazi past and come to terms with its role in the war.

"A Man Becomes a Nazi" - 10 Pages-A Short Story by Anna Seghers - 1943 - translated from the German by Margot Bettauer Dembo - 2021

 "A Man Becomes a Nazi" - A Short Story by Anna Seghers -  - - 1943 - 

translated from the German and edited by Margot Bettauer Dembo.- 2021

This will be my 12th year as a participant in Germans Literature Month, held every November.  Through the event I have discovered many new to me authors.

Born: November 19, 1900, Mainz, Germany

Died: June 1, 1983 (age 82 years), East Berlin

Born Netty Reiling in Mainz in 1900 of partly Jewish descent, she married Laszlo Radvanyi, a Hungarian Communist in 1925.

In Cologne and Heidelberg she studied history, the history of art and Chinese. She joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1928, at the height of its struggle against the burgeoning National Socialist German Workers Party. Her 1932 novel, Die Gefährten was a prophetic warning of the dangers of Fascism, which led to her being arrested by the gestapo.

 After German troops invaded the French Third Republic in 1940, she fled to Marseilles and one year later to Mexico, where she founded the anti-fascist 'Heinrich-Heine-Klub', named after the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, and founded Freies Deutschland (Free Germany), an academic journal. During this time, she wrote The Seventh Cross, for which she received the Büchner-Prize in 1947. The novel is set in 1936 and describes the escape of seven prisoners from a concentration camp. It was published in the United States in 1942 and produced as a movie in 1944 by MGM starring Spencer Tracy. The Seventh Cross was one of the very few depictions of Nazi concentration camps, in either literature or the cinema, during World War 

In 1947, Anna Seghers returned to Germany, moved to West Berlin, and became a member of the SED in the zone occupied by the Soviets. In 1950, she moved to East Berlin and became a co-founder of the freedom movement of the GDR. In 1951, she received the first Nationalpreis der DDR and the "Ehrendoktorwürde der Universität Jena" in 1959. In 1981, she became "Ehrenbürgerin" of her native town Mainz.

During prior German Literature Months I have posted upon two of her novels, Transit and The Seventh Cross.

“A Man Becomes a Nazi,” written in 1942 and 1943 in Mexico, explores the question: How does a person become a torturer and murderer? Within a tightly controlled narrative frame, the story ventures out into unstable terrain. Fritz Mueller’s life unrolls in front of a Red Army tribunal: “He was charged with shootings, hangings, and a series of acts of cruelty committed against women and children.

  This German, the fourth son of a soldier and unemployed metalworker, is born into a continuum of war and hardship. It is impossible to say what plays the greatest role in making him a Nazi—his circumstances, his education, his predispositions?. He becomes a cold blooded killer in a war against people he thought were enemies of Germany.

There are 15 other stories in the collection. I hope to post this month upon a few of them.

Mel u

The Reading Life

Refuge in Hell: How Berlin's Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis by Daniel B. Silver - 2003

 Refuge in Hell: How Berlin's Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis by Daniel B. Silver - 2003

This is essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in the Holocaust and the history of Jewish Life in Berlin.  Silver goes back to about 1350 when a restricted number of Jewish families were allowed to settle in Berkin, processing to periods when Jews were welcomed. By about 1940  over half of the economic productivity in Berkin was generated by the activity of Jews. (Silva goes into details on who was seen as a Jew by the Nazis and explains his own use of terminology.)  As German antisemitism grew worse some how a Jewish Hospital with almost all Jewish Doctors and staff survived, Some employees were saved by being married to Christians and for a while from being World War One Veterans.  They began to see family members deported to death camps.

The Germans actually sent Jewscto the hospital to be treated and once they recovered they sent them to death camps.  The hospital used to treat everyone.  If you could not pay you were welcomed.  Then they were told they could treat only Jews so they lost a large percentage of their paying customers.  Food rations were cut but still the hospital stayed open.

"Dan Silver, a lawyer and former general counsel to the CIA, tells the astonishing story of Berlin's Jewish Hospital during WWII. For decades before the Nazis seized power in Germany, the hospital had served Berlin's Jews as their principal medical resource. At the war's end, it was still functioning, delivering what medical care it could and sheltering a large percentage of the city's few remaining Jews. Silver asks how a Jewish institution, located in the capital city of a regime dedicated above all to obliterating the Jews, could possibly have survived. To answer this question, Silver has gathered the available documentary evidence and interviewed the handful of hospital staffers still alive. According to these sources, the institution's survival hinged on an amalgam of factors, including sheer, blind luck and bureaucratic infighting among Nazi organizations. As Silver explains, the Nazis' bizarre system for classifying persons of partly Jewish ancestry played a role as well, since some hospital personnel with mixed ancestry were not treated with the same implacable hostility as full Jews were. Silver acknowledges where gaps in the evidence make certainty impossible, as in assessing Dr. Walter Lustig, the hospital's chief during the war years. Lustig may have been a betrayer and collaborator, as some staffers think, or he may have manipulated the system as best he could to save at least some Jews from destruction. The balanced analysis of Dr. Lustig's record typifies the author's careful use of evidence throughout this absorbing book." From Amazon

Refuge in Hell: How Berlin's Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis by Daniel B. Silver greatly expanded my knowledge of Holocaust and Jewish history.

Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire Kindle Edition by Katja Hoyer - 2021 - 255 Pages

Five years ago, in consultation with Max u, it was decided every December there should be a post in Observation of the Birth Anniversary of our father, born on December 2, 1918 in a small then very undeveloped tiny town in south Georgia, Cairo.

Our Father served four years in the United States Army during World War Two.  He was a junior officer serving under General Douglas MacArthur.  He was stationed in New Guinea and shortly after the war in the Philippines.  For the initial observation in December of 2018 I posted on a wonderful book, Rampage MacArthur, Yamashita and The Battle of Manila by James M. Scott .  Shortly after I posted, the author, a great speaker, did a book tour in Manila.  My wife and I attended one of his talks. Afterwards we had a lovely conversation with Mr. Scott.

In 2019, I came upon a perfect book for the second annual birthday observation, War at the End of the World: Douglas MacArthur and the Forgotten Fight For New Guinea, 1942-1945 Book by James P Duffy.  

Two books on Georgia history have also been featured.

This year I decided to go in another direction, exploring the history of Germany. Our last name comes from a very ancient pre-Roman City Ulm Germany.  (The City has a very famous cathedral and is the birthplace of Albert Einstein).  Because our last name is relatively uncommon we have been able ascertain when and where our first American ancestor bearing our Last named arrived in tbe colonies, Savanah Georgia in 1755.

Katja Hoyer is a German historian, and her book explains German politics between 1871 and 1900. Modern Germany came into existence in 1871 after its victory over France, but it suffered defeat and humiliation in 1918. Hoyer provides a clear narrative of what happened in between. When Wilhelm II became Kaiser, Germany began to antagonize its neighbors and this would eventually lead to a major war. Its generals wanted a preemptive war with Russia, but they declared war on Russia, France, and Belgium in 1914. They also ended up fighting Britain, United States, and Italy. Hoyer does not really explain what Germany was thinking or trying to achieve. It seemed on a suicide mission. Everybody else in 1914 wanted peace. 

Bismarck was a Prussian aristocrat who was chancellor of Germany from 1871-1890, he died in 1898. Until 1871 Germany consisted of 39 separate states. It would have been better for Europe had it remained that way. Bismarck had two objectives: to unite Germany and bring Germany under Prussian control. Between 1864 and 1871 Bismarck organized three successful wars against Denmark, Austria, and France. These wars helped create a German national identity. Hoyer claims that the new Germany’s “only binding experience was conflict against external enemies.” Bismarck later found new internal enemies and targeted Catholics, socialists, and ethnic minorities.

Bismarck wrote the 1871 German constitution. The constitution made Wilhelm I, Prussia’s king, the Kaiser of Germany. The Kaiser determined foreign policy, approved legislation, and was the supreme commander of the military. The Chancellor was similar to a prime minister and was appointed by the Kaiser. Wilhelm, I became Bismarck’s puppet. Bismarck was the real Kaiser. Wilhelm I had little interest in governing the country and was easily bullied and manipulated by Bismarck. The problem with the constitution was that it contained no checks and balances on the Kaiser’s power in foreign and military matters. In 1888 Wilhelm II became Kaiser, and Germany became more aggressive and militaristic. Wilhelm was a dangerous idiot. He delegated too much power to his generals who eventually sidelined him.

Most Germans were socially conservative and valued order, prosperity, and the national union that Bismarck had built. Germany was the largest state in Europe in 1871 with a population of 41 million. France had a population of 36 million, Austria 36 million, and Britain and Ireland 31.5 million. By 1913, Germany had a population of 65 million. The Second Reich had universal suffrage, but Parliament could not initiate legislation. Parliament would hold the purse-strings to the governmental budget, including military spending. Germany did have strong progressive elements and developed a welfare state. It also had a growing economy with rising real wages, and a literacy rate of 99 percent.

Hoyer claims that after he united Germany, Bismarck tried to convince other European powers that Germany was peaceful and not a threat. He claimed it had no more territorial ambitions in Europe, although Germany did pick up colonies in Africa and the Pacific in the 1880s. Bismarck worked hard to prevent a coalition from emerging against Germany by keeping on friendly terms with Russia. During his term as chancellor, Germany avoided a major war.

Bismarck was removed by Wilhelm II in 1890. Wilhelm did not want a chancellor, parliament, or ministers to mitigate his power. Wilhelm was initially popular and had big ambitions for Germany. As one of his chancellors put it, Germany wanted “its place in the sun.” Under Wilhelm II, Germany became increasingly assertive on the world stage. Hoyer claims Wilhelm wanted a “unified nation with a strong central monarchy that was world-leading in terms of technological, military and naval power.” He talked about a world empire and seemed unconcerned if a major war came along. Germany’s militarism began to frighten its neighbors. Wilhelm wanted an empire on a par with those of Britain and France. This was a popular ambition within Germany, but his policies divided Europe into two armed camps: The Central Powers of Germany and Austria on the one hand; and the Entente powers of France, Russia, and Great Britain on the other.

Hoyer tries to exonerate Bismarck for the disasters that came later, but he wrote the constitution. It allowed the Kaiser to have too much power and Germany succumbed to war and military dictatorship. By 1916 the German people had had enough of war, but there was no way for them to stop it, even after Russia surrendered in 1917. The German army kept going until its troops started to surrender in droves in 1918.

Wilhelm II is depicted as out of his depth. He believed in the divine right of kings and that he was chosen by God. He believed he could run Germany with a small group of conservative sycophants. Hoyer admits that he was also was a bad choice of character. He did not believe that Germany needed democracy when it had him. Wilhelm was often undiplomatic and upset foreign governments. Professor Margaret Macmillan at Oxford University claims that the British king Edward VII (Wilhelm’s uncle) believed that Wilhelm II was mad. Lord Salisbury, Britain’s long-time prime minister, agreed with him. Due to his poor diplomatic skills, Wilhelm alienated Britain, France, Russia, and Italy. Bismarck had always been cautious about upsetting rival powers, unnecessarily. Austria became Germany’s only ally.

Hoyer acknowledges that the Bismarckian system was “inherently flawed but argues that it did not set Germany upon an inevitable path to war and genocide.” That is debatable. None of Germany’s leaders seem wise or prescient and several were mentally unstable. Wilhelm II, Moltke, and Ludendorf all suffered nervous breakdowns at crucial times. Hoyer claims that Bismarck was a great statesman, but the lack of democratic accountability in the constitution counts against him. The constitution required a competent Kaiser/chancellor. However, Hoyer believes that the German people preferred a strong leader to democracy.

Hoyer’s account of the crisis in July 1914 shows that the Kaiser never expected to be sucked into a serious conflict, which does not excuse him of blame. The buck stopped with him and he appointed the generals. Moltke, who was head of the army was really running Germany in 1914. He was obsessed with Russia, which shared a border with 

Mel Ulm

 

All The Frequent Troubles of Our Days-The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of German Resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner - 2021 - 577 Pages

 Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography 

Finalist for the Plutarch Award

A New York Times Notable Book for 2021 

Oprah Daily Best New Books of August

A New York Public Library Book of the Week

 

In this stunning literary achievement, Donner chronicles the extraordinary life and brutal death of her great-great-aunt Mildred Harnack, the American leader of one of the largest underground resistance groups in Germany during the Nazi Years.

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment—a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution. Her coconspirators circulated through Berlin under the cover of night, slipping the leaflets into mailboxes, public restrooms, phone booths. When the first shots of the Second World War were fired, she became a spy, couriering top-secret intelligence to the Allies. On the eve of her escape to Sweden, she was ambushed by the Gestapo. At a Nazi military court, a panel of five judges sentenced her to six years at a prison camp, but Hitler overruled the decision and ordered her execution. On February 16, 1943, she was strapped to a guillotine and beheaded.

Historians identify Mildred Harnack as the only American in the leadership of the German resistance, yet her remarkable story has remained almost unknown until now.

Harnack’s great-great-niece Rebecca Donner draws on her extensive archival research in Germany, Russia, England, and the U.S. as well as newly uncovered documents in her family archive to produce this astonishing work of narrative nonfiction. Fusing elements of biography, real-life political thriller, and scholarly detective story, Donner brilliantly interweaves letters, diary entries, notes smuggled out of a Berlin prison, survivors’ testimony, and a trove of declassified intelligence documents into a powerful, epic story, reconstructing the moral courage of an enigmatic woman nearly erased history.

As I read this marvelous work, I hoped so much Mildred Harnack's romances, her marriage and her career plans would not be destroyed by the Nazis. In her work as an anti-Nazi agent it was very hard to trust anyone. A neighbor might be a gestapo agent, a collaborator might, and one in fact turned in Mildred and many others, turn you in under fear of torture.  

Some in her circle did make it out of Germany.

We get a clear view of the increasing cruelty of life in Germany.

"Rebecca Donner is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, published by Little, Brown. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days won the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, the 2022 PEN /Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award, the 2022 Chautauqua Prize, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Plutarch Award, and the Governor General’s Literary Award. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days was also selected as a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2021, a New York Times Notable Book, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and was named one of the Best Books of 2021 by the Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, and The Economist. 

Rebecca Donner is currently a Visiting Scholar at Oxford. In 2023-2024, she will be a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard Radcliffe Institute." From rebeccadonner.com

Mel u

Nazi Billionaires:The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties by David de Jong - 2022 - 400 pages

 

Nazi Billionaires:The Dark History of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties by David de Jong - 2022

The biggest fear of wealthy Germans was the specter of communism.  Wealthy Germans were summoned to meetings where donations to the party was solicited by high ranking Nazis, sometimes by Hitler himself.  Per de Jong, most of the wealthy were very Anti-Semitic and relished the opportunity to take over Jewish assets.  Some fell under the sway of Hitler, others flattered and bribed him to gain contracts with the German military.  We also see how leading German banks were heavily involved, becoming ever richer.

“At the Esplanade dinner, Günther arranged his executives across fourteen tables, seating each next to a Nazi bureaucrat or general to discuss arms deals and Aryanizations. Naturally, the men who financed these transactions — the leading executives of Commerzbank, Dresdner Bank, and Deutsche Bank — were present. These financiers of the Third Reich competed bitterly to serve the deep-pocketed Nazi regime and to satiate their private clients’ ravenous appetite for credit.”

The dynasties treated include, THE QUANDTS Günther Quandt: Patriarch. Industrialist, his second wife was Magda Goebbels.  After they divorced she married Goebbels and became “The First Lady of Nazi Germany.”  She worshiped Hitler.  Also detailed is Friedrich Flick: Patriarch. Industrialist, THE VON FINCKS August von Finck Sr.: Patriarch. Private banker, Ferdinand Porsche: Patriarch. Creator of Volkswagen and Porsche, and Dr. Oetker a German multinational company that produced baking powder, cake mixes, frozen pizza, pudding, cake decoration, cornflakes, party candles.  All of these companies were family run and employed top,SS officers as part of management.  All greatly benefited financially from the war, employing slave laborers and stealing Jewish firms.

The industries owned by the dynasty families used slave laborers, concentration camp inmates and Russian prisoners of war.  This was  expedited by their close tied to the Nazi party and the SS. Many had S S officers in their employ.After the war, of course, claims were made that they had no idea of the horrible conditions those in their factories and mines labored.  

With the defeat of Germany, numerous business leaders were arrested and tried.  Many got off by having their attorneys present letters exculpating them from wrong doing.  In the American controlled zone policy shifted against punishment for German business men. America wanted Germany as an ally in the developing Cold War with Russia.  

De Jong goes into the reparation process.  This included reimbursement for the theft of Jewish assets and payment for  enslaved workers.  For a year in concentration camp you might get about $700.00.  

To me the Porsche family came across very venal,  denying all blame.  Ferdinand Porsche did three years in prison while denying everything.  He even cheated the Nazis by overcharging them in the developing of the Volkswagen, one of Hitler’s pet projects.  Only 625 cars were produced by war end and all were given as gifts to Nazis.  Thousands of ordinary Germans paid for cars but never got them. Thousands worked as slave laborers in his factories.  During the war, he produced and designed tanks and military vehicles.  

Descendants of the dynasty leaders are now among Germany’s richest people, worth billions of dollars.  Some of the grandchildren have acknowledged how the got this wealth and paid some reparations. Others say all criticism of them are politically motivated prevarications.

There is a lot of fascinating material about American pre-war attitudes.

David de Jong is a journalist who previously covered European banking and finance from Amsterdam and hidden wealth and billionaire fortunes from New York for Bloomberg News. His work has also appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek, the Wall Street Journal, and the Dutch Financial Daily.

Anyone interested in German history should read this book.

Mel Ulm

Kl: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps By Nikolaus Wachsmann - 2015 - 881 Pages

Kl: A History  of the Nazi Concentration  Camps

By Nikolaus Wachsmann - 2015 - 881 Pages

In March of 1933 an abandoned factory in Dachau surrounded by barbed wire held 233 prisoners. Wachsmann traces out in a very detailed  narrative the complex sequence of events leading up to the 22 majors camps and over 1000 satellite camps located in Germany and Nazi occupied Europe.  The camps were at heart of the Nazis program of terror and repression.  As war dragged on they became an important part of the German economy and war effort.

The camps were quite different from each other. Auschwitz, the biggest camp, was primarily a place to murder Jews.  Other sites were work camps where the SS had economic reasons to keep workers alive such as Dora where V2 rockets were made by slave labor.  Inmates with skills valuable to the Germans had a much better chance of surviving longer.  I fascinated to learn that there was a unit of about 200 inmates who counterfeited British currency.  They worked inside, had better food and had a much higher survival rate than inmates working outside.  

Wachsmann is the first historian to write a complete history of the camps.  He shows us how The camps were organized while vividly detailing horrors, the sadism, and the central role in murdering those Nazi ideology dictated were parasites, sub-human and enemies of the State.  We see how German doctors were among the most vicious of camp officials, giving lethel injections, performing barbaric experiments and selecting which of newly arriving inmates were at once sent to be killed.

Gas Chambers were phased in as the primary method of Killing because Germans found shoting 

 them traumatic.

Wachsmann shows us The Germans failed attempt to turn Russian  POWs into slaves laborers.  Most were judged to weak and about two million were murdered.  Only about two percent of Russian POWs survived to return home.

Almost everyone who worked at the camps very long stole things that were supposed to be used in war efforts.

There is a lot of information about the Command structure of the Camps.

As the war started to turn against the Germans, hard core anti-semites began to panic, fearing they would not suceed in Killing all of the Jews in the camps.  As portrayed by Wachsmann,most all Germans knew what was going on in camps and did not care much one way or the other.

There is much more in this book.  

“Nikolaus Wachsmann is Professor in Modern European History at Birkbeck, University of London.

He studied at the London School of Economics, the University of Cambridge and at Birkbeck, gaining his PhD in 2001. His comprehensive history of the Nazi camps KL, published in 2015, won the Wolfson History Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, and the Jewish Quarterly-Wingate literary prize. Nikolaus has a particular interest in public history and Holocaust education, and serves on the academic advisory boards of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, as well as the concentration camp memorials Bergen-Belsen, Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück. He also curates a free educational website for students and teachers about the history of the Nazi camps.” From https://www.gresham.ac.uk/professors-and-speakers/nikolaus-wachsmann/

Mel Ulm

 

Wunderland by Jennifer Cody Epstein - 2019 - 384 pages

 

Wunderland by Jennifer Cody Epstein - 2019 - 384 pages 

Last month I read The Painter from Shanghai: A Novel by Jennifer Cody Epstein.  I added her two other novels to my Amazon wish list.  When Wunderland was marked down fifty percent, as a Kindle, I happily acquired it.  Set largely in Germany,  Wunderland centers around the impact  of the Holocaust on three women. Ava Fisher and her mother Ilsa have never been close.   Renete, Ilse’s very close friend when they were growing up, is the third.

Ilse and Renete grew up very close. Hitler has come to power, Ilse joins Hitler youth organizations and begins to write articles about how Jews were destroying Germany.  Through a series of revelations Renete discovers her mother has kept secret their Jewish ancestry.  Epstein vividly portrays how both girls lives are impacted by the Nuremburg laws, the Gestapo.  Things were never easy between Ava and her mother Ilse, supposedly her father had been killed on the Eastern Front.  Terrible attacks on Jews are depicted.

Once Renete’s ancestory comes out, it changes everything.   We see the pervasive way German Society is destroyed.

The narrative moves from Germany in 1936 to New York City in the 1980s.  There are lots of delightful literary references including a number to a German translation of Alice in Wonderland.

From the author’s website

“I am the author of the USA Today bestseller Wunderland, now out in paperback. My prior works include The Gods of Heavenly Punishment, winner of the 2014 Asian Pacific Association of Librarians Honor award for outstanding fiction, as well as the international bestseller The Painter from Shanghai. I have also written for The Wall Street Journal, The Asian Wall Street Journal, The Nation (Thailand), Self and Mademoiselle magazines, and the NBC and HBO networks, working in Kyoto, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Bangkok as well as Washington D.C. and New York. I’ve taught at Columbia University in New York and Doshisha University in Kyoto, and have an MFA from Columbia, a Masters of International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and a BA in Asian Studies/English from Amherst College.

I currently live in Brooklyn, NY with my husband, filmmaker Michael Epstein, my two amazing daughters and an exceptionally needy Springer Spaniel.”

I hope to read The Gods of Heavenly Punishment, set in Japan during World War Two, soon.

A Night in Lisbon by Erich Maria Remarque -1961- translated from The German by Ralph Manheim - 1964

 

A Night in Lisbon by Erich Maria Remarque -1961- translated from The German by Ralph Manheim - 1964

German Literature Month XI

This is my 10th  year participating in German Literature Month.

Through this I have encountered numerous great writers.  One of themes in a Night in Lisbon by Erich Maria Remarque is how could the culture that produced great art, literature and lasting philosophical classics have also given rise  to the Holocaust.

During German Literature Month in November of 2013 I posted on All Quiet on The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, his masterful account of trench warfare during World War One.  On the cover of my copy of All Quiet on the Western Front it is said to be greatest war novel of all time. I have not read enough war novels to dispute or verify this claim but I think the foot soldiers in The Iliad would see little has changed in four thousand or so years.  This is a great novel and it well might be the best war novel ever written.  It is told in the first person by a twenty year old German WW I private.  I admit part of the power of the book for me was the way it forced me to see the Germans soldiers in a sympathetic way.  My ancestors fought against the Germans twice in the Twentieth Century.  My uncle, for whom I was named, died at 23 in WWII

Now eight years later I just completed his account of a refugee from concentration camps in German stuck in Lisbon while he tries to secure passage for his wife and himself on a ship bound for America.  It is a nightmarish enviorment in which no one can be trusted.  Their lives depend on securing the required paper work.

This is a powerful work, very profoundly evoking the horrors of the narrator’s situation.  I have been under lock down in Metro Manila since March 15, 2020.  I do not at all suffer materially but at times I find it oppressive.  I think A Night in Lisbon great a work of art as it is, was not a good choice for me.

The Brothers Grimm - Three Fairy Tales - from TALES OF THE GERMAN IMAGINATION FROM THE BROTHERS GRIMM TO INGEBORG BACHMANN Selected, Translated and Edited by Peter Wortsman - 2011

 

The Brothers Grimm - Three Fairy Tales - from TALES OF THE GERMAN IMAGINATION FROM THE BROTHERS GRIMM TO INGEBORG BACHMANN Selected, Translated and Edited by Peter Wortsman - 2011

German Literature 10 November 2020

TALES OF THE GERMAN IMAGINATION FROM THE BROTHERS GRIMM TO INGEBORG BACHMANN Selected, Translated and Edited by Peter Wortsman is a great anthology.  In addition to a perfect selection of writers, through Peter Wartsman’s introduction to stories we can follow the evolution of the German Short Story starting with these three stories from The Brothers Grimm.

The Singing Bone -1812

Hansel and Gretal - 1812

The Children of Hameln - 1814

These are not Disney Fairy Tales.  A man muders his brother, an old woman tries to cook and eat two children but ends up murdered  and 130 children are taken from their parents never to be see again as revenge for a debt not paid.

The Singing Bone is, I think, the least famous of the three fairy tales.  There is a very dangerous wild boar killing people all over the kingdom. The ruler offers his daughter as a bride to who ever brings him the body of the beast.  Two Brothers enter.  A mysterious man they encounter in the forrest offers them advise.  One brother married the Princess.  He stole the body of the boar after he killed his brother, the true winner.  The lesson is at the end.

Hansel and Gretal is one of the most famous of The Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

In it a wicked step mother persuades her husband to take his two children from his late wife out in the deep Woods, to be eaten by Wild animals, thus reducing their food costs.  Hansel and Gretal find in the woods an edible house.  In that house is a witch who lures in children, fattens  them up and eats them.  Part of the “moral” of this is that ugly women are evil, there are very few people you can trust not even your father.  

The Children of Hameln ( Often this story is titled “The Pied Piper of Hamiln” has been made into Movies and cartoons.  The storyline is very well known.  The town of Hameln is invented with rats.  A piper says The town rats will follow his music over a cliff.  The town leaders offer to pay him for doing this.  He does it and they refuse to pay.  He takes a terrible Revenge on the town.

‘The Singing Bone’, ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and ‘The Children of Hameln’, collected and retold by the Brothers Grimm, were included in the first two volumes of Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Fairy Tales), published in 1812 and 1814 respectively. The Brothers Grimm, Jakob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were born in Hanau, into a family of nine children, six of whom survived. Students of law and linguistics, they worked both independently and together. Best known for their fairy tale collection, they also collaborated on the first German dictionary and a book of German legends. In addition Jakob wrote important books on German grammar, the law and German mythology. Following the demise of the Holy Roman Empire,the Grimms surely had a hand in defining it. The fairy tales they collected, and touched up in their retelling, sounded the depths of the German unconscious. The popularity of their collection, which went through seven editions in the Brothers’ lifetimes, makes it second only to Luther’s translation of the Bible as a formative influence on, and mirror of, the German identity.” Peter Wortsman

Mel u

Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany by Edward Westermann

Drunk on Genocide:Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany by Edward B. Westermann -forthcoming March 15, 2021 from Cornell University Press 

An Autodidactic Corner Selection

In Drunk on Genocide:Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany Edward B. Westermann seeks to demonstrate a close connection between alcohol, male bonding, a compulsive need to prove one’s masculinity and the tremendous enjoyment involved in the killings during the Holocaust.  

He cites cites a copious number of incidents where ordinary citizens joined in watching events of mass shooting as one might a soccer game. Germans, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Romanians and others flocked to watch Jews being shot, often taking pictures of them abusing the bodies for keepsakes.  Massive amounts of alcohol was typically consumed as part of the celebration.  The more joy with which  a German took part in killing and the more he could “hold his liquor” the more of a man he became in the eyes of others.  The killers were not drinking to hide shame but to make it all more fun.  

Of course alcohol lowers inhibitions, many concentration camp guards were most feared when they were drunk.  In the camps guards would have lots of marksmanship contests using Jews as targets.  Female and male inmates were routinely raped.  There were official Gestapo rules against sex with Jewish inmates  and drinking while on duty but the penalties were trivial.  I was shocked to learn women who played in the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz were regularly raped by drunken guards because they received extra food rations and were more attractive targets physically because of this.  Pregnancy was terminated with a gun shot.

Much sport was made of throwing babies in the air and shooting them fueled by alcohol. 

. 

Westerman details the ritual drinking parties of SS men.  Female SS guards were often the cruelest, trying to show that they were even more masculine than the men.  

I closed this book totally convinced by Westerman.

From Cornell University Press 

“In Drunk on Genocide, Edward B. Westermann reveals how, over the course of the Third Reich, scenes involving alcohol consumption and revelry among the SS and police became a routine part of rituals of humiliation in the camps, ghettos, and killing fields of Eastern Europe.

Westermann draws on a vast range of newly unearthed material to explore how alcohol consumption served as a literal and metaphorical lubricant for mass murder. It facilitated "performative masculinity," expressly linked to physical or sexual violence. Such inebriated exhibitions extended from meetings of top Nazi officials to the rank and file, celebrating at the grave sites of their victims. Westermann argues that, contrary to the common misconception of the SS and police as stone-cold killers, they were, in fact, intoxicated with the act of murder itself.

Drunk on Genocide highlights the intersections of masculinity, drinking ritual, sexual violence, and mass murder to expose the role of alcohol and celebratory ritual in the Nazi genocide of European Jews. Its surprising and disturbing findings offer a new perspective on the mindset, motivation, and mentality of killers as they prepared for, and participated in, mass extermination.”

Edward B. Westermann is Professor of History at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, a Commissioner on the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission, and author, most recently, of Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars.

This book should be in all school libraries.  It is a very valuable addition to Holocaust studies.

Mel u