After Midnight by Irmgard Keun (1937, translated by Anthea Bell)

Lizzy's Literary Life


Beauty is a Sleeping Cat


German Literature Month V 

German Literature Month V has only about a week left.  I have greatly enjoyed participating in this wonderful event. I commend and thank the hosts for their hard work.  There are lots of wonderful edifying posts by event participants.  

German Literature IV Post Event Celebration. Copiously illustrated

I am debating with myself whether or not we will host a party this year.  

Works I Have So Far Read for G L V

1.  Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. A brilliant recreation of life in Nazi Germany. 

2.  Ostend, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and the Summer Before the End by Volker Weidermann. A fascinating social history 

3.  Buddenbrook Ths Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann.  Must reading 

4.  "The Governess" by Stefan Zweig

5.  Demian:  The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by Herman Hesse.  Read the major works first.

6.  The Tanners by Robert Walser. a serious work of art

7. The Hotel Years Wandering Between the Wars by Joseph Hoffman, a brilliant collection of feuilletons translated and introduced by Michael Hoffman

8.  "The Dandelioln" by Wolfgang Borchert. 

9.   "The Foundling" by Heinrich Von Kleist

10.  "A Conversation Concerning Legs" by Alfred Lichenstein 

11.  A Homage to Paul Celan

12.  "The Criminal" by Veza Canetti 

13.  Rebellion by Joseph Roth. Between the wars

14.  The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch - an amazing work of art

15.  The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun.  Sex and the City redone in the Weimer Republic  

16.  Wolf Among Wolves by Hans Fallada.  A panoramic view of the Weimer Republic 

17.  Journey Into the Past by Stefan Zweig

18.  Fear by Stefan Zweig

19.  "Mendel the Bibliophile" by Stefan Zweig

A few days ago I read and posted on The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun (1905 to 1862, born in Berlin).  Keun's books were burned by the Nazis and it is a miracle that she escaped a similar fate.  The Artifical Silk Girl is sort of sort of like a story Dorthy Parker might have written about the life of a young woman in her early twenties on her on in Berlin in 1934 trying to get by on her looks and some flattery. I have seen it described as sort of like Sex in the City meets the Weimier Republic.  In it we see how the culture of Nazi Germany destroyed the self respect of the young woman.

The Artificial Sikj Girl is a very good work, After Midnight a good bit better.  It is the story of two young women in Betlin just before the wR starts.  Anti-Jewish laws were in place and everyone feared being turned in by those around them as a subversive.  The women social prize with Nazi soldiers and try to secure a decent life for themselves by finding men to take care of them.  It is not just about Nazi Germany but about how hard it is to keep your convictions when every day is a struggle just to have food.  The women get in trouble and they have their romances.  

This is a lively and exciting novel which I greatly enjoyed reading.  Fans of Vhridtopher Isherwood will love it.  

There is one more novel of Keun available in translation as a Kindle edition and I hope to read it in 2016 for German Literature VI.

Irmgard Keun (born 1905 in Berlin, died Cologne 1982) is widely considered the best female novelist of the Late 1930s in Germany.  Her work was banned as subversive by the Gestapo for her satirical portrayal of the impact of hyper-inflation and the creeping evil embodied in the rise of Nazi Germany which brought on a destruction of much of normal morality. She actually was crazy/brave enough to sue the Gestspo for banning her work, of course she lost.

Mel ü

Journey Into the Past by Stefan . Collection forthcoming 2016

Lizzy's Literary Life


Beauty is a Sleeping Cat


German Literature Month V 

I am estatic to once again be able to Participate in German Literature Month, elegantly and lovingly hosted by Lizzi's Literary Live and Beauty is a Sleeping Cat. This is my fourth year as a participant.   On the host blogs you will find the particularities of the event but the basic idea is to read literature first written in German (translated or not) and share your thoughts.  I began accumulating works for the event soon after the event ended last year and I began reading for it in mid-September.  

German Literature IV Post Event Celebration. Copiously illustrated

Works Read for G L V So Far

1.  Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. A brilliant recreation of life in Nazi Germany. 

2.  Ostend, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and the Summer Before the End by Volker Weidermann. A fascinating social history 

3.  Buddenbrook Ths Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann.  Must reading 

4.  "The Governess" by Stefan Zweig

5.  Demian:  The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by Herman Hesse.  Read the major works first.

6.  The Tanners by Robert Walser. a serious work of art

7. The Hotel Years Wandering Between the Wars by Joseph Hoffman, a brilliant collection of feuilletons translated and introduced by Michael Hoffman

8.  "The Dandelioln" by Wolfgang Borchert. 

9.   "The Foundling" by Heinrich Von Kleist

10.  "A Conversation Concerning Legs" by Alfred Lichenstein 

11.  A Homage to Paul Celan

12.  "The Criminal" by Veza Canetti 

13.  Rebellion by Joseph Roth. Between the wars

14.  The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch - an amazing work of art

15.  The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun.  Sex and the City redone in the Weimer Republic  

16.  Wolf Among Wolves by Hans Fallada.  A panoramic view of the Weimer Republic 

Pushkin Press has been very instrumental in publishing the work of Stefan Zweig in translation.  I salute them for this but I wish so much they would include in their collections date first published information. I really don't think, for example, that readers of his novella, Journey Into the Past should have to use Google to find Zweig began working on it in 1924 and kept  polishing it but never had it published.  It was in fact first published in 1976.  

Journey Into the Past is an intensely romantic work.    Ludwig, the central,character, is a young engineer when the story begins.  He is so hard working that the owner of the huge corporation he works for offers him s position as his personal assistant.  The job requires he move into the mansion of   his boss.  He develops a  relationship with the owner's wife.  They fall deeply in love, they kiss but they never have sex, being constrained by morality.  One day the boss offers him a job running a big mining operation in Mexico. He will have to be there for two years but he will be handsomely rewarded and given a top position in the company when he returns to Germany.   He hates to seperate from his love but he really cannot turn down this job.  He moves to Mexico and throws himself into his work, counting the days until he can go back to Germany.  He writes his love a long letter everyday.  He lives for the letters she sends him.   Just a few days before his return he gets the terrible news of the outbreak of World War I, German subjects have no way to get back home.  He is crushed but he throws himself into his work.  He no longer gets letters from the woman.  Time goes by and he gradually thinks of her less and less.  He marries a woman from a nice German family living in Mexico. He has sons.  He continues working for the company.  Eventually the war is over.   Soon he is asked to return to Germany to negotiate the closing of some very important business deals. He returns to Germany.

He, against his better judgment as a married man, calls tne home number of his old boss, after nine years it still works.  He finds the woman's husband and son were killed in the war.  At first the meeting is not totally comfortable for either, the man sees she has aged and he does not know if she still feels a passion for him.  He wants to at last have sex with her.  She agrees but she asks that they go to another city so they can have privacy.

The story is very well narrated but there nothing so far real remarkable about it.  Then something exciting and for sure not something we expect in a work by Zweig happens.  An endless prade passes in from of the hotel, the marchers are carrying red banners with swasticas on them.  The man has been gone so long he is shocked by the implications of the event. 

The story is very much about trying to return to old emotions, the role of memories voluntary and otherwise. 

This story is very exciting, some will say it is over done but that is not my feeling.

There are five novellas in this collection,   Here is the table of included works.

Burning Secret, A Chess Story, Fear, Confusion, and Journey into the Past. 

I have already read and posted on the first two and hope to work the other two in this month.

I was given a copy of this book for review purposes.

Mel ü

Wolf Among Wolves by Hans Fallada. (1937, translated by Phillip Owens, 810 pages)

I offer my great thanks to Max ü for proving me with the Amazon gift card that allowed me to read Wolf Among Wolves.

Lizzy's Literary Life


Beauty is a Sleeping Cat


German Literature Month V 

I am estatic to once again be able to Participate in German Literature Month, elegantly and lovingly hosted by Lizzi's Literary Live and Beauty is a Sleeping Cat. This is my fourth year as a participant.   On the host blogs you will find the particularities of the event but the basic idea is to read literature first written in German (translated or not) and share your thoughts.  I began accumulating works for the event soon after the event ended last year and I began reading for it in mid-September.  

German Literature IV Post Event Celebration. Copiously illustrated

Works Read for G L V So Far

1.  Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. A brilliant recreation of life in Nazi Germany. 

2.  Ostend, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and the Summer Before the End by Volker Weidermann. A fascinating social history 

3.  Buddenbrook Ths Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann.  Must reading 

4.  "The Governess" by Stefan Zweig

5.  Demian:  The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by Herman Hesse.  Read the major works first.

6.  The Tanners by Robert Walser. a serious work of art

7. The Hotel Years Wandering Between the Wars by Joseph Hoffman, a brilliant collection of feuilletons translated and introduced by Michael Hoffman

8.  "The Dandelioln" by Wolfgang Borchert. 

9.   "The Foundling" by Heinrich Von Kleist

10.  "A Conversation Concerning Legs" by Alfred Lichenstein 

11.  A Homage to Paul Celan

12.  "The Criminal" by Veza Canetti 

13.  Rebellion by Joseph Roth. Between the wars

14.  The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch - an amazing work of art

15.  The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun.  Sex and the City redone in the Weimer Republic  

At the start of German Literature Month V I read Every Man Dies Alone by Henry Fallada.  Primo Levi called it the best book ever written on Nazi Germany.  I loved it and accept the author's pronouncement that he produced a work of genius.  It is consistently very exciting.  

Wolf Among Wolves, a longer book, focuses on the impact of the hyper-inflation in Germany in the years after WW One.  The German Mark went from four to the dollar to four billion to the dollar.  The thrifty German middle class saw the savings of a life time wiped out.  Those who had debts  to pay greatly benefited from the inflation.  

The story follows the fate of three German war veterans.  It focuses a lot on a young man who struggles to support his girl friend working as a professional gambler while living in Berlin.  Germany's defeat in the war has destroyed the pride of the country.  Heroin and cocaine are the drugs of choice.   Prostitution is rampant, many an ex soldier is portrayed as turning tricks for foreigners with American dollars come to,the city for the rampant vice.  Police and government officials are all on the make.  We receive frequent announcements of the fall of the mark.  There was a time when a savings of ten thousand marks was enough for a comfortable retirement.  Fallada lets us see how crushing the inflation was on the very thrift oriented German middle class.  The poor had to,struggle terribly just to survive.  Many of the rich had reserved in dollars or pounds.

Fallada vividly portrays the period.  You can see how hyper inflation made the Germans vulnerable to an ideology which blamed their miseries on the Jews.  There are lots of interesting scenes.  In one very interesting case we witness a mortgage being converted from payments in marks to payment in bread.

Gangsters gain control of society.  

Bio Data from Melville House

Before WWII, German writer Hans Fallada's novels were international bestsellers, on a par with those of his countrymen Thoman Mann and Herman Hesse. In America, Hollywood even turned his first big novel, Little Man, What Now? into a major motion picture

Learning the movie was made by a Jewish producer, however, the Nazis blocked Fallada's work from foreign rights sales, and began to pay him closer attention. When he refused to join the Nazi party he was arrested by the Gestapo--who eventually released him, but thereafter regularly summoned him for "discussions" of his work.

However, unlike Mann, Hesse, and others, Fallada refused to flee to safety, even when his British publisher, George Putnam, sent a private boat to rescue him. The pressure took its toll on Fallada, and he resorted increasingly to drugs and alcohol for relief. Not long after Goebbels ordered him to write an anti-Semitic novel he snapped and found himself imprisoned in an asylum for the "criminally insane"--considered a death sentence under Nazi rule. To forestall the inevitable, he pretended to write the assignment for Goebbels, while actually composing three encrypted books--including his tour de force novel The Drinker--in such dense code that they were not deciphered until long after his death.

Fallada outlasted the Reich and was freed at war's end. But he was a shattered man. To help him recover by putting him to work, Fallada's publisher gave him the Gestapo file of a simple, working-class couple who had resisted the Nazis. Inspired, Fallada completed Every Man Dies Alone in just twenty-four days.

Wolf Among Wolves  is thoroughly entertaining. The characters are very well done.  I would suggest that those new to,Fallafa ffirst read Every Man Dies Alone. The next of Fallada's book i shall read is A Small Circus.  

I hope others will share their experiences with Fallada and other novels depicting Weimer Germany share their experiences.

Mel ü

 

The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun (1933)

..

Lizzy's Literary Life


Beauty is a Sleeping Cat


German Literature Month V 

I am estatic to once again be able to Participate in German Literature Month, elegantly and lovingly hosted by Lizzi's Literary Live and Beauty is a Sleeping Cat. This is my fourth year as a participant.   On the host blogs you will find the particularities of the event but the basic idea is to read literature first written in German (translated or not) and share your thoughts.  I began accumulating works for the event soon after the event ended last year and I began reading for it in mid-September.  

German Literature IV Post Event Celebration. Copiously illustrated

Works Read for G L V So Far

1.  Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. A brilliant recreation of life in Nazi Germany. 

2.  Ostend, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and the Summer Before the End by Volker Weidermann. A fascinating social history 

3.  Buddenbrook Ths Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann.  Must reading 

4.  "The Governess" by Stefan Zweig

5.  Demian:  The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by Herman Hesse.  Read the major works first.

6.  The Tanners by Robert Walser. a serious work of art

7. The Hotel Years Wandering Between the Wars by Joseph Hoffman, a brilliant collection of feuilletons translated and introduced by Michael Hoffman

8.  "The Dandelioln" by Wolfgang Borchert. 

9.   "The Foundling" by Heinrich Von Kleist

10.  "A Conversation Concerning Legs" by Alfred Lichenstein 

11.  A Homage to Paul Celan

12.  "The Criminal" by Veza Canetti 

13.  Rebellion by Joseph Roth

14.  The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch - an amazing work of art

Ever since I read Ostend, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and the Summer Before the End by Volker Weidermann earlier this month in which he talked about German writers on holiday in Ostend, Beligum I knew I needed to read a work by Irmgard Keun.  In this work I learned of the romance between Irmgzrd and Joseph Roth.  To me Roth came across as trying to turn her into an enabler for his alcoholism.  

Irmgard Keun (born 1905 in Berlin, died Cologne 1982) is widely considered the best female novelist of the Late 1930s in Germany.  Her work was banned as subversive by the Gestapo for her satirical portrayal of the impact of hyper-inflation and the creeping evil embodied in the rise of Nazi Germany which brought on a destruction of much of normal morality. She actually was crazy/brave enough to sue the Gestspo for banning her work, of course she lost.  Some have  calledher work "Sex and the City Berlin style circa 1935".  

The story is narrated by twenty year old Doris, her father is an  alcoholic, her mother was "hot in her day".  Doris world as a typist, living in a small town.  She has to fend off the advances of her boss while still making him think she might give in to his dubious charms.  He ends up firing her with a one month severance.  She gives part of the money to her mother, she lives at home and leaves for the big city of Berlin, figuring she can live off her charms.  Doris is fascinated by Berlin.  She is on a man hunt, Hoping for a suger daddy.  Gradually she is overtaken by the miasma of corruption creeping over Berlin and dates turn into tricks.   

The Artificial Silk Girl is not a "heavy read" like The Death of Virgil or a work of genius like We all Die Alone by Hans Fallada but for sure it gave me a feel of what it must have been like to be broke, young, female, pretty and without a family or any real friends in the early days of Nazi Germany.   Slowly it becomes a city of whores, johns, pimps and assorted passeers by on Alexanderplatz. 

IRMGARD KEUN (1905–1982) was born in Berlin and raised in Cologne, where she studied to be an actress. However, reputedly inspired by a meeting with Alfred Döblin, author of Berlin Alexanderplatz, she turned to writing, and became an instant sensation with her first novel, Gigli: One of Us, published in 1931 when she was just twenty-six. A year later, her second novel, The Artificial Silk Girl, was an even bigger bestseller. The rising Nazi party censured Keun, however, and her books were included in the infamous “burning of the books” in 1933. After being arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo, Keun left her husband and escaped Germany. While wandering in exile, Keun conducted an eighteen-month affair with the writer Joseph Roth and finished After Midnight, published in 1937. In 1940 Keun staged her suicide and, under a false identity, re-entered Germany, where she lived in hiding until the end of the war. Her work was rediscovered in the late seventies, reviving her reputation in Germany. She died in 1982.  

There are two other translated works of Keun available as Kindle editions and I hope to read them one day.  

I hope those with experience with novels written about the Nazi years by Germans will share their experience with us.

Mel ü

The Death of Virgil by Hermann Broch (1945, translated by Jean Star Vetermeyer)

"The Death of Virgil represents the only genuine technical advance in fiction since Ulysses" - George Steiner in Language and Silence

"Prussia, the ruler of Germany, was always an enemy of the intellect, of books, of the Book of Books—that is, the Bible—of Jews and Christians, of humanism and Europe. Hitler’s Third Reich is only so alarming to the rest of Europe because it sets itself to put into action what was always the Prussian project anyway: to burn the books, to murder the Jews, and to revise Christianity."  Joseph Roth, 1933"

Lizzy's Literary Life


Beauty is a Sleeping Cat


German Literature Month V 

I am estatic to once again be able to Participate in German Literature Month, elegantly and lovingly hosted by Lizzi's Literary Live and Beauty is a Sleeping Cat. This is my fourth year as a participant.   On the host blogs you will find the particularities of the event but the basic idea is to read literature first written in German (translated or not) and share your thoughts.  I began accumulating works for the event soon after the event ended last year and I began reading for it in mid-September.  

German Literature IV Post Event Celebration. Copiously illustrated

Works Read for G L V So Far

1.  Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. A brilliant recreation of life in Nazi Germany. 

2.  Ostend, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and the Summer Before the End by Volker Weidermann. A fascinating social history 

3.  Buddenbrook Ths Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann.  Must reading 

4.  "The Governess" by Stefan Zweig

5.  Demian:  The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by Herman Hesse.  Read the major works first.

6.  The Tanners by Robert Walser. a serious work of art

7. The Hotel Years Wandering Between the Wars by Joseph Hoffman, a brilliant collection of feuilletons translated and introduced by Michael Hoffman

8.  "The Dandelioln" by Wolfgang Borchert. 

9.   "The Foundling" by Heinrich Von Kleist

10.  "A Conversation Concerning Legs" by Alfred Lichenstein 

11.  A Homage to Paul Celan

12.  "The Criminal" by Veza Canetti 

13.  Rebellion by Joseph Roth

Last November during GL IV I read Hermann Broch's great between the wars trilogy, The Sleepwalkers.

(Broch was born in Vienna in 1886, he was briefly imprisoned by the Nazis as a subversive, upon release from a concentration camp he moved to the USA, his last years were spent researching mass psychology at Yale, he died in 1951. Virgil was born 70BC and died in 19BC)

The Death of Virgil is one of the most amazing novels I have ever read.  It is one of the great works of Modernism.  It is largely the stream of consciousness of the Poet Virgil during his last eighteen hours before his death.  It is also an amazing recreation of the Roman social world and cosmology.  As the novel opens Virgil is disembarking from a boat on his way to the Imperial palace of the Emperor Augustus.  Broch makes us feel we are there, he makes us not just understand it with our minds but somehow forces the experience into our own consciousness.  We see how dependent Rome was on slaves, how the existence of a slave class was taken for granted.  It has to be seen as partially a political comment on Germany. I felt I was being carried through the city of Rime on a sedan chair gapping at the wonders and horrors of the city, taking my right to be carried for granted.

The work is really a giant prose poem, simply an amazing work of high art.  Broch worked very closely with the translator to achieve as much verisimilitude in the English prose as possible.  Some of the sentences go on for pages.

Virgil reading The Aeneid to Augustus, by Jean-Baptiste Wicar.

The death of Virgil deals with the very nature of art, poetry and literature.  Virgil has brought the manuscript of The Aeneid with him.  He wants it to be burned before he dies.  There is an extensive conversation, or more probably the partial hallucination of conversations, Virgil has with Augustus over why he wants his book burned.  He also has memories of Plotia, a woman he loved.  Mingled with this are images from Roman religion.  My post read research indicates Broch was drawing on theories of Carl Jung on the collective unconscious and was drawing on iideas from this theory. 

As I read the deeper and darker hallunicinatory aspects of Virgil's stream of consciousness devoted to Roman theories on the creation of I had an involuntary memory of murals depicting the creation of the cosmos I was mesmerized by at Anghor Wat.  Each reader will find her own connection if they open their minds wide enough.

There are long wide ranging conversations with the Emperor Augustus, his use for The Aeneid was largely political. The conversations are at least in part creations of the mind of Virgil.  Virgil knows he is dying and his mind is spinning a way from superficial rationality.  

I would recommend you read this work not slowly trying to understand every reference but quickly, letting the work flow without restraint as deeply as you can allow it into your consciousness. If Jungian readings are viable, at some point it will connect with your own aspect of the universal subconsciousness.   As you read, do not try to make literal sense of the story line.  

In reading this it helps to have a basic understanding of Roman culture and to have read at least The Aeneid.  I read The Aeneid maybe fiveteen years ago.  I began the epic poem thinking well this is an important work I need to read and ended being stunned by the power of the work.  

My great thanks to Max ü for providing me with the Amazon gift card that allowed me to read The Death of Virgil.

Mel ü

Rebellion by Joseph Roth (1924, translated by Michael Hoffman

My great thanks to Max ü for tne gift card that allowed me to read this book

Lizzy's Literary Life


Beauty is a Sleeping Cat


German Literature Month V 

I am estatic to once again be able to Participate in German Literature Month, elegantly and lovingly hosted by Lizzi's Literary Live and Beauty is a Sleeping Cat. This is my fourth year as a participant.   On the host blogs you will find the particularities of the event but the basic idea is to read literature first written in German (translated or not) and share your thoughts.  I began accumulating works for the event soon after the event ended last year and I began reading for it in mid-September.  

German Literature IV Post Event Celebration. Copiously illustrated

Works Read for G L V So Far

1.  Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. A brilliant recreation of life in Nazi Germany. 

2.  Ostend, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and the Summer Before the End by Volker Weidermann. A fascinating social history 

3.  Buddenbrook Ths Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann.  Must reading 

4.  "The Governess" by Stefan Zweig

5.  Demian:  The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by Herman Hesse.  Read the major works first.

6.  The Tanners by Robert Walser. a serious work of art

7. The Hotel Years Wandering Between the Wars by Joseph Hoffman, a brilliant collection of feuilletons translated and introduced by Michael Hoffman

8.  "The Dandelioln" by Wolfgang Borchert. 

9.   "The Foundling" by Heinrich Von Kleist

10.  "A Conversation Concerning Legs" by Alfred Lichenstein 

11.  "The Criminal" by Veza Canetti

Earlier in the month I posted on a collection of essays by Joseph Roth assembled, introduced and translated by Michael Hoffman, Hotel  Years.  Rebellion was one of the earliest of Roth's sixteen novels.  Roth was too smart to be a simple ideologue, it is hard to pin down his ideas but he hated fascism and he loved his conception of old Vienna under Emperor Franz Joseph.

Rebellion is a brief work, 121 pages in my edition.  It focuses largely on one man, a veteran of World War One who lost a leg in the conflict.   He gets a license to operate a "hurdy gurdy", a musical instrument on wheels.  Operation of this was restricted to wounded veterans who rolled them around town seeking donations.   He meets a widow and takes up with her.  The relationship between him and the widow is very well done and lets us see how the massive killing of men impacted the matrimonial market.  He moves into her place, he buys a donkey to pull the cart and all is going well.  Then he gets in a fight with a police officer, and ends up in jail.

The story follows his fate.  It reads like a kind of dark Gogol influenced fable.   In it are many reflections on the nature of government and the law.   

Rebellion is a work for those who have already read and appreciated his more famous works like The Zandesky March, The Emperor's Tomb, Job, Leviathan and one of my very favorite Roth works, Hotel Savoy. 

Mel ü

The Ghetto Swinger A Berlin Jazz Legend Remembers by Coco Schumann (1997, translation by John Howard Forthcoming, 2016)

A joint post for Jewish Book Month and German Literature Month

Today I am very happy to be able to post on the memoirs of Coco Schumann, international jazz legend and member of a band that played in German concentration camps.  Ghetto Swingers Memoirs of a Berlin Jazz Legend fits in perfectly with two world wide November literary events.  German Literature Month is an online event hosted by two great book bloggers, Jewish Book Month began in the Brooklyn Public Library in 1925 and is a USA event run by the Jewish  Book Council to encourage wide spread reading of books focusing on the cultural heritage of Jews.

Jewish Book Month

From The Webpage of The Jewish Book Council

"In 1925, Fanny Goldstein, a librarian at the West End Branch of the Boston Public Library, set up an exhibit of Judaic books and used it as a focus of what she called Jewish Book Week. In 1927, the event was adopted by communities around the country. During its first fifteen years, the annual date of the program coincided with the holiday of Lag B'Omer or Shavuot, regarded as a scholars' festivals. In 1940, the event was moved to the pre-Hanukkah, so as to promote books of Jewish content as Hanukkah gifts. This timetable remains in place to this day. Jewish Book Week became so popular and so filled with activities that it was extended to a one-month period in 1943."

Every year they have a new poster, I really like this one!

Say what you want, the Holocaust is the central event in modern Jewish cultural identity.  This binds German and Jewish history.  As I read German language literature I wonder was Joseph Roth right when he said, in 1933, 

""Prussia, the ruler of Germany, was always an enemy of the intellect, of books, of the Book of Books—that is, the Bible—of Jews and Christians, of humanism and Europe. Hitler’s Third Reich is only so alarming to the rest of Europe because it sets itself to put into action what was always the Prussian project anyway: to burn the books, to murder the Jews, and to revise Christianity."  

Lizzy's Literary Life


Beauty is a Sleeping Cat


German Literature Month V 

My knowledge of the jazz bands and musicians of the 1930s is very limited.  My feeling for the great cultural evil of the Holocaust is personalized for me by the death of Iréne Nemirovsky at Auschwitz.  I knew the Nazis burned many books and greatly restricted the publishing industry.  I knew many Jewish writers like Stefan Zweig, Herman Broch, Joseph Roth and Stefan Zweig went into exhile.  What I did not know was that the Nazis also censored much music.  They regarded Jazz music as played by artists like Bennie Goodman and Louis Armstrong as the products of corrupt races.  Schumann does a wonderful job of taking us on tour of the Berlin nightclub world.  Schumann was just a young man when he first started playing in clubs and for him it sure beat being a laborer or a cook and the Weimer ladies took to the movie star handsome Coco with great fondness.  It was a fast life style and Coco loved it.  He met many of the greats of the Jazz world when they came to play in Berlin. He was a drummer and a guitarist.  Musically he was incredibly talented.  

Sadly he was arrested as a Jew and sent to a death camp.  His miraculous survival was owed to his musical talents.  He was in the Terizen Concentration Camp.  The Nazis used this camp to show international organizations like the Red Cross that inmates were treated quite humanely.  (I was very saddened to learn that many Jews were marketed spaces in Terizen almost like it was a Club Med, being charged huge fees for what they were told  guaranteed their safety.) The camp management and guards wanted to have a band for their own enjoyment, to pacify inmates and to show outside observers how well Jews were being treated.  Schumann joined a band given the name The Ghetto Swingers.  The concentration camp had a large number of musicians including many top classical musicians as well as Jazz and Swing style performers.  Any day now in a camp could be your last but Coco survived through his music, his networks of other musicians,  his robust strong young health and his high intelligence.

There is much about day to day life in the camps.  Schumann was released at the end of the war and he  went  back into the night club scene, at first fueled by American money and German women eager to meet allied soldiers.  It was kind of like a terrible miasma of gloom had been lifted from the city.  Schumann meets and falls in love with a wonderful woman.  He marries.  He is not terribly comfortable as a Jew in Germany, who would be, and with the help of some contacts, he and his wife emigrate to Australia.  At first he does construction work, where you worked as an emigrant was mandated by the Austrslian government, but he soon hooks up with other musicians and becomes quite a success.  However, he gets homesick for Germany and he and his wife move back.  Coco goes on to achieve international status as a jazz guitarist.  

To me the most fascinating aspect of the book was learning how the Nazis turned on Berlin musicians as well as the account of how music saved his life once he was in the camp.  There was more to the Nazis war on culture than book banning. 

The Ghetto Swingers is very well narrated, the translated prose reads smoothly.  It is an important addition to English language Holocaust Memoirs.   I am glad I read it.  

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"The Criminal" by Veza Canetti (included in Vienna Tales, selected and translated nslated by Deborah Holmes)

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Lizzy's Literary Life


Beauty is a Sleeping Cat


German Literature Month V 

I am estatic to once again be able to Participate in German Literature Month, elegantly and lovingly hosted by Lizzi's Literary Live and Beauty is a Sleeping Cat. This is my fourth year as a participant.   On the host blogs you will find the particularities of the event but the basic idea is to read literature first written in German (translated or not) and share your thoughts.  I began accumulating works for the event soon after the event ended last year and I began reading for it in mid-September.  

German Literature IV Post Event Celebration. Copiously illustrated

Works Read for G L V So Far

1.  Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada. A brilliant recreation of life in Nazi Germany. 

2.  Ostend, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth and the Summer Before the End by Volker Weidermann. A fascinating social history 

3.  Buddenbrook Ths Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann.  Must reading 

4.  "The Governess" by Stefan Zweig

5.  Demian:  The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by Herman Hesse.  Read the major works first.

6.  The Tanners by Robert Walser. a serious work of art

7. The Hotel Years Wandering Between the Wars by Joseph Hoffman, a brilliant collection of feuilletons translated and introduced by Michael Hoffman

8.  "The Dandelioln" by Wolfgang Borchert. 

9.   "The Foundling" by Heinrich Von Kleist

10.  "A Conversation Concerning Legs" by Alfred Lichenstein 

Last November for GL IV I read a simply amazing book, especially given the theme of my blog, Auto de Fé by Elias Canetti.  I will be rereading it soon.  This morning I was looking over an anthology of shorties  I was very kindly given by the hosts for German Literature Month, Vienna Tales, stories translated by Debirah Holmes.  It is part of a series of city story books edited by Helen Constantine and published by Oxford Press. 

I was pleased and I admit surprised to see included in the anthology a brief story by Veza Canetti (born 1897 in Vienna, died 1963 in the U.K.), "The Criminal".  (The anthology does not provide first publication information but I guess it was around 1925, if you have this data please contact me.)

The story focuses on the owner of an animal training booth at a carnival and his teenage son George.  The son wants to go on some of the rides at the carnival like the giant Farris wheel.  The father does not want to spend the funds for the rides so he tells his son that the rides are dangerous.  We get to see the man at work at the show and that was fun.  

The son runs into a big group,of high school students while he is roaming around the carnival.  They are in line for the Ferris wheel but the boy tells them many have been hurt on them and suggests they take the grotto train as his father said nothing about that ride.  After the train rides he tells the boys they must go to the wild animal show, not mentioning his father owns it.  The father is so proud and happy when he sees the big paying crowd his son brings to the show.  Then the boys all go to the ceniema, treating the son to a ticket.  During the show the usher removes a man out who,time stamped ticket was expired.  The son tries to give the man his ticket but is told tickets are not transferable.  The boy then also,leaves the theater saying that his father always says "you don't need to go looking at the bottom of the heap to find criminals".

"The Criminal" is an interesting slice of life story.