I won’t be original today. I just want to mention a book on WWII on this Victory day. I read “Das Jagdhaus” a little over a month ago and still remember the feeling of being very much impressed. It’s a novel written by Rosemarie Marchner and tells a story of a well-to-do family in Linz during WWII. In September 1939 Antonia and her family gather to celebrate baptizing of Antonia’s second daughter Lilli, and at the ceremony the priest remarks casually that the child is so old as the war (16 days). Antonia doesn’t want to think that her little girl has to do anything with the war, especially when it’s so lovely and peaceful in the town, with sunlight pouring through chestnut leaves and all her family near her. But all of them will have to face the war soon thogh they initially did not have anything to do with it. Antonia’s parents decide to flee from Vienna to Italy, because her father (a University professor) cannot adapt his views to the Nazi ideolology and cannot lie too. They leave Peter, Antonia’s much younger brother (he’s 12 or 13) with Antonia’s family and her parents-in-law. And the boy finds it hard to be left behind. Antonia is uneasy as to how he might be influenced by Nazi propaganda, but he remains true to his father’s ideals of humanism. Meanwhile, the war comes nearer, supplies become shorter, everyone is tense and tired of the war who none of them wanted but was involved into. Antonias husband Ferdinand has to go to the line though he’s about 40, not a young man any more, and he hates it to be a puppet in the deadly game started by Hitler. The war comes even closer, with bombings in Linz and Antonia’s father and mother in law insist she takes her both girls, Enrica and Lilli to the hunting-house in the country, belonging to the family, where they will be safe. There Antonia will discover a secret from her husband’s past – he has another daughter from his first youthful relationship, Marie, and Antonia is to meet her and even get on well with her. In about half a year, when there are just about a couple of days before the war ends, Antonia cannot wait any more and drives back with both the girls to discover Peter was called to defend the city from the enemy troops. In a couple of days Peter returns psychologically traumatized. The war is over but it will take time to build a new life. Besides, Antonia still doesn’t have any news from Ferdinand. He comes back unexpectedly one day in autumn. The family is almost re-united and when Antonia burns his and Peter’s uniform in the garden, she finally burns the dismal past with it and feels inner peace and hope for the future.
So the plot is not particularly exciting and doesn’t have any unexpected twists and turns, but it’s hardly possible to put the book down. I think it’s exactly because it’s so non-exciting on the surface – and so deep and realistic instead. You just grow to care about this family (and how many families were there to live through the events described in the book!) and hope they they live through the war. It’s so particularly moving for us, who see the war as history, to see it as reality. Those people did not know what will come next day but they tried to live normal lives as much as they could. There’s Antonia’s father taking his young son Peter to Stefansdom, Vienna’s historical heart and speaking about him on eternal ideals, Antonia’s old-fashioned father-in-law, comparing the old times with the new war which broke out when he was already old, Antonia’s mother-in-law trying pretend war did not exist unless anyone of her family was directly touched by it, Antonia, becoming stonger with the war getting even more respect from her husband’s parents and becoming a real responsible mistress in the house, serious Enrica, Antonia’s elder girl, very sensible and helpful, the little Lilly who does not know the world before the war (the chills is so old as the war…), Ferdinand, a good man and an assiduous layer for whom the war is completely against his nature, Peter, growing into a handsome young man, ho was to study and dance with girls instead of being made to kill other people at war… Fanny and Paula, the nanny and the cook in the household, staying loyal to their employees…
The time when one wasn’t sure about anything, the official news communicating numerous victories of Wehrmacht and “enemy” radiostations absolutely forbidden (but for Enrica Antonia would have been arrested and never seen her family again for unlawful listening of the BBC), shocking talks about what they did to people in concentration camps, beautiful cities like Hamburg turned to burning hell and later bombs falling on your own house, the already losing Germany taking 15-year old boys to the line in a desperate attempt to defend to the last man in the last days of the war. We never see a battlefield in this book, we just see people who were involved into that chaos against their will and how they were getting through it.
My grandma and her sister told me a lot about the war. They were children then and had to help in the fields all day long, because any pair of working hands, even a child’s hands was needed. My great-grand mother and her three girls having to provide for themselves after the war stole their husband and father, my great-grandfather from them (by the way, he had a heart disease and was a little over 40 when called to the front, but again, by 1944 the front needed any man). Grandmother sometimes said the war stole her childhood. And indeed, she was 8 when it started and almost 13 when it was over. She never went to school further than the basic 4 grades. Her sister, my godmother, told me that the teacher came to great-grandmother and tried to talk her into letting the girls study further, but there was the argument that “they had to work and get something to live by” now that they didn’t have a father. Even now, when they are far past 70 they are so brilliant and intelligent, it’s just heartbreaking they didn’t have an opportunity in life to get a higher education though they had all the potential for it. My grandma says she’s always wanted to be a teacher. I think she would have made a brilliant one. (I’m the one in the family now to put her unfulfilled dream into life!).
And, reading this book, it was interesting to see the other side of the story, what the was was like there, in the country that was “the enemy” then. It wasn’t any easier. Just when my grandma, a country girl, was working hard in the field with other children and her mum, somewhere there in Austria, in the town of Linz, there was a little girl of the same age, Enrica, who sensed trouble when a policeman came into their house and switched off the radio tuned onto the “enemy” station before he could discover it and arrest her mum, taking her from the family forever (Enrica is fictional, but it doesn't matter). And how many such boys and girls were there on both sides who were made serious and responsible in sprite of their age in those circumstances? How many lives destroyed through the war on both sides? Neither side had it easy and both sides had get up from the ruins when it was over. And it was life for them. It’s us who take it as history. But it’s the history that should be remembered. We often forget how happy we are to live today.
When I picked “Das Jagdhaus” up I did not realize the story was connected to another book by Rosemarie Marscher, “Das Bucherzimmer” (highly praised by the assistant in the bookshop near Stefansdom, Vienna, where I bought it). “Das Buecherzummer”, however, is not a direct first part of the story, it’s about Marie, Ferdinand’s unlegitimate daughter and her life in pre-war Linz, the next book, “Das Jagdhaus” focuses on Antonia and Ferdinand’s family, Marie coming as a secondary character. I’m going to read “Das Buecherzimmer” soon and no doubt it will be brilliant, atmospheric and realistic as well. When the shop-assistant praised Rosemarie Marschner she was absolutely right. If only RM would now write another book, focusing on post-war Linz and, say, Enrica this time? I wonder if she ever thought about it herself.
So the plot is not particularly exciting and doesn’t have any unexpected twists and turns, but it’s hardly possible to put the book down. I think it’s exactly because it’s so non-exciting on the surface – and so deep and realistic instead. You just grow to care about this family (and how many families were there to live through the events described in the book!) and hope they they live through the war. It’s so particularly moving for us, who see the war as history, to see it as reality. Those people did not know what will come next day but they tried to live normal lives as much as they could. There’s Antonia’s father taking his young son Peter to Stefansdom, Vienna’s historical heart and speaking about him on eternal ideals, Antonia’s old-fashioned father-in-law, comparing the old times with the new war which broke out when he was already old, Antonia’s mother-in-law trying pretend war did not exist unless anyone of her family was directly touched by it, Antonia, becoming stonger with the war getting even more respect from her husband’s parents and becoming a real responsible mistress in the house, serious Enrica, Antonia’s elder girl, very sensible and helpful, the little Lilly who does not know the world before the war (the chills is so old as the war…), Ferdinand, a good man and an assiduous layer for whom the war is completely against his nature, Peter, growing into a handsome young man, ho was to study and dance with girls instead of being made to kill other people at war… Fanny and Paula, the nanny and the cook in the household, staying loyal to their employees…
The time when one wasn’t sure about anything, the official news communicating numerous victories of Wehrmacht and “enemy” radiostations absolutely forbidden (but for Enrica Antonia would have been arrested and never seen her family again for unlawful listening of the BBC), shocking talks about what they did to people in concentration camps, beautiful cities like Hamburg turned to burning hell and later bombs falling on your own house, the already losing Germany taking 15-year old boys to the line in a desperate attempt to defend to the last man in the last days of the war. We never see a battlefield in this book, we just see people who were involved into that chaos against their will and how they were getting through it.
My grandma and her sister told me a lot about the war. They were children then and had to help in the fields all day long, because any pair of working hands, even a child’s hands was needed. My great-grand mother and her three girls having to provide for themselves after the war stole their husband and father, my great-grandfather from them (by the way, he had a heart disease and was a little over 40 when called to the front, but again, by 1944 the front needed any man). Grandmother sometimes said the war stole her childhood. And indeed, she was 8 when it started and almost 13 when it was over. She never went to school further than the basic 4 grades. Her sister, my godmother, told me that the teacher came to great-grandmother and tried to talk her into letting the girls study further, but there was the argument that “they had to work and get something to live by” now that they didn’t have a father. Even now, when they are far past 70 they are so brilliant and intelligent, it’s just heartbreaking they didn’t have an opportunity in life to get a higher education though they had all the potential for it. My grandma says she’s always wanted to be a teacher. I think she would have made a brilliant one. (I’m the one in the family now to put her unfulfilled dream into life!).
And, reading this book, it was interesting to see the other side of the story, what the was was like there, in the country that was “the enemy” then. It wasn’t any easier. Just when my grandma, a country girl, was working hard in the field with other children and her mum, somewhere there in Austria, in the town of Linz, there was a little girl of the same age, Enrica, who sensed trouble when a policeman came into their house and switched off the radio tuned onto the “enemy” station before he could discover it and arrest her mum, taking her from the family forever (Enrica is fictional, but it doesn't matter). And how many such boys and girls were there on both sides who were made serious and responsible in sprite of their age in those circumstances? How many lives destroyed through the war on both sides? Neither side had it easy and both sides had get up from the ruins when it was over. And it was life for them. It’s us who take it as history. But it’s the history that should be remembered. We often forget how happy we are to live today.
When I picked “Das Jagdhaus” up I did not realize the story was connected to another book by Rosemarie Marscher, “Das Bucherzimmer” (highly praised by the assistant in the bookshop near Stefansdom, Vienna, where I bought it). “Das Buecherzummer”, however, is not a direct first part of the story, it’s about Marie, Ferdinand’s unlegitimate daughter and her life in pre-war Linz, the next book, “Das Jagdhaus” focuses on Antonia and Ferdinand’s family, Marie coming as a secondary character. I’m going to read “Das Buecherzimmer” soon and no doubt it will be brilliant, atmospheric and realistic as well. When the shop-assistant praised Rosemarie Marschner she was absolutely right. If only RM would now write another book, focusing on post-war Linz and, say, Enrica this time? I wonder if she ever thought about it herself.
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