Walter Kempowski

A wealthy family tries--and fails--to seal themselves off from the chaos of post-World War II life surrounding them in this stunning novel by one of Germany's most important post-war writers. In East Prussia, January 1945, the German forces are in retreat and the Red Army is approaching. The von Globig family's manor house, the Georgenhof, is falling into disrepair. Auntie runs the estate as best she can since Eberhard von Globig, a special officer in the German army, went to war, leaving behind his beautiful but vague wife, Katharina, and her bookish twelve-year-old son, Peter. As the road fills with Germans fleeing the occupied territories, the Georgenhof begins to receive strange visitors--a Nazi violinist, a dissident painter, a Baltic baron, even a Jewish refugee. Yet in the main, life continues as banal, wondrous, and complicit as ever for the family, until their caution, their hedged bets, and their denial are answered by the wholly expected events they haven't allowed themselves to imagine. All for Nothing, published in 2006, was the last novel by Walter Kempowski, one of postwar Germany's most acclaimed and popular writers.

All for Nothing

Roman

Alles umsonst

chronicles the end of Nazi Germany and World War II in Europe through hundreds of letters, diary extracts, and autobiographical accounts covering four days that fateful spring: Hitler’s birthday on April 20; American and Soviet troops meeting at the Elbe on April 25; Hitler’s suicide on April 30; and finally the German surrender on May 8. Side by side we encounter vivid accounts of civilians fleeing Berlin, ordinary German soldiers determined to fight to the bitter end, American POWs dreaming of home, and concentration camp survivors’ first descriptions of their horrific experiences—as well as the intimate thoughts of figures such as Eisenhower, Churchill, Stalin, Eva Braun, Joseph Goebbels, and Hitler himself. Renowned German author Walter Kempowski painstakingly collected and organized these firsthand accounts, and the result brings to life the end of Nazi Germany and the war in Europe as never before.

A Collective Diary of the Last Days of the Third Reich

Swansong 1945

Shaun Whiteside

Chronicles the end of Nazi Germany and World War II in Europe through hundreds of letters, diaries, and autobiographical accounts covering four days that fateful spring: Hitler's birthday on April 20, American and Soviet troops meeting at the Elbe on April 25, Hitler's suicide on April 30, and finally the German surrender on May 8. Side by side, we encounter vivid, first-person accounts of civilians fleeing Berlin, ordinary German soldiers determined to fight to the bitter end, American POWs dreaming of home, concentration-camp survivors' first descriptions of their horrific experiences, as well as the intimate thoughts of figures such as Eisenhower, Churchill, Stalin, Joseph Goebbels, and Hitler himself. These firsthand accounts, painstakingly collected and organized by renowned German author Walter Kempowski, provide the raw material of history and present a panoramic view of those tumultuous days, an extraordinary account of suffering and survival.--From publisher description.

Contains primary source documents.

a collective diary of the last days of the Third Reich

Tadellöser und Wolff

Prusia Oriental, enero de 1945. Ha comenzado el éxodo de los alemanes que huyen hacia el oeste ante el avance del Ejército Rojo. En su camino, varios de ellos encontrarán refugio en Georgenhof, la privilegiada hacienda donde Katharina von Globig vive, en ausencia de su marido, con su hijo Peter y una tía lejana que ejerce de ama de llaves metomentodo. Por la casa desfilarán personas de origen muy variopinto: una violinista nazi, un economista, un aristócrata báltico o incluso un prófugo judío; cada uno de los testimonios de estos visitantes revela un punto de vista distinto sobre la guerra, el nazismo, el enemigo o el porvenir. En la hacienda resuenan así las opiniones de los alemanes comunes sobre su propia historia mientras la tragedia se va cerniendo sobre la familia. Inédito en español hasta la fecha, Walter Kempowski es uno de los grandes escritores alemanes de la segunda mitad del siglo xx. Esta ambiciosa novela, publicada en 2006, se considera un hito literario por su exploración de un periodo de la historia alemana largamente silenciado en la literatura de este país. La rica panorámica de Kempowski retrata magistralmente, sin juicios y con rigor documental, el sufrimiento, las complicidades y las negaciones del pueblo alemán ante la caída del Tercer Reich. «Uno de los mejores libros que he leído en toda mi vida.» Jenny Erpenbeck «Una obra maestra. Qué libro tan extraordinario. [...] Uno de los mayores logros de ese ajuste de cuentas que los alemanes emprendieron consigo mismos desde la posguerra (...) que ha motivado importantes obras como las de Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, W. G. Sebald y, más tarde, Jenny Erpenbeck» James Wood (The New Yorker) «El gran Walter Kempowski ha vuelto a conseguir lo que era casi imposible y que casi nunca se logra: una novela histórica completamente convincente.» «Ninguna ideología puede apropiarse de este libro. (...) Una respuesta literaria a un trauma colectivo que ha sido enterrado durante mucho tiempo; vale la pena leerlo.» Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim (The New York Times)

Todo en vano

Op het eind van de Tweede Wereldoorlog leeft op het landgoed Georgenhof in Oost-Pruisen de familie Von Globig een leven buiten de tijd.

Alles voor niets

Twintig jaar lang verzamelde de Duitse schrijver Walter Kempowski brieven, dagboeken en memoires waarin de Tweede Wereldoorlog werd beschreven. In 1993 publiceerde hij de eerste vier boeken van een werk dat uiteindelijk tien delen zou beslaan. In Das Echolot bracht Kempowski honderden stemmen bijeen die van dag tot dag verslag doen van hun oorlogservaringen. Elk boek geeft een caleidoscopisch beeld van enkele weken uit de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Kempowski ontving louter lof voor dit uitzonderlijke project; Das Echolot werd in Duitsland een grote bestseller. In Zwanenzang 1945, het sluitstuk van de reeks, wordt het einde van de oorlog beschreven. We lezen dagboekteksten van staatslieden en generaals, brieven van soldaten en burgers, evenals herinneringen van schrijvers en journalisten. Tezamen vormen al deze stemmen een koor dat op indringende wijze het einde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog laat weerklinken.

Een collectief dagboek - van Hitlers laatste verjaardag tot aan de bevrijding

Zwanenzang 1945

Während einer Reise nach Danzig und Masuren 1988 entdeckt ein Hamburger (Jg. 1945) seine nie gekannte Heimat. - Zeitkritisch-ironische Erzählung.

eine Episode

Mark und Bein

Lei ha mai visto Hitler?

A sharply evocative novel of one man's journey into his family history and the troubled legacy of World War II, from the author of All for Nothing.

Homeland

Das Echolot: 1. bis 17. Januar 1943

12. bis 20. Januar 1945

Fuga furiosa

Der Abschluss der sogenannten „Deutschen Chronik“ von Walter Kempowski "Wird schon werden, da müssen wir eben durch", sagt Mutter Grethe, als ihr Sohn Walter nach acht Jahren Haft aus dem Zuchthaus Bautzen zu ihr zurückkehrt - ohne Ausbildung, ohne Ziel und Geld. Der in den Westen entlassene Walter fühlt sich von den Menschen, mit denen er es zu tun hat, nicht anerkannt und als Bürger zweiter Klasse. Er beginnt sein Studium, doch die Jahre in Bautzen haben ihre Spuren hinterlassen. Immer wieder erliegt er Anfällen von Melancholie. Währenddessen kehrt sein Bruder Robert ungebrochen aus der Haft zurück, und Walter findet endlich die Frau, die ihn versteht. So enden für ihn die Jahre des Suchens und des Übergangs.

Herzlich willkommen

A moving, darkly funny road trip novel about World War II, returning to one's birthplace, and coming to terms with tragedy. West Germany, 1988, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall: Jonathan Fabrizius, a middle-aged erstwhile journalist, has a comfortable existence in Hamburg, bankrolled by his furniture-manufacturing uncle. He lives with his girlfriend Ulla in a grand, decrepit prewar house that just by chance escaped annihilation by the Allied bombers. One day Jonathan receives a package in the mail from the Santubara Company, a luxury car company, commissioning him to travel in their newest V8 model through the People’s Republic of Poland and to write about the route for a car rally. Little does the company know that their choice location is Jonathan’s birthplace, for Jonathan is a war orphan from former East Prussia, whose mother breathed her last fleeing the Russians and whose father, a Nazi soldier, was killed on the Baltic coast. At first Jonathan has no interest in the job, or in dredging up ancient family history, but as his relationship with Ulla starts to wane, the idea of a return to his birthplace, and the money to be made from the gig, becomes more appealing. What follows is a darkly comic road trip, a queasy misadventure of West German tourists in Communist Poland, and a reckoning that is by turns subtle, satiric, and genuine. Marrow and Bone is an uncomfortably funny and revelatory odyssey by one of the most talented and nuanced writers of postwar Germany.

Marrow and Bone

e. Haftbericht ; mit 32 Bildnotizen d. Verf

Im Block

Una villa in Prussia, una famiglia nazista sulla frontiera dell’invasione russa. Un romanzo toccante, drammaticamente attuale sul significato della sconfitta e la perdita della propria cultura. «Uno dei libri più belli che abbia mai letto» (Jenny Erpenbeck).

Walter Kempowski

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