A bestseller in Germany, Michael Wieck’s account of his childhood in Königsberg recalls a German city obliterated by fire-bombing during the Second World War. As the child of a Jewish mother and Gentile father, Wieck was persecuted first as a "certified Jew" by the Nazis, then as a German by the Russian occupiers, including horrific internment in the Rothenstein concentration camp. His emigration to the West in 1948 marked the end of the 408-year history of the Jewish community in Königsberg. From the earliest delights of a childhood filled with music, family, and the smell of pines and the sea, Wieck retraces his life. He tells of his school days and their sudden end, the shock of Kristallnacht, his Aunt Fanny being sent by train to a destination unknown, the chemical factory where Jewish workers gradually disappeared, the bombs falling on Königsberg. The Russian occupation was anything but the expected delivery from the horrors of the war. In the midst of privation, savagery, and death, there were moments of absurdity, and Wieck powerfully depicts them in this unforgettable memoir.

A Childhood under Hitler and Stalin: Memoirs of a "Certified Jew"

Biographies & Memoirs

Wieck, Michael

Penny Milbouer

LENZ, SIEGFRIED

Historical

University of Wisconsin Press

The German lesson

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Macdonald

For centuries, Poles and Germans have mingled in the province of Masuria in East Prussia, and, to preserve this heritage, Zygmunt Rogalla builds a museum that the forces of history compel him to destroy

The Heritage (Methuen Modern Fiction)

Genre Fiction

Mandarin

Through the limited viewpoint of the confused and vulnerable Bruno, this novel provides a complex commentary both on the decline of a family and on the wider history of post-war Germany. The author has won a number of literary awards, including the Thomas Mann Prize.

Training Ground

Methuen Publishing, Ltd.

It is the last watch of the lightship that stands at anchor in the Baltic Sea, near the port of Kiel; it is nine years since the end of World War II and the mines she warned the shipping of have been removed. But on her last watch, her peace is interrupted: her captain, Freytag, takes in three men whose boat has broken down, and with them, their illegal cargo of guns.  Held hostage on the ship by the three criminals, headed by the sinister Dr Caspary, the tensions between captain and crew become apparent. Freytag still hopes for a peaceful end to the watch; but his son, Fred, and his resourceful but outgunned crew cannot forget Freytag’s dishonour in the war. As a stalemate develops, Freytag finds he must make a final choice - one that must redeem him in the eyes of his men.

Lightship

Arrow (A Division of Random House Group)

An exemplary life

Secker and Warburg

The Heritage

Translated from the German by Krishna Winston

Martin Secker & Warburg

German Lesson

Faber Finds

In The Heritage, first published in German in 1978, Zygmunt Rogalla, an elderly Masurian rug-maker from Lucknow ... which was once part of East Prussia, now part of Poland ... tells his story from a hospital bed. The curator of the Masurian museum, where objects were collected as a symbol of the culture that had been lost in the second world war and after, he is also its destroyer, his injuries self-inflicted. Through the remembrance of his sufferings, he explains why the museum was so important to him, and to his fellow exiles, and what terrible discovery led him to destroy not only his life's greatest work, but the objects salvaged from his people's lost past.

Faber and Faber

The innocent Bruno tells the saga of the Zeller family who fled East Germany and nurtured a military practice field into a blossoming tree nursery, only to destroy their success with greed and jealousy

The Training Ground

Henry Holt Co.

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