Kind of a family gathering
A kind of family reunion is the last part of the autobiographical novel trilogy by Judith Kerr , which begins with When Hitler Stole the Pink Rabbit . In the fall of 1956 he played in London and West Berlin .
A kind of family reunion came out for the first time in 1979 in the German translation by Annemarie Böll . The English-language original from 1978 appeared under the title A Small Person Far Away .
As in the first two volumes, Judith Kerr's alter ego bears the name Anna, her brother Michael appears as Max, the parents Alfred and Julia Kerr are only called Papa and Mama. Behind the figure of Richard is Judith Kerr's husband Nigel Kneale .
content
While When Hitler Stole the Pink Rabbit covered a period of a good two years - from spring 1933 to autumn 1935 - and Waiting for Peace to come, the theme of the war years in London from March 1940 to the end of World War II , the plot extends of the third volume only for a few days in October 1956. But as in the previous volume, the past is thematized in numerous flashbacks and memory scenes, so that an almost complete description of the fate of the emigrant family up to autumn 1956 is created.
Anna has been married to a well-known television writer for about a year. The two live in a small apartment in a new block in Camden and are still in the process of procuring the last of the furnishings for this domicile. While Anna's husband Richard is at home at the typewriter, one Saturday morning at Heal's, Anna finally discovers a carpet for the dining room that has just the right, long sought-after color. As she fills out the check, she starts talking to the seller, who is taken aback when he sees her husband's familiar last name. You learn that Anna, who initially studied art, is now also active as a writer and how her husband works for the BBC .
On the way home, Anna happens to pass the house of the Dillons, a married couple who also work for the BBC and with whom she recently made friends at a party. Elizabeth Dillon invites Anna in. James Dillon, still in his pajamas, is only sitting at breakfast because he got to bed late because of "this thing with Hungary ". What is meant is the uprising of the Hungarians against the Soviet occupation in 1956, which was bloodily suppressed a few days after this scene and, like the Suez Crisis , overshadowed all events in the story. Nobody wants a third world war and therefore, James Dillon predicts, the West will speak, but not use weapons against the Soviets. Elizabeth believes that doing nothing was already the wrong path with Hitler , as no one knows better than Anna herself. This leads to a conversation about Anna's fate while fleeing from Hitler, her trilingualism and her work at the BBC. When she says goodbye, the Dillons invite her and Richard to dinner next Thursday.
Anna returns to Richard so happy about the encounter with the Dillons and about her shopping in her apartment that she ignores the caretaker who calls her in front of the house. A few moments later, however, he appears at the apartment door and hands her a telegram . Convinced that only positive news can be delivered on such a day, Anna is stunned when she reads the text. Her mother, who now lives in Berlin again, is seriously ill with pneumonia , and Anna should book a flight for the next day just in case. She'll find out more by phone in the evening.
The telegram was sent by Konrad, mom's partner. Mama, who works as an interpreter for the American occupation, has lived in West Berlin since 1947. Papa died during his first visit to Germany in 1948 or committed suicide after a stroke , and about a year later Mama's relationship with Konrad Rabin must have started. The doctor of law works for the JRSO and lives like mom in a new American building. Konrad left his wife and two grown daughters for mom's sake. Konrad's colleague Erwin Goldblatt and his wife Hildy belong to their circle of friends.
Anna worries about how Mama's illness could have come about. She shrinks from the idea of flying to Berlin. Although she survived numerous dangerous situations during her emigration and during the Second World War, she was seldom frightened when she was in the care of her parents. But now the encircled West Berlin seems like a trap. Richard finally calms her down by saying that Konrad had only spoken of a provisional booking of the flight and that by the evening the situation might look completely different again. As a distraction, he accompanies them to the market on Portobello Road , where the couple come across demonstrators who want to draw attention to the situation in Hungary; xenophobic statements are also made on the part of the audience.
During the phone call with Konrad, Anna learns that her mother is not only sick with pneumonia, but that she tried to kill herself with an overdose of sleeping pills and is in a Berlin hospital. Konrad thinks Anna's presence is necessary and promises to pick her up at the airport in Tempelhof the next day. Anna ponders all evening what could have made her mother take such a step and reproaches herself for not having written to her in a long time. During the night, apparently not for the first time, she has a terrible nightmare: She knows that she has to belong to someone, but cannot remember who it is, and therefore finds herself completely alone and abandoned in various frightening scenes . Only after she wakes up does she realize that the person she is looking for is Richard, who is lying next to her in bed.
Richard repeatedly offers to fly to Berlin with Anna, but Anna refuses because he is in the middle of working on a new TV series and, furthermore, because of her lack of German, he couldn't help her in Berlin. But when she said goodbye to him at Heathrow Airport , she felt that this would be a separation and was overcome with tears. She calms her husband down with the hint: "You know that I always cry when I get my days."
Only in Berlin does Anna find out from Konrad the reason for her mother's attempt to commit suicide: While she was busy for a few days in Hanover , he was talking to his secretary Ilse. He confessed this relationship to his partner himself after their return, because both move in such a tight circle that the incident would probably not have been covered up in the long run anyway. Konrad insists that as an adult, mom should be able to overlook such an affair. Nevertheless, he worried about Mama in the weeks after his confession - it was also he who found her in her apartment after the suicide attempt and arranged the transport to a German hospital. When Anna asks him why he started the relationship with Ilse, whom he describes as much more boring and unattractive than Mama, he seems a little perplexed and finally says that he probably wanted to rest a little with the secretary. Anna, used to the sometimes nerve-wracking intensity of her mother's expressions of life, can understand this well.
After lunch in a pub, Anna and Konrad visit Mama in the hospital. She is in a coma and Anna is asked to call her again and again: Perhaps her voice penetrates Mama's consciousness and could trigger a reaction. Anna, who has been plagued by nausea all day, cannot stand these attempts for long. She lets Konrad take her to the hotel, rests there for a while, experiencing numerous visions of her past, and accompanies Konrad to dinner with the Goldblatt couple in the evening, as Konrad and Mama are invited there for that day. The Goldblatts only know about Mama's pneumonia, not about her attempt to take her own life, but soon begin to suspect that something may be wrong, especially since it is mentioned in the conversation that Konrad has now also alerted Anna's brother Max, who is currently in the process with his wife and child on a remote Greek island.
During her next visit to the hospital on Monday morning, Anna has the opportunity to speak to mom's doctor. He explains that the treatment method has been changed and that mom is now very restless. Anna, once again haunted by memories of the past, cannot last long in Mama's bed. The staff also thinks that a visit in the afternoon might make more sense. Konrad brings Anna, as she is completely soaked from the pouring rain, to his well-heated apartment and arranges to meet her for lunch. While Anna is in Konrad's apartment, she discovers some bobby pins, which probably did not come from her mother, and takes a call from Ilse, who is concerned about Konrad's long absence from his place of work. Neither of these things helps Anna look optimistically into the future with regard to Konrad's promise to stay with mom. At lunch in a restaurant there is at least some positive news from Hungary. Anna and Konrad's conversation about the apparently pleasant turnaround - the Soviets have been asked to withdraw from Hungary - is interrupted by a friend of Konrad's: Ken Hathaway from the British Council . This protests how much mom is valued in her environment. Her cultural interests are a decidedly continental quality, he says, and Anna can't help but imagine how annoyed her mother, who feels like British, would be at this statement.
In the afternoon she lets Konrad drop her off in the vicinity of her former home, as this is almost the only part of Berlin that she can still remember from her childhood: “When she was little, the street always seemed very dark to her. The sidewalks were lined with a thick row of trees, and when Mom and Dad told her they would live here instead of their old apartment on the bright street with no trees at all, she thought they were crazy [ …] That was in the summer - it must have been four or five - when the leaves formed a kind of canopy over the whole street. Now most of the leaves were on the ground [...] She had expected the house at the other end, but she was very soon in front of it. It was hardly recognizable […] “But then Anna realizes that the stairs to the front door, which she rushed up every day after school, have remained unchanged. No sooner was the door opened than she called day after day: “Is Mommy here?” Suddenly she feels with a ghostly clarity what it was like to be a little girl, only to speak German and fully aware of the presence of her parents to feel safe. Numerous scenes from her childhood come before her eyes, past and present seem to mix and Anna is suddenly on the verge of fainting when Hildy Goldblatt appears and leads her to the neighboring café, where she can slowly relax. Finally Hildy can put her in a taxi and she drives to the hospital. Again she calls her comatose mother, also with the name "Mami" from her childhood. In the back of her mind she puts an annoying resemblance between the scene and the kitschy television series Dr. Kildare notes - but this time there is indeed a noticeable reaction from her mother. After she uttered the words “I want” several times and Anna replied each time with “You mustn't!” And similar exclamations when she wanted to die, Mom finally replied: “Yes, good.” Contrary to the doctor's skepticism and Konrads Anna is now convinced that her mother will survive. She spends the evening alone in the hotel and has a relaxed night.
The next day she is woken up by a phone call: Now, even in the hospital, one is sure that Anna's mother has been saved. Shortly afterwards, she also learns that Max is now in Berlin. The two meet in the hospital and can talk to mom for a moment. In the afternoon Anna and Max visit an exhibition in a theater foyer dedicated to her father. She is familiar with most of the old photographs. She is only really touched when she turns to go and sees the last picture of her father, which a press photographer took when he arrived in Germany in 1948, in huge enlargement. This photo is the only one depicting her father as she experienced him. Both Anna and Max wonder how mom, who was married to a man like her father, can now hang her heart on an everyday person like Konrad. But Max finally expresses understanding: “Papa was a great man. It is not that easy to prove yourself worthy of yourself. Married to him and also being a refugee - everyone would long for a bit of everyday life. I think we all did it somehow. "Anna, the artist and writer, doesn't quite see it that way, but doesn't go into the subject, as Max's announcement that he will have to leave shortly and take care of his wife, Wendy, is busy. She is afraid of being left alone with Mama and Konrad in West Berlin. They later visit their mother in the hospital. She has a violent emotional outburst because she feels deeply hurt by Konrad's affair and is unhappy because she spoiled Max's vacation. As so often when mom speaks to her son, Anna feels like a fifth wheel on the car. At the same time, however, she states again and again and with a little guilty conscience that the processes would be great for writing about. Anna and Max spend the evening with Konrad in the restaurant where they once celebrated Anna's engagement, and the landlady gives them a schnapps for their “family reunion”. Upon returning to the hotel, Anna was horrified to find that it was too late to call Richard today, which she could do two days earlier from Goldblatt's apartment, and that Max had apparently told Konrad that she, Anna, was going to be longer stay in Berlin when he flies back to Greece.
Both siblings are irritable in the morning on Wednesday. Anna is haunted by recurring memories of her mother, who stands crying in front of a shop, Max is plagued by fear for his wife. When they read a headline in the newspaper about the British attack in Suez, while at the same time it was reported that the Russians were offering their withdrawal from Hungary, Romania and Poland , it was clear to Max that he would fly to Greece as soon as possible and have to fetch wife and child. Shortly thereafter, he got into an argument with his mother, who claims that she could have mastered a situation like the one in which Wendy is currently in without the help of her husband and that it is only thanks to her that the family emigrated in this way survived well. On the one hand, her children have to agree with her, on the other hand, Max does not want to see his own achievements and difficulties forgotten, as well as those of his sister and father. He accuses her of always wanting to see the world in a romantic and one-sided light. Finally, Anna is drawn into the argument and is outraged because her mother apparently does not really appreciate the fact that she separated from Richard and very reluctantly started the trip to Berlin. The second visit of the day to the hospital is more harmonious. Mama - who still sees Anna crying in front of a shop in this stubborn vision - remembers many scenes from the time of emigration, seems to have made it up with Konrad and is thrilled that Anna and Max visit Ken Hathaway's British Council in the evening -Party will be going. From there, Konrad wants to bring Max directly to the airport. When Anna then sits alone in the entrance hall of the hospital for a while, she suddenly thinks of the context of the scene that she has seen over and over again in the past few days: Mama tried before, in London, during her emigration to take life. At least that's what she told Anna after she saw her, standing in front of a shop, driving by on the bus and calling her. Anna got off the bus at the next opportunity, ran back to mom, who was crying in front of a Woolworths store, and learned that her mother had allegedly taken two pills in the hotel bathroom the night before, which she had taken during the Wartime from Professor Rosenberg, a doctor friend of mine. The tablets should contain an immediately lethal poison; Anna's parents had given them to them when there were fears that the Germans would invade Great Britain. But these tablets, Mama explained, crying, hadn't worked - maybe the doctor was a charlatan , maybe the drug had lost its effectiveness over the years. Anna suddenly remembers that she suddenly found the scene so absurd that she began to laugh and Mama joined in the laughter. Apparently she later repressed the experience; but now it stands before her eyes again.
For Anna, Hathaway's party in the evening is pure stress. She tries to call Richard from Hathaway's apartment for advice on her return to London. But the connection is a long time coming and when it is finally established, the conversation is immediately interrupted again. Because Max has to be rushed to the airport, Anna cannot make a second attempt at a phone call. Konrad races through Berlin at night with his two siblings and can drop Max off at the airport just in time. On the way back, Anna starts talking to Konrad. He feels very depressed because he brought mom to attempt suicide, which, in his opinion, she did not seriously consider even in the worst of times of emigration. Anna then tells him about her return to the memory of the experience in London, which seems to give Konrad great relief. Anna wonders if she's done anything bad with this story. On the other hand, she feels relieved because Konrad has offered to book her a flight home for Friday.
After a restless night, she learns from the landlady that the Russians really seem to be leaving Hungary. Mama, who visits her in the hospital that morning, is also enthusiastic about the news and reacts relatively calmly when Anna cautiously announces that she will soon be flying home. But a phone call from Konrad destroys the relaxed atmosphere. When mom asks whether Konrad has booked the hotel rooms for her vacation, he tells her that Erwin is sick and he doesn't yet know whether he can apply for vacation under these circumstances. Mama loses her composure and accuses Konrad of still being in a relationship with the secretary Ilse; Finally she talks about her suicide attempt and Konrad reacts with the smug remark that it wasn't the first time. Since Mama Konrad never told of her alleged or actual attempt to commit suicide with Rosenberg's tablets, she is stunned. Konrad later succeeds in making her believe that she reported the incident to him herself.
Anna leaves the hospital room as soon as possible. Konrad has announced his visit to the hospital and for a moment she contemplates intercepting him in the entrance hall and asking Mama not to tell what she, Anna, told him that night. But then she lets him pass without him noticing, and goes back to Douglasstrasse. She wants to repeat the experience of the other day and feel the presence of the little person she once was. But the attempt fails. Finally, Anna lets a taxi take her to Konrad's office. In the anteroom she meets Ilse. Konrad himself is not there yet and is a bit startled when he later meets Anna and Ilse together. He sends Ilse to lunch, takes Anna to his private office and explains to her that he has reconciled with Mama and has also got Anna's plane ticket. He also goes through the restitution request with her, which he has to process for Mom. He tells her that he met her father once in London and was very impressed by him: “He was so funny and interesting. And what he knew. And his enthusiasm - just like your mother's. They went very well together. Both emotionally and intellectually […] I wasn't exactly her shoe number […] it's true and I know it. ”However, he promises to take care of Anna's mother in the future, and Anna leaves that after one last visit to her mother Hospital at least halfway reassured. She decides to pay another visit to the Goldblatt. Hildy and Erwin, who is lying in the sick bed, are drinking to the brave Hungarians and to the fact that Erwin does not suffer from hepatitis , as initially feared , and Hildy encourages Anna, who is no longer in the mood to cover up the events. Konrad will certainly stay with his partner, at least for the time being. "Then?" Hildy raised both palms in the ancient Jewish gesture. "Then? Who will care much about this? Then everything always turns out differently than you think. ""
Friday begins when Anna, standing by the window, suddenly has the feeling that she can smell the glass and suddenly has to vomit. She fears that she has contracted Erwin's gastrointestinal flu, but is determined to fly home anyway and lets Konrad take her to the airport. The farewell talk is halting and full of pitfalls, Anna is happy when her flight is called. Half asleep, she relived scenes from her past on the plane. The stewardess is worried about her paleness and asks if she will be picked up at Heathrow. Anna can say yes, but she experiences another moment of shock because, as in her recurring nightmare, she cannot immediately remember who will pick her up. Richard just seems to be faded out in these dreams.
In reality, however, he is there and takes you in his arms at the airport. He explains that he has now become afraid, and only now does Anna find out that Budapest is now surrounded by tanks and that the Soviets in Hungary are doing what they want while the Labor Party is “holding a huge protest meeting in Trafalgar Square "Organized because of" us. How angry we are that we are invading Suez like imperialists. And while we're dealing with our own little fiasco, the real imperialists do what they want. ”As the two wait for a taxi, Anna looks utterly exhausted from the news, and Richard mentions that she is also in the past busy week also had its days. Anna then looks at him in disbelief and suddenly knows that she is pregnant.
Biographical references
The seller in the entrance scene speaks of a major television series that ran last year. This street sweeper was The Quatermass Experiment by Nigel Kneale. Elizabeth Dillon is called "awakened childhood" in the mouth, which later formed the title of another publication by Judith Kerr about her childhood. Julia Kerr had regularly spoken of the possibility of ending her life during her time in exile and actually wanted to part with her in the 1950s. In Judith Kerr's Creatures , her daughter mentions this fact without going into the background. Judith Kerr's first pregnancy, which ended in a miscarriage, also fell during this time. The first child, daughter Tacy , was born in 1958, followed by brother Matthew in 1960.
reception
Judith Kerr herself wrote about the third part of her autobiographical trilogy: “ A Small Person Far Away is really a grown-up novel an I have always been pleased that my grown-up children liked it best of the three […] I just wanted to tell the story of my family - how, when my brother and I were young, our parents were always able to protect us, how they always seemed to know what to do, and how, gradually the relationship changed, until, with my mother's attempt at suicide, the position was totally reversed […] "Kerr also stated that a kind of family reunion aroused less reader interest than his two predecessors, but commented on this with the words:" I had found writing it interesting and decided to follow it up with another grown-up novel ". But this planned book never came about.
Bannasch and Rochus describe the novel A Kind of Family Reunion as “an attempt at therapy” and believe that the main character or the author has attempted to deal with the trauma of exile, the consequences of which have reached her present day. In the handbook of German-language exile literature, however, you deal in more detail with the first volume of the trilogy.
Judith Kerr's autobiographical books attracted attention because they were among the first books for children and young people to deal with the Third Reich . But here, too, the first volume of the trilogy was usually the focus of interest. A kind of family reunion often seems to be judged negatively by young readers, but the adult Ulrike Schimming also judged: “Of the three volumes, a kind of family reunion is certainly the weakest part.” She only approves of the volume that it holds the picture, so to speak on starting a family of the main character, without going into how the topic of the parent-child relationship is continued in this book and that this last volume only enables the encounter with the little person named in the English title, who Anna alias Judith Kerr before the experience of exile was.
Wilhelm Kühlmann even comes to the conclusion in his portrayal of the novel: “Her story turns out to be a young woman's search for identity, who finally frees her unexpected motherhood from a series of seemingly insoluble crises and marks the end of her childhood. Thus, the final piece of the trilogy of novels culminates in the successful development of a specifically female sexual character [...] This revises the emancipatory stimuli emanating from the first two parts [...]. In terms of its educational and moral objectives, a kind of family reunion can be attributed to the ideals of traditional girls 'literature. ”Judith Kerr, however, probably never considered this book to be“ girls' literature ”. Her explanation can be read on the dust jacket of the German-language edition: “This story of Anna, who got married in London and leads her own life there, and of her brave, vulnerable, aging mother, who was never able to settle in England, is a story Book about parents and children for adults. "
output
- Judith Kerr: Kind of a family gathering . Otto Maier Verlag: Ravensburger 1980, ISBN 3-473-35050-8
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Elisabeth von Thadden, The girl from London , in: Die Zeit 25, 2013 ( online )
- ^ Judith Kerr, Eine Art Familientreffen , Otto Maier Verlag Ravensburg 1980, ISBN 3-473-35050-8 , p. 8
- ^ Judith Kerr, Eine Art Familientreffen , Otto Maier Verlag Ravensburg 1980, ISBN 3-473-35050-8 , p. 29
- ^ Judith Kerr, Eine Art Familientreffen , Otto Maier Verlag Ravensburg 1980, ISBN 3-473-35050-8 , p. 68
- ^ Judith Kerr, Eine Art Familientreffen , Otto Maier Verlag Ravensburg 1980, ISBN 3-473-35050-8 , p. 94
- ^ Judith Kerr, Eine Art Familientreffen , Otto Maier Verlag Ravensburg 1980, ISBN 3-473-35050-8 , p. 159
- ^ Judith Kerr, Eine Art Familientreffen , Otto Maier Verlag Ravensburg 1980, ISBN 3-473-35050-8 , p. 169
- ↑ a b Judith Kerr, Eine Art Familientreffen , Otto Maier Verlag Ravensburg 1980, ISBN 3-473-35050-8 , p. 179
- ^ Judith Kerr, Eine eineweckte Kindheit , Argon Verlag Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-87024-175-6
- ^ Judith Kerr's Creatures. A Celebration of Her Life and Work , Harper Collins 2013, ISBN 978-0-00-751321-5 , p. 112
- ^ Judith Kerr's Creatures. A Celebration of Her Life and Work , Harper Collins 2013, ISBN 978-0-00-751321-5 , p. 65
- ^ Judith Kerr's Creatures. A Celebration of Her Life and Work , Harper Collins 2013, ISBN 978-0-00-751321-5 , p. 115 ff.
- ^ Judith Kerr's Creatures. A Celebration of Her Life and Work , Harper Collins 2013, ISBN 978-0-00-751321-5 , p. 119
- ↑ Bettina Bannasch, Gerhild Rochus: Handbook of German-language exile literature: From Heinrich Heine to Herta Müller . De Gruyter, October 14, 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-025675-8 , p. 355.
- ↑ Heike Schwering: Autobiographical traces in the narrative of selected German children's and youth book authors of the war and post-war generation: A qualitative study . diplom.de, April 1, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8366-1155-8 , p. 43.
- ↑ An example can be found at www.roterdorn.de ( Memento of the original from November 21, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .
- ↑ Ulrike Schimming, Escape to a new home , June 14, 2013 on letteraturen.letterata.de
- ^ Wilhelm Kühlmann: Huh - Kräf . Walter de Gruyter, September 4, 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-021394-2 , p. 380.
- ↑ Excerpt from the text of the dust jacket by Judith Kerr, Eine Art Familientreffen , Otto Maier Verlag Ravensburg 1980, ISBN 3-473-35050-8
