Wait till the peace comes
Wait until peace comes is the second part of an autobiographical novel trilogy by Judith Kerr . The book was initially published in English under the title The Other Way Round . The translation into German, which was first published in 1975, was done by Annemarie Böll .
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Waiting until peace comes is the sequel to When Hitler Stole the Pink Rabbit , but does not follow seamlessly from the events described in this book. When Hitler stole the pink rabbit, the exiled family moved - Judith Kerr is the daughter of the writer Alfred Kerr and his wife Julia and the younger sister of Michael Kerr , who is called "Max" in the novels, while she herself with hers middle name "Anna" - from Paris to London in 1935. The reason for this move was the fact that the father, usually called "Papa" in the book, was able to sell a film script to a Hungarian director in England, and that he couldn't earn enough to support his family during the economic crisis in France. A fresh start in London seemed hopeful at the time.
Now, on March 4, 1940, the seventh anniversary of the family's flight from Berlin , the situation changed. Anna's father, who grew up bilingual and was able to publish in France in the national language, has insufficient knowledge of English, can only rarely sell an article or the text for a leaflet and therefore has almost no income. His wife tries with office work, which she has never learned to support the family. Your income is just enough for two cheap hotel rooms for yourself and her husband. Fortunately, their son Max received a scholarship to study at Cambridge and Anna, who ended her school career in an uncomfortable boarding school after completing secondary school , is initially staying free of charge with her American friends, the Bartholomew family. On the day the story begins, when she realizes that she seems to have lost the four pennies of the subway fare that she would need to visit mom and dad at their hotel, she decides to get a job looking to be able to pay for their own living - a little later, when the Bartholomews return to the USA in view of the danger of bombs in London, this will also be sorely needed.
With the help of a refugee organization, she was able to take a secretary course and, after being rejected by numerous military and government agencies as a native German, finally got a job with the Honorable Mrs. Hammond. She heads an organization of the Red Cross that is responsible for the production and distribution of clothing for soldiers.
Once received by mum's cousin Otto on arrival in London, the family continues to keep in contact with this cousin and his relatives: Aunt Niedlich, his mother, managed to buy her husband Viktor out of a concentration camp and bring them to London now lives in the basement of a house whose other rooms she has rented. Viktor has suffered brain damage, is no longer able to work and no longer recognizes his own family, and Otto, who actually has a doctorate in physics, works in a shoe factory. One day Mama receives a brochure from the City of London from Aunt Niedlich, in which, similar to an adult education center directory, numerous inexpensive courses are offered, including drawing courses.
Anna, who has always liked to draw, first signs up for one and later for several of these drawing courses and thus has an evening-long occupation. Before long she falls in love with her teacher, John Cotmore, who is around 40 years old and has separated from his wife.
Meanwhile, the war situation is becoming more and more critical. When the German invasion was expected, many men of foreign nationality were interned in camps in the coastal area as "enemy foreigners". Max and Otto both end up in a camp on the Isle of Man . Max, who is about to take his legal exam, hardly takes any clothes, just his specialist literature, and writes indignant and desperate letters to his family. The parents also do their best to get their son released from this camp, but initially have just as little success as his old headmaster, Mr. Chetwyn. Only when mom reads a very positive review of a film in a newspaper about the tribulations that German refugees have to endure before they can leave their own country does the tide turn. Mama, outraged that these refugees are on the one hand regretted by the author of the review, an English minister, but on the other hand are locked in camps in Great Britain, writes a letter to the reviewer in which she describes Max's situation. Two days later he is released and arrives in London in the middle of a bombing raid. He decides to work as a teacher for a year out of gratitude to Mr. Chetwyn, who so desires, but then to join the army. This is faced with difficulties because he has long felt himself to be English, but has not yet been naturalized. Finally, the Honorable Mrs. Hammond, who lets her relations play, can help, and Max fights as a member of an air squadron in the English army. Otto, on the other hand, who was interned with him, signs up for a transport to Canada, comes from there to the USA and receives a job on an important project about which even President Roosevelt is constantly informed and in which Einstein is also involved.
One day John Cotmore asks Anna to undertake a bigger project, such as illustrating a book or painting a wall. She was immediately electrified by the idea with the wall and soon found a suitable object: a café with nine boring cream-colored walls, which she painted with scenes from the Victorian era in the weeks that followed, after she was able to convince the owner couple of her idea . During these weeks she hardly ever gets to attend her drawing classes and also spends the weekends only at her work. When it is finished, she invites the participants of the courses, including Cotmore, to the bar for a party, is proud of her success, but realizes that Cotmore suddenly treats her strangely cool. A little later, when she and her dad attended a concert for which another student had received a bundle of tickets, she discovered that Cotmore was now in a relationship with Barbara, a woman in her late twenties who was also learning to draw with him.
The next day Dad suffers a stroke, and Anna, whose world has collapsed, can no longer attend the drawing classes for this reason. When her father is feeling better, he finally asks why she no longer draws and insists that she go back to her classes. Anna follows his urgent request, but for a long time she has the feeling that she can no longer achieve anything. It was only towards the end of the war, when the children who had been sent to the country were returning to London, that their interest in art suddenly returned. She starts drawing again and eventually receives a three-year scholarship to study art. Max, whose squadron has been disbanded, talks to his sister about the parents towards the end of the book. While it has always been the case that the children felt safe and did not suffer from being a refugee as long as they were with their parents, the situation now seems to have changed. Now it is mom and dad that Max and Anna have to give the feeling of security.
This conclusion corresponds to the statement made by the author in an interview: The novels are less novels about Anna herself than novels about her parents. It is no coincidence that the novel is preceded by a poem by Alfred Kerr in which the words "parents ... remain" are repeated several times.
How important personal experience was for Judith Kerr's work was summarized by Othmar Hicking in 2013 with the sentence “that with Judith Kerr, life and work are always closely intertwined in a very special way, one's own life being the primary source of artistic inspiration for the work and the work without the lived life is inconceivable. ” Waiting until peace comes , Anna talks to Papa after the funeral of her uncle Viktor. She is desperate at the idea that her father might see life in emigration as pointless:
I am a person who writes, he said, as a writer you have to know . Haven't you noticed yet?
I'm not a writer, said Anna.
Maybe one day you will write too. But even a budding painter ... He hesitated for a moment. There is something in me, he said carefully, completely separate from everything else. It's like a little man sitting behind my forehead. And whatever happens, he watches it. Even if it's something terrible. He watches how I feel, what I say, that I want to scream, that my hands start to tremble. And he says: How interesting! How interesting to know that it is so.
Yes, said Anna. She knew that she had a little man like Papa too [...]
In A Kind of Family Reunion set ten years later, Kerr brings the trilogy to an end
Biographical references
Judith Kerr has now given the real names of some of the people who play a role in Waiting for Peace to Come. The drawing teacher she and her friend Peggy Fortnum had fallen in love with was John Farleigh . Her Red Cross employer was actually called The Honorable Mrs. Gamage.
reception
In Waiting for Peace, Yvonna-Patricia Alefeld saw a treatment of “ topics such as war, the fate of emigrants, etc., which were previously foreign to youth literature . Holocaust ”, which appeared alongside more traditional motifs such as the difficulties of adolescence and the protagonist's first love. Heike Schwering also emphasized that Judith Kerr, along with a few other writers, was an exception. Until around 1980, the era of National Socialism was hardly discussed in children's books.
Ulrike Schimming placed the value of the book as a contemporary document in the foreground: “ Waiting until peace comes, captivates with the authentic depiction of the bombing of London . It makes it clear how much the British metropolis suffered from the attacks by the Germans. ”Her addition, Kerr's work contains“ one of the most sensitive depictions of flight ”and it shows“ that children are very much aware of the suffering of adults, but also definitely are able to find their way into new situations and to be able to lead a happy life ”, refers more to the first part of the trilogy, but also fits the second and third.
Waiting until peace comes was on the shortlist for the Buxtehuder Bulle in 1975 and on the shortlist for the German Youth Book Prize in 1976 .
literature
- Pauline Liesen, Maria Linsmann (ed.), The pink rabbit, Mog and the others. The imagery of Judith Kerr. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the picture book museum Burg Wissem of the city of Troisdorf from May 5 to June 16, 2013, Troisdorf 2013
Individual evidence
- ↑ On Kerr's production in exile, see also Jörg Thunecke: Deutschsprachige Exillyrik from 1933 to the post-war period . Rodopi, 1 January 1998, ISBN 90-420-0574-2 , p. 296 ff.
- ^ Dieter Kühn: Portrait studies in black and white . Fischer E-Books, August 20, 2015, ISBN 978-3-10-403415-7 , p. 439.
- ↑ a b Othmar Hicking, Judith Kerr. About her life, her work and her world of images. Retrospective at Burg Wissem - picture book museum of the city of Troisdorf , in: Volkacher Bote. Journal of the German Academy for Children's and Youth Literature 98, July 2013, pp. 12–15
- ^ Judith Kerr, Waiting until peace comes , Otto Maier Verlag Ravensburg 1982, ISBN 3-473-38753-3 , p. 240
- ^ Judith Kerr's Creatures. A Celebration of Her Life and Work , HarperCollins London 2013, ISBN 978-0-00-751321-5 , pp. 30 and 26
- ^ Wilhelm Kühlmann: Huh - Kräf . Walter de Gruyter, 4 September 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-021394-2 , p. 379 f ..
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ Ulrike Schimming, Escape to a new home , June 14, 2013, on letteraturen.letterata.de