Vladimir

05Apr12

I’ve always seen it as my obligation to dive into my family’s secrets, perhaps in a quest to figure out what cast the long shadows that have always hung over it. With my mom’s family that was easy. There were archival documents, references, a long paper trail. My father’s family always seemed bland in comparison. [...]

Filed under: Father, History, Russia, Third Reich, World War II   |  Closed

Family, lost and found

17Feb12

You might have noticed at this point that my family was more of the “unhappy in its own way” kind. Helmed by parents whose own parents had never shown them much affection, which meant they never learned how dispense it themselves, my family was an archipelago of six individuals with few bonds. We were four [...]

Filed under: 2000s, Childhood, Germany, Third Reich, World War II, Youth   |  Closed
Tags: Brighton Beach, family, friendship, isolation, loss, mortality, sadness, sisters, unhappiness

Patterns: mortality

18Jan12

I originally started this blog to find out if there were larger patterns to the things I love. The tags don’t lie: there is a very consistent theme to almost all of my posts, and it’s mortality. Oof. I hadn’t quite expected that. I think of myself as an optimistic, forward-looking person. And all I seem [...]

Filed under: Childhood, Mother, World War II   |  Closed
Tags: childhood, family, flight, grandparents, legacy, loss, mortality, my mother, patterns

The dead in your backyard

07Dec11

I grew up in a very pretty village in one of the more picturesque parts of (then) rural Germany. It did have a small factory, but the overall vibe was agricultural. The farmer a couple of streets down would sell you a liter of fresh raw milk for one Mark, and our house was surrounded [...]

Filed under: Childhood, Germany, History, Third Reich, World War II   |  Closed
Tags: Baader Meinhof, cemetery, childhood, concentration camp, forced labor, Germany, Harald Isermeyer, Hitlers Hinterhof, hometown, mortality, Nike missile base, Rote Armee Fraktion, Third Reich

Small feasts

06Dec11

Denton Welch, according to his diaries, was an inveterate picnic-er (if that is a word). This is a typical repast: “When we got to the opening which led into the wood, we pushed our bicycles up over the brambles and leaves; we came out at the charming clearing that I knew, and we laid my [...]

Filed under: Books, Food, World War II, Writers   |  Closed
Tags: Denton Welch, Eric Oliver, food, picnic, Ryvita

It is with profound joy

05Dec11

While we’re on Klemperer, I’d like to add a digression on the birth announcement of my mother, which appeared in January 1943. It read something like “With the most profound joy we would like to announce the birth of our daughter Brünnhilde. May she give birth to many courageous warriors. Munich, The Brown House.” The [...]

Filed under: Books, Germany, History, Linguistics, Mother, Third Reich, Victor Klemperer, World War II, Writers   |  Closed
Tags: 1943, birth announcements, Das Braune Haus, death announcements, family announcements, Lingua Tertii Imperii, LTI, Martin Bormann, my grandfather, my mother, The Brown House, Victor Klemperer

The pursuit of happiness

03Dec11

A few years ago I read all of Victor Klemperer’s Diaries – from 1933 to 1959. I read them in the subway on the way to work, at a time when I felt overwhelmed and miserable. I figured it would be therapeutic to read about the daily life of someone who had it so much [...]

Filed under: Books, Germany, History, Third Reich, Victor Klemperer, World War II, Writers   |  Closed
Tags: bombing of Dresden, Dölzschen, diaries, Eva Klemperer, Hadwig Klemperer, happiness, miserableness, Muschel, persecution of Jews, Q train, stoicism, Third Reich, Victor Klemperer

The final loosening

13Nov11

Walter Serner’s Letzte Lockerung (hard to translate: last loosening? final loosening?) was one of the guidebooks of my teenage years. It billed itself as a guide to conmanship, and contains several hundred themed aphorisms and directives on how to live life with a certain kind of haute grifter style. It is imbued with a 1920s [...]

Filed under: 1980s, Books, Childhood, Germany, History, Third Reich, Walter Serner, World War II, Writers   |  Closed
Tags: aphorisms, cool, detachment, Dorothea Herz, Dorothea Serner, guide to living, Letzte Lockerung, mortality, murder, Walter Serner, World War I