Motherland Author: Maria Hummel | Language: English | ISBN:
B00GL9T2LW | Format: PDF
Motherland Description
Motherland is inspired by stories from the author’s father and his German childhood, and letters between her grandparents that were hidden in an attic wall for fifty years. It is the author’s attempt to reckon with the paradox of her father—a product of her grandparents’ fiercely protective love and their status as Mitläufer, Germans who “went along” with Nazism, first reaping its benefits and later its consequences.
This page-turning novel focuses on the Kappus family: Frank is a reconstructive surgeon who lost his beloved wife in childbirth and two months later married a young woman who must look after the baby and his two grieving sons when he is drafted into medical military service. Alone in the house, Liesl must attempt to keep the children fed with dwindling food supplies, safe from the constant Allied air attacks, and protected against the swell of desperate refugees flooding their town. When one child begins to mentally unravel, Liesl must discover the source of the boy’s infirmity or lose him forever to Hadamar, the infamous hospital for “unfit” children. The novel bears witness to the shame and courage of Third Reich families during the devastating last days of the war, as each family member’s fateful choices lead them deeper into questions of complicity and innocence, to the novel’s heartbreaking and unforgettable conclusion.
- File Size: 568 KB
- Print Length: 382 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1619022370
- Publisher: Counterpoint (January 14, 2014)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00GL9T2LW
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,190 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #3
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Historical Fiction > German - #41
in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > War - #55
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Historical Fiction > United States
- #3
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Historical Fiction > German - #41
in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > War - #55
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Historical Fiction > United States
The story is that of the tragedy and triumph of a young German family trying to survive the trials and tribulations of a devastated Germany at the end of World War ll.
The novel is based on the author's paternal grandparents, suspected of being a Mitläufer family: Germans who went along with Nazism, while keeping a blind eye to their atrocities, they garnered its benefits and rewards; but later suffered the consequences.
Dr. Frank Kappus, a reconstructive surgeon, loses his beloved wife while giving birth to their third son. A couple of months later he marries young Liesl. Shortly after, Frank is drafted into military medical service and is transferred to the front, about 250 kilometers away, leaving young Liesl to care for his children.
Fear from the constant Allied bombings and the approaching battle front, scarcity of resources and diminishing food supplies, the commonality of deaths, and the inexorable invasion of starving destitute refugees in their town caused tremendous insurmountable daily challenges for survival, during the last year of the war.
Young Liesl, alone, bravely and selflessly struggled to feed, protect and comfort the children. It is a time when ethnic hatred, political compatibility or hostility, and personal betrayal are insignificant in comparison to keeping her wards fed, warm and safe. = No spoilers here=.
Hummel distilled the angst, fear, daily suffering and generous humanity from her grandfather's letters, written during the WW ll and discovered (50 years later) in an attic wall. The horrendous cruelty of the Nazis in their treatment of the disabled, the mentally deficient, the insane, homosexuals, gypsies and, especially, the Jews was passively tolerated and ignored.
Maria Hummel published her last novel (her first) twelve years ago. Hummel is an accomplished poet who brought her rhythm, lyricism and voice to Motherland and I sincerely hope she doesn’t wait another twelve years and let academia swallow her time.
(Note: I read the comments of Chris Roberts and Stephen Weiss prior to posting this. Any novelist writing of the time and place of the Holocaust is going to be criticized if they do not confront the extermination of the Jews and the complicity of the German people headon. I stood in the low ceiling concrete gas chamber, prayed before the cremation ovens, and walked through the barracks of dead Jews at Mauthausen, sitting on a hilltop overlooking the Danube in Austria. We drove up the narrow winding road to the concrete-walled fortress, through a cornfield, past a farmhouse with an elderly gentleman sitting on the porch, knowing well that the family that lived there forty-five years before as well as the entire town of Mauthausen knew full well what was there. We had dinner with a young German executive friend of a friend who, after too many glasses of wine, downplayed the Holocaust by claiming the Allies killed more in their bombing. I fully agree that the Germans knew to a great extent and tacitly approved of the exterminations. That does not mean that a person cannot write a literary novel exploring the daily lives from the viewpoint of the German people. As with any literary novel, “Motherland” is subtle, laced with metaphors and the sub-text of the novel brings out the cultural cruelty and dystopia of the then German people. It does not explore the full broad hatred of various minority groups and the complicity of the people in rounding them up. But that is not the scope of this novel.
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