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AMDG

Forty Autumns: a Family's Story of Courage and Suffering on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall by Nina Willner

I see that it has been six weeks since I lasted posted here, but while I haven't written for a while, I have finished quite a few books. The one that I am going to write about today isn't one that was on my shelf, in fact, I don't even have a copy of the book. We recently went on a trip, and I downloaded this one to listen to in the car. We never got around to that, but I've been listening to it since I got home.

One reason I chose to resume writing with Forty Autumns is that today is Veteran's Day and the 100th anniversary of the World War I armistice. This book is not about World War I, but about the aftermath of World War II. It reminds us, though, of why it is important to remember our history, and why wars are fought, and what happens in a country where there is no freedom, and where the goals of the government are more important than the lives of the people who live there.

Nina Willner's mother, Hanna, escaped from East Germany in 1948, two weeks before her 21st birthday. Almost 40 years later, a few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Willner moved to East Germany as an intelligence agent for the United States. In Forty Autumns, Willner weaves together the story of her mother's escape and future life, the life of the family she left behind, and the political history of East Germany.

Willner chronicles all the difficulties her family suffered under the East German regime.  They were hungry. The people had to harvest their crops and then turn them over to the government to be distributed, but not much came back to the family. The children were more or less compelled to undergo Communist Party indoctrination in Youth Groups and schools. The Statsi (East German equivalent of the KGB) were everywhere, and everyone was encouraged to spy on their neighbors. No one could trust their neighbors or even their children. Products were scarce, and shoddy and quickly wore out. And, of course, they were held prisoners within the borders of the country.

Despite all this, Oma (Hanna's mother) was determined to keep her family intact and loyal to one another. She raised what she called the Family Wall. She taught her children that the family came first, and to not let anyone divide them, and in this, she was successful. She seems to have always persevered no matter how difficult things were, and to believe that one day things would be different.

Opa (Hanna's father), on the other hand, was not so sanguine. He was a teacher, and was disgusted by the things he was required to teach. He was appalled at the falsified version of history presented by the government, but he went along with what was expected, because to complain was to ask for serious trouble. Eventually, though, he did begin to rebel with the result that he was kicked out of the Communist party, fired, sent away to a small home in an area where there were only a few other people, and eventually put in an insane asylum for 6 months.

There was some occasional communication between Hanna and her family, although all their mail was read by the Stasi, so they had to be very careful about what they said. Twice while Hanna was still living in West Germany, family members were allowed to visit her in there, partly because the Stasi hoped that her mother would convince her to come back. In 1954, Oma and her youngest daughter, 5 year-old Heidi, were the first visitors. Heidi was born after Hanna had escaped, so this was the first time that they had met, and Heidi decided then and there that she was going to pattern her life after Hanna's.

In 1958, Opa and Oma were allowed a to come. Since Oma's last visit, Hanna had married Eddie Willner, a Jewish holocaust survivor, now a U.S. intelligence agent. The Stasi knew who he was, and they encourage Opa to somehow find out information from Eddie. The topic never came up during the visit, and they had a wonderful time. However, since Oma and Opa had failed to cooperate, they were never allowed to visit again.

One of the most encouraging stories in the book is that of Heidi, and her husband Reinhardt. Because neither of them had ever joined the Communist Party, they could not get very good jobs, but they and their children managed to get by on, and be happy with what they had. After a time, Heidi was rewarded a small plot of land on which to raise food. Reinhardt built a small shed on the land from a prefab kit, and they worked hard to make it into a nice little place to stay. They called it Paradise Bungalow and spent their weekends there.

In a way, Forty Autumns reminds me of Eleni. Although Hanna's family did not suffer the torture and martyrdom of Eleni Gotzoyiannis, there were those who did. Willner writes about a terrible women's prison, and, of course, many people were killed trying to escape. Like Eleni, Forty Autumns is a reminder of the corruptions of the Communist government that seems to be sorely needed today, when there are those that seem to see Communism as a positive good.

I would highly recommend this book for anyone. It is a very good read. It has all the elements of a good novel, and is also very informative, but the chapters that talk about the political climate are never tedious because they are related to what is going on in the lives of these people that we care about.

AMDG

The Most Beautiful House in the World by Witold Rybczynski

Ever since I read Home: a Short History of an Idea, I have wanted to read another book by Witold Rybczynski, and now I have. I mentioned (well, not in so many words) in my former post that Rybczynski never met a rabbit trail he didn't like, and he proceeds along on (and off) the same path in The Most Beautiful House in the World. I was happy to see this because the digressions are one of the main charms of the books.

In the newer book, however, he doesn't only follow rabbit trails in his narrative, but in his life. After a while, I couldn't help thinking about the children's book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. One thing leads to another, and eventually Rybczynski reaches a totally unexpected end.

The one thing was his idea that he would like to build a boat. This wasn't as unrealistic an idea as it would be for me--I daydream about learning how to build stuff--because he was experienced with construction and the tools he would have to use, and being an architect, he would be able to come up with a plan. But there was one problem--he needed a place to build the boat. He needed a boatbuilding shed. And then, of course, he needed a piece of land to put the shed on.

It was a five year journey from the day Rybczynski first made sketches for a boatbuilding shed in September, 1975, until the day that he and his wife, Shirley, moved into their Most Beautiful House. In the acknowledgments at the end of the book, Rybczynski says:

I told the story of my house to a fellow visitor (at Tianjin University), a Belgian engineer. "You must write about this," he said . . . I thought that this would be an easy book to write, or at least a straightforward one. Instead it has take many unexpected twists and turns . . .

The book was published three years later.

As we join Rybczynski in navigating all those twists and turns, we learn many things. First, we learn about feng-shui, and ask the question, "What is architecture?" Then, we learn the history of construction toys--latecomers to the toy game, we also learn about pre-construction toy toys--from building with playing cards to the first building blocks introduced by Friedrich Froebel in 1837 as part of his method of education to Meccano to the ubiquitous Lego. Rybczynski describes architecture as the building game. It's not a game you play with others, but more like a word puzzle, something that you do alone in quiet times, when you draw plans, make models, and dream about what you will do next.

Along the way we learn about why a building has to fit into it's environment, what happens when it doesn't. We find out a lot about barns and their history--there's a reason for the barn discussion. And when the building project is finally reaching its end, Rybczynski tells the story of a man who built his own house from almost nothing in a poor area of Mexico, and also about five well-known men who built their own houses: Samuel Clemens, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Bernard Shaw, and my favorite, Carl Larsson. You have probably seen pictures of Larsson's home and family on calendars and Christmas cards.

The Most Beautiful House in the World was just the kind of book that I expected from Rybczynski. It underscores something that I have really learned while reading all these diverse books. A good author can make almost any subject interesting if he loves what he is writing about. This book is a good example of that concept. It's also a great book to read when you are looking for something that is enjoyable and not terribly demanding--a book to relax with.

AMDG

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

From Michael Shaara's note to readers of The Killer Angels:

You may find it a different story from the one you learned in school. There have been many versions of that battle [Gettysburg] and that war. I have there fore avoided historical opinions and gone back primarily to the words of the men themselves, their letters and other documents. I have not consciously changed any fact. . . . The interpretation of character is my own.

Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels is a wonderful book. When before reading the book, I saw Ken Burn's liner notes on the back and read, "REMARKABLE . . . A BOOK THAT CHANGED MY LIFE," I thought, "Well, I guess." However, while I don't think the book quite changed my life, it did peel back a sort of film over my vision and clarified some things for me.

As you may have gathered, this is a novel about the battle at Gettysburg, and it is the book from which the movie of that name is taken. I have always had an interest in the Civil War, and wanted to read more about it, but I thought it would be a bit of work. I have a hard time following battles, both in print and on the screen. I usually just skip to the end of the battle to find out who won and who is still alive. However, since many of the most important moments of The Killer Angels take place during the battles, my usual practice just wouldn't work, and because of the many maps Shaara included, and his clear descriptions of the action, I didn't have much trouble.

The story is told from the point-of-view of the participants, and each chapter's title is the name of the man whose thoughts and experiences we are sharing. The only exception to this is the first chapter which is called, The Spy. and is about a man named Harrison, a paid scout, who first informs the Southern generals that Union soldiers are gathering in the area of Gettysburg. The narratives are mainly those of Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, and Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (who commanded the Union forces at the Battle of Little Round Top), with a few others appearing at the beginning and end of the book.

One of the main strengths of the book is Shaara's ability to get us into the heads of the men who fought this battle. As I was reading I was with the man whose life I was sharing. It didn't matter if he was Union or Confederate, it was only important that he was a person who was struggling through that moment. The battle, and the war itself, are only the background for the thoughts, fears, motivations, and physical experience of the characters.

What struck me most, I think, is the motivations of the soldiers. I know that the big reason for the war was slavery, although I think it is much more complex than that, but I wonder what drove each individual soldier to battle. I'm pretty sure that the real answer would differ quite a bit from man to man.

I'm trying to remember, and I can't, an instance where the Southern soldiers discuss slavery. The only one of Shaara's characters that really professes slavery as his reason for joining the Union army is Chamberlain, who is not a professional soldier, but a professor of Rhetoric. This conversation between Chamberlain and his brother, Tom, after the Union had won the battle made me think.

[Tom said,] "Thing I cannot understand. Thing I never will understand. How can they fight so hard, them Johnnies, and all for slavery? . . . When you ask them prisoners, they never talk about slavery. But, Lawrence, how do you explain that? What else is the war about?"

Chamberlain shook his head.

"Well then, I don't care how much political fast-talking you hear, that's what it's all about and that's what them fellers died for, and I tell you Lawrence, I don't understand it at all."

 What it makes me think is this. Slavery was the big, over-riding cause for the war, but in some way, slavery was just the spark that lit the wick of the war between the North and South. That wick was there to be lit, and if it hadn't been slavery, I imagine it would have been something else.

It seems to me that the Civil War was not so much a political battle, but a battle between cultures, and I don't mean the slave culture. I think that had there been no slavery, that difference would still have been there--well, it still is, I guess. It has always seemed to me that the great tragedy for the South in the war was that by refusing to give up slavery (which was clearly wrong, although I think that maybe some people were blind to that fact), they lost something very important that they would miss much more than their slaves. But that is a discussion for another day.

I would recommend The Killer Angels to anyone who likes to read. If you like history, or are interested in the Civil War, that would be a bonus, but not at all necessary for anyone to enjoy the book. I should also mention that it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1975, so I guess I'm not the only person who likes it.

And here is a bit of trivia that I picked up while looking around for the date of the Pulitzer Prize. Joss Whedon says that The Killer Angels was his inspiration for the TV series Firefly. In an interview that I found here, Whedon say, in answer to a question about his inspiration . . .

It was The Killer Angels. It's a book. I think it won the Pulitzer. It's a very detailed account of the Battle of Gettysburg that I read in London when I was on one of my vacations where I didn't write anything, but I did come up with Firefly and a couple other shows. I read The Killer Angels. The minutia of the Battle of Gettysburg and the lives of the people in it really made Firefly just pop out of my head. I want to get into people's lives this intimately. I want to do it in the future and show that the future is the past. So I built the structure of the world and the look of the show on the Reconstruction Era.

AMDG