Synopsis
Johannes Hoeber left Nazi Germany for America on Nov. 12, 1938. His wife Elfriede & their 9-year-old daughter Susanne were unable to leave until Sept. 1939. Fifty years, later Johannes & Elfriede’s son found an old folder containing the long letters they exchanged during the many months they were separated. In these letters, Elfriede describes the worsening situation in Germany & Johannes describes his flight from Europe & his excited entry into American life. This volume collects 135 of these letters with an intro., extensive notes, & an epilogue that sets the letters in the context of their time. The letters tell the story of a couple driven from their home by the Nazis & forced to make a new life in a new country. An important historical resource that reads like a novel. Photos.
Review
Marjorie Perloff, Professor of English, Stanford University
I am very much impressed with Against Time: Letters from Nazi Germany, 1938-1939. The background chapters that Francis Hoeber provides are beautifully done, and provide major historical background for the letters that follow. As for the letters themselves, they are fascinating. The reader learns what the Nazi era really was like, day by day. The letters on Kristallnacht, for instance, describe specific attacks on Jewish friends and neighbors that are astonishing. The fools' paradise of pre-1939 Germany comes through very clearly.
Herbert Lindenberger, Professor of Humanities,Stanford University. Against Time is a thoroughly absorbing experience. What sustains the reader's attention is the way the two correspondents move at ease between the events of their daily lives and the horrendous political events happening around them. The result is a book that holds much of the fascination we associate with reading novels, but here we are reading a narrative that not only rings true, but is true. A reader finds himself deeply involved in the details surrounding the two correspondents' day-to-day struggles.
Harry Liebersohn, Professor of History, University of Illinois.
This is a fascinating book. The writing throughout is clear and engaging. I find the anecdotes collected here to be satisfyingly detailed and historically valuable. Too often, narrative histories focus on the dramas of persecution and exit (important in their own right, of course) to the neglect or exclusion of reorientation in a new world. The details are delightfully vivid - one can imagine just where and how the family lived.
Michael W. Zuckerman, Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania.
Johannesand Elfriede wrote longingly to each other for most of a terrifyingyear. Their remarkable letters allow usa vivid view of everyday life in Germany as men, women, and children raceddesperately to flee their fate.As the letters succeed one another, a secondstory emerges: a story of two young people of uncommonintelligence, honesty, and deeply moving devotion to one another. Their correspondence opens windows onchilling moments of world-historical significance and thrillingmovements of the human heart.
CHOICE, a publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries
Highly recommended. These letters, written by two literate, gifted writers, construct a deeply experienced history entwined with significant world events. Genuine, emotional, human, rational--the letters exemplify precisely why published history needs such primary material.... Only by absorbing the personal narratives of people who recount the events they lived through can readers approximate the feelings, the vibrant presence,the individual acts that enliven historical experience.
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