The Survivor

The period of German history between the years 1930 and 1950 shapes the very character of Bernd, whose world is destroyed and whose family is ruined by World War II

Schoolboy Bernd Walther, the protagonist of this tempestuous and engrossing novella, comes of age during World War II, experiencing the Nazi era, the bombings and occupation of Germany, and the postwar chaos and black-market economy. At first, the solidly furnished middle-class Walther household includes Bernd's sister Hermine and their father, "Wotan," a bank president and retired major general, who disciplines his children with a whip. Bernd huddles in the wardrobe of his mother, many years dead, and caresses her fragrant gowns. When Wotan remarries, his tarty young "blue angel" bride Irmchen introduces a whiff of sensuality and instability into the straitlaced family. Bernd's needsfor love, sex and foodgrow rampant as he battles for his father's attention. When bombs raze their house, the family moves to the cellar, patching the ruin with salvaged scraps. Irmchen makes her getaway. Bernd's world crumbles but he toughens and views his life with wry humor. The novel's welter of memories is rich with period details.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In his first work of fiction, well-known German critic Raddatz reveals the same readiness to explore the controversial and uncomfortable as he does in his criticism. Set in Berlin, the story focuses on Bernd's adolescence in the 1940s. A lonely child in a pretentious and perverse household, cruelly disciplined by his major general father and taunted by his frivolous stepmother, he later fends off starvation as a black marketeer in the postwar years, while his father is dying of tuberculosis in their bombed-out home. The text is brief and dense, the characters not very likable. Raddatz presents only highly charged scenes, often violent or grotesque, that are strung together without transition as in a film. Though not artistically successful, this approach results in a strong and vivid evocation of life in war-torn Berlin.
- Ulla Sweedler, Univ. of California at San Diego Lib.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.