Fred Uhlman (1901–1985)

I discovered 'Reunion' via Ali Smith's wonderful Edinburgh International Book Festival event this year. At one point she brandished a copy to emphasise how good it is. When the libraries finally began to reopen two days ago, this was one of the first books I seized from the shelves. Of course Ali Smith's recommendation should be trusted. It is a luminous and beautiful little novella about a friendship between two boys at the end of Germany's Weimar Republic. I read it in one sitting, show more absorbed by the elegant prose and delicate yet powerful emotion of it. This combination reminded me of Stefan Zweig's writing and made me wonder if Zweig would have written something like this about Austria, had he lived past the Second World War. Like the parents of the protagonist, however, he and his wife committed suicide before the war ended. Uhlman infuses the narrative with a nostalgia similar in some ways to that of Zweig's [b:The World of Yesterday|629429|The World of Yesterday|Stefan Zweig|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347696322l/629429._SY75_.jpg|615762]. However this is tempered and given much greater complexity by the narrator's distance from his intense boyhood friendship. As he recounts the little incidents of visiting each other's houses and seeing each other's collections of old coins, the wider political situation looms in the background. The marvel is that such a succinct piece of fiction can cover so much socio-political and emotional ground without seeming at all rushed or simplistic. I don't really know how Uhlman does this so adeptly. The tension builds inexorably to the incredible final pages and the extraordinary last sentence. An absolute gem of a book that I highly recommend. show less

La rilogia del ritorno si conclude con un ritorno, penoso, ma forse necessario per non dimenticare. Se il primo si era concluso con una nota positiva, pur in tutto quel dolore, e il secondo era a mio parere completamente evitabile perché non portava nulla di nuovo, questo terzo è esaustivo e conclusivo, e non lascia spazio alla benché minima ombra di positività. Ma, onestamente, su certi argomenti non c’è nulla che si possa dire di positivo, anche chi l’ha scampata vive show more nell’Inferno. E probabilmente è giusto che sia così, è giusto che certi argomenti continuino a fare male anche a tanti anni di distanza.
A L’amico ritrovato solo legata per averlo letto la prima volta quando ero piccola, ma ragionando obiettivamente direi proprio che questo è il più bello della trilogia.

http://www.naufragio.it/iltempodileggere/18037 show less

Beautifully written psychological study of a friendship between two teenage boys in Germany as Hitler came to power. The last paragraph is absolutely brilliant and makes this an unforgettable story.

This is a small book--a novella as Arthur Koestler calls it in the introduction--that I bought and read twenty years ago in Brussels. I enjoyed it then, and for some reason I picked it up again this afternoon and read, and enjoyed it, again. It is the story, told in the first person, of the unlikely friendship between Hans Schwartz, Jewish, and Konradin von Hohenfels, scion of an illustrious family that sits atop the pinnacle of society in Stuttgart. As two equally shy, reticent young boys show more (16 years), they become friends when they find themselves together in the same class. It is a strong and deep friendship built on the mutual exploration of life and god and the cosmos and all those other questions that pre-occupy inquisitive teenagers. But it is a friendship that cannot survive the growing pressures of society. Hans' parents can see the shape of things to come, and send Hans to America to go to university, after which he becomes a successful lawyer. So the story is told in a retrospect of 40 years. Konradin writes to Hans on the eve of his departure to say that given the uncertainties of the times, he thinks it best that Hans is leaving, although it will only be for a few years until things settle down, because Hitler, whom Konradin has met and admires, will know the difference between the good Jews and the negative elements. In the end, Hans is reminded of this part of his life, although he has never really forgotten it, when he receives a standard request, as an alumnus, from the school for a contribution. He looks at the long lists of names, some of whom he remembers, and notes how many are missing, or died particularly in Russia. He waits and resists looking under "H" until the very last line of the book which closes the circle, and brings closure for Hans: "von Hohenfels, Konradin, implicated in the plot to kill Hitler. Executed."

The story is successful and feels right because Uhlman is able to bring so many elements to bear and into focus in such a short story. Hans lives in relatively quiet backwater town where he has never suffered any discrimination and where his father is a respected doctor who earned the Iron Cross First Class in WWI as an officer; his worries are those of any other sixteen-year old boy growing up. But this life is invaded by the outside forces (a new history teacher who extols the primary role of Aryan influence throughout world history, and who is first ridiculed by the boys, but who begins to win them over), the boys who may never have been friends, but who become Jew-baiters and start to torment Hans, the aristocratic welcoming of Hitler because of a deep in-grained anti-semitism (Konradin's mother) and the essentially benign, unseeing, and uninvolved aristocrat (Konradin's father), the townspeople who first side with Hans' father when a Nazi tries to close down his surgery, but whom one knows would have tempered their feelings later out of personal concerns if nothing else, and Konradin, the initial supporter and enthusiast for Hitler and what he was doing for Germany, particularly in contrast with the feared and hated Stalin, but who in the end had the courage and the moral vision to see the evil and to try to act against it. A lot of thoughts, ideas, currents in such a short work, but well-written and done in a subtle, almost oblique manner. Well worth reading. show less