Walter Kempowski (1929–2007)

The old folk were transported on an open horse-drawn cart sitting on straw packed well around them. They were nodding their heads in time to cheerful tunes played on a concertina. They never thought they would have to go on the road again in their old age with cannulas sticking out of them like hedgehog quills, with colostomy bags and devices for getting air into their thoracic cavities. They were bad on their feet and had trouble with their water-works. It hadn’t been so bad in Mitkau. show more They got used to the place. Can’t people leave us in peace?

At times Kempowski manages to inject humor into his story of a young boy’s journey westward from East Prussia during the dying days of WWII.

The boy, Peter comes from a wealthy Mitkau family. His mother, beautiful and dreamy has little contact with young Peter, and his father is far away in Italy on business with the Reich. His main contact, emotional and intellectual is with his tutor, and he spends most of his time learning and playing with scientific instruments like his magnifying glass and binoculars.

With the Soviet army advancing and the German army retreating, East Europeans start to move west. Peter with his aunt , mother and tutor set off, but are quickly separated in the refugee chaos. It’s a hazardous journey. Peter gets some help along the way. He’s a determined little chap and he carries his magnifying glass under his arm. He manages with his wit, intelligence and innate charm to make the journey.

Peter becomes a storyteller and entertains the people who help him with his tales. Each town reflects a step deeper into the disintegration of German life and society as the war closes in.

Peter meets all types of people from the different counties that made up Eastern Europe before they were reorganized, again. Jews moving west toward the Reich not aware that they were being treated worse there, but fearing the communists. People from old people’s home, trades people, artists, parents and babies.

From Mitkau to Wehlau (now Znamensk, Russia), Heilsberg (now Lidzbark Warmiński, Poland), Rastenburg, now in Poland, Osterode, Allenstein (now Olsztyn, Poland),nand Braunsberg (now Braniewo ) in northern Poland, the stream of refuges grew. Then Peter becomes separated from the larger group. At this stage many of the refuges were trying to go by sea to Denmark, but Peter is forced to continue on. Alone with his microscope.

“All for Nothing” is not just another refugee book. “All for Nothing” is set in the latest stages of the war from the standpoint of Eastern Europen civilians. The refugees in “All for Nothing” are unusual in novels nowadays, in that they are fleeing towards Germany, though more so in the beginning of the book. The mix of motives, the chaos of war, the human ability to push through, the human kindness, and the human callousness are all put together in this surprisingly delightful book.

Refugees come in all shapes and sizes now. A few years back we were all worried about people crossing the seas to Europe. Now we have Gaza where there are no refugees because there’s no way out. In America citizens can become refugees in their own country. In my country Australia no boat carrying refugees can make landfall. We all see these problems every day when we look at our newspapers or screens. But how many of us do anything?

I highly recommend this book. show less

Kempowski's epic final novel takes on the big subject of the evacuation of Germans from East Prussia during the Soviet advance into the region in the winter of 1945. This was one of the most traumatic moments of the war for German civilians: something like 750 000 people had to flee their homes, and nearly half of them were killed on their way to the west by air raids, the sinking of refugee ships, or by cold, accident or disease. It's potentially a huge story, but Kempowski keeps his focus show more tight and shows us events, one detail at a time, mostly from the perspective of the twelve-year-old Peter von Globig, whose parents own a small country estate in East Prussia.

The drama of the evacuation itself is all packed into the last few chapters, and most of the book is devoted to building up a context for it, showing us how cracks are starting to appear in German self-confidence as rumours of a Russian advance over the frontier start to get stronger, and exploring how difficult it seems to be for any of us to accept that the stable world we are living in is about to be blasted away completely. The homes, businesses and families we've built up, the wars we've fought: surely that can't have been all for nothing? Even as the artillery starts to rumble in the background and a caravan of farm carts from further east is rattling past the front door, everyone is still making excuses for postponing departure, and Peter is busy playing with his train set and his microscope.

Kempowski spent much of his life collecting ordinary people's memories, and this comes out in the wealth of everyday detail that he uses to illuminate the distorted world on the edge of the abyss: BDM-girls sent out to assist German Mothers-to-be, HJ-lads sweeping snow, forced labourers from the occupied countries doing most of the real work, the self-important block-warden using denunciation to get even with all the people he resents, bureaucrats constantly trying to invent order for the chaos around them by issuing it with papers and permits, the enforcing of rules that have long lost their purpose. Even in the midst of the panic, this is still a world where saying "Good morning" would be seen as an act of reckless subversion: Kempowski uses the insane way that people still hammer on the official "Heil Hitler!" greeting as an ironic Leitmotif throughout the book.

A hugely impressive book, but a surprisingly fine and delicate one too. show less

An outstanding novel about the waning days of World War II in eastern Germany.

Peter is a quiet, twelve-year-old boy, enamored with his microscope and train set. His father, currently away serving the Reich in Italy as a procurement officer, had purchased the 14,000 acre estate of Georgenhof for the family, but sold all but the manor house and surrounding grounds. There Peter lives with his dreamy, artistic mother and his practical Auntie, who runs things. There are also two Ukrainian show more housemaids and Vladimir, the Polish handyman. They lead an insular life, only occasionally troubled by the busybody Nazi, Drygalski, who lives across the way in a new settlement. Other than losing their shares in English steel and a Romanian flour business, they have been untroubled by the war so far. Peter's father sends lots of luxury goods like cigarettes, chocolate, liquors, and food stuffs from abroad, which offsets the family's financial losses, but ominous rumors are circulating from the eastern front.

As the Russians draw closer, they drive before them a wave of refugees. At first a trickle, and then a flood of people from the Baltics and eastern Prussia surge westward toward the safety of the Reich. At first the occasional intrusion from a refugee is a welcome break from the monotony of their daily routine, but as the refugees increase in number and desperation, Katharina is forced to make decisions for the family, a role to which she is unaccustomed. As the sounds of the front moves nearer, the tension increases and they must decide whether to stay or join the wave of humanity trudging past their gate.

This was Walter Kempowski's last published novel, and it is well-informed by both his own experiences and his massive project to collect primary materials documenting the war. The writing is clean and unsentimental, despite the sentimental nature of some of his characters. The pacing is excellent, and I had a hard time putting the book down as the tension built. But perhaps most stunning of all is Kempowski's characters—from Peter to his mother, from the gentlemanly tutor Dr. Wagner to the one-armed soldier who plays the piano—each character seems drawn from real life, so vividly are they portrayed. I found the book emotionally impactful and one I will not soon forget. Highly recommended. show less

The first part of Kempowski’s Deutsche Chronik (but the fifth in publication order), covering the period from about 1898 to 1918, the childhood of his parents Karl (in Rostock) and Grethe (in Hamburg) and their experiences in the First World War.

Kempowski uses his characteristic collage technique, mixing together his third person narrative with passages of what seems to be oral history from people who remember the Kempowski and De Bonsac families, to create a composite picture of show more bourgeois life in Wilhelmite North Germany, a kind of less-ponderous follow-up to the world of Buddenbrooks. Lübeck is between Hamburg and Rostock, after all.

There’s a lot about the apparently universal and unquestioned belief in German greatness, German mission, and the Kaiser. Some of that is probably hindsight— Kempowski was writing from the point of view of someone who had lived through the consequences of post-1918 German arrogance — but it’s also not so different from what you might read about British or French jingoism in the early 20th century. It’s also fascinating to read about how little people like Karl and Grethe knew about the poor people who lived around them. Karl is quite genuinely puzzled the first time he sees a hunger march, and Grethe is shocked when she leaves her suburban cocoon for the first time to work in an inner-city kindergarten. show less