Erich Kästner (1899–1974)

The shelves of the world's libraries are groaning with childhood memoirs of the great and the good, but Erich Kästner is unusual in that he chose to address his main autobiographical work, describing growing up in Dresden before 1914, specifically to young readers. "Dear children and non-children" is the formula he uses to open his Foreword, and it's obvious throughout that, whilst the presence of non-children is to be tolerated, it's not exactly encouraged, and they are admitted only as show more long as they keep quiet and don't interrupt. They would be wise not to provoke expulsion, because there is actually at least as much in this book that is interesting for adult readers as there is for children.

As always, Kästner treats his young readers as responsible, intelligent people, with a clear, sane gaze capable of puncturing the stupidities and hypocrisies of the adult world. He doesn't shelter them from "difficult" topics: we are told about how he had to help his mother through episodes of depression when she would go missing and he would find her standing on one of the bridges over the Elbe, looking longingly at the water; about how his fear of and disgust for a brutal teacher changed to compassion when he spent time with the man outside school and realised how trapped he was in a job he wasn't fitted for; and about his reaction to returning to the destroyed city after the 1945 bombing. And we learn a lot about how class-prejudice worked in Wilhelmite Germany, about poverty and child mortality, about militarism and pacifism, about what intellectual life looks like from the perspective of a working-class child, and much more.

It's a charming, funny, period piece, and the illustrations by Horst Lemke are a delight, of course, but it certainly isn't a trivial book. Still just as interesting as it was sixty years ago. show less

A mixed bag of Kästner's writings about snow and the strange German cult of winter-sports holidays, something that he was extremely fond of, although his heart problems meant that he was mostly restricted to sitting on sunny traces watching the skiers exert themselves. We get the snowy bits of several of his full-length books for children or adults (Das fliegende Klassenzimmer, Drei Männer im Schnee, Der Zauberlehrling), plus a couple of short stories and newspaper articles, some lyrics, show more and a large selection of postcards and letters written to his mother from places like Garmisch, Oberstdorf, Kitzbühel and Davos. Most of the material is from the 1930s.

There's a lot of amused observation of the complex social world of the alpine Grand-Hotel, of the odd ways city-dwellers behave on holiday in the mountains, of the ingenious ways indigenous people find to make money out of them, and so on. He's amused by the way farm-boys turn into sex-gods when they declare themselves to be ski-instructors, by the interesting sexual ambiguity of ski costume, and by the strange rules of the fancy-dress ball (the unfortunate who turns up at an "Apache Ball" in Native American dress, unaware that to the fashionable mind, an Apache is a French gangster...). And, like every observer of the winter-sport theme before and since, he jokes about the prevalence of broken legs and bemoans the way mass tourism is ruining the mountains. Not that that stops him boasting (for the censor's benefit) about finding himself lunching at the next table to Reichsführer Rudolf Hess and friends. I imagine his mother would have been able to guess how he really felt about that.

This is a nicely-produced book, issued by Kästner's long-standing Swiss publishers and helpfully annotated by Sylvia List, but about half the book is taken up by the long extracts from the three full-length books, which most people likely to pick this up will have read already, and which are probably rather frustrating if you don't know the rest of the story. The other half is either unpublished material or less well-known pieces, and it's probably worth getting the book for those. I particularly enjoyed the short story "Zwei Schüler sind verschwunden," featuring Matz and Uli from Das fliegende Klassenzimmer, which I hadn't seen before. show less

A dark, satirical account of a young man trying to make sense of the absurd, morally vacuous world of Berlin in the late 1920s. It's the Berlin of Alfred Döblin and Christopher Isherwood, rather than that of Emil and the Detectives — but despite all the grotesque sex scenes that could be out of a painting by George Grosz or Otto Dix, it's still really informed by the same reasonable, liberal, enlightened and slightly off-axis view of how the world should be that defines Kästner's books show more for children. Very disconcerting, somehow.

Something else that struck me was how much it echoes the satirical novels of British writers of about the same time, especially Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell. The plot of Fabian is pretty much interchangeable with that of Vile bodies, for instance, but the feeling you get when you read it is quite different. Waugh's pessimism looks like an intellectual affectation, but you have to take Kastner's as the real thing, because you know that Weimar Berlin was living on borrowed time; the world — as far as Fabian is concerned — was about to end. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, sometimes. show less

A gloriously joyful memoir, neither “rose-coloured” nor with “black lenses”, but “multicoloured”.
Including many delightful black line drawings by Horst Lemke, this loving recollection of Erich Kästner’s early years starts with stories he has been told about his ancestors, especially his grandfathers and many uncles. These stories mainly about butchers, who make their fortunes (or not) by building sufficient capital to be horse traders, are deeply nostalgic for the loss of all show more the skills associated with horses as we move into the age of the automobile.
Kästner’s father, Emil, was a saddler (leatherworker), apprenticed and becoming a master in a guild as if still in the Middle Ages, but mechanisation undermines his ability to make a living as a skilled craftsman, so he ceases to be an artisan and moves to work in a factory in Dresden.
Kästner’s mother, Ida Augustin, worked in service until she marries, and then earned money doing piece work sewing underwear (corsets). Later, after Kästner had started going to school, Ida apprenticed as a hairdresser, receives her diploma and earns money working from home, with a corner of the bedroom equipped as a salon.
The Kästners also supplement their income by subletting rooms in their small tenement flat to a series of lodgers, who were teachers.
It sounds like a poor but respectable life in early twentieth century Germany, told with humour and charming descriptions of the elegant buildings of Dresden, the most famous of which are illustrated (page 60). And although Kästner focuses on his early years, 1899 to 1914, he doesn’t shy away from telling of the subsequent obliteration of Dresden by Allied bombing towards the end of the Second World War: “It had taken centuries to create its incomparable beauty. A few hours sufficed to spirit it off the face of the earth. This happened on the night of 13 February 1945. Eight hundred planes rained down high explosive and incendiary bombs on it. When they had gone, nothing remained but a desert with a few giant ruins which looked like ocean liners heeling over.”
Kästner also tells the larger than life story of his domineering, entrepreneurial uncle Franz, who becomes a millionaire from horse trading from the stables in a poor street in Dresden, is persuaded to buy a large villa, which he only uses to sleep, but which the Kästners regularly visit to see their lonely aunt Lina and cousin, Dora. Uncle Franz loses his money in the inflation, but manages to rebuild his fortunes somewhat before dying. His only child, Dora, dies in childbirth, and his only grandson, also called Franz and a medical student, dies in the retreat from Hungary at the end of the Second World War.
Kästner describes hiking and cycling tours of a week or fortnight with his mother, and occasionally his cousin Dora, whilst his father remains home working in the factory. Finally, Aunt Lina pays for Kästner and his mother to accompany Dora to a Baltic resort, where they enjoy avoiding the crowds, until the story ends on 1 August 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War.

Kästner describes his childhood beautifully, noting that as a child “I read as I breathed - as if I would suffocate if I didn’t.” (page 101), which is a sentiment that must resonate with many of his readers.

I read the beautiful Slightly Foxed edition, which has a bright orange ribbon marker that somehow perfectly complements the youthful memoir. show less