Not I: Memoirs of a German Childhood
Joachim C. Fest
Language: English
Pages: 464
ISBN: 1590516109
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
One of the New York Times Books Review's 100 Notable Books of 2014!
A portrait of an intellectually rigorous German household opposed to the Nazis and how its members suffered for their political stance
Few writers have deepened our understanding of the Third Reich as much as German historian, biographer, journalist, and critic Joachim Fest. His biography of Adolf Hitler has reached millions of readers around the world. Born in 1926, Fest experienced firsthand the rise of the Nazis, the Second World War, and a catastrophically defeated Germany, thus becoming a vital witness to these difficult years.
In this memoir of his childhood and youth, Fest offers a far-reaching view of how he experienced the war and National Socialism. True to the German Bildung tradition, Fest grows up immersed in the works of Goethe, Schiller, Mörike, Rilke, Kleist, Mozart, and Beethoven. His father, a conservative Catholic teacher, opposes the Nazi regime and as a result loses his job and status. Fest is forced to move to a boarding school in the countryside that he despises, and in his effort to come to terms with his father’s strong political convictions, he embarks on a tireless quest for knowledge and moral integrity that will shape the rest of his life and writing career.
Technically, it was comparatively easy to contrive an escape, because the guards were rather negligent and every week at least one goods train went from Laon to the American Zone of occupation in Germany.4 Those in charge of the camp were therefore forced to tighten control. Lieutenant Dillon, together with the command staff in Rheims, urged greater restrictions, while Captain Donaldson said the prisoners should not be treated with undue harshness. They had already had more than enough of that.
grew irritated and cut me short: “That’s it! Here are your papers! Now get out!” At first I was unable to think of a retort. I simply stood there, motionless, while the sergeant waved me away. Finally, I made what seemed to me to be a quick-witted response: “In ten minutes I’ll be going through the camp gate over there. From then on I’ll be very happy that people like you will have to address me courteously again!” He stopped short. Then he angrily threw the leather-bound volume with my
cathedral and the main railway station. At any rate, one encountered nowhere here the dirty colors which dominated the devastated cities all the way to Berlin; the aquatint tones of the town, the gentle sandstone red and unobtrusive grays, behind them the green of the castle hill, seemed almost like home. In a letter to my parents, in which for the first time in years I could express myself more or less openly, and, above all, explain why I had not applied for release to Berlin, I wrote: All in
was active in both the FDP (Free German Party) and the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) and attempted to help bridge the gap between the Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches. 6 Advance Guard Black-Red-Gold: black, red, and gold being the colors of the republican German flag, as opposed to the black, red, and white of the imperial and Nazi flags.—Trans. 7 Frederick II, king of Prussia (1712–86), called the Great, is an icon of Prussian conservatives and advocates of German national greatness in
out with billowing clouds of breath. What kept us there was a conversation about the ultimate questions of life and death. Gerd Donner said that—as an intelligent person—I surely couldn’t believe everything that was said in church. He had nothing against Father Lauen, our “snappy” religious education teacher, but the fairy tale about the Dear Lord with the curly beard, together with the Resurrection and the “immaculate conception”—he could only laugh at it. And he knew for sure that secretly I