German-Israeli Book Project: History Told in Personal Stories
A parcel of books returns to Germany from Israel (Photo: Andrea Krogmann)
15 October 2011
Why did Ada Brodsky read Hesse and Rilke? Why did their work move her? Grammar school pupils in Detmold, who today are holding the books that belonged to the Jew who fled from the Nazis in their hands, are asking themselves these questions. This is their own, literary approach to finding answers. By Andrea Krogmann
“It was an overwhelming feeling for me to hold The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christoph Rilke by Rainer Maria Rilke in my hands.” The enthusiasm of a 15-year old for a story set in the 17th century is surprising. The book came from the property of a Jewish woman who fled from Germany under the Nazis. Without knowing this, says the book’s present reader, Antonia, it would only be “one of many in the world.” Together with her classmates, the pupil at Christian-Dietrich-Grabbe-Gymnasium in Detmold is taking part in the project No lightweight packages, by which the Goethe-Institut Jerusalem aims to sensitize people for German-Jewish history.
Steven Förster’s class received five books from the bequest of the Jewish translator Ada Brodsky, who died on 12 April in Jerusalem, together with biographical texts about their former owner. The books include classical school reading requirements such as Mann’s The Magic Mountain, Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game and Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, but also a children’s book from the 1930s in which the author aims to bring “heroes and adventurers from the Bible” so close to Jewish children, “that they become as familiar to them as Little Red Riding Hood and the story of the seven little goats.”
In groups, the pupils will present the books, retrace Ada Brodsky’s life story in reports and explore the significance of the books for the literature-loving Jewish woman. Individual writings will be examined in detail and everything set in the context of the times. In the end, explains class teacher Steven Förster, the pupils will make folders for the Jerusalem Goethe-Institut including a fictional letter to Ada Brodsky, who was once awarded a Goethe Medal for her translations.
Solace in books?
Förster has taught the class German and history for two years; time in which he could prepare the pupils for the subject matter. “The individual visualization of personal stories,” he says, makes history “more tangible than anonymous victim counts.” For him it also began with a personal encounter, “the friendship with an American Jew of German origin, who I met by chance at the Buchenwald memorial.”Authenticity has great effects. “It is a burdensome feeling to hold a book from those times in your own hands. You feel you’ve been taken back to the past,” says 15-year old Adrian, for instance. “We always read, ‘Many thousands of people were forced to flee.’ I read that sentence but I don’t think I ever really understood what these words actually meant,” classmate Charlotte adds.
Horror at the fate of the Jewish woman is mixed with admiration for her courage. It is important, “to treat the books with care and pay the entire project a certain degree of serious attention,” according to Lea, who undertook the reading with great respect. “The first time I was able to hold the books in my hands I was always afraid I might cause some damage.”
Even if she cannot “comprehend and understand any of what she had to experience,” the books make her feel very close to Ada Brodsky, says Antonia, who admires the way that the woman tried to live with both cultures – the German and the Hebrew. Many of the questions that arise during reading, the pupil says, can never be answered, like “What experiences did she have with the book and where was she while reading it? What does she associate with this book?” Charlotte would also like to know, “why Ada Brodsky read these very books” and “why this work in particular comforted her or made her smile.”
What if they were able to meet Ada Brodsky in person? Adrian, Antonia and their classmates would thank her for allowing them to take part in her experience through this project and ask her where she found the strength to get through it all. They would tell her how important it is that this part of German history never be forgotten and, while they had the opportunity, ask her why The Magic Mountain and Rilke’s short story were so important to her.
The idea for the project No lightweight packages originated from a quandary, explains its initiator, Simone Lenz. Entire collections of books, according to the director of the Jerusalem Goethe-Institut, entered the former British mandate of Palestine along with their German owners who escaped from Nazi persecution. In the past years, second and third generation family members often offered the books to the institute as bequests. It was not easy to reject these “memorabilia” merely for lack of space, some of which were valuable editions containing historical testimonies such as dedications and personal entries. These books, says Simone Lenz, formed an important element of the identity of German-Jewish immigrants in Israel. In cooperation with the Holocaust memorial Jad Vaschem, the district government of Münster (advanced teacher training) and partner schools in Germany, she developed the book project in which the participating school classes receive a selection of books from four different people. Large-format brochures provide additional comprehensive information about the former owners of the books and their specific reading habits.
Copyright: 2011 KNA. All rights reserved.
