I've written my startrekholidays story and sent it off to be beta'd, as well as embarked on writing my Yuletide assignment. In betwee, there's RL business, but I do fifind the tiime for readiing the occasional article, such as a this one:


Emil's Berlin in translation: about the various English versions of "Emil and the Detectives" by Erich Kästner, and how each of them dealt - or failed to - meet the central challenge: How can you translate a book so closely connected to a particular time and place? How do you let young English readers understand Emil’s world without losing the specificity that is part of the original’s charm? (Was simultanously amused and appalled to find out the Berlin kids get a class upgrade in the English version smply by being given some type of Enid Blyton-esque public school slang to speak, which, err, is not what I'd have chosen as the British equivalent for Berlin working class kids...)

On another note, have a Lawrence of Arabia vid rec:

[VID] Garlands (17 words) by caramarie
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Ali ibn el Kharish & T. E. Lawrence
Characters: Ali ibn el Kharish, T. E. Lawrence
Summary:

‘I pray that I may never see the desert again.’

Heartbreaking Lawrence/Ali relationship and character study.

Erich Kästner, author of witty and wise poems and some of the most beloved books for children in German literature, about whom I’ve written before, also wrote one of the saddest Christmas stories I know, but not in any of his works of fiction. It’s from his book about his childhood, Als ich ein kleiner Junge war („When I was a little boy“), and I was reminded of it recently, when encountering, not for the first time, a complaint that Das doppelte Lottchen, aka the work that was later bastardized into US movies called The Parent Trap (which I still haven’t watched, mostly because I’m told that the hard working Munich journalist mother of the original becomes a Boston society lady there, and that’s just not on!), is clueless and/or screwed up about marital enstragement and divorce, presenting it as something easily overcome for the sake of the nuclear family. Now, Das doppelte Lottchen was one of the earliest children’s books to deal with divorce at all in Germany, and you won’t get any argument from me re: the lack of realism of its central premise, but that wasn’t because Kästner himself didn’t know that some couples really are (or would be) better off separated, or that „for the sake of the child(ren)“ can ring hollow. (And no, not because one of them is a wife beater or an ax murderer.) Case in point: his parents. Which brings me to that autobiographical Christmas story of his, translated here into English by yours truly. (Some additional background notes: Kästner’s father Emil had started out as a saddle maker and then had become a carpenter; his mother Ida started as a maid and later became a hair dresser, mostly because they needed the additional money so young Erich could afford to stay at school and then go to college instead of becoming a workman himself. Oh, and in Germany, presents are given on Christmas Eve, in the evening, not on Christmas Day in the morning.)

„My parents were, out of love for me, jealous of each other. They tried to hide it, and often they succeeded. But on the most beautiful day of the year, they never managed. Otherwise they tried to pull themselves together as best they could, for my sake, but on Christmas Eve, they couldn’t do it very well. I knew that, and had to pretend I didn’t for all our sakes.

( Why Erich Kästner hated Christmas more than Scrooge ever did )

Kästner published this book only after his mother had died (though his father was still alive), and in it, he tried to explain her further. Here’s the thing: Als ich ein kleiner Junge war actually wasn’t one of Kästner’s „adult“ books (like Fabian). It was explicitly a memoir aimed at children (ending with the beginning of WWI, not so coincidentally). Now, in Kästner’s novels some dark stuff happens now and then, but as far as I recall nothing as harrowing as this (though there is something of it in some of the darker poems):

( Norma Bates in Dresden )

If you're wondering where the fact the children in Kästner's novels tend to be the "adults", taking care of their parents or making them see reason comes from - wonder no longer.

Kästner und der kleine Dienstag (Erich Kästner and Little Tuesday), directed by Wolfgang Murnberger: movie which gets around the biopic conundrum (i.e. if you film the entire life of a person, it usually comes across as a checklist of edited highlights, as worthy and dull or what not) the usual way, by choosing a limited time to cover, and one particular relationship to focus on. In this case, the time is 1929 - 1945, and the relationship is the one that develops between Erich Kästner (self and most of the German reading world would list him among their favourite writers any time; and not just the German reading world, abigail_n once told me he was the only German author who chose to remain in Germany during the Third Reich who still got published in Israel post WWII and ever after) and Hans Löhr. Who is Hans Löhr? In 1929, he was an eight years old boy who read Emil and the Detectives, wrote an enthusiastic fan letter to the author, then met him, ended up playing Little Tuesday in the movie version the UFA produced in 1931 (early sound movie, scripted by one Billie (sic, he didn't change the spelling until making it to the US) Wilder). Hans Löhr and Kästner remained in contact until Löhr died.

Now, had this relationship happened in any other era, it simply would have been a not quite father and son, mentor/protegé type of story, with the added factor of making one realise it couldn't happen today because an adult man befriending a child immediately invokes suspicion. But it started in the last years of the Weimar Republic, and then took place in the vilest dictatorship we had in this country. And the questions whether you can survive inside the system with your moral integrity, and what it does to you to grow up in such a system, are of course a big part of the story. Erich Kästner during the course of the film goes from young vibrant and successful Weimar Republic era writer, still more famous for his political sharp tongued poetry than anything else (though Emil and the Detectives changes this radically), always ready with a witty come back, to the haunted grey figure at the end of the war who is completely silent in the last scene. The question "why don't you leave?" is asked repeatedly - until 1939, when leaving or not isn't an option any more - and Kästner has different answers: at first he doesn't believe Hitler will last, then he wants to be a witness from the inside (he made lots of notes, some of which survive, for a novel about the Third Reich which was to be his big justirfication for staying, something he said couldn't be written from the outside, but in the end he never wrote it), there's also his mother (Kästner was a proud self declared Mother's Boy whose "Letters to Muttchen" filled whole volumes), and lastly he also names fear and laziness. The movie leaves him this ambiguity, not settling on just one or the other. One of the most important supporting characters, Erich Ohse, a cartoonist who illustrated Kästner's novels and poetry, like him remained in Germany (and was allowed to continue to work under a pseudonym, until he was denounced and arrested for expressing anti Nazi opinions, and committed suicide in his cell), once has a conversation with Kästner where he says, about both of them: "You can't say clean in a pigsty, Erich."

Kästner stays, sees his books burned in front of him - he was probably the only German author whose books were among those burned in 1933 who witnessed it -, isn't allowed to publish anymore officially (inofficiallly, he worked as a script doctor and in one famous case wrote an entire script under a pseudonym - the movie Münchhausen, plus he also lived from the sales of his books outside of Germany). There is a visual running thread from the start of the movie, when an overcrowded café where Kästner often hangs out is bursting with people (signal to audience we're in Weimar Germany: not just the music but also same sex couples in the crowd), and through the movie we keep returning to the café with fewer and fewer people until it's just Kästner and the waiter. If this sounds all very depressing, I'm selling the energy of the movie short. Like I said, it focuses on the relationship between Kästner and Hans Löhr, which means a lot of comedy early on, as Kästner, like many a successful writer of children's books, isn't actually keen on or used to interacting with real children but otoh devoted fan Hans (his initial fan letter even comes with chocolate for his new favourite author!) is so incredibly endearing (and persistent) he gets around that.

The relationship also keeps shifting. At first Kästner is indulgent; directly after the Third Reich has started and Hans' best buddy, being half Jewish, finds himself derided by their teacher while Hans' sister joins the Jungvolk (she's still too young for the BDM at this point), Kästner tries to provide some moral counterpoints; still later, when Hans, who is played by two different actors by virtue of necessity in this movie (and may I say: very well cast, because the boy and young man who plays Hans as a teenager/very young adult really look like one could turn into the other, and both have excellent chemistry with Florian David Fitz who plays Kästner) has grown up some more, it's he who provides the moral challenges - didn't Kästner tell him through his books that standing by and doing nothing is as bad as joining the harm? (It's also, among many other things, a growing up, seeing your idol as a flawed human tale.) It's a getting estranged, finding each other again tale. And one which inevitably ends up in tragedy. As I saidin an earlier entry, all but two of the children playing in the first movie version of Emil and the Detectives died in World War II. Hans gets drafted. In the Q & A afterwards, the producers, asked about reality versus fiction, said they made some changes to the timeline, the most noticable being the point of Hans' death, which in reality already happened in 1942 but in the movie not until 1945 so it can coincide with the end of the war. The very last images of the movie are clips from the 1931 Emil and the Detectives, so we see the real Hans Löhr, and then the image of all the children joyfully running overlaid with the lettering tha tall but two died in the war, which after spending the last one and a half hour with Hans is gut wrenching enough to make cry, and I knew it was coming.

Now, this is a low budget movie. Which means no big sweeping spectacle shots: you get bombed Berlin via people sitting in a bomb shelter and later via Kästner watching the ruins of the house he used to live in, not via the whole city panorma. It also is low key in another fashion, and I suppose you could accuse it of pulling punches, though for me what they did worked, to wit: the fact that we don't see Hans as a soldier other than briefly ducking shots. (As opposed to shooting people.) The reason why I wouldn't agree that it was evading the fact that Hans, as a soldier of the Wehrmacht in the East, couldn't be other than a participant in a genocidal war is that earlier there's a conversation between Kästner and Hans where they talk about the rumors that there are atrocities in the East, and decide on a code sentence Hans is supposed to write to his mother if he finds this to be true. (Because obviously all mail is censored.) And the next time Kästner visits Mrs. Löhr, and she shows him Hans' letter, the sentence is there, underlined three times. Which in all its implication is mirrored on Kästner's face.

Also, the insidiousness of non stop hate propagadanda - a very contemporary topic, alas! - is addressed a lot by the movie; I already mentioned Hans' teacher (and believe me, what he says in class really was every day). One key sequence, for example: Kästner and Hans listen to the first Joe Louis versus Max Schmeling fight (the one Schmeling won) on the radio. To them, being Max Schmeling fans, this is a joyful occasion; he was already 30 and thought to be on the decline, not likely to win against the much younger Louis. The next morning, however, at school, the teacher recontextualizes the fight as Aryan superiority winning over a "negro", and the realisation that there is really no area untouched by hate propaganda now hits home all over again.

I've seen a lot of movies and tv shows include the book burning, but they usually get the books in question wrong (Christopher and his Kind), or they leave it at the point of "this is barbarism having arrived", with the character witnessing the burning usually a concerned foreigner. The way this movie uses it is different, both because they get the books right (and Kästner's adult novel Fabian isn't the first to be burned, either), because Kästner is actually there, and because of the conversation he has with the other Erich, Erich Ohse, later about it. One: he points it it wasn't SS men who threw the books into the fire, it were students. "Our hope for tomorrow." And secondly: "I was there, and I did nothing. I said nothing. This is how it's going to work. Some who act, and the rest of us standing by frozen."

Again: this doesn't just have historical relevance, and more's the pity.

On a more light hearted note: things that would be edited out if this was a US movie: Kästner's chain smoking (he's hardly without a cigarette in this movie, which is true to reality), and his casual sexuality (multiple relationships early on, including one with a married woman). BTW, of course Hans who informes him that "we are divorced" hopes Kästner will marry his mother early on, but Mrs. Löhr refresingly isn't interested (Kästner isn't, either), and is a rounded character who gets to make a lot of good points. (For example, early in the Third Reich, that it's all very well for Kästner to talk to her son about pacifism etc., but Kästner can leave Germany whenever he wants to, whereas they, being a working class family, can't afford it.

Accents: Hans' best friend Wolfi Stern speaks Berliner German like a pro (or a native, which him being a kid I suspect he is, though the teenage actor later also does it), as do most of the other kids. Otoh, Florian David Fitz is doesn't even attempt to have a go at the slight touch of Saxonian Kästner had, and his voice sounds different (he's a tenor, whereas Kästner was a bariton getting only deeper through the years), but he's so good in the part that you don't mind, and this isn't about impersonation anyway.

Allusions to Kästner's works: plenty, obviously: Emil and the Detectives is a touchstone, but also Pünktchen and Anton and Das Fliegende Klassenzimmer. At one point, Kästner has the idea for Das doppelte Lottchen somewhat prematurely and bounces it off Hans, but never mind. The script also found a way to include several of the poems, and put them to great use - Die andere Möglichkeit and Kennst Du das Land, Wo Die Kanonen Blühen? especially.

Movie-wise, two scenes of the 1931 Emil are re-acted so the kid who plays Hans is in them, and like I said, we see the original clips later on at the very end of the film; there's also a clip of Münchhausen, which Kästner watches in the cinema when British bombs arrive. Billy Wilder as a young man shows up only silently during the Emil premiere celebration (you only know it's him if you've seen photographs of Wilder at that age), but he's referred to earlier as the script writer; the movie avoids Wilder and Kästner having had a typical scriptwriter of adaption versus novelist who has never been adapted before clash, since it hasn't got anything to do with the Kästner and Hans Löhr story. We see a lot of Erich Ohse's cartoons, both the Weimar era ones and the later "father and son" series he published under the pseudonym of e.o. plauen. And a great example of how the film uses the comic to set up the tragic: early on, when Emil just got published, Kästner charms a bookseller into putting it in the frontal display of her store's window, replacing the Heinrich Mann (not Thomas!) novel which was there before. Twenty minutes into the movie later, that same Heinrich Mann novel precedes Kästner's in being thrown into the fire.

Where to watch: not at all yet. It's not been released. But the house was packed, and we gave it a tremendous applause. And I think I'll visit Kästner's grave here in Munich again soon.

A recent conversation in comments induced a wave of nostalgia directed at Erich Kästner, one of the 20th century's most enjoyable writers. He's responsible for some of the most beloved children's books (several of which, as I belatedy found out, were aquired by Disney, and, err, Disneyfied - never mind Marvel, the Mouse got its paws on Kästner, zomg!), popularizing the "children detectives" idea, and contemporary settings. Emil und die Detektive, Pünktchen und Anton, Das doppelte Lottchen are the most popular ones. Emil und die Detektive was so popular in Germany that it was the only one of Kästner's novels not to be forbidden by the Nazis. All of Kästner's other works were; he was issued what amounted to a gag order, a Berufsverbot, and could only work under pseudonyms or by publishing in Switzerland. He did not emigrate but remained in Germany, however, which meant he was also the only one of the writers whose books were burned in 1933 who was physically present (but not assaulted, thankfully) at one of the burnings. To return to Emil und die Detektive, this was filmed several times as most of Kästner's books; the very first version, from 1931, had its script written by young Billy Wilder, who I hear had something of a career overseas later. :)

YouTube doesn't have an excerpt of this version. But it has some other Kästner stuff. First of all, have a look at the man himself, and hear his voice. Here's the epilogue of the 1954 version of Das fliegende Klassenzimmer (directed by Kurt Hoffmann), which features Kästner, as the narrator, encountering two of his characters in the Hofgarten of Munich. (Where Kästner lived after WW II.) Even if you don't understand German, listen to the sound; Kästner had a great voice, and recorded a lot of his work.




Now, aside from children's novels, Kästner is also famous for his wonderfully witty and still eminently quotable poetry. (Though it was neglected for a few decades during and post WWII before being rediscovered in the 70s.) He was a firm pacifist, and prone to take a rather jaundiced view on romance, so you can bet on your avarage Kästner poem either making fun of the military, attacking social injustice or being unsentimental love. Here's one set to music by Kurt Weill in ye olde Weimar Republic days (I hear Mr. Weill later had a career overseas as well...):



That was Der Abschiedsbrief, Rita-Lucia Schneider singing. Kästner's most famous poem about the falling apart of an affair, which manages the incredibly tough balance act between on the one hand being unsentimental but on the other full of sympathy for both partners, is Sachliche Romanze, here recited by Kästner himself (again, great voice, hadn't he?):



And to round it off with a poem attacking the military build-up in Germany, Kennst du das Land, wo die Kanonen blühn? (the title, "do you know the country where canons bloom?" is a parody of a poem written by Goethe, Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn? - "do you know the country of lemon trees?" - which was about Italy). That's the sort of stuff Kästner was given a gag order for, here presented by Matthias Habich:



Back to the movies. From 1933-1945, Kästner now and then did have other sources of income than Emil royalties and Swiss publications. He worked for the UFA once, under the pseudonym of Berthold Bürger ("Berthold Citizen"); he wrote the script for the 1943 movie Münchhausen, which was the third film to be made in colour in Germany and the UFA's big 25th anniversary project. It's a fantasy movie, with a modern day framing narration (the Baron Münchhausen we meet early on, supposedly a descendant of the legendary Münchhausen, turns out to be the genuine article in the end, whom Cagliostro has made immortal, starring most of the big stars still in Germany at the time. Shezan once expressed surprise to me that the modern day scenes do not contain a single reference to the Nazis; this actually wasn't unusual for most German films made between 1933-1945 if they were set in present day, and it got only more extreme the worse the war was for Germany. The films presented an alternate reality in which nobody ever greets anyone else with "Heil Hitler", nobody wears uniform and there certainly is no war. Take the extreme case of Unter den Brücken by Helmut Käutner, which is a movie shot between May and October 1944. It's set in and around Berlin and is a charming love story, a triangle featuring two boatsmen and a girl (where all three participants end up with each other). In 1944, it was hard to find a bridge in Berlin still standing, let alone several, and most of the action of this film takes place around bridges over the Spree, the river running through Berlin. Yet in the Berlin of this film there are no ruins, no sign of bomb attacks at all, nothing. Truly, German movieland was an Alternate Universe of its own. Back to Münchhausen: YouTube has several scenes from the film subtitled in English. The one I've picked shows Münchhausen (Hans Albers) with Catherine the Great (Brigitte Horney). The first time Münchhausen met Catherine, he didn't know who she was as she was in disguise as a servant girl - which is why he calls her Käthchen - , but now they're reunited and the truth is out. The interesting thing here is that you have reversed conventional gender dynamics; she's the one rushing off to serious business with the intention to keeping him around for fun in between:



Despite not emigrating, Kästner was one of the very few German authors to remain extremely popular in Israel during the 50s; to my knowledge, he is so till this day. Over here, we have many schools named after him, films still continue to be made based on his novels, and most caberet artists use one or several of his poems in their programm. I'll conclude with another poem of his, recited by himself: Stiller Besuch, which is autobiographical and about his relationship with his mother: